7 books like Where the Crawdads Sing for your next book club

Delia Owens’s novel hit a particular sweet spot: a vivid natural setting, a heroine shaped by isolation, a courtroom thread, and prose that lingers on marsh and weather. If that’s the combination you’re chasing — and you want something your book club will actually finish — start here.

1. The Great Alone — Kristin Hannah

A family homesteading in 1970s Alaska, where the landscape is as dangerous as the people. Survival, coming-of-age, and a setting that overwhelms.

2. The Signature of All Things — Elizabeth Gilbert

A 19th-century botanist’s sweeping life story. For readers who loved the natural-science thread and want something richer and slower.

3. The Death of Bees — Lisa O’Donnell

Two sisters keep a devastating secret and raise themselves. Grittier and more urban, but the same self-reliant-outsider heart.

4. The Snow Child — Eowyn Ivey

A homesteading couple in 1920s Alaska and a child who appears from the wilderness. Lyrical, wintry, faintly magical.

5. The Light Between Oceans — M. L. Stedman

A lighthouse keeper, an impossible moral choice, and the sea. A book-club favorite for the debates it starts.

6. Educated — Tara Westover

A memoir, not a novel, but the same arc of a resourceful young woman raised far outside the mainstream. A near-universal discussion-starter.

7. The Marsh King’s Daughter — Karen Dionne

A woman raised in the wilderness must confront her past when her father escapes prison. The closest thriller cousin on this list.

For your club

Book clubs read in sync, which makes them perfect for trading — finish a pick together, then bring the copies back for credit toward the next month’s read. Browse what’s on our shelves, or describe your last favorite to the Next Read Matchmaker.