Every book lover has their favorite authors, from the literary giants, the nostalgic children’s authors whose books made your childhood, to that one author whose every book you’ve read and whose new releases never come fast enough. Our 2025 Book Challenge theme for this month, a book about a writer or author, celebrates these creative minds, offering a peek inside their heads. This book challenge features books that tell the stories behind the storytellers. From biographies and memoirs of real authors such as Tolkein, Judy Blume, and Nicholas Sparks, to writers writing books. This booklist shows the chaos and creativity behind the writing process, providing a behind the scenes look into the making of your favorite books. 

If you read one of these books or any other about a writer, enter our drawing by filling out this form for a chance to win!

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald – Therese Fowler

A tale inspired by the marriage of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald follows their union in defiance of her father’s opposition and her scandalous transformation into a Jazz Age celebrity in the literary party scenes of New York, Paris, and the French Riviera.

 

Separation Anxiety: A Novel – Laura Zigman

A once-promising children’s book writer navigates the humbling realities of middle age and dysfunctional family life while pursuing well-intentioned but increasingly disastrous changes.

 

The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us – Rachelle Bergstein

Offers an intimate and expansive look at Judy Blume’s life, work and cultural impact, focusing on her most iconic–and controversial–young adult novels, from Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to Blubber.

 

The Thirteenth Tale: A novel – Diane Setterfield

When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.

 

The fellowship: the literary lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams – Phillip Zaleski

A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis C.S. Lewis is the twentieth century’s most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien, its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis’s Oxford rooms and a nearby pub. They read aloud from works in progress, argued about anything that caught their fancy, and gave one another invaluable companionship, inspiration, and criticism. In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings’ lives and works.

 

The Overnight Guest – Heather Gudenkauf

True crime writer Wylie Lark, snowed in at an isolated farmhouse where she’s retreated to write her new book, finds a small child in the snow outside and, bringing him inside for warmth and safety, learns that the farmhouse isn’t as isolated as she thought.

 

Three Weeks with My Brother – Nicholas Sparks and Micah Sparks

In January 2003, Nicholas Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three week trip around the world. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at 37 and 38 respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family. Against the backdrop of the wonders of the world, the Sparks brothers band together to heal, to remember, and to learn to live life to the fullest.

 

The Paris Wife: A Novel – Paula McLain

Meeting through mutual friends in Chicago, Hadley is intrigued by brash “beautiful boy” Ernest Hemingway, and after a brief courtship and small wedding, they take off for Paris, where Hadley makes a convincing transformation from an overprotected child to a game and brave young woman who puts up with impoverished living conditions and shattering loneliness to prop up her husband’s career.

 

Yellowface: A Novel – R.F. Kuang

After the death of her literary rival in a freak accident, author June Hayward steals her just-finished masterpiece, sending it to her agent as her own work, but as emerging evidence threatens her success, she discovers just how far she’ll go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

 

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft – Stephen King

 Stephen King reflects on how his writing has helped him through difficult times and describes various aspects of the art of writing.

 

The Mystery of Mrs. Christie – Marie Benedict

Claiming amnesia after going missing for more than a week in late 1926, up-and-coming mystery author Agatha Christie pens a chilling story that brashly implicates her war-hero husband.

 

Misery – Stephen King

Rescued from a car crash by a psychotic woman claiming to be a fan, novelist Paul Sheldon becomes a captive invalid in her secluded Colorado farmhouse.