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Los Angeles Times Book Prizes 2021

The 42nd annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were awarded on April 22nd. The best books of 2021 were recognized in 12 categories, along with the winners of the Robert Kirsch and Innovator’s awards.

Bookreporter.com's Spring Preview 2022 Wrap-up

THANK YOU to all who subscribed to this Spring Preview newsletter and entered our 24-hour contests! We appreciate your enthusiasm and participation.

This Bookreporter.com Spring Preview Wrap-up newsletter brings you a look at all of the titles that were included in our Spring Preview feature. We shared five books with you in March and April, and we thank our publisher sponsors who made this possible.

April 26, 2022

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of April 25th and May 2nd that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our "What's Your Book Group Reading This Month?" contest on ReadingGroupGuides.com. Three book groups will win up to 12 copies of THE PAPER PALACE by Miranda Cowley Heller, which was a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick when it released in hardcover last July and is now available in paperback. The deadline for your entries is Wednesday, May 11th at noon ET.

Miranda Cowley Heller Event Art

Betsy Prioleau, author of Diamonds and Deadlines: A Tale of Greed, Deceit, and a Female Tycoon in New York City’s Gilded Age

For 20 years Miriam Leslie ran the country’s largest publishing company, Frank Leslie Publishing, which chronicled postbellum America in dozens of weeklies and monthlies. A pioneer in an all-male industry, she made a fortune and became a national celebrity and tastemaker in the process. But she also flouted feminine convention, took lovers, married four times, and harbored unsavory secrets that she concealed through a skein of lies and multiple personas. DIAMONDS AND DEADLINES reveals the unknown, sensational life of the brilliant and brazen “empress of journalism,” who dropped a bombshell at her death: She left her entire multimillion-dollar estate to women’s suffrage --- a never-equaled amount that guaranteed passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Delia Ephron, author of Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life: A Memoir

Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She’d lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry’s death, she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She channeled her grief by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates 54 years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and ’60s folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love. But four months later, she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia.

Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. It’s the early 1960s, and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans, the lonely, brilliant, Nobel Prize-nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with her mind. True chemistry results. But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later, Elizabeth finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show. Her unusual approach to cooking proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

James Rollins, author of Kingdom of Bones

A United Nations relief team in a small village in the Congo makes an alarming discovery. An unknown force is leveling the evolutionary playing field. Men, women and children have been reduced to a dull, catatonic state. The environment surrounding them has grown more cunning and predatory, evolving at an exponential pace. The insidious phenomenon is spreading from a cursed site in the jungle --- known to locals as the Kingdom of Bones --- and sweeping across Africa, threatening the rest of the world. What has made the biosphere run amok? Is it a natural event? Or, more terrifyingly, did someone engineer it? As Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force race to find answers, they quickly realize that they have become the prey.

David Baldacci, author of Dream Town: An Archer Novel

Aloysius Archer is in Los Angeles to ring in the New Year with an old friend, aspiring actress Liberty Callahan, when their evening is interrupted by an acquaintance of Callahan’s: Eleanor Lamb, a screenwriter in dire straits. After a series of increasingly chilling events, Eleanor fears that her life is in danger, and she wants to hire Archer to look into the matter. Archer suspects that Eleanor knows more than she’s saying, but before he can officially take on her case, a dead body turns up inside of Eleanor’s home…and Eleanor herself disappears. With the help of Callahan and his partner, Willie Dash, Archer launches an investigation that will take him from mob-ridden Las Vegas to the glamorous world of Hollywood to the darkest corners of Los Angeles.

Editorial Content for Death of the Black Widow

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Ray Palen

James Patterson has worked with many authors over the years. One of my favorite collaborators of his is J. D. Barker. Their latest effort, DEATH OF THE BLACK WIDOW, blows the roof off of anything Patterson has done from a supernatural standpoint and features perhaps the most memorable villain to ever darken the pages of one of his novels. I must give a lot of the credit here to Barker, whose career started in the horror genre before venturing into dark serial killer stories and psychological thrillers. Read More

Teaser

On his first night with the Detroit PD, Officer Walter O’Brien is called to a murder scene. A terrified 20-year-old has bludgeoned her kidnapper with skill that shocks even O’Brien’s veteran partner. The young woman is also a brilliant escape artist. Her bold flight from police custody makes the case impossible to solve --- and, for Walter, even more impossible to forget. By the time Walter is promoted to detective, his fascination with the missing, gray-eyed woman is approaching obsession. And when Walter discovers that he’s not alone in his search, one truth is certain. This deadly string of secrets didn’t begin in his home city --- but he’s going to make sure it ends there.

Promo

On his first night with the Detroit PD, Officer Walter O’Brien is called to a murder scene. A terrified 20-year-old has bludgeoned her kidnapper with skill that shocks even O’Brien’s veteran partner. The young woman is also a brilliant escape artist. Her bold flight from police custody makes the case impossible to solve --- and, for Walter, even more impossible to forget. By the time Walter is promoted to detective, his fascination with the missing, gray-eyed woman is approaching obsession. And when Walter discovers that he’s not alone in his search, one truth is certain. This deadly string of secrets didn’t begin in his home city --- but he’s going to make sure it ends there.

About the Book

She destroys the men she loves --- and escapes every time. The most dangerous killer James Patterson has ever created is also his most seductive.

On his first night with the Detroit PD, Officer Walter O’Brien is called to a murder scene. A terrified 20-year-old has bludgeoned her kidnapper with skill that shocks even O’Brien’s veteran partner. The young woman is also a brilliant escape artist. Her bold flight from police custody makes the case impossible to solve --- and, for Walter, even more impossible to forget.

By the time Walter is promoted to detective, his fascination with the missing, gray-eyed woman is approaching obsession. And when Walter discovers that he’s not alone in his search, one truth is certain. This deadly string of secrets didn’t begin in his home city --- but he’s going to make sure it ends there.

Audiobook available, read by Ryan Vincent Anderson