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End-of-the-Year Contest 2020

Congratulations to the winners of our 2020 End-of-the-Year Contest! One Grand Prize winner received all 42 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2020, while 14 others won a selection of three of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2020's Bets On books.

Winter Reading 2020

At Bookreporter.com, we kicked off 2020 with our sixth annual Winter Reading Contests and Feature. We hosted a series of 24-hour contests spotlighting a book releasing this winter (or a recently published title that we would like to get into your hands now) and gave five lucky readers a chance to win it.

Even though our contests have wrapped up, we encourage you to take a look at this year's featured titles, as these are the books you'll want to read during the winter months --- and into the warmer ones!

Allison Pataki, author of The Queen's Fortune

As the French Revolution ravages the country, Desiree Clary is faced with the life-altering truth that the world she has known and loved is gone, and it’s fallen on her to save her family from the guillotine. A chance encounter with Napoleon Bonaparte, the ambitious and charismatic young military prodigy, provides her answer. When her beloved sister Julie marries his brother Joseph, Desiree and Napoleon’s futures become irrevocably linked. Quickly entering into their own passionate, dizzying courtship that leads to a secret engagement, they vow to meet in the capital once his career has been secured. But her newly laid plans with Napoleon turn to sudden heartbreak, thanks to the rising star of Parisian society, Josephine de Beauharnais. Once again, Desiree’s life is turned on its head.

The Queen's Fortune by Allison Pataki

February 2020

I confess that I never thought I would love a book where the protagonist was the one-time lover of Napoleon, who went on to become the queen of Sweden. I never hearkened to this particular time period, perhaps due to too many quizzes and tests in high school and college that made history into a series of facts, and not a lot of fun. Well, those attitudes rapidly changed after reading THE QUEEN’S FORTUNE; I was equally impressed with Allison Pataki’s eye for detail as I was with her beautiful prose. She had me completely caught up in the story of Desiree Clary --- and the crazy world that surrounded Napoleon.

Week of February 15, 2021

Paperback releases for the week of February 15th include THE ORDER, the 20th installment in Daniel Silva's riveting thriller series featuring art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon; Emily St. John Mandel's THE GLASS HOTEL, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events --- the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea; ALL THE WAYS WE SAID GOODBYE by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White, a glorious historical adventure that moves from the dark days of two World Wars to the turbulent years of the 1960s, in which three women with bruised hearts find refuge at Paris’s legendary Ritz hotel; THE QUEEN’S FORTUNE, a sweeping novel from Allison Pataki about the extraordinary woman who captured Napoleon’s heart, created a dynasty and changed the course of history; and AMERICAN SHERLOCK, Kate Winkler Dawson's gripping historical true crime narrative that recounts the story of the birth of modern criminal investigation.