July 22, 2025
This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Wednesday, July 23rd at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of THAT LAST CAROLINA SUMMER by Karen White, which is now available. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!
July 19, 2025
I love when I share a book with someone and tell them that I think they will enjoy it --- and the next time I see them, they hand it back to me with a big smile and huge raves. That is what happened when I shared THE DOORMAN by Chris Pavone, a Bookreporter.com Bets On pick, with our book group leader, Kathleen. She enjoyed it and suggested that we read it for our August discussion. I am looking forward to this meeting!
Editorial Content for The Compound
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Whether you’re staunchly against reality television and its vapid stars and plotlines, or you can’t stop tuning into the latest group of hotties paired in unusual and startling ways, you can’t deny the pull of the genre and how it highlights and amplifies our worst qualities. In THE COMPOUND by debut novelist Aisling Rawle, readers are invited into perhaps the most dystopian reality show yet: a remote desert compound inhabited by 19 of America’s sexiest men and women, and the increasingly depraved acts they must perform to win. Read More
Teaser
Lily --- a bored, beautiful twentysomething --- wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside 19 other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave. Why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur.
Promo
Lily --- a bored, beautiful twentysomething --- wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside 19 other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home. Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave. Why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur.
About the Book
Nothing to lose. Everything to gain. Winner takes all.
Lily --- a bored, beautiful twentysomething --- wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside 19 other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances and a front door.
Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave. Why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams. But what will she have to do to win?
Addictive and prescient, THE COMPOUND is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends.
Audiobook available, read by Lucy Boynton
Editorial Content for Do Not Disturb
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
In Freida McFadden’s dedication at the beginning of DO NOT DISTURB, she thanks her parents, “who let me watch way too many scary movies when I was a child.” As such, you will see touches of Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Robert Bloch’s novel, PSYCHO, among others. Read More
Teaser
Quinn Alexander has committed an unthinkable crime. To avoid spending her life in prison, Quinn makes a run for it. She leaves behind her home, her job and her family. She grabs her passport and heads for the northern border before the police can discover what she's done. But when an unexpected snowstorm forces her off the road, Quinn must take refuge at the broken-down, isolated Baxter Motel. The handsome and kindly owner, Nick Baxter, is only too happy to offer her a cheap room for the night. Unfortunately, the Baxter Motel isn't the quiet, safe haven it seemed to be. The motel has a dark and disturbing past. And in the dilapidated house across the way, the silhouette of Nick's ailing wife is always at the window. Always watching.
Promo
Quinn Alexander has committed an unthinkable crime. To avoid spending her life in prison, Quinn makes a run for it. She leaves behind her home, her job and her family. She grabs her passport and heads for the northern border before the police can discover what she's done. But when an unexpected snowstorm forces her off the road, Quinn must take refuge at the broken-down, isolated Baxter Motel. The handsome and kindly owner, Nick Baxter, is only too happy to offer her a cheap room for the night. Unfortunately, the Baxter Motel isn't the quiet, safe haven it seemed to be. The motel has a dark and disturbing past. And in the dilapidated house across the way, the silhouette of Nick's ailing wife is always at the window. Always watching.
About the Book
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden comes a story of sinister secrets.
Quinn Alexander has committed an unthinkable crime.
To avoid spending her life in prison, Quinn makes a run for it. She leaves behind her home, her job and her family. She grabs her passport and heads for the northern border before the police can discover what she's done.
But when an unexpected snowstorm forces her off the road, Quinn must take refuge at the broken-down, isolated Baxter Motel. The handsome and kindly owner, Nick Baxter, is only too happy to offer her a cheap room for the night.
Unfortunately, the Baxter Motel isn't the quiet, safe haven it seemed to be. The motel has a dark and disturbing past. And in the dilapidated house across the way, the silhouette of Nick's ailing wife is always at the window. Always watching.
In the morning, Quinn must leave the motel. She'll pack up her belongings and get back on the road to freedom.
Audiobook available, read by Holly Adams and Daniel Thomas May
Editorial Content for The Möbius Book
Book
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
Losing faith seems to be the most salient topic in our post-COVID world. The suffering of the pandemic and the isolation brought on by lockdown changed the lives of every human being on the planet. And the loss of faith came in so many different shapes and sizes --- religious faith, faith in people, and faith in the systems we thought could protect us and care for us. Read More
Teaser
Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey’s appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith’s absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, grief-driven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself.
Promo
Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey’s appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith’s absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, grief-driven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself.
About the Book
A genre-bending story about breaking --- both of the heart and form itself --- from the author of BIOGRAPHY OF X.
Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey’s appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God.
Through relationships, travel, reading and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith’s absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, grief-driven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself.
A hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending, THE MÖBIUS BOOK troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith’s inherent danger.
Audiobook available, read by Gabra Zackman












