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Summer Reading 2026

Summer will be here before you know it! At Bookreporter.com, this means it's time for us to share some great summer book picks with our Summer Reading Contests and Feature.

We are hosting a series of 24-hour contests for these titles on select days through mid-August, so you will have to check the site each day to see the featured prize book and enter to win.

Mother’s Day is a time to recognize the woman who raised and nurtured us. To celebrate, we gave you the opportunity to win five books for you or the special lady in your life in our 21st annual "Books Mom Will Love" contest. Scroll down to see the five winners!

Kathryn Stockett, author of The Calamity Club

Oxford, Mississippi, 1933. Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, 11-year-old Meg Lefleur is now one of the unadoptable "big girls" at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum. Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she's left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers that her sister's seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies. Then Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates --- and Meg’s --- converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan to claim what's rightfully theirs. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women's freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences.

The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett

May 2026

There are books where the voices ring so true that they stay with you. This is what happened when I read Kathryn Stockett's debut novel, THE HELP. Now, with THE CALAMITY CLUB, I feel the same way about Meg, Birdie and the other women who populate this story.

The setting is Oxford, Mississippi, in the early 1930s. The Depression has brought challenges to people across the country. Birdie has come to town to ask her sister, Frances, who has married well, to give her money so they do not lose their family home in southern Mississippi. But she arrives to find that her sister’s life is not as brilliant as she thought it was. In fact, Frances has troubles of her own and somehow has not accepted her new reality.

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