Last updated: July 1, 2026
Three women shape what America reads more than almost anyone else. Reese Witherspoon, Oprah Winfrey, and Jenna Bush Hager each run a book club with serious cultural pull. One announcement from them can make an author's career overnight, and the picks reliably end up on bestseller lists and beach blankets and book club meeting agendas all year long.
This is the running list of every 2026 pick from all three, in one place, updated every month as new picks are announced. Bookmark it. I'll keep this page current and you won't have to check three different sites anymore.
For each pick I've added a short honest take: who it's actually for, whether it lived up to the hype, and what to read next if you loved it. (Most of the picks I've already covered with their own full guides so links to those are below each title.)
This Month's Picks (July 2026)
| Club | Current Pick |
|---|---|
| 📕 Reese | A Founding Mother by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie |
| 📘 Oprah | Little Wonder by Sophie Chen Keller |
| 📗 Jenna | To be announced (TODAY Show reveal) |
Last updated July 1, 2026. New picks added the first Tuesday (Reese) and first Wednesday (Jenna) of each month.
Holding the book The Fine Art of Lying by Alexandra Andrews
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Reese's Book Club Picks 2026
Reese announces a new pick the first Tuesday of every month, usually live on Instagram or via a video drop. Her formula: a book with a woman at the center, often a debut, often with adaptation potential (her production company Hello Sunshine has the first-look on most of them). The picks skew towards literary page-turners with lots to discuss making them perfect for book clubs.
January 2026:The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave
Released: January 6, 2026
The sequel to The Last Thing He Told Me, picking up five years after Owen's disappearance. Hannah and Bailey are settled in Southern California when Owen returns and the danger comes back with him. A propulsive, twisty read and Reese has the adaptation locked, with Jennifer Garner returning in season 2 of the Apple TV+ series.
Who it's for: Anyone who loved the first book; readers who like a domestic suspense with real heart underneath.
📖 Read my full guide: The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave: Plot Summary, Ending Explained, and Book Club Guide
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
February 2026: In Her Defense by Philippa Malicka
Released: February 3, 2026
A debut legal-thriller about a televised trial that's gripped the country: a beloved TV star accuses her daughter's therapist of brainwashing. Told with shifting perspectives and a quiet third character Augusta "Gus" Bird who turns out to know the real truth. Reese pitched it as a follow-up read for fans of The Guest List and The Lying Game.
Who it's for: Readers who can't get enough courtroom drama or unreliable-narrator structure. Strong book club fit if your group likes a mystery with moral knots.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
March 2026: Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser
Released: March 3, 2026
Forget the glass slippers. This isn't that story. Lady Tremaine takes the world's most famous fairy tale villain and makes you root for her. Etheldreda is twice widowed, broke, living in a manor that's gorgeous on the outside and literally crumbling within, and fighting tooth and nail to get her daughters married before the whole facade collapses. She's prideful, sharp-tongued, and occasionally ruthless but every move she makes is driven by desperate, bone-deep maternal love.
It's all here. The ball, the prince, the stepsisters... but flipped in ways that actually make you rethink the original. And when something deeply wrong surfaces inside the palace, Ethel has to decide whether to protect the stepdaughter who has rejected her at every turn. That tension is where the book really shines.
Who it's for: Fairy-tale retelling fans, anyone who loved Circe or the Wicked perspective flip, and book clubs that want a debut with real literary heft. Comped by the publisher to Bridgerton meets Circe and earns the comparison.
📖 Read my full guide: Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser: Plot, Characters, Ending Explained, and Book Club Guide
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
April 2026: Into the Blue by Emma Brodie
Released: April 7, 2026
Two acting partners meet in a Massachusetts video store in 2000, lose each other, and then find themselves cast in the same TV production seven years later, when Noah is Hollywood famous and AJ is still trying to break in. A sweeping decades-spanning love story with real chemistry on the page.
Who it's for: Readers who loved Daisy Jones & the Six, Tom Lake, or Carrie Soto Is Back the second-chance-romance-meets-art-world subgenre.
📖 Read my full guide: Into the Blue by Emma Brodie: Plot Summary, Ending Explained, and Book Club Guide
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
May 2026: The Fine Art of Lying by Alexandra Andrews
Released: May 5, 2026
Clare Bast, an art-historian-turned-Park-Avenue-wife, gets pulled into Manhattan's high-stakes art world by the well-connected wife of her husband's new boss and ends up at the scene of a gruesome murder with a stolen masterpiece in the middle of it. A glossy literary thriller with real teeth.
Who it's for: Readers who liked The Devil Wears Prada meets The Goldfinch — art-world plus social-climbing plus murder. Strong book club potential.
📖 Read my full guide: The Fine Art of Lying by Alexandra Andrews: Plot Summary, Ending Explained, and Book Club Guide
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
June 2026: A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
Released: June 2, 2026
The historical fiction duo behind The Personal Librarian and The First Ladies returns with their third co-write and it's built on two real women I had somehow never heard of.
Eunice Carter was the only woman and only person of color on Thomas Dewey's Crime Commission, and Manhattan's first Black female Assistant District Attorney.
Pearl "Polly" Adler was "the Jewish Jezebel" sent from Russia at thirteen, and by the 1930s the most famous madam in New York. They form an unlikely alliance to bring down Lucky Luciano.
Who it's for: Fans of The Personal Librarian and The First Ladies. Anyone who loves historical fiction rooted in real women's history. Book clubs that thrive on stories about justice, ambition, and the work of writing women back into the record.
📖 Read my full guide: A Pair of Aces: Real History, Plot, and Book Club Guide
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
July 2026: A Founding Mother by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Released: May 5, 2026
For America's 250th, Reese picked the perfect book: Abigail Adams, front and center at last. Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, the duo behind America's First Daughter and My Dear Hamilton, bring the wife of one president and mother of another fully to life running the farm, managing the money, and famously telling John to "remember the ladies" while the republic was built around her.
It's long, it's immersive, and it's grounded in the 1,000-plus letters Abigail and John left behind. If you've been meaning to fall down a founding-mothers rabbit hole, this is your on-ramp.
Who it's for: Fans of My Dear Hamilton, the musical Hamilton, and anyone who loves historical fiction that puts a real woman back at the center of the story. A perfect 250th-anniversary read for July.
📖 Read my full guide: A Founding Mother by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie: Plot, Real History, and Book Club Guide
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
Want to be notified when each pick is announced?
Holding a copy of the book Go Gentle by Maria Semple
Oprah's Book Club Picks 2026
Oprah announces her picks on her own schedule. Usually 4–6 per year, not monthly. Each one becomes a literary event: she sits down with the author for a full interview, the book club commits to the title for a long discussion arc, and the pick almost always becomes a bestseller within days. Her 2026 picks lean literary, generational, and emotionally weighty.
January 2026: Enough by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Ania Jastreboff
Released: January 2026
Oprah's own book, co-authored with Yale obesity-medicine specialist Dr. Ania Jastreboff. A conversation about obesity as a treatable medical condition, Oprah's own decades-long struggle, and what modern therapies offer. Reads more like an extended Oprah interview than a typical book club pick, which is precisely the point.
Who it's for: Readers interested in health, medical narratives, and Oprah's personal story. Not a fiction book club pick.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
February 2026: Kin by Tayari Jones
Released: February 24, 2026
Oprah's 121st book club pick and her first fiction selection of 2026. Kin follows Vernice and Annie, two motherless girls from Honeysuckle, Louisiana, who grow up as best friends and then watch their lives diverge one to Spelman, one searching the South for the mother she lost. Tayari Jones returns to fiction after An American Marriage (also an Oprah pick, 2018) and the result is exactly the kind of generational, conversation-starting novel Oprah's club exists for.
Who it's for: Readers of literary fiction about sisterhood, motherhood, the South, and the long arc of friendship. Tayari Jones is one of the most reliably book-club-worthy authors writing today.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
April 2026: Go Gentle by Maria Semple
Released: April 2026
Oprah's third 2026 pick and her first comedic literary fiction selection of the year. Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette) returns with the story of Adora Hazzard, a fifty-something Stoic philosopher in Manhattan who falls for a mysterious man at the ballet and uncovers a sixty-year art conspiracy. It's a tonal shapeshifter, wickedly funny one minute, devastating the next, and the NDA subplot alone will fuel an entire book club meeting.
Who it's for: Readers who loved Where'd You Go, Bernadette, anyone who likes literary fiction that doesn't stay in one register, and book clubs willing to debate the structural choices.
📖 Read my full guide: Go Gentle: Summary, Ending Explained, and Book Club Questions
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
June 2026: Little Wonder by Sophie Chen Keller
Released: June 16, 2026 (Thousand Voices / Random House)
Oprah's fourth 2026 pick and her first debut novel of the year. Sophie Chen Keller (born in China, raised in California, classically trained pianist) follows Song, a food delivery worker from northeastern China, and her eleven-year-old son River, a piano prodigy on his way to study with a preeminent teacher in Beijing. In the chaos of Beijing Railway Station on the busiest day of the year, Song loses her grip on River's hand. The novel spans the years that follow as both of them try to find their way back to each other.
Worth noting: Little Wonder is published through Thousand Voices, Jenna Bush Hager's Random House imprint. Which makes Sophie Chen Keller one of the very few authors to land on both Oprah's and Jenna's radars in a single week.
Who it's for: Readers of literary fiction about motherhood, separation, and music as a language. Strong fit for book clubs that loved An American Marriage or Pachinko. Bring tissues.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
Coming soon
Oprah's next pick should land late summer or early fall. Her 2026 cadence so far (January, February, April, June) suggests 1–2 more picks before year-end, typically with longer windows between selections so readers can sit with each book.
holding the book Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister
Read with Jenna Book Club Picks 2026
Jenna Bush Hager picks a book the first Wednesday-ish of every month, announced on the TODAY Show and on her Instagram. Her taste runs eclectic. Literary fiction, memoir, the occasional thriller, debuts she championed before anyone else heard of them. She also runs her own imprint, Thousand Voices Books, which puts out 4–6 titles a year of debut and literary fiction.
January 2026: Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block
Released: January 2026
A tender memoir about a son growing up in a family where love and dysfunction were both obvious — and how he eventually found his way to forgiveness. Jenna called it "a tender mother-son love story about forgiveness, hope, and the ways we heal."
Who it's for: Memoir readers, especially fans of Hillbilly Elegy, The Glass Castle, or Educated. Quiet, raw, deeply personal.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
February 2026: One & Only by Maurene Goo
Released: February 3, 2026
A romance about fate versus free will. Cassia Park comes from a long line of Korean American matchmakers who can see clients' past lives a 100% guarantee for everyone but Cassia herself. For ten years she's been searching for her own fated love, a man named Daniel Nam. Maurene Goo also wrote Throwback, which was a Reese pick in 2025 so this is one of the rare books to have its author in both clubs.
Who it's for: Romance readers, fated-mates fans, anyone who liked The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo or The Wedding People. A perfect February pick.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
March 2026: Wait For Me by Amy Jo Burns
Released: March 3, 2026
Two women, decades apart. Elle Harlow disappears in the '70s right before her big break as a folk singer. Years later, Marijohn is searching for her own kind of future. As their lives connect, secrets long buried surface. Jenna called it "an emotional mystery about what connects us," and Amy Jo Burns (Shiner, Mercury) brings her signature Appalachian sense of place.
Who it's for: Readers who loved Tom Lake, The Cliffs, or Demon Copperhead. Literary fiction with music, mystery, and a strong female-friendship spine.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
April 2026: Upward Bound by Woody Brown
Released: March 31, 2026
A debut novel by Woody Brown, who is autistic and nonspeaking. The story is set at Upward Bound, a fictional adult day care in Southern California for individuals with disabilities. Booker Prize winner Paul Beatty called it "implosive and wonderfully inspirational." A genuinely singular voice in fiction.
Who it's for: Readers who value debut voices and unconventional perspectives. Book clubs willing to read something formally different.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
May 2026: Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister
Released: May 5, 2026
Jenna's first thriller pick of the year, and a rare genre choice for her. A mother on a Texas trip has her teenage daughter kidnapped, and a stranger calls with chilling instructions that demand far more than money. McAllister (Wrong Place Wrong Time) is one of the best at moral-knot thrillers, and Jenna leaning into a thriller suggests she found one that earned the seal.
Who it's for: Thriller readers who want emotional stakes alongside the pace. Anyone who burned through Wrong Place Wrong Time in a sitting.
📖 Read my full guide: Caller Unknown: Summary, Ending Explained, and Book Club Questions (in progress)
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
June 2026 The Children by Melissa Albert
Released: June 2, 2026
Jenna Bush Hager's June pick. Melissa Albert built her reputation on The Hazel Wood atmospheric dark-fairy-tale fiction with strong YA crossover and The Children moves her into adult literary territory with the same haunting register.
Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods. In one, she and her brother Ennis grow up near-feral in the wooded shadow of their family's isolated Vermont farmhouse unwashed, underfed, escaping each day into the wild woods. In the other, they're household names, the magical children at the heart of their mother Edith Sharpe's world-famous Ninth City fantasy series. As the books explode into popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame, until the night the farmhouse goes up in flames, leaving Edith's series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.
Twenty years later, Guinevere is coasting on her mother's name, mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir, when her estranged brother, now an artist who has spurned the family legacy announces an installation titled simply Mother. Rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show. Memories Guinevere has spent two decades running from begin to surface. What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother's fantasy world?
Who it's for: Readers who love stories about the cost of fame, the unreliability of childhood memory, and the way our favorite books cast longer shadows the older we get. If The Hazel Wood hit you a certain way, this is the adult-literary version of that itch.
📚 Buy: Amazon | Bookshop | 🎧 Audible
July 2026: To be announced
Jenna usually announces the next month's pick at the end of the prior month, so look for the July reveal on the TODAY Show in the last days of June or the first days of July. I'll update this the moment it drops.
How These Three Book Clubs Compare
If you're trying to figure out which club's picks fit your taste, here's the honest read:
Reese's Book Club is the most consistent. One book a month, almost always a woman-centered story, often with adaptation potential. The picks lean commercial-literary accessible page-turners that work for both solo readers and book clubs. If you love a recommendable beach read with discussion depth, this is your club.
Oprah's Book Club is the most literary, the slowest-cadence, and the heaviest. Fewer picks per year, longer windows between them, and the books tend to be Big multi generational sagas, debut literary novels, books that require sitting with. If you want fiction that becomes a cultural event, Oprah's your club.
Read with Jenna is the most eclectic. Memoir one month, romance the next, debut literary fiction after that. Jenna champions debuts and unconventional voices more than the other two, and she's the one most likely to pick a book you'd never have found on your own. If you want the widest range of what literary fiction is doing right now, follow Jenna.
The best news: there's enough overlap in audience and quality that you don't have to pick. The strongest book club move is to follow all three and let the picks pile up there's always something on this list that'll match the mood your club is in this month.
Where to Start If You Want to Catch Up
If you're new to celebrity book clubs and want to dip in without reading all 12+ titles, here's where I'd start:
- For a thriller mood: The First Time I Saw Him (Reese) or Caller Unknown (Jenna)
- For literary heft: Kin by Tayari Jones (Oprah), Little Wonder by Sophie Chen Keller (Oprah), or Wait For Me (Jenna)
- For historical fiction and the 250th: A Founding Mother (Reese) or A Pair of Aces (Reese)
- For pure escape: One & Only (Jenna) or Into the Blue (Reese)
- For something different: Lady Tremaine (Reese) or Upward Bound (Jenna)
Each one has earned its seal of approval, the question is just which mood you're in.
P.S. A 2026 book club pick we're tracking outside the big three.
The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn book cover
The Golden Boy is the 2026 literary release that landed with Katie Couric Media and Jen Hatmaker's For the Love Book Club rather than the three clubs above. Aristotelian three-part structure (Boulesis, Epithumia, Thumos), themes of mercy and inherited guilt, a wealthy aging Hollywood couple exiled to Maui who are asked to raise the four orphaned grandchildren of the childhood friend whose death they caused decades earlier. It's the kind of book that ruins your evening plans because you cannot put it down.
The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn: reader's guide breaks down every character, the Aristotelian structure, the Bobby Shepherd backstory, and our case for why this is the year's most underrated book club pick.
If you read across the wider club ecosystem (Katie Couric, Jen Hatmaker, Belletrist, Reese's audiobook club) and want us to expand this hub to cover those clubs too, let us know. A 2026 mid-year refresh is on the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does Reese announce her monthly pick?
The first Tuesday of every month, usually via an Instagram video. Sometimes there's a YA Sunnie Reads pick announced separately the same week.
What is Reese's Book Club July 2026 pick?
Reese's July 2026 pick is A Founding Mother by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, a historical novel about Abigail Adams chosen to coincide with America's 250th anniversary.
Does Oprah announce a book every month?
No. Oprah averages 4–6 picks per year, with longer windows between selections. Her 2026 picks so far are Enough (January), Kin (February), Go Gentle (April), and Little Wonder (June).
How does Read with Jenna compare to the other two?
Jenna picks monthly like Reese, but her selections range widest in genre. Memoir, romance, thriller, debut literary fiction. Her imprint, Thousand Voices Books, also publishes its own slate of titles each year.
Are the Reese, Oprah, and Jenna picks worth reading?
Generally yes, each curator has a different angle, and they've all developed reliable taste over years of selections. The strongest move for book club hosts is to track all three and pick the one each month that fits your group's mood.
Where can I find the older picks?
Each club has a complete archive on its official site. Reese's complete list goes back to 2017. Oprah's archive goes back to 1996.
Bookmark this page, I update it monthly as each club announces. Want the picks in your inbox the moment they drop?
