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End-of-the-Year Contest 2020

End-of-the-Year Celebration

End-of-the-Year Contest 2020

Congratulations to the winners of our 2020 End-of-the-Year Contest! One Grand Prize winner received all 42 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2020, while 14 others won a selection of three of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2020's Bets On books.

Winners

GRAND PRIZE WINNER:
Marilyn F. from Lakewood, NJ

SECOND PRIZE WINNERS:
Andrea B. from Maryville, TN
Anne L. from Monroe Township, NJ
Betty L. from Boynton Beach, FL
Cory H. from Ladysmith, British Columbia
Darlene M. from Plano, TX
Deborah L. from Huntington Beach, CA
Diane P. from Newburgh, NY
Eleni G. from New York, NY
Julie R. from Woodland, CA
Laura H. from McKinney, TX
Lois D. from Pearland, TX
Monica J. from Round Rock, TX
Sara B. from Winsted, CT
Vickie N. from Ontario, CA

 

All Adults Here by Emma Straub - Fiction


When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she'd been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence? Astrid's youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count?

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins - Fiction


Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same. Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?

Big Lies in a Small Town (Audiobook) written by Diane Chamberlain, read by Susan Bennett - Fiction


North Carolina, 2018: Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, Morgan Christopher finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women's Correctional Center. But then a mysterious visitor makes her an offer that will see her released immediately. Her assignment: restore an old post office mural in a sleepy southern town. North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. But what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep and the price of being different might just end in murder. What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner - Fiction


Six years after the fight that ended their friendship, Daphne Berg is shocked when Drue Cavanaugh walks back into her life, looking as lovely and successful as ever, with a massive favor to ask. Daphne hasn’t spoken one word to Drue in all this time, so when Drue asks if she will be her maid-of-honor at the society wedding of the summer, Daphne is rightfully speechless. Letting glamorous, seductive Drue back into her life is risky, but it comes with an invitation to spend a weekend in a waterfront Cape Cod mansion. When Drue begs and pleads and dangles the prospect of cute single guys, Daphne finds herself powerless as ever to resist her friend’s siren song.

Brontë’s Mistress by Finola Austin - Historical Fiction

Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson has tragically lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. All of that changes with the arrival of her son’s tutor, Branwell Brontë, brother of her daughters’ governess, Miss Anne Brontë, and those other writerly sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Branwell has his own demons to contend with --- including living up to the ideals of his intelligent family --- but his presence is a breath of fresh air for Lydia. A love of poetry, music and theater bring mistress and tutor together, and Branwell’s colorful tales of his sisters’ imaginative worlds form the backdrop for seduction. But their new passion comes with consequences.

Confessions on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger - Psychological Thriller


Selena Murphy is commuting home on the train when she strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat. The woman introduces herself as Martha and soon confesses that she has been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again. Then the nanny disappears. As Selena is pulled into the mystery of what happened, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, she begins to wonder who Martha really was. But she is hardly prepared for what she will discover.

Don't Look for Me by Wendy Walker - Psychological Thriller

They called it a “walk away.” The car abandoned miles from home. The note found at a nearby hotel. The shattered family. It happens all the time. Women disappear, desperate to start over. But what really happened to Molly Clarke? The night Molly disappeared began with a storm, running out of gas, and a man offering her a ride to safety. But when the doors lock shut, Molly begins to suspect she has made a terrible mistake. A new lead brings Molly’s daughter, Nicole, back to the small, desolate town where her mother was last seen to renew the desperate search. The locals are sympathetic and eager to help. The innkeeper. The bartender. Even the police. Until secrets begin to reveal themselves and Nicole comes closer to the truth about that night --- and the danger surrounding her.

The End of Her by Shari Lapena - Psychological Thriller


Stephanie and Patrick are adjusting to life with their colicky twin girls. The babies are a handful, but even as Stephanie struggles with the disorientation of sleep deprivation, there's one thing she's sure of: she has all she ever wanted. Then Erica, a woman from Patrick's past, appears and makes a disturbing accusation. Patrick had always said his first wife's death was an accident, but now Erica claims it was murder. Patrick insists he's innocent, that this is nothing but a blackmail attempt. Still, Erica knows things about Patrick --- things that make Stephanie begin to question her husband. Stephanie isn't sure what, or who, to believe. As Stephanie's trust in Patrick begins to falter, Patrick stands to lose everything. Is Erica the persuasive liar Patrick says she is? Or has Stephanie made a terrible mistake?

The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline - Historical Fiction


Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early 19th-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. Months later, she is sentenced to Van Diemen’s Land, a penal colony in Australia. During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Though Australia has been home to Aboriginal people for more than 50,000 years, the British government considers its fledgling colony uninhabited and unsettled. By the time the Medea arrives, many of them have been forcibly relocated, including Mathinna, who has been adopted by the new governor of Van Diemen’s Land.

Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland - Historical Fiction

Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and it always feels like home. Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bed rest for the duration of her pregnancy. After Joseph insists they take in a mysterious young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams. When tragedy strikes, Esther pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface.

Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella - Psychological Thriller/Mystery


Cadence Archer arrives on Harvard’s campus desperate to understand why her brother, Eric, a genius who developed paranoid schizophrenia, took his own life there the year before. Losing Eric has left a black hole in Cady’s life, and while her decision to follow in her brother’s footsteps threatens to break her family apart, she is haunted by questions of what she might have missed. And there’s only one place to find answers. As Cady struggles under the enormous pressure at Harvard, she investigates her brother’s final year, armed only with a blue notebook of Eric’s cryptic scribblings. She knew he had been struggling with paranoia, delusions and illusory enemies --- but what tipped him over the edge?

The Girl from Widow Hills by Megan Miranda - Psychological Thriller/Mystery


Arden Maynor was just a child when she was swept away while sleepwalking during a terrifying rainstorm and went missing for days. Against all odds, she was found, alive, clinging to a storm drain. The girl from Widow Hills was a living miracle. Arden’s mother wrote a book, and fame followed. As soon as she was old enough, Arden changed her name and disappeared from the public eye. Now a young woman living hundreds of miles away, she goes by Olivia. But with the 20th anniversary of her rescue approaching, the media will inevitably renew its interest in Arden. Soon Olivia feels like she’s being watched and begins sleepwalking again, like she did long ago, even waking outside her home. Until late one night she jolts awake in her yard. At her feet is the corpse of a man she knows --- from her previous life, as Arden Maynor.

The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle - Psychological Thriller


Cynical and insecure, Iris has long been envious of her twin sister Summer’s seemingly never-ending good fortune. When Summer calls Iris to Thailand to help her sail the family yacht to the Seychelles, Iris has secret hopes for what might happen on the journey. But after a disturbing incident in the middle of the Indian Ocean, everything changes. Now Iris has the chance to step into the golden life she’s always envied --- and get one step closer to the hundred-million-dollar inheritance left by her manipulative father. All Iris would need to do is ensure she’s the first of his seven children to fulfill the strange conditions of his will. But Iris soon discovers that her twin was keeping more than one secret, and her life lurches between glamorous dream and paranoid nightmare.

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler - Fiction


In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who’s headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans --- a family with new money and a secretly troubled teenage daughter --- raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace. With little in common except a property line, these two families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.

Goodnight Beautiful by Aimee Molloy - Psychological Thriller

Newlyweds Sam Statler and Annie Potter are excited to say goodbye to New York City and start a life together in Sam's sleepy hometown upstate. Or, it turns out, a life where Annie spends most of her time alone while Sam, her therapist husband, works long hours in his downstairs office, tending to the egos of his (mostly female) clientele. Little does Sam know that through a vent in his ceiling, every word of his sessions can be heard from the room upstairs. Who could resist listening? Everything is fine until the French girl in the green mini Cooper shows up, and Sam decides to go to work and not come home, throwing a wrench into Sam and Annie's happily ever after.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley - Psychological Thriller/Mystery


On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. But as the champagne is popped and the festivities get underway, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And, perhaps more importantly, why?

The Heirloom Garden by Viola Shipman - Fiction


Iris Maynard lost her husband in World War II, her daughter to illness and, finally, her reason to live. Walled off from the world for decades behind the towering fence surrounding her home, Iris has built a new family…of flowers. Iris propagates her own daylilies and roses while tending to a garden filled with the heirloom starts that keep the memories of her loved ones alive. When Abby Peterson moves next door with her family --- a husband traumatized by his service in the Iraq War and a young daughter searching for stability --- Iris is reluctantly yet inevitably drawn into her boisterous neighbor’s life, where, united by loss and a love of flowers, she and Abby tentatively unearth their secrets, and help each other discover how much life they have yet to live.

Hello, Summer by Mary Kay Andrews - Fiction


Conley Hawkins left her family’s small-town newspaper, The Silver Bay Beacon, in the rearview mirror years ago. Now a star reporter for a big-city paper, Conley is exactly where she wants to be and is about to take a fancy new position in Washington, D.C. Or so she thinks. When the new job goes up in smoke, Conley finds herself right back where she started, working for her sister, who is trying to keep The Silver Bay Beacon afloat --- and she doesn’t exactly have warm feelings for Conley. Soon she is given the unenviable task of overseeing the local gossip column, “Hello, Summer.” Then Conley witnesses an accident that ends in the death of a local congressman --- a beloved war hero with a shady past. The more she digs into the story, the more dangerous it gets.

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker - Science/Biography


Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their 12 children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins --- aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony --- and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family? What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health.

His & Hers by Alice Feeney - Psychological Thriller

When a woman is murdered in Blackdown, a quintessentially British village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Detective Jack Harper is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation. Someone isn’t telling the truth, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.

Hollywood Park: A Memoir by Mikel Jollett - Memoir


Mikel Jollett was born into the Church of Synanon, one of the country’s most infamous and dangerous cults. Per the leader’s mandate, all children were separated from their parents when they were six months old and handed over to the cult’s “School.” After spending years in what was essentially an orphanage, Mikel escaped the cult one morning with his mother and older brother. Raised by a clinically depressed mother, tormented by his angry brother, subjected to the unpredictability of troubled stepfathers and longing for contact with his father, a former heroin addict and ex-con, Mikel slowly, often painfully, builds a life that leads him to Stanford University and, eventually, to finding his voice as a writer and musician.

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle - Fiction


Where do you see yourself in five years? When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan. But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment and beside a very different man. The date is December 15, 2025, five years in the future. After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. Determined to ignore this odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind. That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.

Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell - Psychological Thriller

Owen Pick has just been suspended from his job as a teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel forums, where he meets a charismatic and mysterious figure. Across the street from Owen lives the Fours family, headed by mom Cate, a physiotherapist, and dad Roan, a child psychologist. They think Owen is a bit creepy, and their teenaged daughter swears he followed her home from the train station one night. Meanwhile, young Saffyre Maddox spent three years as a patient of Roan Fours. Feeling abandoned when their therapy ends, she searches for other ways to maintain her connection with him. Then, on Valentine’s night, Saffyre disappears --- and the last person to see her alive is Owen Pick.

The Jetsetters by Amanda Eyre Ward - Fiction


When 70-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the “Become a Jetsetter” contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children. She yearns for the years when they were young, when she was a single mother who meant everything to them. When Charlotte wins the contest, the family packs their baggage --- both literal and figurative --- and spends 10 days traveling from sun-drenched Athens through glorious Rome to tapas-laden Barcelona on an over-the-top cruise ship, the Splendido Marveloso. As lovers new and old join the adventure, long-buried secrets are revealed and old wounds are reopened, forcing the Perkins family to confront the forces that drove them apart and the defining choices of their lives.

Lady Clementine by Marie Benedict - Historical Fiction


In 1909, Clementine steps off a train with her new husband, Winston. An angry woman emerges from the crowd to attack, shoving him in the direction of an oncoming train. Just before he stumbles, Clementine grabs him by his suit jacket. This will not be the last time Clementine Churchill will save her husband. LADY CLEMENTINE is the ferocious story of the ambitious woman beside Winston Churchill, the story of a partner who did not flinch through the sweeping darkness of war, and who would not surrender either to expectations or to enemies.

The Last Flight by Julie Clark - Psychological Thriller

Claire Cook has a perfect life. Married to the scion of a political dynasty, with a Manhattan townhouse and a staff of 10, her surroundings are elegant, her days flawlessly choreographed, and her future auspicious. But behind closed doors, nothing is quite as it seems, and she has worked for months on a plan to vanish. A chance meeting in an airport bar brings Claire together with Eva, whose circumstances seem equally dire. Together they make a last-minute decision to switch tickets, believing that the swap will give each of them the head start they need to begin again somewhere far away. But when one of the flights goes down, Claire realizes it's no longer a head start but a new life. With the news of her death about to explode in the media, Claire will assume Eva's identity --- and, along with it, the secrets Eva fought so hard to keep hidden.

The Lions of Fifth Avenue by Fiona Davis - Historical Fiction


Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she has wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes and books for the exhibit Sadie has been running begin disappearing from the library's famous Berg Collection. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-averse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage --- truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library's history.

Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent - Psychological Thriller


William, Brian and Luke: three boys, born a year apart, trained from birth by their wily mother to compete for her attention. They play games, as brothers do…yet even after the Drumms escape into the world beyond their windows, those games --- those little cruelties --- grow more sinister, more merciless and more dangerous. And with their lives entwined like the strands of a noose, only two of the brothers will survive.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore - Mystery/Thriller


In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling. Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit --- and her sister --- before it's too late.

Monogamy by Sue Miller - Fiction


Graham and Annie have been married for nearly 30 years, and their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. Lucas, Graham’s son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Graham’s daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Graham’s last and greatest love. When Graham suddenly dies, Annie is lost. What is the point of going on without him? Then, while she is still mourning him intensely, she discovers that Graham had been unfaithful to her. She spirals into darkness, wondering if she ever truly knew the man who loved her.

The Night Swim by Megan Goldin - Psychological Thriller

The new season of Rachel Krall's true-crime podcast has brought her to a small town being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. A local golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season 3 a success, Rachel throws herself into her investigation --- but she keeps receiving mysterious letters. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insist she was murdered. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases --- and a revelation that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

One by One by Ruth Ware - Psychological Thriller


When the cofounder of Snoop, a trendy London-based tech startup, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other. But as soon as one shareholder upends the agenda by pushing a lucrative but contentious buyout offer, tensions simmer and loyalties are tested. However, the storm brewing inside the chalet is no match for the one outside, and a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. Even worse, one Snooper hadn’t made it back from the slopes when the avalanche hit. As each hour passes without any sign of rescue, panic mounts, the chalet grows colder, and the group dwindles further…one by one.

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica - Psychological Thriller


Sadie and Will Foust have only just moved their family from bustling Chicago to small-town Maine when their neighbor, Morgan Baines, is found dead in her home. The murder rocks their tiny coastal island, but no one is more shaken than Sadie. But it’s not just Morgan’s death that has Sadie on edge. And as the eyes of suspicion turn toward the new family in town, Sadie is drawn deeper into the mystery of what really happened that dark and deadly night. But Sadie must be careful, for the more she discovers about Mrs. Baines, the more she begins to realize just how much she has to lose if the truth ever comes to light.

The Paris Hours by Alex George - Historical Fiction

Camille was the maid of Marcel Proust, and she has a secret: when she was asked to burn her employer’s notebooks, she saved one for herself. Now she is desperate to find it before her betrayal is revealed. Souren, an Armenian refugee, performs puppet shows for children that are nothing like the fairy tales they expect. Lovesick artist Guillaume is running from a debt he cannot repay --- but when Gertrude Stein walks into his studio, he wonders if this is the day everything could change. And Jean-Paul is a journalist who tells other people’s stories, because his own is too painful to tell. When the quartet’s paths finally cross in THE PARIS HOURS, which is told over the course of a single day in 1927, each discovers if they will find what they are looking for.

The Queen's Fortune by Allison Pataki - Historical Fiction


As the French Revolution ravages the country, Desiree Clary is faced with the life-altering truth that the world she has known and loved is gone, and it’s fallen on her to save her family from the guillotine. A chance encounter with Napoleon Bonaparte, the ambitious and charismatic young military prodigy, provides her answer. When her beloved sister Julie marries his brother Joseph, Desiree and Napoleon’s futures become irrevocably linked. Quickly entering into their own passionate, dizzying courtship that leads to a secret engagement, they vow to meet in the capital once his career has been secured. But her newly laid plans with Napoleon turn to sudden heartbreak, thanks to the rising star of Parisian society, Josephine de Beauharnais. Once again, Desiree’s life is turned on its head.

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin - Psychological Thriller


Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found, and two local men --- employees at the resort --- are arrested. But the evidence is slim, and the men are soon released. Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth --- not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister?

The Second Home by Christina Clancy - Fiction

After a disastrous summer spent at her family summer home on Cape Cod, 17-year-old Ann Gordon was left with a secret that changed her life forever, and created a rift between her sister, Poppy, and their adopted brother, Michael. Now, 15 years later, her parents have died, leaving Ann and Poppy to decide the fate of the Wellfleet home that's been in the Gordon family for generations. For Ann, the once-beloved house is tainted with bad memories. Poppy loves the old saltbox, but after years spent chasing waves around the world, she isn't sure she knows how to stay in one place. Just when the sisters decide to sell, Michael re-enters their lives with a legitimate claim to the house. But more than that, he wants to set the record straight about that long-ago summer.

This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir by Jacqueline Winspear - Memoir


After 16 novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her story tackles the difficult, poignant and fascinating family accounts of her paternal grandfather’s shellshock; her mother’s evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father’s torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents’ years living with Romany Gypsies; and Winspear’s own childhood picking hops and fruit on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception.

Tiny Imperfections by Alli Frank and Asha Youmans - Romantic Comedy


At 39, Josie Bordelon's modeling career as the "it" black beauty of the '90s is far behind her. Now director of admissions at San Francisco's most sought-after private school, she's chic, single and determined to keep her 17-year-old daughter, Etta, from making the same mistakes she did. But Etta has plans of her own --- and their beloved matriarch, Aunt Viv, has Etta's back. If only Josie could manage Etta's future as well as she manages the shenanigans of the over-anxious, over-eager parents at school --- or her best friend's attempts to coax Josie out of her sex sabbatical and back onto the dating scene. As admissions season heats up, Josie discovers that when it comes to matters of the heart --- and the office --- the biggest surprises lie closest to home.

Two Truths and a Lie by Meg Mitchell Moore - Fiction


Truth: Sherri Griffin and her daughter, Katie, have recently moved to the idyllic beach town of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Rebecca Coleman, former leader of the Newburyport Mom Squad, has made a surprising effort to include these newcomers in typically closed-group activities. Rebecca’s teenage daughter, Alexa, has even been spotted babysitting Katie. Truth: Alexa has time on her hands because of a recent falling-out with her longtime best friends for reasons no one knows --- but everyone suspects have to do with Alexa’s highly popular and increasingly successful YouTube channel. Lie: Rebecca Coleman doesn’t have a new man in her life. Alexa is not seeing anyone new herself and is planning on shutting down her YouTube channel in advance of attending college in the fall. Sherri Griffin’s real name is Sherri Griffin, and a bad divorce is all she’s running from.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett - Fiction


The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

What's Left of Me Is Yours by Stephanie Scott - Fiction


In Japan, a covert industry has grown up around the "wakaresaseya" (literally "breaker-upper"), a person hired by one spouse to seduce the other in order to gain the advantage in divorce proceedings. When Satō hires Kaitarō, a wakaresaseya agent, to have an affair with his wife, Rina, he assumes it will be an easy case. But Satō has never truly understood Rina or her desires, and Kaitarō's job is to do exactly that --- until he does it too well. While Rina remains ignorant of the circumstances that brought them together, she and Kaitarō fall in a desperate, singular love, setting in motion a series of violent acts that will forever haunt her daughter's life.