Authors Like Jodi Picoult

Chris Bohjalian

American · b. 1962 · Novelist

Bohjalian was born in White Plains, New York, in 1962 and has lived in Vermont since 1988. In Midwives, a rural Vermont midwife performs an emergency Caesarean on a patient she believes has already died, and is tried for involuntary manslaughter; the story is told by her fourteen-year-old daughter. It was chosen for Oprah's Book Club in October 1998. The Flight Attendant became a television series with Kaley Cuoco in 2020.

Anita Shreve

American · b. 1946 · Novelist

Shreve was born in Boston in 1946 and died in New Hampshire in 2018. The Weight of Water (1997) won the PEN New England fiction award and was filmed by Kathryn Bigelow; The Pilot's Wife, about a woman who learns what her husband was hiding only after his plane goes down, was an Oprah's Book Club pick in 1999. Testimony follows a sex scandal at a Massachusetts prep school and its cover-up through the voices of the students, parents and staff involved.

Every book by Anita Shreve →

Lionel Shriver

American · b. 1957 · Novelist · Women's Prize 2005

Shriver was born in Gastonia, North Carolina, in 1957 and lived for decades in the United Kingdom before moving to Portugal in 2023. We Need to Talk About Kevin is told in letters from a mother to her husband after their fifteen-year-old son has carried out a massacre at his school; it won the Orange Prize (now the Women's Prize) in 2005 and was filmed in 2011 with Tilda Swinton. So Much for That, about an American family bankrupted by illness, was a National Book Award finalist.

Liane Moriarty

Australian · b. 1966 · Novelist

Moriarty was born in 1966 and grew up in Sydney. Big Little Lies follows three mothers of kindergarten children in the months before a death at a school fundraiser, and was adapted by HBO in 2017 with Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley. She was the first Australian author to debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Her most recent novel is Here One Moment (2024).

Every book by Liane Moriarty →

Celeste Ng

American · b. 1980 · Novelist

Ng was born in Pittsburgh in 1980. Everything I Never Told You, about a Chinese-American family in 1970s Ohio after their daughter's death, was Amazon's book of the year in 2014. Little Fires Everywhere is set in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where a white family's attempt to adopt an abandoned Chinese-American baby becomes a custody case that divides the town. Our Missing Hearts (2022) is set in a near-future America hostile to Asian Americans.

Every book by Celeste Ng →

Lisa Genova

American · b. 1970 · Novelist

Genova, born in 1970, has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard. She self-published Still Alice, about a Harvard linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer's, in 2007; Simon & Schuster reissued it in 2009, and Julianne Moore won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 2014 film. Her other novels each follow a family through one neurological condition, including ALS in Every Note Played and Huntington's in Inside the O'Briens (2015).

Every book by Lisa Genova →

Tayari Jones

American · b. 1970 · Novelist · Women's Prize 2019

Jones was born in Atlanta in 1970. An American Marriage follows a young Black couple in the South whose marriage is broken when the husband is convicted of a crime he did not commit; it was an Oprah's Book Club pick on its publication day in 2018 and won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019. Her novel Kin (2026), about two friends from small-town Louisiana, won the 2026 Kirkus Prize for fiction.

Sue Miller

American · b. 1943 · Novelist

Miller was born in Chicago in 1943. In The Good Mother, her first novel, a divorced woman loses custody of her young daughter after her ex-husband accuses her new lover of improper behaviour with the child; it was filmed in 1988 with Diane Keaton and Liam Neeson. While I Was Gone, about a veterinarian whose past is reopened by an old housemate's murder, was an Oprah's Book Club pick in 2000.

Every book by Sue Miller →

Diane Chamberlain

American · b. 1950 · Novelist

Chamberlain was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1950 and trained as a clinical social worker, working in hospitals and then running a psychotherapy practice for adolescents before writing full-time. Necessary Lies is set in rural North Carolina around 1960, where a new county social worker discovers that a fifteen-year-old girl in her care is in line for the state's eugenics sterilisation programme. Many of her novels pair a present-day story with a buried one from the past.

Every book by Diane Chamberlain →

Jacquelyn Mitchard

American · b. 1953 · Novelist

Mitchard grew up near Chicago and worked as a journalist. The Deep End of the Ocean follows a family after their three-year-old son vanishes from a hotel lobby, and what happens when a boy turns up nine years later under another name; in September 1996 it became the first ever selection of Oprah's Book Club, and it was filmed with Michelle Pfeiffer.