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WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? is Sophie Kinsella's Most Personal Book

In this heartbreaking and life-affirming story, a renowned novelist faces a devastating diagnosis and learns to live and love anew.

BE READY WHEN THE LUCK HAPPENS is Ina Garten's Long-Awaited Memoir

Here, for the first time, the Barefoot Contessa presents an intimate, entertaining and inspiring account of her remarkable journey.

On the Cusp of Turning 80, Newly Retired Pharmacist Augusta Stern is Adrift

When she relocates to an active senior community, Augusta unexpectedly crosses paths with the man who broke her heart 60 years earlier.

IDENTITY UNKNOWN is the 28th Installment in Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta Series

Summoned to an abandoned theme park to retrieve a body, Scarpetta learns that the victim is a man she once had an intense love affair with.

Two Sisters. A Lost Imperial Treasure.

Mike Brink, the world’s greatest puzzle master, has 24 hours to solve the most dangerous mystery of his life --- or die trying --- in this extremely clever sequel to Danielle Trussoni's THE PUZZLE MASTER.

We're Giving Away a Different Fall Reading Title on Select Days Through October

Our latest prize book is BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CHRISTMAS by Mary Kay Andrews. The deadline for your entries is October 16th at noon ET.

Latest Features and Contests


Bookreporter.com's 14th Annual Fall Reading Contests and Feature

Fall is known as the biggest season of the year for books. The titles that release during this latter part of the year often become holiday gifts, and many are blockbusters. In our Fall Reading Contests and Feature, we are spotlighting a number of outstanding books that we know people will be talking about this fall.

We are hosting a series of 24-hour contests for these titles on select days through October, so you will have to check the site each day to see the featured prize book and enter to win. We also are sending a special newsletter to announce the day's title, which you can sign up for here.

Our latest prize book is BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CHRISTMAS by Mary Kay Andrews, a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick that is now available in paperback. The deadline for your entries is Wednesday, October 16th at noon ET.

» Click here to enter the contest.


Our Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks for October

Each month, we share top book picks from Indie Next and LibraryReads. We also feature a number of other prominent selections, including the Barnes & Noble Book Club, the "Good Morning America" Book Club, Oprah’s Book Club, the PBS Books Readers Club, the "Read with Jenna" Today Show Book Club, Reese's Book Club, and the Target Book Club.

Oprah's latest Book Club pick is FROM HERE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN. Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley tells her whole story for the first time in this raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir faithfully completed by her daughter, Riley Keough, following her death in January 2023.

Oprah says, “I have great love and admiration for Lisa Marie Presley, and was so moved that her daughter Riley, through her grief, was able to help her finish a beautifully touching memoir that allows us to see her mother at her most honest and vulnerable. This is an intimate look at what it was like growing up as heir to one of America’s most famous families.”

» Click here for October's Favorite Monthly Lists & Picks.


Bookreporter.com's Word of Mouth Contest: Tell Us What You've Read --- and You Can Win Two Books!


Let us know by Friday, October 18th at noon ET what books you’ve read, and you’ll have a chance to win THE PUZZLE BOX by Danielle Trussoni and WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? by Sophie Kinsella in our Word of Mouth contest.

In THE PUZZLE BOX, the world’s greatest puzzle master has 24 hours to solve the most dangerous mystery of his life...or die trying. An upcoming Bookreporter.com Bets On pick, WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE? is an unforgettable story --- by turns heartbreaking and life-affirming --- of a renowned novelist facing a devastating diagnosis and learning to live and love anew.

» Click here to enter the contest.


An Interview with Benjamin Barson, Author of BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons


Benjamin Barson is a historian, a baritone saxophonist, a political activist and an assistant professor of music at Bucknell University. His newly released book, BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY, recasts the birth of jazz, unearthing vibrant narratives of New Orleans musicians to reveal how early jazz was inextricably tied to the mass mobilization of freedpeople during Reconstruction and the decades that followed. In this interview conducted by Michael Barson, Senior Publicity Executive at Melville House (and Benjamin’s father), Benjamin talks about his inspiration for the book, a thrilling discovery he made while researching this fascinating subject, and his next project, which is somewhat of a sequel to BRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY.

» Click here to read the interview.

Bookreporter Talks To...

As part of our mission to expand The Book Report Network, we have been shooting video interviews with authors and posting them on our YouTube channel. We also have been making them available as podcasts. Carol loves interviewing authors, so this feels like a natural.

Jean Hanff Korelitz joins Carol to talk about her latest book, THE SEQUEL, which is the appropriately titled follow-up to THE PLOT and an upcoming Bets On selection. In it, Anna, the widow of Jacob Finch Bonner, is enjoying the riches of being a literary widow and has written a debut novel called The Afterword. But, ah, Anna has a secret to hide. Jean shares the fun she had layering wry humor into the book, as well as how she satirizes the publishing industry in juicy detail. Yes, there is film news talk, as well as what’s next for Jean. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.

THE NIGHT WE LOST HIM is Laura Dave's latest thriller, following THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME, and a Bets On pick. At the heart of this story is a secret that has been hidden for years — one that may have caused the death of Liam Noone, a successful hotel magnate. Nora, his daughter from one of his marriages, is convinced by Sam, his son from another marriage, to join together to see if his death was accidental or something more sinister. Laura talks about Liam’s unique hotel properties and what inspired them, and how research finds its way into her writing. She also shares her writing schedule and how she manages her day, as well as the song she had on repeat as she wrote, which is something she always does. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.

Carol had the pleasure of talking to Chris Whitaker about his New York Times bestseller, ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, which is a Bets On title. Chris explains how he developed the book by spending a year writing just dialogue to get a feel for his characters, Patch and Saint. Once he had a good grasp of their voices, he could write around that. Chris went through trauma in his youth that overshadowed his life, and it fueled his writing here. He shares how he researches the locations that he uses in his novels and talks about the joy of having Edoardo Ballerini as a narrator for the audiobook. And yes, he addresses the book’s 261 chapters that are just one to three pages long. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.

» Click here for a complete list of our "Bookreporter Talks To" videos and podcasts, along with upcoming interviews.

Latest Reviews

The Drowned by John Banville - Historical Mystery

1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn’t approach but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea. Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector Strafford, who soon turns to his old ally --- the flawed but brilliant pathologist Quirke --- a man he is linked to in increasingly complicated ways. But as the case unfolds, events from the past resurface that may have life-altering ramifications for all involved.

Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic and determined to finally make things right. He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose her forever.

The Book of Witching by C. J. Cooke - Supernatural Thriller/Horror

Clem gets a call that is every mother’s worst nightmare. Her 19-year-old daughter, Erin, is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn’t recognize her mother. And she doesn’t answer to her name but insists she is someone named Nyx. Clem travels the site of her daughter’s accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin’s strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind or the effects of an ancient curse.

First came the secretaries from Brooklyn and Queens --- the “smart cookies” who saw that making money, lots of it, might be within their grasp. Then came the first female Harvard Business School graduates, who were in for a rude awakening because an equal degree did not mean equal opportunity. But by the 1980s, as the market went into turbodrive, women were being plucked from elite campuses to feed the belly of a rapidly expanding beast, playing for high stakes in Wall Street’s bad-boy culture by day and clubbing by night. In SHE-WOLVES, award-winning historian Paulina Bren tells the story of how women infiltrated Wall Street from the swinging '60s to 9/11 --- starting at a time when “No Ladies” signs hung across the doors of its luncheon clubs and (more discretely) inside its brokerage houses and investment banks.

A string of overdoses in Colorado Springs has Detectives Joe Kenda and Lee Wilson on the lookout for a bad batch of heroin that has been cut with a drug they've never seen before. Meanwhile, at Springs General Hospital, Dr. Blair Moreland --- the notoriously unpleasant head anesthesiologist --- has found a way to feed his deepening addiction to the very same powerful new drug: Fentanyl. But when Dr. Moreland starts supplying the dangerous painkiller to dealer Lula Lopez --- planning to manufacture the drug himself --- he angers a Mexican crime syndicate and sets into motion a cycle of death and violence that threatens to engulf the entire city. Detectives Kenda and Wilson must track down the source of this killer heroin before anyone else can overdose --- and stop Moreland before he can escape the long arm of the law.

Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented themselves as “food detectives,” offering a service that goes beyond cooking mouth-watering meals. Through their culinary sleuthing, they revive lost recipes and rekindle forgotten memories. From the Olympic swimmer who misses his estranged father’s bento lunchbox to the one-hit-wonder pop star who remembers the tempura she ate to celebrate her only successful record, each customer leaves the diner forever changed --- though not always in the ways they expect. The Kamogawa Diner doesn’t just serve meals. It’s a door to the past through the miracle of delicious food.

Echoes of Us by Joy Jordan-Lake - Historical Fiction

In the midst of World War II, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish Cambridge student and a German POW forge a connection that endures --- against all odds. But now everything that Will Dobbins, Dov Silverberg and Hans Hessler fought for is at risk as their descendants clash for control of the corporation they founded together. In an attempt to remake its tattered corporate image, the firm hires event planner Hadley Jacks and her sister, Kitzie, to organize a reunion for the families on St. Simons Island, Georgia, the place that changed all three men’s lives forever. As Hadley and her sister delve into the friends’ past, they uncover the life of the courageous young woman who links them all together...and the old wounds that could tear everything apart.

On the cusp of 30, Ghanaian Londoner Whitney Appiah was born with a special gift. The massage therapist can physically sense where her clients’ trauma lies and heal them. But Whitney has no idea that she, too, is suffering. Tragic events from her youth have left a terrible, unseen mark. When a dangerous encounter with the man she’s dating triggers a wave of fragmented recollections, Whitney embarks on a journey to reclaim her memories and the truth that is buried deep in her early years growing up in Kumasi, Ghana, during the 1990s. Spanning three decades, told through the viewpoints of Whitney, sisters Gloria and Aretha, and their house help Maame Serwaa, THE REST OF YOU explores what happens when we try to move forward through the lacuna of our past.