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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.

Janet Skeslien Charles, author of The Paris Library

Paris, 1939: Young and ambitious Odile Souchet has it all: her handsome police officer beau and a dream job at the American Library in Paris. When the Nazis march into Paris, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal. Montana, 1983: Lily is a lonely teenager looking for adventure in small-town Montana. Her interest is piqued by her solitary, elderly neighbor. As Lily uncovers more about her neighbor’s mysterious past, she finds that they share a love of language, the same longings and the same intense jealousy, never suspecting that a dark secret from the past connects them.

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles

February 2021

THE PARIS LIBRARY by Janet Skeslien Charles is such a delight. It spans 60 years and brings readers from the lights of Paris to a small town in Montana. In 1939, Odile Souchet is a librarian at the American Library in Paris, whose patrons hail from many countries. It’s a dream job for her as she delights in sharing books with readers --- and the joy of working with her colleagues. Then the Nazis invade the city. And her twin brother is taken prisoner by the Germans as he fights on foreign soil. Life changes quickly with new rules coming down every day. At one point, it is dictated that Jewish people cannot receive library materials anymore. The librarians take this as a challenge and begin ferreting out this information on the sly, which brings danger at every checkpoint.

Week of February 28, 2022

Paperback releases for the week of February 28th include THE BEAUTY OF LIVING TWICE, Sharon Stone's intimate and candid memoir that chronicles her efforts to rebuild her life after a massive stroke cost her not only her health, but also her career, family, fortune and global fame; THE PARIS LIBRARY by Janet Skeslien Charles, an unforgettable story of romance, friendship, family and the power of literature to bring us together, inspired by the real-life heroic librarians at the American Library in Paris during World War II; THE GOOD SISTER, a knock-out of a novel from Sally Hepworth about the lies that bind two sisters; WHO IS MAUD DIXON? by Alexandra Andrews, a taut, twisty and character-driven psychological thriller about a famous novelist and a small-town striver locked in a struggle for fortune and fame; and Lauren Willig's BAND OF SISTERS, a sweeping novel based on a true story about a group of young women from Smith College who risk their lives in France at the height of World War I.