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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.

Sharon Virts, author of Veil of Doubt

Emily Lloyd, a young widow in Reconstruction-era Virginia, is accused of poisoning her three-year-old daughter, Maud. Her husband and three other children all died of mysterious illnesses, so when Maud succumbs to an unexplained malady, the town suspects foul play. Soon Mrs. Lloyd is charged not only with poisoning the child but also with murdering her children, her husband and her aunt. Enter Powell Harrison, a soft-spoken, brilliant attorney who recently returned to his Virginia hometown to help his brother manage their late father’s practice. As details about the widow’s erratic behavior and her reclusive neighbors emerge, Harrison begins to suspect that an even more sinister truth might lurk beneath the family’s horrible fate and finds himself irresistibly drawn to the case.

Week of October 9, 2023

Paperback releases for the week of October 9th include James Patterson's TRIPLE CROSS, a heart-stopping adventure that finds Detective Alex Cross hunting down a serial killer who targets entire families --- and who will be coming for the Crosses next; LIBERATION DAY, George Saunders' first collection of short stories since 2013's TENTH OF DECEMBER, which explores ideas of power, ethics and justice as it cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans; Veronica Roth's POSTER GIRL, a dystopian novel set in a surveillance state that revolves around a woman’s desperate search for a missing girl...and the dark family secrets she uncovers along the way; AGATHA CHRISTIE: An Elusive Woman, a fascinating account of the life of Agatha Christie from celebrated literary and cultural historian Lucy Worsley; and the paperback original VEIL OF DOUBT by Sharon Virts, an exhaustively researched mystery/thriller that delves into the darkness of the South during Reconstruction, exposing intrigue, deception and death.

Veil of Doubt by Sharon Virts

October 2023

VEIL OF DOUBT, Sharon Virts’ second novel, is a historical mystery set in 1872. In it, Maud, the three-year-old daughter of Emily Lloyd, has died after a short illness, from which she seemed to be rebounding. This would be tragic enough if the other three children in the family and her husband had not died previously under mysterious circumstances. Emily is accused of poisoning Maud and quickly is charged with murder. Powell Harrison and his brother, Matthew, take on what appears to be an unwinnable case. Powell has experienced a personal loss recently and watches Emily, projecting some of how he feels onto her. But he is convinced that something is not ringing right. She does not seem capable of murder, yet the child is dead, as are the other family members.

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