If your book club is looking for inspiration on what to read next, we’re here to help.

Nina Kenwood recommends…

If you’re looking for an interesting, well-written novel that’s funny and filled with topics ripe for discussion, then you can’t go wrong with Dietland by Sarai Walker. It covers feminism, body weight issues, media, violence, terrorism, the diet industry, fashion and much more. The author is American, and she’s coming to Australia very soon (we’re holding an event with her at the end of August, in fact!), so your bookclub might even like to make the discussion into an outing…

In other recommendations, I would suggest A Fortunate Age by Joanna Rakoff, if your book club isn’t afraid of a long novel. It’s got a big cast of characters for everyone to love and hate.

Relativity by Antonia Hayes is another book I think would work well for book clubs. There’s secrets to be revealed, and controversial issues to be discussed. (To get a sense of the book, you can read the author’s piece on being a teenage mother here.)

If your book club is open to short stories, then I recommend any of these three collections (or, if you are feeling ambitious, read all three and discuss, because they all complement each other beautifully): Six Bedrooms by Tegan Bennett Daylight, Hot Little Hands by Abigail Ulman and Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny.

You also can’t go wrong with prize winners. The Strays and The Eye of the Sheep are two prize-winning Australian books from this year (winning the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award respectively) that are very worthy book club contenders. The Dobbie and Kibble Literary Awards were recently announced, with Heat and Light winning the award for first book, and The Golden Age by Joan London winning the award for an established writer – again, both seem excellent book club fodder.

Finally, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel has been a little overlooked here in Australia, and I think it would make an excellent book club discussion title – on the one hand it’s a very literary novel that examines survival, family, community, the enduring nature of literature, and on the other hand it also has a killer flu, a post-apocalyptic world and some genuinely terrifying, exciting chapters.

Bronte Coates recommends…

As well as actually reading books, I get so much joy out of talking about them. For this reason, I’m a big advocate for clubs, even (and perhaps especially) if your book club is secretly a wine club. I’m also interested in how many of the best books we’ve talked about at my book club aren’t my favourites. Rather, they were the books that inspired debate and questions – the kind that had me venting to anyone who will listen as soon as I finished the last page.

One recent release that looks certain to fit that description is Harper Lee’s controversial new novel Go Set A Watchman. It’s generating all kinds of responses online, including this blog post from my colleague Nina.

Other thought-provoking and meaty fiction picks for this year are Krissy Kneen’s The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Anne Enright’s The Green Road and Atticus Lish’s Preparation for the Next Life. Though, if your book club has trouble finishing big books, Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation is a slim novel packed with big ideas. And if you’re partial to YA fiction, Dianne Touchell’s A Small Madness would definitely make for an interesting conversation.

For non-fiction, I highly recommend Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematorium, which is funny, gruesome and fascinating. I’d also love to read and discuss Åsne Seierstad’s true crime, One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway, which Readings Managing Director Mark Rubbo said ‘is destined to become a classic account of evil’. If you’re interested in Irish literature and history, Anne-Marie Foster semi-fictionalised biography The Belle of Belfast also has much to discuss, not least how expectations on women have evolved since then.

Book clubs can also be a good place to read a book you may have missed when it were a new release. If you’re looking for an excuse to delve into the past, you can find some lovely new formats of some of our favourites from last year here, including Siri Hustvedt’s fascination exploration of the art world with The Blazing World and Alexander McCall Smith’s contemporary version of Austen’s Emma. I’m personally very keen to read Rachel Cusk’s Outline. This book, which blends fiction with memoir, was suggested to me by the same friend who recommended H is for Hawk and thus, won my trust forever.

Also looking to backlist titles, Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (which has been adapted for the screen with Cate Blanchett in the titular role, ‘Carol’) is also high on my list. As is Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids, which I’ve regrettably never read. This year feels like good timing to counter this regret as she’s publishing a follow-up in Octobe, M Train.

And finally, I highly, highly recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me which blew me away. You can read my review here.