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When Your Life Flashes Before Your Eyes, Where Would You Stop?

No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to relive the moments that meant most.

A FORTUNE OF SAND is a Gripping Prohibition-Era Novel from Ruta Sepetys

The daughter of a powerful tycoon escapes to a glamorous artists’ retreat --- where dark secrets and dangerous temptations await.

Lori Foster's Second Firefly Summer Novel Follows Last Year's THE GUEST COTTAGE

Second chances, surprising revelations, and sweet, unexpected love go hand-in-hand in the tiny lakeside town at the heart of this charming series.

THE LAND AND ITS PEOPLE is David Sedaris' Highly Anticipated New Essay Collection

Our reviewer Bronwyn Miller says that Sedaris “observes life post-COVID, both here and abroad, with his signature wit and wry humor.”

KATE! is the Definitive Portrait of Kate Middleton, the Beloved Princess of Wales

In his latest work, master biographer Christopher Andersen traces Kate's stunning rise from working-class roots to queen-in-waiting.

We're Giving Away a Different Summer Reading Title on Select Days Through August

Our next two contests will be up at noon ET on June 2nd and 4th. The prize books will be THE WINDSOR AFFAIR and ROAD TRIP.

Latest Features and Contests


Women's Fiction Author Spotlight: THE LAKE HOUSE: A Firefly Summer Novel, by Lori Foster

When Pixie Nolan first came to Bramble, Kentucky, the abandoned and desperate young single mother found hope, healing and a fresh start. With the loving support of her best friends, she is now happily raising her toddler son in a cozy cottage. She never expected to make an electrifying connection with a summer renter, a retired Navy SEAL with his own complicated past.

Brogan Rafferty arrives with an adorable baby girl in tow and settles into the lake house next door. But it’s no coincidence that Brogan has found Pixie, and his startling revelations make it clear she’s the key to healing old regrets and building new dreams. And when a hostile stranger turns up with shocking accusations against Bramble’s new hometown hero, Pixie must put her own fears and heartbreak away for good.

» Click here to read more in our Women's Fiction Author Spotlight.
» Click here to read our review.


Bookreporter.com's Word of Mouth Contest: Tell Us What You've Read --- and You Can Win Two Books!

Let us know by Friday, June 12th at noon ET what books you’ve read, and you’ll have a chance to win A PAIR OF ACES by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray and WHISTLER by Ann Patchett in our Word of Mouth contest.

In A PAIR OF ACES, two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law --- a prosecutor and a madam --- team up to bring down notorious Mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York. WHISTLER is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, as well as the choices that were made for them.

» Click here to enter the contest.


Bookreporter.com's 22nd Annual Summer Reading Contests and Feature

Summer will be here before you know it! 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 two contests will be up at noon ET on Tuesday, June 2nd and Thursday, June 4th. The prize books will be THE WINDSOR AFFAIR by Melanie Benjamin and ROAD TRIP by Mary Kay Andrews.

» Click here to read all the contest details and learn more about our featured titles.

Bookreporter Talks To...

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.

THE CALAMITY CLUB is Kathryn Stockett's first book since THE HELP, which was published in 2009, and is a Bets On selection. The story is set in Mississippi during the Great Depression and follows a group of scrappy, strong-willed women who work together to conquer challenges they face, knowing that there are no men to save them. The novel also addresses the societal expectations and hypocrisies of the 1920s and ’30s. Kathryn balances the book’s serious historical themes with humor. Initially she tried to write a cautious, bland tale that was different from THE HELP to avoid similar criticism, but she realized after a number of years that it lacked heart. Kathryn drew a lot of inspiration from her own mother, to whom THE CALAMITY CLUB is dedicated. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.

Susan Patterson teamed up with her husband, James Patterson, to write THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER BOOK CLUB. Set in Lake Como, Italy, the story revolves around four mothers and their five daughters, exploring mother-daughter relationships through a book club. Three of the mothers met at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is Susan’s alma mater. The book evolved naturally from the success and themes of their previous collaboration, THINGS I WISH I TOLD MY MOTHER. Susan and James decided to structure chapters by character point of view to make it easier for readers to follow multiple characters. Lake Como was selected because it represents one of the most beautiful places, with a perfect landscape, mountains, water and food. Watch the video or listen to the podcast.

Carol had a wonderful conversation with Jane Harper about her latest novel, LAST ONE OUT. This Bets On pick is set in Carralon Ridge, a dying rural Australian mining town that has become a shadow of its former self due to an industrial mining operation. It follows Ro Crowley as she returns annually to investigate her son Sam's disappearance on the eve of his 21st birthday five years earlier. This is Jane's first book with a female main character after five previous novels featuring male protagonists. She explains why Ro was the perfect character to tell this story. She also talks about the three houses near where Sam disappeared, which are almost characters themselves. Jane took a three-year break between books to avoid burnout and spend time with her young children. She returned refreshed to write this novel. 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.

Latest Reviews

The Divorce by Freida McFadden - Psychological Thriller

Naomi was living the quintessential love story. Boy meets girl. They fall in love, get married, buy a dream house and start a family. Then --- he kicks her out, hires the city's best divorce lawyers, drains their accounts, and takes up with a twenty-something. It's a brutal end to the story. Naomi should accept defeat: move into a dingy apartment, get back into the workforce, and piece together the shattered remains of her life. Except, why should she? Instead, Naomi fixates on her husband's new girlfriend. What begins as cynical curiosity soon twists into obsession --- and then into something far darker. As Naomi uncovers secrets she never imagined, she realizes her own life may be in danger.

Thirty years into their relationship, college professor Jesse del Ruth witnesses his husband, Norman, get out of bed late one night, walk into their backyard, step into a strange beam of light, and…disappear. How could Norman desert him? Where did he go? Will he ever return? As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? When Norman’s sister, Lally, lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure.

It's a hot, miserable summer in the small town of Sandy Lake. Detective Ben Packard has finally settled into life here --- just in time for a tornado to sweep through the county, causing irreparable damage. Hiding among the debris is someone with a secret. When a mother who made enemies defending her bullied son is killed, the suspect list stretches across the entire town. For Packard, the case hits uncomfortably close to home. The deeper he digs, the more Sandy Lake hums with a tension that refuses to break. As thick smoke from nearby wildfires chokes the air, someone from Packard's past shows up on his doorstep without warning, forcing him to confront the reality of navigating life as a gay man in a small town bent on tradition, no matter the cost. 

Modern-day homicide detective Mallory Mitchell has grown accustomed to life in Victorian Scotland after traveling 150 years into the past into the body of a housemaid. Even though she works as an assistant to forensic-science pioneer Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie, she considers them true friends. Late one night, Gray and Mallory are summoned urgently to the home of Lady Adler, a patron of Gray’s undertaking business. They arrive in the midst of a seance with a ghost demanding Gray's presence. The ghost is Lady Adler's former maid, who had gone missing but now requests that Gray investigate her murder. Unsure if there's been a murder or not, Gray and Mallory are once again drawn into a mystery much more puzzling --- and more dangerous --- than it first seems.

Tom Coyne, the New York Times bestselling author of A COURSE CALLED AMERICA and numerous other contemporary classics of golf literature, has spent his career traveling the world and playing legendary courses from St. Andrews to Shinnecock. One day, at the urging of a course superintendent who is hoping to save his local nine-hole gem from shuttering just shy of its 100th anniversary, Coyne pays a visit to Sullivan County Golf & Country Club in upstate New York. When he arrives, the course is buried under ice and snow, and what he can see of the clubhouse is falling apart. By the time he leaves, all he can see is his next adventure: discovering how owning a course is vastly different from playing one.

All great music is a threat. What left is there to say about The Rolling Stones? A hell of a lot, it turns out. Bob Spitz has brought his indefatigable energy and five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock 'n’ roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of popular music’s greatest stories. There are myriad revisions to the conventional narrative that underscore just how in control of that narrative the band has been up to now. But, as with the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, Spitz’s greatest gift is for the big picture. He knows where the magic is, and why it is. He is as clear-eyed a connoisseur of the show business, the spectacle and the collateral damage of this whirlwind as anyone alive. But the ultimate goal is to connect with a creative force whose power shows no signs of fading, over 60 years on. 

James Holland’s deep knowledge of WWII gives him unique insight and appreciation for its historic aftermath. THE VISIONARIES chronicles the prelude to the Marshall Plan --- from Franklin Roosevelt’s historic “four freedoms” speech and “Good Neighbor Policy” towards Central and South America to the landmark Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944, which established the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, pillars of world stability. But it was Truman who pushed for the Marshall Plan, which in 1948 kickstarted via economic assistance the fastest period of growth in European history. However, Holland warns that we in the West have become complacent, less willing to safeguard the freedoms that extended prosperity has allowed.

Dead Weight written by Hildur Knútsdóttir, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal - Psychological Thriller/Horror

Unnur was living a normal, if lonely, life until a black cat showed up at her door. When she tracks down the cat’s wayward owner, she finds a young woman just as lost and in need of help. Like a gust of cold air in a Reykjavík night, Ásta and her pet slip into Unnur’s life. It’s unexpected, but welcome. Unnur likes the company, and she begins to rely on Ásta in turn. But like a black cat, trouble has been tailing her new friend, and Unnur is the only one there for Ásta when things take a violent turn. The two women quickly learn: nothing tests a friendship like blood on your hands.

Glyph by Ali Smith - Metaphysical Fiction

It all starts when Petra and her little sister, Patch, hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost. Is it imaginary? Is it real? Then it all starts again 30 years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom. What to do? She phones her sister. In a chiarascuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, GLYPH asks if we’re attending to the history that’s made us and to the history we’re making.

You Can Tell Me by Melinda Leigh - Mystery/Thriller

On the three-year anniversary of true crime writer Olivia Cruz’s horrific kidnapping, she’s scheduled to walk her podcaster friend, Zoe March, through the crime scene, but Zoe fails to show. Zoe’s husband, who claims she never came home the night before, has reported her missing. But marital conflicts make the police suspect she has left him. Olivia thinks otherwise. Retracing her friend’s last steps, she finds Zoe’s phone and a text with one chilling word: Run. It soon becomes apparent that Zoe has been keeping secrets, and with her true crime podcast, there’s no telling what she has unearthed. To find her, Olivia must dig into her friend’s past. Did Zoe vanish to escape a killer, and is Olivia walking into a deadly trap?