Kathryn Stockett, the author of multi-million selling hit novel, The Help is returning with a new, highly-anticipated novel. The Calamity Club, publishing next year, will be Stockett’s first novel since her 2009 début, The Help.
Her début book was a historical fiction novel that centred two African-American maids (Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson) working in White households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s. The Help was adapted into a film and released in 2011, starring Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Emma Stone. Despite selling sever million copies in print and audiobook editions, as of August 2011 when the movie was at its height, and spending more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, the novel was rejected by 60 literary agents before finally finding representation.
Nearly two decades later, Stockett is publishing a second novel, which once again, returns to Mississippi where the author was born and raised. The Calamity Club is set in Oxford, Mississippi 1933 during the Great Depression.
Details from the publisher outline the story: “Eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one.
“Ever since her beloved mother failed to come home last Christmas Eve, she’s been one of the “unadoptable” big girls at the town’s orphanage where she fights each day to keep her wits sharp and her spirit unbowed.
“When she meets Birdie, a young woman set on confronting the socialite sister who believes she’s left her impoverished family behind, for the first time in a long while it seems someone else might care about Meg’s future.
“But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers her sister’s charmed life is balanced precariously upon a tapestry of lies. Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman haunted by loss who has been pushed to the brink with nothing left to lose.
“Drawn together by circumstance, they find unexpected kinship among a disreputable, determined band of women. But in a town steeped in hypocrisy, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences…
“Bold, heartwarming, and riotously funny, The Calamity Club is an unforgettable story of resilience and friendship, and a sisterhood of underestimated women who risk everything to take back control of their fates.”
The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett is available to pre-order now; publishing 9th April 2026 in the U.S. and 21st May 2026 in the UK (dates across the world may vary).
