Bookreporter.com's 22nd Annual Summer Reading Contests and Feature
Summer is here! At Bookreporter.com, this means it's time for us to share some great summer book picks with our Summer Reading Contests and Feature.
We are hosting a series of 24-hour contests for these titles on select days through mid-August, so you will have to check the site each day to see the featured prize book and enter to win.
We also are sending a special newsletter to announce the day's title, which you can sign up for here.
Our next prize book will be SILENT RETREAT by Sally Quinn. This sophisticated, sexy and soulful love story explores the boundary between flesh and spirit, restraint and ecstasy, and asks what we’re willing to sacrifice in the name of passion. The contest will be up at noon ET on the day of its paperback release, Tuesday, July 28th.
» Click here to read all the contest details and learn more about our featured titles.
Bookreporter.com Bets On: THE SHAMPOO EFFECT by Jenny Jackson
I loved Jenny Jackson's debut, PINEAPPLE STREET, so I was excited to read her new novel, THE SHAMPOO EFFECT. This time the setting is seaside Massachusetts in a town called Greenhead, which is inspired by Ipswich, where Jenny grew up. Caroline is there for a writing fellowship and plans to get a long work of fiction done. Her mother is a bestselling thriller author, and Caroline has worked at a publishing house. But now she wants to be on the other side of it, as an author in her own right.
On the ferry ride over, Caroline encounters a young man, Van Whittaker, who she later learns has lived in Greenhead his entire life. Their whole “meet-cute” scene leads to another casual meeting and then some dates. Van has a close-knit group of friends who also are lifers in town. Through him, she comes to know them and is treated like an outsider right from the very start.
» Click here to read more of Carol's Bets On commentary.
» Click here to read our review.
» Click here to watch Carol's “Bookreporter Talks To” interview with Jenny Jackson.
» Click here to listen to a podcast of the interview.
Bookreporter.com Bets On: WHEN YOU LOVED ME by Beatriz Williams
I love the Winthrop Island books by Beatriz Williams. With WHEN YOU LOVED ME, she shares a multilayered story that combines historical fiction, mystery, romance and family drama. This series has allowed Beatriz to build a rich, interconnected world where characters evolve across multiple books.
Here we meet Lucy Cooper, whose father, Bud, has died recently. He had lived his whole life on Winthrop Island. For years, he sought to find a legendary pirate treasure, which was rumored to have been buried somewhere on the island more than a century ago. In doing so, he had mortgaged the house and his savings. So Lucy has come home with her precocious young daughter, Elise, to settle his estate, and she finds a huge pile of debt.
» Click here to read more of Carol's Bets On commentary.
» Click here to read our review.
» Click here to watch Carol's “Bookreporter Talks To” interview with Beatriz Williams.
» Click here to listen to a podcast of the interview.
Bookreporter.com's Word of Mouth Contest: Tell Us What You've Read --- and You Can Win Two Books!
Let us know by Friday, July 24th at noon ET what books you’ve read, and you’ll have a chance to win THE HALF LIFE by Rachel Beanland and THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING by Lisa Scottoline, both of which will be Bookreporter.com Bets On selections, in our Word of Mouth contest.
Set on a remote Italian island, THE HALF LIFE is about a navy wife’s reckoning with power, love and the price of staying silent in the Atomic Age. In THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, a woman risks her life to help her best friend find justice for a tragic crime --- and realizes she has more power than she ever knew.
» Click here to enter the contest.
As part of our mission to expand The Book Report Network, we have been shooting video interviews with authors and posting them on our YouTube channel. We also have been making them available as podcasts. Carol loves interviewing authors, so this feels like a natural.
SINGLE GIRLS by John Searles is a work of dramatic fiction set in the 1960s and an upcoming Bets On pick. It focuses on Helen Gurley Brown and the team of women she assembled who transformed Cosmopolitan into one of the best-selling magazines of all time. John worked at Cosmopolitan and shares his encounters with Helen through the years. The novel is deeply informed by real events, Helen's memoirs, published biographies, and his personal knowledge of the editors who worked there. John had always wanted to write about Helen and had told her so during their friendship, but he had been constrained by publishing expectations to stay within his established genre: suspense/thrillers. The audiobook is narrated by his friend, Amy Ryan, who starred in the film adaptation of his earlier book, STRANGE BUT TRUE. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.
Jenny Jackson's latest novel, THE SHAMPOO EFFECT, was announced as July’s “Read with Jenna” Book Club pick on the day of this interview. Set in a seaside Massachusetts town inspired by Ipswich, where Jenny grew up, the book explores themes of friendship, romantic entanglement, generational differences, imposter syndrome, and coming of age in one's 30s. Carol notes the novel's layered, unfolding mystery quality, with readers constantly wondering about character connections and motivations. Jenny discusses how the book captures shifting attitudes toward sexuality and parenting across generations. And she also shares the origins of the title. Carol selected THE SHAMPOO EFFECT as a Bets On title, just as she did Jenny's debut novel, PINEAPPLE STREET. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.
Carol had the pleasure of talking to Beatriz Williams about her latest novel, WHEN YOU LOVED ME, which is a Bets On selection. Set on fictional Winthrop Island, this multilayered story combines historical fiction, mystery, romance and family drama. The Winthrop Island series has allowed Beatriz to build a rich, interconnected world where characters evolve across multiple books. She talks about the deliberate choices behind the novel's various narrative perspectives, as well as the multicast recording for the audiobook. She also shares personal background on her football experience at Stanford, which directly inspired the character of Ben Ressler, an NFL player at the center of the story. And towards the end of the interview, Beatriz reveals what’s next for her. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.
» Click here for a complete list of our "Bookreporter Talks To" videos and podcasts, along with upcoming interviews.
Emma, a struggling American artist in Paris, meets Stella Swanson, the widow of one of the most notorious art dealers in the business. She becomes both a player and a pawn in a family battle to protect their empire and conceal its crimes. In the late 1800s, young widow Jo van Gogh inherits hundreds of paintings from her brother-in-law, Vincent, that the art world deems worthless. Determined to prove their genius, she becomes consumed by Vincent’s legacy. As her devotion deepens, a vanished painting and a thwarted love affair leave her unsure who she can trust and how much of herself she’s willing to lose in the process. The lives of these two women converge as Emma uncovers the Swanson family’s darkest secrets and agrees to mastermind a daring heist inside the Musée d’Orsay.
For more than three decades, Paul Skalnik roamed the Gulf Coast lying about who he was. He passed himself off as a fighter pilot, a high-rolling oilman, a criminal defense attorney, an undercover agent, and a terminal cancer patient. In these guises, he married nine women --- some at the same time. When Skalnik got caught, he would run a different con. Locked up with other men awaiting trial, he claimed they confessed their crimes to him. In 1985, Jim Dailey, a down-on-his-luck Vietnam veteran, was implicated in the murder of a 14-year-old girl and landed in the Pinellas County Jail with Skalnik. No forensic evidence or motive linked Dailey to the killing, but Skalnik’s account of his "confession" helped put Dailey on death row. More than three decades later, another man took responsibility for the killing, but Skalnik refused to recant his testimony.
Lou Campanelli runs a rehab center. When one of his patients, a homeless veteran, is charged with first-degree murder, he needs his old friend, defense lawyer Andy Carpenter, to help. The man whom Jason Maddox is accused of stabbing to death is none other than billionaire Paul Vincent, an eccentric businessman and inventor. Bickert dedicated a great portion of his life to philanthropy, with a soft spot for dog-related causes. This led him to befriend Jason, a physicist and war hero, whose life fell apart to the point where he ended up on the streets with his dog, just trying to survive. But why would Jason possibly have wanted to kill him? Once again, Andy is enmeshed in a puzzling, twisty case. But in order to reunite a man and his dog, Andy will have to untangle it all.
For the first time in print comes a collection of five short stories in Linda Castillo’s Edgar Award-winning Kate Burkholder series: “The Pact,” “Disappeared,” “Blood Moon,” “Hallowed Ground” and “Dark Storm Rising.” In “Dark Path,” a brand-new story, an Amish couple disappears while en route to town. They recently had been threatened by their granddaughter’s troubled boyfriend --- and heavy weather is moving in. Kate rushes toward their remote farm, but a dog on the road causes her to crash into a ravine, where she discovers a shattered buggy. Together, she and her new canine friend must find the couple before it's too late.
Will Miles is trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. But when she stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer 40 years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she has found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will’s fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she's never known? Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, and their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives her sidelong access to a world she’s only ever imagined. But when a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything.
When Nicola Fischer’s father is arrested for the murder of five women --- including her best friend --- the entire world watches it unfold on “To Catch a Killer,” the hit true-crime TV show hosted by Greer Woods. Overnight, Nicola becomes a pariah. And to make matters worse, Greer --- once a budding friend and fellow child of a serial killer --- hasn’t returned a single call since the show aired. Then comes an unexpected invitation to the Death Row Club, a secret retreat for the adult children of serial killers, founded by none other than Greer herself. Desperate for answers and human connection, Nicola agrees to go. But when a mysterious girl arrives, claiming her father is a killer too, the club’s fragile peace is shattered, unraveling the buried secrets at its core. By morning, the girl has vanished. By afternoon, one of the club members is dead.
It's late summer 1984, and Babs Dionne’s hometown of Waterville, Maine, is on the verge of collapse. A strike at the paper mill has dragged on for a year, pitting neighbor against neighbor, leaving everyone broke and exhausted. As head of the union local, Babs has presided over Little Canada’s decline. When her best friend, Rita, returns home after five years away, she is shocked by the state of things. And as the strike comes to a head, Rita notices something else: the men may be broken, but the women are furious. They need Babs to be the fearless woman who emerged from the woods 15 years ago, drenched in blood. They need Babs to face what she already knows: that the only way to fix things is to assume control. Completely. Mercilessly.
Meet Peter Key, a self-proclaimed “laziest private investigator in Texas” (it’s harder than it looks), an unapologetic bisexual, a dedicated stoner, and the surprised recipient of a windfall inheritance from an uncle he barely knew. Peter’s life was a mess before, but now --- as the owner of a dilapidated house in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Austin --- he has a mountain of debt to deal with and pressure to sell from every side. But Peter doesn’t like to be pushed around. And when he discovers a bag full of cash, he starts to suspect that his uncle’s death wasn’t an accident. He soon finds himself pulled into a lethal game where not everybody plays by the rules. Fortunately, Peter never has been good at following rules.
Malti Patel is absolutely fine. Concussed and bruised, maybe, but fine. Certainly fine enough not to need her daughter's soon-to-be ex-husband, Nathan Whitlock, playing nurse in her home while she recuperates. But that's exactly the quandary in which she finds herself. Her doctor insists on in-home supervision for seven days. With her daughter, Kavya, abroad at grad school in India, Nathan proves too much of a do-gooder to let Malti rehabilitate alone. Malti and Nathan want nothing to do with one another. But over the course of the week, they learn that they are the two people who know Kavya best --- and the ones who have hurt her so deeply that she has left them both.