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January 12, 2021

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we know people will be talking about this winter. Read more about it, and enter our Winter Reading Contest by Wednesday, January 13th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME by Julia Claiborne Johnson, which is now available and is this month's Barnes & Noble Book Club pick. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

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Tommy Lasorda

"Pressure" is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure.

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Tommy Lasorda

Special Preview: Bookreporter.com's Winter Reading 2021

This Bookreporter.com SPECIAL PREVIEW Newsletter brings you a sneak peek at the titles that are included in our Winter Reading feature.

Each title below will be featured in a contest where you will have a 24-hour window of opportunity to enter for your chance to win a copy of the book being featured that day. You will need to act quickly! Learn more about the feature here.

We encourage you to scroll down and click on each image to read more about that book on our site.

If you have friends who you think may be interested in these 24-hour contests, please forward this newsletter to them so they can sign up for it.

Our first feature and contest kicks off tomorrow, Tuesday, January 12th at noon ET. Best of luck to you, and Happy Winter Reading!

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Mary J. Blige

There's so many things that life is, and no matter how many breakthroughs, trials will exist and we're going to get through it. Just be strong.

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Mary J. Blige

Dr. Karl Menninger

Set up as an ideal the facing of reality as honestly and as cheerfully as possible.

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Dr. Karl Menninger

P. J. Plauger

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared.

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P. J. Plauger

January 8, 2021

It’s nice to be back after a very needed and much-enjoyed break; it was lovely to not have a schedule for a few weeks. That said, I was thinking of you all as I read and watched lots of programs on streaming services.

I also learned something very interesting: butter on the west coast is packaged differently than butter on the east coast. It’s still a 4-oz stick, but on the east coast it’s long and skinny, while on the west coast it's shorter and fatter. I bought butter at Trader Joe’s, which is headquartered on the west coast. I got home and started baking and was confused looking at it. Greg walked into the kitchen and said, “Oh, you have west coast butter.” My son, the traveler, once again jumps in with a random fact. I think that I baked one batch of cookies with twice as much butter as a result, since I thought it was just a half stick. But if I did, no one seemed to notice.

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Jane Smiley, author of Perestroika in Paris

Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon, she finds the door of her stall open and wanders all the way to the City of Light. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, and they keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly 100-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather and Christmas near, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself?

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Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck

An unambitious 22-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother. A chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, New York City’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the 36th floor. After enduring a “hell week” of training, Darren, the only Black person in the company, reimagines himself as “Buck,” a ruthless salesman unrecognizable to his friends and family. But when things turn tragic at home and Buck feels he’s hit rock bottom, he begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force, setting off a chain of events that forever changes the game.

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Anna North, author of Outlawed

The day of her wedding, 17-year-old Ada's life looks good. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide if she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.

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