Donna's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 21 Apr 2025 08:39:52 -0700 60 Donna's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Lacuna 6433752 The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.]]> 508 Barbara Kingsolver 0060852577 Donna 0 currently-reading 3.80 2009 The Lacuna
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Donna
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict between Conscience and Success]]> 51688
For decades now, from the pulpit and through his writing, Harold Kushner has been helping people navigate the rough patches of life: loss, guilt, crises of faith. Now, in this compelling new work, he ad-dresses an equally important issue: our craving for significance, the need to know that our lives and our choices mean something.
We sometimes do great things, and sometimes terrible things, to reassure ourselves that we matter to the world. We sometimes confuse fame, power, and wealth with true achievement. But finally we need to think of ourselves as good people, and we are troubled when we compromise our integrity in the pursuit of what we think of as success.

Harold Kushner tells us that the path to a truly successful and significant life is through friendship, through family, and through acts of generosity and self-sacrifice. He describes how, in affecting the life
of even one person in a positive way, we make a difference in the world, and prove that we do in fact matter.
Persuasive and sympathetic, anecdotal and commonsensical, Living a Life That Matters inspires and uplifts.]]> 176 Harold S. Kushner 0375410635 Donna 4 4.07 2001 Living a Life That Matters: Resolving the Conflict between Conscience and Success
author: Harold S. Kushner
name: Donna
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
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]]> Show Me Where It Hurts 222245727 Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things

‘Exceptional . . . simply an exquisite novel�
Anne Griffin, author of When All Is Said

How do you survive the unsurvivable?

Rachel lives with her husband Tom and their two children: it's the ordinary family life she always thought she'd have. All of that changes in an instant - when Tom runs the family car off the road, seeking to end his own life, and take his wife and children with him. Rachel is left to pore over the wreckage to try and understand what happened - to find a way to go on living afterwards.

What emerges is a snapshot of what it's like to live alongside someone who is suffering, how you keep yourself afloat when the person you love is drowning, and how you survive irreparable loss.

Impossible to turn away from, Show Me Where It Hurts is a compelling, heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming story of recovery and unexpected hope.]]> Claire Gleeson 1399734725 Donna 0 to-read 4.47 Show Me Where It Hurts
author: Claire Gleeson
name: Donna
average rating: 4.47
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]]> The Homemade God 219520756 Family is everything, even when it falls apart.

After the sudden death of a renowned artist, his four adult children travel to Italy to sort out his affairs with his much-younger wife, in this moving novel from the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

World-famous artist Vic Kemp has relied on his four children ever since their mother died when they were young. Netta, the oldest, is a litigator who often serves as co-parent to her siblings; Susan, a housewife who cooks and cleans for both her husband and her father; Goose's own thwarted artistic ambitions have left him resigned to a job in Vic's studio; and Iris, the baby, drops everything the moment her father calls. 

When Vic summons the siblings with the promise of big news, they hope their father is about to tell them he has finished the mysterious masterpiece he claims will be the capstone to his career. Instead, he announces he’s getting remarried. Bella-Mae, his wife to be, is apparently beautiful, a fellow artist—and twenty-seven to his seventy-six years. When his children dare to express concern, Vic decamps with Bella-Mae to his summer home in Italy. Six weeks later, he is found dead. There is no sign of his will, or his promised final painting. 

Netta, Susan, Goose, and Iris gather at the house on Lake Orta to piece together what happened and prepare to bring their father’s body home. They spend the summer in a waiting game, living under the same roof as Bella-Mae, and forced to confront Vic's legacy and the buried wounds they have incurred as his children. So who is Bella-Mae? Is she the woman their father believed her to be? Or is she the force that will destroy the family for good? How long can their old bonds hold? 

With sparkling wit, compassion and tender insight, The Homemade God explores memory, identity, grief, healing, and the bonds of siblinghood—what happens when they splinter, and what it might take to find a new way forward.]]> 336 Rachel Joyce 0593448294 Donna 0 to-read 3.99 The Homemade God
author: Rachel Joyce
name: Donna
average rating: 3.99
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]]> Postcards 28000 The odyssey begins on a freezing Vermont hillside in 1944 and propels Blood across the American West for forty years. Denied love and unable to settle, he lives a hundred different lives: mining gold, growing beans, hunting fossils, trapping, prospecting for uranium and ranching. His only contact with his past is through a series of postcards he sends home � not realising that in his absence disaster has befallen his family, and their deep-rooted connection with the land has been severed with devastating consequences�

‘Postcards� was Annie Proulx’s first novel, which received huge acclaim and marked the launch of an outstanding literary career. Her works include short story collections ‘Bad Dirt�, ‘Close Range� (featuring ‘Brokeback Mountain�) and novels such as ‘The Shipping News� and ‘Accordion Crimes�.]]> 352 Annie Proulx 1841155012 Donna 2 3.78 1992 Postcards
author: Annie Proulx
name: Donna
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1992
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/20
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]]> The Clock Winder 112323 312 Anne Tyler 0449911799 Donna 3 3.71 1972 The Clock Winder
author: Anne Tyler
name: Donna
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1972
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> Troubles (Empire Trilogy, #1) 256279
1919: After surviving the Great War, Major Brendan Archer makes his way to Ireland, hoping to discover whether he is indeed betrothed to Angela Spencer, whose Anglo-Irish family owns the once-aptly-named Majestic Hotel in Kilnalough. But his fiancée is strangely altered and her family's fortunes have suffered a spectacular decline. The hotel's hundreds of rooms are disintegrating on a grand scale; its few remaining guests thrive on rumors and games of whist; herds of cats have taken over the Imperial Bar and the upper stories; bamboo shoots threaten the foundations; and piglets frolic in the squash court. Meanwhile, the Major is captivated by the beautiful and bitter Sarah Devlin. As housekeeping disasters force him from room to room, outside the order of the British Empire also totters: there is unrest in the East, and in Ireland itself the mounting violence of "the troubles."

Troubles is a hilarious and heartbreaking work by a modern master of the historical novel.]]> 459 J.G. Farrell 1590170180 Donna 3 3.84 1970 Troubles (Empire Trilogy, #1)
author: J.G. Farrell
name: Donna
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1970
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> Love Marriage 59366233
As the wedding day draws near, misunderstandings, infidelities, and long-held secrets upend both Yasmin’s relationship and that of her parents, a “love marriage,� according to the family lore that Yasmin has believed all her life.

A gloriously acute observer of class, sexual mores, and the mysteries of the human heart, Monica Ali has written a riveting social comedy and a moving, revelatory story of two cultures, two families, and two people trying to understand one another.]]> 432 Monica Ali 1982181478 Donna 3 3.78 2022 Love Marriage
author: Monica Ali
name: Donna
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> The Heart in Winter 202985145 A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho. Briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunsmen are soon in hot pursuit of the lovers, and closing in fast . . .
The Heart in Winter is a savagely funny, achingly beautiful tale set in the Wild West]]> 242 Kevin Barry 1837261512 Donna 4 4.22 2024 The Heart in Winter
author: Kevin Barry
name: Donna
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> Brotherless Night 60324341 In this searing novel, a courageous young woman tries to protect her dream of becoming a doctor as civil war devastates Sri Lanka.

Jaffna, 1981. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, a vicious civil war tears through her home, and her dream spins off course as she sees her four beloved brothers and their friend K swept up in the mounting violence. Desperate to act, Sashi accepts K's invitation to work as a medic at the field hospital for the militant Tamil Tigers, who, following years of state discrimination and violence, are fighting for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But after the Tigers murder one of her teachers and Indian peacekeepers arrive only to commit further atrocities, Sashi begins to question where she stands. When one of her medical school professors, a Tamil feminist and dissident, invites her to join a secret project documenting human rights violations, she embarks on a dangerous path that will change her forever.

Set during the early years of Sri Lanka's three-decade civil war, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman's moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.]]> 348 V.V. Ganeshananthan 0812997158 Donna 4 4.45 2023 Brotherless Night
author: V.V. Ganeshananthan
name: Donna
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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]]> Sorrow and Bliss 49110165
Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.

By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.]]> 352 Meg Mason Donna 3 4.08 2020 Sorrow and Bliss
author: Meg Mason
name: Donna
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
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]]> The Nightingale 21853621 Der Weltbestseller � die Nr. 1 aus den USA.
Zwei Schwestern im von den Deutschen besetzten Während Vianne ums Überleben ihrer Familie kämpft, schließt sich die jüngere Isabelle der Résistance an und sucht die Freiheit auf dem Pfad der Nachtigall, einem geheimen Fluchtweg über die Pyrenäen. Doch wie weit darf man gehen, um zu überleben? Und wie kann man die schützen, die man liebt?
In diesem epischen, kraftvollen und zutiefst berührenden Roman erzählt Kristin Hannah die Geschichte zweier Frauen, die ihr Schicksal auf ganz eigene Weise meistern.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Donna 4 4.63 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Donna
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life]]> 27202127
This Naked Mind offers a new solution. Packed with surprising insight into the reasons we drink, it will open your eyes to the startling role of alcohol in our culture. Annie Grace brilliantly weaves psychological, neurological, cultural, social and industry factors with her extraordinarily candid journey resulting in a must read for anyone who drinks.

This book, without scare tactics, pain or rules, gives you freedom from alcohol. By addressing causes rather than symptoms it is a permanent solution rather than lifetime struggle. It removes the psychological dependence allowing you to easily drink less (or stop drinking). Annie’s clarity, humor and unique ability to blend original research with riveting storytelling ensures you will thoroughly enjoy the process.

In a world defined by ‘never enough� Annie takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of alcohol and specifically the connection between alcohol and pleasure. She dispels the cultural myth that alcohol is a vital part of life and demonstrates how regaining control over alcohol is not only essential to personal happiness and fulfillment but also to ending the heartache experienced by millions as a result of secondhand drinking.

Finally, with perfect clarity, this book opens the door to the life you have been waiting for.

Read this book. You’ll be glad you did.]]> 271 Annie Grace Donna 0 currently-reading 4.16 2015 This Naked Mind: Control Alcohol, Find Freedom, Discover Happiness & Change Your Life
author: Annie Grace
name: Donna
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell]]> 562710 The Case of Mary Bell. Over the years, however, she came to realize that if we are ever to understand the pressures which bring a child to commit serious crimes, only they, when adult, can tell us.

Twenty-seven years after her conviction, and her sentence of detention for life, after her mother's death, Mary Bell agreed to talk about her harrowing childhood, her two terrible acts nine weeks apart, her public trial, and her twelve years of detention - seven of them, beginning when she was sixteen, in a maximum security women's prison.

Nothing she said in the five months of intensive talks with Gitta Sereny was intended, or can be taken, as an excuse for her crimes: she herself rejects all mitigation. But the story of her life forces the reader to ponder society's responsibility for children at breaking point. It challenges our willingness to commit ourselves to the prevention of violent acts such as Mary committed. It is a clarion call to review our system of justice, and punishment, as it applies to the most needy amongst us - our children at risk.

Cries Unheard is a brilliant tour de force, meticulously piecing together the terribly damaged life of Mary Bell, who only as an adult, and loving parent herself, grew to realize the moral enormity of her crimes. But it is not an isolated tragedy. There are thousands of children in prison across Europe, and in America. And in Britain, where punitive justice for children is most formalized, recent cases such as the murder of James Bulger show the urgency for our attention, our compassion, and our action.]]> 416 Gitta Sereny 0805060685 Donna 4 3.90 1998 Cries Unheard: Why Children Kill: The Story of Mary Bell
author: Gitta Sereny
name: Donna
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
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]]> The Plot Against America 703
For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America - and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.]]> 391 Philip Roth 1400079497 Donna 3 3.79 2004 The Plot Against America
author: Philip Roth
name: Donna
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> The Long Song 7500150 313 Andrea Levy 0374192170 Donna 4 3.73 2010 The Long Song
author: Andrea Levy
name: Donna
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> The Good Doctor 111464 224 Damon Galgut 0802141692 Donna 3 3.67 2003 The Good Doctor
author: Damon Galgut
name: Donna
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
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]]> Dream Count 219521090 A publishing event ten years in the making�a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists�the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until � betrayed and brokenhearted � she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America � but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]> 416 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 059380273X Donna 0 to-read 3.93 2025 Dream Count
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Donna
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Three Days in June 213243949 A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers

]]> 165 Anne Tyler 0593803485 Donna 0 to-read 3.61 2025 Three Days in June
author: Anne Tyler
name: Donna
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Heatwave 55711633 A vivid, mesmerizing novel about a teenage boy on vacation who makes an irrevocable mistake and becomes trapped in a spiral of guilt and desire—in the tradition of Alice McDermott�s That Night and E. Lockhart�s We Were Liars.

Oscar is dead because I watched him die and did nothing.

Seventeen-year-old Leo is sitting in an empty playground at night, listening to the sound of partying and pop music filtering in from the beach, when he sees another, more popular boy strangle himself with the ropes of the swings. Then, in a panic, Leo drags the other to the beach and buries him.

Over the next 24 hours, Leo wanders around the campsite like a sleepwalker, haunted by guilt and fear, and distracted by his desire for a girl named Luce. Meanwhile, the teenage summer rituals continue all around him—the fighting and flirting, the smell of salt and sunscreen, the tinny announcements from the loudspeaker, and above all, the crushing, relentless heat...

A prizewinning sensation in France and now stunningly translated by Sam Taylor, Heatwave is Victor Jestin’s unforgettable debut—a searing portrait of adolescent desire and recklessness, and secrets too big to keep.

*Originally published in France under the title La Chaleur.]]> 112 Victor Jestin 1982143487 Donna 3 3.11 2019 Heatwave
author: Victor Jestin
name: Donna
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/18
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]]> Great Circle 54976986 An alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780525656975 can be found here.

Spanning Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles, Great Circle tells the unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost.

After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There—after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes—Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she drops out of school and finds an unexpected and dangerous patron in a wealthy bootlegger who provides a plane and subsidizes her lessons, an arrangement that will haunt her for the rest of her life, even as it allows her to fulfill her destiny: circumnavigating the globe by flying over the North and South Poles.

A century later, Hadley Baxter is cast to play Marian in a film that centers on Marian's disappearance in Antarctica. Vibrant, canny, disgusted with the claustrophobia of Hollywood, Hadley is eager to redefine herself after a romantic film franchise has imprisoned her in the grip of cult celebrity. Her immersion into the character of Marian unfolds, thrillingly, alongside Marian's own story, as the two women's fates—and their hunger for self-determination in vastly different geographies and times—collide. Epic and emotional, meticulously researched and gloriously told, Great Circle is a monumental work of art, and a tremendous leap forward for the prodigiously gifted Maggie Shipstead.]]> 608 Maggie Shipstead Donna 5 4.06 2021 Great Circle
author: Maggie Shipstead
name: Donna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)]]> 203956647 A brand new series. An iconic new detective duo. And a puzzling new murder to solve...

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job...

Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 059365322X.]]> 400 Richard Osman Donna 2 4.06 2024 We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Donna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
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]]> The Bee Sting 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Donna 3 3.92 2023 The Bee Sting
author: Paul Murray
name: Donna
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
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]]> Then She Was Gone 35297426 She was fifteen, her mother's golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.

NOW
It’s been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.

And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a café and sweeps Laurel off her feet.

Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.

Poppy is precocious and pretty - and meeting her completely takes Laurel's breath away.

Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.

What happened to Ellie? Where did she go?

Who still has secrets to hide?]]> 359 Lisa Jewell 1501154648 Donna 3 4.02 2017 Then She Was Gone
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Donna
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Hours (Black Death, #1)]]> 35477888
But Lady Anne of Develish has her own ideas. Educated by nuns, Anne is a rarity among women, being both literate and knowledgeable. With her brutal husband absent from the manor when news of this pestilence reaches her, she looks for more sensible ways to protect her people than daily confessions of sin. She decides to bring her serfs inside the safety of the moat that surrounds her manor house, then refuses entry to anyone else, even her husband.

Lady Anne makes an enemy of her daughter and her husband’s steward by doing so, but her resolve is strengthened by the support of her leading serfs...until food stocks run low. The nerves of all are tested by continued confinement and ignorance of what is happening in the world outside. The people of Develish are alive. But for how long? And what will they discover when the time comes for them to cross the moat again?

Compelling and suspenseful, The Last Hours is a riveting tale of human ingenuity and endurance set against the worst pandemic in history. In Lady Anne of Develish—leader, savior, heretic—Walters has created her most memorable heroine to date.]]> 547 Minette Walters 1760294985 Donna 3 3.85 2017 The Last Hours (Black Death, #1)
author: Minette Walters
name: Donna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Donna 4 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Donna
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/30
date added: 2024/11/27
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]]> Akin 43209291 A retired New York professor's life is thrown into chaos when he takes a young great-nephew to the French Riviera, in hopes of uncovering his own mother's wartime secrets in the next masterpiece from New York Times bestselling author Emma Donoghue.

Noah Selvaggio is a retired chemistry professor and widower living on the Upper West Side, but born in the South of France. He is days away from his first visit back to Nice since he was a child, bringing with him a handful of puzzling photos he's discovered from his mother's wartime years. But he receives a call from social services: Noah is the closest available relative of an eleven-year-old great-nephew he's never met, who urgently needs someone to look after him. Out of a feeling of obligation, Noah agrees to take Michael along on his trip.

Much has changed in this famously charming seaside mecca, still haunted by memories of the Nazi occupation. The unlikely duo, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, bicker about everything from steak frites to screen time. But Noah gradually comes to appreciate the boy's truculent wit, and Michael's ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family's past. Both come to grasp the risks people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew.

Written with all the tenderness and psychological intensity that made Room an international bestseller, Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy, born two generations apart, who unpick their painful story and start to write a new one together.]]> 352 Emma Donoghue Donna 3 3.63 2019 Akin
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Donna
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
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]]> All But My Life 163363 All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops—including the man who was to become her husband—in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey.

Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the Weissmanns were permitted to live for a while in the basement of their home, they were eventually separated and sent to German labor camps. Over the next few years Gerda experienced the slow, inexorable stripping away of "all but her life." By the end of the war she had lost her parents, brother, home, possessions, and community; even the dear friends she made in the labor camps, with whom she had shared so many hardships, were dead.

Despite her horrifying experiences, Klein conveys great strength of spirit and faith in humanity. In the darkness of the camps, Gerda and her young friends manage to create a community of friendship and love. Although stripped of the essence of life, they were able to survive the barbarity of their captors. Gerda's beautifully written story gives an invaluable message to everyone. It introduces them to last century's terrible history of devastation and prejudice, yet offers them hope that the effects of hatred can be overcome.]]> 261 Gerda Weissmann Klein Donna 3 4.31 1959 All But My Life
author: Gerda Weissmann Klein
name: Donna
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1959
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
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]]> In Memoriam 59948520 A haunting, virtuosic debut novel about two young men who fall in love during a time of war.

It's 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting.

Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle--an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood--without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. To Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next.

An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.]]> 382 Alice Winn 0593534565 Donna 4 4.51 2023 In Memoriam
author: Alice Winn
name: Donna
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
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]]> Rabbit Hole 55894304 was.

Or perhaps she just imagines she was.

Whatever the truth is, following a debilitating bout of PTSD, self-medication with drink and drugs, and a psychotic breakdown, Alice is now a long-term patient in an acute psychiatric ward.

When one of her fellow patients is murdered, Alice becomes convinced that she has identified the killer and that she can catch them. Ignored by the police, she begins her own investigation. But when her prime suspect becomes the second victim, Alice's life begins to unravel still further as she realizes that she cannot trust anyone, least of all herself.]]> 400 Mark Billingham Donna 2 3.36 2021 Rabbit Hole
author: Mark Billingham
name: Donna
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> How to Breathe Underwater 47975 How to Breathe Underwater illuminates this powerful territory with striking grace and intelligence.]]> 226 Julie Orringer 1400034361 Donna 3 3.95 2003 How to Breathe Underwater
author: Julie Orringer
name: Donna
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
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]]> So Much for That 6839917
From acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Lionel Shriver comes a searing, ruthlessly honest novel. Brimming with unexpected tenderness and dry humor, it presses the question: How much is one life worth?]]> 436 Lionel Shriver 0061458589 Donna 4 3.73 2010 So Much for That
author: Lionel Shriver
name: Donna
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
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]]> Platform Seven 42980139
What the man doesn't realize is that he has company. Lisa Evans knows what he has decided. She knows what he is about to do as she tries and fails to stop him walking to the platform edge.

Two deaths on Platform Seven. Two fatalities in eighteen months - surely they're connected?

No one is more desperate to understand what connects them than Lisa Evans herself. After all, she was the first of the two to die.]]> 448 Louise Doughty 0571321941 Donna 3 3.45 2019 Platform Seven
author: Louise Doughty
name: Donna
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> The Last Lecture 40611510
When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave, 'Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams', wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because time is all you have and you may find one day that you have less than you think). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humour, inspiration, and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.]]> 217 Randy Pausch Donna 2 4.30 2008 The Last Lecture
author: Randy Pausch
name: Donna
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
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]]> Epitaph 18739541
A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands...

That was America in 1881.

All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26th when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and thirty bullets later, three officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt.

Wyatt Earp was the last man standing, the only one unscathed. The lies began before the smoke cleared, but the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would soon become central to American beliefs about the Old West.

Epitaph tells Wyatt’s real story, unearthing the Homeric tragedy buried under 130 years of mythology, misrepresentation, and sheer indifference to fact. Epic and intimate, this novel gives voice to the real men and women whose lives were changed forever by those fatal 30 seconds in Tombstone. At its heart is the woman behind the myth: Josephine Sarah Marcus, who loved Wyatt Earp for forty-nine years and who carefully chipped away at the truth until she had crafted the heroic legend that would become the epitaph her husband deserved.]]> 597 Mary Doria Russell Donna 4 4.14 2015 Epitaph
author: Mary Doria Russell
name: Donna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
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]]> Beyond the Tracks 54508928
Germany is a terrifying place.

When people start disappearing in nightly raids, a young Jacob Kagan flees the country and ends up in the Dutch refugee camp of Westerbork. But he can only avoid the Nazis for so long. After the Netherlands fall to the German war machine, Westerbork is transformed into a transit camp with weekly trains bound for the Eastern concentration camps.

Faced with the terrors of the SS camp regime, Jacob now only has one goal � avoid a spot on the dreaded transport list at all costs. But how far is he willing to go to save himself, his parents and best friend?]]> 442 Michael Reit Donna 3 4.43 2020 Beyond the Tracks
author: Michael Reit
name: Donna
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/09/21
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]]> The Covenant of Water 180357146 From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 715 Abraham Verghese 0802162177 Donna 5 4.34 2023 The Covenant of Water
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Donna
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/17
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]]> Go as a River 63922274 A sweeping, heart-stopping epic of a young woman's journey to becoming, set against the harsh beauty of mid-century Colorado

On a cool autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash delivers late-season peaches from her family's farm set amid the wild beauty of Colorado. As she heads into her village, a disheveled stranger stops to ask her the way. How she chooses to answer will unknowingly alter the course of both their young lives.

So begins the mesmerizing story of split-second choices and courageous acts that propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength.

Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life forever.

Go as a River is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettable characters and a breathtaking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate.]]> 320 Shelley Read 1954118236 Donna 0 to-read 4.20 2023 Go as a River
author: Shelley Read
name: Donna
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/16
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]]> The Wren, the Wren 77265006 An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, full of verve and wit, twenty-two-year-old Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry—and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet� with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother.

The Wren, the Wren brings to life three generations of women who contend with inheritances—of abandonment and of sustaining love that is “more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.� In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.]]> 278 Anne Enright 1324005696 Donna 0 to-read 3.51 2023 The Wren, the Wren
author: Anne Enright
name: Donna
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/12
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]]> You Are Here 201465867
Michael is coming undone. Adrift after his wife's departure, he has begun taking himself on long, solitary walks across the English countryside. Becoming ever more reclusive, he’ll do anything to avoid his empty house.

Marnie, on the other hand, is stuck. Hiding alone in her London flat, she avoids old friends and any reminders of her rotten, selfish ex-husband. Curled up with a good book, she’s battling the long afternoons of a life that feels like it’s passing her by.

When a persistent mutual friend and some very unpredictable weather conspire to toss Michael and Marnie together on the most epic of ten-day hikes, neither of them can think of anything worse. Until, of course, they discover exactly what they’ve been looking for.

Michael and Marnie are on the precipice of a bright future . . . if they can survive the journey.]]> 368 David Nicholls 0063394057 Donna 3 3.97 2024 You Are Here
author: David Nicholls
name: Donna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/02
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]]> The Widow and Her Hero 1594704 272 Tom Keneally 0340825278 Donna 4 3.46 2007 The Widow and Her Hero
author: Tom Keneally
name: Donna
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
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]]> Other People Manage 59206093 'A quietly devastating novel about our failings and how we cope' Patrick Gale
It’s Minneapolis in the 1970s, and two women meet in the Women's Coffeehouse. Marge is a bus driver, and Peg is training to be a psychotherapist.
Over the next twenty years, they stay together, through the challenges any couple faces and some that no one expects. Then one day things change, and Marge has to work out what she’s left with � and if she still belongs to the family she's adopted as her own.
Other People Manage is a novel about hard-earned but everyday love. It's about family and it's about loss. It's the kind of novel that only someone who has lived enough of life could write - frequently funny, at times almost unbearably moving, but above all extraordinarily wise.]]> 199 Ellen Hawley 1800750978 Donna 4 3.72 2022 Other People Manage
author: Ellen Hawley
name: Donna
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/19
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]]> This Tender Land 25813942
After committing a terrible crime, Odie and Albert are forced to flee for their lives along with their best friend, Mose, a mute young man of Sioux heritage. Out of pity, they also take with them a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy. Together, they steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi in search for a place to call home.

Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphan vagabonds journey into the unknown, crossing paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an en­thralling, bighearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.]]> 450 William Kent Krueger 1476749299 Donna 4 4.35 2019 This Tender Land
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Donna
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Man in the Wooden Hat (Old Filth, #2)]]> 6570431 Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Old Filth was Eddie's story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.

They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s.

As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, the novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power. It will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and so thoroughly satisfying.]]> 233 Jane Gardam 1933372893 Donna 3 4.04 The Man in the Wooden Hat (Old Filth, #2)
author: Jane Gardam
name: Donna
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2020/09/29
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Facing the Tank 701983
There he finds that the chintzy perfection of the place masks a network of passionate secrets: one woman on the run from the cardinal who impregnated her, another haunted by her feral child, a young man breaking the news to his parents that he isn’t gay after all, a careworn son reluctantly consigning his mad mother to a home, a bishop with doubts, and a bishop’s mother with a serious cannabis cookie habit. Even as supernatural elements seem to conspire to wreck Evan’s latest undertaking, he finds himself surprised by love. The earthly paradise is revealed to be full of poisoned apples but one after another its inhabitants are offered a taste of sweet redemption.]]> 338 Patrick Gale 0006545459 Donna 3 3.62 1989 Facing the Tank
author: Patrick Gale
name: Donna
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/07/30
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]]> Zennor In Darkness 634689 9780140173567

In her prize-winning first novel, Zennor in Darkness, Helen Dunmore reimagines the plight of D.H. Lawrence and his German wife hiding out in Cornwall during the First World War. Spring, 1917, and war haunts the Cornish coastal village of Zennor: ships are being sunk by U-boats, strangers are treated with suspicion, and newspapers are full of spy stories. Into this turmoil come D. H Lawrence and his German wife, Frieda hoping to escape the war-fever that grips London. They befriend Clare Coyne, a young artist struggling to console her beloved cousin, John William, who is on leave from the trenches and suffering from shell-shock. Yet the dark tide of gossip and innuendo means that Zennor is neither a place of recovery nor of escape . . . 'Helen Dunmore mesmerizes you with her magical pen' Daily Mail 'A beautiful and inspired novel' John le Carré 'Secrets, unspoken words, lies that have the truth wrapped up in them somewhere make Dunmore's stories ripple with menace and suspense' Sunday Times Helen Dunmore has published eleven novels with Penguin: Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead; Your Blue-Eyed Boy; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby; House of Orphans; Counting the Stars and The Betrayal , which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. She is also a poet, children's novelist and short-story writer.]]> 315 Helen Dunmore Donna 4 3.77 1994 Zennor In Darkness
author: Helen Dunmore
name: Donna
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/21
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]]> The Humans 16130537
He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, and the wars they witness on the news, and is totally baffled by concepts such as love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this weird species than he has been led to believe. He drinks wine, reads Emily Dickinson, listens to Talking Heads, and begins to bond with the family he lives with, in disguise. In picking up the pieces of the professor's shattered personal life, the narrator sees hope and redemption in the humans' imperfections and begins to question the very mission that brought him there--a mission that involves not only thwarting human progress...but murder.]]> 285 Matt Haig 1476727910 Donna 3 4.05 2013 The Humans
author: Matt Haig
name: Donna
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> <![CDATA[A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali]]> 141473 All manner of Kigali residents pass their time by the pool of the Mille-Collines aid workers, Rwandan bourgeoisie, expatriates, UN peacekeepers, prostitutes. Keeping a watchful eye is Bernard Valcourt, a jaded foreign journalist, but his closest attention is devoted to Gentille, a hotel waitress with the slender, elegant build of a Tutsi. As they slip into an intense, improbable affair, the delicately balanced world around them–already devastated by AIDS–erupts in a Hutu-led genocide against the Tutsi people. Valcourt’s efforts to spirit Gentille to safety end in their separation. It will be months before he learns of his lover’s shocking fate.]]> 272 Gil Courtemanche 1400034345 Donna 4 3.94 2000 A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali
author: Gil Courtemanche
name: Donna
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2024/07/05
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]]> The Cat Sanctuary 1107279
Joanna, a Junoesque American photographer, shares a lovely, lonely retreat on Cornwall's Bodmin Moor with her novelist lover, Judith. On an assignment to an African principality, she feels compelled to meet up with Judith's estranged sister, Deborah, whose husband has just been murdered by a bomb meant for someone more important.

Impulsively, Joanna rescues Deborah from the respectable compassion of in-laws and brings her back to Cornwall to recuperate, unaware of the devils this will unleash in her womanly paradise.

As Judith struggles to unlock a new novel and Deborah struggles to keep locked-up the girlhood horrors neither of them has yet confronted, the three women are caught up in a battle that is no less bloody for being so domestic.

The Cat Sanctuary draws closely on the landscape of bleak moorland and rain-sodden valleys in which Patrick Gale was then living.]]> 272 Patrick Gale 0586090614 Donna 4 3.58 1990 The Cat Sanctuary
author: Patrick Gale
name: Donna
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2024/06/29
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]]> The Moon Is Down 12722
In The Moon is Down, a small, peaceable town comes face-to-face with evil imposed from the outside and betrayal from within the close-knit community. As he delves into the motivations and emotions of the enemy, Steinbeck uncovers profound and often unsettling truths both about war and human nature.]]> 144 John Steinbeck Donna 0 to-read 3.93 1942 The Moon Is Down
author: John Steinbeck
name: Donna
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/29
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]]> Notes on an Execution 57773248
Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. He hoped it wouldn’t end like this, not for him.

Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the homicide detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake.

Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.]]> 306 Danya Kukafka 0063052733 Donna 0 to-read 4.04 2022 Notes on an Execution
author: Danya Kukafka
name: Donna
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/20
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]]> Past Lying (Karen Pirie #7) 128618515
It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown, but that doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot � the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed � but when a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, but no one quite expects how many twists it will turn out to have. ]]> 452 Val McDermid 0802161499 Donna 2 4.01 2023 Past Lying (Karen Pirie #7)
author: Val McDermid
name: Donna
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2024/06/19
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]]> Weyward 127280850
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.]]> 392 Emilia Hart 1250842727 Donna 0 to-read 4.02 2023 Weyward
author: Emilia Hart
name: Donna
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Cheri 63885982 A masterpiece of fiction and memory, Cheri is a heart-breaking but glorious celebration of all the moments of beauty and pain that make an individual life, right up until its very last moments.

Cheri has been living with cancer for many years. Now she is dying. As she navigates the final weeks of her life, and takes charge of the manner of her death, she is flooded with childhood memories and returns to the present with a renewed appreciation for the brilliance of life around her. Autumn has never been so beautiful, her daughters never as radiant. Brave, incredibly strong and deeply loved, Cheri makes one last nerve-wracking journey across the country with her daughters and her friends.]]> 52 Jo Ann Beard 1800817878 Donna 0 to-read 4.25 2023 Cheri
author: Jo Ann Beard
name: Donna
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Donna 4 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Donna
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
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]]> Gold 15015218
Gold is the story of Zoe and Kate, world-class athletes who have been friends and rivals since their first day of Elite training. They've loved, fought, betrayed, forgiven, consoled, gloried, and grown up together. Now on the eve of London 2012, their last Olympics, both women will be tested to their physical and emotional limits. They must confront each other and their own mortality to decide, when lives are at stake: What would you sacrifice for the people you love, if it meant giving up the thing that was most important to you in the world?]]> 384 Chris Cleave 145167273X Donna 0 to-read 3.73 2012 Gold
author: Chris Cleave
name: Donna
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/31
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]]> Everyone Brave Is Forgiven 25814512
It’s 1939 and Mary, a young socialite, is determined to shock her blueblood political family by volunteering for the war effort. She is assigned as a teacher to children who were evacuated from London and have been rejected by the countryside because they are infirm, mentally disabled, or—like Mary’s favorite student, Zachary—have colored skin.

Tom, an education administrator, is distraught when his best friend, Alastair, enlists. Alastair, an art restorer, has always seemed far removed from the violent life to which he has now condemned himself. But Tom finds distraction in Mary, first as her employer and then as their relationship quickly develops in the emotionally charged times. When Mary meets Alastair, the three are drawn into a tragic love triangle and—while war escalates and bombs begin falling around them—further into a new world unlike any they’ve ever known.

A sweeping epic with the kind of unforgettable characters, cultural insights, and indelible scenes that made Little Bee so incredible, Chris Cleave’s latest novel explores the disenfranchised, the bereaved, the elite, the embattled. Everyone Brave Is Forgiven is a heartbreakingly beautiful story of love, loss, and incredible courage.]]> 418 Chris Cleave 1501124374 Donna 4 3.71 2016 Everyone Brave Is Forgiven
author: Chris Cleave
name: Donna
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
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]]> The Night She Disappeared 55922299
Kim watches her daughter leave and, as late evening turns into night, which turns into early morning, she waits for her return. And waits.

The next morning, Kim phones Tallulah's friends who tell her that Tallulah was last seen heading to a party at a house in the nearby woods called Dark Place.

She never returns.

2019: Sophie is walking in the woods near the boarding school where her boyfriend has just started work as a head-teacher when she sees a note fixed to a tree.

'DIG HERE' . . .

A cold case, an abandoned mansion, family trauma and dark secrets lie at the heart of Lisa Jewell's remarkable new novel.]]> 416 Lisa Jewell 1982137363 Donna 3 4.05 2021 The Night She Disappeared
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Donna
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/05/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Your Life in My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story]]> 35223582
How does it feel to be spat out of medical school into a world of pain, loss and trauma that you feel wholly ill-equipped to handle? To be a medical novice who makes decisions which - if you get them wrong - might forever alter, or end, a person's life?

In 'Your Life in My Hands', television journalist turned junior doctor Rachel Clarke captures the extraordinary realities of life on the NHS frontline. During last year's historic junior doctor strikes, Rachel was at the forefront of the campaign against the government's imposed contract upon young doctors. Her heartfelt, deeply personal account of life as a junior doctor in today's NHS is both a powerful polemic on the degradation of Britain's most vital public institution and a love letter of optimism and hope to that same health service.]]> 280 Rachel Clarke 1786064510 Donna 4 3.74 2017 Your Life in My Hands: A Junior Doctor's Story
author: Rachel Clarke
name: Donna
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/24
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]]> Yellowface 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Donna 2 3.69 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Donna
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/19
date added: 2024/05/19
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]]> Darling Girls 127280429 SISTERS, SECRETS, LOVE, AND MURDER... Sally Hepworth’s new novel has it all.

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life.

But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free. Even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

A thrilling page-turner of sisterhood, secrets, love, and murder by New York Times bestselling author Sally Hepworth.]]> 359 Sally Hepworth 125028452X Donna 0 to-read 3.98 2024 Darling Girls
author: Sally Hepworth
name: Donna
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> Crystal Spirit 3095839 Roger Granelli's first novel is a gripping and affecting story, persuasive and realistic, sympathetic in its portrayal of life in the Depression and full of remarkable scenes from the Spanish Civil War. Closely researched, Crystal Spirit brings to life a period which has almost slipped from memory. It is a moving testament to those who suffered in Wales and Spain, yet remained undefeated by the horrors of poverty and a brutal war.]]> 288 Roger Granelli 1854110608 Donna 2 3.75 1992 Crystal Spirit
author: Roger Granelli
name: Donna
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1992
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
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]]> The Most Fun We Ever Had 41880044
When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that's to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest: Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator-turned-stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt when the darkest part of her past resurfaces; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents'.

As the novel moves through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt--given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption fifteen years before--we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons' past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile.]]> 532 Claire Lombardo 0385544251 Donna 4 3.88 2019 The Most Fun We Ever Had
author: Claire Lombardo
name: Donna
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/09
date added: 2024/05/09
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]]> The Trial 75482120
ONE MURDER. ONE IMPOSSIBLE CASE. WHO IS GUILTY?

When hero policeman Grant Cliveden dies from a poisoning in the Old Bailey, it threatens to shake the country to its core.

The evidence points to one man. Jimmy Knight has been convicted of multiple offences before and defending him will be no easy task. Not least because this is trainee barrister Adam Green's first case.

But it will quickly become clear that Jimmy Knight is not the only person in Cliveden's past with an axe to grind.

The only thing that's certain is that this is a trial which will push Adam - and the justice system itself - to the limit . . .

'
']]> 358 Rob Rinder Donna 3 4.22 2023 The Trial
author: Rob Rinder
name: Donna
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/30
date added: 2024/04/30
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]]> You Will Be Safe Here 40653135 “There is pain on these pages and poetry too. I left this book bruised yet somehow better for it.� � Tayari Jones.

“Brutal, haunting, redemptive and...beautiful.� � Jojo Moyes.

This extraordinary debut set in South Africa reveals legacies of abuse and redemption exploring the extraordinary strength of the human spirit - from the Boer War in 1901 to brutal camps for teenage boys now. There is always darkness but there is always light in it if we just look.

South Africa, 1901 - the height of the second Boer War. Sarah van der Watt and her six-year-old son Fred are forced from their home on Mulberry Farm by British troops. As the polite invaders welcome them to Bloemfontein Concentration Camp they promise Sarah and Fred that they will be safe there.

2010. Sixteen-year-old Willem is an outsider. Hoping he will become the man she wants him to be, his Ma and her boyfriend send Willem away to the New Dawn Safari Training Camp where they are proud to 'make men out of boys'. They promise Willem he will be safe there.

You Will Be Safe Here is a powerful and urgent novel of two connected South African stories with universal relevance. Inspired by real events, it uncovers a hidden colonial history, reveals a dark contemporary secret, and explores the legacy of violence and our drive to survive and to love.

An Observer, Guardian, Financial Times, Irish Times, Irish Independent and Big Issue Pick of the Year ]]> 352 Damian Barr 1635573513 Donna 4 3.99 2019 You Will Be Safe Here
author: Damian Barr
name: Donna
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
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]]> Le Bal & Snow in Autumn 919525
Le Bal is a penetrating and incisive book set in early twentieth century France. At its heart is the tension between mother and daughter. The nouveau-riche Kampfs, desperate to become members of the social elite, decide to throw a ball to launch themselves into high society. For selfish reasons Mrs. Kampf forbids her teenage daughter, Antoinette, to attend the ball and banishes her to the laundry room. In an unpremeditated fury of revolt and despair, Antoinette takes a swift and horrible revenge. A cruel, funny and tender examination of class differences, Le Bal describes the torments of childhood with rare accuracy.

Also included in this volume is Snow in Autumn , in which Némirovsky pays homage to Chekov and chronicles the life of a devoted servant following her masters as they flee Revolutionary Moscow and emigrate to a life of hardship in Paris.]]> 106 Irène Némirovsky 0676979661 Donna 4 3.60 1930 Le Bal & Snow in Autumn
author: Irène Némirovsky
name: Donna
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1930
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/04/22
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]]> The Good Son 56383022
Stefan was just seventeen when he went to prison for the drug-fueled murder of his girlfriend, Belinda. Three years later, he’s released to a world that refuses to let him move on. Belinda’s mother, once Thea’s good friend, galvanizes the community to rally against him to protest in her daughter’s memory. The media paints Stefan as a symbol of white privilege and indifferent justice. Neighbors, employers, even some members of Thea's own family turn away.

Meanwhile Thea struggles to understand her son. At times, he is still the sweet boy he has always been; at others, he is a young man tormented by guilt and almost broken by his time in prison. But as his efforts to make amends meet escalating resistance and threats, Thea suspects more forces are at play than just community outrage. And if there is so much she never knew about her own son, what other secrets has she yet to uncover—especially about the night Belinda died?]]> 344 Jacquelyn Mitchard 0778311791 Donna 3 3.31 2022 The Good Son
author: Jacquelyn Mitchard
name: Donna
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2024/04/21
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]]> Pilgrims 49901969
These are among a group of pilgrims that sets off on the tough and dangerous journey from England to Rome, where they hope all their troubles will be answered. Some in the party who have their own, secret reasons for going.

Matthew Kneale is the author of English Passengers and Rome: A History in Seven Sackings. His new novel, Pilgrims is a riveting, sweeping narrative that shows medieval society in a new light, as a highly rule-bound, legalistic world, though religious fervour and the threat of violence are never far below the surface. Told by multiple narrators, 'Pilgrims' has much to say about Englishness, then and now.]]> 340 Matthew Kneale 1786492377 Donna 2 3.69 2020 Pilgrims
author: Matthew Kneale
name: Donna
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/21
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]]> To Paradise 57739876 From the author of the classic A Little Life, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.

In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.

These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.

To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvellous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love � partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens � and the pain that ensues when we cannot.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385547935 Donna 4 3.74 2022 To Paradise
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Donna
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/13
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]]> The Seventh Son 64645745
When a young woman named Talissa answers an advert to carry a child, she cannot begin to imagine the consequences.

Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, one they hope no one ever discovers, they set in motion an experiment that is set to upend the human race as we know it.

Seth, a baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention.

The Seventh Son is a spectacular examination of what it is to be human. Sweeping between New York, London, and the Scottish Highlands, this is an extraordinary novel about unrequited love and unearned power. It asks the just because you can do something, does it mean you should?]]> 353 Sebastian Faulks Donna 4 3.48 2023 The Seventh Son
author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Donna
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/13
date added: 2024/03/29
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]]> The Leviathan 58645179
Norfolk, 1643. With civil war tearing England apart, reluctant soldier Thomas Treadwater is summoned home by his sister, who accuses a new servant of improper conduct with their widowed father. By the time Thomas returns home, his father is insensible, felled by a stroke, and their new servant is in prison, facing charges of witchcraft.

Thomas prides himself on being a rational, modern man, but as he unravels the mystery of what has happened, he uncovers not a tale of superstition but something dark and ancient, linked to a shipwreck years before.

Something has awoken, and now it will not rest.]]> 320 Rosie Andrews Donna 4 3.46 2022 The Leviathan
author: Rosie Andrews
name: Donna
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/18
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]]> Darkness Falling 51059773
A woman cursed by a priest stands alone on a clifftop trying to summon up the courage to jump.

Her brother stands accused of murder and rebellion against the state.

Surrounded by a troop of soldiers a landlord destroys the homes of his tenants leaving them to die on the hillsides.

The British Government responds to the crisis, reshaping Irish society with disastrous results
]]> 386 Patrick MacDonald 1916189318 Donna 3 4.04 Darkness Falling
author: Patrick MacDonald
name: Donna
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/10
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]]> Still Life 91519
Stephanie Potter gives up a promising academic career to marry Daniel Orton, while her sister, Frederica, enters Cambridge, and her brother, Marcus, begins recovering from a nervous breakdown.]]> 384 A.S. Byatt 0684835037 Donna 1 3.89 1985 Still Life
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Donna
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1985
rating: 1
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]]> The Cement Garden 9957 144 Ian McEwan 0099468387 Donna 3 3.56 1978 The Cement Garden
author: Ian McEwan
name: Donna
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1978
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/26
date added: 2024/02/26
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]]> The Child in Time 6869 The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of the finest writers of his generation.]]> 263 Ian McEwan 0385497520 Donna 4 3.60 1987 The Child in Time
author: Ian McEwan
name: Donna
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/24
date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Velva Jean Learns to Drive (Velva Jean, #1)]]> 6193902
Set in Appalachia in the years before World War II, Velva Jean Learns to Drive is a poignant story of a spirited young girl growing up in the gold-mining and moonshining South.

Before she dies, Velva Jean's mother urges her to "live out there in the great wide world". Velva Jean dreams of becoming a big-time singer in Nashville until she falls in love with Harley Bright, a handsome juvenile delinquent turned revival preacher. As their tumultuous love story unfolds, Velva Jean must choose between keeping her hard-won home and pursuing her dream of singing in the Grand Ole Opry.]]> 404 Jennifer Niven 0452289459 Donna 4 3.92 2009 Velva Jean Learns to Drive (Velva Jean, #1)
author: Jennifer Niven
name: Donna
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/22
date added: 2024/02/22
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]]> A Perfectly Good Family 708268 277 Lionel Shriver 0061239496 Donna 4 3.30 2007 A Perfectly Good Family
author: Lionel Shriver
name: Donna
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/15
date added: 2024/02/15
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]]> Washington Black 38140077
When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist.

He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where two people, separated by an impossible divide, might begin to see each other as human; and where a boy born in chains can embrace a life of dignity and meaning. But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash's head, Titch abandons everything to save him.

What follows is their flight along the eastern coast of America, and, finally, to a remote outpost in the Arctic, where Wash, left on his own, must invent another new life, one which will propel him further across the globe.

From the sultry cane fields of the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, Washington Black tells a story of friendship and betrayal, love and redemption, of a world destroyed and made whole again--and asks the question, what is true freedom?]]> 334 Esi Edugyan 0525521429 Donna 3 3.93 2018 Washington Black
author: Esi Edugyan
name: Donna
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/10
date added: 2024/02/10
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]]> The Accidental 127630 The Accidental is the virtuoso new novel by the singularly gifted Ali Smith. Jonathan Safran Foer has called her writing “thrilling.� Jeanette Winterson has praised her for her “style, ideas, and punch.� Here, in a novel at once profound, playful, and exhilaratingly inventive, she transfixes us with a portrait of a family unraveled by a mysterious visitor.

Amber—thirtysomething and barefoot—shows up at the door of the Norfolk cottage that the Smarts are renting for the summer. She talks her way in. She tells nothing but lies. She stays for dinner.

Eve Smart, the author of a best-selling series of biographical reconstructions, thinks Amber is a student with whom her husband, Michael, is sleeping. Michael, an English professor, knows only that her car broke down. Daughter Astrid, age twelve, thinks she’s her mother’s friend. Son Magnus, age seventeen, thinks she’s an angel.

As Amber insinuates herself into the family, the questions of who she is and how she’s come to be there drop away. Instead, dazzled by her seeming exoticism, the Smarts begin to examine the accidents of their lives through the searing lens of Amber’s perceptions. When Eve finally banishes her from the cottage, Amber disappears from their sight, but not—they discover when they return home to London—from their profoundly altered lives.

Fearlessly intelligent and written with an irresistible blend of lyricism and whimsy, The Accidental is a tour de force of literary improvisation that explores the nature of truth, the role of chance, and the transformative power of storytelling.]]> 306 Ali Smith 1400032180 Donna 2 3.37 2005 The Accidental
author: Ali Smith
name: Donna
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/03
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]]> All the Living and the Dead 58724737
We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.]]> 288 Hayley Campbell 1250281849 Donna 4 4.25 2022 All the Living and the Dead
author: Hayley Campbell
name: Donna
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/31
date added: 2024/01/31
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]]> The Husband's Secret 17802724 At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read

My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died...

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .

Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses—and, ultimately, ourselves.]]> 396 Liane Moriarty 0399159347 Donna 4 3.94 2013 The Husband's Secret
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Donna
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/29
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]]> The Book of Beginnings 78819215 From the author of the phenomenal bestseller The Keeper of Stories, comes the next uplifting story of how the most unexpected friendships are forged in the most unlikely of places . . .

Jo Sorsby knows she is hiding from her past when she steps in to look after her uncle’s stationery shop. Glimpsing the lives of her customers between the warm wooden shelves, as they scribble notes with fountain pens and browse colourful notebooks, distracts her from the life she has left behind.

Yet far from home, Jo feels adrift . . .

When she meets Ruth, a vicar running from a secret, and Malcolm, a septuagenarian struggling to write his first book, she realises that she isn’t alone.

It’s the beginning of a friendship that can transform Jo’s life . . . if only she can let them in.]]> 384 Sally Page 0008612870 Donna 2 3.87 2023 The Book of Beginnings
author: Sally Page
name: Donna
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/23
date added: 2024/01/23
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]]> The Fell 57845085
But Kate's neighbour Alice sees her leaving and Matt, Kate's son, soon realizes she's missing. And Kate, who planned only a quick solitary walk - a breath of open air - falls and badly injures herself. What began as a furtive walk has turned into a mountain rescue operation . . .

Unbearably suspenseful, witty and wise, The Fell asks probing questions about the place the world has become since March 2020, and the place it was before. Sarah Moss's novel is a story about compassion and kindness and what we must do to survive, and it will move you to tears.]]> 184 Sarah Moss 0374606048 Donna 3 3.55 2021 The Fell
author: Sarah Moss
name: Donna
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/01/14
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]]> Burial Rites 17333319
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?]]> 336 Hannah Kent 0316243914 Donna 4 4.00 2013 Burial Rites
author: Hannah Kent
name: Donna
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/11
date added: 2024/01/11
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]]> <![CDATA[If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood]]> 45034263
After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.

For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

]]> 405 Gregg Olsen 154200523X Donna 4 3.91 2019 If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood
author: Gregg Olsen
name: Donna
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/04
date added: 2024/01/04
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]]> Bournville 60301215 From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally funny and brilliantly true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family

In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave.

As we travel through seventy-five years of social change, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question starts to emerge: will these changing times bring Mary's family - and their country - closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before?

Bournville is a rich and poignant new novel from the bestselling, Costa award-winning author of Middle England. It is the story of a woman, of a nation's love affair with chocolate, of Britain itself.

'A wickedly funny, clever, but also tender and lyrical novel about Britain and Britishness and what we have become' Rachel Joyce

'It is miraculous how, in his new novel, Coe has created a social history of postwar Britain as we are still living it. Bournville is a beautiful, and often very funny, tribute to an underexamined place and also a truly moving story of how a country discovered tolerance' Sathnam Sanghera, bestselling author of Empireland]]> 354 Jonathan Coe 0241517389 Donna 4 3.74 2022 Bournville
author: Jonathan Coe
name: Donna
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/26
date added: 2023/12/26
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]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver Donna 4 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Donna
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/14
date added: 2023/12/14
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]]> The Four Winds 53138081 Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.

In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras—the Great Depression.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250178602]]> 464 Kristin Hannah 1250178606 Donna 3 4.27 2021 The Four Winds
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Donna
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/04
date added: 2023/12/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Donna 5 4.21 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Donna
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/17
date added: 2023/11/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4)]]> 62226126
An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?]]> 421 Richard Osman 0241512441 Donna 4 4.44 2023 The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4)
author: Richard Osman
name: Donna
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/04
date added: 2023/11/04
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]]> In a Strange Room 9347443 A finalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize

In this newest novel from South African writer Damon Galgut, a young loner travels across eastern Africa, Europe, and India. Unsure what he's after, and reluctant to return home, he follows the paths of travelers he meets along the way. Treated as a lover, a follower, a guardian, each new encounter—with an enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers, a woman on the verge—leads him closer to confronting his own identity. Traversing the quiet of wilderness and the frenzy of border crossings, every new direction is tinged with surmounting mourning, as he is propelled toward a tragic conclusion.

In a Strange Room is a brilliant, stylish novel of anger and compassion, longing and thwarted desire, and a hauntingly beautiful evocation of life on the road. First published in The Paris Review in three parts, one of which was selected for a National Magazine Award, and another for the O. Henry Prize, In a Strange Room was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.]]> 224 Damon Galgut 1609450116 Donna 3 3.75 2010 In a Strange Room
author: Damon Galgut
name: Donna
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/28
date added: 2023/10/28
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]]> Horse 59109077 A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse--one studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.]]> 401 Geraldine Brooks 0399562966 Donna 5 4.17 2022 Horse
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Donna
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/14
date added: 2023/10/14
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]]> The Marriage Portrait 60353768 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de� Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.

Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.]]> 355 Maggie O'Farrell Donna 4 3.97 2022 The Marriage Portrait
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Donna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/03
date added: 2023/10/03
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]]> Seating Arrangements 12712435 302 Maggie Shipstead 0307599469 Donna 2 3.03 2012 Seating Arrangements
author: Maggie Shipstead
name: Donna
average rating: 3.03
book published: 2012
rating: 2
read at: 2023/09/26
date added: 2023/09/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Astonish Me (Vintage Contemporaries)]]> 18736672 "Astonish Me" is the irresistible story of Joan, a ballerina whose life has been shaped by her relationship with the world-famous dancer Arslan Ruskov, whom she helps defect from the Soviet Union to the United States. While Arslan's career takes off in New York, Joan's slowly declines, ending when she becomes pregnant and decides to marry her longtime admirer, a PhD student named Jacob. As the years pass, Joan settles into her new life in California, teaching dance and watching her son, Harry, become a ballet prodigy himself. But when Harry's success brings him into close contact with Arslan, explosive secrets are revealed that shatter the delicate balance Joan has struck between her past and present.
In graceful, inimitable prose, Shipstead draws us into an extraordinary world, and the lives of her vivid and tempestuous characters. Filled with intrigue, brilliant satire, and emotional nuance, "Astonish Me" is a superlative follow-up to Shipstead's superb debut.]]> 272 Maggie Shipstead Donna 3 3.59 2014 Astonish Me (Vintage Contemporaries)
author: Maggie Shipstead
name: Donna
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/24
date added: 2023/09/24
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]]> The Paper Palace 55994372
Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn't forever changed the course of their lives.

As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593329825.]]> 400 Miranda Cowley Heller Donna 4 3.73 2021 The Paper Palace
author: Miranda Cowley Heller
name: Donna
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/12
date added: 2023/09/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury]]> 880760 288 Margaret Forster 0099455595 Donna 4 3.81 1974 The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury
author: Margaret Forster
name: Donna
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/31
date added: 2023/08/31
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]]> At the Edge of the Orchard 24611681
1838: James and Sadie Goodenough have settled where their wagon got stuck - in the muddy, stagnant swamps of northwest Ohio. They and their five children work relentlessly to tame their patch of land, buying saplings from a local tree man known as John Appleseed so they can cultivate the fifty apple trees required to stake their claim on the property. But the orchard they plant sows the seeds of a long battle. James loves the apples, reminders of an easier life back in Connecticut; while Sadie prefers the applejack they make, an alcoholic refuge from brutal frontier life.

1853: Their youngest child Robert is wandering through Gold Rush California. Restless and haunted by the broken family he left behind, he has made his way alone across the country. In the redwood and giant sequoia groves he finds some solace, collecting seeds for a naturalist who sells plants from the new world to the gardeners of England. But you can run only so far, even in America, and when Robert's past makes an unexpected appearance he must decide whether to strike out again or stake his own claim to a home at last.

Chevalier tells a fierce, beautifully crafted story in At the Edge of the Orchard, her most graceful and richly imagined work yet.]]> 289 Tracy Chevalier 0525953000 Donna 2 3.61 2016 At the Edge of the Orchard
author: Tracy Chevalier
name: Donna
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2023/08/25
date added: 2023/08/25
shelves:
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]]> The Betrayal (The Siege #2) 7482637
Internationally-acclaimed author Helen Dunmore follows her bestselling novel, The Siege, with a riveting and emotionally absorbing portrait of post-war Soviet Russia, a world of violence and terror, where the severest acts of betrayal can come from the most trusted allies.

In 1952 Leningrad, Andrei, a young doctor, and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together in the postwar, post-siege wreckage. But they know their happiness is precarious, like that of millions of Russians who must avoid the claws of Stalin's merciless Ministry of State Security. When Andrei is forced to treat the seriously ill child of a senior secret police officer, his every move is scrutinized, and it becomes painfully clear that his own fate, and that of his family, is bound to the child's. Trapped in an impossible game of life and death, and pitted against a power-mad father's raging grief, Andrei and Anna must avoid the whispers and watchful eyes of those who will say or do anything to save themselves.

With The Betrayal, Dunmore returns with a powerful and stirring novel of ordinary people in the grip of a terrible and sinister regime, and an evocative tale of a love that will not be silenced.]]> 330 Helen Dunmore 1905490593 Donna 4 3.97 2010 The Betrayal (The Siege #2)
author: Helen Dunmore
name: Donna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/20
date added: 2023/08/20
shelves:
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]]> The Night Guest 17332361
Now that Frida is in her house, is Ruth right to fear the tiger she hears on the prowl at night, far from its jungle habitat? Why do memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency? How far can she trust this mysterious woman, Frida, who seems to carry with her, her own troubled past? And how far can Ruth trust herself?]]> 256 Fiona McFarlane 0865477736 Donna 0 to-read 3.44 2013 The Night Guest
author: Fiona McFarlane
name: Donna
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>