The Best Book Club Books of January

This New Year’s Eve champagne punch sounds (and looks!) magical. It’s also pretty easy to assemble. You’ll need triple sec, blackberry brandy, pineapple juice, Chambord, lemon lime soda, pink or Brut champagne, and garnish. You’ll want to mix some of the ingredients the day before and let them sit overnight. Then, you serve with triple sec and soda the day of.

For a full list of ingredients and instructions, visit Sugar and Soul.

Daniel de La Luna starts his tenure as a scholarship student at a prestigious East Coast college with the weight of the world on his shoulders — his family’s hopes and expectations are heavy, as are the shoes of his late uncle, whose name he shares. But his roommate Sam changes everything. In Sam, he finds a comforting friendship, but then something more. Their relationship isn’t able to fully take off just yet, though, because of Sam’s hesitation as well as a tragedy that changes Daniel’s worldview. When he returns to his ancestral home in México, he’ll finally have a chance to reconcile all that’s changed and what’s to come.

Apart from being a great book out in January, this is one I’m looking forward to for the entire year. It’s giving Rebecca meets the movie Three Thousand Years of Longing (starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, if you’re unfamiliar). It centers around Sana, who, along with her father, is one of the latest inhabitants of the once grand Akbar Manzil, an estate off the coast of South Africa. Usually, the estate is a place where people go to forget themselves, even going so far as to ignore the estate’s uncanny qualities — like bones in the garden and mysterious moving figures — but Sana becomes obsessed with the contents of a forgotten room. The room’s pictures, diary, and other artifacts tell Sana of Akbar Manzil’s original owner’s second wife, who died a hundred years ago. She compulsively dives deeper into the woman’s life, but little does she know of the djinn that watches her from the shadows.

Here is a fictional portrait of a trailblazer who I don’t see much written about. Hattie McDaniel was a prolific actress and the first Black person to win an Oscar for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With the Wind. Which is where some of her heartache started. The role was controversial and barred her from both white and Black gatherings because white people only saw her as The Help, while Black people thought her Oscar-winning role was demeaning. Even so, she still fought for a place for Black actors in Hollywood, and leaned on friends like Clark Gable and Dorothy Dandridge when she had to. This tells McDaniel’s story, covering everything from the Oscars to the war to her marriages.

From the author of Such a Fun Age comes a skewering of academia and privilege. At the University of Arkansas in 2017, Millie Cousins is working as a senior resident assistant when visiting professor Agatha Paul offers her an odd but easy chance to earn some money. Agatha wants Millie to let her listen in on conversations had by a group of privileged women who are living in a dorm meant for scholarship recipients. What follows is an often humorous narrative filled with the aptest of social observations.