Meg's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 20 Mar 2025 10:22:00 -0700 60 Meg's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)]]> 203578847 The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive―the iconic epic fantasy masterpiece that has sold more than 10 million copies, from acclaimed bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare―and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray.

Desperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide―Adolin in Azimir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah at Thaylen City. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade. He is accompanied by Kaladin, who faces a new battle helping Szeth fight his own demons . . . and who must do the same for the insane Herald of the Almighty, Ishar.

At the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]> 1344 Brandon Sanderson 1250319188 Meg 0 to-read 4.36 2024 Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)]]> 49021976 The eagerly awaited sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling Oathbringer, from epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson

After forming a coalition of human resistance against the enemy invasion, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant have spent a year fighting a protracted, brutal war. Neither side has gained an advantage, and the threat of a betrayal by Dalinar's crafty ally Taravangian looms over every strategic move.

Now, as new technological discoveries by Navani Kholin's scholars begin to change the face of the war, the enemy prepares a bold and dangerous operation. The arms race that follows will challenge the very core of the Radiant ideals, and potentially reveal the secrets of the ancient tower that was once the heart of their strength.

At the same time that Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with his changing role within the Knights Radiant, his Windrunners face their own problem: As more and more deadly enemy Fused awaken to wage war, no more honorspren are willing to bond with humans to increase the number of Radiants. Adolin and Shallan must lead the coalition’s envoy to the honorspren stronghold of Lasting Integrity and either convince the spren to join the cause against the evil god Odium, or personally face the storm of failure.]]> 1232 Brandon Sanderson 0765326388 Meg 0 to-read 4.58 2020 Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Dawnshard (The Stormlight Archive, #3.5)]]> 54511226
When a ghost ship is discovered, its crew presumed dead after trying to reach the storm-shrouded island Akina, Navani Kholin must send an expedition to make sure the island hasn't fallen into enemy hands. Knights Radiant who fly too near find their Stormlight suddenly drained, so the voyage must be by sea.

Shipowner Rysn Ftori lost the use of her legs but gained the companionship of Chiri-Chiri, a Stormlight-ingesting winged larkin, a species once thought extinct. Now Rysn's pet is ill, and any hope for Chiri-Chiri’s recovery can be found only at the ancestral home of the larkin: Akinah. With the help of Lopen, the formerly one-armed Windrunner, Rysn must accept Navani's quest and sail into the perilous storm from which no one has returned alive. If the crew cannot uncover the secrets of the hidden island city before the wrath of its ancient guardians falls upon them, the fate of Roshar and the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]> 171 Brandon Sanderson 193857026X Meg 0 to-read 4.39 2020 Dawnshard (The Stormlight Archive, #3.5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3)]]> 34002132 Oathbringer, the third volume of the New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance.

Dalinar Kholin's Alethi armies won a fleeting victory at a terrible cost: The enemy Parshendi summoned the violent Everstorm, which now sweeps the world with destruction, and in its passing awakens the once peaceful and subservient parshmen to the horror of their millennia-long enslavement by humans. While on a desperate flight to warn his family of the threat, Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with the fact that the newly kindled anger of the parshmen may be wholly justified.

Nestled in the mountains high above the storms, in the tower city of Urithiru, Shallan Davar investigates the wonders of the ancient stronghold of the Knights Radiant and unearths dark secrets lurking in its depths. And Dalinar realizes that his holy mission to unite his homeland of Alethkar was too narrow in scope. Unless all the nations of Roshar can put aside Dalinar's blood-soaked past and stand together--and unless Dalinar himself can confront that past--even the restoration of the Knights Radiant will not prevent the end of civilization.]]> 1248 Brandon Sanderson Meg 0 to-read 4.60 2017 Oathbringer (The Stormlight Archive, #3)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive, #2.5)]]> 34703445 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, a special gift edition of Edgedancer, a short novel of the Stormlight Archive.

Three years ago, Lift asked a goddess to stop her from growing older--a wish she believed was granted. Now, in Edgedancer, the barely teenage nascent Knight Radiant finds that time stands still for no one. Although the young Azish emperor granted her safe haven from an executioner she knows only as Darkness, court life is suffocating the free-spirited Lift, who can't help heading to Yeddaw when she hears the relentless Darkness is there hunting people like her with budding powers. The downtrodden in Yeddaw have no champion, and Lift knows she must seize this awesome responsibility.

]]> 272 Brandon Sanderson 1250166543 Meg 0 to-read 4.15 2016 Edgedancer (The Stormlight Archive, #2.5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail]]> 204593675 368 Andrea Lankford 0306831961 Meg 0 to-read 4.20 2023 Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail
author: Andrea Lankford
name: Meg
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Cartographers 55004093 What is the purpose of a map?

Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.

But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence... because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.

But why?

To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps...

From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history.]]> 392 Peng Shepherd 0062910698 Meg 2 3.62 2022 The Cartographers
author: Peng Shepherd
name: Meg
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/06
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review:
This book screamed "me" and had been on my to-read for at least a year. Sadly, I was super disappointed. Every chapter seemed to end in a cliffhanger but didn't go anywhere. The flashback chapters were tedious. I saw every twist coming from a mile away. Super bummed!
]]> <![CDATA[The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder]]> 61714633 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then . . . six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death--for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.]]> 331 David Grann 0385534264 Meg 3 4.14 2023 The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
author: David Grann
name: Meg
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS]]> 29429295 The definitive history of the successful battle to halt the AIDS epidemic from the creator of, and inspired by, the seminal documentary How to Survive a Plague.

A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to fight for their right to live by educating themselves and demanding to become full partners in the race for effective treatments. Around the globe, 16 million people are alive today thanks to their efforts.

Not since the publication of Randy Shilts's classic And the Band Played On has a book measured the AIDS plague in such brutally human, intimate, and soaring terms.

In dramatic fashion, we witness the founding of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), and the rise of an underground drug market in opposition to the prohibitively expensive (and sometimes toxic) AZT. We watch as these activists learn to become their own researchers, lobbyists, drug smugglers, and clinicians, establishing their own newspapers, research journals, and laboratories, and as they go on to force reform in the nation s disease-fighting agencies.

With his unparalleled access to this community David France illuminates the lives of extraordinary characters, including the closeted Wall Street trader-turned-activist, the high school dropout who found purpose battling pharmaceutical giants in New York, the South African physician who helped establish the first officially recognized buyers club at the height of the epidemic, and the public relations executive fighting to save his own life for the sake of his young daughter.

Expansive yet richly detailed, this is an insider's account of a pivotal moment in the history of American civil rights. Powerful, heart-wrenching, and finally exhilarating, How to Survive a Plague is destined to become an essential part of the literature of AIDS.]]> 640 David France 0307700631 Meg 0 to-read 4.43 2013 How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS
author: David France
name: Meg
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance]]> 46722
A New York Times notable book

Unpurified drinking water. Improper use of antibiotics. Local warfare. Massive refugee migration. Changing social and environmental conditions around the world have fostered the spread of new and potentially devastating viruses and diseases—HIV, Lassa, Ebola, and others. Laurie Garrett takes you on a fifty-year journey through the world's battles with microbes and examines the worldwide conditions that have culminated in recurrent outbreaks of newly discovered diseases, epidemics of diseases migrating to new areas, and mutated old diseases that are no longer curable. She argues that it is not too late to take action to prevent the further onslaught of viruses and microbes, and offers possible solutions for a healthier future.]]> 750 Laurie Garrett 0140250913 Meg 0 to-read 4.20 1994 The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance
author: Laurie Garrett
name: Meg
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/20
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]]> The Book of M 36204070 Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.

Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.

Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.

As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.]]> 485 Peng Shepherd 0062669605 Meg 0 to-read 3.67 2018 The Book of M
author: Peng Shepherd
name: Meg
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> Bloody Rose (The Band, #2) 35052265
Tam Hashford is tired of working at her local pub, slinging drinks for world-famous mercenaries and listening to the bards sing of adventure and glory in the world beyond her sleepy hometown.

When the biggest mercenary band of all rolls into town, led by the infamous Bloody Rose, Tam jumps at the chance to sign on as their bard. It's adventure she wants - and adventure she gets as the crew embark on a quest that will end in one of two ways: glory or death.

It's time to take a walk on the wyld side.]]> 512 Nicholas Eames 0356509044 Meg 0 to-read 4.16 2018 Bloody Rose (The Band, #2)
author: Nicholas Eames
name: Meg
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)]]> 22313627 The Knights Radiant must stand again.

The ancient oaths have at last been spoken; the spren return. Men seek what was lost; I fear the quest will destroy them.

It is the nature of the magic. A broken soul has cracks into which something else can be fit. Surgebindings, the power of creation themselves; they can brace a broken soul, but they can also widen its fissures.

The Windrunner is lost in a shattered land, balanced upon the boundary between vengeance and honor. The Lightweaver, slowly being consumed by her past, searches for the lie she must become. The Bondsmith, born in blood and death, now strives to rebuild what was destroyed. The Explorer, straddling the fates of two peoples, is forced to choose between slow death and a terrible betrayal of all she believes.

It is past time for them to awaken, for the Everstorm looms.

And the Assassin has arrived.]]> 1310 Brandon Sanderson 0765365286 Meg 0 currently-reading 4.80 2014 Words of Radiance (The Stormlight Archive, #2)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.80
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)]]> 7235533 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, book one of The Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Speak again the ancient oaths:

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

and return to men the Shards they once bore.

The Knights Radiant must stand again.]]> 1007 Brandon Sanderson 0765326353 Meg 5 4.66 2010 The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> The Terror 2346615 771 Dan Simmons 0316017450 Meg 4 4.03 2007 The Terror
author: Dan Simmons
name: Meg
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/16
date added: 2025/01/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition]]> 35167721 416 Paul Watson 0393355861 Meg 4 3.70 2017 Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
author: Paul Watson
name: Meg
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Fatal North: Murder and Survival on the First North Pole Expedition]]> 18917544
The mystery of the captain's death remained unsolved for nearly 100 years. But when Charles Hall's frozen grave in northern Greenland was opened, and hair and fingernail samples were retrieved, forensic scientists were finally able to reach a shocking conclusion.

Now, telling the complete story for the first time, acclaimed researcher and bestselling writer Bruce Henderson—whose works have been praised as "compelling" (LOS ANGELES TIMES Book Review) and "compulsively readable" (SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER)—has researched original transcripts of the U.S. Navy inquests, personal papers of Captain Hall, autopsy and forensic reports relating to the century-old crime, the ship's original log, personal journals kept by crewmen, and hero-survivor George Tyson's diary and family papers to bring to life one of the most mysterious tragedies of American exploration.
]]> 264 Bruce Henderson 098383959X Meg 3 4.09 2001 Fatal North: Murder and Survival on the First North Pole Expedition
author: Bruce Henderson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2001
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens]]> 44781442
The Biography of Resistance is Zaman’s riveting and timely look at why and how microbes are becoming superbugs. It is a story of science and evolution that looks to history, culture, attitudes and our own individual choices and collective human behavior. Following the trail of resistant bacteria from previously uncontacted tribes in the Amazon to the isolated islands in the Arctic, from the urban slums of Karachi to the wilderness of the Australian outback, Zaman examines the myriad factors contributing to this unfolding health crisis—including war, greed, natural disasters, and germophobia—to the culprits driving pharmaceutical companies, farmers, industrialists, doctors, governments, and ordinary people, all whose choices are pushing us closer to catastrophe.

Joining the ranks of acclaimed works like Microbe Hunters, The Emperor of All Maladies, and Spillover, A Biography of Resistance is a riveting and chilling tale from a natural storyteller on the front lines, and a clarion call to address the biggest public health threat of our time.]]> 313 Muhammad H. Zaman 0062862987 Meg 3 3.89 2020 Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens
author: Muhammad H. Zaman
name: Meg
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/09/28
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]]> The Enchanted Greenhouse 217388100
Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium.

This should have been the end of her story . . . Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. She’s starving and freezing, and the only other human on the island is a grumpy gardener. To her surprise, he offers Terlu a place to sleep, clean clothes, and freshly baked honey cakes—at least until she’s ready to sail home.

But Terlu can’t return home and doesn’t want to—the greenhouses are a dream come true, each more wondrous than the next. When she learns that the magic that sustains them is failing—causing the death of everything within them—Terlu knows she must help. Even if that means breaking the law again.

This time, though, she isn’t alone. Assisted by the gardener and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer if she wants to save the island—and have a fresh chance at happiness and love.

Funny, kind, and forgiving, The Enchanted Greenhouse is a story about giving second chances—to others and to yourself.]]> 384 Sarah Beth Durst 1250333989 Meg 0 to-read 4.44 2025 The Enchanted Greenhouse
author: Sarah Beth Durst
name: Meg
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)]]> 30841984
Their glory days long past, the mercs have grown apart and grown old, fat, drunk - or a combination of the three. Then an ex-bandmate turns up at Clay's door with a plea for help. His daughter Rose is trapped in a city besieged by an enemy one hundred thousand strong and hungry for blood. Rescuing Rose is the kind of mission that only the very brave or the very stupid would sign up for.

It's time to get the band back together for one last tour across the Wyld.]]> 502 Nicholas Eames 0316362476 Meg 5 4.26 2017 Kings of the Wyld (The Band, #1)
author: Nicholas Eames
name: Meg
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/08/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries]]> 60310691 A lively tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born ˛Ń±đ±ô±ąľ±±ô±ô±đ’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead.

˛Ń±đ±ô±ąľ±±ô±ô±đ’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States' ambition and reach.

But they are changing and fading. Embalming and burial is incredibly toxic, and while cremations have just recently surpassed burials in popularity, they’re not great for the environment either. Over My Dead Body explores everything—history, sustainability, land use, and more—and what it really means to memorialize.

Locales visited in Over My Dead Body
Shawsheen Cemetery � Bedford, Massachusetts
The 1607 Burial Ground � Historic Jamestowne, Virginia
Burial Hill � Plymouth, Massachusetts
Colonial Jewish Burial Ground � Newport, Rhode Island
Monticello’s African American Graveyard � Charlottesville, Virginia
Mount Auburn Cemetery � Cambridge, Massachusetts
Green-Wood Cemetery � Brooklyn, New York
Laurel Grove Cemetery � Savannah, Georgia
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery � Concord, Massachusetts
Central Park � New York, New York
Gettysburg National Cemetery � Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Arlington National Cemetery � Arlington, Virginia
Woodlawn Cemetery � Bronx, New York
Boothill Graveyard � Tombhill, Arizona
Forest Lawn Memorial-Park � Glenwood, California
The Chapel of the Chimes � Oakland, California
Hollywood Forever Cemetery � Los Angeles, California
Nature's Sanctuary � Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]> 272 Greg Melville 1419754858 Meg 4 3.96 2022 Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries
author: Greg Melville
name: Meg
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/14
date added: 2024/08/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Millennium Approaches (Angels in America, #1)]]> 92250
The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.]]> 119 Tony Kushner 1559360615 Meg 5 4.27 1993 Millennium Approaches (Angels in America, #1)
author: Tony Kushner
name: Meg
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition]]> 832619
The Franklin expedition was not alone in suffering early and unexplained deaths. Indeed, the expeditions of both Back (1837) and Ross (1849) were forced to retreat because of the rapacious illness that stalked their ships. The authors make the case that this illness was due to the crews� overwhelming reliance on a new technology: tinned foods. This not only exposed the seamen to lead, an insidious poison, but also left them vulnerable to scurvy.

The revised "Frozen in Time" will also update the research outlined in the original edition, and will introduce independent confirmation of Dr. Beattie’s lead hypothesis, along with corroboration of his discovery of physical evidence for both scurvy and cannibalism. In addition, the book includes a new introduction written by Margaret Atwood, who has long been fascinated by the role of the Franklin Expedition in Canada’s literary conscience.

Includes never before seen photographs from the exhumations on Beechey Island and rarely seen historical illustrations.]]> 288 Owen Beattie 1553650603 Meg 4 4.06 1987 Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition
author: Owen Beattie
name: Meg
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> Erebus: The Story of a Ship 36992483
On the first, she ventured further south than any human had ever been. On the second, she vanished with her 129-strong crew in the wastes of the Canadian Arctic.

Her fate remained a mystery for over 160 years.

Then, in 2014, she was found.

This is her story.]]> 334 Michael Palin 184794812X Meg 5 4.26 2018 Erebus: The Story of a Ship
author: Michael Palin
name: Meg
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/16
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Story Mode: Video Games and the Interplay Between Consoles and Culture]]> 54982960 240 Trevor Strunk 1633886808 Meg 3 3.64 Story Mode: Video Games and the Interplay Between Consoles and Culture
author: Trevor Strunk
name: Meg
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1)]]> 29127 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780451450524

She was magical, beautiful beyond belief—and completely alone...

The unicorn had lived since before memory in a forest where death could touch nothing. Maidens who caught a glimpse of her glory were blessed by enchantment they would never forget. But outside her wondrous realm, dark whispers and rumours carried a message she could not ignore: "Unicorns are gone from the world."

Aided by a bumbling magician and an indomitable spinster, she set out to learn the truth. but she feared even her immortal wisdom meant nothing in a world where a mad king's curse and terror incarnate lived only to stalk the last unicorn to her doom...]]> 294 Peter S. Beagle Meg 5 4.16 1968 The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1)
author: Peter S. Beagle
name: Meg
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/03
date added: 2024/07/10
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review:

]]> The House On The Borderland 72087325
In a mysterious, brooding ruin clinging to the edge of an abyss in the timeless Irish hinterland, the journal of the last tenant is discovered. In it he has recorded his mind-wrenching involuntary adventures. Descents into the Pit, desperate battles against the subhuman Swinefolk, voyages across the dimensions and through aeons of time to the centre of the Universe and the death of the Solar System—these are just some of the elements in this unique classic of fantasy fiction.]]> 117 William Hope Hodgson Meg 0 0.0 1908 The House On The Borderland
author: William Hope Hodgson
name: Meg
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1908
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/21
date added: 2024/05/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong]]> 33146881
History is filled with brilliant ideas that gave rise to disaster, and this book explores the most fascinating—and significant—missteps: from opium's heyday as the pain reliever of choice to recognition of opioids as a major cause of death in the U.S.; from the rise of trans fats as the golden ingredient for tastier, cheaper food to the heart disease epidemic that followed; and from the cries to ban DDT for the sake of the environment to an epidemic-level rise in world malaria.

These are today's sins of science—as deplorable as mistaken past ideas about advocating racial purity or using lobotomies as a cure for mental illness. These unwitting errors add up to seven lessons both cautionary and profound, narrated by renowned author and speaker Paul A. Offit. Offit uses these lessons to investigate how we can separate good science from bad, using some of today's most controversial creations—e-cigarettes, GMOs, drug treatments for ADHD—as case studies. For every "Aha!" moment that should have been an "Oh no," this book is an engrossing account of how science has been misused disastrously—and how we can learn to use its power for good.]]> 277 Paul A. Offit 1426217994 Meg 4 4.16 2017 Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong
author: Paul A. Offit
name: Meg
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World]]> 60784781
Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet-in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport-these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe.

The two queens commanded armies and negotiated with kings and popes. They formed coalitions and broke them, mothered children and lost them. They fought a decades-long civil war-against each other. With ingenuity and skill, they battled to stay alive in the game of statecraft, and in the process laid the foundations of what would one day be Charlemagne's empire. Yet after the queens' deaths-one gentle, the other horrific-their stories were rewritten, their names consigned to slander and legend.

In The Dark Queens , award-winning writer Shelley Puhak sets the record straight. She resurrects two very real women in all their complexity, painting a richly detailed portrait of an unfamiliar time and striking at the roots of some of our culture's stubbornest myths about female power. The Dark Queens offers proof that the relationships between women can transform the world.]]> 384 Shelley Puhak 1639730753 Meg 0 4.21 2022 The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry That Forged the Medieval World
author: Shelley Puhak
name: Meg
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/08
date added: 2024/05/08
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]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is one of the most extraordinary literary documents to have emerged from the Soviet Union and confirms Solzhenitsyn's stature as "a literary genius whose talent matches that of Dosotevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy"--Harrison Salisbury

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Meg 5 2017 3.98 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Meg
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/19
date added: 2024/03/15
shelves: 2017
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Theft of Swords (The Riyria Revelations, #1-2)]]> 10790290
Can a self-serving thief and an idealistic swordsman survive long enough to unravel the first part of an ancient mystery that has toppled kings and destroyed empires?

And so begins the first tale of treachery and adventure, sword fighting and magic, myth and legend.

When author Michael J. Sullivan self-published the first books of his Riyria Revelations, they rapidly became ebook bestsellers. Now, Orbit is pleased to present the complete series for the first time in bookstores everywhere.]]> 691 Michael J. Sullivan 0316187747 Meg 0 to-read 4.23 2011 Theft of Swords (The Riyria Revelations, #1-2)
author: Michael J. Sullivan
name: Meg
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Melmoth 36628420 The Essex Serpent, it is heading in our direction.

It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts—or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation of timeless, itinerant solitude. To Helen it all seems the stuff of unenlightened fantasy.

But, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being watched. And then Karel disappears. . . .]]> Sarah Perry 006285643X Meg 0 to-read 3.41 2018 Melmoth
author: Sarah Perry
name: Meg
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> Lanny 44324871 Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller and Booker Prize Longlisted novel Lanny by the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers.

Not far from London, there is a village. This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England's mysterious past and its confounding present. It belongs to families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here, such as the boy Lanny, and his mum and dad. But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all.]]> 224 Max Porter 0571340296 Meg 5 4.13 2019 Lanny
author: Max Porter
name: Meg
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/27
date added: 2023/11/26
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]]> Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 Meg 3 4.00 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Meg
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2020/12/25
date added: 2023/11/11
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Seriously weird ending! Until that, it was really good!
]]> <![CDATA[Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)]]> 55401
Set in a brilliantly realized world ravaged by dark, uncontrollable magic, Deadhouse Gates is a novel of war, intrigue and betrayal confirms Steven Eirkson as a storyteller of breathtaking skill, imagination and originality--a new master of epic fantasy.]]> 604 Steven Erikson 0765310023 Meg 0 to-read 4.27 2000 Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)
author: Steven Erikson
name: Meg
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer]]> 196613199 721 Kai Bird 0375726268 Meg 5 4.47 2005 American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
author: Kai Bird
name: Meg
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/12
date added: 2023/10/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty]]> 61796652 An indelible portrait of three children struggling to survive in the poorest neighborhood of the poorest large city in America

Kensington, Philadelphia, is distinguished only by its poverty. It is home to Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel, three Puerto Rican children who live among the most marginalized families in the United States. This is the story of their coming-of-age, which is beset by violence—the violence of homelessness, hunger, incarceration, stray bullets, sexual and physical assault, the hypermasculine logic of the streets, and the drug trade. In Kensington, eighteenth birthdays are not rites of passage but statistical miracles.

One mistake drives Ryan out of middle school and into the juvenile justice pipeline. For Emmanuel, his queerness means his mother’s rejection and sleeping in shelters. School closures and budget cuts inspire Giancarlos to lead walkouts, which get him kicked out of the system. Although all three are high school dropouts, they are on a quest to defy their fate and their neighborhood and get high school diplomas.

In a triumph of empathy and drawing on nearly a decade of reporting, sociologist and policymaker Nikhil Goyal follows Ryan, Giancarlos, and Emmanuel on their mission, plunging deep into their lives as they strive to resist their designated place in the social hierarchy. In the process, Live to See the Day confronts a new age of American poverty, after the end of “welfare as we know it,� after “zero tolerance� in schools criminalized a generation of students, after the odds of making it out are ever slighter.]]> 352 Nikhil Goyal 1250850061 Meg 0 to-read 3.88 2023 Live to See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty
author: Nikhil Goyal
name: Meg
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Sinkable: Obsession, the Deep Sea and the Shipwreck of the Titanic]]> 60010335 RMS Titanic.

On a frigid April night in 1912, the world’s largest—and soon most famous—ocean liner struck an iceberg and slipped beneath the waves. She had scarcely disappeared before her new journey began, a seemingly limitless odyssey through the world’s fixation with her every tragic detail. Plans to find and raise the Titanic began almost immediately. Yet seven decades passed before it was found. Why? And of some three million shipwrecks that litter the ocean floor, why is the world still so fascinated with this one?

In Sinkable, Daniel Stone spins a fascinating tale of history, science, and obsession, uncovering the untold story of the Titanic not as a ship but as a shipwreck. He explores generations of eccentrics, like American Charles Smith, whose 1914 recovery plan using a synchronized armada of ships bearing electromagnets was complex, convincing, and utterly impossible; Jack Grimm, a Texas oil magnate who fruitlessly dropped a fortune to find the wreck after failing to find Noah’s Ark; and the British Doug Woolley, a former pantyhose factory worker who has claimed, since the 1960s, to be the true owner of the Titanic wreckage.

Along the way, Sinkable takes readers through the two miles of ocean water in which the Titanic sank, showing how the ship broke apart and why, and delves into the odd history of our understanding of such depths. Author Daniel Stone studies the landscape of the seabed, which in the Titanic’s day was thought to be as smooth and featureless as a bathtub. He interviews scientists to understand the decades of rust and decomposition that are slowly but surely consuming the ship. (She’s expected to disappear entirely within a few decades!) He even journeys over the Atlantic, during a global pandemic, to track down the elusive Doug Woolley. And Stone turns inward, looking at his own dark obsession with both the Titanic and shipwrecks in general, and why he spends hours watching ships sink on YouTube.

Brimming with humor, curiosity and wit, Sinkable follows in the tradition of Susan Orlean and Bill Bryson, offering up a page-turning work of personal journalism and an immensely entertaining romp through the deep sea and the nature of obsession.]]> 416 Daniel Stone 0593329376 Meg 0 to-read 3.79 2022 Sinkable: Obsession, the Deep Sea and the Shipwreck of the Titanic
author: Daniel Stone
name: Meg
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Meet Your Dog: The Game-Changing Guide to Understanding Your Dog's Behavior]]> 39844918 257 Kim Brophey 1452149305 Meg 4
Almost $20 for a kindle version is nuts.]]> 4.36 Meet Your Dog: The Game-Changing Guide to Understanding Your Dog's Behavior
author: Kim Brophey
name: Meg
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/23
date added: 2023/08/23
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Recommended by my dog trainer. Really great book that gives a lot of insight into your dog and his behavior. Aligns nicely with any training that uses fear-free and positive reinforcement methods.

Almost $20 for a kindle version is nuts.
]]> <![CDATA[The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean]]> 7997104 An astonishing book about colossal, ship-swallowing rogue waves and the surfers who seek them out

For centuries mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves�100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis­missed these stories, believing waves that high violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships have vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary is brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea—including several that approached 100 feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean’s most destructive monsters. The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to board suicidally large waves of 70 and 80 feet. Casey follows this unique tribe of peo­ple as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport: a 100­-foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed with scientists� urgent efforts to understand the destructive power of waves, from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740-foot-wave that leveled part of the Alaskan coast. Like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, The Wave brilliantly portrays human beings confronting nature at its most ferocious.]]> 326 Susan Casey 0767928849 Meg 0 to-read 4.03 2010 The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean
author: Susan Casey
name: Meg
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time]]> 16086620 364 John Kelly Meg 4 4.09 2005 The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time
author: John Kelly
name: Meg
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/18
date added: 2023/08/18
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]]> Happiness Falls 75495002 When a father goes missing, his family's desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another--both a riveting page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia's brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, race, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.]]> 387 Angie Kim 0593448200 Meg 0 to-read 3.72 2023 Happiness Falls
author: Angie Kim
name: Meg
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Discovery of the Titanic 684885 288 Robert D. Ballard 0446671746 Meg 4 4.31 1987 The Discovery of the Titanic
author: Robert D. Ballard
name: Meg
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/06
date added: 2023/08/10
shelves:
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]]> Station Eleven 23995368 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 336 Emily St. John Mandel 0804172447 Meg 2
At least the writing was very beautiful.]]> 4.14 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Meg
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2023/04/13
date added: 2023/04/13
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Ugh. So disappointing. I hyped this up in my head for far too long. I got so bored with Arthur, a B-list actor who serves as the connection between past and present.

At least the writing was very beautiful.
]]> <![CDATA[Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth, #1)]]> 618241 Librarian's note: See alternate cover editions of ISBN 0812548051 here. and here.

Millions of readers the world over have been held spellbound by this valiant tale vividly told.

Now, enter Terry Goodkind's world, the world of the Sword of Truth.

In the aftermath of the brutal murder of his father, a mysterious woman, Kahlan Amnell, appears in Richard Cypher's forest sanctuary seeking help ... and more. His world, his very beliefs, are shattered when ancient debts come due with thundering violence.

In their darkest hour, hunted relentlessly, tormented by treachery and loss, Kahlan calls upon Richard to reach beyond his sword-- to invoke within himself something more noble. Neither knows that the rules of battle have just changed ... or that their time has run out.

This is the beginning. One book. One Rule. Witness the birth of a legend.]]> 836 Terry Goodkind 0812548051 Meg 0 to-read 4.02 1994 Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth, #1)
author: Terry Goodkind
name: Meg
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Money Men: A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth]]> 57951413
'A rip-roaring ride into the underworld of the global economy' Tom Burgis, author of Kleptopia

This is the stranger-than-fiction story of Wirecard, once a $30 billion tech darling, now a smouldering wreck, by the journalist who brought it crashing down - perfect for those who loved Bad Blood and Empire of Pain.

When journalist Dan McCrum followed a tip to investigate the hot new tech company challenging Silicon Valley, everything about Wirecard looked a little too good to be true: offices were sprouting up around the world, it was reporting runaway growth and the CEO even wore a black turtleneck in tribute to Steve Jobs. In the space of a few short years, the company had come from nowhere to overtake industry giants like Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank on the stock market.

As McCrum dug deeper, he encountered a story stranger and more dangerous than he ever imagined: a world of short sellers and whistleblowers, pornographers and private militias, hackers and spies. Before long he realised that he wasn't the only one in pursuit. Shadowy figures were following him through the streets of London, high-flying lawyers were sending ominous letters to his boss, and he was named as the prime suspect in a criminal inquiry. The race was on to prove his suspicions and clear his name.

Money Men is the astonishing inside story of Wirecard's multi-billion-dollar fraud, Europe's biggest new tech darling revealed as a house of cards. Uncovering fake bank accounts, fake offices and possibly even a fake death, McCrum offers a searing exposé that will finally lay bare the truth.]]> 352 Dan McCrum 178763504X Meg 0 to-read 3.99 2022 Money Men: A Hot Startup, A Billion Dollar Fraud, A Fight for the Truth
author: Dan McCrum
name: Meg
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Such a Beautiful Thing to Behold]]> 58655890
A mysterious plague known as the Grey grips the small village of Pilam, which the world has quarantined without pity. Laying waste to Pilam’s residents, the Grey saps its victims of strength, drains the color from their eyes, and kills all promise until their last breath. Only the young are immune. But beyond the barricades and walls of soldiers—the manifestation of a nation’s terror—there are rumors of a cure. Dunka, the eldest son of a family reeling from the Grey, takes on the daunting task of leaving Pilam to find that cure for his siblings and save them before it’s too late.

His siblings, however, have plans of their own. Navigating the chaos of violence, hunger, and death, each of them tries to make sense of the bleak circumstances, forging new bonds with other juvenile survivors left to their own devices. Now an unlikely family of six, they choose their own perilous paths, at first separately and then together, coming to terms with the decisions they make and the ghosts they cannot leave behind.

Umar Turaki’s gripping novel is a story of survival, love, and the human spirit’s tenacious capacity for wonder.]]> 256 Umar Turaki 1542034655 Meg 0 to-read 3.53 2022 Such a Beautiful Thing to Behold
author: Umar Turaki
name: Meg
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks]]> 6493208
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored� ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia � a land of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo � to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality� until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family � past and present � is inextricably connected to the history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.]]> 370 Rebecca Skloot 1400052173 Meg 5 4.12 2010 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
author: Rebecca Skloot
name: Meg
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/12/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm]]> 60824200
In When McKinsey Comes to Town, two prizewinning investigative journalists have written a portrait of the company sharply at odds with its public image. Often McKinsey’s advice boils down to major cost-cutting, including layoffs and maintenance reductions, to drive up short-term profits, thereby boosting a company’s stock price and the wealth of its executives who hire it, at the expense of workers and safety measures. McKinsey collects millions of dollars advising government agencies that also regulate McKinsey’s corporate clients. And the firm frequently advises competitors in the same industries, but denies that this presents any conflict of interest.

In one telling example, McKinsey advised a Chinese engineering company allied with the communist government which constructed artificial islands, now used as staging grounds for the Chinese Navy—while at the same time taking tens of millions of dollars from the Pentagon, whose chief aim is to counter Chinese aggression.

Shielded by NDAs, McKinsey has escaped public scrutiny despite its role in advising tobacco and vaping companies, purveyors of opioids, repressive governments, and oil companies. McKinsey helped insurance companies� boost their profits by making it incredibly difficult for accident victims to get payments; worked its U.S. government contacts to let Wall Street firms evade scrutiny; enabled corruption in developing countries such as South Africa; undermined health-care programs in states across the country. And much more.

Bogdanich and Forsythe have penetrated the veil of secrecy surrounding McKinsey by conducting hundreds of interviews, obtaining tens of thousands of revelatory documents, and following rule #1 of investigative Follow the money.
When McKinsey Comes to Town is a landmark work of investigative reporting that amounts to a devastating portrait of a firm whose work has often made the world more unequal, more corrupt, and more dangerous.]]> 353 Walt Bogdanich 0385546246 Meg 4 3.93 2022 When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm
author: Walt Bogdanich
name: Meg
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/05
date added: 2022/12/05
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review:
Very good, jaw-dropping at times. I feel like the epilogue could have been longer with more editorializing, lost most epilogues are. I would have reordered the chapters, too. The more bombshell chapters (All State, opioids) were stuck in the middle. I think they would have packed a greater punch at the end. Otherwise, really great book. These are just nit-picky criticisms on my part.
]]> City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1) 57558287 New York Times Bestseller!

From the #1 internationally bestselling author of the Cartel Trilogy (The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border), The Force, and Broken comes the first novel in an epic new trilogy.

“Superb. City on Fire is exhilarating.� � Stephen King

"Epic, ambitious, majestic, City on Fire is The Godfather for our generation.� � Adrian McKinty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chain

Two criminal empires together control all of New England.

Until a beautiful woman comes between the Irish and the Italians, launching a war that will see them kill each other, destroy an alliance, and set a city on fire.

Danny Ryan yearns for a more “legit� life and a place in the sun. But as the bloody conflict stacks body on body and brother turns against brother, Danny has to rise above himself. To save the friends he loves like family and the family he has sworn to protect, he becomes a leader, a ruthless strategist, and a master of a treacherous game in which the winners live and the losers die.

From the gritty streets of Providence to the glittering screens of Hollywood to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, two rival crime families ignite a war that will leave only one standing. The winner will forge a dynasty.

Exploring the classic themes of loyalty, betrayal, and honor, City on Fire is a contemporary masterpiece in the tradition of The Godfather, Casino, and Goodfellas—a thrilling saga from Don Winslow, “America’s greatest living crime writer� (Jon Land, Providence Journal).]]> 384 Don Winslow 0062851195 Meg 0 to-read 4.02 2021 City on Fire (Danny Ryan, #1)
author: Don Winslow
name: Meg
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> Children of Earth and Sky 25938417 Ěý
From the small coastal town of Senjan, notorious for its pirates, a young woman sets out to find vengeance for her lost family. That same spring, from the wealthy city-state of Seressa, famous for its canals and lagoon, come two very different people: a young artist traveling to the dangerous east to paint the grand khalif at his request—and possibly to do more—and a fiercely intelligent, angry woman, posing as a doctor’s wife, but sent by Seressa as a spy.
Ěý
The trading ship that carries them is commanded by the accomplished younger son of a merchant family, ambivalent about the life he’s been born to live. And farther east a boy trains to become a soldier in the elite infantry of the khalif—to win glory in the war everyone knows is coming.
Ěý
As these lives entwine, their fates—and those of many others—will hang in the balance, when the khalif sends out his massive army to take the great fortress that is the gateway to the western world...]]> 571 Guy Gavriel Kay 0451472969 Meg 0 to-read 4.10 2016 Children of Earth and Sky
author: Guy Gavriel Kay
name: Meg
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Brightness Long Ago 41458663
Danio's fate changed the moment he saw and recognized Adria Ripoli as she entered the count's chambers one autumn night--intending to kill. Born to power, Adria had chosen, instead of a life of comfort, one of danger--and freedom. Which is how she encounters Danio in a perilous time and place.

Vivid figures share the unfolding story. Among them: a healer determined to defy her expected lot; a charming, frivolous son of immense wealth; a powerful religious leader more decadent than devout; and, affecting all these lives and many more,Ěý two larger-than-life mercenary commanders, lifelong adversaries, whose rivalry puts a world in the balance.

A Brightness Long Ago offers both compelling drama and deeply moving reflections on the nature of memory, the choices we make in life, and the role played by the turning of Fortune's wheel.]]> 423 Guy Gavriel Kay 0451472985 Meg 0 to-read 4.12 2019 A Brightness Long Ago
author: Guy Gavriel Kay
name: Meg
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe]]> 36231060 From a preeminent historian of Eastern Europe, the definitive history of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster

On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe witnessed the worst nuclear disaster in the explosion of a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. Dozens died of radiation poisoning, fallout contaminated half the continent, and thousands fell ill.

In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of Communist party rule, the regime’s control of scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else.

Today, the risk of another Chernobyl looms in the mismanagement of nuclear power in the developing world. A moving and definitive account, Chernobyl is also an urgent call to action.]]> 432 Serhii Plokhy 1541617088 Meg 4 4.34 2018 Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe
author: Serhii Plokhy
name: Meg
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/04
date added: 2022/11/04
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]]> 2 A.M. in Little America 59849183 One such American is Ron Patterson, who finds himself on distant shores, working as a repairman and sharing a room with other refugees. In an unnamed city wedged between ocean and lush mountainous forest, Ron can almost imagine a stable life for himself. Especially when he makes the first friend he has had in years--a mysterious migrant named Marlise, who bears a striking resemblance to a onetime classmate.
Nearly a decade later--after anti-migrant sentiment has put their whirlwind intimacy and asylum to an end--Ron is living in "Little America," an enclave of migrants in one of the few countries still willing to accept them. Here, among reminders of his past life, he again begins to feel that he may have found a home. Ron adopts a stray dog, observes his neighbors, and lands a repairman job that allows him to move through the city quietly. But this newfound security, too, is quickly jeopardized, as resurgent political divisions threaten the fabric of Little America. Tapped as an informant against the rise of militant gangs and contending with the appearance of a strangely familiar woman, Ron is suddenly on dangerous and uncertain ground.
Brimming with mystery, suspense, and Kalfus's distinctive comic irony, 2 A.M. in Little America poses several questions vital to the current moment: What happens when privilege is reversed? Who is watching and why? How do tribalized politics disrupt our ability to distinguish what is true and what is not? This is a story for our time--gripping, unsettling, prescient--by one of our most acclaimed novelists.]]> 256 Ken Kalfus 1571311440 Meg 3 3.15 2022 2 A.M. in Little America
author: Ken Kalfus
name: Meg
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/04
date added: 2022/11/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]> 7082 244 Philip K. Dick Meg 0 to-read 4.08 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Meg
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)]]> 18952341 640 Ken Liu 1481424270 Meg 0 to-read 3.77 2015 The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)
author: Ken Liu
name: Meg
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear]]> 9691004 A riveting medical detective story that explores the limits of rational thought

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist with a history of self-promotion, published a paper with a shocking allegation: the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine might cause autism. The media seized hold of the story and, in the process, helped to launch one of the most devastating health scares ever. In the years to come Wakefield would be revealed as a profiteer in league with class-action lawyers, and he would eventually lose his medical license. Meanwhile, one study after another failed to find any link between childhood vaccines and autism.

Yet the myth that vaccines somehow cause developmental disorders lives on. Despite the lack of corroborating evidence, it has been popularized by media personalities such as Oprah Winfrey and Jenny McCarthy and legitimized by journalists who claim that they are just being fair to “both sides� of an issue about which there is little debate. Meanwhile, millions of dollars have been diverted from potential breakthroughs in autism research; families have spent their savings on ineffective “miracle cures"; and declining vaccination rates have led to outbreaks of deadly illnesses like Hib, measles, and whooping cough. Most tragic of all is the increasing number of children dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.

In The Panic Virus Seth Mnookin draws on interviews with parents, public-health advocates, scientists, and anti-vaccine activists to tackle a fundamental question: How do we decide what the truth is? The fascinating answer helps explain everything from the persistence of conspiracy theories about 9/11 to the appeal of talk-show hosts who demand that President Obama “prove� he was born in America. The Panic Virus is the ultimate cautionary tale for our time.]]> 448 Seth Mnookin 1439158649 Meg 5 4.04 2011 The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear
author: Seth Mnookin
name: Meg
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/09/04
shelves:
review:
I read this years ago. Now that I work in public health and immunizations, I should revisit it. Definitely a must-read for anyone that wants to “do their own research� about vaccines�..
]]> <![CDATA[Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them]]> 33395588 "[Kolata] is a gifted storyteller. Her account of the Baxleys... is both engrossing and distressing... Kolata's book raises crucial questions about knowledge that can be both vital and fatal, both pallative and dangerous." —Andrew Solomon, The New York Review of BooksNew York Times science reporter Gina Kolata follows a family through genetic illness and one courageous daughter who decides her fate shall no longer be decided by a genetic flaw.The phone rings. The doctor from California is on the line. “Are you ready Amanda?� The two people Amanda Baxley loves the most had begged her not to be tested—at least, not now. But she had to find out.If your family carried a mutated gene that foretold a brutal illness and you were offered the chance to find out if you’d inherited it, would you do it? Would you walk toward the problem, bravely accepting whatever answer came your way? Or would you avoid the potential bad news as long as possible? In Mercies in Disguise, acclaimed New York Times science reporter and bestselling author Gina Kolata tells the story of the Baxleys, an almost archetypal family in a small town in South Carolina. A proud and determined clan, many of them doctors, they are struck one by one with an inscrutable illness. They finally discover the cause of the disease after a remarkable sequence of events that many saw as providential. Meanwhile, science, progressing for a half a century along a parallel track, had handed the Baxleys a resolution—not a cure, but a blood test that would reveal who had the gene for the disease and who did not. And science would offer another dilemma—fertility specialists had created a way to spare the children through an expensive process. A work of narrative nonfiction, Mercies in Disguise is the story of a family that took matters into its own hands when the medical world abandoned them. It’s a story of a family that had to deal with unspeakable tragedy and yet did not allow it to tear them apart. And it is the story of a young woman—Amanda Baxley—who faced the future head on, determined to find a way to disrupt her family’s destiny.]]> 283 Gina Kolata 1250123992 Meg 4 4.25 2017 Mercies in Disguise: A Story of Hope, a Family's Genetic Destiny, and the Science That Rescued Them
author: Gina Kolata
name: Meg
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/29
date added: 2022/09/04
shelves:
review:
I cannot imagine going through what this family goes through. I would have liked more background on the science but otherwise fascinating and poignant.
]]> <![CDATA[The Masked Empire (Dragon Age, #4)]]> 21826482
Fighting with the legendary skill of the Orlesian Chevaliers, Grand Duke Gaspard has won countless battles for the empire and the empress. But as the Circle fails and chaos looms, Gaspard begins to doubt that Celene's diplomatic approach Orlais' problems will keep the empire safe. Perhaps it is time for a new leader, one who lives by the tenets of the Chevalier's Code, to make Orlais strong again.

Briala has been Celene's handmaid since the two of them were children, subtly using her position to help improve the lives of elves across Orlais. She is Celene's confidante, spymaster, and lover, but when politics force the empress to choose between the rights of the elves and the Orlesian throne, Briala must decide where her true loyalties lie.

In this thrilling tie-in to the award-winning Dragon Age� games, alliances are forged and promises broken as Celene and Gaspard battle for the throne of Orlais. But in the end, the elves who hide in the forests or starve in the slums may decide the fate of the masked empire.


At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 382 Patrick Weekes 1466828102 Meg 4 3.97 2014 The Masked Empire (Dragon Age, #4)
author: Patrick Weekes
name: Meg
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/01
date added: 2022/09/04
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Approximate finish date. Patrick is a much better book writer than David.
]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Queen (The Lost Queen, #1)]]> 38355440 �Outlander meets Camelot� (Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers) in the first book of an exciting historical trilogy that reveals the untold story of Languoreth—a powerful and, until now, tragically forgotten queen of sixth-century Scotland—twin sister of the man who inspired the legendary character of Merlin.

Intelligent, passionate, rebellious, and brave, Languoreth is the unforgettable heroine of The Lost Queen, a tale of conflicted loves and survival set against the cinematic backdrop of ancient Scotland, a magical land of myths and superstition inspired by the beauty of the natural world. One of the most powerful early medieval queens in British history, Languoreth ruled at a time of enormous disruption and bloodshed, when the burgeoning forces of Christianity threatened to obliterate the ancient pagan beliefs and change her way of life forever.

Together with her twin brother Lailoken, a warrior and druid known to history as Merlin, Languoreth is catapulted into a world of danger and violence. When a war brings the hero Emrys Pendragon, to their door, Languoreth collides with the handsome warrior Maelgwn. Their passionate connection is forged by enchantment, but Languoreth is promised in marriage to Rhydderch, son of the High King who is sympathetic to the followers of Christianity. As Rhydderch's wife, Languoreth must assume her duty to fight for the preservation of the Old Way, her kingdom, and all she holds dear.

“Moving, thrilling, and ultimately spellbinding� (BookPage), The Lost Queen brings this remarkable woman to life—rescuing her from obscurity, and reaffirming her place at the center of the most enduring legends of all time. “Moving, thrilling, and ultimately spellbinding, The Lost Queen is perfect for readers of historical fiction like The Clan of the Cave Bear and Wolf Hall, and for lovers of fantasy like Outlander and The Mists of Avalon� (BookPage).]]> 527 Signe Pike 1501191411 Meg 0 to-read 4.14 2018 The Lost Queen (The Lost Queen, #1)
author: Signe Pike
name: Meg
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Asunder (Dragon Age, #3) 11738736 416 David Gaider 085768647X Meg 3 3.96 2011 Asunder (Dragon Age, #3)
author: David Gaider
name: Meg
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/01
date added: 2022/08/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands]]> 53827285 For readers of Jon Krakauer and Douglas Preston, the critically acclaimed author and journalist Jon Billman's fascinating, in-depth look at people who vanish in the wilderness without a trace and those eccentric, determined characters who try to find them.

These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The proverbial vanished without a trace incidences, which happen a lot more (and a lot closer to your backyard) than almost anyone thinks. These are the missing whose situations are the hardest on loved ones left behind. The cases that are an embarrassment for park superintendents, rangers and law enforcement charged with Search & Rescue. The ones that baffle the volunteers who comb the mountains, woods and badlands. The stories that should give you pause every time you venture outdoors.

Through Jacob Gray's disappearance in Olympic National Park, and his father Randy Gray who left his life to search for him, we will learn about what happens when someone goes missing. Braided around the core will be the stories of the characters who fill the vacuum created by a vanished human being. We'll meet eccentric bloodhound-handler Duff and R.C., his flagship purebred, who began trailing with the family dog after his brother vanished in the San Gabriel Mountains. And there's Michael Neiger North America's foremost backcountry Search & Rescue expert and self-described "bushman" obsessed with missing persons. And top researcher of persons missing on public wildlands Ex-San Jose, California detective David Paulides who is also one of the world's foremost Bigfoot researchers.


It's a tricky thing to write about missing persons because the story is the absence of someone. A void. The person at the heart of the story is thinner than a smoke ring, invisible as someone else's memory. The bones you dig up are most often metaphorical. While much of the book will embrace memory and faulty memory--history--The Cold Vanish is at its core a story of now and tomorrow. Someone will vanish in the wild tomorrow. These are the people who will go looking.]]> 368 Jon Billman 1538747561 Meg 4 4.02 2020 The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America's Wildlands
author: Jon Billman
name: Meg
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/15
date added: 2022/08/29
shelves:
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]]> Under the Whispering Door 53205888 Welcome to Charon's Crossing.
The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through.

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead.

And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.

But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.]]> 376 T.J. Klune 1250217342 Meg 0 to-read 4.11 2021 Under the Whispering Door
author: T.J. Klune
name: Meg
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> Nothing to See Here 42519313
Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth.

Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other—and stay cool—while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her—urgently and fiercely. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for?]]> 288 Kevin Wilson 0062913484 Meg 0 to-read 3.95 2019 Nothing to See Here
author: Kevin Wilson
name: Meg
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine]]> 52585343 A sweeping global history that looks beyond European urban centers to show how slavery, colonialism, and war propelled the development of modern medicine.

Most stories of medical progress come with ready-made heroes. John Snow traced the origins of London’s 1854 cholera outbreak to a water pump, leading to the birth of epidemiology. Florence Nightingale’s contributions to the care of soldiers in the Crimean War revolutionized medical hygiene, transforming hospitals from crucibles of infection to sanctuaries of recuperation. Yet histories of individual innovators ignore many key sources of medical knowledge, especially when it comes to the science of infectious disease.

Reexamining the foundations of modern medicine, Jim Downs shows that the study of infectious disease depended crucially on the unrecognized contributions of nonconsenting subjects—conscripted soldiers, enslaved people, and subjects of empire. Plantations, slave ships, and battlefields were the laboratories in which physicians came to understand the spread of disease. Military doctors learned about the importance of air quality by monitoring Africans confined to the bottom of slave ships. Statisticians charted cholera outbreaks by surveilling Muslims in British-dominated territories returning from their annual pilgrimage. The field hospitals of the Crimean War and the U.S. Civil War were carefully observed experiments in disease transmission.

The scientific knowledge derived from discarding and exploiting human life is now the basis of our ability to protect humanity from epidemics. Boldly argued and eye-opening, Maladies of Empire gives a full account of the true price of medical progress.]]> 272 Jim Downs 0674971728 Meg 0 to-read 3.67 2021 Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine
author: Jim Downs
name: Meg
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus]]> 23316552

Extracted from Spillover by David Quammen, updated and with additional material.]]> 128 David Quammen 0393351556 Meg 4 4.16 2014 Ebola: The Natural and Human History of a Deadly Virus
author: David Quammen
name: Meg
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/02
date added: 2022/05/09
shelves:
review:
Good, but you might as well read Spillover by the same author instead.
]]> <![CDATA[Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age]]> 53122357
In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.

Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.

Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.]]> 320 Annalee Newitz 0393652661 Meg 3 3.76 2021 Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age
author: Annalee Newitz
name: Meg
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/07
date added: 2022/05/09
shelves:
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]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Meg 0 to-read 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Meg
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Tragedy in the North Woods: The Murders of James Hicks (True Crime)]]> 29626145 A riveting account of one of Maine’s most notorious serial killers—includes a prison interview between the author and the unrepentant murderer. Ěý Jennie Cyr disappeared in 1977. Jerilyn Towers vanished in 1982. Lynn Willette never came home on a night in 1994. Each woman had a relationship with James Hicks, who in 2000 confessed to murdering them, dismembering their bodies and burying the remains alongside rural roads in Aroostook County. This is their story. Trudy Irene Scee follows Hicks from the North Woods to west Texas, detailing three decades of evasion, investigation and prosecution. She interviews police officers and victimsâ€� families—and meets Hicks at the state prison in Thomaston, where he remains remorseless as he lives out his days behind bars. Thoroughly researched and carefully documented, Tragedy in the North Woods is the definitive history of one of Maine's most ruthless killers. Ěý Includes photos!]]> 131 Trudy Irene Scee 1625841310 Meg 0 to-read 3.79 2009 Tragedy in the North Woods: The Murders of James Hicks (True Crime)
author: Trudy Irene Scee
name: Meg
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Blinds 32600769 Shovel Ready—a speculative modern Western with elements of Cormac McCarthy, Jim Thompson, and the Coen brothers that is wickedly funny, razor-sharp, and totally engrossing

Imagine a place populated by criminals—people plucked from their lives, with their memories altered, who’ve been granted new identities and a second chance. Welcome to The Blinds, a dusty town in rural Texas populated by misfits who don’t know if they’ve perpetrated a crime, or just witnessed one. What’s clear to them is that if they leave, they will end up dead.

For eight years, Sheriff Calvin Cooper has kept an uneasy peace—but after a suicide and a murder in quick succession, the town’s residents revolt. Cooper has his own secrets to protect, so when his new deputy starts digging, he needs to keep one step ahead of her—and the mysterious outsiders who threaten to tear the whole place down. The more he learns, the more the hard truth is revealed: The Blinds is no sleepy hideaway. It’s simmering with violence and deception, aching heartbreak and dark betrayals.]]> 382 Adam Sternbergh 0062661345 Meg 0 to-read 3.71 2017 The Blinds
author: Adam Sternbergh
name: Meg
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History]]> 56026907 Instant #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller

From the Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta--the definitive account of the Trump administration's tragic mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the chaos, incompetence, and craven politicization that has led to more than a half million American deaths and counting.

Since the day Donald Trump was elected, his critics warned that an unexpected crisis would test the former reality-television host--and they predicted that the president would prove unable to meet the moment. In 2020, that crisis came to pass, with the outcomes more devastating and consequential than anyone dared to imagine. Nightmare Scenario is the complete story of Donald Trump's handling--and mishandling--of the COVID-19 catastrophe, during the period of January 2020 up to Election Day that year. Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta take us deep inside the White House, from the Situation Room to the Oval Office, to show how the members of the administration launched an all-out war against the health agencies, doctors, and scientific communities, all in their futile attempts to wish away the worst global pandemic in a century.

From the initial discovery of this new coronavirus, President Trump refused to take responsibility, disputed the recommendations of his own pandemic task force, claimed the virus would "just disappear," mocked advocates for safe-health practices, and encouraged his base and the entire GOP to ignore or rescind public health safety measures. Abutaleb and Paletta reveal the numerous times officials tried to dissuade Trump from following his worst impulses as he defied recommendations from the experts and even members of his own administration. And they show how the petty backstabbing and rivalries among cabinet members, staff, and aides created a toxic environment of blame, sycophancy, and political pressure that did profound damage to the public health institutions that Americans needed the most during this time. Even after an outbreak in the fall that swept through the White House and infected Trump himself, he remained defiant in his approach to the virus, very likely costing him his own reelection.

Based on exhaustive reporting and hundreds of hours of interviews from inside the disaster zone at all levels of authority, Nightmare Scenario is a riveting account of how the United States government failed its people as never before, a tragedy whose devastating aftershocks will linger and be felt by generations to come.]]> 496 Yasmeen Abutaleb 006306605X Meg 4 4.24 2021 Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History
author: Yasmeen Abutaleb
name: Meg
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/12/31
date added: 2022/01/16
shelves:
review:
DNF, can’t remember when I put it down. Really good! But just hit a little too close to home for me and I was getting so frustrated at the tr*mp administration, even though he was out of office by this point. F*ck that guy.
]]> <![CDATA[A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1)]]> 25667118
Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.]]> 413 Victoria E. Schwab 0765376466 Meg 4 4.16 2015 A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1)
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Meg
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/02
date added: 2021/11/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ten Thousand Doors of January]]> 52879375 In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

Lush and richly imagined, a tale of impossible journeys, unforgettable love, and the enduring power of stories awaits in Alix E. Harrow's spellbinding debut--step inside and discover its magic.]]> 400 Alix E. Harrow 0316421979 Meg 3 4.04 2019 The Ten Thousand Doors of January
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Meg
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2021/10/08
date added: 2021/10/08
shelves:
review:
This took exactly 2 months to read because it ended up being so� blah? I’d been wanting to read it for a while, and it was not nearly as good as I anticipated. I liked about half of it. Maybe 3/8.
]]> <![CDATA[The Stolen Throne (Dragon Age, #1)]]> 7971941 400 David Gaider 1848567537 Meg 0 to-read 3.62 2009 The Stolen Throne (Dragon Age, #1)
author: David Gaider
name: Meg
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/10/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spellbook of the Lost and Found]]> 30079439
Then Olive meets three wild, mysterious strangers: Ivy, Hazel and Rowan. Like Rose, they’re mourning losses - and holding tight to secrets.

When they discover the ancient spellbook, full of hand-inked charms to conjure back lost things, they realise it might be their chance to set everything right. Unless it’s leading them towards secrets that were never meant to be found . . .]]> 416 Moïra Fowley-Doyle 1448193974 Meg 0 to-read 3.72 2017 Spellbook of the Lost and Found
author: MoĂŻra Fowley-Doyle
name: Meg
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, #1)]]> 22929563
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a sweeping, atmospheric narrative that takes the reader on an unexpected journey through Victorian London, Japan as its civil war crumbles long-standing traditions, and beyond. Blending historical events with dazzling flights of fancy, it opens doors to a strange and magical past.]]> 318 Natasha Pulley 1620408333 Meg 0 to-read 3.72 2015 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, #1)
author: Natasha Pulley
name: Meg
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Meg 0 stopped, to-read 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: Meg
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/20
shelves: stopped, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists]]> 11141658 Anthony M. Amore and Tom Mashberg's Stealing Rembrandts is a spellbinding journey into the high-stakes world of art theft Today, art theft is one of the most profitable criminal enterprises in the world, exceeding $6 billion in losses to galleries and art collectors annually. And the masterpieces of Rembrandt van Rijn are some of the most frequently targeted. In Stealing Rembrandts, art security expert Anthony M. Amore and award-winning investigative reporter Tom Mashberg reveal the actors behind the major Rembrandt heists in the last century. Through thefts around the world - from Stockholm to Boston, Worcester to Ohio - the authors track daring entries and escapes from the world's most renowned museums. There are robbers who coolly walk off with multimillion dollar paintings; self-styled art experts who fall in love with the Dutch master and desire to own his art at all costs; and international criminal masterminds who don't hesitate to resort to violence. They also show how museums are thwarted in their ability to pursue the thieves - even going so far as to conduct investigations on their own, far away from the maddening crowd of police intervention, sparing no expense to save the priceless masterpieces. Stealing Rembrandts is an exhilarating, one-of-a-kind look at the black market of art theft, and how it compromises some of the greatest treasures the world has ever known.]]> 271 Anthony M. Amore Meg 0 to-read 3.72 Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists
author: Anthony M. Amore
name: Meg
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)]]> 52483192 An Alternative Cover Edition can be found here

A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.

Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 396 T.J. Klune 1250217318 Meg 5 4.47 2020 The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Meg
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/06/12
date added: 2021/07/01
shelves:
review:
This book is up there with The Night Circus, The Starless Sea, Good Omens, and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in terms of reading experience. I didn’t want this book to end! It’s an absolute delight. I laughed out loud and I cried actual tears. It’s such a beautiful story. No pressure, Mr. Klune, but I’d read a whole series or a bunch of short stories in this universe.
]]> <![CDATA[The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Meg 0 to-read 4.16 2020 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Meg
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them]]> 30199426
In 1518, in a small town in Alsace, Frau Troffea began dancing and didn’t stop. She danced until she was carried away six days later, and soon thirty-four more villagers joined her. Then more. In a month more than 400 people had been stricken by the mysterious dancing plague. In late-seventeenth-century England an eccentric gentleman founded the No Nose Club in his gracious townhome―a social club for those who had lost their noses, and other body parts, to the plague of syphilis for which there was then no cure. And in turn-of-the-century New York, an Irish cook caused two lethal outbreaks of typhoid fever, a case that transformed her into the notorious Typhoid Mary.

Throughout time, humans have been terrified and fascinated by the diseases history and circumstance have dropped on them. Some of their responses to those outbreaks are almost too strange to believe in hindsight. Get Well Soon delivers the gruesome, morbid details of some of the worst plagues we’ve suffered as a species, as well as stories of the heroic figures who selflessly fought to ease the suffering of their fellow man. With her signature mix of in-depth research and storytelling, and not a little dark humor, Jennifer Wright explores history’s most gripping and deadly outbreaks, and ultimately looks at the surprising ways they’ve shaped history and humanity for almost as long as anyone can remember.]]> 336 Jennifer Wright 1627797467 Meg 4 4.27 2017 Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them
author: Jennifer Wright
name: Meg
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2021/05/07
date added: 2021/05/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1)]]> 77197
Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals - the old art known as the Wit - gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility.

So when Fitz is finally adopted into the royal household, he must give up his old ways and embrace a new life of weaponry, scribing, courtly manners; and how to kill a man secretly, as he trains to become a royal assassin.]]> 435 Robin Hobb 055357339X Meg 0 2018, to-read 4.21 1995 Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1)
author: Robin Hobb
name: Meg
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/02
shelves: 2018, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear]]> 56132724
The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they've been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line - conveniently labeled "crazy" so their voices are ignored.

No one is willing to fight for their freedom and, disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness, they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose...]]> 540 Kate Moore 1492696722 Meg 0 to-read 4.29 2021 The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear
author: Kate Moore
name: Meg
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century]]> 38212124 An alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780393356311 can be found here.

The inspiration for Chloé Zhao's celebrated film starring Frances McDormand, winner of the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress
March and April pick for the PBS Newshour-New York Times "Now Read This" Book Club
New York Times bestseller

"People who thought the 2008 financial collapse was over a long time ago need to meet the people Jessica Bruder got to know in this scorching, beautifully written, vivid, disturbing (and occasionally wryly funny) book." —Rebecca Solnit




From the beet fields of North Dakota to the National Forest campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older Americans. Finding that social security comes up short, often underwater on mortgages, these invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in late-model RVs, travel trailers, and vans, forming a growing community of nomads.

On frequently traveled routes between seasonal jobs, Jessica Bruder meets people from all walks of life: a former professor, a McDonald’s vice president, a minister, a college administrator, and a motorcycle cop, among many others—including her irrepressible protagonist, a onetime cocktail waitress, Home Depot clerk, and general contractor named Linda May.

In a secondhand vehicle she christens “Van Halen,� Bruder hits the road to get to know her subjects more intimately. Accompanying Linda May and others from campground toilet cleaning to warehouse product scanning to desert reunions, then moving on to the dangerous work of beet harvesting, Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one that foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, she celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these quintessential Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive. Like Linda May, who dreams of finding land on which to build her own sustainable “Earthship� home, they have not given up hope.]]> 288 Jessica Bruder Meg 0 to-read 3.98 2017 Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century
author: Jessica Bruder
name: Meg
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz]]> 52090492
To uncover the fate of the thousands being interred at a mysterious Nazi camp on the border of the Reich, a thirty-nine-year-old Polish resistance fighter named Witold Pilecki volunteered for an audacious mission: assume a fake identity, intentionally get captured and sent to the new camp, and then report back to the underground on what had happened to his compatriots there. But gathering information was not his only task: he was to execute an attack from inside—where the Germans would least expect it.Ěý

The name of the camp was Auschwitz.

Over the next two and half years, Pilecki forged an underground army within Auschwitz that sabotaged facilities, assassinated Nazi informants and officers, and gathered evidence of terrifying abuse and mass murder. But as he pieced together the horrifying truth that the camp was to become the epicenter of Nazi plans to exterminate Europe’s Jews, Pilecki realized he would have to risk his men, his life, and his family to warn the West before all was lost. To do so, meant attempting the impossible—an escape from Auschwitz itself.

Completely erased from the historical record by Poland’s post-war Communist government, Pilecki remains almost unknown to the world. Now, with exclusive access to previously hidden diaries, family and camp survivor accounts, and recently declassified files, Jack Fairweather offers an unflinching portrayal of survival, revenge and betrayal in mankind’s darkest hour. And in uncovering the tragic outcome of Pilecki’s mission, he reveals that its ultimate defeat originated not in Auschwitz or Berlin, but in London and Washington.]]> 528 Jack Fairweather Meg 4 4.35 2019 The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz
author: Jack Fairweather
name: Meg
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/02/27
date added: 2021/03/14
shelves:
review:
Not an easy read but very fascinating!
]]> <![CDATA[The Romanovs: The Final Chapter]]> 155206 The Romanovs provides the answers, describing in suspenseful detail the dramatic efforts to discover the truth. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie presents a colorful panorama of contemporary characters, illuminating the major scientific dispute between Russian experts and a team of Americans, whose findings, along with those of DNA scientists from Russia, America, and Great Britain, all contributed to solving one of the great mysteries of the twentieth century.]]> 308 Robert K. Massie 0345406400 Meg 0 to-read 4.04 1995 The Romanovs: The Final Chapter
author: Robert K. Massie
name: Meg
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty]]> 133486 The story of the love that ended an empire.

In this commanding book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs� lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history—the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.]]> 640 Robert K. Massie 0345438310 Meg 0 to-read 4.21 1967 Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
author: Robert K. Massie
name: Meg
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> High-Rise 12331767 208 J.G. Ballard 0871404028 Meg 0 to-read 3.61 1975 High-Rise
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Meg
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery]]> 16046229 The Secret Rooms is an enthralling, page-turning true story that reads like an Agatha Christie novel.]]> 450 Catherine Bailey 0670917559 Meg 0 to-read 3.43 2012 The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery
author: Catherine Bailey
name: Meg
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg]]> 40603533 The Last Days of the Romanovs reveals in exceptional detail how the conspiracy to kill them unfolded. In the vivid style of a TV documentary, Helen Rappaport reveals both the atmosphere inside the family's claustrophobic prison and the political maneuverings of those who wished to save--or destroy--them. With the watching world and European monarchies proving incapable of saving the Romanovs, the narrative brings this tragic story to life in a compellingly new and dramatic way, culminating in a bloody night of horror in a cramped basement room.]]> 273 Helen Rappaport Meg 0 to-read 4.04 2009 The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg
author: Helen Rappaport
name: Meg
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra]]> 18404173
Over the years, the story of the four Romanov sisters and their tragic end in a basement at Ekaterinburg in 1918 has clouded our view of them, leading to a mass of sentimental and idealized hagiography. With this treasure trove of diaries and letters from the grand duchesses to their friends and family, we learn that they were intelligent, sensitive and perceptive witnesses to the dark turmoil within their immediate family and the ominous approach of the Russian Revolution, the nightmare that would sweep their world away, and them along with it.

The Romanov Sisters sets out to capture the joy as well as the insecurities and poignancy of those young lives against the backdrop of the dying days of late Imperial Russia, World War I and the Russian Revolution. Rappaort aims to present a new and challenging take on the story, drawing extensively on previously unseen or unpublished letters, diaries and archival sources, as well as private collections. It is a book that will surprise people, even aficionados]]> 492 Helen Rappaport 1250020204 Meg 0 to-read 3.85 2014 The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra
author: Helen Rappaport
name: Meg
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Thirteen Years at the Russian Court]]> 25571592
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.]]> 175 Pierre Gilliard Meg 0 to-read 4.02 2015 Thirteen Years at the Russian Court
author: Pierre Gilliard
name: Meg
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1) 49247130 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Leigh Bardugo comes a mesmerizing tale of power, privilege, and dark magic set among the Ivy League elite.



Galaxy "Alex" Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she's thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world's most prestigious universities on a full ride. What's the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale's secret societies. Their eight windowless "tombs" are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street's biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.

Ninth House is the long-awaited adult debut by the beloved author of Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows. Leigh Bardugo will take her place alongside Lev Grossman and Deborah Harkness as one of the finest practitioners of literary fantasy writing today.]]> 458 Leigh Bardugo 1250751365 Meg 2
The ending sets up for a sequel, which I will likely skip. ]]> 4.08 2019 Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Meg
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2021/01/26
date added: 2021/01/28
shelves:
review:
I had high expectations for this. The premise is interesting. The characters are not. It did not need to be an adult novel. In fact, it probably would have been more interesting as a YA novel, but the author made it grimdark by adding murder, blood, gore, rape, drugs, etc. Alex was an incredibly boring character. Ms. Bardugo tried to add depth to her by making her background dark and depressing, but beyond that, there was nothing to her. Darlington was interesting for about one chapter about halfway through the book, but there was otherwise so little development to him. There was nothing explaining his evolution from his childhood to early adulthood. He obviously built a new identity for himself, but that was never shown.

The ending sets up for a sequel, which I will likely skip.
]]> Queen Mary 661634 685 James Pope-Hennessy 1842120328 Meg 0 to-read 4.33 1959 Queen Mary
author: James Pope-Hennessy
name: Meg
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness]]> 13547180 New York Times bestseller that goes far beyond its riveting medical mystery, Brain on Fire is the powerful account of one woman’s struggle to recapture her identity.

When twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a hospital room, strapped to her bed and unable to move or speak, she had no memory of how she’d gotten there. Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?

In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.]]> 250 Susannah Cahalan 145162137X Meg 0 to-read 4.06 2012 Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
author: Susannah Cahalan
name: Meg
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[King of Scars (King of Scars, #1)]]> 36307634 Face your demons... or feed them.

The dashing young king, Nikolai Lantsov, has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country's bloody civil war--and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, Nikolai must find a way to refill Ravka's coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army.

Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built. With the help of a young monk and a legendary Grisha general, Nikolai will journey to the places in Ravka where the deepest magic survives to vanquish the terrible legacy inside him. He will risk everything to save his country and himself. But some secrets aren't meant to stay buried--and some wounds aren't meant to heal.]]> 511 Leigh Bardugo 125014227X Meg 0 to-read 4.16 2019 King of Scars (King of Scars, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Meg
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Things in Jars 53007224 In this “miraculous and thrilling� (Diane Setterfield, #1 New York Times bestselling author) mystery for fans of The Essex Serpent and The Book of Speculation, Victorian London comes to life as an intrepid female sleuth wades through a murky world of collectors and criminals to recover a remarkable child.

Bridie Devine—flame-haired, pipe-smoking detective extraordinaire—is confronted with the most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, and a peculiar child whose reputed supernatural powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors in this age of discovery.

Winding her way through the sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won’t rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing secrets about her past that she’d rather keep buried. Luckily, her search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot-tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where nothing is quite what it seems.

Blending darkness and light, Things in Jars is a stunning, “richly woven tapestry of fantasy, folklore, and history� (Booklist, starred review) that explores what it means to be human in inhumane times.]]> 369 Jess Kidd 1982121297 Meg 4 3.63 2019 Things in Jars
author: Jess Kidd
name: Meg
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/10
date added: 2021/01/10
shelves:
review:
Such a fun book! The revelation and exposition leading up to the climax was rushed. Otherwise, I very much enjoyed it! Bridie is a great character and the ending leaves me hoping there might be more books featuring her.
]]> <![CDATA[The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir]]> 41798385 A memoir of one woman's effort to save her husband's life-and the discovery of a forgotten cure that has the potential to save millions more.

Epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee and her husband, psychologist Tom Patterson, were vacationing in Egypt when Tom came down with a stomach bug. What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world.

Frantic, Steffanie combed through research old and new and came across phage therapy: the idea that the right virus, aka "the perfect predator," can kill even the most lethal bacteria. Phage treatment had fallen out of favor almost 100 years ago, after antibiotic use went mainstream. Now, with time running out, Steffanie appealed to phage researchers all over the world for help. She found allies at the FDA, researchers from Texas A&M, and a clandestine Navy biomedical center -- and together they resurrected a forgotten cure.]]> 353 Steffanie Strathdee 0316418072 Meg 5 4.52 2019 The Perfect Predator: A Scientist's Race to Save Her Husband from a Deadly Superbug: A Memoir
author: Steffanie Strathdee
name: Meg
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2020/12/02
date added: 2020/12/26
shelves:
review:
Amazing medical drama with a badass lady scientist doing everything she can to save her husband!
]]> The Midnight Library 52578297
When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.

Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?]]> 288 Matt Haig 0525559477 Meg 0 to-read 3.96 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Meg
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Huntress 40390752
Bold and fearless, Nina Markova always dreamed of flying. When the Nazis attack the Soviet Union, she risks everything to join the legendary Night Witches, an all-female night bomber regiment wreaking havoc on the invading Germans. When she is stranded behind enemy lines, Nina becomes the prey of a lethal Nazi murderess known as the Huntress, and only Nina’s bravery and cunning will keep her alive.

Transformed by the horrors he witnessed from Omaha Beach to the Nuremberg Trials, British war correspondent Ian Graham has become a Nazi hunter. Yet one target eludes him: a vicious predator known as the Huntress. To find her, the fierce, disciplined investigator joins forces with the only witness to escape the Huntress alive: the brazen, cocksure Nina. But a shared secret could derail their mission unless Ian and Nina force themselves to confront it.

Growing up in post-war Boston, seventeen-year-old Jordan McBride is determined to become a photographer. When her long-widowed father unexpectedly comes homes with a new fiancée, Jordan is thrilled. But there is something disconcerting about the soft-spoken German widow. Certain that danger is lurking, Jordan begins to delve into her new stepmother’s past—only to discover that there are mysteries buried deep in her family . . . secrets that may threaten all Jordan holds dear.

In this immersive, heart-wrenching story, Kate Quinn illuminates the consequences of war on individual lives, and the price we pay to seek justice and truth.]]> 530 Kate Quinn 0062740377 Meg 0 to-read 4.30 2019 The Huntress
author: Kate Quinn
name: Meg
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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