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Marie Benedict's Latest Novel is Propelled by High Adventure and Deadly Intrigue

In DAUGHTER OF EGYPT, a young woman unearths the truth about a forgotten Pharaoh --- rewriting both of their legacies forever.

Written Over Two Decades, Louise Erdrich's New Collection Features a Range of Characters

Among them: A man is confronted with a folk-singing thief. A woman enters a corporately owned afterlife to seek revenge on her father.

Karen Robards Pens a Sweeping Story of Love, Bravery and the Relentless Pursuit of Freedom

In the wake of the Great War, a young woman joins the Irish rebellion and risks everything for her country in THE MOONLIGHT RUNNER.

Annabelle Gurwitch Received an Out-of-the-Blue Diagnosis of Stage 4 Lung Cancer

Instead of turning into a cancer warrior, Annabelle declared herself a cancer slacker. Her motto: no runs, no ribbons, no religion.

A Fearless Fortune Teller in 1920s Paris Must Use Her Powers to Divine Who She Can Trust

An exiled Romanov princess and her brother come to Zina seeking answers about a decades-old mystery --- the disappearance of their father.

We're Giving Away a Different Spring Reading Title on Select Days Through Mid-April

Our latest prize book is THE UNRAVELING OF JULIA by Lisa Scottoline. The deadline for your entries is by Wednesday, April 1st at noon ET.

Latest Features and Contests


Bookreporter.com's 15th Annual Spring Reading Contests and Feature

Spring is in the air! We’ve caught the fever --- and it’s being fueled by some wonderful new and upcoming releases.

Our 15th annual Spring Reading Contests and Feature spotlights many of these picks, which we know people will be talking about over the next few months. We are hosting a series of 24-hour contests for these titles on select days through mid-April. You will need to check the site to see the featured book and enter to win.

We also are sending a special newsletter to announce each title, which you can sign up for here.

Our latest prize book is THE UNRAVELING OF JULIA by Lisa Scottoline, a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick that is now available in paperback. The deadline for your entries is Wednesday, April 1st at noon ET.

» Click here to enter the contest.


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

Let us know by Friday, April 3rd at noon ET what books you’ve read, and you’ll have a chance to win DAUGHTER OF EGYPT by Marie Benedict and THE KEEPER by Tana French in our Word of Mouth contest.

In DAUGHTER OF EGYPT, a young woman unearths the truth about a forgotten Pharaoh --- rewriting both of their legacies forever. THE KEEPER wraps up the Cal Hooper trilogy with a final visit to the rural Irish village of Ardnakelty --- and to another one of its unsettling deaths.

» Click here to enter the contest.

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.

Carol talks to Patricia Finn about her novel, THE GOLDEN BOY, a complex, non-linear narrative about marriage, friendship and redemption that spans multiple timelines. The book explores themes of memory, identity, exile and atonement through the lives of Stafford and Agnes, a wealthy couple who are living on Maui when readers meet them. This is Patricia’s first novel at the age of 71, and she explains how her background — which includes television writing, ghostwriting, corporate communications and crisis management — informs her literary approach. She notes that she used the real-life trial of Steven Truscott from 1959 to explore themes of justice and moral choices. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.

KEEPER OF LOST CHILDREN is a Bets On pick, just like Sadeqa Johnson's earlier two works of historical fiction. Sadeqa shares that she found a piece about the Brown Babies when she was doing research for THE HOUSE OF EVE. The story was calling to her, but she put it aside to finish that book. She learned more about the Brown Babies and Mabel Grammer, the inspiration for her character Ethel Gathers, in both Ebony and Jet magazines. Sadeqa talks about crafting the three different characters the way that she did and the challenge of tying their stories together. She also expresses her love of the audiobook, which features three voice actors --- Ariel Blake, Karen Chilton and Adam Lazarre-White --- the latter of whom she came to admire when he narrated S. A. Cosby’s work. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.

Wendy Walker's new thriller, BLADE, is a Bets On selection that is set in the world of competitive figure skating. The novel, which draws from Wendy's personal experience as a competitive figure skater (she trained in Colorado from ages 13 to 16), features alternating timelines that follow attorney Ana Robbins, who returns to her former skating facility to defend a young skater accused of murder. Wendy talks about the book’s themes of isolation, the pressure on young athletes, and the psychological impact of competitive sports. The dual-timeline structure allows readers to see connections between past and present events. And with the Winter Olympics airing, she touches on the importance of nailing the triple axel. 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

Nonesuch by Francis Spufford - Historical Fiction

It’s the summer of 1939, and the air in London is thick with the tension of impending war. Iris Hawkins, a fiery young financial secretary, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a genius engineer from the new technology of television. What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into a nightmare of otherworldly pursuit --- into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes droning overhead. In a time when all the men are away in uniform, the defense of the city is in the hands of its women. But Iris has more to contend with than just the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, a fascist fanatic is traveling with a gun in her hand, and only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.

When reports come in that the Kingpin and a police officer have been killed and that Frank Castle (aka the Punisher) has turned himself in for it, Matt Murdock senses holes in the narratives that the media and the streets are quick to run with. Both criminals have been Matt’s nemeses when he dons the cowl of the Daredevil, and there’s no denying that New York is better off without its Kingpin and with the Punisher behind bars. And yet, while the Punisher is a murderous vigilante, he doesn’t kill cops. And he doesn’t turn himself in. Castle certainly deserves prison for all of the other crimes he has committed in the past. However, Matt’s indomitable sense of justice insists that nobody should be locked away for crimes they didn’t actually commit. Representing the vigilante in court, Matt enters a contest of wills and guile with Castle to try and uncover the game beneath the game.

Alex Carter is thrilled to be in lush, tropical Hawaii for her new assignment: to study and protect hawksbill turtles. From global warming to poaching to the simple fragility of a turtle’s nest, these creatures are under constant threat. And as excited as Alex is to swim, explore and relax, she’s also ready to be these turtles’ fiercest protector. Alex looks forward to a break from the danger of her past assignments, but she soon finds that environmental crime can happen anywhere. As a massive hurricane approaches, armed thieves storm onto the beach where Alex and her volunteers are desperately trying to move turtle eggs to safety out of the storm surge. When the gunmen take one of her volunteers hostage, and Alex tracks them to a nearby paleontology museum, she suspects that there’s more to these mysterious criminals than meets the eye.

January 28, 1986: Soon after launch, the Challenger shuttle falls out of the sky and into the sea. At the same time, Oliver Ines is born. He spends his childhood in an English village where his bedroom is covered in glow-in-the-dark wallpaper bearing the planets and stars. Decades later, he has become one of the most renowned astronauts of his time. When an enterprising billionaire taps him to lead a landmark mission to the distant moon Europa, Ollie makes a choice that will send his whole world spinning. As the mission advances deeper into uncharted territory, Ollie finds himself retreating into the past: his university days in London and years in the navy, relationships found and lost, becoming a husband and father. But will the world he remembers still be waiting for him 10 years later when he returns?

Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell - Dark Fantasy/Horror

Once upon a time, on the edge between meadow and forest, there was a lonely child with only his older sister for company. In exchange for being left in peace, his sister made him a playmate --- Daye, a girl woven from flowers and words. And for the first time, this boy, Rory, had a friend. Rory couldn't be happier, until he learns that Daye is a short-lived creature. At the end of each season, she must be woven back together or fall gruesomely apart. And every time Daye falls apart might be her last. As Rory and Daye grow older and the line between friendship and romance begins to blur, Rory becomes desperate to break this cycle of bloom and decay. But the farther Rory pushes his research and experiments to lengthen Daye's existence, the more Daye begins to wonder just how much control she really has over her own life.

Chaos Man by Andrew Mayne - Thriller

A train derails in Idaho, nearly causing a nuclear disaster. An inferno at a battery facility in Florida disrupts the electrical grid for days. A potentially devastating failure is discovered at Virginia’s Mud River Dam. To computational biologist Theo Cray, these aren’t mere infrastructure accidents. They are virtually undetectable acts of sabotage. Theo sees a mathematical pattern to the madness that few others can comprehend --- except for his associates: rogue FBI agent Jessica Blackwood, private security specialist Brad Trasker, and Florida underwater investigator Sloan McPherson. If Theo’s intuition and calculations are correct, the disasters are just a warm-up. The worst is yet to come --- a catastrophe that could trigger the deaths of millions across the country.

A former postal inspector, Mercury Carter specializes in moving sensitive or dangerous packages from point A to B. And sometimes he needs his gun to do so. Carter’s current mission leads him to Providence, Rhode Island, but his delivery is interrupted when he comes across a woman badly injured in a car wreck in the pouring rain. Then a man with a gun appears, warning Carter away from the scene. Carter leaps into action, disarming the attacker and rescuing the crash victim. Just as Carter thinks the danger has passed, he discovers a deeper mystery stemming from the crash, a deadly puzzle involving a memorable pair of grifters, a crooked ex-cop, stolen identities, human trafficking and murder. And it appears that Carter’s next assignment will put him right in this conspiracy’s perilous center.

Daniel Kraus first saw George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead when he was five years old. Through watching it approximately 300 times since, Kraus discovered the many ways the film is tied to his childhood trauma and how its influence has carried into his adulthood. He couldn't help but wonder: Are there other admirers of the movie out there who feel the same? PARTIALLY DEVOURED uses a frame-by-frame deep dive into Night of the Living Dead to produce a kaleidoscopic cultural investigation of the film's importance and to examine the author's early life of rural isolation and local violence.

Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward - Psychological Thriller/Horror

Riley and her brother, Oliver, set off in the pitch-black night, fleeing their troubled home. They are heading for Nowhere --- an abandoned ranch, once the playground of its former eccentric movie-star owner, now a haven for runaways. What awaits could be the freedom they crave. But this mysterious clan guards dark secrets, and the scorched grounds hold the ghosts of the past. Riley quickly realizes that while she and Oliver may have escaped the devil they knew, something darker lurks in the burnt shell of Nowhere. Something that asks a terrible price for sanctuary.