Bookreporter.com Bets On: GOOD DIRT by Charmaine Wilkerson
I was a huge fan of Charmaine Wilkerson’s first novel, BLACK CAKE. So when I heard that she had a new book coming out, I was looking forward to reading it. I am happy to share that GOOD DIRT is another powerful work of fiction that spans generations. Charmaine has a beautiful way of telling a family story, filling it with emotion and history.
Ebby Freeman is at the heart of the book. As a young girl, she witnessed her brother being killed in a home invasion, but she holds back from revealing everything she saw that day. For years, she is looked upon as “the poor Freeman girl,” and what happened to her is whispered about. Ebby already stands out as the stunningly beautiful Black woman in her affluent, all-white neighborhood. All this history makes the pain of being left at the altar on the day of her wedding at her family home that much sadder. She stumbles through life for a while before jetting off to France to get away from it all. But even there Ebby’s past follows her.
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Bookreporter.com's Word of Mouth Contest: Tell Us What You've Read --- and You Can Win Two Books!
Let us know by Friday, February 28th at noon ET what books you’ve read, and you’ll have a chance to win CLOSE YOUR EYES AND COUNT TO 10 by Lisa Unger and MEMORIAL DAYS: A Memoir by Geraldine Brooks in our Word of Mouth contest.
In CLOSE YOUR EYES AND COUNT TO 10, an extreme game of hide-and-seek turns deadly. MEMORIAL DAYS is a heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace.
» Click here to enter the contest.
Bookreporter.com's 10th Annual Winter Reading Contests and Feature
Our Winter Reading contests have returned for a 10th year! On select days through February 19th, we are hosting a series of 24-hour contests spotlighting a book releasing this winter and giving five lucky readers the chance to win it. We also are sending a special newsletter to announce the day's title, which you can sign up for here.
Our final Winter Reading contest will be up on Tuesday, February 18th at noon ET. The prize book will be FIRST LIE WINS by Ashley Elston, a Reese's Book Club pick and a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection that is now available in paperback.
» Click here to read all the contest details and learn more about our featured titles.
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.
Joseph Finder's new book, THE OLIGARCH’S DAUGHTER, will be a Bets On pick. In this breakneck thriller, a young hedge funder falls for an attractive woman he meets at a party who turns out to be the daughter of a Russian oligarch. Joe talks about writing the novel’s two time frames and how the awareness of what oligarchs are has become a lot more timely in the past few years. He did some wilderness training for part of the book and then jumped at the chance to learn more about superyachts that are owned by the uber-wealthy. Joe explains the process of building his characters and what drives them. He also shares what’s next for him. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.
PRESUMED GUILTY is Scott Turow's latest legal thriller. This Bets On title marks the return of Rusty Sabich, following his starring roles in PRESUMED INNOCENT and INNOCENT. Scott explains his decision to write the book and why this may be the last time we see Rusty as a protagonist in one of his novels. He also shares the reason that he chose to make Aaron a young Black man who was adopted by white people. Scott and Carol talk about the mantle of “accused murderer” and what that means to a person, which is something that two of his characters share. Carol points out Scott’s very in-depth courtroom scenes, which leads to a discussion about their significance for the reader. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.
Carol had a fascinating conversation with Michelle Horton about DEAR SISTER: A Memoir of Secrets, Survival, and Unbreakable Bonds, which has just released in paperback with bonus content and is a Bets On selection. Michelle shares the harrowing story of how her sister, Nikki, a victim of domestic violence for years, was imprisoned after she killed her long-time partner. She discusses how the Domestic Abuse Act that was passed in New York led to Nikki’s early release. This law is only in effect in a few states, while others are fighting to get it on the books. She traces what happened at the trial and how information can be suppressed. 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.
An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world. Add two children. And a horse. From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, GLIFF explores how and why we endeavor to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data --- something easily categorizable and predictable --- Ali Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.
When Theodora Scott met Connor, a member of the powerful Dalton family, she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives. Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood. Theo has almost no recollection of her earliest years, but now she begins to piece together the fragments of her memories. Someone here has a shocking secret that they will do anything to keep hidden, and Theo is in terrible danger.
Margot and Mama have lived by the forest ever since Margot can remember. When Margot is not at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. People who have strayed too far from the road. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine and keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies. But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes. And when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her bid for freedom.
Mira Salvi has the perfect life --- a job she loves, a fiancé everyone adores, and the secure future she’s always imagined for herself. She hasn’t a thing to complain about, not even when she has to go on her engagement trip to New York alone. While playing tourist in the city, Mira chances upon a lost ring, and her social media post to locate its owner goes viral. With everyone trying to claim the ring, only one person seems to want to find its owner as badly as Mira does: journalist Krish Hale. Brooding and arrogant, he will do anything to get to write this story. As Krish and Mira reluctantly join forces and jump into the adventure of tracing the ring back to where it belongs, Mira begins to wonder if she is in the right place in her own life. Maybe, like the owner of the lost ring, her happy ending hasn’t been written yet.
A teenager returns home from work and finds her parents shot to death in their bed. Responding to the call, Sheriff Bree Taggert realizes the crime wasn’t a burglary gone wrong. The couple was executed. The sole survivor: their traumatized teenage daughter, Claire Mason. Bree teams up with investigator Matt Flynn to work the case, but together they uncover more questions than answers. When Claire is stalked at the park, it’s clear the killer isn’t finished --- and she’s the next target. As Bree and Matt sift through the past --- suspect by suspect --- a tangled web of deception emerges, and the truth becomes harder to see. Because the victims’ entire lives were a lie. And the only way to protect the vulnerable girl is to unravel her parents’ secrets.
Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide they must set out to investigate themselves --- to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother’s property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more threatening the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt’s home in the present day, their parents’ childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they’ve been told about who they are, where they came from and what they deserve.
Eilean Eadar is a barren, windswept rock best known for the unsolved mystery of the three lighthouse keepers who vanished back in 1919. But when a young man is found dead at the base of that same lighthouse, two detective inspectors are sent from Glasgow to investigate. Georgina “George” Lennox is happy to be back from leave after a devastating accident. That is, until she meets the hostile islanders and their enigmatic priest, who seem determined to thwart their investigation. George’s partner, Richie, just wants to close the case and head home to his family. But he hasn’t heard the wolves howling or seen the dark figures at their window at night. He’s too busy watching George as if waiting for her to break. With the dark secrets of the island swirling around them, George and Richie must decide who to trust and what to believe as they spin closer to the terrible truth.
Kerry’s life is in shambles. Her husband has left her, her drinking habit has officially become a problem, and though the deadline for her big book deal --- the one that was supposed to change everything --- is looming, she can’t write a word. When she sees an ad for a caretaker position at a revitalized roadside motel in the Catskills, she jumps at the chance. It's the perfect getaway to finish her book and start fresh. But as she hunkers down in a blizzard, she spots something through the window: a pale arm peeking out from a heap of snow. Trapped in the mountains and alone with a dead, frozen body, Kerry must keep her head and make it out before the killer comes for her too. But is the deadly game of cat-and-mouse all in her mind? The body count begs to differ.
Professional baseball has featured a bevy of superstars over the past century and a half, but only a few of them have impacted their sport and cities as deeply as Willie McCovey and Billy Williams. Born just a handful of miles apart in 1938, they grew up in and around one of the sport’s true cradles, Mobile, Alabama, on their way to producing two iconic careers in Major League Baseball. In A TIME FOR REFLECTION, Jason Cannon examines these two legends of the game. Overcoming the heinous racism of the Jim Crow South as part of the second generation of African American major leaguers who followed in the footsteps of Jackie Robinson, they became two of baseball’s all-time greatest players. Off the field, they took impactful stands for racial progress that continue to resonate today.