Features

End-of-the-Year Contest 2024

Congratulations to the winners of our 2024 End-of-the-Year contest! One reader received all 40 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2024, while 10 others won four of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2024'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 40 picks.

Summer Reading 2024

All summer long, we at Bookreporter.com have been sharing some great summer book picks with our Summer Reading Feature. While our series of 24-hour contests have ended, we encourage you to take a look at our featured titles for some sizzling summer reading ideas.

» Click here to see the winners of this year's Summer Reading contests.

Best Books for Dad 2024

Father’s Day is a time to celebrate the men in our lives who have raised and loved us. Why not show him your appreciation by inspiring him with a great book? We have seven titles that are perfect gift-giving suggestions for Dad, keeping him busy through the rest of the year.

Congratulations to the five winners of our 19th Annual Father’s Day Contest! Each winner received all seven books in this year’s feature.

Linwood Barclay, author of I Will Ruin You

English teacher Richard Boyle certainly never thought he would find himself talking down a former student intent on harming others. But when Mark LeDrew shows up at Richard’s school with a bomb strapped to his chest, Richard immediately jumps into action. Thanks to some quick thinking, he averts a major tragedy and is hailed as a hero. However, Richard’s brief moment in the spotlight puts him in the sights of a deranged blackmailer with a score to settle. The situation rapidly spirals out of control, drawing Richard into a fraught web of salacious accusations and deadly secrets. As he tries to uncover the truth, he discovers that there’s something deeply wrong in the town --- something that ties together Mark, the blackmailer and a gang of ruthless drug dealers, and Richard has landed smack in the middle of it. What price will he pay for one good deed?

I Will Ruin You by Linwood Barclay

May 2024

I am a longtime fan of Linwood Barclay’s books, and I think I have read them all. I especially love the characters he delivers, all of whom are well drawn and relatable. Then he puts them in circumstances that upend their lives. Often I think, What would *I* do? And yes, I am happy that these are his characters’ problems, not mine.

In I WILL RUIN YOU, we start with a sadly familiar situation. A teacher is confronted by a former student armed with dynamite who is ready to blow up the school building and himself. Just as Richard has talked Mark into walking away, fate intervenes, and the young man trips. Bang! That is on page 11.

Week of May 5, 2025

Paperback releases for the week of May 5th include THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese, a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith and medicine that follows three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret; Lucy Foley's THE MIDNIGHT FEAST, a deliciously twisty locked-room mystery set at a luxe coastal retreat; I WILL RUIN YOU, an intriguing psychological thriller from Linwood Barclay, in which a teacher’s act of heroism inadvertently makes him the target of a dangerous blackmailer; Ann Hood's THE STOLEN CHILD, a moving, page-turning novel about an unlikely duo venturing through France and Italy to solve the mystery of a child’s fate; and THE YEAR OF LIVING CONSTITUTIONALLY, which chronicles A.J. Jacobs' hilarious adventures in attempting to follow the original meaning of the Constitution, as he searches for answers to one of the most pressing issues of our time: How should we interpret America’s foundational document?

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