An impressive novel.

One of the top books of the year.

The Calamity Club (2026) is a historical fiction novel by American author Kathryn Stockett.

Set in Oxford, Mississippi in 1933 during the Great Depression, the book follows two women and a girl — an orphaned girl, an unmarried bookkeeper, and a resourceful down-on-her-luck woman — whose lives converge amid the poverty, hypocrisy, and constrained freedoms of the Depression-era Deep South.

• Birdie Calhoun. An unmarried, outspoken bookkeeper from the rural Mississippi Delta who travels to Oxford to ask her social-climbing sister for money to pay back taxes on their family home.
• Meg Lefleur. A bright eleven-year-old girl living at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum after her mother mysteriously vanished on Christmas Eve. Deemed an unadoptable “big girl,” she endures harsh treatment from the orphanage director while holding onto hope.
• Charlie. A gritty, resourceful woman with a complicated past and nothing left to lose. When her path crosses with Birdie, Meg, and other underestimated townswomen, they devise an audacious, high-risk scheme to survive.

Reviewers at outlets like The New York Times and Oprah Daily have praised it as an immersive, rowdy, and big-hearted saga of found family.

While some critics note a slow initial setup as the dual storylines develop, the audiobook edition—narrated by Jenna Lamia and January LaVoy—has received widespread acclaim.