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End-of-the-Year Contest 2024

Congratulations to the winners of our 2024 End-of-the-Year contest! One reader received all 40 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2024, while 10 others won four of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2024'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 40 picks.

Dervla McTiernan, author of What Happened to Nina?

Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Until they leave for a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home. His explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn’t add up. Nina’s parents push the police for answers, and Simon’s parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fueled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina’s social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive "fans." Nina’s family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters --- finding their daughter.

What Happened to Nina? by Dervla McTiernan

April 2024

I love reading true crime books, and I have been known to go down the rabbit hole on many a Netflix true crime series. (Oddly, I do not gravitate to true crime podcasts.) So it probably is not surprising that crime fiction in this vein will call my name. WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA? by Dervla McTiernan drew me in from the description.

Nina and her boyfriend, Simon, head off to his family’s 400-acre estate in Vermont for spring break. Now, mind you, this property is located in the same state as the palatial home of Simon’s family. Yes, we are talking that kind of family money. Nina and Simon spend the day climbing, which they both enjoy. But something happens on one of the climbs that worries Nina.

Week of February 24, 2025

Paperback releases for the week of February 24th include LONG ISLAND, a spectacularly moving novel featuring Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of BROOKLYN, Colm Tóibín’s most popular work in 20 years; AFTER ANNIE by Anna Quindlen, whose trademark wisdom on family, friendship and the ties that bind us are at the center of her novel, which is about the power of love to transcend loss and triumph over adversity; GRIEF IS FOR PEOPLE, a disarmingly witty and poignant memoir that explores multiple kinds of loss following the death of Sloane Crosley’s closest friend; David Grann's THE WAGER, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth; and WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA? by Dervla McTiernan, an emotional novel of suspense about two families pitted against each other --- one seeking justice in the disappearance of their daughter, the other desperate to clear their son’s name.

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