Many book clubs prefer to wait for a book to come out in paperback before selecting it for a group read. Paperbacks are less expensive and more portable than hardcovers, and by the time they are released, the books are often easier to find in libraries.
Well, good news: These 12 great reads — many former or current bestsellers — are now out in paperback.
Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
Cooper and Howe, who explored his family in the bestselling 2021 book Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty, turned to the Astors last year, offering a fascinating, frank and extremely critical portrayal of a clan prone to both greed and miserliness, in the unhappy grip of a fortune that was created with “very real brutality.” It all began with John Jacob Astor, the son of a German butcher, who came to the United States in the 18th century and grew rich, first in the beaver fur trade, then in New York City real estate. Subsequent generations went on to manage and be defined by that obscene wealth — in part by acting as slumlords — before their empire diminished in a sad soap opera of infighting and scandal.
The Last Devil to Die: A Thursday Murder Club Mystery by Richard Osman
On the lighter side is the fourth fun caper from Osman featuring the four septuagenarian English sleuths from Osman’s Thursday Murder Club Mystery series (read our excerpt), out last year following the bestselling The Bullet That Missed. This time they’re contending with a dangerous package gone missing and a killer on the loose. The series is the basis for an upcoming film from Stephen Spielberg. Note that Osman has a new book, We Solve Murders, with a cozy duo of slightly younger mystery solvers: 30-something Amy Wheeler, a private security officer who thrives on dangerous assignments, and her beloved 50-something retired police officer father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, who’d rather be at the pub with a pint but gets drawn into the action.AARP NEWSLETTERS
Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club by J. Ryan Stradal
Stradal is the author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest and The Lager Queen of Minnesota, and this 2023 novel is another warmhearted multigenerational story set in the Midwest. It is focused on a young couple from two Minnesota restaurant families — one running an old-school supper club — who feel the weight of their legacies. Then a tragic accident leads them in new directions.
Holly by Stephen King
Does your book club like scary stuff? You can’t go wrong with the master of suspense, who offers a supremely creepy story featuring Holly Gibney from a few of the author’s other novels (Mr. Mercedes, The Outsider). This 2023 novel revisits the private detective, who’s now on the case of a string of disappearances and contending with twisted husband and wife professors with some very dark secrets.
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
A Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting at The New York Times, Egan focuses this deeply researched history on KKK supporters, including top politicians and officials, and corruption galore in the early 20th century. He singles out one particularly evil character, Sen. David Curtis ‘‘D.C.” Stephenson, who was eventually convicted of murder and other crimes. This title made lots of best of 2023 lists.
To read about other new book available in paperback for fall, from AARP, CLICK HERE.
