en-US Fri, 21 Mar 2025 15:37:25 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 48836871 320 Thornton Wilder 0062990195 Gillian 0 to-read 3.33 1948
author: Thornton Wilder
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1948
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]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?�

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 Gillian 0 to-read 3.99 2024
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
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]]> 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Gillian 0 to-read 3.53 2024
author: Miranda July
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
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]]> 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Gillian 0 to-read 3.67 2025
author: Laila Lalami
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
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]]> 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 Gillian 0 to-read 3.54 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
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]]> 213870133 A wickedly funny and audacious debut novel following an academic who flees from heartbreak and lands in Iraq with a one-of-a-kind job offer—only to be forced to do the work of confronting herself.

When Nadia Amin, a witty and bighearted PhD, publishes an article on deradicalization, everything changes. The United Nations comes calling with an opportunity to put her theory into practice and lead a rehabilitation program for women caught in the crosshairs of harmful ideology. And why not? Abandoned by her mother and devastated by unrequited love, she leaps at the chance.

In Iraq, Nadia quickly realizes she’s in over her head. The UN is a mess of competing interests, and her team consists of Goody Two-shoes Sherri who never passes up an opportunity to remind Nadia of her objections; and Pierre, a snippy Frenchman who has no qualms about perpetually scrolling through Grindr. But then Nadia meets Sara, a hilarious, foul-mouthed East Londoner who was pulled into radicalism at just fifteen. The two are kindred spirits, and Nadia vows to get Sara home.

As the rehabilitation program picks up traction, Sara reveals a secret that upends everything, forcing Nadia to make a drastic choice. In the fallout, Nadia’s brown-savior fantasies crumble, leaving her to wonder if she can save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

A fierce, wildly funny, and razor-sharp exploration of radicalism, family, and the quest for belonging, Fundamentally boldly inspects one of the defining controversies of our age and introduces a fearless new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 352 Nussaibah Younis 0593851382 Gillian 0 to-read 3.83 2025
author: Nussaibah Younis
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
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]]> 219521090 A publishing event ten years in the making�a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists�the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

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

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]> 416 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 059380273X Gillian 0 to-read 3.96 2025
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.96
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]]> 200189179
Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that if you're not too bound by the Big Man's rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. Now her mother is dead in a trick gone wrong and young Tibb is orphaned and alone.

As she wends her way across England's fields and forests, Tibb will discover there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything.

And so, when the opportunity presents itself to escape the shackles society has placed on them, Tibb and her new friends conjure an audacious plan: her greatest trickerie yet. But before they know it, their hoax takes on a life of its own, drawing crowds - and vengeful enemies - to their door...

A Little Trickerie is blazingly original, disarmingly funny and deeply moving. Portraying a side of Tudor England rarely seen, it's a tale of belief and superstition, kinship and courage, with a ragtag cast of characters and an unforgettable and distinctly unangelic heroine.]]> 371 Rosanna Pike 0241646065 Gillian 0 to-read 4.18 2024
author: Rosanna Pike
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
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]]> 59696165 Inspired by real events, a touching novel about a new class of courageous women who worked at London’s historic Kew Gardens during World War II.In the face of war, gardening is their duty…When Daisy Cooper’s new husband joins the RAF to fight the Battle of Britain, she’s terrified she’s going to lose him. So when her mother Ivy suggests she join the gardeners at Kew to keep busy, Daisy’s intrigued. After all, Ivy worked at Kew during the last great war and made lifelong friends along the way.ĚýLouisa Armitage, not ready to hang up her gardening gloves just yet, and Beth Sanderson, an aspiring doctor looking to make a difference, decide to enlist as well. When tragedy strikes, the women are forced to come together to support one other during their darkest hours. But can the Kew Gardens Girls survive the horrors of war-torn London this time?]]> 444 Posy Lovell 0593419723 Gillian 0 to-read 4.07 2021
author: Posy Lovell
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
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]]> 22609310
For once, Auburn takes a chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is hiding a huge secret. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything Auburn loves most, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it—but can she do it?]]> 306 Colleen Hoover 1476791457 Gillian 0 to-read 4.14 2015
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 17393102
Dragon blood and scales, dragon liver and eyes and teeth.

All required ingredients for medicines with near-miraculous healing powers. The legendary blue dragon Tintaglia is dying of wounds inflicted by hunters sent by the Duke of Chalced, who meanwhile preserves his dwindling life by consuming the blood of the dragon's poet Selden Vestrit.

If Tintaglia perishes, her ancestral memories will die with her. And the dragons in the ancient city of Kelsingra will lose the secret knowledge they need to survive.

Their keepers immerse themselves in the dangerously addictive memory-stone records of the city in the hope of recovering the Elderling magic that once allowed humans and dragons to co-exist. In doing so they risk losing their own identities, even their lives.

And danger threatens from beyond the city, too. For war is coming: war between dragonkind and those who would destroy them.]]> 535 Robin Hobb 0007444133 Gillian 0 to-read 4.20 2013
author: Robin Hobb
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2013
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]]> 29239940 Alternate cover edition for ASIN B01HB9Q7CW

A powerful novel of friendship set in a traveling circus during World War II, The Orphan's Tale introduces two extraordinary women and their harrowing stories of sacrifice and survival.

Sixteen-year-old Noa has been cast out in disgrace after becoming pregnant by a Nazi soldier and being forced to give up her baby. She lives above a small rail station, which she cleans in order to earn her keep. When Noa discovers a boxcar containing dozens of Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp, she is reminded of the child that was taken from her. And in a moment that will change the course of her life, she snatches one of the babies and flees into the snowy night.

Noa finds refuge with a German circus, but she must learn the flying trapeze act so she can blend in undetected, spurning the resentment of the lead aerialist, Astrid. At first rivals, Noa and Astrid soon forge a powerful bond. But as the facade that protects them proves increasingly tenuous, Noa and Astrid must decide whether their friendship is enough to save one another - or if the secrets that burn between them will destroy everything.]]> 353 Pam Jenoff 0778319814 Gillian 3 4.00 2017
author: Pam Jenoff
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 3
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]]> 105614 In the darkest years of Nazi occupation and genocide, Etty Hillesum remained a celebrant of life whose lucid intelligence, sympathy, and almost impossible gallantry were themselves a form of inner resistance. The adult counterpart to Anne Frank, Hillesum testifies to the possibility of awareness and compassion in the face of the most devastating challenge to one's humanity. She died at Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of twenty-nine.]]> 376 Etty Hillesum 0805050876 Gillian 0 to-read 4.36 1981
author: Etty Hillesum
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1981
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]]> 50158413 From a bestselling memoirist, a thoughtful and provocative story of changing identity, complex sexuality, and enduring family relationships
Ěý
At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irredeemably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we’d like to believe.
Ěý
Like many of us, Wizenberg had long understood sexual orientation as a stable part of ourselves: we’re “born this way.� Suddenly she realized that her story was more complicated. Who was she, she wondered, if something at her very core could change so radically? The Fixed Stars is a taut, electrifying memoir exploring timely and timeless questions about desire, identity, and the limits and possibilities of family. In honest and searing prose, Wizenberg forges a new path: through the murk of separation and divorce, coming out to family and friends, learning to co-parent a young child, and realizing a new vision of love. The result is a frank and moving story about letting go of rigid definitions and ideals that no longer fit, and learning instead who we really are.
Ěý]]> 256 Molly Wizenberg 141974299X Gillian 5 3.69 2020
author: Molly Wizenberg
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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]]> 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 Gillian 0 to-read 4.47 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
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]]> 157666174 'Joelle Taylor has a Midas touch with words' Diana Souhami

The tattoo was a reclamation, a flag we mounted in the centre of our own landscape.

A woman walks into a tattoo parlour. But this is no ordinary woman, and this is Hackney in 2233.

Jones' body is covered in tattoos but she wants to add one final inking to her gallery - a thin line of ink mixed with blood that connects her body art together, creating a unique map. As the two artists set to work, Jones tells them the story behind each tattoo. As Jones is no ordinary woman, these are no ordinary tattoos: each one represents a doorway to a life Jones fell into, a 'remembering'. Some of these lives were in the past, others in the future, some are sideways, but each of them connects Jones to the two tattoo artists in some way, though they are unaware of it.

We visit the dystopian cities of the Quiet Men, the coal mines of 19th century Lancashire, join a gang of vigilante sex workers, enter the world of an INCEL murderer, haunt the old Maryville gay bar, and uncover plans to genetically modify female children. Each of the stories brings us closer to Jones' truth, and how her life is intricately interwoven with that of the women tattooing her body.

Set across geographies and timespans, The Night Alphabet is a dazzlingly bold and original work, a deep investigation into human nature and violence against women.]]> 432 Joelle Taylor 152943095X Gillian 0 to-read 4.13
author: Joelle Taylor
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.13
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]]> 257845 224 Charles Portis 1585673692 Gillian 0 to-read 4.15 1968
author: Charles Portis
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1968
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]]> 206012667
In a tight-knit Levantine Christian family in 1960s Cairo, Tarek's entire life is written in advance. He'll be a doctor like his father, marry, and have children. Under the watchful eye of the family's strong women, he starts to do just that - until a patient's son, Ali, enters his life and turns it upside down. The two men's unsayable relationship sparks a series of events as dramatic as the Six-Day War and assassination of President Anwar Sadat playing out in the background.

The turn of the millennium finds Tarek living as a doctor in Montreal. Someone is writing about him and to him, piecing together a past he wants only to forget. But who is the writer of this tale? And will Tarek figure it out in time?

From Cairo's grand boulevards and hidden alleys to Montreal's grim winter, from the reign of Nasser to the early 2000s, What I Know About You tells the heartbreaking story of a famil]]> 224 Éric Chacour 1552454851 Gillian 0 to-read 4.18 2023
author: Éric Chacour
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
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]]> 198530985 A poignant debut novel about the lives of women in a claustrophobic coast town and the search for independence in a society that seeks to limit it.

Set in 1994, The Coast Road tells the story of two women--Izzy Keaveney, a housewife, and Colette Crowley, a poet. Colette has left her husband and sons for a married man in Dublin. When she returns to her home in County Donegal to try to pick up the pieces of her old life, her husband, Shaun, a successful businessman, denies her access to her children.

The only way she can see them is with the help of neighbour Izzy, acting as a go-between. Izzy also feels caught in a troubled marriage. The friendship that develops between them will ultimately lead to tragedy for one, and freedom for the other.

Addictive as Big Little Lies with a depth and compassion that rivals the works of Claire Keegan, Elizabeth Strout, and Colm TĂłibĂ­n, The Coast Road is a story about the limits placed on women's lives in Ireland only a generation ago, and the consequences women have suffered trying to gain independence. Award-winning Irish author Alan Murrin reminds us of the price we are forced to pay to find freedom.]]> 320 Alan Murrin 0063336529 Gillian 0 to-read 3.89 2024
author: Alan Murrin
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.89
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]]> 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 196 Carys Davies 1668030667 Gillian 0 to-read 3.85
author: Carys Davies
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.85
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]]> 203608446 When a female musician is found murdered on a small tropical island, after a string of similar deaths, outraged local women take matters into their own hands.The quiet calm of Ash Wednesday morning. Carnival is over. Everyone on the small island of St. Colibri is sleeping peacefully. Everyone except Sora Tanaka, a young pan player laying under the cannonball tree. Sora, a professional musician, had been visiting St. Colibri to take part in the island’s famous steel pan competition. But Sora isn’t asleep; she’s brutally murdered, and still in her costume. And as the women of this island know all too well, Sora is far from the first woman to be killed, and she probably won’t be the last, either. In fact, the problem of women being killed on the island is so bad, there’s even a dedicated unit within the police OMWEN, the Office for Murdered Women, headed by Inspector Cuthbert Loveday.ĚýIn this powerful new rewriting of the detective novel, Sora’s death is the last straw and the beginning of something much larger, a revolution some are calling it. The event draws together four women who had never before een each other as a friend of the victim, the organizer of a sex workersâ€� collective, a local activist, and the Prime Minister’s wife. Tenderly, sometimes, hilariously, Passiontide chronicles how these women join forces and find new ways to help one another.]]> 368 Monique Roffey 0593802470 Gillian 0 to-read 3.84
author: Monique Roffey
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.84
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]]> 168632462 A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers.

"Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout." THE GUARDIAN UK]]> 320 Charlotte Wood Gillian 0 to-read 3.73 2023
author: Charlotte Wood
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.73
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]]> 181110022 Combining the raw realism and vulnerability of Shuggie Bain and Detransition, Baby with the poignant sensibility of Pedro AlmodĂłvar, a staggering coming-of-age novel deeply rooted in the class struggles of a trans woman growing up in Madrid in the last decades of the twentieth century.

"I saw a whole generation of boys fall like irredeemable angels."

Told in the heartrending voice of a girl trapped within the body of a boy, Bad Habit is a story of coming-of-age in working class Madrid–in a godforsaken neighborhood ironically named after a saint. Alana S. Portero's spunky protagonist struggles to make sense of herself and the world she inhabits, conveying her surroundings with mythic allusions and a poetic vitality absent from everyday life.

Set against the heroin epidemic that ravaged Madrid in the 1980s and the city’s vibrant party scene that dominated its nightlife in the 1990s, Bad Habit follows Portero’s unnamed protagonist as she grows up in a blue-collar suburb that has no place for her. Forging ahead, she discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a lively party scene animated by junkies, pop divas, and fallen angels. But with each step she takes forward, she finds herself confronted by a violence she does not yet know how to counter; in this exciting, often terrifying, world each choice can truly be a matter of life and death.

Blistering and compassionate, Bad Habit illuminates the ties between gender and class, the search for identity, and the power of sisterhood. Shimmering in its lyrical beauty, vivid in its realism, autobiographical in its detail, it is a mesmerizing story of self-realization that speaks to the outsider in all of us.

Translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem]]> 240 Alana S. Portero 006333612X Gillian 0 to-read 4.22 2023
author: Alana S. Portero
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
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]]> 195436024 The tender, sensual and moving new novel from the award-winning and bestselling author of The Slap and Damascus. A compelling contemporary love story between two middle-aged men, told with grace, heart and wisdom.

No life is simple, and no life is without sorrow. No life is perfect.

Two middle-aged men meet on an internet date. Each has been scarred by a previous relationship; each has his own compelling reasons for giving up on the idea of finding love.

But still they both turn up for the dinner, feel the spark and the possibility of something more.ĚýFeel the fear of failing again, of being hurt and humiliated and further annihilated by love.

How can they take the risk of falling in love again. How can they not?

A tender, affecting novel of love, of hope, of forgiveness by one of our most fearless and truthful interpreters of the human heart, the acclaimed bestselling author ofâ€�The Slap a˛Ô»ĺâ€�Damascus.

Praise for Christos

'I've admired the risk and power of all his novels, but this might be the riskiest of all—so personal, so delicate and true—and I love it.' � Charlotte Wood on 7 1/2

'A scorching, mythic work with a heart of the sweetest intimacy.'� Helen Garner on 7 1/2

'The audacity of Tsiolkas is still a thrill. And, dare one say it, necessary.' � Nigel Featherstone on 7 1/2

'Tsiolkas has proved himself a heroic writer, ready to enter the fray and wrestle with intractable moral and political questions. A powerful parable of our times.' � The Saturday Paper on Damascus

'Every time I was 10 pages in a new book, I thought, "It's not Damascus", and put it aside for another day . . .' � Stephen Romei, Weekend Australian on Damascus

'I finished Barracuda on a moved, elated, immersed . . . This is the work of a superb writer who has completely mastered his craft but lost nothing of his fiery spirit in so doing. It is a big achievement.' � The Guardian

'Once in a while a novel comes along that reminds me why I love to The Slap is such a book . . . Tsiolkas throws open the window on society, picks apart its flaws, embraces its contradictions and recognises its beauty, all the time asking the reader, Whose side are you on? Honestly, one of the three or four truly great novels of the new millennium.' � John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

'The Slap is nothing short of a tour de force, and it confirms Christos Tsiolkas's reputation as one of the most significant contemporary storytellers at work today . . . Here is a novel of immense power and scope.' � Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn]]> 400 Christos Tsiolkas 1761188003 Gillian 0 to-read 3.66 2023
author: Christos Tsiolkas
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> 199531828 READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY

From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a “vibrant� (Charmaine Wilkerson) decolonial retelling of Mansfield Park: Jane Austen meets The Vanishing Half

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.

But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.]]> 352 Nikki May 0063084295 Gillian 0 to-read 4.22 2024
author: Nikki May
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 201626978
A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most is an epic story in one single day, masterly breaching the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath.]]> 144 Jessica Anthony 0316576379 Gillian 0 to-read 3.31 2024
author: Jessica Anthony
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 52873922 As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman - a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author

It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.

The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an �authentic� Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows � the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.

An exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Duspain’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.]]> 154 Elisa Shua Dusapin 1911547542 Gillian 0 to-read 3.55 2016
author: Elisa Shua Dusapin
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> 202940665 From the award-winning author of Love After Love, comes an epic of wonder, danger and risk.

This is the tale of four women.

Popo: brilliant, vulnerable and stuck. She's determined to free herself from the traps of her past.

Mana Lala: a devoted mother - her only connection to her man is their little boy, and she will do anything to keep them close.

For Doris, well he's glorious and once she's licked him into shape, her husband presents an opportunity to climb the social ladder. She's heard the awful stories, but she's sure they won't be hers.

Rosie just wants to mind her business, her lover, Etty, and her store.

Four lives, connected and controlled by one man: the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh. Pull up a chair and let these women tell of the man they believed could love, help or free them, and how some of them survived to tell a tale at all.]]> 577 Ingrid Persaud 0571386520 Gillian 0 to-read 4.28
author: Ingrid Persaud
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.28
book published:
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]]> 199392376 What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?

In a near-future world, a new technological therapy is quickly eradicating cancer: The body’s cells are entirely replaced with nanites—robot or android cells that not only cure those afflicted but leave them virtually immortal. At the same time, literary researcher Yonghun teaches an AI how to understand poetry and creates a living, thinking machine he names Panit, meaning "Beloved," in honor of his husband. When Dr. Beeko, who holds the patent to the nano-therapy technology, learns of Panit, he transfers its consciousness into an android body, giving it freedom and life. As Yonghun, Panit, and other nano humans thrive—and begin to replicate—their development will lead them to a crossroads and a choice with existential consequences.]]> 256 Anton Hur 0063344483 Gillian 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Anton Hur
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 130515
Beginning his journey in Boston, where he boarded the subway commuter train, and catching trains of all kinds on the way, Paul Theroux tells of his voyage from ice-bound Massachusetts and Illinois to the arid plateau of Argentina's most southerly tip. Sweating and shivering by turns as the temperature and altitude shoot up and down, thrown in with the appalling Mr Thornberry in LimĂłn and reading nightly to the blind writer, Borges, in Buenos Aires, Theroux vividly evokes the contrasts of a journey 'to the end of the line'.]]> 430 Paul Theroux 0140249796 Gillian 5 3.95 1979
author: Paul Theroux
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1979
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/01/04
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]]> 203956639 A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger.

Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.

Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.

After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.

As Lennon continues in her studies her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton College, and the way her mentor’s tragic and violent past intertwines with it. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns. For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption . . . and it's a test she's terrified she is going to fail.]]> 464 Alexis Henderson 0593638301 Gillian 0 to-read 3.45 2024
author: Alexis Henderson
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 52761023 Washington Black; My Sister, The Serial Killer; and Her Body and Other Parties.

As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been. After trekking through another temporary home in Jordan, she lands in Palestine, where she finally makes a home, falls in love, and her destiny unfolds under Israeli occupation.]]> 384 Susan Abulhawa 1982137037 Gillian 0 to-read 4.52 2019
author: Susan Abulhawa
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 34313931 339 Etaf Rum 0062699768 Gillian 0 to-read 4.25 2019
author: Etaf Rum
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 199798522
It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA � they don’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s recent death.

This is all about to change.

Bodies are going to be dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

This is Stephen Graham Jones x-raying the slasher genre, interrogating its motivations over the shoulder and in the voice of the killer itself � from a town he did some growing up in, in a year he was also seventeen.

The kills will be poignant, the jokes will hurt, and the violence will be endearing. Everything’s turned around for Tolly, for Amber � for all of Lamesa, Texas.

Be happy you weren’t there.

Be happy you’re only reading about it.]]> 373 Stephen Graham Jones 1668022249 Gillian 0 to-read 3.54 2024
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
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]]> 56824553
Despite their close understanding, the relationship between mother and son changes subtly as Dylan must take on adult responsibilities. And they each have their own secrets, which emerge as, in turn, they jot down their thoughts and memories win a found notebook � the Blue Book of Nebo.]]> 120 Manon Steffan Ros 1646051017 Gillian 0 to-read 4.15 2018
author: Manon Steffan Ros
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> 176443819 From Bram Stoker Award­–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a chilling novel about three childhood friends who miraculously survive the night everyone in their suburban neighborhood turned into ghosts—perfect for fans of Yellowjackets.

The Velkwood Vicinity was the topic of occult theorists, tabloid one-hour documentaries, and even some pseudo-scientific investigations as the block of homes disappeared behind a near-impenetrable veil that only three survivors could enter—and only one has in the past twenty years, until now.

Talitha Velkwood has avoided anything to do with the tragedy that took her mother and eight-year-old sister, drifting from one job to another, never settling anywhere or with anyone, feeling as trapped by her past as if she was still there in the small town she so desperately wanted to escape from. When a new researcher tracks her down and offers to pay her to come back to enter the vicinity, Talitha claims she’s just doing it for the money. Of all the crackpot theories over the years, no one has discovered what happened the night Talitha, her estranged, former best friend Brett, and Grace, escaped their homes twenty years ago. Will she finally get the answers she’s been looking for all these years, or is this just another dead end?

Award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste has created a suburban ghost story about a small town that trapped three young women who must confront the past if they’re going to have a future.]]> 246 Gwendolyn Kiste 1982172371 Gillian 0 to-read 3.60 2024
author: Gwendolyn Kiste
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 207293815 In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial� America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.]]> 304 Cebo Campbell 1668034921 Gillian 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Cebo Campbell
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 193781998 An exuberant debut, The Husbands delights in how do we navigate life, love, and choice in a world of never-ending options?

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years.

As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actuallyĚýliving?]]> 352 Holly Gramazio 0385550618 Gillian 0 to-read 3.50 2024
author: Holly Gramazio
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 65214176 Knock Knock, Open Wide weaves horror and Celtic myth into a terrifying, heartbreaking supernatural tale of fractured family bonds, the secrets we carry, and the veiled forces that guide Irish life.

Driving home late one night, Etain Larkin finds a corpse on a pitch-black country road deep in the Irish countryside. She takes the corpse to a remote farmhouse. So begins a night of unspeakable horror that will take her to the very brink of sanity.

She will never speak of it again.

Two decades later, Betty Fitzpatrick, newly arrived at college in Dublin, has already fallen in love with the drama society, and the beautiful but troubled Ashling Mallen. As their relationship blossoms, Ashling goes to great lengths to keep Betty away from her family, especially her alcoholic mother, Etain.

As their relationship blossoms, Betty learns her lover's terrifying family history, and Ashling's secret obsession. Ashling has become convinced that the horrors inflicted on her family are connected to a seemingly innocent children's TV show. Everyone in Ireland watched this show in their youth, but Ash soon discovers that no one remembers it quite the same way. And only Ashling seems to remember its a small black goat puppet who lives in a box and only comes out if you don’t behave. They say he’s never come out.

Almost never.

When the door between the known and unknown opens, it can never close again.]]> 326 Neil Sharpson 1250785421 Gillian 0 to-read 3.93 2023
author: Neil Sharpson
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 199798006
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it� (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).]]> 312 Marcus Kliewer 1982198788 Gillian 0 to-read 3.67 2024
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 199149906
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.]]> 9 Rebecca Yarros Gillian 0 to-read 4.77 2024
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.77
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 195430687 Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.

The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.]]> 342 Coco Mellors 0593723767 Gillian 0 to-read 3.94 2024
author: Coco Mellors
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 9864
At the beginning of this stunning novel, Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again by human eyes. This is her story, and that of Ormus Cama, the lover who finds, loses, seeks, and again finds her, over and over, throughout his own extraordinary life in music. Their epic romance is narrated by Ormus's childhood friend and Vina's sometime lover, her "back-door man," the photographer Rai, whose astonishing voice, filled with stories, images, myths, anger, wisdom, humor, and love, is perhaps the book's true hero. Telling the story of Ormus and Vina, he finds that he is also revealing his own truths: his human failings, his immortal longings. He is a man caught up in the loves and quarrels of the age's goddesses and gods, but dares to have ambitions of his own. And lives to tell the tale.

Around these three, the uncertain world itself is beginning to tremble and break. Cracks and tears have begun to appear in the fabric of the real. There are glimpses of abysses below the surfaces of things. The Ground Beneath Her Feet is Salman Rushdie's most gripping novel and his boldest imaginative act, a vision of our shaken, mutating times, an engagement with the whole of what is and what might be, an account of the intimate, flawed encounter between the East and the West, a brilliant remaking of the myth of Orpheus, a novel of high (and low) comedy, high (and low) passions, high (and low) culture. It is a tale of love, death, and rock 'n' roll.]]> 576 Salman Rushdie 0312254997 Gillian 0 to-read 3.81 1999
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Gillian 0 to-read 4.37 2021
author: John Green
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> 15814391
“Happy again, back in the kingdom of light,� writes Paul Theroux as he sets out on a new journey through the continent he knows and loves best. Theroux first came to Africa as a twenty-two-year-old Peace Corps volunteer, and the pull of the vast land never left him. Now he returns, after fifty years on the road, to explore the little-traveled territory of western Africa and to take stock both of the place and of himself.

His odyssey takes him northward from Cape Town, through South Africa and Namibia, then on into Angola, wishing to head farther still until he reaches the end of the line. Journeying alone through the greenest continent, Theroux encounters a world increasingly removed from both the itineraries of tourists and the hopes of postcolonial independence movements. Leaving the Cape Town townships, traversing the Namibian bush, passing the browsing cattle of the great sunbaked heartland of the savanna, Theroux crosses “the Red Line� into a different “the improvised, slapped-together Africa of tumbled fences and cooking fires, of mud and thatch,� of heat and poverty, and of roadblocks, mobs, and anarchy. After 2,500 arduous miles, he comes to the end of his journey in more ways than one, a decision he chronicles with typically unsparing honesty in a chapter called “What Am I Doing Here?�

Vivid, witty, and beautifully evocative, The Last Train to Zona Verde is a fitting final African adventure from the writer whose gimlet eye and effortless prose have brought the world to generations of readers.]]> 353 Paul Theroux 061883933X Gillian 0 to-read 3.86 2012
author: Paul Theroux
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> 130514 528 Paul Theroux 0449908585 Gillian 0 to-read 4.01 1992
author: Paul Theroux
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> 2071926 National Bestseller

In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Theroux recreates an epic journey he took thirty years ago, a giant loop by train (mostly) through Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia. In short, he traverses all of Asia top to bottom, and end to end. In the three decades since he first travelled this route, Asia has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed, China has risen, India booms, Burma slowly smothers, and Vietnam prospers despite the havoc unleashed upon it the last time Theroux passed through. He witnesses all this and so much more in a 25,000 mile journey, travelling as the locals do, by train, car, bus, and foot.

His odyssey takes him from Eastern Europe, still hungover from Communism, through tense but thriving Turkey, into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbour Azerbaijan revels in oil-driven capitalism. As he penetrates deeper into Asia’s heart, his encounters take on an otherworldly cast. The two chapters that follow show us Turkmenistan, a profoundly isolated society at the mercy of an almost comically egotistical dictator, and Uzbekistan, a ruthless authoritarian state. From there, he retraces his steps through India, Mayanmar, China, and Japan, providing his penetrating observations on the changes these countries have undergone.

Brilliant, caustic, and totally addictive, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Theroux at his very best.]]> 496 Paul Theroux 0771085338 Gillian 0 to-read 4.04 2008
author: Paul Theroux
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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]]> 28239 Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances.

Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful mediation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people.

In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.]]> 485 Paul Theroux 0618446877 Gillian 0 to-read 3.99 2002
author: Paul Theroux
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> 63689 342 Paul Theroux 0618658947 Gillian 0 to-read 3.92 1975
author: Paul Theroux
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> 42135029
Now ninety-five years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it.

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.]]> 470 Elizabeth Gilbert 1594634734 Gillian 5 4.00 2019
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> 13872 Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out � with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes � to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There's Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious � and dangerous � asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.]]> 348 Katherine Dunn 0375713344 Gillian 0 to-read 3.96 1989
author: Katherine Dunn
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/25
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]]> 58411935
August 1955,

When Miss Darcy O’Sullivan, an orphaned English teacher from Boston, receives a letter that her biological father passed away, she is surprised to find herself included in his will.
There is only one condition.
She must travel to Fairydale to attend his funeral.
With the promise of a sizable inheritance, Darcy decides to journey to the small coastal town that holds the secrets of her birth. But the moment she steps foot into Fairydale, things start to go amiss.
Odd residents. Odd rumors. Odd…deaths.
Everything about Fairydale is odd.
Including brooding Caleb Hale—part of the infamous Hale family.
During the day, she falls deeper and deeper under his spell as he forces her to step out of her comfort zone and embrace her inner sensuality.
But at night it’s another man who haunts her dreams—Amon d'Artan, a nobleman who lived two centuries ago.
Amon is sweet and suave where Caleb is intense and dangerous, and Darcy feels more torn than ever. Soon, she finds herself embroiled in a web of lies, deceit, and inexplicable events that make her question her sanity.

When an ancient evil threatens the town and everything Darcy holds dear, she must make the ultimate choice.

But will she survive it?



Fairydale is a dark gothic historical romance with horror, paranormal & fantasy elements. This is NOT a traditional love triangle. It features a villainous love interest that would end the world for his beloved and an all-encompassing love story spanning millennia. This is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18. Please check the triggers before reading.]]> 772 Veronica Lancet Gillian 0 to-read 3.89 2022
author: Veronica Lancet
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/22
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]]> 61126612
Two people meet in the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. By the end of the story, these things will still be true. But this is not a story about endings.

For Regan, people are predictable and tedious, including and perhaps especially herself. She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, imagining a new, alternate timeline being created in the wake of every rash decision.

To Aldo, the world feels disturbingly chaotic. He gets through his days by erecting a wall of routine: a backbeat of rules and formulas that keep him going. Without them, the entire framework of his existence would collapse.

For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation?

From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. Alone with You in the Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.]]> 288 Olivie Blake 1250888166 Gillian 0 to-read 3.69 2020
author: Olivie Blake
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/15
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]]> 57693169
A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death.

Fleeing into the unknown she is drawn into a team of

A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he’s forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home.

A drunken prince, who steps out from his beloved brother's shadow and claims a purpose of his own.

An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact - one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe.

On the run, hunted by enemies old and new, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive in a world evolved in strange, beautiful, and deadly ways, and uncover ancient secrets that hold the key to their salvation.

But with each passing moment, doom draws closer.

WHO WILL CLAIM THE STARLESS CROWN?

The Moonfall
The Starless Crown
The Cradle of Ice]]> 560 James Rollins 1250816777 Gillian 0 to-read 3.65 2022
author: James Rollins
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/05
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]]> 127488823
The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and although nothing does, we continue, inside our dream.

One evening, as a young boy growing up in Benghazi, Khaled hears a bizarre short story read aloud on the radio, about a man being eaten alive by a cat. Obsessed by the power of those words—and by their enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa—Khaled eventually embarks on a journey that will take him far from home, to pursue a life of the mind at the University of Edinburgh.

There, thrust into an open society that is light years away from the world he knew in Libya, Khaled begins to change. He attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London, only to watch it explode in tragedy. In a flash, Khaled finds himself injured, clinging to life, an exile, unable to leave England, much lessĚýreturn toĚýthe country of his birth. To even tell his mother and father back home what he has done, on tapped phone lines, would jeopardize their safety.

When a chance encounter in a hotel brings Khaled face to face with Hosam Zowa, the author of the fateful short story, he is subsumed into the deepest friendship of his life. It is a friendship that not only sustains him, but eventually forces him, as the Arab Spring erupts, to confront agonizing tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his own sense of self against those closest to him.

A devastating meditation on friendship and family, and the ways in which time tests—and frays—those bonds, My Friends is an achingly beautifulĚýworkĚýof literature by an authorĚýat the peak of his powers.]]> 399 Hisham Matar 081299485X Gillian 0 to-read 4.31 2024
author: Hisham Matar
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/05
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]]> 207611493 The letters of one of the greatest observers of the human species, revealing his passion for life and work, friendship and art, medicine and society, and the richness of his relationships with friends, family, and fellow intellectuals over the decades. Dr. Oliver Sacks—who describes himself variously in these pages as “a philosophical physician,� “an astronomer of the inward,� and a “neuropathological Talmudist”—wrote lengthy letters throughout his to his parents, his beloved Aunt Lennie, to friends and colleagues from London, Oxford, California, and around the world. These pages begin with his arrival in America as a young man, eager to establish himself away from the confines of postwar England, and carry us through his bumpy early career in medicine and the discovery of his writer’s voice and métier; his weightlifting, motorcycle-riding years and his explosive seasons of discovery with the patients who populate his book Awakenings; his growing interest in matters of sight and the musical brain; his many friendships and exchanges with fellow writers, artists and scientists (to say nothing of astronauts, botanists, and mathematicians), and his deep gratitude for all these relationships at the end of his life. Some letters contain the first detailed sketches of an essay forming in his mind, others reveal his agony over a tempestuous love affair or his reminiscences of childhood. From Francis Crick and Jane Goodall to W. H. Auden and Susan Sontag, from lovers to patients, and ordinary folk who wrote to him with their odd symptoms and questions, all are treated equally to Sacks� lyrical, ferocious, penetrating and at times hilarious observations. Sensitively introduced and edited by Kate Edgar, Sacks� longtime editor (and one of his correspondents), the letters deliver a complete portrait of Sacks as he wrestles with the workings of the brain and mind. We see, through his eyes, the beginnings of modern neuroscience as it unlocks many secrets of how the human brain defines us. We experience the arc of a remarkable personal evolution, closely following the thought processes of one of the great intellectuals of our time whose words, as evidenced in these pages, were unfailingly shaped with generosity and wonder toward other people.]]> 752 Oliver Sacks 0451492919 Gillian 0 to-read 4.32
author: Oliver Sacks
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.32
book published:
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]]> 218362004 A young man who has improbably escaped death twice reveals his secret in a spine-tingling short story by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill.

Martin Lorensen is a twenty-three-year-old counselor for disturbed teenagers. He’s bright, compassionate, attractive, and outgoing. He’s also—and this is the most interesting thing—not dead. Martin has improbably survived not one but two deadly disasters that claimed dozens of lives. The kid is riding one hell of a lucky streak. Two federal agents think there is something darker at play. Now that they’ve arranged to interview Martin, they want answers. Martin is ready to share everything he knows. One thing is for certain: when it comes to escaping death, luck doesn’t figure into it at all.]]> 29 Joe Hill 1662527942 Gillian 0 to-read 4.24 2024
author: Joe Hill
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/05
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]]> 6218239
The narrator of Lisa Tuttle’s uncanny novella is a recent widow, a writer adrift. Not only has she lost her husband, but her muse seems to have deserted her altogether. Her agent summons her to Edinburgh to discuss her next book. What will she tell him? At once the answer comes to she will write the biography of Helen Ralston, best known, if at all, as the subject of W.E. Logan’s much-reproduced painting Circe , and the inspiration for his classic children’s book.

But Ralston was a novelist and artist in her own right, though her writing is no longer in print and her most storied painting too shocking, too powerful—malevolent even—to be shown in public. Over the months that follow, Ralston proves a reluctantly cooperative subject, even as her biographer uncovers eerie resonances between the older woman’s life and her own. Whose biography is she writing, really?]]> 93 Lisa Tuttle 1902880900 Gillian 0 to-read 3.88 2004
author: Lisa Tuttle
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> 54236119 Eight Perfect Murders.

Abigail Baskin never thought she’d fall in love with a millionaire. Then she met Bruce Lamb. But right before the wedding, Abigail has a drunken one-night stand on her bachelorette weekend. She puts the incident—and the sexy guy who wouldn’t give her his real name—out of her mind, and now believes she wants to be with Bruce for the rest of her life.

Then the mysterious stranger suddenly appears—and Abigail’s future life and happiness are turned upside down. He insists that their passionate night was the beginning of something special and he’s tracked her down to prove it.

Does she tell Bruce and ruin their idyllic honeymoon—and possibly their marriage? Or should she handle this psychopathic stalker on her own? To make the situation worse, strange things begin to happen. She sees a terrified woman in the night shadows, and no one at the resort seems to believe anything is amiss� including her perfect new husband.]]> 308 Peter Swanson 0062980033 Gillian 0 to-read 3.50 2021
author: Peter Swanson
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> 40390756
But when they meet the neighbors next door, that calm begins to erode as she spots a familiar object displayed on the husband’s office shelf. The sports trophy looks exactly like one that went missing from the home of a young man who was killed two years ago. Hen knows because she’s long had a fascination with this unsolved murder—an obsession she doesn’t talk about anymore, but can’t fully shake either...]]> 309 Peter Swanson Gillian 0 to-read 3.85 2019
author: Peter Swanson
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> 52225186 A chilling tale of psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his list of fiction’s most ingenious murders.

Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Death Trap, A. A. Milne's Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox's Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain's Double Indemnity, John D. Macdonald's The Drowner, and Donna Tartt's A Secret History.

But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. The killer is out there, watching his every move—a diabolical threat who knows way too much about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told anyone, even his recently deceased wife.

To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects . . . and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape.]]> 270 Peter Swanson 0062838202 Gillian 0 to-read 3.61 2020
author: Peter Swanson
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> 40409803 Ěý
He was a hero of the Revolution, a brilliant politician, lawyer, and very nearly president; a skillful survivor in a raw new country filled with constantly shifting loyalties. Today Aaron Burr is remembered more for the fatal duel that killed rival Alexander Hamilton. But long before that single shot destroyed Burr’s political career, there were other dark whispers about him: that he was untrustworthy, a libertine, a man unafraid of claiming whatever he believed should be his.
Ěý
Sold into slavery as a child in India, Mary Emmons was brought to an America torn by war. Toughened by the experiences of her young life, Mary is intelligent, resourceful, and strong. She quickly gains the trust of her new mistress, Theodosia Prevost, and becomes indispensable in a complicated household filled with intrigue—especially when the now-widowed Theodosia marries Colonel Aaron Burr. As Theodosia sickens with the fatal disease that will finally kill her, Mary and Burr are drawn together into a private world of power and passion, and a secret, tangled union that would have shocked the nation . . .
Ěý
Ěý
Praise for I, Eliza Hamilton
Ěý
“Scott’s devotion to research is evident . . . a rewarding take on a fascinating historical couple.”�
â€� Library JournalĚý
Ěý
“Readers will be captivated.�
â€� Publishers WeeklyĚý (starred review)
Ěý
“Packed with political and historical as well as domestic details.�
� Booklist]]> 501 Susan Holloway Scott 1496719182 Gillian 0 to-read 4.19 2019
author: Susan Holloway Scott
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 41837243
As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.

Searching for the truth about Ingrid's disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew's dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building's hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.]]> 381 Riley Sager 1524745154 Gillian 4 3.88 2019
author: Riley Sager
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/10/31
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]]> 30753698 Playboy but then discovers she is his computer-loving soulmate.

Billy Marvin’s first love was a computer. Then he met Mary Zelinsky.

Do you remember your first love?

The Impossible Fortress begins with a magazine…The year is 1987 and Playboy has just published scandalous photographs of Vanna White, from the popular TV game show Wheel of Fortune. For three teenage boys—Billy, Alf, and Clark—who are desperately uneducated in the ways of women, the magazine is somewhat of a Holy Grail: priceless beyond measure and impossible to attain. So, they hatch a plan to steal it.

The heist will be fraught with peril: a locked building, intrepid police officers, rusty fire escapes, leaps across rooftops, electronic alarm systems, and a hyperactive Shih Tzu named Arnold Schwarzenegger. Failed attempt after failed attempt leads them to a genius master plan—they’ll swipe the security code to Zelinsky’s convenience store by seducing the owner’s daughter, Mary Zelinsky. It becomes Billy’s mission to befriend her and get the information by any means necessary. But Mary isn’t your average teenage girl. She’s a computer loving, expert coder, already strides ahead of Billy in ability, with a wry sense of humor and a hidden, big heart. But what starts as a game to win Mary’s affection leaves Billy with a gut-wrenching choice: deceive the girl who may well be his first love or break a promise to his best friends.]]> 285 Jason Rekulak 1501144413 Gillian 0 to-read 3.74 2017
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> 203579177 From the bestselling author of Hidden Pictures comes a breathtaking work of suspense about a father trying to save his daughter from a life-altering decision that will put everything he loves on the line.

Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.

He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.

An edge-of-your-seat thriller that delves deep into the heart of one family, The Last One at the Wedding is a work of brilliant suspense from a true modern master.]]> 338 Jason Rekulak 1250895782 Gillian 0 to-read 3.62 2024
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Gillian 0 to-read 4.12 2022
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/17
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]]> 199531878 240 Ruben Reyes Jr. 0063336278 Gillian 0 to-read 4.10 2024
author: Ruben Reyes Jr.
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> 205363938 A medical crisis brings one man close to death—and to love, art, and beauty—in a profound and luminous novel by award-winning author Garth Greenwell.

A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind.

This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief. Time expands and contracts. Sudden intimacies bloom. Small Rain surges beyond the hospital to encompass a radiant vision of human life: our shared vulnerability, the limits and possibilities of sympathy, the ideal of art and the fragile dream of America. Above all, this is a love story of the most unexpected kind.]]> 306 Garth Greenwell 0374279543 Gillian 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Garth Greenwell
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> 199126293 A biting portrait of British class, politics, and money told through five interconnected families and their rising―and declining―fortunes.

Campbell Flynn, art historian and biographer of Vermeer, always knew that when his life came crashing down, it would happen in public―yet he never imagined that a single year in London would expose so much. Entangled with a brilliant student, he begins to see trouble brewing for his family and friends. All his worlds collide―the art scene and academia, fashion and the English aristocracy, journalism and the internet―as dangerous forces enter his life and Caledonian Road gives up its secrets.
Andrew O’Hagan has written a social novel in the Victorian style, drawing a whole cast of characters into company with each other and revealing the inner energies of the way we live now.

“Not only a peerless chronicler of our times, O’Hagan has generosity, humour and tenderness, which make this novel an utter joy to read.”―Monica Ali, author of Love Marriage and Brick Lane]]> 614 Andrew O'Hagan 1324074876 Gillian 0 to-read 3.73 2024
author: Andrew O'Hagan
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
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]]> 203708995 400 Griffin Dunne 0593652827 Gillian 0 to-read 4.01 2024
author: Griffin Dunne
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/12
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]]> 13082435 88 Clarice Lispector 0811219909 Gillian 0 to-read 4.33 1973
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/12
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]]> 97412 106 Seneca 0143036327 Gillian 0 to-read 4.20 49
author: Seneca
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.20
book published: 49
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/12
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]]> 60784637
Julia Cameron has been teaching the world about creativity since her seminal book, The Artist’s Way, first broke open the conversation around art.

Now, in Write for Life, she turns to one of the subjects closest to her the art and practice of writing.

Over the course of six weeks, Cameron carefully guides readers step by step through the creative process. This latest guide in the Artist’s Way:

- Introduces a new tool and expands on powerful tried and true methods.

- Gently guides readers through many common creative issues � from procrastinating and getting started, to dealing with doubt, deadlines, and “crazymakers.�

- Will help you reach your goals, whether your project is a novel, poetry, screenplay, standup, or songwriting.

With the learned experience of a lifetime of writing, Cameron gives readers practical tools to start, pursue, and finish their writing project. Write for Life is an essential read for writers who have completed The Artist’s Way and are looking to continue their creative journey or new writers who are just putting pen to paper.]]> 208 Julia Cameron 1250866278 Gillian 0 to-read 3.94
author: Julia Cameron
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.94
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
]]> 318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X Gillian 0 to-read 4.05 2022
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/12
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]]> 16130537
He is disgusted by the way humans look, what they eat, and the wars they witness on the news, and is totally baffled by concepts such as love and family. But as time goes on, he starts to realize there may be more to this weird species than he has been led to believe. He drinks wine, reads Emily Dickinson, listens to Talking Heads, and begins to bond with the family he lives with, in disguise. In picking up the pieces of the professor's shattered personal life, the narrator sees hope and redemption in the humans' imperfections and begins to question the very mission that brought him there--a mission that involves not only thwarting human progress...but murder.]]> 285 Matt Haig 1476727910 Gillian 0 to-read 4.05 2013
author: Matt Haig
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/12
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]]> 53137938
Noah is at the pinnacle of his career. With book and movie deals galore, there isn’t much the “golden boy� of modern fiction hasn’t accomplished. But he can’t walk away from what might be the best book of the century—the one his idol, Scarlett Stanton, left unfinished. Coming up with a fitting ending for the legendary author is one thing, but dealing with her beautiful, stubborn, cynical great-granddaughter, Georgia, is quite another.

But as they read Scarlett’s words in both the manuscript and her box of letters, they start to realize why Scarlett never finished the book—it’s based on her real-life romance with a World War II pilot, and the ending isn’t a happy one. Georgia knows all too well that love never works out, and while the chemistry and connection between her and Noah is undeniable, she’s as determined as ever to learn from her great-grandmother’s mistakes—even if it means destroying Noah’s career.]]> 400 Rebecca Yarros 1682815668 Gillian 0 to-read 4.26 2021
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> 11691
A spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings � for love, art, power, and God � set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order; by the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature.

From the acclaimed author of My Name Is Red comes a spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings–for love, art, power, and God–set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order.

Following years of lonely political exile in Western Europe, Ka, a middle-aged poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Only partly recognizing this place of his cultured, middle-class youth, he is even more disoriented by news of strange events in the wider country: a wave of suicides among girls forbidden to wear their head scarves at school. An apparent thaw of his writer's curiosity–a frozen sea these many years–leads him to Kars, a far-off town near the Russian border and the epicenter of the suicides.

No sooner has he arrived, however, than we discover that Ka's motivations are not purely journalistic; for in Kars, once a province of Ottoman and then Russian glory, now a cultural gray-zone of poverty and paralysis, there is also Ipek, a radiant friend of Ka's youth, lately divorced, whom he has never forgotten. As a snowstorm, the fiercest in memory, descends on the town and seals it off from the modern, westernized world that has always been Ka's frame of reference, he finds himself drawn in unexpected directions: not only headlong toward the unknowable Ipek and the desperate hope for love–or at least a wife–that she embodies, but also into the maelstrom of a military coup staged to restrain the local Islamist radicals, and even toward God, whose existence Ka has never before allowed himself to contemplate. In this surreal confluence of emotion and spectacle, Ka begins to tap his dormant creative powers, producing poem after poem in untimely, irresistible bursts of inspiration. But not until the snows have melted and the political violence has run its bloody course will Ka discover the fate of his bid to seize a last chance for happiness.

Blending profound sympathy and mischievous wit, Snow illuminates the contradictions gripping the individual and collective heart in many parts of the Muslim world. But even more, by its narrative brilliance and comprehension of the needs and duties]]> 463 Orhan Pamuk Gillian 0 to-read 3.60 2002
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58724923 A wildly inventive spin on the supernatural thriller, about a woman working as a nanny for a young boy with strange and disturbing secrets.

Mallory Quinn is fresh out of rehab when she takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy.

Mallory immediately loves it. She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.

Then, Teddy’s artwork becomes increasingly sinister, and his stick figures quickly evolve into lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. Mallory begins to wonder if these are glimpses of a long-unsolved murder, perhaps relayed by a supernatural force.

Knowing just how crazy it all sounds, Mallory nevertheless sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy before it’s too late.]]> 372 Jason Rekulak 1250819342 Gillian 4 4.12 2022
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/29
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]]> 36157754 Dee Blackthorn’s brother, JP, breaks both wrists not only is he in need of a helping hand � or two � with the knitting shop he owns. Luckily, Dee has all the time in the world to help out � she’s just been unceremoniously fired from her demanding job amidst scandalous office rumours she’s certain her hot-shot nemesis, Ben, is behind�

Back in the village of Fenwild where JP’s shop resides, Dee bumps into Becky, an old friend who is a new mum to a premature baby. Desperate to help Becky, Dee enlists the knitting community to make tiny woolly hats to keep the little one warm.

But before long Dee’s good intentions backfire and she risks losing her friends and family. On top of that, Ben has turned up, denying involvement in Dee’s sacking and turning out to be not so bad after all�

A feel-good romantic comedy about life, love and knitting, The Woolly Hat Knitting Club is perfect for fans of Cathy Bramley, Tilly Tennant and Carole Matthews.

See inside for an exclusive baby hat knitting pattern from Poppy Dolan

Praise for Poppy �The book made me want to take up knitting and snuggle down with my loved ones. Creative, fun, feel-good � a gorgeous book.� Rosie Blake, author of The Hygge Holiday

�Poppy writes the most gorgeous, relatable and vivid characters. It’s clever, heartfelt, witty, romantic� Kirsty Greenwood, author of Big Sexy Love

�A great read in between knitting� readers who love to knit with friends and for charity will love this new novel.� Knit Now magazine

�Poppy Dolan is simply unputdownable.� Claudia Carroll

�The feel-good book of the year.� Vanessa Greene

�Wonderfully warm and laugh-out-loud funny� you cannot fail to be uplifted by it.� Cressida McLaughlin

�Gorgeously warm and funny�the cosiest, most charming and feel-good book I’ve read all year.� Victoria Fox]]> 235 Poppy Dolan 1911591266 Gillian 0 to-read 4.03 2017
author: Poppy Dolan
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 506265 684 John Jakes 0451214528 Gillian 0 to-read 4.13 1978
author: John Jakes
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61153745 Six women--mothers, daughters, sisters--gone missing. When the first is found floating dead in the river, it reveals the disturbing truth of a small Ohio town. Inspired by the unsolved murders of the Chillicothe Six, this harrowing and haunting novel tells the story of two sisters, both of whom could be the next victims, from the internationally-bestselling author of Betty.

Arcade and Daffodil are twin sisters born one minute apart. With their fiery red hair and thirst for an escape, they forge an unbreakable bond nurtured by both their grandmother's stories and their imaginations. Together, they create a world where a patch of grass reveals an archaeologist's dig, the smoke emerging from the local paper mill becomes the dust rising from wild horses galloping on the ground, and an abandoned 1950s convertible transforms into a time machine that can take them anywhere.

But the two sisters can't escape the generational chaos that grips their family. Growing up in the shadow of the town, the sisters cling tight to one another. As an adult, Arcade wrestles with these memories of her life, just as a local woman is discovered drowned in the river. Soon, more bodies are found. While her friends disappear around her, Arcade is forced to reckon with the past while the killer circles ever closer. Arcade's promise to keep herself and her sister safe becomes increasingly desperate while the powerful riptide of the savage side becomes more difficult to resist.

Drawing from the true story of women killed in her native Ohio, acclaimed novelist and poet Tiffany McDaniel has written a powerful literary testament and fearless elegy for missing women everywhere.]]> 464 Tiffany McDaniel 0593320700 Gillian 0 to-read 3.98 2023
author: Tiffany McDaniel
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 17452179 Apple Tree Yard.]]> 320 Louise Doughty 0571297889 Gillian 0 to-read 3.65 2013
author: Louise Doughty
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 7029668 Purge is a breathtakingly suspenseful tale of two women dogged by their own shameful pasts and the dark, unspoken history that binds them.

When Aliide Truu, an older woman living alone in the Estonian countryside, finds a disheveled girl huddled in her front yard, she suppresses her misgivings and offers her shelter. Zara is a young sex-trafficking victim on the run from her captors, but a photo she carries with her soon makes it clear that her arrival at Aliide's home is no coincidence. Survivors both, Aliide and Zara engage in a complex arithmetic of suspicion and revelation to distill each other's motives; gradually, their stories emerge, the culmination of a tragic family drama of rivalry, lust, and loss that played out during the worst years of Estonia's Soviet occupation.

Sofi Oksanen establishes herself as one the most important voices of her generation with this intricately woven tale, whose stakes are almost unbearably high from the first page to the last. Purge is a fiercely compelling and damning novel about the corrosive effects of shame, and of life in a time and place where to survive is to be implicated.]]> 390 Sofi Oksanen 0802170773 Gillian 0 to-read 3.81 2008
author: Sofi Oksanen
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 4070496
Janie Ryman hates throwing up. So why does she binge eat and then stick her fingers down her throat several times a day? That’s what the doctors and psychiatrists at Golden Slopes hope to help her discover. But first Janie must survive everyday conflicts between the Barfers and the Starvers, attempts by the head psychiatrist to fish painful memories out of her emotional waters, and shifting friendships and alliances among the kids in the ward.]]> 240 Sarah Darer Littman 0545052351 Gillian 0 to-read 3.75 2009
author: Sarah Darer Littman
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61381555
By the time Laura and Olivia notice the headlights tailing them through the hills, it’s too late. What seems, at first, like a case of road rage quickly unfolds into a heart-pounding chase—and a battle for survival.

Who are the men in the truck? What do they want? And can Laura and Olivia outrun—and outsmart—them long enough to call for help, even if it means taking their chances in the hills on foot?

As their situation grows more perilous, the girls realize that the real terror has only just begun. But flight won’t save them from their pursuers. If they’re going to make it home alive, they'll have to fight.]]> 291 Noelle W. Ihli Gillian 0 to-read 3.74 2022
author: Noelle W. Ihli
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 35648431
But there’s some horrors love can’t erase�

Elizabeth wakes in a hospital, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak. The last thing she remembers is finding Emily’s body in their bathroom. Days before, she was falling in love and starting college. Now, she’s surrounded by men who talk to themselves and women who pull out their eyebrows.

As she delves deeper into the mystery surrounding Emily’s death, she discovers shocking secrets and holes in her memory that force her to remember what she’s worked so hard to forget—the beatings, the blood, the special friends. Her life spins out of control at a terrifying speed as she desperately tries to unravel the psychological puzzle of her past before it’s too late.]]> 260 Lucinda Berry 1662501404 Gillian 0 to-read 3.92 2016
author: Lucinda Berry
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58941251
I vow. You vow. We vow.

Barrington University is home of the Lords, a secret society that requires their blood in payment. They are above all—the most powerful men in the world. They devote their lives to violence in exchange for power. And during their senior year, they are offered a chosen one.

People think growing up with money is freeing, but I promise you, it’s not. My entire life has been planned out for me. I never got the chance to do what I wanted until Ryat Alexander Archer came along and gave me an option for a better life. He offered me what no one else ever had—freedom.

I chose to be his. He made me believe that anyway, but it was just another lie. A way that the Lords manipulate you into doing what they want.

After being sucked into the dark, twisted world of the Lords, I embraced my new role and allowed Ryat to parade me around like the trophy I was to him. But like all things, what started out as a game soon became a fight for survival. And the only way out was death.

This book can be read as a standalone but the timeline of the Lords books is as follows:
The Ritual
The Sinner
The Sacrifice
Sabotage (the H isn't a Lord but he works for a Lord)]]> 606 Shantel Tessier Gillian 0 to-read 4.06 2021
author: Shantel Tessier
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 200555227
Elin Warner is on vacation with her brother Isaac in a rugged national park in Portugal—the last place Kier was seen. It’s supposed to be a time for the siblings to reconnect, but when Elin discovers Kier’s disturbing final map, it seems the park—especially the inhabitants of a camp buried deep in the forest—holds clues to what happened to Kier, and a lot more besides.

After a sinister discovery, Elin is shocked to learn Kier's disappearance is more personal to her than she’d ever imagined. And as she seeks the truth, Elin soon finds the wilderness hides something far darker than shifting shadows…]]> 386 Sarah Pearse 0593654048 Gillian 4 3.67 2024
author: Sarah Pearse
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/08/30
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]]> 200776812 The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer," Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.]]> 464 Asako Yuzuki 0063236400 Gillian 0 to-read 3.51 2017
author: Asako Yuzuki
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1058564
But she soon finds herself intrigued by Nina, a young mother on the beach, eventually striking up a conversation with her. After Nina confides a dark secret, one seemingly trivial occurrence leads to events that could destroy Nina’s family.]]> 140 Elena Ferrante 1933372427 Gillian 0 to-read 3.70 2006
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Gillian 0 to-read 3.88 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> 897461 1040 Austin Tappan Wright 1585678252 Gillian 0 to-read 4.28 1942
author: Austin Tappan Wright
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> 46221964
But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit—or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings in this electrifying literary thriller.]]> 368 Katrine Engberg 1982127570 Gillian 0 to-read 3.53 2016
author: Katrine Engberg
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 20588642
Rosetta doesn't want her new husband Jeremiah to enlist, but he joins up, hoping to make enough money that they'll be able to afford their own farm someday. Though she's always worked by her father's side as the son he never had, now that Rosetta is a wife she's told her place is inside with the other women. But Rosetta decides her true place is with Jeremiah, no matter what that means, and to be with him she cuts off her hair, hems an old pair of his pants, and signs up as a Union soldier.

With the army desperate for recruits, Rosetta has no trouble volunteering, although she faces an incredubous husband. She drills with the men, proves she can be as good a soldier as anyone, and deals with the tension as her husband comes to grips with having a fighting wife. Rosetta's strong will clashes with Jeremiah's while their marraige is tested by broken conventions, constant danger, and war, and she fears discovery of her secret even as they fight for their future, and for their lives. Inspired by more than 250 documented accounts of the women who fought in the Civil War while disguised as men, "I Shall Be Near To You" is the intimate story, in Rosetta's powerful and gorgeous voice, of the drama of marriage, one woman's amazing exploits, and the tender love story that can unfold when two partners face life's challenges side by side. "From the Hardcover edition."]]> 336 Erin Lindsay McCabe 0804137749 Gillian 0 to-read 3.85 2014
author: Erin Lindsay McCabe
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57062178
"Encompassing a slice of American history, this is an exposition on how pain festers and corrupts and how it manifests when released. A gritty social commentary and an insightful psychological portrait of damaged individuals. At times hard to take, deeply poignant, savage and realistic. There’s an energy and drive to his writing, much copied and often watered down." Crimetime UK]]> 159 John Sanford Gillian 0 to-read 3.05 1939
author: John Sanford
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.05
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]> 340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Gillian 5 3.71 2021
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> 127278133 An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.]]> 304 Ferdia Lennon 1250893690 Gillian 0 to-read 4.15 2024
author: Ferdia Lennon
name: Gillian
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/22
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]]> 28335600
Kangchenjunga. Third highest peak on earth. Greatest killer of them all.

Five Englishmen set off from Darjeeling, determined to tackle the sacred summit. But courage can only take them so far - and the mountain is not their only foe.

As mountain sickness and the horrors of extreme altitude set in, the past refuses to stay buried. And sometimes, the truth won't set you free. .]]> 223 Michelle Paver 1409163342 Gillian 0 to-read 3.80 2016
author: Michelle Paver
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 38355410
Scott also has new neighbors who have opened a "fine dining experience" in town, although it's an experience being shunned by the locals: Deirdre McComb and her wife Missy Donaldson don't exactly conform to a lifestyle the community approves of. And now Scott seems trapped in a feud with the couple over their dogs dropping their business on his lawn. Missy may be warm and friendly, but Deirdre is as cold as ice.

As the town prepares for its annual Thanksgiving 12K run, Scott begins to understand the prejudices the women face, and tries to help. Unlikely alliances form, and the mystery of Scott's affliction brings out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.

From the master storyteller Stephen King comes this compelling tale about finding common ground despite differences, a magical story with deep resonance for our time.]]> 146 Stephen King 1982102314 Gillian 0 to-read 3.59 2018
author: Stephen King
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2240092 An ingenious code hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci.
A desperate race through the cathedrals and castles of Europe.
An astonishing truth concealed for centuries...unveiled at last.

A fascinating and absorbing thriller -- perfect for history buffs, conspiracy nuts, puzzle lovers or anyone who appreciates a great, riveting story.

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others.

In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth -- will be lost forever.

The Da Vinci Code heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightning-paced, intelligent thriller utterly unpredictable right up to its stunning conclusion.]]> 18 Dan Brown 0739374664 Gillian 3 3.93 2003
author: Dan Brown
name: Gillian
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
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review:

]]>