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End-of-the-Year Contest 2021

Congratulations to the winners of our 2021 End-of-the-Year Contest! One Grand Prize winner received all 44 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2021, while 11 others won a selection of four of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2021's Bets On books.

Shari Lapena, author of Not a Happy Family

Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there, and Fred and Sheila Merton certainly are rich. But even all their money can't protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mertons are brutally murdered after a fraught Easter dinner with their three adult kids. They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their vindictive father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of the siblings is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did someone snap after that dreadful evening? Or did another person appear later that night with the worst of intentions? That must be what happened. After all, if one of the family were capable of something as gruesome as this, you'd know. Wouldn't you?

Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena

August 2021

NOT A HAPPY FAMILY is the latest from perennial Bets On author Shari Lapena. The book opens with a family at Easter dinner. Fred and Sheila Merton and their adult children  --- Catherine, Dan and Jenna --- have gathered at the sizable home (yes, it could be called a mansion) where the siblings grew up. The setting is beautifully pulled together; it looks like an idyllic family meal being served by their longtime housekeeper, Irena.

Week of July 4, 2022

Paperback releases for the week of July 4th include LIGHTNING STRIKE, a powerful prequel to William Kent Krueger's acclaimed Cork O’Connor series, which is about fathers and sons, long-simmering conflicts in a small Minnesota town, and the events that echo through youth and shape our lives forever; SILVERVIEW, the last completed novel by John le Carré, who turns his focus to the world that occupied his writing for the past 60 years --- the secret world itself; COUNT THE WAYS by Joyce Maynard, a mesmerizing story of a family, from the hopeful early days of young marriage to parenthood, divorce and the costly aftermath that ripples through all their lives; and Hayley Mills' fascinating memoir, FOREVER YOUNG, in which the iconic actress shares personal memories from her storied childhood, growing up in a famous acting family and becoming a Disney child star, trying to grow up in a world that wanted her to stay forever young.