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End-of-the-Year Contest 2023

Congratulations to the winners of our 2023 End-of-the-Year Contest! One reader received all 44 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2023, while 11 others won four of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2023's Bets On selections.

If you would like to know more about these books, be sure to check out this video and podcast where Carol talks about each of her 44 picks.

Stephanie Land, author of Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education

When Stephanie Land set out to write her memoir, MAID, she never could have imagined what was to come. Handpicked by President Barack Obama as one of the best books of 2019, it was called “an eye-opening journey into the lives of the working poor.” Later it was adapted into the hit Netflix series “Maid.” MAID was a story about a housecleaner, but it also was a story about a woman with a dream. In CLASS, Land takes us with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career. Facing barriers at every turn --- including a byzantine loan system, not having enough money for food, navigating the judgments of professors and fellow students who didn’t understand the demands of attending college while under the poverty line --- Land finds a way to survive once again.

Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education by Stephanie Land

December 2023

Only one memoir is on my Bets On list this year: CLASS by Stephanie Land. I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephanie twice in 2018 before her New York Times bestseller MAID came out in early 2019. That was before Zoom and video were readily available, so those interviews do not exist. I loved that the book enjoyed instant success, and it was fun to see it made into a hugely popular Netflix series.

Week of September 9, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of September 9th include CLASS, Stephanie Land's gripping follow-up memoir to her New York Times bestseller, MAID, where she takes readers with her as she finishes college and pursues her writing career; David Baldacci's edge-of-your-seat thriller, THE EDGE, which marks the return of the 6:20 Man, Travis Devine, who is dropped by his handlers into a small coastal town in Maine to solve the murder of a CIA agent who knew America’s dirtiest secrets; THE MUSEUM OF FAILURES, a powerful story from Thrity Umrigar about family secrets, a mother's power and the importance of forgiveness; SCATTERSHOT, the evocative, clear-eyed and revealing memoir of Bernie Taupin, the lyrical master and long-time collaborator of Elton John; and THE LIST by Yomi Adegoke, a sensational, page-turning debut novel in which a high-profile female journalist’s world is upended when her fiancé’s name turns up in a viral social media post.