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End-of-the-Year Contest 2022

Congratulations to the winners of our 2022 End-of-the-Year Contest! One Grand Prize winner received all 40 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2022, while eight others won a selection of five of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2022's Bets On books.

Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake

Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage, and themselves. Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

February 2022

BLACK CAKE by Charmaine Wilkerson is a brilliant and moving debut written in a completely compelling style. It opens in California where Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves her two children, Byron and Benny, with a very nontraditional inheritance. She has left them two things --- a traditional Caribbean black cake, one made with a family recipe, and an eight-hour voice recording that they are to listen to together with her lawyer present. They are not to share the cake until they have listened to the whole story. As the recording is played, they learn that their mother’s life is not what they have long believed --- and many family secrets are revealed. Her narrated stories will take them from California to the Caribbean and London.

Week of November 28, 2022

Paperback releases for the week of November 28th include BLACK CAKE by Charmaine Wilkerson, a moving debut novel in which two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother’s death and her hidden past --- a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake; Stuart Woods' A SAFE HOUSE, an adrenaline-charged thriller that finds Stone Barrington taking on a vengeful rival as he tries to hide and protect those closest to him; APPARENTLY THERE WERE COMPLAINTS, a laugh-out-loud, juicy and touching memoir from Emmy Award–winning actress Sharon Gless, who dishes about her five decades in Hollywood, where she took on some of the most groundbreaking roles of her time; and the paperback original THE PERSONAL ASSISTANT by Kimberly Belle, a deeply addictive thriller that explores the dark side of the digital world when a mommy-blogger’s assistant goes missing.

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