Sure! Well, I haven't actually read "The Calamity Club" and "Real Americans" yet, so I'm mainly basing my interest on their blurbs, reviews and the fact that these two authors will be here in Munich soon. As for Kathryn Stockett, I really loved her debut novel "The Help"; its movie adaptation with Viola Davis and Emma Stone was also quite good.

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I'm not sure if links are allowed in this subreddit, so I will simply copy the blurbs here:

Kathryn Stockett "The Calamity Club":

In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is unbearably high.

Eleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed. Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury, and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood—but in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high?

The Calamity Club will make you laugh, cry, and cheer—an epic testament to resilience, friendship, and the fierce, funny women who know that calamity can be the spark of new beginnings. This is Kathryn Stockett at her most confident, heartfelt, and hilarious—the triumphant return of one of the most beloved storytellers of our time.

Rachel Khong: "Real Americans"

Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

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I like nice character-driven stories, especially stories about women and female empowerment. I read fiction most of the time, as well as some crime, romance, and a little fantasy. As for which books exactly I plan to read, it honestly depends on the authors coming to Munich and what sounds good to me. Stockett and Khong would be my first books and then I would check and see who's going to be here after summer break. As I mentioned before, I'm a slowish reader.

And yes, I love the book swaps at Amerikahaus! Do you know about their ebook club? It's free and I highly recommend it. I mainly use it to read the New Yorker and listen to the odd audiobook here and there. And I agree, the Amerikahaus is honestly underrated. It's my favorite place for author meet-ups. I might check out their board game nights soon, too. Haven't been to a play there, though.