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End-of-the-Year Contest 2025

Congratulations to the winners of our 2025 End-of-the-Year contest! One reader received all 42 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2025, while seven others won six of these titles.

You can see all the winners below, along with 2025'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 42 picks.

Chris Pavone, author of The Doorman

Chicky Diaz is everyone’s favorite doorman at the Bohemia, the most famous apartment house in the world. But gathered in the Bohemia’s bowels, the building’s almost entirely Black and Hispanic working-class staff is taking in the news that just a few miles uptown, a Black man has been killed by the police, leading to a demonstration, a counterdemonstration, and a long night of violence across the tinderbox city. As Chicky changes into his uniform for tonight’s shift, he finds himself breaking a cardinal rule of the job. Tonight, he’ll be carrying a gun, bought only hours earlier, but before he knew of the pandemonium taking over the city. Chicky knows that there’s more going on in his patch of sidewalk in front of the Bohemia than anyone is aware of.

The Doorman by Chris Pavone

June 2025

With THE DOORMAN, Chris Pavone has written both a taut thriller and a brilliant social commentary on present-day New York, similar to what we saw in THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES.

Set over just one day, with generous backstory to give deeper meaning to his characters, Chris has portrayed different layers of New Yorkers. The first, as noted in the title, is the doorman, who opens doors, collects packages, and is acknowledged (or not) according to how you see him in his role. The others include the occupants of one of the biggest apartments in the building on one of the higher floors --- one that actually combined two spaces --- and the people who live in a more modest space on a lower floor.

Week of April 27, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of April 27th include THE DOORMAN, a pulse-pounding novel of class, privilege, sex and murder from Chris Pavone; MEMORIAL DAYS, Geraldine Brooks' heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace; Julie Clark's THE GHOSTWRITER, a dazzling thriller in which a ghostwriter is hired to write the last book for her estranged father, a famous horror novelist --- and finds herself investigating the brutal murders of his two siblings in the summer of 1975; THE NAMES, an extraordinary novel from Florence Knapp that asks: Can a name change the course of a life?; and SALTWATER by Katy Hays, a slow-burn psychological drama about an opulent family that unravels when a decades-old crime resurfaces.

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