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End-of-the-Year Contest 2022

Congratulations to the winners of our 2022 End-of-the-Year Contest! One Grand Prize winner received all 40 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2022, while eight others won a selection of five of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2022's Bets On books.

Week of December 5, 2022

Paperback releases for the week of December 5th include Brendan Slocumb's THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY, a beautifully rendered and complex debut novel in which a shocking theft sends a Black classical musician on a desperate quest to recover his great-great-grandfather’s heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world; THE DICKENS BOY, a vibrant and engaging novel about the adventures of Charles Dickens’ son in the Australian Outback during the 1860s --- from the award-winning author of modern classics such as SCHINDLER'S LIST and NAPOLEON'S LAST ISLAND, Thomas Keneally; and the paperback original SO LONG, CHESTER WHEELER by Catherine Ryan Hyde, an uplifting novel about looking deeper into the heart and soul to form bonds with the last people we’d expect --- only to discover that they’re the ones who need it most.

Brendan Slocumb, author of The Violin Conspiracy

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream --- he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. When he discovers that his great-great-grandfather’s beat-up old fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, all his dreams suddenly seem within reach. Together, Ray and his violin take the world by storm. But on the eve of the renowned and cutthroat Tchaikovsky Competition, the violin is stolen, a ransom note for five million dollars left in its place. Ray will have to piece together the clues to recover his treasured Strad before it’s too late.

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

March 2022

I absolutely loved THE VIOLIN CONSPIRACY by Brendan Slocumb. I have never been a fan of classical music, so reading a book about a concert artist is not something that typically would grab my attention. But I was riveted.

Ray McMillian loves playing the violin, but he’s using a school rental instrument, which is not the way one is going to get ahead in the music world. When visiting his grandmother, she suggests that he look around the attic in her house where her grandfather’s fiddle is. He treks up there, and after days of searching, he finds a green alligator case with a violin inside. Ray practices for hours on it, with his mom complaining about “that noise” and lending no support. As he studies music in school, a teacher takes him under her wing and guides him as she sees real talent in him.

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