Oprah Book Club PIcks don't miss
So you tore through Culpability in a weekend, canceled plans to finish “just one more chapter,” and now… you’re book-hungover. We get it. The good news? There’s a whole shelf of stories out there waiting to hit you just as hard. If Oprah’s latest pick left you reeling in the best way, here are more novels to stir your heart and mind.
Let's get to reading!
Culpability (Oprah's Book Club, July 2025)
by Bruce Holsinger
- OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK -
"I was riveted until the very last shocking sentence!"--Oprah Winfrey
"The most of-the-moment novel I've read all year, and it's the book of the summer."--Real Simple
A suspenseful family drama about moral responsibility in the age of artificial intelligence.
Culpability explores a world newly shaped by chatbots, autonomous cars, drones, and other nonhuman forces in ways that are thrilling, challenging, and unimaginably provocative.
Now… What to Read Next:
If Culpability kept you turning pages late into the night, you’re not alone. This gripping novel draws readers in with its sharp writing, layered characters, and tense emotional undercurrent.
That’s why we’ve curated a list of next reads that tap into the same energy. From thrillers that wrestle with digital danger, and from novels set in the salt-swept charm of the Eastern Shore to intimate stories of family fractures, these recommendations will help you chase the same reading high you got from Culpability.
More from the Eastern Shore
Red Kayak
by Priscilla Cummings
Brady loves life on the Chesapeake Bay with his friends J.T. and Digger. But developers and rich families are moving into the area, and while Brady befriends some of them, like the DiAngelos, his parents and friends are bitter about the changes. Tragedy strikes when the DiAngelos' kayak overturns in the bay, and Brady wonders if it was more than an accident. Soon, Brady discovers the terrible truth behind the kayak's sinking, and it will change the lives of those he loves forever. Priscilla Cummings deftly weaves a suspenseful tale of three teenagers caught in a wicked web of deception.
The Secrets of Maiden's Cove
by Erin Palmisano
From the author of The Secrets of the Little Greek Taverna comes a moving novel filled with friendship, summer, and legends of mermaids.
When Grace Cleary's father passes suddenly, she realizes that the life she has shared with her husband Richard is not the one wanted for herself or her daughter, Bayla. When she inherits Cleary's Crab Shack, her father's seafood restaurant and the center of the small Maiden's Cove community, it gives her the push she needs to leave her controlling husband.
When Grace's estranged childhood best friend, Isla, returns to Maiden's Cove, the old rumors and myths about Isla being a mermaid begin yet again. Grace knows that this is their last summer together and their one chance to make amends.
Kismet
by Becky Chalsen
A New York Public Library Summer Staff Pick
A sun-soaked debut about love, sisterhood, and destiny, set in the glorious beach town of Kismet, Fire Island . . . Can Amy's marriage survive Jo's wedding?
For as long as anyone can remember, it has been Amy, Jo, and Ben. Amy and Jo, the inseparable Sharp twins who couldn't be more different; and Ben, Amy's childhood sweetheart turned husband.
But as this year's Fourth of July weekend approaches, something feels off. As the family beach town transforms for Jo's wedding weekend, Amy's trusted trio will be tested by the most unexpected hurdle yet: the arrival of a handsome, mysterious newcomer in a best man suit. One with a strikingly familiar face.
Similar Technology Thrillers
The Confessions
by Paul Bradley Carr
"A timely, ticking clock thriller with unforgettable characters and psychological twists and turns you won't see coming. Read it. You won't regret it" (Sarah Pinborough, author of We Live Here Now).
Millions of letters arrive in the mail.
Murders are uncovered, affairs revealed, family secrets exposed.
These are the first Confessions.
This is our last chance.
LLIAM is the world's most powerful supercomputer, built to make the toughest decisions for its users. Where to work, who to marry, and even who should live or die. But when LLIAM suddenly goes offline with no explanation, the world is thrust into chaos, paralyzed by indecision. Stocks plummet, stores are shuttered, planes sit grounded on runways as humanity scrambles to re-adapt to an uncertain, analog world.
One Level Down
by Mary G Thompson
Trapped in a child's body, a resourceful woman risks death by deletion from a simulated world. With her debut novella for adults, Mary G. Thompson (Wuftoom) has crafted a taut, ultimately hopeful story that deftly explores identity and autonomy.
Ella is the oldest five-year-old in the universe. For fifty-eight years, the founder of a simulated colony-planet has forced her to pretend to be his daughter. Her "Daddy" has absolute power over all elements of reality, which keeps the colonists in line even when their needs are not met. But his failing experiments and despotic need for absolute control are increasingly dangerous.
Phantom Orbit: A Thriller
by David Ignatius
David Ignatius is known for his uncanny ability, in novel after novel, to predict the next great national security headline. In Phantom Orbit, he presents a story both searing and topical, with stakes as far-reaching as outer space. It follows Ivan Volkov, a Russian student in Beijing, who discovers an unsolved puzzle in the writings of the seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler. The puzzle holds untold consequences for space warfare.
The years pass, and they are not kind to Volkov. After the loss of his son, a prosecutor who'd been too tough on corruption, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Volkov makes the fraught decision to contact the CIA. He writes: Satellites are your enemies, especially your own. . . . Hidden codes can make time stop and turn north into south. . . . If you are smart, you will find me.
Feeders
by Matt Serafini
From "one of the best new voices in horror fiction" (Brian Keene, Bram Stoker Award-winning author), this darkly satirical supernatural thriller follows a would-be influencer whose dreams of online fame spiral into nightmare territory when she encounters a mysterious and dangerous social media platform.
When a video depicting the brutal murder of a former classmate leaks online, Kylie Bennington's--whose dreams of becoming a successful influencer remain frustratingly elusive--curiosity gets the better of her, leading to the discovery of an off-the-grid social media app called MonoLife. As it turns out, there are certain cryptic rules in the user agreement that must be adhered to, such as interacting with other users at least twice daily or risk losing it all...and never, ever speaking of MonoLife's existence to non-users or risk dire consequences.
Dissolution
by Nicholas Binge
NAMED A BEST THRILLER OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE
Maggie Webb has lived the last decade caring for elderly husband, Stanley, as memory loss gradually erases all the beautiful moments they created together. It's the loneliest she's ever felt in her life.
When a mysterious stranger named Hassan appears at her door, he reveals a shocking truth: Stanley isn't losing his memories. Someone is actively removing them to hide a long-buried secret from coming to light. If Maggie does what she's told, she can reverse it. She can get her husband back.
Hum
by Helen Phillips
A Most Anticipated Book for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Goodreads, LitHub, and Book Riot
A Best Book of the Summer for Esquire, Electric Lit, and Town & Country
A People Book of the Week
In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called "hums," May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family's debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.
Siblings and Family Themed
Shred Sisters
by Betsy Lerner
LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss and love. If anything is true it's what Amy learns on her road to self-acceptance: No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.
It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight until her stunning confidence becomes erratic and unpredictable, a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. None of that explains what's happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy's carefully constructed life.
The Catch
by Yrsa Daley-Ward
In her riveting first foray into fiction, Yrsa Daley-Ward conjures a kaleidoscopic multiverse of daughterhood and mother-want, exploring the sacrifices that women must make for self-actualization. The result is a marvel of a debut novel that boldly asks, "How can it ever, ever be a crime to choose yourself?"
Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. As infants they were adopted into different families, Clara sent to live with a successful, upper-class couple, and Dempsey with a sullen, unaffectionate city councilor. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life--the very life, it seems, she might have had if the girls had never been born.
Worry
by Alexandra Tanner
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, NPR, Vogue, the Washington Post, Electric Lit, and more!
It's March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold--anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed--has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she'd marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy, a year and a half out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn while Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen.
Then the hives that've plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules's uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar.
Luminous
by Silvia Park
This sweeping debut novel set in a unified Korea tells the story of three estranged siblings--two human, one robot--as they collide against the backdrop of a murder investigation to settle old scores and make sense of their shattered childhood.
"I once had a family. At least, the earliest version of me had a family."
In a reunified Korea of the near future, the sun beats down on a junkyard filled with abandoned robots, broken down for parts. Eleven-year-old Ruijie sifts through the scraps, searching for a piece that might support her failing body. There among the piles of trash, something catches her eye: a robot boy--so lifelike and strange, unlike anything she's ever seen before.
The Bee Sting
by Paul Murray
One of The New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year
One of The New Yorker's Essential Reads
One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of the Year
One of TIME's 10 Best Fiction Books of the Year
A Dua Lipa x Service95 Book Club Pick
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under--but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he's on the brink of running away.
The Float Test
by Lynn Steger Strong
A rich exploration of family, ambition, secrets, and love, The Float Test is an elegant and gripping testament to the power that family has to both nurture and destroy us from a critically acclaimed writer working at the top of her craft.
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever--if only they could trust each other. Equally unsettling are the changes around them; the climate of their hometown is hotter and more oppressive than ever before.
What Will You Pick Up Next?
Whether you're drawn to the windswept secrets of the Eastern Shore, the chilling possibilities of near-future tech, or the tangled tenderness of sibling bonds, these books cultivate emotional and thematic power. Each recommendation invites you into a story that asks hard questions, reveals hidden truths, and lingers in your thoughts long after the final page. If Culpability cracked something open in you—an urge to question, to reflect, or simply to read more deeply—consider this your next stack. Oprah always brings the conversation; we’re just helping you keep it going.