Davenport Public Library Logo

April 2026 Celebrity Book Club Picks

Bestsellers Club is a service that automatically places you on hold for authors, celebrity picks, nonfiction picks, and fiction picks. Choose any author, celebrity pick, fiction pick, and/or nonfiction pick and The Library will put the latest title on hold for you automatically. Select as many as you want! Still have questions? Check out our FAQ list.

It’s a new month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! Oprah has also recently announced a new pick for her club. Reminder that if you join Bestsellers Club, you can choose to have their newest selections automatically put on hold for you.

Book cover for Upward Bound by Woody Brown

Jenna Bush Hager has selected Upward Bound by Woody Brown for her April pick.

Curious what Upward Bound is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

Upward Bound is not a place anyone dreams of spending their days. The dreary adult daycare center for Los Angeles’s disabled community is, for many of its clients and staff, a place of last resort. This includes Carlos, a young aide who lost his mother as a boy and now works there alongside his beloved sister, Mariana; Jorge, the gentle nonspeaking giant whom Carlos seeks to befriend (and prevent from escaping); Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy who pines for Ann, the summer lifeguard at the center’s pool who feels out of her depth. Then there’s Dave, Upward Bound’s director, who came to L.A. to pursue an acting career but now channels his passion into staging an overly ambitious holiday show starring the center’s irrepressible clients. Framing these intertwined narratives—and connecting them in surprising, shattering ways—is the riveting and sometimes ironic testimony of Walter, a recent community college graduate who, after a family tragedy, must return to the company of his disabled peers.

In Upward Bound, Woody Brown has created an indelible, authentic, and profoundly moving group portrait of autism and other disabilities, all illuminated by his empathy, sly sense of humor, and enormous gifts as a novelist. With remarkable sophistication, insight, and creativity, Brown depicts a community too-often invisible in literature and society. Filled with characters you won’t soon forget, Upward Bound will inspire and touch you, teaching you as much about yourself as the tender, miraculous world behind the center’s doors. – Hogarth

This title is also available in large print.

Reese Witherspoon has selected Into the Blue by Emma Brodie for her April pick.

Book cover for Into the Blue by Emma Brodie

Curious what Into the Blue is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

“The truth is there’s no such thing as a normal life. There’s just the time you get and how you spend it.”

In the summer of 2000, AJ Graves dreams of writing for Saturday Night Live; instead, she’s stuck working in a video rental store, with slim odds of escaping her small Massachusetts town. Then in walks Noah Drew, the enigmatic and intense scion of the Drew acting dynasty, and her life changes forever. Despite wildly different upbringings, the two forge a deep, cosmic bond, first as friends, then as acting partners—until one day, Noah disappears without a word.

Seven years later, in New York City, AJ is shocked to find herself cast in the same intergalactic TV production as Noah, by then a well-known Hollywood heartthrob. As their on-screen characters grow closer every day, the lines between reality and acting begin to blur. Unable to stay away from each other, AJ and Noah are forced to confront the truth of what happened years ago—and the devastating secret that will send their lives careening apart, even as fate continues to draw them together.

Blending unforgettable characters, explosive chemistry and yearning, and profound emotion, Into the Blue is a journey unlike any other—one that asks: What does it mean to diverge from the script to forge your own story? – Ballantine Books

Oprah Winfrey has selected Go Gentle by Maria Semple for her latest pick.

Curious what Go Gentle is about? Check out the following description from the publisher.

Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a “coven”—like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia—and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger.

Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past—which she has worked so hard to bury—lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she’ll risk everything to get it.

Adora Hazzard’s journey of self-discovery will grip you from the start. Romantic, hilarious, intelligent, and bursting with the stuff of life, Go Gentle is a thrilling story of one woman’s mid-life transformation, cementing Maria Semple in the pantheon of our most exciting and important contemporary writers. – G.P. Putnam’s Sons

This title is also available in large print.

Join Bestsellers Club to have Oprah, Jenna, and Reese’s adult selections automatically put on hold for you!

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *