What Book Clubs Are Reading in October

The Irish lit megastar's latest novel is finally here, so don’t miss this chance to dive into her latest zeitgeist-defining book, which was picked by both The New York Times Book Review and Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss’ book club this month. Belletrist recently threw a glittery bash to celebrate the book’s launch at the Irish Arts Center - sans its press-shy author. “Sally Rooney has said that her ideal existence is to be able to write and then let her work go into the world without her being involved at all…so we cohosted a party with @fsgbooks and obeyed her wishes,” Roberts quipped on Instagram.

For October, Jenna Bush Hager picked the new novel by this Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author about “a journey through a prairie community where love is absurd and splendid, and where the bond with the earth is both tattered and treasured,” according to the Today show host. “Louise Erdrich is a true literary treasure, and she’s done it again in this beautiful novel.”

This blistering memoir co-written by the late Lisa Marie Presley and her daughter Riley Keough is filled with bombshells about the royal family of rock and roll. Oprah said she knew within a few pages that this “honest and vulnerable" book would be her 108th pick.

Natalie Portman's October selection is a sizzling hot literary spy noir “about a secret agent sent to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists in rural France” that’s currently nominated for both a National Book Award and the Booker Prize.

This Tertulia First Dibs selection is Dakota Johnson's October pick. In the Lambda Award winner’s latest supernatural thriller, three Black siblings return to the white Dallas suburb where they grew up in the aftermath of their parents' unusual deaths.

Reese Witherspoon gets her readers in the mood with this debut thriller that Dark Academia fans won’t be able to put down. When a Princenton grad returns to campus for her reunion, she’s pulled into a sinister world of secret societies after her little sister turns up dead. “If you’re looking for a page-turner that keeps you on the edge of your seat this spooky season, this one is a must-read!”

This October, Dua Lipa chose the celebrated author who won the 2017 Booker Prize for this imaginative Civil War story that finds Abraham Lincoln mourning the death of his young son Willie, who inhabits a Buddhist purgatory state filled with quarrelsome ghosts. “I loved this unique, bold and compassionate book…There is no one writing today who can match George Saunders for compassion and empathy. The very last page still replays in my mind. The voices of these spirits – the wretched and the brave, and the dead boy Willie Lincoln - will stay with me forever,” raved the pop star.

With her Audacious Book Club selection for October, Roxane Gay picks the new essay collection from an acclaimed Haitian-American author that pays tribute to her literary heroes like Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez, offers personal anecdotes that tap into her experience as a Haitian immigrant, and explores the effects of hurricanes and political violence.

Queen Camilla selected the latest love story from the internationally bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author of One Day that The New York Times Book Review found “captivating [and] flawless...An affectingly hard-won romance.”

Rapper Noname’s October pick is the timely second book of a critically-acclaimed speculative fiction series by an acclaimed Afrofuturist author who passed away in 2006. "In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler's 'Parable' books may be unmatched," hailed the New Yorker.