en-US Sat, 12 Apr 2025 05:24:05 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 6668467 394 Kristin Hannah 0312364121 Sammyyy 0 currently-reading 4.21 2010
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> 222834044
His resilience was stronger than the pain within. Stephen climbed from the depths, finding purpose in hard work and a fierce talent for boxing. In the ring and in life, he adeptly fought his way to victory. Against all odds, he built a successful life.

When his adoptive father took his own life, Stephen inherited a small fortune. Yet, no amount of money can erase the atrocities of his childhood. Even as he stands tall, a champion in life, he bears the weight of his pain, overcomes it, but never truly forgets. He hid the scars until now, but he’s finally ready to tell his story.

Breaking the Mask is a harrowing yet inspirational tale of survival, perseverance, and the unbreakable human spirit. It’s a testament to the scars that shape us and the resilience that defines us.]]> 216 Stephen Butzloff Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.00
author: Stephen Butzloff
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> 221642563
FBI Special Agent Lukas Stark has been hunting the Tableau Killer for eighteen months but is always two steps behind in a maze of dead ends. He has no understanding of why the killer stages the scenes so meticulously or chooses entire families. Burning out, Stark is forced to take on a new partner, Gilles Garnier.

Garnier, an odd loner with a vague past, claims he's a remote viewer who "sees" people, places, and events far away--remote--as if they're right in front of him. Stark knows this sort. Cons. Wannabes desperate to worm their way onto a sensational case. Stark dismisses his new partner as a fraud ... until Garnier precisely describes a new Tableau Killer crime scene from hundreds of miles away.

As Stark and Garnier track the Tableau Killer across the country, they start to believe they finally have the advantage. But Garnier's ability to remote view fails him and leaves him ill and weak. Then Stark realizes how the killer has stayed ahead of them all this time. The reason is more terrifying than either man can fathom.

They face a killer who may be unstoppable, and stand at the abyss of a conspiracy so ominous, it shakes their reality to the core.]]> 306 Eric Rickstad 1094000442 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.15
author: Eric Rickstad
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/10
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]]> 30753704
But hidden inside the socially awkward, fussy busybody is a woman who has more imagination, bigger dreams, and a warmer heart that anyone around her realizes.

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself in the miserable backwater town of Borg—of which the kindest thing one can say is that it has a road going through it—she finds work as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center. The fastidious Britt-Marie soon finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, layabouts. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?

Funny and moving, sweet and inspiring, Britt-Marie Was Here celebrates the importance of community and connection in a world that can feel isolating.

The New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry “returns with this heartwarming story about a woman rediscovering herself after a personal crisis� fans of Backman will find another winner in these pages.”]]> 324 Fredrik Backman 1501142542 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.12 2014
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/10
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]]> 210395729 The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue meets This is How You Lose The Time War in this fantastical love story that defies death as two souls reincarnate through the centuries.

They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.

Evelyn remembers all her past lives. She also remembers that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her eighteenth birthday by Arden, a supernatural being whose soul―and survival―is tethered to hers.

The problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her for bone marrow transplants in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to:

1. Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life―before they find her first.
2. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse.
3. Try not to fall in love.]]> 352 Laura Steven 1250333881 Sammyyy 5 3.80 2025
author: Laura Steven
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
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]]> 146121146
"Unfortunately, only a girl again."

From a young age, Cäcilie Bertha Ringer is fascinated by her father's work as a master builder in Pforzheim, Germany. But those five words, which he wrote next to her name in the family Bible, haunt Bertha.

Years later, Bertha meets Carl Benz and falls in love—with him and his extraordinary dream of building a horseless carriage. Bertha has such faith in him that she invests her dowry in his plans, a dicey move since they alone believe in the machine. When Carl's partners threaten to withdraw their support, he's ready to cut ties. Bertha knows the decision would ruin everything. Ignoring the cynics, she takes matters into her own hands, secretly planning a scheme that will either hasten the family's passage to absolute derision or prove their genius. What Bertha doesn't know is that Carl is on the cusp of making a deal with their nemesis. She's not only risking her marriage and their life's work, but is also up against the patriarchy, Carl's own self-doubt, and the clock.

Like so many other women, Bertha lived largely in her husband's shadow, but her contributions are now celebrated in this inspiring story of perseverance, resilience, and love.]]> 320 Penny Haw 1728257735 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.99 2023
author: Penny Haw
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: on-my-shelf
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]]> 446038 Everything that shaped him happened near that river...
Now its banks are filled with lies and greed, shame, and murder...

John Hart's debut, The King of Lies, was compelling and lyrical, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring, "There hasn't been a thriller as showily literate since Scott Turow came along." Now, in Down River, Hart makes a scorching return to Rowan County, where he drives his characters to the edge, explores the dark side of human nature, and questions the fundamental power of forgiveness.

Adam Chase has a violent streak, and not without reason. As a boy, he saw things that no child should see, suffered wounds that cut to the core and scarred thin. The trauma left him passionate and misunderstood---a fighter. After being narrowly acquitted of a murder charge, Adam is hounded out of the only home he's ever known, exiled for a sin he did not commit. For five long years he disappears, fades into the faceless gray of New York City. Now he's back and nobody knows why, not his family or the cops, not the enemies he left behind.

But Adam has his reasons.

Within hours of his return, he is beaten and accosted, confronted by his family and the women he still holds dear. No one knows what to make of Adam's return, but when bodies start turning up, the small town rises against him and Adam again finds himself embroiled in the fight of his life, not just to prove his own innocence, but to reclaim the only life he's ever wanted.

Bestselling author John Hart holds nothing back as he strips his characters bare. Secrets explode, emotions tear, and more than one person crosses the brink into deadly behavior as he examines the lengths to which people will go for money, family, and revenge.

A powerful, heart-pounding thriller, Down River will haunt your thoughts long after the last page is turned.]]> 325 John Hart 0312359314 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.94 2007
author: John Hart
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: on-my-shelf
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]]> 214152112 From New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and Courtney Sheinmel comes a historical adventure about a young girl plucked from a London orphanage to begin attending a boarding school with more secrets than she could imagine—perfect for fans of Enola Holmes.

Lainey Phillips has lived at the Sycamore Home for Orphaned Children since she was three years old. Now nearly a teenager, her life is hard, and she doesn’t expect it to get better—until a chance encounter during an open house changes everything when Lainey meets a woman who invites her to attend the prestigious Lovelace Academy.

Fitting in amongst the many privileged students within the ivy-covered walls of Lovelace Academy presents challenges unlike the ones Lainey has faced in the past. Her life of drudgery has hardly prepared her for the aristocratic airs and cutthroat academic ambition of the other girls. Terrified she’ll be cast out of the academy, Lainey grabs at her chance to prove herself by traveling to Switzerland to meet a female scientist crafting a groundbreaking theory.

Determined to prove her capability and reach her destination, Lainey must rely on her own wit—as well as a mysterious boy who has yet to prove himself as friend or foe. But the real test is what awaits her in Switzerland, at the home of Mileva Maric, wife of Albert Einstein.]]> 304 Marie Benedict 1665950218 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.04
author: Marie Benedict
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> 90202302 “The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.� —Xaden Riorson

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.

Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders� capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.

But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.

Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.]]> 623 Rebecca Yarros 1649374178 Sammyyy 4 4.33 2023
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.17 1992
author: Donna Tartt
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 58416952 At the elite Catenan Academy, a young fugitive uncovers layered mysteries and world-changing secrets in this new fantasy series by internationally bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

AUDI. VIDE. TACE.

The Catenan Republic � the Hierarchy � may rule the world now, but they do not know everything.

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus � what they call Will � to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do.

I tell them that I belong, and they believe me.

But the truth is that I have been sent to the Academy to find answers. To solve a murder. To search for an ancient weapon. To uncover secrets that may tear the Republic apart.

And that I will never, ever cede my Will to the empire that executed my family.

To survive, though, I will still have to rise through the Academy’s ranks. I will have to smile, and make friends, and pretend to be one of them and win. Because if I cannot, then those who want to control me, who know my real name, will no longer have any use for me.

And if the Hierarchy finds out who I truly am, they will kill me.]]> 639 James Islington 1982141190 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.61 2023
author: James Islington
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 221115923 A retired serial killer’s quiet life is upended by an unexpected visitor. To protect her secret, there’s only one option left—what’s another murder? From bestselling author Samantha Downing.

Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her.

Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends. 

When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that.

But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young. And when Lottie receives another annoying knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her…]]> 400 Samantha Downing 0593101030 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.48 2025
author: Samantha Downing
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 219178061 'Kate Foster is an exceptional writer and masterful storyteller' � Janice Hallett, bestselling author of The Appeal

Inspired by an infamous real-life case, The Mourning Necklace is an unforgettable historical novel from the Women's Prize-longlisted author of The Maiden, Kate Foster.

They said I would swing for the crime and I did. I wear the rope-bruise like a necklace.

1724. In a tavern just outside Edinburgh, Maggie Dickson’s family drown their sorrows, mourning her death yet relieved she is gone. Shame haunts them. Hanged for the murder of her newborn child, passers-by avert their eyes from her cheap coffin on its rickety cart.

But as her family pray her soul rests in peace, a figure appears at the door.

It is Maggie. She is alive.

Bruised and dazed, Maggie has little time for her family’s questions. All that matters to her is answering this will they hang her twice?

Praise for Kate

'Exceptional � a tense, thrilling investigation, with a decidedly feminist slant' � Daily Mail on The Maiden

'Riveting . . . the tension persists until the last page� � The Times on The Maiden

'Enthralling, compelling and at times chilling . . . An utterly timely tale' � D. V. Bishop, prize-winning author of Ritual of Fire, on The King's Witches]]> Kate Foster 1035052083 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.77
author: Kate Foster
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.77
book published:
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]]> 214269328 Grieving the loss of her best friend, a young woman’s life is turned upside down when she meets a grumpy stranger who swears he can help her live again, in this heartwarming, slow-burn romance by the author of Ready or Not

Lenny’s a bit of a mess at the moment. Her best friend, Lou, recently passed away after a battle with cancer, and her death has left Lenny feeling completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with Lou, and the list of things she’s supposed to do to help her live again. The only thing she can do is temporary babysitting gigs, and luckily, she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. It’s not perfect: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of... a huge jerk. But if Lenny acts like she has it all together, maybe no one will notice she’s falling apart.

Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again� list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.]]> 416 Cara Bastone 0593595734 Sammyyy 3 4.27 2025
author: Cara Bastone
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
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]]> 212378269 New York Times bestselling author Madeline Martin

In the aftermath of a tumultuous year, Fiona Winslow finds solace in the decaying grandeur of Wurimbirra, the rambling family estate on the east coast of Australia she once called home. Intent on restoring it, she discovers the keys to more than just the dilapidated mansion—beneath the crumbling plaster and dust are secrets that have been buried for a generation.

When a misshelved book, The Midnight Estate, catches her attention in her late uncle's library, Fiona is plunged into a tale that mirrors her own—a story of love, loss and betrayal. But as the lines between fiction and reality blur, Fiona must ask herself: Is the true mystery the one hidden within the walls of her ancestral home, or is it within the pages of a book that chose her as much as she chose it?

Told across three timelines and set against the Gothic backdrop of Wurimbirra, The Midnight Estate weaves a tale as intricate and haunting as Kate Morton's Homecoming, inviting readers into the heart of a family's darkest secrets with an absorbing book-within-a-book mystery.]]> 352 Kelly Rimmer 1525805118 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.38
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> 176403358 The year’s biggest book sensation and #1 New York Times bestseller returns in this completely jaw-dropping special edition, featuring:
� a stunning, revamped cover
� gorgeous new endpapers
� black sprayed edges
…plus two bonus chapters from Xaden’s point of view!

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.]]> 518 Rebecca Yarros 1649376162 Sammyyy 4 4.70 2023
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.70
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 34454589 320 Margaret Atwood 1328879941 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.31 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40940649
By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

How long can one man survive like this?

]]> 162 Richard Matheson 0795315635 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.04 1954
author: Richard Matheson
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54508524 Marie Benedict, the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Only Woman in the Room, uncovers the untold story of Agatha Christie’s mysterious eleven day disappearance.

In December 1926, Agatha Christie goes missing. Investigators find her empty car on the edge of a deep, gloomy pond, the only clues some tire tracks nearby and a fur coat left in the car—strange for a frigid night. Her husband and daughter have no knowledge of her whereabouts, and England unleashes an unprecedented manhunt to find the up-and-coming mystery author. Eleven days later, she reappears, just as mysteriously as she disappeared, claiming amnesia and providing no explanations for her time away.

The puzzle of those missing eleven days has persisted. With her trademark exploration into the shadows of history, acclaimed author Marie Benedict brings us into the world of Agatha Christie, imagining why such a brilliant woman would find herself at the center of such a murky story.

What is real, and what is mystery? What role did her unfaithful husband play, and what was he not telling investigators?

A master storyteller whose clever mind may never be matched, Agatha Christie’s untold history offers perhaps her greatest mystery of all.]]> 292 Marie Benedict 149268273X Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.94 2020
author: Marie Benedict
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> 198563674 A sweeping novel inspired by the untold history of women pioneers who fought to protect children caught in the storm of land barons hungry for power and oil wealth.

Oklahoma, 1909. Eleven-year-old Olive Augusta Radley knows that her stepfather doesn’t have good intentions toward the two Choctaw girls boarded in their home as wards. When the older girl disappears, Ollie flees to the woods, taking six-year-old Nessa with her. Together they begin a perilous journey to the rugged Winding Stair Mountains, the notorious territory of outlaws, treasure hunters, and desperate men. Along the way, Ollie and Nessa form an unlikely band with others like themselves, struggling to stay one step ahead of those who seek to exploit them . . . or worse.

Oklahoma, 1990. Law Enforcement Ranger Valerie Boren O’dell arrives at Horsethief Trail National Park seeking a quiet place to balance a career and single parenthood. But no sooner has Valerie reported for duty than she’s faced with local controversy over the park’s opening, a teenage hiker gone missing from one of the trails, and the long-hidden burial site of three children deep in a cave. Val’s quest to uncover the truth wins an ally among the neighboring Choctaw Tribal Police but soon collides with old secrets and the tragic and deadly history of the land itself.

In this emotional and enveloping novel, Lisa Wingate traces the story of children abandoned by the law and the battle to see justice done. Amid times of deep conflict over who owns the land and its riches, Ollie and Val traverse the wild and beautiful terrain, each leaving behind one life in search of another.]]> 368 Lisa Wingate 0593726502 Sammyyy 4 3.81 2024
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves:
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]]> 34051011
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.]]> 496 Min Jin Lee Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.35 2017
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> 211025407 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593712993.

An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life.

Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.

Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.

Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.]]> 512 Karissa Chen Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.25 2025
author: Karissa Chen
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> 216247081 A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom—and her family’s ties to it—in this enthralling novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand.

As featured in People � Harper's Bazaar � TODAY � PopSugar � Reader's Digest � SheReads � Woman’s World � Real Simple � BookBrowse � and more!

Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can.

But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen.

It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale—royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away.

Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.]]> 363 Dolen Perkins-Valdez 0593337735 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.55 2025
author: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 8705953 96 Eileen M. Smith-Cavros 0915630435 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.33 2006
author: Eileen M. Smith-Cavros
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 28957368 � A Shoshone elder

The genius of the Native Americans has always been their profound spirituality and their deep understanding of the land and its ways.

For three decades, author Kent Nerburn has lived and worked among the Native American people. Voices in the Stones is a unique collection of his encounters, experiences, and reflections during that time.

He takes us inside a traditional Native feast to show us how the children are taught to respect the elders. He brings us to an isolated prairie rock outcropping where a young Native man and his father show us how the power of ceremony connects the present with the ancient voices of the past. At a dusty roadside café he introduces us to an elder who remembers the time when his ancestors could talk to animals.

In these and other deeply touching stories, Nerburn reveals the spiritual awareness that animates all of Native American life, and shows us how we have much to learn from one another if only we have the heart to listen.]]> 192 Kent Nerburn 1608683907 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.32
author: Kent Nerburn
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: on-my-shelf
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]]> 6532022
In this fictionalized account of actual events, Nerburn brings the land of the northern High Plains alive and reveals the Native American way of teaching and learning with a depth that few outsiders have ever captured.]]> 368 Kent Nerburn 1577315782 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.49 2009
author: Kent Nerburn
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 72662 336 Kent Nerburn 1577312333 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.37 2002
author: Kent Nerburn
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 208840265 A deliciously witty and inspiring memoir by One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz about her decade in a cult and her quest to break free.

In the early 2000s, after years of hard work and determination to breakthrough as an actor, Bethany Joy Lenz was finally cast as one of the leads on the hit drama One Tree Hill. Her career was about to take off, but her personal life was slowly beginning to unravel. What none of the show’s millions of fans knew, hidden even from her costars, was her secret double life in a cult.

An only child who often had to fend for herself and always wanted a place to belong, Lenz found the safe haven she’d been searching for in a Bible study group with other Hollywood creatives. However, the group soon morphed into something more sinister—a slowly woven web of manipulation, abuse, and fear under the guise of a church covenant called The Big House Family. Piece by piece, Lenz began to give away her autonomy, ultimately relocating to the Family’s Pacific Northwest compound, overseen by a domineering minister who would convince Lenz to marry one of his sons and steadily drained millions of her TV income without her knowledge. Family “minders� assigned to her on set, “Maoist struggle session”–inspired meetings in the basement of a filthy house, and regular counseling with “Leadership� were just part of the tactics used to keep her loyal.

Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith. Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.]]> 303 Bethany Joy Lenz 1668067307 Sammyyy 0 4.28 2024
author: Bethany Joy Lenz
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> 17707906 Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight. Part history, part mystery, part spiritual journey and teaching story, The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo is filled with the profound insight into humanity and Native American culture we have come to expect from Nerburn’s journeys. As the American Indian College Fund has stated, once you have encountered Nerburn’s stirring evocations of America’s high plains and incisive insights into the human heart, “you can never look at the world, or at people, the same way again.”]]> 408 Kent Nerburn 1608680150 Sammyyy 5 4.51 2013
author: Kent Nerburn
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
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]]> 60657589
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.]]> 336 Heather Fawcett 059350013X Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.99 2023
author: Heather Fawcett
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 59883848 A profound exploration of the spiritual power of nature--and an urgent call to reclaim that power in everyday life.

Since the beginning of time, humankind has looked upon nature and seen the divine. In the writings of the great thinkers across religions, the natural world inspires everything from fear to awe to tranquil contemplation; God, or however one defined the sublime, was present in everything. Yet today, even as we admire a tree or take in a striking landscape, we rarely see nature as sacred.

In this short but deeply powerful book, the bestselling historian of religion Karen Armstrong re-sacralizes nature for modern times. Drawing on her vast knowledge of the world's religious traditions, she vividly describes nature's central place in spirituality across the centuries. In bringing this age-old wisdom to life, Armstrong shows modern readers how to rediscover nature's potency and form a connection to something greater than ourselves.
]]> 224 Karen Armstrong 0735282420 Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.61 2022
author: Karen Armstrong
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 44167792 A violent ex-con forces his son to commit crimes in this unforgettable memoir about family and survival.

Growing up on the Navajo Indian Reservation, David Crow and his three siblings idolized their dad, a self-taught Cherokee who loved to tell his children about his World War II feats. But as time passed, David discovered the other side of Thurston Crow, the ex-con with a code of ethics that justified cruelty, violence, lies—even murder. Intimidating David with beatings, Thurston coerced his son into doing his criminal bidding. David’s mom, too mentally ill to care for her children, couldn’t protect him.

Through sheer determination, David managed to get into college and achieve professional success. When he finally found the courage to refuse his father’s criminal demands, he unwittingly triggered a plot of revenge that would force him into a deadly showdown with Thurston Crow.

David would have only twenty-four hours to outsmart his father—the brilliant, psychotic man who bragged that the three years he spent in the notorious San Quentin State Prison had been the easiest time of his life.

Raw and palpable, The Pale-Faced Lie is an inspirational story about the power of forgiveness and the strength of the human spirit.]]> 352 David Crow 0997487178 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.09 2019
author: David Crow
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 305508
Rich with storytelling, history, and folklore, The Lakota Way expresses the heart of Native American philosophy and reveals the path to a fulfilling and meaningful life. Joseph Marshall is a member of the Sicunga Lakota Sioux and has dedicated his entire life to the wisdom he learned from his elders. Here he focuses on the twelve core qualities that are crucial to the Lakota way of life--bravery, fortitude, generosity, wisdom, respect, honor, perseverance, love, humility, sacrifice, truth, and compassion. Whether teaching a lesson on respect imparted by the mythical Deer Woman or the humility embodied by the legendary Lakota leader Crazy Horse, The Lakota Way offers a fresh outlook on spirituality and ethical living.]]> 256 Joseph M. Marshall III 0142196096 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.35 2001
author: Joseph M. Marshall III
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 30231812 An intrepid investigation into nature’s restorative benefits by a prize-winning author.

For centuries, poets and philosophers extolled the benefits of a walk in the woods: Beethoven drew inspiration from rocks and trees; Wordsworth composed while tromping over the heath; Nikola Tesla conceived the electric motor while visiting a park. Intrigued by our storied renewal in the natural world, Florence Williams sets out to uncover the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain.

From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to groves of eucalyptus in California, Williams investigates the science at the confluence of environment, mood, health, and creativity. Delving into completely new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and ultimately strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.]]> 304 Florence Williams 0393242714 Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.98 2017
author: Florence Williams
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1138262 224 Stephen Plog 050027939X Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.95 1997
author: Stephen Plog
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 182012
Going back and forth between present and past, the narrative takes place in two time frames: present and ten years prior to the shooting. The “present� narration evolves over several hours; the “past� takes place over the course of a week.

Lena will primarily get the present narration, working outside the station with Frank trying to figure out who the shooter is and how to resolve the hostage situation. Inside the station, Jeffrey has not been fatally wounded, but Sara knows he could easily die if the bleeding is not stopped. He drifts in and out of consciousness and through Sara and Jeffrey we get the past, and the case that leads up to the present day shooting.]]> 384 Karin Slaughter 0060567112 Sammyyy 5 4.15 2004
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
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]]> 127305713
Spending her days pretending to be nothing more than a vapid young socialite, Rune spends her nights as the Crimson Moth, a witch vigilante who rescues her kind from being purged. When a rescue goes wrong, she decides to throw the witch hunters off her scent and gain the intel she desperately needs by courting the handsome Gideon Sharpe � a notorious and unforgiving witch hunter loyal to the revolution � who she can't help but find herself falling for.

Gideon loathes the decadence and superficiality Rune represents, but when he learns the Crimson Moth has been using Rune’s merchant ships to smuggle renegade witches out of the republic, he inserts himself into her social circles by pretending to court her right back. He soon realizes that beneath her beauty and shallow façade, is someone fiercely intelligent and tender who feels like his perfect match. Except, what if she’s the very villain he’s been hunting?

Kristen Ciccarelli’s The Crimson Moth is the thrilling start to a romantic fantasy duology where the only thing more treacherous than being a witch� is falling in love.]]> 406 Kristen Ciccarelli 1250866901 Sammyyy 3 4.16 2024
author: Kristen Ciccarelli
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
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]]> 219603177 One train. No stops. A deadly game of survival and revenge.

In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family. Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution.

Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey of fourteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served.

But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. As the train barrels through the night, it becomes clear that someone else on board is enacting their own form of revenge—and that they won’t stop until everyone else is dead.

With time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them—even though it means putting her own life at risk.]]> 400 Riley Sager 0593472403 Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.64 2025
author: Riley Sager
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> 37946455 In this sequel to Kerri Maniscalco's Stalking Jack the Ripper, bizarre murders are discovered in the castle of Prince Vlad the Impaler, otherwise known as Dracula. Could it be a copycat killer...or has the depraved prince been brought back to life? Now in paperback!
Following the grief and horror of her discovery of Jack the Ripper's true identity, Audrey Rose Wadsworth has no choice but to flee London and its memories. Together with the arrogant yet charming Thomas Cresswell, she journeys to the dark heart of Romania, home to one of Europe's best schools of forensic medicine...and to another notorious killer, Vlad the Impaler, whose thirst for blood became legend.
But her life's dream is soon tainted by blood-soaked discoveries in the halls of the school's forbidding castle, and Audrey Rose is compelled to investigate the strangely familiar murders. What she finds brings all her terrifying fears to life once again.]]> 480 Kerri Maniscalco 0316551678 Sammyyy 4 4.20 2017
author: Kerri Maniscalco
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> 209439446
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 527 Rebecca Yarros 1649374186 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.18 2025
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 53481714 An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the ceaseless push and pull of family

Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents' popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can't quite believe that it will affect them; they're hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refusing to patronize the bakery. Luckily Annelise and her husband are given the chance to leave for America, but they must go without her parents, whose future and safety are uncertain.

Two generations later, in a small Midwestern city, Annelise's granddaughter, Clare, is a young woman newly in love. But when she stumbles upon a trove of her grandmother's letters from Germany, she sees the history of her family's sacrifices in a new light, and suddenly she's faced with an impossible choice: the past, or her future. A novel of dazzling emotional richness, Send for Me is a major departure for this acclaimed author, an epic and intimate exploration of mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness.]]> 272 Lauren Fox Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.37 2021
author: Lauren Fox
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: on-my-shelf
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]]> 6521488 Picoult, Jodi 416 Jodi Picoult 0743422813 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.84 2000
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: on-my-shelf
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]]> 10913 � Richmond Times Dispatch “Extraordinary.�
� Orlando Sentinel From the #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult ( Nineteen Minutes, Change of Heart, Handle with Care ) comes Keeping Faith : an “addictively readable� ( Entertainment Weekly ) novel that “makes you wonder about God. And that is a rare moment, indeed, in modern fiction� ( USA Today ).]]> 422 Jodi Picoult 0060878061 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.79 1999
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: on-my-shelf
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]]> 3360060
So when midnight calls from the hospital come in, no one is ready for the appalling truth: Emily is dead at seventeen from a gunshot wound to the head. There's a single unspent bullet in the gun that Chris took from his father's cabinet—a bullet that Chris tells police he intended for himself. But a local detective has doubts about the suicide pact that Chris has described.]]> 389 Jodi Picoult 006085880X Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.97 1998
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 10911
"Sometimes I wonder....Can a ghost find you, if she wants to?"

An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe, who insist it's a burial ground. When odd, supernatural events plague the town of Comtosook, a ghost hunter is hired by the developer to help convince the residents that there's nothing spiritual about the property.

Enter Ross Wakeman, a suicidal drifter who has put himself in mortal danger time and again. He's driven his car off a bridge into a lake. He's been mugged in New York City and struck by lightning in a calm country field. Yet despite his best efforts, life clings to him and pulls him ever deeper into the empty existence he cannot bear since his fiancée's death in a car crash eight years ago. Ross now lives only for the moment he might once again encounter the woman he loves. But in Comtosook, the only discovery Ross can lay claim to is that of Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death. Thus begins Jodi Picoult's enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate, and a crime of passion.

Hailed by critics as a "master" storyteller (Washington Post), Picoult once again "pushes herself, and consequently the reader, to think about the unthinkable" (Denver Post). Second Glance, her eeriest and most engrossing work yet, delves into a virtually unknown chapter of American history -- Vermont's eugenics project of the 1920s and 30s -- to provide a compelling study of the things that come back to haunt us -- literally and figuratively. Do we love across time, or in spite of it?]]> 448 Jodi Picoult 0743454510 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.78 2003
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 22571046
An apparent student suicide has brought medical examiner Sara Linton to the local college campus, along with her ex-husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver. But a horribly mutilated corpse yields up few answers. And a suspicious rash of subsequent "suicides" suggests that a different kind of terror is stalking the youth of Heartsdale, Georgia—a nightmare that is coming to prey on Sara Linton's loved ones.

A small town is being transformed into a killing ground. And the key to a sadistic murderer's motive and identity may be held in the unsteady hands of a campus security guard—a former police detective driven from the force by the hellish memories that will never leave her. Lena Adams survived the unthinkable and has paid a devastating price. Now the survival of future victims may depend upon her ... when she can barely protect herself.]]> 13 Karin Slaughter 0062381520 Sammyyy 5 3.81 2003
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
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]]> 40727470
Against her stern father's wishes and society's expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle's laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.

The story's shocking twists and turns, augmented with real, sinister period photos, will make this dazzling debut from author Kerri Maniscalco impossible to forget.]]> 337 Kerri Maniscalco 0316273503 Sammyyy 4 3.93 2016
author: Kerri Maniscalco
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves:
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]]> 3462
BookPage calls Nicholas Sparks, "a modern master of fateful love stories," and his phenomenal bestsellers- The Notebook, Message in a Bottle, and A Walk to Remember- have made him one of America's most beloved storytellers. Here, in his newest work, Sparks tells a story about making the greatest commitment of all...loving someone forever.

The Rescue

When confronted by raging fires or deadly accidents, volunteer fireman Taylor McAden feels compelled to take terrifying risks - risks no one else in the department would ever take - to save lives. But there is one leap of faith Taylor can't bring himself to make: He can't fall in love. For all his adult years, Taylor has sought out women who need to be rescued, women he leaves as soon as their crisis is over, as soon as the relationship starts to become truly intimate.

Then, one day, a raging, record-breaking storm hits his small Southern town. Denise Holton, a young single mother, is driving through it when her car skids off the road. With her is her four-year-old son, Kyle, a boy with severe learning disabilities and for whom she has sacrificed everything. Unconscious and bleeding, she-but not Kyle-will be found by Taylor McAden. And when she wakes, the chilling truth becomes clear to both of them: Kyle is gone.

During the search for Kyle, the connection, the lifeline, between Taylor and Denise takes root. Taylor doesn't know that this rescue will be different from all the others, demanding far more than raw physical courage. That it will lead him to the possibility of his own rescue from a life lived without love. That it will require him to open doors to his past that were slammed shut by pain. That it will dare him to live life to the fullest by daring to love.

In The Rescue Nicholas Sparks weaves his inimitable spell, immersing us in the passions and the surprising complexities of modern relationships-and in doing so, teaching us something about our own.]]> 339 Nicholas Sparks 0446696129 Sammyyy 4 4.11 2000
author: Nicholas Sparks
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
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]]> 214151420 From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.

Shari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface—Ruby’s wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.

As the family’s YouTube notoriety grew, so too did Ruby’s delusions of righteousness. Fueled by the sadistic influence of relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, together they implemented an inhumane and merciless disciplinary regime.

Ruby and Jodi were arrested in Utah in 2023 on multiple charges of aggravated child abuse. On that fateful day, Shari shared a photo online of a police car outside their home. Her caption had one word: “Finally.�

For the first time, Shari will reveal the disturbing truth behind 8 Passengers and her family’s devastating involvement with Jodi Hildebrandt’s cultish life coaching program, “ConneXions.� No stone is left unturned as Shari exposes the perils of influencer culture and shares for the first time her battle for truth and survival in the face of her mother’s cruelty.]]> 320 Shari Franke 1668065398 Sammyyy 5 4.44 2025
author: Shari Franke
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
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]]> 34460631 368 Corban Addison 0718042298 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.16 2017
author: Corban Addison
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 22608582 The harrowing, true account from the brave men on the ground who fought back during the Battle of Benghazi.

13 Hours presents, for the first time ever, the true account of the events of September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya. A team of six American security operators fought to repel the attackers and protect the Americans stationed there. Those men went beyond the call of duty, performing extraordinary acts of courage and heroism, to avert tragedy on a much larger scale. This is their personal account, never before told, of what happened during the thirteen hours of that now-infamous attack.

13 Hours sets the record straight on what happened during a night that has been shrouded in mystery and controversy. Written by New York Times bestselling author Mitchell Zuckoff, this riveting book takes readers into the action-packed story of heroes who laid their lives on the line for one another, for their countrymen, and for their country.

13 Hours is a stunning, eye-opening, and intense book--but most importantly, it is the truth. The story of what happened to these men--and what they accomplished--is unforgettable.]]> 432 Mitchell Zuckoff 1455530093 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.26 2014
author: Mitchell Zuckoff
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25862358 256 Jesse J. Holland 1493008463 Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.65 2016
author: Jesse J. Holland
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57565245 The extraordinarily moving memoir by a Holocaust survivor who saved an untold number of lives at Auschwitz through everyday acts of courage and kindness--in the vein of A Bookshop in Berlin and The Nazi Officer's Wife.In March 1942, twenty-five-year-old kindergarten teacher Magda Hellinger and nearly a thousand other young women were deported as some of the first Jews to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The SS soon discovered that by putting prisoners in day-to-day charge of the accommodation blocks, they could deflect attention away from themselves. Magda was one such prisoner selected for leadership and put in charge of hundreds of women in the notorious Experimental Block 10. She found herself constantly walking a dangerously fine line: saving lives while avoiding suspicion by the SS and risking execution. Through her inner strength and shrewd survival instincts, she was able to rise above the horror and cruelty of the camps and build pivotal relationships with the women under her watch, and even some of Auschwitz's most notorious Nazi senior officers. Based on Magda's personal account and completed by her daughter's extensive research, this awe-inspiring tale offers us incredible insight into human nature, the power of resilience, and the goodness that can shine through even in the most horrific of conditions.]]> 1 Magda Hellinger 179713339X Sammyyy 0 to-read 0.0 2021
author: Magda Hellinger
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> 108514520 The rules were simple . . . Keep my hands off his daughter and stay out of trouble. But now I'm stuck with her. There's only one bed. And, well, rules are made to be broken.

I'm the golden boy of professional bull riding. Or at least I was until it all blew up in my face. Now, my agent says I have to clean up my image, so I'm stuck with his ball-busting daughter for the rest of the season as my "full-time supervision."

But I don't need a goddamn babysitter, especially one with skin-tight jeans, a sexy smirk, and a mouth she can't stop running . . . A mouth I can't stop thinking about.

She says this means nothing.

I say this means everything.

She says there are boundaries we shouldn't cross. That my reputation can't take any more hits-and neither can her damaged heart.

I say I'm going to steal it anyway.]]> 416 Elsie Silver 0349437661 Sammyyy 4 3.93 2022
author: Elsie Silver
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves:
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]]> 178811157   Ian is thrown west to Paris. There, he unexpectedly falls in love with Alicia, a mysterious Frenchwoman, but then must leave her to race across France to safety in Casablanca. Daniel ends up in the Siberian Gulag, where he faces endless blizzards, starvation, and the often-lethal cruelties of guards and fellow prisoners. He too finds someone, an exiled poet named Nadhya, until he must stay with her or cross all of Russia to return to the future he'd envisioned.
  Walk the Earth as Brothers is the story of two pawns in a titanic world war, of bravery, random chance, kindness, betrayal and love, and of what happens to the hopes and dreams of Ian and Daniel.]]> 253 Henry Rozycki 1592113869 Sammyyy 0 5.00
author: Henry Rozycki
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
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]]> 217206738
Ruthless. Meticulous. Arrogant.

Dante Russo thrives on control, both personally and professionally.

The billionaire CEO never planned to marry—until the threat of blackmail forces him into an engagement with a woman he barely knows.

Vivian Lau, jewelry heiress and daughter of his newest enemy.

It doesn’t matter how beautiful or charming she is. He'll do everything in his power to destroy the evidence and their betrothal.

There’s only one problem: Now that he has her...he can't bring himself to let her go.

***

Elegant. Ambitious. Well-mannered.

Vivian Lau is the perfect daughter and her family’s ticket into the highest echelons of high society.

Marrying a blue-blooded Russo means opening doors that would otherwise remain closed to her new-money family.

While the rude, elusive Dante isn't her idea of a dream partner, she agrees to their arranged marriage out of duty.

Craving his touch was never part of the plan.

Neither was the worst thing she could possibly do: fall in love with her future husband.

King of Wrath is a steamy arranged-marriage billionaire romance. It includes explicit content and profanity. Recommended for mature listeners only.]]> 398 Ana Huang Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.05 2022
author: Ana Huang
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58117458 Join the fight.


Sam Pope was one of the UK’s finest soldiers, serving over a decade as an elite sniper. After a near fatal shooting brings an end to his career, Sam returns home to his family and a potential new career in the Metropolitan Police. When disaster strikes and his bond with his family is broken, Sam takes a job as an archive officer within the Met, hunting down criminals that have beaten the system and delivering his own brand of justice.

When a terrorist attack at the London Marathon shakes the city to its core, Sam decides to open his own line of investigation. Venturing into the world of organised crime and police corruption, Sam soon finds himself as the number one target…and faces a race against time to expose the truth.

Fans of Lee Child, Mark Dawson, Robert Ludlum and Vince Flynn who are looking for their next action hero, will be thrilled by The Night Shift, the first book in the Amazon No.1 Best Selling Series.

What the readers are saying:

'Every major city in the world needs Sam Pope...All Jack Reacher fans should read this!!'

'Highly recommend to anyone who likes an action packed, thrilling genre.'

'Sam Pope was one of the most bad ass characters that I have read in a while.'

' I enjoyed it so much I started reading it again! The story is full of action, well written and became a video in my mind.'

Grab your copy and join the best selling series. The fight awaits...]]> 296 Robert Enright 1838074007 Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.79 2016
author: Robert Enright
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> 211004023 A spine-tingling thriller by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about a 10-year-old girl with an impossible power, her father, and an unlikely stranger, who come together to confront the dangerous forces that want her at all costs. A strange story of family, love, comets, and bacon. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother wants nothing to do with him, and he's been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington DC. With nothing left to lose, he returns to his family's summer cabin outside the small mountain town of Roseland, Oregon to try and find some sense of direction. The cabin should be empty. It's not. Inside is a man named Alex. And with him is an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader. Artemis, who isn't exactly as she appears.

Soon it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: let himself drown in the memories of his past, or fight for a future he never thought possible. Because the girl is special. And forces are descending upon them who want nothing more than to control her.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 1250890438 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.13 2018
author: T.J. Klune
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28587957
Ruth hesitates before performing CPR and, as a result, is charged with a serious crime. Kennedy McQuarrie, a white public defender, takes her case but gives unexpected advice: Kennedy insists that mentioning race in the courtroom is not a winning strategy. Conflicted by Kennedy's counsel, Ruth tries to keep life as normal as possible for her family—especially her teenage son—as the case becomes a media sensation. As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy must gain each other's trust, and come to see that what they've been taught their whole lives about others—and themselves—might be wrong.

With incredible empathy, intelligence, and candor, Jodi Picoult tackles race, privilege, prejudice, justice, and compassion—and doesn't offer easy answers. Small Great Things is a remarkable achievement from a writer at the top of her game.]]> 480 Jodi Picoult 0345544951 Sammyyy 5 The queen does it again ❤️ 4.30 2016
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves:
review:
The queen does it again ❤️
]]> 59912428 A soul-stirring novel about what we choose to keep from our past, and what we choose to leave behind.

Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business.

Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.

And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can she trust him completely . . .

Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.

Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.]]> 464 Jodi Picoult 1984818384 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.05 2022
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.44 2007
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.45 2025
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6648391 141 Eva Mozes Kor 1933718285 Sammyyy 5 4.27 2009
author: Eva Mozes Kor
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
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]]> 209496283 Time is a healer, but it helps to have a friend.

The last thing Alice expects to see at her husband’s graveside on his birthday is a giant, talking frog. On closer inspection, it’s a grown man dressed as Kermit.

Turns out Alice’s husband is buried next to Ben’s older brother Harry, who—as a parting practical joke in his will—insisted that Ben visit his grave each year, on this specific day, dressed in an as-yet-undisclosed pageant of embarrassing fancy dress.

With little but their grief and this one day in common, Alice and Ben form a very special, very strange friendship, meeting just once a same day, same time, same place—different silly costume. As the years pass and grief alters, can their unique bond help them cope with the hardest part of life?]]> 314 Nick Spalding 1662519990 Sammyyy 5 4.24 2024
author: Nick Spalding
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
Equal parts gut-busting-laugh-out-loud and emotional-on-the-verge-of-tears. I loved every bit of it!
]]> 133938826 should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighborhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings.

Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that bind them, Yeongju begins to write a new chapter in her life. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop evolves into a warm, welcoming haven for lost souls—a place to rest, heal, and remember that it’s never too late to scrap the plot and start over.]]> 307 Hwang Bo-Reum Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.94 2022
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 158649513 Orphan Train meets Before We Were Yours meets Water for Elephants in this compelling multigenerational novel of survival, love, and the families we make.

In 1924, four-year-old Cecily Larson’s mother reluctantly drops her off at an orphanage in Chicago, promising to be back once she’s made enough money to support both Cecily and herself. But she never returns, and shortly after high-spirited Cecily turns seven, she is sold to a traveling circus to perform as the “little sister� to glamorous bareback rider Isabelle DuMonde. With Isabelle and the rest of the circus, Cecily finally feels she’s found the family she craves. But as the years go by, the cracks in her little world begin to show. And when teenage Cecily meets and falls in love with a young roustabout named Lucky, she finds her life thrown onto an entirely unexpected—and dangerous—course.

In 2015, Cecily is now 94 and living a quiet life in Minnesota, with her daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandson. But when her family decides to surprise her with an at-home DNA test, the unexpected results not only bring to light the tragic love story that Cecily has kept hidden for decades but also throw into question everything about the family she’s raised and claimed as her own for nearly seventy years. Cecily and everyone in her life must now decide who they really are and what family—and forgiveness—really mean.

Sweeping through a long period of contemporary history, The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson is an immersive, compelling, and entertaining family drama centered around one remarkable woman and her determination to survive.]]> 384 Ellen Baker 0063351196 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.84 2024
author: Ellen Baker
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
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]]> 45701218 From the bestselling author of The Things We Cannot Say comes a poignant novel about the fault in memories and the lies that can bond a family together—or tear it apart.

With her father recently moved to a care facility for his worsening dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.

As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.

Exploring the expectations society places on women of every generation, Kelly Rimmer explores the profound struggles two women unwittingly share across the decades set within an engrossing family mystery that may unravel everything they believed to be true.]]> 352 Kelly Rimmer 1525804650 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.99 2020
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 62926992
Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. Now a twenty-six-year-old teacher’s aide, she is able to share her love of reading with bright, young students, especially seven-year-old Christopher Lamb, who was left orphaned after the tragic death of his parents. Lucy would give anything to adopt Christopher, but even the idea of becoming a family seems like an impossible dream without proper funds and stability.

But be careful what you wish for. . . .

Just when Lucy is about to give up, Jack Masterson announces he’s finally written a new book. Even better, he’s holding a contest at his home on the real Clock Island, and Lucy is one of the four lucky contestants chosen to compete to win the one and only copy.

For Lucy, the chance of winning the most sought-after book in the world means everything to her and Christopher. But first she must contend with ruthless book collectors, wily opponents, and the distractingly handsome (and grumpy) Hugo Reese, the illustrator of the Clock Island books. Meanwhile, Jack “the Mastermind� Masterson is plotting the ultimate twist ending that could change all their lives forever.

. . . You might just get it.]]> 304 Meg Shaffer 0593598830 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.02 2023
author: Meg Shaffer
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.11 2020
author: Brit Bennett
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
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]]> 85459
Meg Galloway, born and raised in Lunacy, is used to being alone. She was a young girl when her father disappeared, and she has learned to be independent, flying her small plane, living on the outskirts of town with just her huskies for company. After her New Year's kiss with the chief of police, she allows herself to give in to passion - while remaining determined to keep things as simple as possible. But there's something about Nate's sad eyes that gets under her skin and warms her frozen heart.

And now, things in Lunacy are heating up. Years ago, on one of the majestic mountains shadowing the town, a crime occurred that is unsolved to this day - and Nate suspects that a killer still walks the snowy streets. His investigation will unearth the secrets and suspicions that lurk beneath the placid surface, as well as bring out the big-city survival instincts that made him a cop in the first place. And his discovery will threaten the new life - and the new love - that he has finally found for himself.]]> 637 Nora Roberts 0515139742 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.01 2004
author: Nora Roberts
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

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

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

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

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.59 2024
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
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]]> 37539001 In the shocking finale to the bestselling series that began with Stalking Jack the Ripper, Audrey Rose and Thomas are on the hunt for the depraved, elusive killer known as the White City Devil. A deadly game of cat-and-mouse has them fighting to stay one step ahead of the brilliant serial killer---or see their fateful romance cut short by unspeakable tragedy.

Audrey Rose Wadsworth and Thomas Cresswell have landed in America, a bold, brash land unlike the genteel streets of London they knew. But like London, the city of Chicago hides its dark secrets well. When the two attend the spectacular World's Fair, they find the once-in-a-lifetime event tainted with reports of missing people and unsolved murders.

Determined to help, Audrey Rose and Thomas begin their investigations, only to find themselves facing a serial killer unlike any they've heard of before. Identifying him is one thing, but capturing him---and getting dangerously lost in the infamous Murder Hotel he constructed as a terrifying torture device---is another.

Will Audrey Rose and Thomas see their last mystery to the end---together and in love---or will their fortunes finally run out when their most depraved adversary makes one final, devastating kill?]]> 464 Kerri Maniscalco 0316485543 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.19 2019
author: Kerri Maniscalco
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 30375937
But then, privileged young women begin to go missing without explanation, and a series of brutal slayings shocks the entire ship. The disturbing influence of the Moonlight Carnival pervades the decks as the murders grow ever more freakish, with nowhere to escape except the unforgiving sea.

It's up to Audrey Rose and Thomas to piece together the gruesome investigation as even more passengers die before reaching their destination. But with clues to the next victim pointing to someone she loves, can Audrey Rose unravel the mystery before the killer's horrifying finale?]]> 416 Kerri Maniscalco 0316551694 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.93 2018
author: Kerri Maniscalco
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 27883214 A legendary competition.
A mesmerizing romance.
An unbreakable bond
between two sisters.

Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over.

But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.

Welcome, welcome to Caraval . . . beware of getting swept too far away.]]> 407 Stephanie Garber 1250095255 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.97 2016
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.34 2003
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 61925111
Hamburg, 1942. Seventeen-year-old Anna knows she can never tell her proud parents the truth about where she is going. She must hide the fact that she is pregnant, that the father of her unborn child is dead and that she is on her way to a special maternity home, where her baby will be given to a perfect family. She tells herself that this is the best solution. She doesn’t expect to feel the rush of love for her beautiful baby boy in the white blanket, or the devastation when he is snatched from her, never to be seen again.

Desperate to forget her grief, she sees an advert for a secretary in a prison, far away in the east. Days later, she leaves Hamburg, travelling eastwards by train, feeling as if a whole new life is about to begin. It is the biggest mistake she will ever make.

London, 2016. Ninety-year-old Anna sits on the edge of her bed, hands trembling, eyes brimming with tears, as she looks at the picture of the soldier in the newspaper. Her friends and neighbors know her as a kindly old lady who bakes cakes and always has time to listen to their troubles. They don’t know about the hated green uniform she burned, the memories of the prisoners she tried to help and the bombed and blackened city she once called home. But now the time for a reckoning has come, will revealing the truth free Anna or destroy her?]]> 311 Suzanne Goldring 1803143959 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.17 2022
author: Suzanne Goldring
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 208547650 An inspiring, uplifting story of love and loss, courage and adventure, from the bestselling author of The Skylark’s Secret.

1927. Violet Mackenzie-Grant is embarking on her dream of studying at the Edinburgh School of Gardening for Women. She doesn’t yet know that it’s a journey that will take her to Kathmandu and beyond, deep into captivating landscapes and cultures that are worlds away from everything and everyone she’s left behind in Scotland.

2020. Daisy Laverock has dreamed of retracing the footsteps of her great-great-aunt Violet ever since discovering her long-lost journals, whose accounts of plant hunting in the 1930s inspired Daisy’s own career. Divorced, and facing an empty nest, Daisy decides to embark on the trip of a lifetime. She arrives in Nepal, ready to start trekking in the shadow of Everest. But fate, and the pandemic, have other plans.

Stranded and alone, Daisy must fall back on the kindness of strangers, taking inspiration from Violet’s determination and resilience to keep going in the darkest of times. As she gradually pieces together the fragments of Violet’s story and uncovers long-held secrets, can Daisy finally reveal a path forward to her own future?]]> 309 Fiona Valpy 1662516851 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 4.46 2024
author: Fiona Valpy
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 17571433
Some stories live forever...

Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shame­ful secret and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths to which we will go in order to keep the past from dictating the future.]]> 460 Jodi Picoult 1439102775 Sammyyy 5 4.36 2013
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
review:
I don't know how Jodi does it
]]> 154985516 For fans of Piranesi and The Midnight Library, a stunning historical fantasy novel set on a grand express train, about a group of passengers on a dangerous journey across a magical landscape

It is said there is a price that every passenger must pay. A price beyond the cost of a ticket.

There is only one way to travel across the Wastelands: on the Trans-Siberian Express, a train as famous for its luxury as for its danger. The train is never short of passengers, eager to catch sight of Wastelands creatures more miraculous and terrifying than anything they could imagine. But on the train's last journey, something went horribly wrong, though no one seems to remember what exactly happened. Not even Zhang Weiwei, who has spent her life onboard and thought she knew all of the train’s secrets.

Now, the train is about to embark again, with a new set of passengers. Among them are Marya Petrovna, a grieving woman with a borrowed name; Henry Grey, a disgraced naturalist looking for redemption; and Elena, a beguiling stowaway with a powerful connection to the Wastelands itself. Weiwei knows she should report Elena, but she can’t help but be drawn to her. As the girls begin a forbidden friendship, there are warning signs that the rules of the Wastelands are changing and the train might once again be imperiled. Can the passengers trust each other, as the wildness outside threatens to consume them all?]]> 336 Sarah Brooks 1250878616 Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.57 2024
author: Sarah Brooks
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35758169
As weeks unfold, Lexie finds herself caring for her fragile newborn niece while her carefully ordered life is collapsing around her. She’s in danger of losing her job, and her fiancé only has so much patience for Annie’s drama. In court-ordered rehab, Annie attempts to halt her downward spiral by confronting long-buried secrets from the sisters� childhood, ghosts that Lexie doesn’t want to face. But will the journey heal Annie, or lead her down a darker path?

Both candid and compassionate, Before I Let You Go explores a hotly divisive topic and asks how far the ties of family love can be stretched before they finally break.]]> 384 Kelly Rimmer 1525820842 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.11 2018
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200982339
In 1940s Germany, Sophie is excited to discover a message waiting for her in the Bridegroom's Oak from a mysterious suitor. Meanwhile, her best friend, Hanna, is sending messages too—but not to find love. As World War II unfolds in their small town of Kleinwald, the oak may hold the key to resistance against the Nazis.

In 1980s West Germany, American teen transplant Jenny feels suffocated by her strict parents and is struggling to fit in. Until she finds herself falling for Lena, a punk-rock girl hell-bent on tearing down the wall separating West Germany from East Germany, and meeting Frau Hermann, a kind old lady with secrets of her own.

In Spring 2020, New York City, best friends Miles and Chloe are slogging through the last few months of senior year when an unexpected package from Chloe’s grandmother leads them to investigate a cold case about two unidentified teenagers who went missing under the Bridegroom’s Oak eighty years ago.

Age Range: 12-18]]> 480 Libba Bray 0374388946 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.21 2025
author: Libba Bray
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 217163697 #1ĚýNew York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

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

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

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.59 2025
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 17286747
After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm.  As she struggles with her grandmother’s aging, her sister’s mental illness and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.

When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County’s newest social worker, she doesn’t realize just how much her help is needed.  She quickly becomes emotionally invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her boss and her new husband.  But as Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much darker than she would have guessed.  Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing the battle against everything she believes is wrong.

Set in rural Grace County, North Carolina in a time of state-mandated sterilizations and racial tension, Necessary Lies tells the story of these two young women, seemingly worlds apart, but both haunted by tragedy.  Jane and Ivy are thrown together and must ask themselves: how can you know what you believe is right, when everyone is telling you it’s wrong?]]> 368 Diane Chamberlain 1250010691 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.28 2013
author: Diane Chamberlain
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 202298237 302 C.L. Merklinger Sammyyy 0 5.00
author: C.L. Merklinger
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> 207592177 A courageous and poignant memoir of one young man’s daring escape from Cambodia’s genocidal regime

Forced from his home by the Khmer Rouge, teenager Mae Taing struggles to endure years of backbreaking work, constant starvation, and ruthless cruelty from his captors—supposed freedom fighters who turned against their own people. Mae risks torture and death to escape into the dark tropical jungles, trekking across a relentless wilderness crawling with soldiers.

When Mae is able to overcome unthinkable odds in the hopes of reuniting with his family, fate takes cruel turn as he flees war-torn Cambodia. He becomes trapped as a refugee with thousands of others on the ancient temple mountain, Preah Vihear, a place surrounded by countless deadly landmines. Caught up in the terror once more, it is only his willpower to survive and dreams of a better country that give Mae the strength to face the dangers ahead.

This gripping and inspiring memoir, written with Mae’s son, James, is not merely an incredible story of survival, but a testament to the human spirit’s capacity in us all to endure and prevail in spite of great adversity. Under the Naga Tail will find its place among the most epic true stories of personal triumph.]]> 352 Mae Bunseng Taing Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.48 2023
author: Mae Bunseng Taing
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 21719
What seemed at first to be a horrific but individual catastrophe proves to have wider implications. The autopsy reveals evidence of long-term abuse, of ritualistic self -mutilation, but when Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver start to investigate, they are frustrated at every turn.

The children surrounding the victim close ranks. The families turn their backs. Then a young girl is abducted, and it becomes clear that the first death is linked to an even more brutal crime, one far more shocking than anyone could have imagined. Meanwhile, detective Lena Adams, still recovering from her sister's death and her own brutal attack, finds herself drawn to a young man who might hold the answers. But unless Lena, Sara, and Jeffrey can uncover the deadly secrets the children hide, it's going to happen again . . .]]> 436 Karin Slaughter 0060534044 Sammyyy 5 4.07 2002
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
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review:

]]> 211004123 The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible � a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.]]> 306 Alice Feeney 125033778X Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.64 2025
author: Alice Feeney
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 542830
Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation. Images from that war -- and the protests against it -- had flooded America's living rooms for a decade. Hearts in Atlantis, King's newest fiction, is composed of five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.

In Part One, "Low Men in Yellow Coats," eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield discovers a world of predatory malice in his own neighborhood. He also discovers that adults are sometimes not rescuers but at the heart of the terror.

In the title story, a bunch of college kids get hooked on a card game, discover the possibility of protest...and confront their own collective heart of darkness, where laughter may be no more than the thinly disguised cry of the beast.

In "Blind Willie" and "Why We're in Vietnam," two men who grew up with Bobby in suburban Connecticut try to fill the emptiness of the post-Vietnam era in an America which sometimes seems as hollow -- and as haunted -- as their own lives.

And in "Heavenly Shades of Night Are Falling," this remarkable book's denouement, Bobby returns to his hometown where one final secret, the hope of redemption, and his heart's desire may await him.

Full of danger, full of suspense, most of all full of heart, Stephen King's new book will take some readers to a place they have never been...and others to a place they have never been able to completely leave.]]> 523 Stephen King 0684853515 Sammyyy 0 on-my-shelf 3.85 1999
author: Stephen King
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: on-my-shelf
review:

]]> 208558435 In 1960, junior editor Dottie Barber is up to her elbows in the slush pile of a New York publishing house. All of Dottie's friends and colleagues know her to be a book lover through and through, but what they don't know is that she has a special intuitive ability to understand pieces of a writer's life just by reading their words.
Only one writer has ever baffled Dottie's empathic understanding: the mysterious author of brilliant stories submitted to the publishing house with no endings and no name. Every day, Dottie looks for a new envelope from the author, but each submission only adds to her bittersweet frustration.
Nearly sixty years later, the mystery remains unsolved. Dottie's career in publishing has amassed her a wealth of bookish friends, part ownership in a bookstore, and an enormous private library full of treasures and secrets, yet she still yearns to uncover the identity of the unknown author. She's well into retirement when she meets Jim, a young playwright living in the basement apartment of her building. Despite being at opposite ends of their respective stories, the two become fast friends. Together, they search for the perfect reader-one who can help them finally decipher the author's identity.
A braided narrative of interconnected lives and stories, Bookstories is an ode to the authors, editors, publishers, librarians, booksellers, and countless others who make up the ecosystem of books. After all, it takes a world of people to bring about a world of books.]]> 270 Sarah Tollok 1947012584 Sammyyy 0 4.55
author: Sarah Tollok
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> 219876684 In a hilarious short story from New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, the absurdities of modern life cause one man’s solitary world to spin suddenly, and comically, out of control.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone?

Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.]]> 68 Fredrik Backman 1662526520 Sammyyy 0 3.94 2024
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves:
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]]> 209568774
Mafia families from around the world send their children to Kingmakers Academy to learn the skills of criminal enterprise.

Under the rules of Sanctuary, students are forbidden to fight or kill. But rivalries are high, tensions inflamed, and forbidden love arises in the most unlikely places�

Welcome to Kingmakers]]> 432 Sophie Lark 1464231532 Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.71 2021
author: Sophie Lark
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50520939
Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications.

When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

Most of them.]]> 376 Olivie Blake Sammyyy 2
I probably could have rated it 3 stars if it wasn't for everyone being mesmerized and sleeping with a 15-year-old� oh and another one of the characters dating someone 20 years younger than him.]]> 3.56 2020
author: Olivie Blake
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:
I’m so mad that this book didn’t live up to its full potential because the premise sounds SO GOOD and I wanted so badly to love it. I was hooked at the beginning with the character introductions, and I also thought the ending was pretty good and unpredictable. But like 85% of what happened in the middle of the book wasn’t necessary for the plot and had me so confused. It’s obvious the author is extremely smart, but I think she was trying to fit so many ideas and thoughts into one book, and it just made it uninteresting. At times it was purely fantasy, at times it had a sci-fi feel, and a huge part of it was just philosophical rambling which really played no part in the story line.

I probably could have rated it 3 stars if it wasn't for everyone being mesmerized and sleeping with a 15-year-old� oh and another one of the characters dating someone 20 years younger than him.
]]> 65213377 Inheritance is the first in The Lost Bride Trilogy by #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts―a tale of tragedies, loves found and lost, and a family haunted for generations.

1806: Astrid Poole sits in her bridal clothes, overwhelmed with happiness. But before her marriage can be consummated, she is murdered, and the circle of gold torn from her finger. Her last words are a promise to Collin never to leave him�

Graphic designer Sonya MacTavish is stunned to learn that her late father had a twin he never knew about―and that her newly discovered uncle, Collin Poole, has left her almost everything he owned, including a majestic Victorian house on the Maine coast, which the will stipulates she must live in it for at least three years. Her engagement recently broken, she sets off to find out why the boys were separated at birth―and why it was all kept secret until a genealogy website brought it to light.

Trey, the young lawyer who greets her at the sprawling clifftop manor, notes Sonya’s unease―and acknowledges that yes, the place is haunted…but just a little. Sure enough, Sonya finds objects moved and music playing out of nowhere. She sees a painting by her father inexplicably hanging in her deceased uncle’s office, and a portrait of a woman named Astrid, whom the lawyer refers to as “the first lost bride.� It’s becoming clear that Sonya has inherited far more than a house. She has inherited a centuries-old curse, and a puzzle to be solved if there is any hope of breaking it�
]]> 419 Nora Roberts 1250288320 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.17 2023
author: Nora Roberts
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 25803949 Karin Slaughter Sammyyy 5 3.79 2001
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 220160814 Three women are connected by one man in this kaleidoscopic thriller.

Restauranteur Paddy Swann was the life of the party until the day a man pushed him in the path of an oncoming train, leaving his twenty-something daughter Ash and wife Nina devastated. Shortly after Paddy’s funeral, the two women receive a surprise in the mail: a note and package from Nick Ratcliffe, an old friend of Paddy’s, and a nondescript lighter that once belonged to him decades ago. This unexpected gift draws Nick and Nina closer together—much to Ash’s dismay.

Martha is a small-town florist with dreams of expansion. She lives with her second husband Al, her baby, and two sons from her prior marriage. But they never seem to have any money, and with his constant traveling for work, she feels like a single parent—especially when an emergency makes her realize something needs to change.

But Nick and Al may not be who they say they are, leading these three women on a shocking collision course, wishing they had heeded a warning: Don’t let him in.]]> 368 Lisa Jewell 1668033879 Sammyyy 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 21469157 432 Kristin Hannah 1250059879 Sammyyy 5 4.22 2011
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves:
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Kristin does it again <3<3<3
]]> 209041993 Dead doesn’t always mean gone�

Gemma LeClair has a secret…she can see and speak with the dead that haunt the world around her. Forever trapped in the places they died, the dead are lonely and dangerous, longing for attention, desperate to be seen again.

After nearly failing the ninth grade, moving in with her grandfather in Sage County is Gemma’s last chance to prove she can lead a normal life. But the dead are everywhere, and no place is more haunted than Gemma’s new high school.

When a mysterious girl with no record of dying suddenly appears in the school’s hallway, Gemma is intrigued despite the risks. Who is this nameless dead girl? Where did she come from, and what dark secrets are the people of Sage County hiding?

Gemma sets to unravel this mystery while protecting her own secret. And defend it she must, because talking to the dead and validating their existence is never enough. Eventually, they always wonder what else Gemma can do for them.

The ugly scars on Gemma’s neck are reminders that the dead can never find out.]]> 358 Nichole Calabrese Sammyyy 5 4.69
author: Nichole Calabrese
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.69
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves:
review:
I bought this book on a whim at a local book festival and I'm SO glad I did! It was such a fun paranormal mystery that had me hooked from the very beginning. I could hardly put it down! I absolutely loved all of the characters (dead and alive) and found myself laughing out loud quite a bit at several of the characters. It's hard to believe this is Nichole's debut novel and I truly cannot wait to read more from her!
]]> 18159043
Imagine waking up one day to discover that you have forgotten everything about your life. Your only link with the past, your only hope for the future, is your identical twin.

Now imagine, years later, discovering that your twin had not told you the whole truth about your childhood, your family, and the forces that had shaped you. Why the secrets? Why the silences? You have no choice but to begin again.

This has been Alex's reality: a world where memories are just the stories people tell you, where fact and fiction are impossible to distinguish. With dogged courage he has spent years hunting for the truth about his hidden past and his remarkable family. His quest to understand his true identity has revealed shocking betrayals and a secret tragedy, extraordinary triumph over crippling adversity and, above all, redemption founded on brotherly love.

Marcus his twin brother has sometimes been a reluctant companion on this journey, but for him too it has led to staggering revelations and ultimately the shedding of impossible burdens.

Their story spans continents and eras, from 1950s debutantes and high society in the Home Counties to a remote island in the Pacific and 90s raves. Disturbing, funny, heart-breaking and affirming, Alex and Marcus's determination to rebuild their lives makes us look afresh at how we choose to tell our stories.]]> 339 Alex Lewis 1444757261 Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.67 2013
author: Alex Lewis
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 206180583 In this highly atmospheric thriller from the Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of The Violence, a young woman hopes to reinvent herself at an isolated artists� colony . . . only to be drawn into its dark, twisted past.

Sarah Carpenter is starting over.

She’s on the run—leaving behind her unsupportive, narcissistic ex-boyfriend and alcoholic, abusive mother—and headed for a new beginning at Tranquil Falls, a secluded artists� colony on the grounds of a closed hotel. There, with no cell signal or internet to distract her, she hopes to rediscover her love for pottery and put the broken pieces of her life back together.

But when Sarah uncovers the body of a young woman while digging a hole for a pit kiln, things start to fall apart. Her fellow artists begin to act in troubling ways. The eccentric fiber artist knits an endless scarf. The musician plays the same carousel song over and over until his fingers bleed. The calligrapher grins with ink-stained teeth. Not to mention the haunting dreams Sarah has night after night.

When she discovers glass shards in her clay, Sarah wonders if someone is out to get her—or if she’s losing her grip on reality out here in the wilds, where the pounding of the waterfall never, ever fades. As she investigates the beautiful valley and the crumbling resort looming over them all, she unearths a chilling past that refuses to remain buried . . .]]> 368 Delilah S. Dawson 059315665X Sammyyy 0 to-read 3.64 2024
author: Delilah S. Dawson
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 14866
Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult's most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who -- if anyone -- has the right to judge someone else?]]> 440 Jodi Picoult 0743496728 Sammyyy 5 favorites 4.16 2007
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Sammyyy
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: favorites
review:
What a rollercoaster! This book was so heavy that I had to read it in small chunks, but so well written that I didn't want to stop. For such a sensitive topic it was very well done. I officially want to read everything Jodi Picoult has ever written.
]]>