Next Read ClubThe Best Fiction Books to Read Next
"Fiction" is the broadest shelf in the store, which makes it the hardest one to browse well. This is our attempt at a shortcut — the books we'd point to first, across styles, eras, and moods, if someone just said "surprise me, but make it good."
Across the 38 fiction picks here, most are medium books with a easy-paced feel — generally approachable, and leaning emotional and thought-provoking. Use the length, pace and difficulty on each book's page to pick the one that fits your week.
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
A gentle, page-turning meditation on regret and the roads not taken.
Medium · Easy pace · Easy to follow
1984
George Orwell
The book that defined what a surveillance state feels like from the inside.
Medium · Fast pace · Moderate
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho
A fable-like nudge to actually go after the thing you keep putting off.
Short · Easy pace · Beginner-friendly
The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini
One of those books that will genuinely wreck you, in a good way.
Medium · Fast pace · Easy to follow
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Manages to be tender and funny even while set in one of history's darkest moments.
Long · Easy pace · Easy to follow
Where the Crawdads Sing
Delia Owens
Equal parts courtroom mystery and love letter to the natural world.
Medium · Fast pace · Beginner-friendly
Me Before You
Jojo Moyes
A love story that refuses to give you the ending you're rooting for.
Medium · Fast pace · Beginner-friendly
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid
One of the most talked-about book club picks of the last decade, for good reason.
Medium · Can't put it down pace · Beginner-friendly
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
As relevant now as it was on publication, which is exactly the problem it's about.
Medium · Easy pace · Easy to follow
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Short, glamorous, and quietly devastating by the final page.
Short · Fast pace · Easy to follow
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
Starts as a comedy about an odd woman, quietly becomes something much deeper.
Medium · Easy pace · Beginner-friendly
A Man Called Ove
Fredrik Backman
You will laugh, then cry, often on the same page.
Medium · Easy pace · Beginner-friendly
The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
You can read it in an hour and think about it for years.
Short · Easy pace · Beginner-friendly
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
A quieter, stranger kind of dystopia than 1984 — happiness as the trap.
Medium · Easy pace · Moderate
Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami
Quietly devastating in a way that lingers for days after you finish it.
Medium · Slow pace · Easy to follow
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
Even more devastating than The Kite Runner, and just as hard to put down.
Medium · Fast pace · Easy to follow
All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
Prose so beautiful you'll want to read passages twice.
Long · Slow pace · Moderate
The Secret History
Donna Tartt
The book that basically invented dark academia as a vibe.
Long · Can't put it down pace · Moderate
Big Little Lies
Liane Moriarty
Sharp, funny, and surprisingly moving underneath the domestic-drama surface.
Medium · Fast pace · Beginner-friendly
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro
A dystopia so understated you almost don't notice how dark it is.
Medium · Slow pace · Easy to follow
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The book that made magical realism a household term.
Long · Slow pace · Challenging
The Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A love letter to books and libraries wrapped in a genuine mystery.
Long · Fast pace · Easy to follow
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
The original deep dive into a criminal mind, still unmatched.
Long · Slow pace · Demanding
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
Heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful in equal measure.
Medium · Easy pace · Easy to follow
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Funny and clear-eyed about things most novels tiptoe around.
Long · Easy pace · Easy to follow
Normal People
Sally Rooney
Devastatingly accurate about how badly two people who love each other can communicate.
Medium · Fast pace · Beginner-friendly
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Mark Haddon
A genuinely different way of seeing the world, told with real warmth.
Short · Fast pace · Beginner-friendly
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
The book a lot of people credit with helping them survive being a teenager.
Short · Easy pace · Beginner-friendly
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger
The voice is the whole book, and it's still unmistakable decades later.
Short · Easy pace · Easy to follow
The Stranger
Albert Camus
The clearest, shortest entry point into existentialist fiction.
Short · Fast pace · Moderate
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
For when you want a book that refuses to fully explain itself.
Long · Slow pace · Challenging
Klara and the Sun
Kazuo Ishiguro
One of the gentlest, saddest robots in fiction.
Medium · Slow pace · Easy to follow
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A love story about patience that most modern romances wouldn't dare attempt.
Long · Slow pace · Moderate
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoevsky
A genuine commitment, but one many readers call the greatest novel ever written.
Long · Slow pace · Demanding
Beloved
Toni Morrison
A ghost story that is really about the impossibility of forgetting.
Medium · Slow pace · Challenging
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A war novel that centers the people history books usually skip.
Long · Slow pace · Moderate
Conversations with Friends
Sally Rooney
Cool, detached prose hiding a lot of real feeling underneath.
Medium · Fast pace · Beginner-friendly
Sophie's World
Jostein Gaarder
The friendliest possible way into philosophy, wrapped in an actual story.
Long · Easy pace · Easy to follow
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