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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.

Rachel Beanland, author of The House Is on Fire

Richmond, Virginia, 1811. It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital. At the city’s only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that’s done looking for enlightenment at the front of a church. On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than 600 holiday revelers. When it goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, four theatergoers make a series of split-second decisions that will affect not only their own lives but those of countless others. And in the days following the fire, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.

The House Is on Fire by Rachel Beanland

April 2023

It’s true joy when an author whose debut novel was a Bets On pick (FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS FOREVER) follows up with a book that I similarly want to rave about. Rachel Beanland’s THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE is a well-written, immersive work of historical fiction. Years ago, when Rachel moved to Richmond, her realtor showed her around town citing the location of a theater fire that killed a number of the city’s residents in 1811. This nugget stayed with her, and when the pandemic limited her travel, she moved on to do deep research into the fire, its origins and the aftermath.

Week of April 1, 2024

Paperback releases for the week of April 1st include HOMECOMING, a sweeping novel from Kate Morton that begins with a shocking crime, the effects of which echo across continents and generations; Martha Hall Kelly's THE GOLDEN DOVES, a profound tale of bravery in which two female spies risk everything to hunt down an infamous Nazi; THINGS I WISH I TOLD MY MOTHER by Susan Patterson and Susan DiLallo, a moving novel about an artist and her perfectionist mother who unpack a lifetime of secrets while on vacation in Paris; Rachel Beanland's THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE, a masterful work of historical fiction about an incendiary tragedy that shocked a young nation and tore apart a community in a single night --- told from the perspectives of four people whose actions during the inferno changed the course of history; and the paperback original JUST FOR THE SUMMER by Abby Jimenez, a sharp and scintillating summer novel that will make readers laugh out loud and cry happy tears.