See all of Emma Roberts and Karah Preiss' 2024 Belletrist Book Club Selections

Mar. 15, 2025

Karah Preiss and Emma Roberts in 2023.Photo:Cindy Ord/Getty

Cindy Ord/Getty

Emma Robertshas been making her love of books known for years, through her book club and online reading community,Belletrist.In 2017, Roberts and her best friend, Karah Preiss, founded Belletrist, based on their mutual love of reading. Since then, the two have chosen over 70 books for their club, selected on a monthly basis, ranging from fiction to memoir to short story collections.Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.“It’s genuinely whatever moves us,” Roberts told PEOPLE about Belletrist’s selection process. “But I will say this … we try to pick books that we read and then need to talk about. That’s what makes a good Belletrist pick. You read it and you’re like: I gotta talk to someone about this — now!”See all of Belletrist’s 2024 selections below.

Emma Robertshas been making her love of books known for years, through her book club and online reading community,Belletrist.In 2017, Roberts and her best friend, Karah Preiss, founded Belletrist, based on their mutual love of reading. Since then, the two have chosen over 70 books for their club, selected on a monthly basis, ranging from fiction to memoir to short story collections.

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.“It’s genuinely whatever moves us,” Roberts told PEOPLE about Belletrist’s selection process. “But I will say this … we try to pick books that we read and then need to talk about. That’s what makes a good Belletrist pick. You read it and you’re like: I gotta talk to someone about this — now!”See all of Belletrist’s 2024 selections below.

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Buy Now

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Scribner

Writers Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, who captured ‘60s and ‘70s California in their fiction and nonfiction, are now revered as literary icons. This compelling account details the complicated friendship between the two writers, who died just days apart in December 2021.

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Amazon

In the wake of their father’s death, brothers Peter and Ivan navigate their romantic relationships — and their grief — in very different ways. This period of mourning also marks a new beginning for everyone involved, in Rooney’s emotional, highly-anticipated fourth novel.

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The protagonist of this novel is the best-rated man on the Rental Stranger app, which allows people to hire a fake partner, wingman or parent. When a new patron on the app threatens to upend his favorite role — as the pretend father to a young girl — the main character must confront the walls he’s put up, and look back onto his own history of connection.

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When businessman Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his Long Island home in 1980, the trauma that impacts him and his family will reverberate for generations. Once the Fletchers learn that their fortune is shrinking decades later, Carl, his wife Ruth and their three adult children must reckon with their privilege in the second novel from the author of bestsellerFleishman Is in Trouble.

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Actor, director and producer Griffin Dunne had a memorable upbringing in Hollywood. As the son of journalist Dominick Dunne, and the nephew to writers Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, he was no stranger to wild parties and celebrity encounters growing up. In this moving memoir, Griffin looks back on it all, as well as the tragic murder of his younger sister, Dominique.

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Longtime friends Giselle, Ellen and Jackie once had big dreams, but in adulthood, they find their paths diverging. Giselle, a performance artist, is stuck navigating a new social world. Ellen, a community activist, is facing the gentrification of her neighborhood and Jackie, a coder, is trapped within the darker side of wealth and surveillance. This novel follows the trio across decades in a rapidly changing world.

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This novel’s protagonist, who can’t run away from her childhood nickname Piglet, has a seemingly perfect life: she’s engaged to her fiancé Kit, she gets along with his upper-class family and she loves her job as a cookbook editor. When Kit unexpectedly betrays her, and the couple decides to go ahead with their wedding plans anyway, Piglet comes to see that there may be more that she’s hungry for too.

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Vera has long tried to avoid the house where she grew up, along with its dark past. When her mother calls her home, however, Vera learns that a troubling artist has moved in, and that notes written in her dead father’s handwriting have started appearing around the home too. A chilling thriller.

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In this heartfelt novel, Kathleen Cheng returns home to Oakland after a disastrous breakup where she’s shocked to learn that her mother is getting married to a tech entrepreneur. While Kathleen helps with the wedding preparations, she also takes a new job at an unconventional therapy start-up, which might just help her to reconnect with her mother.

source: people.com