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End-of-the-Year Contest 2014

Congratulations to the winners of our 2014 End-of-the-Year Contest! One Grand Prize winner received all 32 of Carol Fitzgerald's Bookreporter.com Bets On picks from 2014, while 32 others won a copy of one of these titles. You can see all the winners below, along with 2014's Bets On selections.

Jeff Hobbs, author of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League

When author Jeff Hobbs arrived at Yale University, he became fast friends with the man who would be his college roommate for four years, Robert Peace. Robert’s life was rough from the beginning in the crime-ridden streets of Newark in the 1980s. But Robert was a brilliant student, and it was supposed to get easier when he was accepted to Yale. But it didn’t get easier. Robert carried with him the difficult dual nature of his existence, “fronting” in Yale and at home.

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by Jeff Hobbs

October 2014

Back in the spring, I read Jeff Hobbs’s first work of nonfiction, THE SHORT AND TRAGIC LIFE OF ROBERT PEACE: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League, and I have not stopped talking about it since. It’s a book I cannot get out of my head. To me, it’s not just the story of Robert Peace, but also a commentary on the racial divide in this country, as well as a background history on the downfall of the inner city.

As the book opens and we are introduced to Rob’s world, Jeff sets the stage with a history of Newark that is informative and articulates why the city, like many American cities, has deteriorated. This setup paves the way for Rob’s story to unfold.

Week of July 27, 2015

Releases for the week of July 27th include THE SHORT AND TRAGIC LIFE OF ROBERT PEACE by Jeff Hobbs, a heartfelt and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets --- and of one’s own nature --- when he returns home; THE LONG WAY HOME, the 10th installment in Louise Penny's mystery series starring Armand Gamache, now the former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec; and NO SAFE HOUSE, the follow-up to Linwood Barclay's NO TIME FOR GOODBYE, in which a family’s troubled past is about to return in more ways than one --- and this time, they may not be able to escape.

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