10 Discussion-Worthy Book Club Picks for November

Looking for discussion-worthy books for your November book club? I’ve put together ten of the best picks for your reading group. These are great to discuss and debate. Whether you like cozy fantasy, thrillers with twists, or horror, each book gives you something to talk about. These books are easy to read, but not forgettable. They have mystery, tension, secrets, and moments you will want to share. This list is for book club members who want a book that is fun to read and also makes you think after you finish.

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Must-read Book Club Suggestion for November 2025

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

The Reformatory is Robbie gets sent to a reform school in Jim Crow Florida, and the ghosts he sees are not nearly as terrifying as the adults who run the place. the land feels cursed, the school feels like a machine, and every boy inside is trapped. this book blends real history with horror, and the horror is rooted in what humans choose to do. it is a haunting story about a place where cruelty wasn’t an accident, it was the system.

A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Gracetown, Florida
June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.

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Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is a horror book Fern is fifteen and pregnant, and her family sends her to a “home” that claims it can fix girls like her. the staff controls every part of their lives, and shame is the main tool they use to keep the girls quiet. then a librarian slips Fern a book on witchcraft, and suddenly everything changes. the girls start to feel power again. the fear turns into fire. this is a story about girls who were trapped and silenced, and what happens when they finally decide to push back.

There’s power in a book…

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

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A Dark and Secret Magic by Wallis Kinney

A Dark and Secret Magic is about Kate, a hedge witch who likes peace, order, and being left alone. She runs her little apothecary, walks the Ipswich woods, and talks to her cat more than she talks to people. She feels steady and safe this way. That changes when her sister tells her she has to host the coven for Halloween, which also happens to be her birthday. She is already overwhelmed when Matthew, a man from her past, shows up at her door asking her to give him sanctuary. Kate remembers how he tricked her once before, and she does not trust him, but her witch duty says she has to help. Then she finds a spell book written in her mother’s handwriting. It suggests her mother hid darker magic than anyone knew.

A warm, spellbinding tale about a witch and the secrets her coven has been keeping from her, with echoes of the classic Hades and Persephone story, in the tradition of Practical Magic and Witch of Wild Things.

Hecate Goodwin, Kate to her friends, has curated the perfect life as a hedge witch, living in a secluded cottage with only a black cat for company. She spends her days foraging herbs from the Ipswich forest, gardening, and creating tinctures to sell at the apothecary she owns. Most evenings pass without her speaking to another human being, an arrangement she quite prefers.

Kate’s solitude is thrown into disarray when her older sister, Miranda, reaches out and asks her to host their coven’s annual Halloween gathering. The day marks the beginning of the new year for witches and is also Kate’s birthday. The pressure from her coven to make the evening memorable mounts as the event draws near. To complicate things further, a handsome man from Kate’s past turns up at her cottage, asking for sanctuary. It is Kate’s duty as a hedge witch to honor this request, much to her dismay. Matthew Cypher is no ordinary lost soul–he’s a practitioner of forbidden magic who’s tricked Kate once before, and her guard is up.

As she juggles Matthew’s arrival and the preparations for Halloween, Kate comes across an old tome shrouded in dark magic. She is horrified when she realizes the blood-red inscription is written in familiar handwriting: her recently deceased mother’s. Afraid to even touch the dark magic her mother secretly studied, Kate can turn only to Matthew for help. Her idealized memory of her mother begins to distort, and as she and Matthew grow closer, Kate has to reevaluate whom she can really trust.

A Dark and Secret Magic is a celebration of the Halloween season and a love letter to anyone who drinks pumpkin spice in August and carries the spirit of a witch inside their heart all year long.

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Pictures of You by Emma Grey

Pictures of You is about Evie. She wakes up in a hospital with no memory of her husband or the life she built with him. She thinks she is still a teenager, which shows how much of her past has been erased. She soon learns her husband died in the crash and she survived. Her memories feel like broken pieces, so she has to build her life again from scratch. A photographer named Drew crosses paths with her and becomes the person who helps her understand what happened. As she tries to fill the gaps, things start to look different than she expected. She sees her old choices from a new angle. She questions her marriage and who she was back then.

If you knew then what you know now, would you make the same choices? Imagine having a second chance with the one you never forgot.

From the author of the global breakout bestseller The Last Love Note comes the story of a young woman struggling to piece her life back together in the wake of a tragic accident, and the man who gives up everything to help her.

When Evie Hudson wakes in an unfamiliar hospital room, she thinks she’s fresh out of a teenage party with her best friend, Bree. Except, Bree isn’t around anymore and high school was years ago. Evie had just survived the crash that killed her husband, Oliver—whom she can’t remember either. After suffering a traumatic loss of memory, she’s left to connect the dots. But how?

Drew, a promising photographer whose chance encounter with Evie unravels the elusive details of her marriage and her husband’s death. As Drew watches Evie stitch the story of her life together, secrets emerge that might shatter both of their worlds.

This tangled second-chance romance leads Evie to question every decision she ever made. This time around, she’s seeing all the things she missed–and the life she gets to choose…again.

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The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene

The Lake of Lost Girls is about two sisters. One disappeared in 1998 when female students at her university went missing. Her name is Jessica. She is young, stressed, and sliding into danger she does not fully understand. Then she vanishes. Twenty years later her older sister Lindsey still cannot let the case rest. She uses a huge true crime podcast to push pressure back onto the town and the police. The podcast is called Ten Seconds to Vanish, and it brings new attention to the old crimes. When bodies start showing up in the lake, Lindsey knows this is her chance to finally get answers.

Told in alternating timelines, The Lake of Lost Girls is a haunting novel that will thrill fans of All Good People Here and We Are All the Same in the Dark.

Using suspenseful podcast clips to weave a twisty tale of a missing student and her sister who is desperate for answers, The Lake of Lost Girls is perfect for fans of I Have Some Questions for You.

It’s 1998, and female students are going missing at Southern State University in North Carolina. But freshman Jessica Fadley, once a bright and responsible student, is going through her own struggles. Just as her life seems to be careening dangerously out of control, she suddenly disappears.

Twenty-four years later, Jessica’s sister Lindsey is desperately searching for answers and uses the momentum of a new chart-topping true crime podcast, Ten Seconds to Vanish, that focuses on the cold cases, to guide her own investigation. Soon, interest reaches fever pitch when the bodies of the long-missing women begin turning up at a local lake, which leads Lindsey down a disturbing road of discovery.

In the present, one sister seeks to untangle a complicated web of lies.
In the past, the other descends ever deeper into a darkness that will lead to her ultimate fate.

This propulsive and chilling suspense is a sharp examination of sisterhood and the culture of true crime.

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The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

The Teller of Small Fortunes is about Tao. She is a fortune teller who keeps her predictions small and harmless on purpose. She only tells people simple things like weather, or farm luck, or little choices. She knows big fortunes can destroy lives, and she does not want to repeat her own past mistakes. She travels alone with her mule, and that lonely life feels safer than the one she had before. Then she gets into a search for a missing child. She joins two strangers who are running out of options. A thief and an ex–mercenary. Soon they also pick up a baker and a strange cat. The Teller of Small Fortunes becomes a journey story about a woman who never thought she would have a family again.
A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells “small” fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences…

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.

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The Mirror by Nora Roberts

The Mirror follows Sonya MacTavish after she inherits a huge old mansion in Maine. At first she thinks the house is just strange and dramatic, but soon she realizes it is actually haunted. Things move, doors slam, music plays at night, and none of it is her imagination. In The Mirror, Sonya starts seeing moments from the past like a vision playing out right in front of her. She also sees brides who died long ago. When she is pulled into the mirror itself, she witnesses a bride murdered on her wedding day. That curse repeats through time like a loop. The Mirror becomes a story about a woman trying to break a centuries old spell, and she has to uncover every secret the house has been guarding to free the brides who never got to live out their futures.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts continues the hauntingly spectacular Lost Bride Trilogy with book two, The Mirror.

When Sonya MacTavish inherits the huge Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine, she has no idea that the house is haunted. The footsteps she hears at night, the doors slamming, the music playing, are not figments of her imagination. In her dreams she sees glimpses of the past. In the present she finds portraits of brides. And when she has visions of an antique mirror, she is drawn to it, sensing it holds dark family secrets.

Then one night the mirror appears and Sonya glides through this looking glass, into the past—and sees a bride murdered on her wedding day, the circle of gold torn from her finger. It is a scene that will play out again and again—a centuries-old curse that must be broken—and a puzzle she must solve if there is any hope of breaking the curse.

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Lights Out by Navessa Allen

Lights Out is a dark romance that became viral on TikTok. It is about Aly, a trauma nurse, who has very specific and very intense fantasies. She likes masked men online, and she dreams about being hunted by one of them. Her favorite is a man named Josh, who has a secret online persona. He knows how to stay hidden. One night Aly posts a comment that she wants him to break into her house. She is joking but she is also curious. Josh decides to show up and turn that fantasy real. Lights Out follows these two as they explore the darker side of desire, and they do not hold back.

#1 New York Times bestselling series and Instant USA TODAY Bestseller

The viral TikTok stalker dark romance, burning with high heat, hilarious banter, and a love story like you’ve never seen before. Can you handle the ride?

I want someone with a soul as black as night. Someone who would burn the world down for me and not lose a single minute of sleep over it.

Trauma nurse Aly Cappellucci doesn’t need any more kinks. She likes the one she’s landed on just fine. To her, nothing could top the masked men she follows online. Unless one of those men was shirtless, heavily tattooed, and waiting for her in her bedroom. She dreams about being hunted by one in particular, of him chasing her down and doing deliciously dark things to her willing body. She never could have guessed that by sending one drunken text, those dreams would become her new reality.

I want things most people don’t, craving darkness and depravity instead of light and love.

Josh Hammond has spent his life avoiding the limelight, but his online persona is another story. At night, he posts masked thirst traps for his millions of fans to drool over, but one follower has caught his eye: Aly. After reading a comment begging him to break into her house wearing a mask, he decides to take her up on her offer.

Together, Aly and Josh live out their darkest fantasies, unaware that Aly has captured the attention of someone else. Someone with far more sinister intentions than a little light stalking. As Josh turns from predator to protector and the stakes heighten, he must ask himself how far he’s willing to go for the woman he’s obsessed with.

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She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark

She’s Always Hun gry is a short story collection by Eliza Clark. It looks at the things humans crave in secret. Every story shows a different kind of hunger. A girl who wants perfect skin no matter the cost. A woman who lets something take root inside her body. A researcher who becomes attached to alien plants. A young man who wants to take control of the night. The tone is dark and dry and strange, but also funny. She’s Always Hungry is really about what people will do when desire becomes the main force in their life. Some characters want beauty. Some want power. Some want attention. Some want control. None of them feel satisfied, and that makes every choice more dangerous.

The first collection from a major voice in British fiction, the author of Boy Parts and Penance

A woman welcomes a parasite into her body.

A teenager longs for perfect skin.

A scientist tends to fragile alien flora.

A young man takes the night into his own hands.

Each of these characters has a desperate desire. Can any of them be sated?

Unsettling, revelatory, and laced with her signature dark humor, Eliza Clark’s debut short story collection plumbs the depths of that most basic human feeling: hunger.

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Isola by Allegra Goodman

Iso la is the story of Marguerite. She grows up with wealth and is told she will have an easy life, but everything falls apart when she is orphaned and taken in by a guardian who abuses her trust and spends her money. He forces her to travel with him to New France. Marguerite bonds with the servant of the household. When that relationship is discovered they are punished and left on a barren island to die. Winter hits hard. Food becomes scarce. The environment turns against them. Isola becomes a survival story about a woman who once had everything and now has almost nothing. Inspired by real history, this novel shows how a woman who had comfort can still rise when the world abandons her, and how survival can become its own kind of freedom.

A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this epic saga of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.

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