en-US Sat, 22 Mar 2025 17:05:31 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 217311813 An unforgettable and heartwarming book-club debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: one of her students.

Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.

Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others� expectations.

As their unlikely friendship evolves under the increasing scrutiny of their community, both women—and those closest to them—will come to realize that sometimes there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you really are.

Detransition Baby meets Fleishman is in Trouble in this remarkable debut novel from an incisive contemporary voice. A story about the awkwardness of growing up and the greatest love story of all, that between us and our friends, Woodworking is a tonic for the moment and a celebration of womanhood in all its multifaceted joy.]]> 368 Emily St. James 163893147X Kelly 4 4.45 2025
author: Emily St. James
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
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review:
4.5 Everyone should read this book. Beautiful, sad, funny, insightful� and really, really well written.
]]> 54814839 Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word "bondmaid" flutters to the floor. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means slave-girl, she withholds it from the OED and begins to collect words that show women in a more positive light.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women's suffrage movement with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Based on actual events and combed from author Pip Williams's experience delving into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary, this highly original novel is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.]]> 376 Pip Williams 0593160193 Kelly 0 3.93 2020
author: Pip Williams
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> 214537816 Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their rest, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions before she gets the itch to get back in the game. When they receive a call from Naomi Ndiaye, the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready to tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, all of them connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster who rules her business empire with an iron fist and plays puppet master in international affairs. Naomi is convinced this criminal queen is bent upon revenge, killing off the agents who attempted to thwart her, and the aging quartet of killers is next.

Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster and her assassin. But their nemesis is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their experience and a whole lot of luck to get out of this mission alive.]]> 368 Deanna Raybourn 0593638514 Kelly 3 3.95 2025
author: Deanna Raybourn
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
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review:
Good, not great. I needed a bit of lighter fare after my last few reads, and this fit the bill. Entertaining, far-fetched, and fun, but somewhat forgettable.
]]> 216497043
Behind the scenes, Laurie’s life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all—from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli—while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.

As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie’s mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life’s work that she truly values: care and feeding.]]> 352 Laurie Woolever 0063327600 Kelly 3 3.58
author: Laurie Woolever
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.58
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> 173404023
Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.]]> 352 Tia Williams 153872670X Kelly 4 3.98 2024
author: Tia Williams
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:
As I was browsing reviews and book lists, I didn’t clock that this novel was going to have a magical realism spin. Honestly, I am glad I didn’t notice, because then I probably wouldn’t have picked up this lovely book which I ended up enjoying very much. Unrealistic, yes, but suspend reality and you have a tale of love and loss, graceful aging, and a powerful coming of age story (no pun intended).
]]> 200987258
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic� books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

But Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome� dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.]]> 298 Kirsten Miller 0063348691 Kelly 4 4.07 2024
author: Kirsten Miller
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves:
review:
Started out sooooo strong, but lost its momentum about 2/3 of the way through. Still an excellent story, but I wish the end was as good as the beginning.
]]> 213618132 The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well.

The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get.

So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family's history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.

In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.]]> 368 Charmaine Wilkerson 0593358368 Kelly 5 4.06 2025
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
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]]> 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Kelly 5 4.16 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves:
review:
My first 5 star book of the year! So many of my favorite genres & features wrapped up in one: mystery, historical fiction, powerful woman making her mark, multiple timelines, themes of motherhood, beautiful & compelling setting �. So good!!!
]]> 216247502
Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she’ll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father’s—now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox—lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox’s centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents� secret, just as she’s falling in love for the first time . . .

As Pen experiences the sharp shock of adulthood, she comes to rely on herself for the first time in her life. A rich and rewarding novel of campus life, of sexual awakening, and ultimately, of the many ways women can become mothers in this world, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus asks to what extent we need to look back in order to move forward.]]> 384 Emma Knight 0593830458 Kelly 3

]]> 3.40
author: Emma Knight
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.40
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:
3.5 Like touring an overstuffed old house, this book has good bones, but you need to look past all the fluff and distractions to see them. At the core, I loved the exploration of motherhood and Pen’s coming of age story, however it was easy to become distracted by all of the extraneous subplots.



]]> 195391623 From New York Times bestselling author Tracey Lange, a poignant story about the resilience of family, the importance of community, and the magic of middle school hockey

When Kyle McCray gets word his father has suffered a debilitating stroke, he returns to his hometown of Potsdam, New York, where he doesn’t expect a warm welcome. Kyle left suddenly two and a half years ago, abandoning people who depended on him: his father, his employees, his friends—not to mention Casey, his wife of sixteen years and a beloved teacher in town. He plans to lie low and help his dad recuperate until he can leave again, especially after Casey makes it clear she wants him gone.

The longer he’s home, the more Kyle understands the impact his departure has had on the people he left behind. When he’s presented with an opportunity for redemption as the coach of the floundering middle school hockey team, he begins to find compassion in unexpected places. Kyle even considers staying in Potsdam, but that’s only possible if he and Casey can come to some kind of peace with each other.

Full of love and hope, What Happened to the McCrays? takes an intimate look at both sides of a failed marriage and two people who must finally confront the awful pain of their past or risk being consumed by it.]]> 352 Tracey Lange 1250328438 Kelly 4 4.5 4.10 2025
author: Tracey Lange
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
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review:
4.5
]]> 211003941 Two-time National Outdoor Book Award-winning author Buddy Levy's thrilling narrative of polar exploration via airship�and the men who sacrificed everything to make history.

Arctic explorer and American visionary Walter Wellman pioneered both polar and trans-Atlantic airship aviation, making history’s first attempts at each. Wellman has been cast as a self-promoting egomaniac known mostly for his catastrophic failures. Instead he was a courageous innovator who pushed the boundaries of polar exploration and paved the way for the ultimate conquest of the North Pole—which would be achieved not by dogsled or airplane, but by airship.

American explorer Dr. Frederick Cook was the first to claim he made it to the North Pole in 1908. A year later, so did American Robert Peary, but both Cook’s and Peary’s claims had been seriously questioned. There was enough doubt that Norwegian explorer extraordinaire Roald Amundsen—who’d made history and a name for himself by being first to sail through the Northwest Passage and first man to the South Pole—picked up where Walter Wellman left off, attempting to fly to the North Pole by airship. He would go in the Norge, designed by Italian aeronautical engineer Umberto Nobile. The 350-foot Norge flew over the North Pole on May 12, 1926, and Amundsen was able to accurately record and verify their exact location.

However, the engineer Nobile felt slighted by Amundsen. Two years later, Nobile returned, this time in the Italia, backed by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. This was an Italian enterprise, and Nobile intended to win back the global accolades and reputation he believed Amundsen had stripped from him. The journey ended in disaster, death, and accusations of cannibalism, launching one of the great rescue operations the world had ever seen.

Realm of Ice and Sky is the thrilling narrative of polar exploration via airship―and the men who sacrificed everything to make history.]]> 384 Buddy Levy 1250289181 Kelly 0 to-read 4.19 2025
author: Buddy Levy
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 211003830 The Mystery of Mrs. Christie returns with a thrilling story of Christie’s legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers� own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.]]> 310 Marie Benedict 1250280753 Kelly 0 to-read 3.84 2025
author: Marie Benedict
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 217163697 #1ĚýNew York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Kelly 0 to-read 4.59 2025
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Kelly 4 4.24 2024
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
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]]> 199603377 A senior citizens� center and a daycare collide with hilarious results in the new ensemble comedy from New York Times-bestselling author Clare Pooley

When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens� Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.

The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.

When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.]]> 352 Clare Pooley 0593512030 Kelly 0 to-read 4.31 2024
author: Clare Pooley
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 181110045 A haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, D.C. boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?]]> 432 Kate Quinn 0063244748 Kelly 0 to-read 4.26 2024
author: Kate Quinn
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 211025454 From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same.

New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.� Though Annie soon realizes she’ll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana’s capricious demands and exacting standards.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, wants little to do with the upcoming gala. She’s consumed with her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.

That is, until the night of the gala. When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing . . . and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening.

As Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they’re to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.]]> 352 Fiona Davis 0593474279 Kelly 4 My only gripe with this book (and they reason it is a 4 not a 5) is that it gets all wrapped up a little too neatly in the last 30 or so pages. Especially the last revelation�- that seemed like a far stretch for Annie to deduce with such limited information. ]]> 3.93 2025
author: Fiona Davis
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves:
review:
I am a fan of Davis’s books, so I was very excited to read this one. The dual time lines and main characters were very intriguing and I enjoyed the exploration of mother-daughter relationships alongside the drama and mystery of the Egyptian queen.
My only gripe with this book (and they reason it is a 4 not a 5) is that it gets all wrapped up a little too neatly in the last 30 or so pages. Especially the last revelation�- that seemed like a far stretch for Annie to deduce with such limited information.
]]> 15803144
In the tradition of The Perfect Storm and Seabiscuit , the engrossing tale of the fastest boat ride ever down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

In the winter of 1983, the largest El Niño event on record—a chain of “superstorms� that swept in from the Pacific Ocean—battered the entire West. That spring, a massive snowmelt sent runoff racing down the Colorado River toward the Glen Canyon Dam, a 710-foot-high wall of concrete that sat at the head of the most iconic landscape feature in America, the Grand Canyon. As the water clawed toward the parapet of the dam, worried federal officials desperately scrambled to avoid a worst-case one of the most dramatic dam failures in history.

In the midst of this crisis, beneath the light of a full moon, a trio of river guides secretly launched a small, hand-built wooden boat, a dory named the Emerald Mile, into the Colorado just below the dam’s base and rocketed toward the dark chasm downstream, where the torrents of water released by the dam engineers had created a rock-walled maelstrom so powerful it shifted giant boulders and created bizarre hydraulic features never previously seen. The river was already choked with the wreckage of commercial rafting injured passengers clung to the remnants of three-ton motorboats that had been turned upside down and torn to pieces. The chaos had claimed its first fatality, further launches were forbidden, and rangers were conducting the largest helicopter evacuation in the history of Grand Canyon National Park.

An insurgent river run under such conditions seemed to border on the suicidal, but Kenton Grua, the captain of that dory, was on an unusual a gesture of defiance unlike anything the river world had ever seen. His aim was to use the flood as a hydraulic slingshot that would hurl him and two companions through 277 miles of some of the most ferocious white water in North America and, if everything went as planned, catapult the Emerald Mile into legend as the fastest boat ever propelled—by oar, by motor, or by the grace of God—through the heart of the Grand Canyon.

Grua himself was already something of a mythic figure, a fearless boatman obsessed with the mysteries of the canyon. His quest embraced not only the trials of the speed run itself but also the larger story of his the men who had first discovered the canyon and pioneered its exploration, as well as those who waged a landmark battle to prevent it from being hog-tied by a series of massive hydroelectric dams—a conflict that continues to this day.

A writer who has worked as a river guide himself and is intimately familiar with the canyon’s many secrets, Kevin Fedarko is the ideal narrator for this American epic. The saga of The Emerald Mile is a thrilling adventure, as well as a magisterial portrait of the hidden kingdom of white water at the bottom of the greatest river canyon on earth. This book announces Fedarko as a major writing talent and at last sets forth the full story of an American legend—the legend of The Emerald Mile .]]> 432 Kevin Fedarko 1439159858 Kelly 0 4.41 2013
author: Kevin Fedarko
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2023/07/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
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]]> 13623848 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]> 408 Madeline Miller Kelly 0 4.30 2011
author: Madeline Miller
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 56803179 In every person's story, there is something to hide...

The ornate reading room at the Boston Public Library is quiet, until the tranquility is shattered by a woman's terrified scream. Security guards take charge immediately, instructing everyone inside to stay put until the threat is identified and contained. While they wait for the all-clear, four strangers, who'd happened to sit at the same table, pass the time in conversation and friendships are struck. Each has his or her own reasons for being in the reading room that morning—it just happens that one is a murderer.

Award-winning author Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.]]> 292 Sulari Gentill Kelly 3
As for the actual story, I liked the premise and the characters were likable in that Gen Z way. Cain’s story, in particular, had some compelling aspects and raised questions about redemption and second chances. ]]> 3.46 2022
author: Sulari Gentill
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:
Rounded down from 3.5. I am not sure what the deal is lately with authors throwing in random stuff that does nothing for the plot besides interrupt the rhythm of an otherwise good read. My last book had a dose of wholly unnecessary magical realism and this one had its flow interrupted by a strange correspondence between the fictional author of the book within the book and a creepy over obsessed beta reader. I am not sure if the author was just trying to be cute or meta or what, but the editor should have slashed this bit. It just felt indulgent. This book would have been a 4 or 4.5 for me otherwise.

As for the actual story, I liked the premise and the characters were likable in that Gen Z way. Cain’s story, in particular, had some compelling aspects and raised questions about redemption and second chances.
]]> 34275215
This is how a family lives happily ever after…until happily ever after becomes complicated.

This is how children change…and then change the world.

This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.

When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.

Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.

This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: Change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.

"This is a novel everyone should read. It’s brilliant. It’s bold. And it’s time.�
―Elizabeth George, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Banquet of Consequences]]> 336 Laurie Frankel 1250088569 Kelly 5 4.28 2017
author: Laurie Frankel
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2019/02/02
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:
I loved this book. I loved Rosie and Penn and the way they parented their hilarious, warm hearted brood. I rarely highlight lines of novels, but this line is so true and inspiring that I had to: “Easy is nice, but it’s not as good as getting to be who you are or stand up for what you believe in.� I loved the ups and downs and in-betweens of Poppy’s journey. I loved the fairy tale interwoven with the narrative. I think I’m going to go read it again.
]]> 16349 335 Agatha Christie 0007120699 Kelly 4 3.96 1938
author: Agatha Christie
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
I have not read an Agatha Christie in a very long time, but I have read plenty of locked room mysteries. It was very cool to read from the hand of the creator of so many of the tropes and “rules of murder mystery� I see in so many other books.
]]> 52674676 She's going too far to go it alone.

It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist--the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom sandals seems to attract trouble wherever she goes. But together these two British women find themselves drawn into a cross-ocean adventure that exceeds all expectations and delivers something neither of them expected to find: the transformative power of friendship.]]> 352 Rachel Joyce 0593230957 Kelly 4 4.03 2020
author: Rachel Joyce
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
The premise is rather far-fetched, but once reality was sufficiently suspended, I adored both main characters and enjoyed journeying with them on their crazy quest. Both women were exasperating and stubborn and loving in their own ways�- and they made a great match!
]]> 62929342 Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family, and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? ]]> 399 Rachel Khong 0593537254 Kelly 4 3.94 2024
author: Rachel Khong
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
Rounded up from 3.5 stars. Loved the three sections� almost felt like different genres chosen to match each of the three narrators. I loved each of the stories and how multidimensional all 3 main characters were. The reason I dropped it down to 3.5 is because the magical realism felt wholly unnecessary and a bit distracting from the heart of the story.
]]> 199531989 Knives Out gets a rom-com twist in this rivals-to-lovers Christmas romance-mystery from New York Times bestselling author Ally Carter

The bridge is out. The phones are down. And the most famous mystery writer in the world just disappeared out of a locked room three days before Christmas.

Meet Maggie Chase and Ethan Wyatt:
She’s the new Queen of the Cozy Mystery.
He’s Mr. Big-Time Thriller Guy.

She hates his guts.

He thinks her name is Marcie (no matter how many times she’s told him otherwise.)

But when they both accept a cryptic invitation to attend a Christmas house party at the English estate of a reclusive fan, neither is expecting their host to be the most powerful author in the world: Eleanor Ashley, the Duchess of Death herself.

That night, the weather turns, and the next morning Eleanor is gone.

She vanished from a locked room, and Maggie has to wonder: Is Eleanor in danger? Or is it all some kind of test? Is Ethan the competition? Or is he the only person in that snowbound mansion she can trust?

As the snow gets deeper and the stakes get higher, every clue will bring Maggie and Ethan closer to the truth—and each other. Because, this Christmas, these two rivals are going to have to become allies (and maybe more) if they have any hope of saving Eleanor.

Assuming they don’t kill each other first.]]> 293 Ally Carter 0063276682 Kelly 4 3.92 2024
author: Ally Carter
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:
Christmas Rom Com + Locked Room Murder Mystery??? Yes please!!
]]> 101673373
When Iris decides to move to New York to restart her life, she realizes she underestimated how big the Big Apple really is—all the nostalgic movies set in New York she’d watched with her mom while eating their special secret-recipe gelato didn’t quite do it justice. 

But Bobby, Iris’s best friend, isn’t about to let her hide away. He drags her to a famous autumn street fair in Little Italy, and as they walk through the food stalls, a little family-run gelateria catches her eye—could it be the same shop that’s in an old photo of her mother’s?

Curious, Iris returns the next day and meets the handsome Gio, who tells her that the shop is in danger of closing. His uncle, sole keeper of their family’s gelato recipe, is in a coma, so they can’t make more. When Iris samples the last remaining batch, she realizes that their gelato and her gelato are one and the same. But how can she tell them she knows their secret recipe when she’s not sure why Gio’s uncle gave it to her mother in the first place?

Iris offers her services as a chef to help them re-create the flavor and finds herself falling for Gio and his family. But when Gio’s uncle finally wakes up, all of the secrets Iris has been keeping threaten to ruin the new life—and new love—she’s been building all winter long.]]> 384 Josie Silver 0593724933 Kelly 4 3.64 2023
author: Josie Silver
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves:
review:
Perfect read-by-the-Christmas tree book. Hallmark movie-esque. Sweet and sappy and happy endings abound
]]> 182112124 A family drama set along the Louisiana coastline during the 2010 BP Oil Spill, Pearce Oysters follows a third-generation oyster farmer whose business, family, and livelihood are on the brink of collapse.

Golden Vale, Louisiana, is a hardscrabble coastal town 80 miles south of New Orleans but worlds away culturally. For generations, families have made their living working in commercial fishing or in the petroleum industry. After the sudden death of his father, thirty-five-year-old Jordan Pearce becomes the unwitting head of his family's storied oyster company. Amid Jordan's struggles with flighty employees, a fraught romantic life, living with his distressed, widowed mother, and a fishery that's been on life support for years, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suddenly explodes off the coast of Louisiana, prompting one of the worst environmental disasters in history.

As fallout from the explosion and subsequent oil spill intensifies, Jordan must grapple with the existential repercussions for his family, and the surrounding community, which has already seen its fair share of hardship, having just barely recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Forced to seek help from his estranged brother, Benny―a beatnik musician who ran away to New Orleans years ago―Jordan and what's left of the quarrelsome Pearce clan are reunited under one roof, alongside a cast of unforgettable regional characters. Jordan’s desperation to save the business, coupled with Benny’s desire to distance himself from his past, test the bonds of their family and the strength of their principles. Together, they must commit to saving this long overlooked corner of the Gulf Coast―a final act of hope in the face of impending tragedy.

This tender, unflagging exploration of industry, class, culture, and the extraordinary beauty in the margins of life, is eye-opening, eco-fiction that elevates the voices of deeply sympathetic characters.]]> 368 Joselyn Takacs 1958506508 Kelly 3 3.74 2024
author: Joselyn Takacs
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves:
review:
I enjoyed the interweaving of the broad, devastating impact of the oil spill with the specific impact on the Pearce family. The characters felt authentically flawed, although the ending got tied up a little too neatly for all the disasters the family endured.
]]> 194803881
Tracking the natural beauty that surrounds us, The Backyard Bird Chronicles maps the passage of time through daily entries, thoughtful questions, and beautiful original sketches. With boundless charm and wit, author Amy Tan charts her foray into birding and the natural wonders of the world.

In 2016, Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds visiting her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater—an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired.]]> 291 Amy Tan 0593536134 Kelly 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Amy Tan
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199531723 Murder, She Wrote meets #MeToo in this witty locked room mystery and literary satire by New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White.

There’s been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead—under bizarre circumstances—in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in…or, possibly, one of the castle’s guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for this literary American show-off (or Americans in general), finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists. 

The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky, sexy erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book a historical novel about the castle’s lurid past and its debauched laird, who himself ended up creatively murdered. But the authors� stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don’t quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious. 

Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? Is the murder of the long-ago laird somehow connected with the playboy author’s unfortunate demise? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death? 

A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance—this novel has it all, as only three bestselling authors can tell it! ]]> 404 Beatriz Williams 0063259869 Kelly 4 3.28 2024
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/26
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves:
review:
What a fun, fun read (even with the sometimes heavy subject matter). It really seems like these three authors must have had a blast writing this book together� just like the 3 authors in the book.
]]> 219449299 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?]]> 387 Richard Osman 059365322X Kelly 0 to-read 4.07 2024
author: Richard Osman
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199531966
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen's home. A mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.]]> 400 Clare Chambers 0063258226 Kelly 0 to-read 3.99 2024
author: Clare Chambers
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 204158999 For readers of Remarkably Bright Creatures and A Man Called Ove, a warm, life-affirming debut about a zany case of mistaken identity that allows a lonely old man one last chance to be part of a family.

�Would you mind terribly, old boy, if I borrowed the rest of your life? I promise I’ll take excellent care of it.'

Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he’d return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there’s nobody left in Fred’s life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he’s desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred’s luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of grumpy Bernard Greer at the local nursing home. Now he has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head—as long as his poker face is in better shape than his prostate and that his look-alike never turns up.

Denise Simms is stuck breathing the same disappointing air again and again. A middle-aged mom and caregiver at Bernard's facility, her crumbling marriage and daughter's health concerns are suffocating her joy for life. Wounded by her two-faced husband, she vows never to let a man deceive her again.

As Fred walks in Bernard’s shoes, he leaves a trail of kindness behind him, fueling Denise's suspicions about his true identity. When unexpected truths are revealed, Fred and Denise rediscover their sense of purpose and learn how to return a broken life to mint condition.

Bittersweet and remarkably perceptive, The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife is a hilarious, feel-good, clever novel about grief, forgiveness, redemption, and finding family.]]> 336 Anna Johnston 0063397293 Kelly 0 to-read 4.28 2024
author: Anna Johnston
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201608156
Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love � and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.

But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.

Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams' beloved This Is Happiness, Time of the Child is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.]]> 304 Niall Williams 1639734201 Kelly 0 to-read 4.16 2024
author: Niall Williams
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208580627 192 Ingvild H. Rishøi 0802163491 Kelly 0 to-read 3.67 2021
author: Ingvild H. Rishøi
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203164564
Detroit, 1960. Lila Pereira is two years old when her angry, abusive father has her mother committed to an asylum. Lila never sees her mother again. Three decades later, having mustered everything she has—brains, charm, talent, blond hair—Lila rises to the pinnacle of American media as the powerful, brilliant executive editor of The Washington Globe. Lila unapologetically prioritizes her career, leaving the rearing of her daughters to her generous husband, Joe. He doesn’t mind—until he does.

But Grace, their youngest daughter, feels abandoned. She wishes her mother would attend PTA meetings, not White House correspondents� dinners. As she grows up, she cannot shake her resentment. She wants out from under Lila’s shadow, yet the more she resists, the more Lila seems to shape her life. Grace becomes a successful reporter, even publishing a bestselling book about her mother. In the process of writing it, she realizes how little she knows about her own family. Did Lila’s mother, Grace’s grandmother, die in that asylum? Is refusal to look back the only way to create a future? How can you ever be yourself, Grace wonders, if you don’t know where you came from?

Spanning generations, and populated by complex, unforgettable characters, Like Mother, Like Mother is an exhilarating, portrait of family, marriage, ambition, power, the stories we inherit, and the lies we tell to become the people we believe we’re meant to be.]]> 336 Susan Rieger 0525512497 Kelly 5 3.76 2024
author: Susan Rieger
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves:
review:
4.5 stars. Loved this story so much� a tale of strong mothers and even stronger daughters.
]]> 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story�

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 Kelly 0 3.85 2023
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 200987323 In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues� private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.]]> 338 Natalie Sue 0063320363 Kelly 0 to-read 3.75 2024
author: Natalie Sue
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25852870
Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master's degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won't discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane's fortieth birthday fast approaches.

Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip's friend, neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy, reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . . And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.]]> 492 Curtis Sittenfeld 1400068320 Kelly 0 to-read 3.58 2016
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 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 Kelly 0 to-read 3.63 2025
author: Anne Tyler
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199793688 From the New York Times bestselling author and advice columnist, a poignant and funny debut novel about the residents of a women’s hotel in 1960s New York City.

The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.

The residents give up breakfast, juggle competing jobs at rival presses, abandon their children, get laid off from the telephone company, attempt to retrain as stenographers, all with the shared awareness that their days as an institution are numbered, and they’d better make the most of it while it lasts.

As trenchant as the novels of Dawn Powell and Rona Jaffe and as immersive as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Lessons in Chemistry, Women’s Hotel is a modern classic—and it is very, very funny.]]> 272 Daniel M. Lavery 0063343533 Kelly 2 ]]> 2.85 2024
author: Daniel M. Lavery
name: Kelly
average rating: 2.85
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves:
review:
Whoever wrote the copy for the book jacket clearly read a different book than what was contained inside said jacket. The comparison to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Lessons in Chemistry is absolutely laughable, but perhaps the only funny thing about this book which was touted as being “very, very funny. �

]]> 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Kelly 0 to-read 4.47 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207611551 A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences�

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.]]> 336 Julie Leong 0593815912 Kelly 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Julie Leong
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203579107 It's never too late for new beginnings.

On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs—an active senior community in southern Florida—she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy—and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier.

As a teenager growing up in 1920’s Brooklyn, Augusta’s role model was her father, Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighborhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta’s mother dies and Great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta can’t help but be drawn to Esther’s curious methods. As a healer herself, Esther offers Solomon’s customers her own advice—unconventional remedies ranging from homemade chicken soup to a mysterious array of powders and potions.

As Augusta prepares for pharmacy college, she is torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her great aunt, all while navigating a budding but complicated relationship with Irving. Desperate for clarity, she impulsively uses Esther’s most potent elixir with disastrous consequences. Disillusioned and alone, Augusta vows to reject Esther’s enchantments forever.

Sixty years later, confronted with Irving, Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago and how did her plan go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?]]> 320 Lynda Cohen Loigman 1250278104 Kelly 3 4.07 2024
author: Lynda Cohen Loigman
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 206005312
My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong.

So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection.

THE MAGICIAN

THE ASSISTANT

THE EXECUTIVE

THE HYPNOTIST

THE IDENTICAL TWIN

THE COUNSELLOR

THE TECH

My clues are even more abstract: A suspect covered in blood, without a memory of how it got there. A murder committed without setting foot inside the room where it happens. And an advent calendar. Because, you know, it’s Christmas.

If I can see through the illusions, I know I can solve it.

After all, a good murder is just like a magic trick, isn’t it?]]> 175 Benjamin Stevenson 0063412861 Kelly 4 3.70 2024
author: Benjamin Stevenson
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves:
review:
Fun quick read � loved the collision of “holiday special� and “murder mystery�.
]]> 58311985
One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbours gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants - some of whom have barely spoken to each other - become real neighbours. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editor Margaret Atwood, Authors Guild president Douglas Preston, and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn't get away from the city when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming and ultimately surprising narrative, Fourteen Days reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.

Includes writing from:
Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston, Celeste Ng, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, John Grisham, Diana Gabaldon, Ishmael Reed, Meg Wolitzer, Luis Alberto Urrea, James Shapiro, Sylvia Day, Mary Pope Osborne, Monique Truong, Hampton Sides, R. L. Stine, Scott Turow, Tommy Orange, and more!]]> 363 Margaret Atwood 0358616387 Kelly 2 3.14 2024
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves:
review:
This was a really cool premise (each section written by a different author), but it just didn’t work for me.
]]> 181350367 For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.

It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.

In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?

As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.]]> 358 Kristen Perrin 0593474015 Kelly 4 3.76 2024
author: Kristen Perrin
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves:
review:
3.5 a cozy little romp of a British murder mystery
]]> 198281740
“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…�

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.]]> 324 Matt Haig 0593489276 Kelly 5 3.45 2024
author: Matt Haig
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves:
review:
I loved Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library so I was very excited to read his latest. Like in The Midnight Library, you have to suspend reality in order to really get swept up in this story. Once you do, the writing, the message, the characters� growth�. all of it is pure perfection. Up next: planning a trip to Ibiza!
]]> 199798217 A heartfelt novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.�

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls� high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.]]> 327 Marjan Kamali 1668036584 Kelly 5 4.48 2024
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 123285511 #1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham delivers high-flying international suspense in a stunning new legal thriller that marks the return of Mitch McDeere, the brilliant hero of The Firm.

What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? The answer is in The Exchange, the riveting sequel to The Firm, the blockbuster thriller that launched the career of America’s favorite storyteller. It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favor that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the center of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications—and once again endangers his colleagues, friends, and family. Mitch has become a master at staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there’s nowhere to hide.]]> 338 John Grisham 0385548958 Kelly 2 3.39 2023
author: John Grisham
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/14
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves:
review:
Interesting idea, poorly written. Hardly a “sequel to the Firm”�- seemed like Grisham just happened to give the names Mitch and Abby McDeere to entirely new characters (minus a quick completely unrelated to the plot 15 page detour to Memphis). The plot was so slow�- meeting after meeting, flight after flight described in painstaking detail. The conclusion was abrupt and incomplete. I actually turned the page thinking there would be at least another chapter.
]]> 5355
Maximum Security Unit, Mississippi State Prison: Sam Cayhall is a former Klansman and unrepentant racist now facing the death penalty for a fatal bombing in 1967. He has run out of chances -- except for one: the young, liberal Chicago lawyer who just happens to be his grandson.

While the executioners prepare the gas chamber, while the protesters gather and the TV cameras wait, Adam has only days, hours, minutes to save his client. For between the two men is a chasm of shame, family lies, and secrets -- including the one secret that could save Sam Cayhall's life... or cost Adam his.
--back cover]]> 632 John Grisham 0385339666 Kelly 1 3.84 1994
author: John Grisham
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1994
rating: 1
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves:
review:
The worst Grisham book I’ve read.
]]> 18715978 56 Robin Sloan 0374711844 Kelly 4 ]]> 4.10 2012
author: Robin Sloan
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2013/12/30
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves:
review:
Enjoyed this peek into the past of Mr Penumbra. Wish it had been longer!

]]> 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 Kelly 0 to-read 4.08 2020
author: Meg Mason
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 19691 Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision. The Red October is heading west. The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. And the most incredible chase in history is on...

]]> 432 Tom Clancy 0425172902 Kelly 4 4.11 1984
author: Tom Clancy
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/02
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves:
review:
After recently watching & thoroughly enjoying the movie again (last time I saw it was a very, very long time ago) I thought it would be interesting to read the book that inspired it. The book gets a bit technical and has *so many* additional characters that various sections get pretty tedious, but it is such a great story that I’ll still say 4 stars.
]]> 192778259 320 Caroline Leavitt 164375128X Kelly 4 3.64
author: Caroline Leavitt
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
review:
Interesting premise & really good, engaging storytelling. The characters were complex and interesting. My only stuck point is that I don’t believe Helen would have made the mistake that she did toward the end. She’s been protecting her daughter for too long to slip like that. Otherwise, really interesting plot and character development.
]]> 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 Kelly 5 3.92 2023
author: Ann Patchett
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/14
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves:
review:
I love Ann Patchett’s storytelling. Beautiful words, beautiful flawed characters. I love the framework of Lara telling her daughters the story of her youth� simultaneously a reflection on young love and on motherly love.
]]> 62192261 The charming international bestseller about an elderly bookseller who delivers his recommendations door-to-door and an unlikely friendship with a nine-year-old girl that changes his life, for fans of The Midnight Library and A Man Called Ove.

The bookseller Carl Christian Kollhoff delivers books to special customers in the evening hours after closing time, walking through the picturesque alleys of the city. These people are almost like friends to him, and he is their most important connection to the world.

When Kollhoff unexpectedly loses his job, it takes the power of books and a nine-year-old girl to make them all find the courage to rebuild their bonds with each other.

A bestselling phenomenon internationally, Carsten Henn’s The Door-to-Door Bookstore is a feel-good novel about books and friendship.]]> 239 Carsten Henn 133549085X Kelly 4 4.07 2020
author: Carsten Henn
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/11
date added: 2024/08/11
shelves:
review:
Heartwarming book about the power of books and community.
]]> 179311283 In New York Times–bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s ingenious fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound

Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate.

It is the perfect idyll until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, a gaggle of shrieking children and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kentworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and they quickly offend every last one of their neighbours.

When Giles Kentworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator that can be called on to solve the case.

Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect?]]> 419 Anthony Horowitz 006330564X Kelly 4 4.06 2024
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/08
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves:
review:
4.5 Easily my favorite of this series. Elements of a locked-door mystery plus so many interesting side characters. Like my experience with most of Horowitz’s books, I didn’t guess the correct murderer, but this time I was *really* close!
]]> 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all:

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Kelly 3 3.54 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/04
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves:
review:
A very strange book indeed!! Weirdly enjoyable.
]]> 199797869 A divorcee embarks on her “year of yes� and crosses paths with a shy but sensitive birdwatcher who changes her life in this charming rom-com that is perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Ali Hazelwood.

Newly divorced, almost-empty-nester Celeste is finally seeking adventure and putting herself first, cliches be damned. So when a friend asks Celeste to “partner� with his buddy John for an event, Celeste throws herself into the role of his temporary girlfriend. But quiet cinnamon roll John isn’t looking for love, just birds—he needs a partner for Tucson’s biggest bird-watching contest if he’s ever going to launch his own guiding business. By the time they untangle their crossed signals, they’ve become teammates…and thanks to his meddling friends, a fake couple.

Celeste can’t tell a sparrow from a swallow, but John is a great teacher, and the hours they spend hiking in the Arizona wilderness feed Celeste’s hunger for new adventures while giving John a chance to practice his dream job. As the two spend more time together, they end up watching more than just the birds, and their chemistry becomes undeniable. Since they’re both committed to the single life, Celeste suggests a status upgrade: birders with benefits, just until the contest is done. But as the bird count goes up and their time together ticks down, John and Celeste will have to decide if their benefits can last a lifetime, or if this love affair is for the birds.]]> 336 Sarah T. Dubb 1668037831 Kelly 3 3.5 3.58 2024
author: Sarah T. Dubb
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves:
review:
3.5
]]> 63946934 A young British woman working in a book bindery gets a chance to pursue knowledge and love when World War I upends her life in this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club pick The Dictionary of Lost Words.

“Williams spins an immersive and compelling tale, sweeping us back to the Oxford she painted so expertly in The Dictionary of Lost Words.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

It is 1914, and as the war draws the young men of Britain away to fight, women must keep the nation running. Two of those women are Peggy and Maude, twin sisters who live on a narrow boat in Oxford and work in the bindery at the university press.

Ambitious, intelligent Peggy has been told for most of her life that her job is to bind the books, not read them—but as she folds and gathers pages, her mind wanders to the opposite side of Walton Street, where the female students of Oxford’s Somerville College have a whole library at their fingertips. Maude, meanwhile, wants nothing more than what she has: to spend her days folding the pages of books in the company of the other bindery girls. She is extraordinary but vulnerable, and Peggy feels compelled to watch over her.

Then refugees arrive from the war-torn cities of Belgium, sending ripples through the Oxford community and the sisters� lives. Peggy begins to see the possibility of another future where she can educate herself and use her intellect, not just her hands. But as war and illness reshape her world, her love for a Belgian soldier—and the responsibility that comes with it—threaten to hold her back.

The Bookbinder is a story about knowledge—who creates it, who can access it, and what truths get lost in the process. Much as she did in the international bestseller The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams thoughtfully explores another rarely seen slice of history through women’s eyes.]]> 437 Pip Williams 0593600444 Kelly 3 I loved the Dictionary of Lost words, so I was excited to see this companion novel at the bookstore. While this story takes place at the same time in history with a slight overlap of characters, the plot of this one dragged for me and the characters were less likable. I enjoyed the minor characters of Tilda, Gwen, and others, but I found Peggy to be tiresome.
Like Dictionary of Lost Words, this offered an interesting window into the history of the printing houses in the early 1900s� the craft of bookbinding was meticulously researched and poetically described. ]]> 3.94 2023
author: Pip Williams
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:
3.5
I loved the Dictionary of Lost words, so I was excited to see this companion novel at the bookstore. While this story takes place at the same time in history with a slight overlap of characters, the plot of this one dragged for me and the characters were less likable. I enjoyed the minor characters of Tilda, Gwen, and others, but I found Peggy to be tiresome.
Like Dictionary of Lost Words, this offered an interesting window into the history of the printing houses in the early 1900s� the craft of bookbinding was meticulously researched and poetically described.
]]> 199223201 Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—discover second chances at love in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams� one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.]]> 384 Beatriz Williams 0593724224 Kelly 3 This book had triple story lines: younger Mallory, older Mallory, Hannah. Normally I am a fan of multiple timeline novels, but the connection between Mallory’s stories and Hannah’s seemed a bit forced and switching between Mallory & Hannah disrupted the flow of the story. That said, I enjoyed each of the stories independently; perhaps this would have been better as 2 stand-alone books.
I also spent most of the book mad at Mallory for keeping her child a secret from the father. The author alluded to the reason but didn’t reveal it until the last pages. Revealing this sooner would have allowed for more empathy & understanding of Mallory’s choices instead of being kind of baffled by them for most of the book.]]> 4.08 2024
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/28
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves:
review:
3.5
This book had triple story lines: younger Mallory, older Mallory, Hannah. Normally I am a fan of multiple timeline novels, but the connection between Mallory’s stories and Hannah’s seemed a bit forced and switching between Mallory & Hannah disrupted the flow of the story. That said, I enjoyed each of the stories independently; perhaps this would have been better as 2 stand-alone books.
I also spent most of the book mad at Mallory for keeping her child a secret from the father. The author alluded to the reason but didn’t reveal it until the last pages. Revealing this sooner would have allowed for more empathy & understanding of Mallory’s choices instead of being kind of baffled by them for most of the book.
]]> 61827543 Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective?

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy �detective� work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).

But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could � because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands � Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.

Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.]]> 339 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0593549228 Kelly 4 4.01 2023
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/19
shelves:
review:
SUCH a fun book! Vera is a force to be reckoned with, and each member of the rest of the ensemble is memorable & lovable in their own way. The twist at the end was definitely unexpected, but at that point, I had kind of forgotten about the mystery part as I was so wrapped up in loving the characters.
]]> 819642
An international bestseller, Cry of the Kalahari is the story of the Owenses’s life with lions, brown hyenas, jackals, giraffes, and the many other creatures they came to know. It is also a gripping account of how they survived the dangers of living in one of the last and largest pristine areas on Earth.]]> 384 Mark Owens 0395647800 Kelly 5 4.43 1984
author: Mark Owens
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2020/03/19
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 196056205 A mesmerising novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor � a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth.

They were sisters and they would last past the end of time.

Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works long days on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.

Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the plan to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger.

A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us � and within us � Bear is a propulsive, mythical, rich novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.]]> 304 Julia Phillips 0525520430 Kelly 4 In line with many Grimms� fairytales, this story was also very dark. It explores the bond of sisterhood as well as themes of isolation and fear. The heartbreaking ending left me reeling.
Great interview with the author here: ]]> 3.22 2024
author: Julia Phillips
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves:
review:
What an interesting book! Inspired by the Brothers Grimm tale of Snow White & Red Rose, the author reimagines this tale in modern day San Juan Island. First of all, I love how the author captures the atmosphere of the PNW� her descriptions of the island were beautifully written. The author captures the frightening magnificence of the bear in gorgeous paragraphs as well.
In line with many Grimms� fairytales, this story was also very dark. It explores the bond of sisterhood as well as themes of isolation and fear. The heartbreaking ending left me reeling.
Great interview with the author here:
]]> 101145039 CIA agent Amanda Cole is thrust into an international conspiracy involving high-profile assassinations and Russian blackmail. It � s the case of her lifetime, but solving it might require her to betray another spy—who just so happens to be her father.

Amanda Cole is a brilliant young CIA agent, following in the footsteps of her father Charlie. But Amanda’s posting in Rome is a sleepy one. She’s listless and looking for action when, on a hot summer day, it walks right through her door. A lowly Russian operative is desperate, telling her that a US Senator is about to be assassinated on an overseas trip to Cairo. Amanda believes he’s telling the truth, but her superiors do not, and they determine that the best course of action is no action at all.

But when the assassination occurs, Amanda is suddenly thrust into an international conspiracy as she tries to find out why the senator was killed. What did he know that made him a target of the KGB and the Kremlin? Amanda pairs up with fast-talking, take-no-bullshit Kath, a brash older woman, and legendary spy, to get to the bottom of the case. The investigation takes them from Rome to London to Moscow to Helsinki.

As Amanda and Kath get closer to solving a case that involves double agents, blackmailed CEOs, illegal arms transfers, yachting oligarchs, and more, one question keeps coming back to haunt Amanda: why was her father’s name written down in the senator’s notes, notes that he seemed to be putting together right before he died? In order to get to the bottom of this international plot of blackmail, murder, and lies, Amanda must decide where her loyalty lies: with her country or with her family.

The Helsinki Affair is Pitoniak’s entrée into the genre of full-fledged spy fiction. This explosive novel is for fans of the masters of the genre—John Le Carre and Alan Furst—but will also introduce Pitoniak as a singular new talent in the world of female-centric spy fiction.]]> 355 Anna Pitoniak 1668014742 Kelly 3 3.36 2023
author: Anna Pitoniak
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves:
review:
As you can see by the number of days it took me to read this one, it was pretty put-down-able. To a certain extent, the story was interesting with the interweaving of Amanda and Charlie’s stories, but it lacked the intensity and suspense of a spy thriller. For a thriller, not so thrilling.
]]> 195430705
Frankie O’Neill and Anne Ryan would seem to have nothing in common. Frankie is a lonely ornithologist struggling to salvage her dissertation on the spotted owl following a rift with her advisor. Anne is an Irish musician far from home and family, raising her five-year-old, Aiden, who refuses to speak.

At Beauty Bay, a community of summer homes nestled on the shores of June Lake, in the remote foothills of Mount Adams, it’s off-season with most houses shuttered for the fall. But Frankie, adrift, returns to the rundown caretaker’s cottage that has been in the hardworking O'Neill family for generations—a beloved place and a constant reminder of the family she has lost. And Anne, in the wake of a tragedy that has disrupted her career and silenced her music, has fled to the neighboring house, a showy summer home owned by her husband's wealthy family.

When Frankie finds an injured baby crow in the forest, little does she realize that the charming bird will bring all three lost souls—Frankie, Anne, and Aiden—together on a journey toward hope, healing, and rediscovering joy. Crow Talk is an achingly beautiful story of love, grief, friendship, and the healing power of nature in the darkest of times.]]> 368 Eileen Garvin 0593473884 Kelly 5 Not to mention, so much cool information about crows!! I will never look at these birds in the same way just as I see bees differently after this author’s book Music of Bees. Another reviewer wrote “I trust this author�, and that really resonated with me.
And, added bonus: this is the second year in a row I have read one of this Oregon author’s books on a trip to Oregon. Reading about Hood River and a hidden lake in the Cascades while gazing at the Cascades is just about perfect. ]]> 4.08 2024
author: Eileen Garvin
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/30
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves:
review:
What a fantastic book!! Anne, Frankie, and Aiden are amazing characters and I was rooting *so hard* for them as soon as I met them. What a hope-filled story of grief, love, forgiveness, and finding one’s way. The author did a fantastic job drawing her character who is on the autism spectrum and complicated emotions of his parents. Just beautifully written.
Not to mention, so much cool information about crows!! I will never look at these birds in the same way just as I see bees differently after this author’s book Music of Bees. Another reviewer wrote “I trust this author�, and that really resonated with me.
And, added bonus: this is the second year in a row I have read one of this Oregon author’s books on a trip to Oregon. Reading about Hood River and a hidden lake in the Cascades while gazing at the Cascades is just about perfect.
]]> 59764020
Billington, Texas, is a place where nothing changes. Well, almost nothing. For the first time in nearly four decades, Mary Alice Roth is not getting ready for the first day of school at Billington High. A few months into her retirement—or, district mandated exile as she calls it—Mary Alice does not know how to fill her days. The annual picnic is coming up, but that isn’t nearly enough since the menu never changes and she had the roles mentally assigned weeks ago. At least there’s Ellie, who stops by each morning for coffee and whose reemergence in Mary Alice’s life is the one thing soothing the sting of retirement.

Mary Alice and Ellie were a pair since the day Ellie moved in next door. That they both were single mothers � Mary Alice widowed, Ellie divorced—with sons the same age was a pleasant coincidence, but they were forever linked when they lost the boys, one right after the other. Years later, the two are working their way back to a comfortable friendship. But when Mary Alice’s sister arrives on her doorstep with a staggering piece of news, it jeopardizes the careful shell she’s built around her life. The whole of her friendship with Ellie is put at risk, the fabric of a place as steadfast as Billington is questioned, and the unflappable, knotty fixture that is Mary Alice Roth might have to change after all.]]> 336 Bobby Finger 0593422341 Kelly 2 3.52 2022
author: Bobby Finger
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/24
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves:
review:
I was about 20 pages from the end when this book and nothing was resolved. Then all of a sudden everything got tied up in a neat little bow. No thanks.
]]> 195430688
Stella reached for an oyster, tipped her head and tossed it back. It was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean... Oysters, she thought, where have they been all my life?

When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual a one-way plane ticket and a note reading Go to Paris . But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a childhood trauma has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.

Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella and, for the first time in her life, Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress and together they embark on an adventure.

Her first iconic brasserie Les Deux Magots, where Stella tastes her first oysters, and then meets an octogenarian art collector who decides to take her under his wing. As Jules introduces her to a veritable who’s who of the 1980s Paris literary, art, and culinary worlds, Stella begins to understand what it might mean to live a larger life.

As weeks—and many decadent meals—go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed� at famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past. A feast for the senses, this novel is a testament to living deliciously, taking chances, and finding your true home.]]> 288 Ruth Reichl 0812996305 Kelly 4
Trigger warning: one scene of sexual abuse of a child in chapter 2. ]]> 3.68 2024
author: Ruth Reichl
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:
What a great book! Loved the growth of the main character and I absolutely adored the people she met on her journey: Lucie, Jean, Django, and George were all so finely drawn and I loved knowing them on these pages. It is clear the author’s first love is food, as the descriptions made me feel as though I was enjoying the food alongside the characters.

Trigger warning: one scene of sexual abuse of a child in chapter 2.
]]> 39971465
But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis and revolutionize modern communication...if anyone would listen to her.

A novel based on the true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication.]]> 312 Marie Benedict 1492666866 Kelly 3 What frustrated me the most was the last chapter. I find it hard to believe that that an impassioned, intelligent, confident woman would concede to defeat so easily. It just didn’t fit with the rest of the portrait the author painted. Perhaps the author painted the portrait in too broad of strokes, or perhaps she left key components from the conclusion of Hedy’s story, but there was defiantly a mismatch that left me with more questions than answers.]]> 3.75 2019
author: Marie Benedict
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves:
review:
I am usually a fan of historical fiction that reveals the otherwise unknown achievements of famous women. While learned so much about the achievements on and off the screen of Hedy Lamarr, this story fell a bit flat for me.
What frustrated me the most was the last chapter. I find it hard to believe that that an impassioned, intelligent, confident woman would concede to defeat so easily. It just didn’t fit with the rest of the portrait the author painted. Perhaps the author painted the portrait in too broad of strokes, or perhaps she left key components from the conclusion of Hedy’s story, but there was defiantly a mismatch that left me with more questions than answers.
]]> 199798457
One peaceful morning, in the small, Puget Sound town of Point Orchards, the lifeless body of Dr. Erin Landry is found hanging from a tree on the property of prodigal son and failed writer, Elijah Leith. Sheriff Jim Godbout’s initial investigation points to an obvious suicide, but upon closer inspection, there seem to be clues of foul play when he discovers that the circumstances of the beautiful doctor’s death were ripped straight from the pages of Elijah Leith’s own novel.

Out of money and motivation, thirty-three-year-old Elijah returns to his empty childhood home to lick the wounds of his futile writing career. Hungry for purpose, he throws himself into restoring the ramshackle cabin his father left behind and rekindling his relationship with Nakita, the extraordinary girl from the nearby reservation whom he betrayed but was never able to forget.

As the town of Point Orchards turns against him, Elijah must fight for his innocence against an unexpected foe who is close and cunning enough to flawlessly frame him for murder in this scintillating literary thriller that seeks to uncover a case of love, loss, and revenge.]]> 288 Sarah Crouch 166803509X Kelly 2 The writing itself was trite and pithy with way too many unnecessary extended similes. Example: “she stood pale and slender like a houseplant, a delicate orchid that bloomed brilliantly but hated sunlight and thrived in pots on office desks and bookshelves.�
Also odd: the author makes a note at the beginning about making up an indigenous tribe for some of the characters to “explore the deep connections between reservations and citizens towns.� This just does not happen and seems incredibly tokenizing to me. There is zero exploration of indigenous culture, so why include this?]]> 3.48 2024
author: Sarah Crouch
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/06/17
shelves:
review:
Well, kicked off summer break with a dud. I chose this because it is set in the PNW (my favorite) and the author does a good job describing the setting. However, the novel itself was really unfocused. It read like a homesteading/ finding yourself/ struggling writer/ second chances story with a weakly drawn murder mystery thrown in to spice things up. The reason for framing the suspected murderer was weak at best, and the bumbling sheriff with all of his “I reckon…� statements seemed more 1954 than 1994.
The writing itself was trite and pithy with way too many unnecessary extended similes. Example: “she stood pale and slender like a houseplant, a delicate orchid that bloomed brilliantly but hated sunlight and thrived in pots on office desks and bookshelves.�
Also odd: the author makes a note at the beginning about making up an indigenous tribe for some of the characters to “explore the deep connections between reservations and citizens towns.� This just does not happen and seems incredibly tokenizing to me. There is zero exploration of indigenous culture, so why include this?
]]> 174156145
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

A nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we’ll do for our loved ones, what we’ll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.]]> 467 Tana French 0593493435 Kelly 4 3.96 2024
author: Tana French
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 52661162
Then a local boy appeals to him for help. His brother is missing, and no one in the village, least of all the police, seems to care. And once again, Cal feels that restless itch.

Something is wrong in this community, and he must find out what, even if it brings trouble to his door.]]> 451 Tana French 073522465X Kelly 4 3.70 2020
author: Tana French
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves:
review:
Atmospheric mystery set in rural Ireland. Loved how she wrote both of the main characters, and the secondary characters are quirky & memorable.
]]> 182484307 An extraordinary, gloriously uplifting novel about the power of friendship and the puzzling ties that bind us

Clayton Stumper might be twenty-six years old, but he dresses like your grandpa and drinks sherry like your aunt. Abandoned at birth on the steps of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers, he was raised by a group of eccentric enigmatologists and now finds himself among the last survivors of a fading institution.

When the esteemed crossword compiler and main maternal presence in Clayton's life, Pippa Allsbrook, passes away, she bestows her final puzzle on him: a promise to reveal the mystery of his parentage and prepare him for life beyond the walls of the commune. As Clay begins to unpick the clues, he uncovers something even the Fellowship have never been able to solve—and it's a secret that has the potential to change everything.]]> 362 Samuel Burr 0593470095 Kelly 4 3.79 2024
author: Samuel Burr
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves:
review:
4.5 a book full of clever puzzles and warm fuzzies
]]> 55710565 Woman’s Friend magazine, things are looking up for Emmeline Lake as she takes on the challenge of becoming a young wartime advice columnist. Her relationship with boyfriend Charles (now stationed back in the UK) is blossoming, while Emmy’s best friend Bunty, still reeling from the very worst of the Blitz, is bravely looking to the future. Together, the friends are determined to Make a Go of It.

When the Ministry of Information calls on Britain’s women’s magazines to help recruit desperately needed female workers to the war effort, Emmy is thrilled to be asked to step up and help. But when she and Bunty meet a young woman who shows them the very real challenges that women war workers face, Emmy must tackle a life-changing dilemma between doing her duty and standing by her friends.]]> 304 A.J. Pearce 1501170090 Kelly 0 to-read 3.87 2021
author: A.J. Pearce
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36301038
Martha and her friends are sitting comfortably in Sweden� a little too comfortably. Determined to do more for their fellow pensioners—and jazz things up for themselves—they’re up to their usual antics: bank robberies, money laundering, and figuring out how to disappear in a garbage-truck-cum-getaway-car. They have their sights sets on building a resort village for seniors, but that’s going to take money. Lots of money.

While stalking their millionaire neighbor, Carl, on Facebook, Anna-Gretta scrolls through his photos—all of them featuring luxury yachts on the Riviera—and an idea comes to her on how to solve the League’s cash problem. When she shares the hare-brained scheme with the others, they’re all aboard.

Their plan to cheat billionaires out of their luxury yachts in the south of France’s sun-bleached Saint-Tropez soon turns into the heist of their lives with the police hot on their heels—as well as a couple of ruthless ex-cons. Now this wily group of walker-equipped conspirators are hell-bent on accomplishing their dangerous mission—no matter the consequences…]]> 447 Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg 006269233X Kelly 0 to-read 3.36 2016
author: Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60784757 Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker--or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.]]> 432 Eleanor Catton 0374110336 Kelly 1 3.79 2023
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves:
review:
I put this one aside after about 50 pages, then reopened it to give it a second chance. Terrible decision. Over 400 pages of every little thing being spelled out down to the way the characters stir their milk into their tea� then a dramatic twist of an ending that the author spent 10 pages on? So unsatisfying.
]]> 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Kelly 5 4.04 2023
author: Amanda Peters
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/18
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves:
review:
Wonderful story!! My heart broke for Norma and Joe over and over as I read the two interwoven threads of their stories. What a testament to the power of family� and also a warning to the devastating effects that power can have.
]]> 65646968
A lighthearted whodunnit about a grandmother-mother-daughter trio of amateur sleuths. Gilmore Girls , but with murder.

High-powered businesswoman Lana Rubicon has a lot to be proud her keen intelligence, impeccable taste, and the L.A. real estate empire she’s built. But when she finds herself trapped 300 miles north of the city, convalescing in a sleepy   coastal town with her adult daughter Beth and teenage granddaughter Jack, Lana is stuck counting otters instead of square footage—and hoping that boredom won’t kill her before the cancer does. 

Then Jack—tiny in stature but fiercely independent—happens upon a dead body while kayaking. She quickly becomes a suspect in the homicide investigation, and the Rubicon women are thrown into chaos. Beth thinks Lana should focus on recovery, but Lana has a better idea. She’ll pull on her wig, find the true murderer, protect her family, and prove she still has power. With Jack and Beth’s help, Lana uncovers a web of lies, family vendettas, and land disputes lurking beneath the surface of a community populated by folksy conservationists and wealthy ranchers. But as their amateur snooping advances into ever-more dangerous territory, the headstrong Rubicon women must learn to do the one thing they’ve always depend on each other.]]> 357 Nina Simon 0063315041 Kelly 4 3.52 2023
author: Nina Simon
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/31
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 127306192 New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.

But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.

Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.]]> 342 Xóchitl González 1250786215 Kelly 2 3.76 2024
author: Xóchitl González
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/03/24
shelves:
review:
Honestly, I was about to give this 4.5 or 5 stars until I read some other reviews and did a little research. It appears that this author took the story of artist Ana Mendieta and recreated her as Anita de Monte. I am 100% in favor of biographical novels as they’ve introduced me to amazing people in history. However, it was not until I read the reviews that I learned this story is based on a real person (by another name’s) life. No mention in the authors note, end pages, etc� just a dedication to Ana (first name only). Learning this left a sour taste in my mouth. I really enjoyed the story and the writing, but it feels like, by not acknowledging the actual person by name, the author is perpetuating *exactly* what the book rages against.
]]> 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Kelly 5 4.59 2024
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/17
date added: 2024/03/17
shelves:
review:
Wow, wow, wow. This book is incredibly written: horrifying, heartbreaking, and healing. 100% recommend.
]]> 133206574 When a rich Black debutante enlists the help of a low-level speakeasy manager to identify the head of an underground crime syndicate, the two are thrust into the dangerous world of Prohibition-era Chicago.

The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore with Chicago at its beating heart.

Twenty-year-old Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the alleged “wealthiest Negro in America,� a Kentucky horse breeder whose wealth and prestige catapults his family to the heights of the exclusive, elite Black society. After the unexpected death of her brother—the family’s presumed heir—Nelly goes from being virtually unknown to a premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage. For the past year, she has worked undercover as an investigative journalist for the Chicago Defender , sharing the achievements and tribulations of everyday Black people living in the shadow of Jim Crow. Now, her latest assignment thrusts her into the den of a dangerous vice the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street.

Charming and mysterious, Jay Shorey strives to balance his connection to the Chicago underworld with his desperate yearning for the refinement and protection of high society. Born to a murdered bi-racial couple in rural Alabama, he knows firsthand what it means to be denied a chance at the American dream. When a tragic turn of fate gave Jay a rare path out, he took it without question. He washed up on Chicago’s storied shores and never looked back, until now. 

When Nelly’s and Jay’s paths cross, she recruits him to help expose the Mayor and bring about a lasting change in a corrupted city. Trapped between the monolith of Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the Black upper class, and the violence of Prohibition-era Chicago, Jay and Nelly work together and stoke the flames of a love worth fighting for. And yet, as with all things in America, there is a price to be paid. What risk is Nelly willing to take for a young man willing to risk it all? 

Debut author Avery Cunningham’s stunning novel is at once an epic love story, a riveting historical drama, and a brilliant exploration of Black society and perseverance when the �20s first began to roar.]]> 528 Avery Cunningham 1368093000 Kelly 2 Mystery? Love triangle? Mobster story? This book tried to be all of these things and failed miserably at each one. The “mystery� was clear from the moment the reader first lays eyes on the character, yet Nelly, in all of her “brilliance and charm�, took 500 pages to have the big aha moment. The love triangle was a choice between a toxic relationship and a sugar daddy for a woman who claimed to desire freedom and independence. It just didn’t add up to a great read for me. ]]> 3.52 2024
author: Avery Cunningham
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves:
review:
Rounded down from 2.5
Mystery? Love triangle? Mobster story? This book tried to be all of these things and failed miserably at each one. The “mystery� was clear from the moment the reader first lays eyes on the character, yet Nelly, in all of her “brilliance and charm�, took 500 pages to have the big aha moment. The love triangle was a choice between a toxic relationship and a sugar daddy for a woman who claimed to desire freedom and independence. It just didn’t add up to a great read for me.
]]> 203164368 From the New York Times bestselling co-author of Mad Honey comes an “inspiring� (Elle) novel about two women, centuries apart—one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays—who are both forced to hide behind another name.

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.

In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.]]> 525 Jodi Picoult 059349721X Kelly 0 to-read 4.09 2024
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry Kelly 0 to-read 4.21 2024
author: Emily Henry
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40914164
There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit.

We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer.

Understood? Then let's begin . . .

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others . . .

The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave listeners guessing until the very last second.]]> 458 Stuart Turton 149267012X Kelly 0 to-read 3.75 2018
author: Stuart Turton
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 167006698
The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:

the debut writer (me!)

the forensic science writer

the blockbuster writer

the legal thriller writer

the literary writer

the psychological suspense writer

But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.

Of course, we should also know how to commit one.

How can you find a killer when all the suspects know how to get away with murder?]]> 320 Benjamin Stevenson 006327907X Kelly 4
I really like this author’s conversational style. The book was funny, complicated, and had just enough of a trail of crumbs to make the reveal of the whodunnit both exciting and not completely surprising to the reader. Loved this sequel as much as (if not more than??) the first book. ]]> 3.82 2023
author: Benjamin Stevenson
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/28
date added: 2024/02/28
shelves:
review:
â€Âٱč±ô±đ˛Ô»ĺľ±»ĺâ€�

I really like this author’s conversational style. The book was funny, complicated, and had just enough of a trail of crumbs to make the reveal of the whodunnit both exciting and not completely surprising to the reader. Loved this sequel as much as (if not more than??) the first book.
]]> 127482608
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie's starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardised by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks and illicit intrigue.

A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior.]]> 400 Kiley Reid 0593328205 Kelly 3 3.32 2024
author: Kiley Reid
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/25
date added: 2024/02/25
shelves:
review:
It is interesting to read the other reviews of this one� so polarized! And I kind of agree with everyone! I loved it and hated it in equal measure. On one hand, I enjoyed the satirical view of campus life and the authors not-so-subtle messaging about race, money, and class. On the other hand, I found every character (even the ones we’re “supposed to� like) to be so frustrating! I am a fan of the “antifragile� approach to parenting, but these kids (and some of the adults) really needed a mentor of some sort. The whole book was a portrait of self-destructive behavior�- no redemption arc. Which was, perhaps, the point given it was a satire�. I give this one a very firm 3 stars.
]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Kelly 2 3.84 2023
author: James McBride
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/11
date added: 2024/02/11
shelves:
review:
I very rarely put a book in the DNF pile, but this one ended up there. I gave up on this book around the halfway point. I really wanted to love it� I had heard so many good things and it came recommended by people who have similar book preferences. My problem was this: every time the plot got rolling, McBride introduced another character and spent 15 or so pages on their back story. It was like being in accordion style traffic. Get rolling for 10 pages or so, then stop everything to hear unnecessary details about a minor character. The flow was just really off for me. The writing itself was fantastic, and I am thinking that perhaps this would have been better as a loosely connected set of short stories set on Chicken Hill.
]]> 101135532
In this wondrous and eye-opening exploration, Steve Searles, the renowned and respected "Bear Whisperer" of Mammoth Lakes, takes the reader on a journey into the lives of these remarkable creatures and the world we share.

In the late 1990s, the town of Mammoth Lakes, California hired Steve Searles as a hunter to cull half its troublesome bear population. But as he began to prepare for the grim task, the bears soon won him over, and Searles realized there had to be a better way. He soon developed non-lethal tactics to control their behavior and overpopulation that heralded a landmark moment in the care and handling of the American black bear.

But change was not without its challenges. To some, his success was dismissed due to his lack of formal academic training. Yet Searles never wavered in his commitment, and eventually became not just local folk hero but a nationally recognized expert. This high school dropout saved not just the bears, but, in many ways, his community.

In a tradition that runs from John Muir to Bear Grylls, Searles finds a fellowship with nature and a deeper meaning in the world of bears. Do bears understand things we don’t? Are they dialed in to some greater natural force?

Unlike us, bears waste little time on unreasonable fears. Bears are fully in the moment. They have an inner peace that seems to offset their power and strength. That may explain why no other animal on the planet is as revered as the bear.

As Searles shares his remarkable knowledge and we become immersed in the ursine world, you’ll never look at bears or nature the same way again. Warm and poignant, and perfect for anyone who has been fascinated by the natural world, What the Bears Know shows that wisdom and fulfillment can come from unexpected places.]]> 272 Steve Searles 163936501X Kelly 5 3.98 2023
author: Steve Searles
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves:
review:
I read this book because I thought I’d learn some cool stuff about bears. Little did I know the lessons in store� so grateful for Searles sharing the truths and the magic he’s learned from the bears. Loved it.
]]> 54005204 Brexit is in full swing. And due to mysterious accidents, the Slough Houses ranks continue to thin. The seventh entry to the Slough House series is as thrilling and bleeding-edge relevant as ever.

A year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead from novichok poisoning, Diana Taverner is on the warpath. What seems a gutless response from the government has pushed the Service's First Desk into mounting her own counter-offensive—but she's had to make a deal with the devil first. And given that the devil in question is arch-manipulator Peter Judd, she could be about to lose control of everything she's fought for.

Meanwhile, still reeling from recent losses, the slow horses are worried they've been pushed further into the cold. Slough House has been wiped from Service records, and fatal accidents keep happening. No wonder Jackson Lamb's crew are feeling paranoid. But have they actually been targeted? With a new populist movement taking a grip on London's streets, and the old order ensuring that everything's for sale to the highest bidder, the world's an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass.

But the slow horses aren't famed for making wise decisions. And with enemies on all sides, not even Jackson Lamb can keep his crew from harm.]]> 312 Mick Herron 1641292369 Kelly 4 4.29 2021
author: Mick Herron
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 127305817
It’s 1990 and seventeen-year-old Marley West is blazing into the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. A perpetual loner, she seeks a place at someone’s table and a family of her own. The first thing she sees when she arrives in town is three men standing on a rooftop. Their silhouettes blot out the sun.

The Joseph brothers become Marley’s whole world before she can blink. Soon, she is young wife to one, The One Who Got Away to another, and adopted mother to them all. As their own mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego, Marley steps in to shepherd these unruly men. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface and suddenly the family’s survival hangs in the balance. With Marley as their light, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known―or whether together they can build something stronger in its place.]]> 336 Amy Jo Burns 1250908566 Kelly 3 3.78 2024
author: Amy Jo Burns
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/28
date added: 2024/01/28
shelves:
review:
This one was thoroughly “meh� for me. While I usually enjoy character driven family sagas, this one had too many soap opera elements for me. I enjoyed the growth in Marley’s character, but the journey felt much longer than the 300ish pages that it took. A bright spot was the way the pastor, Lennox, supported a character who came out to him. Bravo on that at least.
]]> 42046728 If Spook Street is where spies live, Joe Country is where they go to die.

Like the ringing of a dead man's phone, or an unwelcome guest at a funeral . . . In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him an outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears himself apart in the process.

Meanwhile, in Regent's Park, Diana Taverner's tenure as First Desk is running into difficulties. If she's going to make the Service fit for purpose, she might have to make deals with a familiar old devil . . . And with winter taking its grip, Jackson Lamb would sooner be left brooding in peace, but even he can't ignore the dried blood on his carpets. So when the man responsible breaks cover at last, Lamb sends the slow horses out to even the score.]]> 345 Mick Herron 1641290552 Kelly 4 4.21 2019
author: Mick Herron
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/26
date added: 2024/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 112975658 A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546874 Kelly 5
Yep, that is this novel in a nutshell!

Martha’s story is inspiring and the author’s short forays into her backstory made the main plot all the more compelling. There is a large cast of characters, however the author draws them so clearly that there is no confusion keeping straight who’s who. I loved the love the author depicts between 50-something Martha and her husband. The mystery of the novel had me guessing, but there is so much more depth to this story than a simple whodunnit. ]]> 4.38 2023
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/01/16
shelves:
review:
This is what my daughters would call a “Kelly novel�: historical fiction with a strong female main character (bonus points if she is based on a real person) who faces seemingly insurmountable challenges with strength and power.

Yep, that is this novel in a nutshell!

Martha’s story is inspiring and the author’s short forays into her backstory made the main plot all the more compelling. There is a large cast of characters, however the author draws them so clearly that there is no confusion keeping straight who’s who. I loved the love the author depicts between 50-something Martha and her husband. The mystery of the novel had me guessing, but there is so much more depth to this story than a simple whodunnit.
]]> 139069 The harrowing tale of British explorer Ernest Shackleton's 1914 attempt to reach the South Pole, one of the greatest adventure stories of the modern age.

In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. When their ship was finally crushed between two ice floes, they attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of the South Atlantic's heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization.

In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton's fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

First edition: here.]]> 282 Alfred Lansing Kelly 5 4.42 1959
author: Alfred Lansing
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1959
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/12
date added: 2024/01/12
shelves:
review:
What an incredible story of perseverance! It is hard to believe this is a true story. These men are inspiring!
]]> 101016900 The first in a crime series set in the Louisiana bayou, introducing the uncensored amateur sleuth Glory Broussard.

It’s a hot and sticky Sunday in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Glory has settled into her usual after-church routine, meeting gamblers at the local coffee shop, where she works as a small-time bookie. Sitting at her corner table, Glory hears that her best friend—a nun beloved by the community—has been found dead in her apartment. When police declare the mysterious death a suicide, Glory is convinced that there must be more to the story and, with her reluctant daughter, with troubles of her own, in tow, launches a shadow investigation in a town of oil tycoons, church gossips, and a rumored voodoo priestess. As a Black woman of a certain age who grew up in a segregated Louisiana, Glory is used to being minimized and overlooked. But she’s determined to make her presence known as the case leads her deep into a web of intrigue she never realized Lafayette could harbor.]]> 271 Danielle Arceneaux 1639364846 Kelly 4 3.74 2023
author: Danielle Arceneaux
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/07
shelves:
review:
A fun lighthearted mystery for a cozy, snowy weekend. Looking forward to the sequel!
]]> 59336985 The fifth entry in CWA Gold dagger-winning Slough House series.

London Rules might not be written down, but everyone knows rule one: Cover your arse.

At MI5 headquarters Regent's Park, First Desk Claude Whelan is learning this the hard way. Tasked with protecting a beleaguered prime minister, he's facing attack from all directions himself: from the showboating MP who orchestrated the Brexit vote, and now has his sights set on Number Ten; from the showboat's wife, a tabloid columnist, who's crucifying Whelan in print; from the PM's favorite Muslim, who's about to be elected mayor of the West Midlands, despite the dark secret he's hiding; and especially from his own deputy, Lady Di Taverner, who's alert for Claude's every stumble. Meanwhile, the country's being rocked by an apparently random string of terror attacks.

Over at Slough House, the MI5 satellite office for outcast and demoted spies, the agents are struggling with personal problems: repressed grief, various addictions, retail paralysis, and the nagging suspicion that their newest colleague is a psychopath. Plus someone is trying to kill Roddy Ho. But collectively, they're about to rediscover their greatest strength - that of making a bad situation much, much worse.]]> 383 Mick Herron Kelly 3 4.36 2018
author: Mick Herron
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/02
date added: 2024/01/02
shelves:
review:
3.5 Went from what I think was my favorite Slough House book (#4) to my least. The story just didn’t capture me like the last one, although I think this one had the most funny one-liners from Lamb. And I love that Flyte can dish it back to him.
]]> 30282181
But River has other things to worry about. A bomb goes off in the middle of a busy shopping center and kills forty innocent civilians. The agents of Slough House have to figure out who is behind this act of terror before the situation escalates.]]> 307 Mick Herron Kelly 4 4.36 2017
author: Mick Herron
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/29
date added: 2023/12/29
shelves:
review:
Probably my favorite of the Slough House books so far� lots of interesting twists & a lot revealed about several characters� backstories.
]]> 53360084 Love. Desire. Betrayal. Her choice could save a nation.

Chicago, 1950. Rosalind Porter has always defied expectations--in her work as a physicist on the Manhattan Project and in her passionate love affair with colleague Thomas Weaver. Five years after the end of both, her guilt over the bomb and her heartbreak over Weaver are intertwined. She desperately misses her work in the lab, yet has almost resigned herself to a more conventional life.

Then Weaver gets back in touch--and so does the FBI. Special Agent Charlie Szydlo wants Roz to spy on Weaver, whom the FBI suspects of passing nuclear secrets to Russia. Roz helped to develop these secrets and knows better than anyone the devastating power such knowledge holds. But can she spy on a man she still loves, despite her better instincts? At the same time, something about Charlie draws her in. He's a former prisoner of war haunted by his past, just as her past haunts her.

As Rosalind's feelings for each man deepen, so too does the danger she finds herself in. She will have to choose: the man who taught her how to love . . . or the man her love might save?]]> 368 Jennie Fields 0593085337 Kelly 0 3.62 2020
author: Jennie Fields
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 17978193
And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud, the letters they couldn’t send home, the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind.

The Wives of Los Alamos is a novel that sheds light onto one of the strangest and most monumental research projects in modern history, and a testament to a remarkable group of women who carved out a life for themselves, in spite of the chaos of the war and the shroud of intense secrecy.]]> 240 TaraShea Nesbit 1620405032 Kelly 0 to-read 3.24 2014
author: TaraShea Nesbit
name: Kelly
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56930703 In this rapturous memoir, writer and activist Laura Coleman shares the story of her liberating journey in the Amazon jungle, where she fell in love with a magnificent cat who changed her life.

Laura was in her early twenties and directionless when she quit her job to backpack in Bolivia. Fate landed her at a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon jungle where she was assigned to a beautiful and complex puma named Wayra. Wide-eyed, inexperienced, and comically terrified, Laura made the scrappy, make-do camp her home. And in Wayra, she made a friend for life.

They weren’t alone, not with over a hundred quirky animals to care for, each lost and hurt in their own a pair of suicidal, bra-stealing monkeys, a frustrated parrot desperate to fly, and a pig with a wicked sense of humor. The humans, too, were cause for laughter and tears. There were animal whisperers, committed staff, wildly devoted volunteers, handsome heartbreakers, and a machete-wielding prom queen who carried Laura through. Most of all, there was the jungle—lyrical and alive—and there was Wayra, who would ultimately teach Laura so much about love, healing, and the person she was capable of becoming.

Set against a turbulent and poignant backdrop of deforestation, the illegal pet trade, and forest fires, The Puma Years explores what happens when two desperate creatures in need of rescue find one another.]]> 321 Laura Coleman 1542022207 Kelly 5 4.34 2021
author: Laura Coleman
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/27
date added: 2023/12/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 Kelly 4 4.17 2022
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Kelly
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/24
date added: 2023/12/17
shelves:
review:
The story of Lexington and Jarret was amazing. I could have done without the Theo/ Jess storyline.
]]>