Peter's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 19 Mar 2025 05:14:53 -0700 60 Peter's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Lies and Sorcery 62001844
A heavily abridged English translation of Lies and Sorcery came out in the 1950s under the title of House of Lies. Jenny McPhee’s new translation is the first complete English rendering of the book that Georg Lukács considered the greatest of modern Italian novels.]]> 800 Elsa Morante 1681376849 Peter 0 to-read 4.02 1948 Lies and Sorcery
author: Elsa Morante
name: Peter
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dragon Haven (Rain Wilds Chronicles #2)]]> 8544772 509 Robin Hobb 0061931551 Peter 4 fantasy 4.15 2010 Dragon Haven (Rain Wilds Chronicles #2)
author: Robin Hobb
name: Peter
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2013/11/26
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> The Madonnas of Leningrad 179264
In the fall of 1941, the German army approached the outskirts of Leningrad, signaling the beginning of what would become a long and torturous siege. During the ensuing months, the city's inhabitants would brave starvation and the bitter cold, all while fending off the constant German onslaught. Marina, then a tour guide at the Hermitage Museum, along with other staff members, was instructed to take down the museum's priceless masterpieces for safekeeping, yet leave the frames hanging empty on the walls—a symbol of the artworks' eventual return. To hold on to sanity when the Luftwaffe's bombs began to fall, she burned to memory, brushstroke by brushstroke, these exquisite artworks: the nude figures of women, the angels, the serene Madonnas that had so shortly before gazed down upon her. She used them to furnish a "memory palace," a personal Hermitage in her mind to which she retreated to escape terror, hunger, and encroaching death. A refuge that would stay buried deep within her, until she needed it once more. . . .]]> 228 Debra Dean 0060825316 Peter 3 3.78 2006 The Madonnas of Leningrad
author: Debra Dean
name: Peter
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:
I found the contemporary storyline of Marina with Alzheimer's more realized than the sections in Leningrad during World War II--but the best bits were when both began to blend near the end of the book.
]]> <![CDATA[Exile's Gate (Morgaine Saga, #4)]]> 834538 The fourth and final book in the epic Morgaine science fiction sagaMorgaine must meet her greatest challenge—Gault, who is both human and alien, and also seeks control of the world and its Gate. She will meet the true Gatemaster—a mysterious lord with power as great, or greater, than her own.]]> 414 C.J. Cherryh 0886772540 Peter 4 fantasy Well of Shiuan the most unique and memorable, and also appreciated the character development of Jhirun who was one of the only characters besides Vanye and Morgaine that was developed enough to care much about. I also found the conclusion of the final book Exiles Gate to be satisfying and well written. Overall a worthwhile if not particularly distinctive series. ]]> 4.10 1988 Exile's Gate (Morgaine Saga, #4)
author: C.J. Cherryh
name: Peter
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: fantasy
review:
More like a 3.5. Review of the whole series: I found the world building in all but the second book to be a little non-descript 'fantasy world.' I found the flooding world in Well of Shiuan the most unique and memorable, and also appreciated the character development of Jhirun who was one of the only characters besides Vanye and Morgaine that was developed enough to care much about. I also found the conclusion of the final book Exiles Gate to be satisfying and well written. Overall a worthwhile if not particularly distinctive series.
]]> <![CDATA[The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry]]> 18293427
A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island—from Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who’s always felt kindly toward Fikry; from Ismay, his sister-in-law who is hell-bent on saving him from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who keeps on taking the ferry over to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.’s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, A.J. can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly.

And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It’s a small package, but large in weight. It’s that unexpected arrival that gives A. J. Fikry the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. It doesn’t take long for the locals to notice the change overcoming A.J.; or for that determined sales rep, Amelia, to see her curmudgeonly client in a new light; or for the wisdom of all those books to become again the lifeblood of A.J.’s world; or for everything to twist again into a version of his life that he didn’t see coming. As surprising as it is moving, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is an unforgettable tale of transformation and second chances, an irresistible affirmation of why we read, and why we love.]]> 260 Gabrielle Zevin 1616203218 Peter 0 4.00 2014 The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Peter
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: currently-reading, general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:

]]> <![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 Peter 0 currently-reading, fantasy 4.58 2020 Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Peter
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: currently-reading, fantasy
review:

]]> Hum 195791689 From the National Book Award–longlisted author of The Need comes an extraordinary novel about a wife and mother who—after losing her job to AI—undergoes a procedure that renders her undetectable to surveillance…but at what cost?

In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,� May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights� respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.

Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities. As New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer says, “Helen Phillips, in typical bravura fashion, has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future.”]]> 262 Helen Phillips 1668008831 Peter 0 to-read 3.49 2024 Hum
author: Helen Phillips
name: Peter
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Everlasting 225653560
It begins where it ends: beneath the yew tree � a girl not yet a knight, and a boy without a story.

It is where she pulls a sword from the heartwood and becomes a legend.

And it is where, more than a thousand years later, he will find her � and lose her � and find her � and lose her again.

It is where a new story will be written � but whose will it be?]]> 400 Alix E. Harrow 1529061172 Peter 0 to-read 5.00 2025 The Everlasting
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Peter
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fires of Azeroth (Morgaine & Vanye, #3)]]> 1313809 The Gates were relics of a lost era. The Union Science Bureau surmised that they had once linked a whole network of civilizations throughout the galaxy-an empire ruled by a ruthless race known as the qhal. This qhal empire had spanned both Space and Time, for their Gates warped time, enabling qhal travelers to step from point to point across light-years unaged. It was even possible to travel into the future. However, intervention in backtime could affect entire worlds and civilizations, could change the course of galactic history, could destroy empires and possibly even implode time itself...and this was what the Science Bureau believed had happened-sometime, somewhere in the unreachable past, an arrogant power-drunk qhal had done the unthinkable, and warped the very fabric of space and time.

Morgaine: pale in coloring and as tall as the tallest men, it seems clear that this mysterious traveler is a descendent of the long-vanished qhal. Aided by a single warrior honor-bound to serve her, it is her mission to travel from world to world sealing the ancient Gates whose very existence threatens the integrity of the universe. But will she have the power to follow her quest to its eventual conclusion-to the Ultimate Gate or the end of time itself?




Cover artist: A. Pedro]]> 236 C.J. Cherryh 0879974664 Peter 3 fantasy 4.06 1979 Fires of Azeroth (Morgaine & Vanye, #3)
author: C.J. Cherryh
name: Peter
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1979
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> Blood Over Bright Haven 208430658 Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia, but magic has a cost—and the collectors have come calling.

An orphan since the age of four, Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, she finds that her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant.

What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was once more than a janitor; before he mopped floors for the mages, Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier. Ten years have passed since he survived the perilous crossing that killed his family. But working for a highmage, he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the Tiranish in power.

Through their fractious relationship, mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first. Sciona has defined her life by the pursuit of truth, but how much is one truth worth with the fate of civilization in the balance?

A standalone dark academia brimming with mystery, tragedy, and the damning echoes of the past. For fans of Leigh Bardugo, V. E. Schwab, and Fullmetal Alchemist.

(Content warnings for gore, sexual assault, and suicidal ideation)]]> 430 M.L. Wang 0593873351 Peter 0 to-read 4.40 2023 Blood Over Bright Haven
author: M.L. Wang
name: Peter
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Written on the Dark 218153843 From the internationally bestselling author of Tigana, All the Seas of the World, and A Brightness Long Ago comes a majestic new novel of love and war that brilliantly evokes the drama and turbulence of medieval France.

Thierry Villar is a well-known--even notorious-- tavern poet, familiar with the rogues and shadows of that world, but not at all with courts and power. He is an unlikely person, despite his quickness, to be caught up in the deadly contests of ambitious royals, assassins, and invading armies.

But he is indeed drawn into all these things on a savagely cold night in his beloved city of Orane. And so Thierry must use all the intelligence and charm he can muster as political struggles merge with a decades-long war to bring his country to the brink of destruction.

As he does, he meets his poetic equal in an aristocratic woman and is drawn to more than one unsettling person with a connection to the world beyond this one. He also crosses paths with an extraordinary young woman driven by voices within to try to heal the ailing king--and help his forces in war. A wide and varied set of people from all walks of life take their places in the rich tapestry of this story.

A new masterwork from the internationally bestselling author of All the Seas of the World, A Brightness Long Ago, and Tigana, Written on the Dark is an elegant tour de force about power and ambition playing out amid the intense human need for art and beauty, and memories to be left behind.]]> 320 Guy Gavriel Kay 0593953983 Peter 0 to-read 4.52 2025 Written on the Dark
author: Guy Gavriel Kay
name: Peter
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Well of Shiuan (Morgaine & Vanye, #2)]]> 57123 Book by Cherryh, C. J. 153 C.J. Cherryh 0879973714 Peter 4 fantasy 3.95 1978 Well of Shiuan (Morgaine & Vanye, #2)
author: C.J. Cherryh
name: Peter
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> The Fox Wife 127278666 Some people think foxes are similar to ghosts because we go around collecting qi, but nothing could be further than the truth. We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better looking . . .

Manchuria, 1908.
In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman’s identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they’ve remained tantalizingly out of reach—until, perhaps, now.

Meanwhile, a family who owns a famous Chinese medicine shop can cure ailments but can’t escape the curse that afflicts them—their eldest sons die before their twenty-fourth birthdays. When a disruptively winsome servant named Snow enters their household, the family’s luck seems to change—or does it?

Snow is a creature of many secrets, but most of all she’s a mother seeking vengeance for her lost child. Hunting a murderer, she will follow the trail from northern China to Japan, while Bao follows doggedly behind. Navigating the myths and misconceptions of fox spirits, both Snow and Bao will encounter old friends and new foes, even as more deaths occur.

New York Times bestselling author Yangsze Choo brilliantly explores a world of mortals and spirits, humans and beasts, and their dazzling intersection. Epic in scope and full of singular, unforgettable characters, The Fox Wife is a stunning novel about old loves and second chances, the depths of maternal love, and ancient folktales that may very well be true.]]> 390 Yangsze Choo 1250266017 Peter 0 to-read 3.97 2024 The Fox Wife
author: Yangsze Choo
name: Peter
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)]]> 57185878 Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.

Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.

Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.

It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.

It wasn't her.

Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyyreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.

But even in Belyyreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.]]> 160 Seanan McGuire Peter 4 fantasy 4.04 2025 Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: Peter
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gate of Ivrel (The Morgaine Cycle, #1)]]> 57084 191 C.J. Cherryh 0886772575 Peter 3 fantasy 3.93 1976 Gate of Ivrel (The Morgaine Cycle, #1)
author: C.J. Cherryh
name: Peter
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1976
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> Service Model 195790861 To fix the world they first must break it further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into their core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then discovers they can also do something else they never did before: run away. After fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is finding a new purpose.]]> 376 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1250290287 Peter 5 sciencefiction The Trial by Kafka. It developed, though, into an interesting exploration of what makes someone/thing self aware or sentient. The exploration of sentience and how it would look for different beings is one of Tchaikovsky's real strengths, and this is no exception. I found the conclusion profound and thought-provoking as well as it relates to gods (human and robot).]]> 3.99 2024 Service Model
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Peter
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: sciencefiction
review:
This started off like a robot version of The Trial by Kafka. It developed, though, into an interesting exploration of what makes someone/thing self aware or sentient. The exploration of sentience and how it would look for different beings is one of Tchaikovsky's real strengths, and this is no exception. I found the conclusion profound and thought-provoking as well as it relates to gods (human and robot).
]]> <![CDATA[Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham, #1)]]> 60879779
I'm Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I'd killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it's a little more complicated than that.

Have I killed someone? Yes. I have.

Who was it?

Let's get started.

EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE

My brother

My stepsister

My wife

My father

My mother

My sister-in-law

My uncle

My stepfather

My aunt

Me]]> 371 Benjamin Stevenson 0063279029 Peter 0 to-read 3.75 2022 Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham, #1)
author: Benjamin Stevenson
name: Peter
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sleeping Beauties 34466922
If they are awakened, and the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place.

The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease.

Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied, or is she a demon who must be slain?]]> 702 Stephen King 150116340X Peter 0 to-read 3.71 2017 Sleeping Beauties
author: Stephen King
name: Peter
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Great Alone 34912895 Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents� passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights� lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.]]> 435 Kristin Hannah Peter 2 4.44 2018 The Great Alone
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Peter
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:
I enjoyed the depiction of the Alaskan wilderness, but this was just misery porn. One awful thing after another. Not for me at all.
]]> <![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Peter 3 sciencefiction 3.87 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Peter
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: sciencefiction
review:

]]> Travel Light 827276 The Sword in the Stone.]]> 135 Naomi Mitchison 1931520143 Peter 0 to-read 3.88 1952 Travel Light
author: Naomi Mitchison
name: Peter
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Peter 4 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Peter
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: general-fiction, sciencefiction
review:

]]> Alien Clay 202776726
On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history � yet who were its builders and where did they go?

Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.

Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and might just set him free . . .]]> 432 Adrian Tchaikovsky 0316578975 Peter 0 to-read 3.90 2024 Alien Clay
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Peter
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sociopath: A Memoir 176501392
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she even started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society that she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with…something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy has been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen, villains, and monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.]]> 11 Patric Gagne 1797170775 Peter 0 to-read 3.73 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir
author: Patric Gagne
name: Peter
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The City in Glass 209439468 In this new standalone, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.

A demon. An angel. A city that burns at the heart of the world.

The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot.

And then the angels come, and the city falls.

Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned.

She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever.

Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.

The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to burn a world to ashes and build it anew.]]> 216 Nghi Vo 1250348277 Peter 3 fantasy 3.75 2024 The City in Glass
author: Nghi Vo
name: Peter
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: fantasy
review:
Probably closer to 3.5 stars. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the slow burn development of the relationship, found myself a bit unsatisfied with the ending.
]]> <![CDATA[We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)]]> 203956647 A brand new series. An iconic new detective duo. And a puzzling new murder to solve...

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

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 059365322X.]]> 400 Richard Osman Peter 4 mysteries 4.07 2024 We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Peter
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: mysteries
review:

]]> The Last Dream 203384642 A wildly inventive story collection from legendary film director Pedro AlmodĂłvar

The Last Dream brings together for the first time twelve unpublished stories from AlmodĂłvar’s personal archive, written between the late sixties and the present day. Both a tantalising glimpse into AlmodĂłvar’s creative mind and a masterclass in how to tell a story, this intimate and mischievous collection reflects AlmodĂłvar’s obsessions and many of the themes of his cinematic work, spanning genres from autofiction to comedy, parody, pastiche and gothic. The title story, â€The Last Dreamâ€�, is a beautiful chronicle of the death of AlmodĂłvar’s mother, and other stories a love story between Jesus and Barabbas; a cult film director out in search of painkillers on a bank holiday weekend; the primary version of the film Bad Education; and a gothic tale of a repentant vampire among monks.

In his introduction, AlmodĂłvar â€I’ve been asked to write my autobiography more than once, and I’ve always refused; it’s also been suggested that I let someone else write my biography, but I have always felt somewhat resistant to the idea of a book entirely about me as an individual. I’ve never kept a diary, and whenever I’ve tried, I’ve never made it to page two; in a sense, then, this book represents something of a paradox. It might be best described as a fragmentary autobiography, incomplete and a little cryptic.â€�

A celebration of the relationship between life and art, fiction and reality from an artist unafraid to write about our most intimate moments, these stories explore desire, mortality, loneliness and the pain and glory of artistic creation, laced with playful humour and a deep love of literature and culture.

Translated by Frank Wynne]]> 221 Pedro AlmodĂłvar 1529918642 Peter 0 to-read 3.56 2023 The Last Dream
author: Pedro AlmodĂłvar
name: Peter
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The City and Its Uncertain Walls]]> 209192695 From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.]]> 449 Haruki Murakami 0593801970 Peter 0 to-read 3.73 2023 The City and Its Uncertain Walls
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Peter
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Peter 0 to-read 4.47 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Decline in Prophets (Rowland Sinclair #2)]]> 11102852
Returning home on the luxury liner after months abroad, Rowland Sinclair and his companions dine with a suffragette, a Bishop and a retired World Prophet. The Church encounters less orthodox religion in the Aquitania's chandeliered ballroom, where men of God rub shoulders with mystics in dinner suits.

The elegant atmosphere on board is charged with tension but civility prevails...until people start to die. Then things get a bit awkward.

And Rowland Sinclair finds himself unwittingly in the centre of it all.]]> 354 Sulari Gentill Peter 3 mysteries 3.89 2011 A Decline in Prophets (Rowland Sinclair #2)
author: Sulari Gentill
name: Peter
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: mysteries
review:

]]> Playground 205478762 The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.]]> 381 Richard Powers 1324086033 Peter 0 to-read 4.16 2024 Playground
author: Richard Powers
name: Peter
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bright Sword 201750794
They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.]]> 673 Lev Grossman 0735224048 Peter 4 fantasy 3.94 2024 The Bright Sword
author: Lev Grossman
name: Peter
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> The Horse 199532033 Award-winning author Willy Vlautin explores loneliness, art, addiction, regret, love, and hard-won empathy in this poignant novel—his most personal to date—that captures the life of a journeyman musician unable to escape the tragedies of his past.

Al Ward lives on an isolated mining claim in the high desert of central Nevada fifty miles from the nearest town. A grizzled man in his sixties, he survives on canned soup, instant coffee, and memories of his ex-wife, friends and family he’s lost, and his life as a touring musician. Hampered by insomnia, bouts of anxiety, and a chronic lethargy that keeps him from moving back to town, Al finds himself teetering on the edge of madness and running out of reasons to go on—until a horse arrives on his doorstep: nameless, blind, and utterly helpless.

Al hopes the horse will vanish as mysteriously as he appeared. Yet the animal remains, leaving him in a conundrum. Is the animal real, or a phantom conjured from imagination? As Al contemplates the horse’s existence—and what, if anything, he can do—his thoughts are interspersed with memories of his life as a musician, from the moment his mother’s part-time boyfriend gifts him a 1959 butterscotch blonde Telecaster, to the day his life as a traveling musician begins. He joins various bands—all who perform his songs once they discover his talent–playing casinos, truck stops, clubs, and bars. He falls in love, and finds pockets of companionship and minor success along the way. Never close to stardom or financial success, he continues as a journeyman for decades until alcoholism and a heartbreaking tragedy lead him to the isolation of the barren Nevada desert.

A poignant meditation on art, addiction, loneliness, heartbreak, and the reality of life on the road in smalltime bands, The Horse is a beautiful, haunting tale from an author working at the height of his powers.]]> 194 Willy Vlautin 0063346575 Peter 0 to-read 4.12 2024 The Horse
author: Willy Vlautin
name: Peter
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (Fairyland, #3)]]> 17261183 248 Catherynne M. Valente 1250023505 Peter 3 fantasy 4.01 2013 The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two (Fairyland, #3)
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Peter
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)]]> 6101718
Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, he’s still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory. Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery.

He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom. Something is missing, though. Magic doesn’t bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentin’s fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.

At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil aren’t black and white, love and sex aren’t simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price.]]> 402 Lev Grossman 0670020559 Peter 0 Such a great book. It's often described as the "adult Harry Potter" which isn't totally off-base, but also misses a lot of what makes the book great. It definitely tips its hat to many classic fantasy series including Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and Wizard of Oz, but its more than that. It explores not only the conventions of fantasy literature (in a very clever way), but the appeal and the psychological motivations that are fulfilled by it--particularly for children who read them (and how those issues are manifest when those children become adults). Highly recommended, particularly if you were a kid who couldn't get enough of fantasy series.]]> 3.53 2009 The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)
author: Lev Grossman
name: Peter
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2015/05/30
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: fantasy, general-fiction, favorites
review:

Such a great book. It's often described as the "adult Harry Potter" which isn't totally off-base, but also misses a lot of what makes the book great. It definitely tips its hat to many classic fantasy series including Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, and Wizard of Oz, but its more than that. It explores not only the conventions of fantasy literature (in a very clever way), but the appeal and the psychological motivations that are fulfilled by it--particularly for children who read them (and how those issues are manifest when those children become adults). Highly recommended, particularly if you were a kid who couldn't get enough of fantasy series.
]]> <![CDATA[The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.]]> 207611509
In the spring of 1980, an unexpected group of musical eccentrics came together to play their very first performance at a college party in Athens, Georgia. Within a few short years, they had taken over the world - with smash records like Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster and Green. Raw, outrageous, and expressive, R. E. M. 's distinctive musical flair was unmatched, and a string of mega-successes solidified them as generational spokesmen. In the tumultuous transition between the wide-open 80s and the anxiety of the early 90s, R. E. M. challenged the corporate and social order, chasing a vision and cultivating a magnetic, transgressive sound.

In this rich, intimate biography, critically acclaimed author Peter Ames Carlin looks beyond the sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll to open a window into the fascinating lives of four college friends - Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry - who stuck together at any cost, until the end. Deeply descriptive and remarkably poetic, steeped in 80s and 90s nostalgia, The Name of This Band is R. E. M. paints a cultural history of the commercial peak and near-total collapse of a great music era, and the story of the generation that came of age at the apotheosis of rock.]]> 464 Peter Ames Carlin 0385546947 Peter 4 non-fiction 3.98 The Name of This Band Is R.E.M.
author: Peter Ames Carlin
name: Peter
average rating: 3.98
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Well-written and readable. Like any band bio, my interest waned when it covered the albums / time periods that I didn't feel as connected to, but if you're a fan, I recommend it.
]]> <![CDATA[A Few Right Thinking Men (Rowland Sinclair, #1)]]> 8176796 349 Sulari Gentill 0980741815 Peter 4 mysteries 3.62 2010 A Few Right Thinking Men (Rowland Sinclair, #1)
author: Sulari Gentill
name: Peter
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: mysteries
review:

]]> The Woman in the Library 56803179 In every person's story, there is something to hide...

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

Award-winning author Sulari Gentill delivers a sharply thrilling read with The Woman in the Library, an unexpectedly twisty literary adventure that examines the complicated nature of friendship and shows us that words can be the most treacherous weapons of all.]]> 292 Sulari Gentill Peter 3 3.46 2022 The Woman in the Library
author: Sulari Gentill
name: Peter
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: mysteries, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:

]]> <![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 Peter 0 to-read 4.40 2020 Dawnshard (The Stormlight Archive, #3.5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Peter
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)]]> 9591398 Ěý
With exquisite illustrations by acclaimed artist Ana Juan, Fairyland lives up to the sensation it created when the author first posted it online. For readers of all ages who love the charm of Alice in Wonderland and the soul of The Golden Compass, here is a reading experience unto itself: unforgettable, and so very beautiful.
]]> 247 Catherynne M. Valente 0312649614 Peter 3 childrensbooks, fantasy 3.95 2011 The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Peter
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: childrensbooks, fantasy
review:
Just what I needed right now--an escape in the best sense.
]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland, #2)]]> 13538708
Fans of Valente's bestselling, first Fairyland book will revel in the lush setting, characters, and language of September's journey, all brought to life by fine artist Ana Juan. Readers will also welcome back good friends Ell, the Wyverary, and the boy Saturday. But in Fairyland Below, even the best of friends aren't always what they seem. . . .]]> 258 Catherynne M. Valente 0312649622 Peter 4 4.17 2012 The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There (Fairyland, #2)
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Peter
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: fantasy, childrensbooks, youngadultfantasy
review:

]]> Sky Full of Elephants 207293815 In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial� America in search of answers.

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

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

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.]]> 304 Cebo Campbell 1668034921 Peter 0 to-read 3.82 2024 Sky Full of Elephants
author: Cebo Campbell
name: Peter
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lessons in Magic and Disaster 217387772 All the Birds in the Sky comes a novel full of love, disaster, and magic.

A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic--with very unexpected results--in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.

Jamie is basically your average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch.

Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.

Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.

Now it's up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.]]> 320 Charlie Jane Anders 1250867320 Peter 0 to-read 4.71 2025 Lessons in Magic and Disaster
author: Charlie Jane Anders
name: Peter
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)]]> 22887541 640 Ken Liu 1481424297 Peter 3 fantasy 3.92 2015 The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)
author: Ken Liu
name: Peter
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: fantasy
review:
I really enjoyed the characters Kuni and Jai and their relationship. It had interesting things to say about love and I thought the novel as a whole has some interesting things to say about power and heroism. It was, however, not really for me. Too many battles and too much political maneuvering, not enough characterization and atmosphere for my taste.
]]> Horse 59109077 A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

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

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

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

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.]]> 401 Geraldine Brooks 0399562966 Peter 3 4.17 2022 Horse
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Peter
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/29
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:

]]> The Wood at Midwinter 206101583 'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the Strange universe. Featuring an introduction by Susanna Clarke and gorgeous illustrations from Victoria Sawdon truly worthy of the magic of this story, this is a mesmerising, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.]]> 64 Susanna Clarke 1639734481 Peter 2 fantasy
I would, however, love to read a whole novel based on the main character and what actually happens to her in the wood!]]> 3.47 2024 The Wood at Midwinter
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Peter
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: fantasy
review:
First of all, I'm SERIOUSLY disappointed this isn't a new novel. Second, it's barely even a short story--almost no plot or story at all, a very slight impression of a story. Nearly half of the book was the afterword where she talks about her influences, and while I love how in to Kate Bush she is, it wasn't particularly satisfying as a piece of fiction.

I would, however, love to read a whole novel based on the main character and what actually happens to her in the wood!
]]> <![CDATA[Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)]]> 210367505 TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance � award winners and international bestsellers all, the first the basis for a now-classic film � Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.

Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future � and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.

Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.

Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team � well trained but eccentric � has been assembled to find Area X’s “off switch� somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.

Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters, and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present, and future in terrifying, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0374616590 Peter 0 to-read 3.61 2024 Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Peter
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Good Turn (Jackson Brodie, #2)]]> 501124
The event thrusts Jackson into the orbit of the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a washed-up comedian, a successful crime novelist, a mysterious Russian woman, and a female police detective. Each of them hiding a secret, each looking for love or money or redemption or escape, they all play a role in driving Jackson out of retirement and into the middle of several mysteries that intersect in one sinister scheme.

Kate Atkinson "writes such fluid, sparkling prose that an ingenious plot almost seems too much to ask, but we get it anyway," writes Laura Miller for Salon. With a keen eye for the excesses of modern life, a warm understanding of the frailties of the human heart, and a genius for plots that turn and twist, Atkinson has written a novel that delights and surprises from the first page to the last.]]> 418 Kate Atkinson 0316012823 Peter 3 mysteries Case Histories had some depth behind the mystery tropes. This was just a standard mystery novel. I enjoyed it, but not nearly to the level of the first book.]]> 3.79 2006 One Good Turn (Jackson Brodie, #2)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Peter
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: mysteries
review:
Case Histories had some depth behind the mystery tropes. This was just a standard mystery novel. I enjoyed it, but not nearly to the level of the first book.
]]> <![CDATA[Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)]]> 16243 1 A little girl disappears in the night.
2 A beautiful young office worker falls to a maniac's attack.
3 A new mother is overwhelmed by demands from her baby and husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.
Result : Startling connections and discoveries emerge. . . .]]> 389 Kate Atkinson 0316010707 Peter 5 general-fiction, mysteries 3.79 2004 Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Peter
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/27
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: general-fiction, mysteries
review:

]]> <![CDATA[City of Miracles (The Divine Cities, #3)]]> 31522139
So when he learns that his oldest friend and ally, former Prime Minister Shara Komayd, has been assassinated, he knows exactly what to do � and that no mortal force can stop him from meting out the suffering Shara's killers deserve.

Yet as Sigrud pursues his quarry with his customary terrifying efficiency, he begins to fear that this battle is an unwinnable one. Because discovering the truth behind Shara's death will require him to take up arms in a secret, decades-long war, face down an angry young god, and unravel the last mysteries of Bulikov, the city of miracles itself. And � perhaps most daunting of all � finally face the truth about his own cursed existence.

]]> 451 Robert Jackson Bennett 0553419730 Peter 3 fantasy 4.39 2017 City of Miracles (The Divine Cities, #3)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Red Prophet (Tales of Alvin Maker, #2)]]> 9393405 321 Orson Scott Card 1429964839 Peter 0 youngadultfantasy 3.95 1988 Red Prophet (Tales of Alvin Maker, #2)
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Peter
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at: 1989/01/01
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: youngadultfantasy
review:

]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

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

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Peter 5 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Peter
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:
For me, this is a novel about contrasts--life and death, but even more than that the contrast between a 'simple' life and a 'glamorous' one.
]]> The Strange Case of Jane O. 213870076
In the first year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Are Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or are they the manifestation of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever-deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind, and cause him to question everything he thought he knew about so-called reality—including events in his own life.

Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.]]> 288 Karen Thompson Walker 1984853945 Peter 0 to-read 3.93 2025 The Strange Case of Jane O.
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: Peter
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[City of Blades (The Divine Cities, #2)]]> 23909755
Now, the city’s god is dead. The city itself lies in ruins. And to its new military occupiers, the once-powerful capital is a wasteland of sectarian violence and bloody uprisings.

So it makes perfect sense that General Turyin Mulaghesh � foul-mouthed hero of the battle of Bulikov, rumored war criminal, ally of an embattled Prime Minister � has been exiled there to count down the days until she can draw her pension and be forgotten.

At least, it makes the perfect cover story.

The truth is that the general has been pressed into service one last time, dispatched to investigate a discovery. For while the city’s god is most certainly dead, something is awakening in Voortyashtan. And someone is determined to make the world tremble at the the city’s awful power again.

]]> 484 Robert Jackson Bennett 0553419714 Peter 3 4.19 2016 City of Blades (The Divine Cities, #2)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/12
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success]]> 61079149 367 Miki Berenyi 1788705556 Peter 5 non-fiction 4.42 Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success
author: Miki Berenyi
name: Peter
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/05
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: non-fiction
review:
The best music memoir I've ever read. It's personal without being overly insular, and honest without being nasty.
]]> <![CDATA[City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)]]> 20174424
Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani. Officially, the unassuming young woman is just another junior diplomat sent by Bulikov’s oppressors. Unofficially, she is one of her country’s most accomplished spies, dispatched � along with her terrifying “secretary�, Sigrud � to solve a murder.

But as Shara pursues the killer, she starts to suspect that the beings who ruled this terrible place may not be as dead as they seem, and that Bulikov’s cruel reign may not yet be over.

A tale of vast conspiracies, dead gods, and buried histories, City of Stairs is at once a gripping spy novel and a stunningly original work of fantasy.

]]> 452 Robert Jackson Bennett 080413717X Peter 4 fantasy 4.07 2014 City of Stairs (The Divine Cities, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> Elder Race 50663055 I am going to make a momentous decision. Most likely it is a bad decision. Certainly it may be the last major decision I ever make.

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she’s an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn’t a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon. . . .]]> 199 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1250768721 Peter 0 to-read 4.01 2021 Elder Race
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Peter
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Absolution 101404407
In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer “on loan� to US Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the “wretchedness� she sees all around her.

When Tricia miscarries, Charlene sweeps her into a cabal of well-dressed do-gooder American wives. Armed with baskets filled with candy and toys, they descend on hospitals, orphanages, and a leper colony on the coast, determined to relieve suffering, no matter the cost.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter reaches out to Tricia, now widowed and living in Washington. As the two relive their shared experience in Saigon, they are forced to come to terms with the ways their own lives have been shaped and stunted by Charlene’s pursuit of “inconsequential good.�

With a narrative impact that recalls Graham Greene’s The Quiet American , Alice McDermott confronts the unresolved mysteries and ironies of America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.]]> 324 Alice McDermott 0374610487 Peter 4 3.69 2023 Absolution
author: Alice McDermott
name: Peter
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/22
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)]]> 203164357 The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize â€� a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the â€sidekickâ€� is DC Reggie Chase.

The crumbling house - Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton - suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.

Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace.

All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.

A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers.]]> 320 Kate Atkinson 0385547994 Peter 0 to-read 3.70 2024 Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Peter
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Map of Tiny Perfect Things]]> 56923399 66 Lev Grossman 0316281220 Peter 0 to-read 3.99 2021 The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
author: Lev Grossman
name: Peter
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pink Slime 199797823
In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine air that blows in from the sea. Inland, a secretive corporation churns out the only food anyone can afford—a revolting pink paste, made of an unknown substance. In the short, desperate breaks between deadly windstorms, our narrator stubbornly tends to her few remaining with her difficult but vulnerable mother; with the ex-husband for whom she still harbors feelings; with the boy she nannies, whose parents sent him away even as terrible threats loomed. Yet as conditions outside deteriorate further, her commitment to remaining in place only grows—even if staying means being left behind.

An evocative elegy for a safe, clean world, Pink Slime is buoyed by humor and its narrator’s resiliency. This unforgettable novel explores the place where love, responsibility, and self-preservation converge, and the beauty and fragility of our most intimate relationships.]]> 240 Fernanda Trías 1668049775 Peter 5 3.37 2020 Pink Slime
author: Fernanda TrĂ­as
name: Peter
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/22
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: general-fiction, sciencefiction, horror
review:
I'm not sure why this is considered horror. There are certainly horrible things happening, but slowly and they are met with resignation more than fear. It has a palpable atmosphere and, although it's short, feels slow and contemplative.
]]> The Rooftop 56522347
â€Are threats and pain external or inside our own bodies? Where is violence’s root? What are we afraid of? Is there a possibility to find a roof to finally being able to breathe? What are our umbilical cords?â€�. Fernanda TrĂ­as does not answer these questions â€� impossible for anyone â€� about instinct, civilization and taboos, instead she gives them shape and dives deep into them a with a grotesque and forceful history written with agility and a Kafkaesque sense of humour.

Rooftop is a claustrophobic novel about freedom, and also about fear, violence, motherhood and loss.]]> 112 Fernanda TrĂ­as 1913867048 Peter 0 to-read 3.59 2000 The Rooftop
author: Fernanda TrĂ­as
name: Peter
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Need 42201850
But then the footsteps come again, and she catches a glimpse of movement.

Suddenly Molly finds herself face-to-face with an intruder who knows far too much about her and her family. As she attempts to protect those she loves most, Molly must also acknowledge her own frailty. Molly slips down an existential rabbit hole where she must confront the dualities of motherhood: the ecstasy and the dread; the languor and the ferocity; the banality and the transcendence as the book hurtles toward a mind-bending conclusion.

In The Need, Helen Phillips has created a subversive, speculative thriller that comes to life through blazing, arresting prose and gorgeous, haunting imagery. Anointed as one of the most exciting fiction writers working today, The Need is a glorious celebration of the bizarre and beautiful nature of our everyday lives.]]> 272 Helen Phillips 1982113162 Peter 0 to-read 3.15 2019 The Need
author: Helen Phillips
name: Peter
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)]]> 37173847
But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic--the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience--have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims.

Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them.

To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined.]]> 501 Robert Jackson Bennett 1524760374 Peter 4 fantasy 4.16 2018 Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2024/08/20
shelves: fantasy
review:
Interesting and unique magic system, good characters. Recommended.
]]> A Sorceress Comes to Call 195790847 A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic

Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.

After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.

Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.]]> 327 T. Kingfisher 1250244072 Peter 0 to-read 4.07 2024 A Sorceress Comes to Call
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Peter
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Peter 4 general-fiction 3.54 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Peter
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/18
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves: general-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 Peter 0 to-read 4.28 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Locklands (The Founders Trilogy, #3)]]> 55535618
Sancia, Clef, and Berenice have gone up against plenty of long odds in the past. But the war they’re fighting now is one even they can’t win.

This time, they’re not facing robber-baron elites, or even an immortal hierophant, but an entity whose intelligence is spread over half the globe—a ghost in the machine that uses the magic of scriving to possess and control not just objects, but human minds.

To fight it, they’ve used scriving technology to transform themselves and their allies into an army—a society—that’s like nothing humanity has seen before. With its strength at their backs, they’ve freed a handful of their enemy’s hosts from servitude, even brought down some of its fearsome, reality-altering dreadnaughts. Yet despite their efforts, their enemy marches on—implacable. Unstoppable.

Now, as their opponent closes in on its true prize—an ancient doorway, long buried, that leads to the chambers at the center of creation itself—Sancia and her friends glimpse a chance at reaching it first, and with it, a last desperate opportunity to stop this unbeatable foe. But to do so, they’ll have to unlock the centuries-old mystery of scriving’s origins, embark on a desperate mission into the heart of their enemy’s power, and pull off the most daring heist they’ve ever attempted.

And as if that weren’t enough, their adversary might just have a spy in their ranks—and a last trick up its sleeve.]]> 544 Robert Jackson Bennett Peter 4 fantasy
Ultimately, though I found it quite moving (particularly Sancia and Berenice's relationship) and loved it's exploration of true empathy and how it's the key to living peaceably. I also found some of the writing particularly evocative--especially the description of the buried city. Ultimately, it was a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy (although not without it's flaws).]]> 4.03 2022 Locklands (The Founders Trilogy, #3)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/13
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: fantasy
review:
This one took me a while to get into. The initial conflict seemed a little too similar to me to the other books (felt a bit stale) I also would have loved if they had included more about the founding and creation of Giva--would have emphasized how special it was and how difficult it was to create (which was an important part of it--it's difficulty). The story, however, eventually transcended the (to me) slightly disappointing start.

Ultimately, though I found it quite moving (particularly Sancia and Berenice's relationship) and loved it's exploration of true empathy and how it's the key to living peaceably. I also found some of the writing particularly evocative--especially the description of the buried city. Ultimately, it was a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy (although not without it's flaws).
]]> The Old Lion 61885106 New York Times bestselling author Jeff Shaara, The Old Lion a brilliant novel tracing the life of Theodore Roosevelt.

In one of his most accomplished, compelling novels yet, acclaimed New York Times bestseller Jeff Shaara accomplishes what only the finest historical fiction can do - he brings to life one of the most consequential figures in U.S. history - Theodore Roosevelt - peeling back the many-layered history of the man, and the country he personified.

From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, from the waning days of the rugged frontier of a young country to the emergence of a modern, industrial nation exerting its power on the world stage, Theodore Roosevelt embodied both the myth and reality of the country he loved and led.

From his upbringing in the rarefied air of New York society of the late 19th century to his time in rough-and-tumble world of the Badlands in the Dakotas, from his rise from political obscurity to Assistant Secretary of the Navy, from national hero as the leader of the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War to his accidental rise to the Presidency itself, Roosevelt embodied the complex, often contradictory, image of America itself.

In gripping prose, Shaara tells the story of the man who both defined and created the modern United States.]]> 480 Jeff Shaara 1250279941 Peter 1
Also, in my mind, the point of historical fiction is imaginatively filling in the personal details that aren't in the historical record. There was hardly any of that. In fact, The River of Doubt a non-fiction book had more emotional heft than this one. ]]> 4.13 The Old Lion
author: Jeff Shaara
name: Peter
average rating: 4.13
book published:
rating: 1
read at: 2024/07/26
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:
I REALLY didn't like this one. The reviewer of this book for Publisher's Weekly described it as ponderous, and that is really the perfect description.

Also, in my mind, the point of historical fiction is imaginatively filling in the personal details that aren't in the historical record. There was hardly any of that. In fact, The River of Doubt a non-fiction book had more emotional heft than this one.
]]> <![CDATA[Shorefall (The Founders Trilogy, #2)]]> 45309582 As a magical revolution remakes a city, an ancient evil is awakened in a brilliant new novel from the Hugo-nominated author ofĚýFoundryside and the Divine Cities trilogy
Ěý
Having narrowly saved the metropolis of Tevanne from destruction, Sancia Grado and her allies have turned to their next task: sowing the seeds of a full-on magical-industrial revolution. If they succeed, the secrets behind scriving—the art of imbuing everyday objects with sentience—will be accessible to all of Tevanne’s citizens, much to the displeasure of the robber-barons who’ve hoarded this knowledge for themselves. Ěý
Ěý
But one of Sancia’s enemies has embarked on a desperate gambit, an attempt to resurrect a figure straight out of legend—an immortal being known as a heirophant. Long ago, the heirophant was an ordinary man, but he’s used scriving to transform himself into something closer to a god. Once awakened, he’ll stop at nothing to remake the world in his horrifying image.
Ěý
And if Sancia can’t stop this ancient power from returning? Well, the only way to fight a god…is with another god.]]> 493 Robert Jackson Bennett 1524760390 Peter 4 fantasy 4.02 2020 Shorefall (The Founders Trilogy, #2)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Peter
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> Such Charming Liars 201055456 The newest mystery from the author One of Us Is Lying, the Queen of thrillers, Karen M. McManus! When mother-daughter grifters set out on their final job, the heist gets deadly and dangerously personal.

For all of Kat’s life, it’s just been her and her mother, Jamie—except for the forty-eight hours when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in an epic divorce, and Kat and Liam haven’t spoken since.

Now Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job—at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s birthday party. And Kat has figured out a way to tag along. What Kat doesn’t know, though, is that there are two surprise guests at the dazzling Sutherland compound that weekend. The last two people she wants to run into. Liam and his father—a serial scammer who has his sights set on Ross Sutherland’s youngest daughter.

Kat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realize they might actually be in the killer’s crosshairs themselves. Somehow Kat and Liam are the new targets, and they can’t trust anyone—except each other.

Or can they? Because if there’s one thing both Kat and Liam know, it’s how to lie. They learned from the best.]]> 320 Karen M. McManus 0241676983 Peter 2 3.72 2024 Such Charming Liars
author: Karen M. McManus
name: Peter
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)]]> 23168817 512 Liu Cixin Peter 2 sciencefiction The Three-Body Problem but doesn't have many of it's strengths--the characterization is horrible, the plotting is very bad and it's dense and often confusing, but it is also lacking the amazing concepts of it's predecessor.

I also need to point out how awful and problematic the idea of finding the wallfacer Luo Ji his perfect female companion exactly how he had invented her and imagined her into reality previously is.

It did pick up by the end once the Trisolarian's start to get closer and the action starts to get in focus (and we finally learn what Luo Ji's endgame was). I was tempted to bump it up to 3 stars but, since I had at one point decided to stop reading it altogether, I decided it didn't deserve it.

Not completely without merit, but very flawed. I doubt I'll continue reading the series (although I will watch the show!)]]> 4.39 2008 The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Peter
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves: sciencefiction
review:
This suffers from a lot of the same issues as The Three-Body Problem but doesn't have many of it's strengths--the characterization is horrible, the plotting is very bad and it's dense and often confusing, but it is also lacking the amazing concepts of it's predecessor.

I also need to point out how awful and problematic the idea of finding the wallfacer Luo Ji his perfect female companion exactly how he had invented her and imagined her into reality previously is.

It did pick up by the end once the Trisolarian's start to get closer and the action starts to get in focus (and we finally learn what Luo Ji's endgame was). I was tempted to bump it up to 3 stars but, since I had at one point decided to stop reading it altogether, I decided it didn't deserve it.

Not completely without merit, but very flawed. I doubt I'll continue reading the series (although I will watch the show!)
]]> Horror Movie 200101541 A chilling twist on the “cursed filmâ€� genre from the bestselling author ofĚýThe Pallbearers Club andĚýThe Cabin at the End of the World.

In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.

The weird part?ĚýOnly three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.

The man who played “The Thin Kid� is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions � demons of the past be damned.

But at what cost?Ěý

Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful twist on the “cursed film� that breathlessly builds to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.]]> 277 Paul Tremblay 0063070014 Peter 0 to-read 3.31 2024 Horror Movie
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Peter
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bury Your Gays 195790870 From Chuck Tingle, author of the USA Today bestselling Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale�"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple.

As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late.]]> 295 Chuck Tingle 1250874653 Peter 0 to-read 4.14 2024 Bury Your Gays
author: Chuck Tingle
name: Peter
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lessons in Chemistry 206305528
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride�) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.]]> 404 Bonnie Garmus Peter 3 4.24 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Peter
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/25
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Solo Viola: A Post-Exotic Novel (Univocal)]]> 55707585 A harrowing early novel by one of France’s most unusual contemporary writersĚý

At once humorous and horrifying, Solo Viola is one of Antoine Volodine’s first forays into post-exoticism. He takes the reader into a fictional world where a variety of characters collide: three prisoners just released from jail, a band of circus performers, a string quartet, a writer, and a bird. All are trying to survive in an absurd and hostile environment of authoritarian spectacle, at the mercy of a tyrannical buffoon, and seeking the strange counterbalance of hope in a viola player, whose stunning music just might save them all, if only for a moment.Ěý]]> 112 Antoine Volodine 1517911192 Peter 0 to-read 4.04 1991 Solo Viola: A Post-Exotic Novel (Univocal)
author: Antoine Volodine
name: Peter
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

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

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Peter 4 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Peter
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/29
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:

]]> Recursion 50612756 Reality is broken.

At first, it looks like a disease. An epidemic that spreads through no known means, driving its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived. But the force that's sweeping the world is no pathogen. It's just the first shock wave, unleashed by a stunning discovery--and what's in jeopardy is not our minds but the very fabric of time itself.

In New York City, Detective Barry Sutton is closing in on the truth--and in a remote laboratory, neuroscientist Helena Smith is unaware that she alone holds the key to this mystery . . . and the tools for fighting back.

Together, Barry and Helena will have to confront their enemy--before they, and the world, are trapped in a loop of ever-growing chaos.]]> 336 Blake Crouch 1524759791 Peter 0 to-read 4.19 2019 Recursion
author: Blake Crouch
name: Peter
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Ferryman 61282437 New York Times bestselling author of The Passage comes a riveting standalone novel about a group of survivors on a hidden island utopia--where the truth isn't what it seems.

Founded by a mysterious genius, the archipelago of Prospera lies hidden from the horrors of a deteriorating outside world. In this island paradise, Prospera's lucky citizens enjoy long, fulfilling lives until the monitors embedded in their forearms, meant to measure their physical health and psychological well-being, fall below 10 percent. Then they retire themselves, embarking on a ferry ride to the island known as the Nursery, where their failing bodies are renewed, their memories are wiped clean, and they are readied to restart life afresh.

Proctor Bennett, of the Department of Social Contracts, has a satisfying career as a ferryman, gently shepherding people through the retirement process--and, when necessary, enforcing it. But all is not well with Proctor. For one thing, he's been dreaming--which is supposed to be impossible in Prospera. For another, his monitor percentage has begun to drop alarmingly fast. And then comes the day he is summoned to retire his own father, who gives him a disturbing and cryptic message before being wrestled onto the ferry.

Meanwhile, something is stirring. The Support Staff, ordinary men and women who provide the labor to keep Prospera running, have begun to question their place in the social order. Unrest is building, and there are rumors spreading of a resistance group--known as "Arrivalists"--who may be fomenting revolution.

Soon Proctor finds himself questioning everything he once believed, entangled with a much bigger cause than he realized--and on a desperate mission to uncover the truth.]]> 538 Justin Cronin 052561947X Peter 4 sciencefiction 3.86 2023 The Ferryman
author: Justin Cronin
name: Peter
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/30
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: sciencefiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant #5)]]> 8456053 207 Josephine Tey 1616882018 Peter 0 to-read 3.77 1951 The Daughter of Time (Inspector Alan Grant #5)
author: Josephine Tey
name: Peter
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture]]> 134119018 A history and investigation of a world ruled by algorithms, which determine the shape of culture itself.

From trendy restaurants to city grids, to TikTok and Netflix feeds the world round, algorithmic recommendations dictate our experiences and choices. The algorithm is present in the familiar neon signs and exposed brick of Internet cafes, be it in Nairobi or Portland, and the skeletal, modern furniture of Airbnbs in cities big and small. Over the last decade, this network of mathematically determined decisions has taken over, almost unnoticed—informing the songs we listen to, the friends with whom we stay in touch—as we’ve grown increasingly accustomed to our insipid new normal.

This ever-tightening web woven by algorithms is called “Filterworld.� Kyle Chayka shows us how online and offline spaces alike have been engineered for seamless consumption, becoming a source of pervasive anxiety in the process. Users of technology have been forced to contend with data-driven equations that try to anticipate their desires—and often get them wrong. What results is a state of docility that allows tech companies to curtail human experiences—human lives—for profit. But to have our tastes, behaviors, and emotions governed by computers, while convenient, does nothing short of call the very notion of free will into question.

In Filterworld, Chayka traces this creeping, machine-guided curation as it infiltrates the furthest reaches of our digital, physical, and psychological spaces. With algorithms increasingly influencing not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced, urgent questions What happens when shareability supersedes messiness, innovation, and creativity—the qualities that make us human? What does it mean to make a choice when the options have been so carefully arranged for us? Is personal freedom possible on the Internet?

To the last question, Filterworld argues yes—but to escape Filterworld, and even transcend it, we must first understand it.]]> 290 Kyle Chayka Peter 4 non-fiction 3.66 2024 Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
author: Kyle Chayka
name: Peter
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> Giovanni’s Room 38462 here.

Baldwin's haunting and controversial second novel is his most sustained treatment of sexuality, and a classic of gay literature. In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two.

Examining the mystery of love and passion in an intensely imagined narrative, Baldwin creates a moving and complex story of death and desire that is revelatory in its insight.]]> 159 James Baldwin Peter 4 general-fiction 4.31 1956 Giovanni’s Room
author: James Baldwin
name: Peter
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/03
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves: general-fiction
review:

]]> Giovanni’s Room 406235 178 James Baldwin Peter 4 4.40 1956 Giovanni’s Room
author: James Baldwin
name: Peter
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files, #1)]]> 181350367 For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.

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

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

As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.]]> 358 Kristen Perrin 0593474015 Peter 0 to-read 3.76 2024 How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files, #1)
author: Kristen Perrin
name: Peter
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Only One Left 62685463 Hung her sister with a rope

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

Stabbed her father with a knife
Took her mother’s happy life

It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything.

“It wasn’t me,� Lenora said
But she’s the only one not dead

As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.]]> 398 Riley Sager 0593183231 Peter 0 to-read 4.22 2023 The Only One Left
author: Riley Sager
name: Peter
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Starling House 65213595 A grim and gothic new tale from author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can't stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.

Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.

As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.

If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.]]> 320 Alix E. Harrow 1250799058 Peter 4 fantasy, horror 3.77 2023 Starling House
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Peter
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: fantasy, horror
review:

]]> The Forest of Vanishing Stars 55711683 The New York Times bestselling author of the The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis—until a secret from her past threatens everything.

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.

Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel.]]> 376 Kristin Harmel 198215893X Peter 3 4.22 2021 The Forest of Vanishing Stars
author: Kristin Harmel
name: Peter
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/21
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: sayville-library-book-discussion, general-fiction
review:

]]> The Fraud 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith Peter 0 to-read 3.25 2023 The Fraud
author: Zadie Smith
name: Peter
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)]]> 22733729
Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.]]> 518 Becky Chambers 1500453307 Peter 0 to-read 4.15 2014 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Peter
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Vanished Birds 45422268
"This is when your life begins."

Nia Imani is a woman out of place and outside of time. Decades of travel through the stars are condensed into mere months for her, though the years continue to march steadily onward for everyone she has ever known. Her friends and lovers have aged past her; all she has left is work. Alone and adrift, she lives only for the next paycheck, until the day she meets a mysterious boy, fallen from the sky.

A boy, broken by his past.

The scarred child does not speak, his only form of communication the beautiful and haunting music he plays on an old wooden flute. Captured by his songs and their strange, immediate connection, Nia decides to take the boy in. And over years of starlit travel, these two outsiders discover in each other the things they lack. For him, a home, a place of love and safety. For her, an anchor to the world outside of herself.

For both of them, a family.

But Nia is not the only one who wants the boy. The past hungers for him, and when it catches up, it threatens to tear this makeshift family apart.]]> 391 Simon Jimenez 0593128982 Peter 4 sciencefiction The Spear Cuts Through Water first probably made me like this a little less (in comparison). I didn't find this one quite as evocative as The Spear, but I was still moved by Ahro and Nia's relationship and commitment to each other and Jiminez is clearly a gifted writer. Very anxiously anticipating his next book.]]> 4.05 2020 The Vanished Birds
author: Simon Jimenez
name: Peter
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/05
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves: sciencefiction
review:
Having read The Spear Cuts Through Water first probably made me like this a little less (in comparison). I didn't find this one quite as evocative as The Spear, but I was still moved by Ahro and Nia's relationship and commitment to each other and Jiminez is clearly a gifted writer. Very anxiously anticipating his next book.
]]> The Warm Hands of Ghosts 154462576 New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.]]> 325 Katherine Arden 0593128257 Peter 0 to-read 3.97 2024 The Warm Hands of Ghosts
author: Katherine Arden
name: Peter
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany]]> 54860488 The Nine follows the true story of the author’s great aunt Hélène Podliasky, who led a band of nine female resistance fighters as they escaped a German forced labor camp and made a ten-day journey across the front lines of WWII from Germany back to Paris.

The nine women were all under thirty when they joined the resistance. They smuggled arms through Europe, harbored parachuting agents, coordinated communications between regional sectors, trekked escape routes to Spain and hid Jewish children in scattered apartments. They were arrested by French police, interrogated and tortured by the Gestapo. They were subjected to a series of French prisons and deported to Germany. The group formed along the way, meeting at different points, in prison, in transit, and at RavensbrĂĽck. By the time they were enslaved at the labor camp in Leipzig, they were a close-knit group of friends. During the final days of the war, forced onto a death march, the nine chose their moment and made a daring escape.

Drawing on incredible research, this powerful, heart-stopping narrative from Gwen Strauss is a moving tribute to the power of humanity and friendship in the darkest of times.]]> 336 Gwen Strauss 125023929X Peter 4 4.26 2021 The Nine: The True Story of a Band of Women Who Survived the Worst of Nazi Germany
author: Gwen Strauss
name: Peter
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/27
date added: 2024/02/27
shelves: non-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:

]]> North Woods 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire.ĚýA crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 Peter 4 general-fiction 4.12 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: Peter
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/12
date added: 2024/02/27
shelves: general-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mislaid in Parts Half-Known (Wayward Children, #9)]]> 57185869 Dinosaurs and portals, and a girl who can find both in the latest book in the Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning series.

Antsy is the latest student to pass through the doors at Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children.

When her fellow students realize that Antsy's talent for finding absolutely anything may extend to doors, she's forced to flee in the company of a small group of friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go to be sure that Vineta and Hudson are keeping their promise.

Along the way, temptations are dangled, decisions are reinforced, and a departure to a world populated by dinosaurs brings untold dangers and one or two other surprises!

A story that reminds us that finding what you want doesn't always mean finding what you need.]]> 4 Seanan McGuire Peter 3 fantasy 4.07 2024 Mislaid in Parts Half-Known (Wayward Children, #9)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: Peter
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/27
date added: 2024/02/27
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables, #2)]]> 58724595 A Mirror Mended is the next installment in USA Today bestselling author Alix E. Harrow's Fractured Fables series.

Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty, is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.

Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can't handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found out how her story ends, and she's desperate for a better ending. She wants Zinnia to help her before it’s too late for everyone. Will Zinnia accept the Queen's poisonous request and save them both from the hot-iron shoes that wait for them, or will she try another path?]]> 128 Alix E. Harrow 1250766648 Peter 3 fantasy 3.73 2022 A Mirror Mended (Fractured Fables, #2)
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Peter
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/02/02
shelves: fantasy
review:

]]> Goth: A History 85157760
GOTH Ěý isĚýan entertaining and engaging historical memoir of the genre of Goth music and culture, exploring creative giants like The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Joy Division, and many more great bands that offered a place of refuge for the misfits of the 80s and ever since. Written by Lol Tolhurst, co-founder of The Cure, this book offers a fascinating deep dive into the movers and shakers of goth with stories and anecdotes from Tolhurst’s personal memories as well as the musicians, magicians, and artists, who made it all happen—the people, places, and events that made goth an inevitable and enduring movement.

Starting with the Origins of Goth, Tolhurst explores early art and literature that inspired the genre and looks into the work of T.S Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath , Albert Camus and more. He also outlines the path of Gothic Forebears and shows how many musicians played in punk bands before transitioning into goth endeavors. Next, he introduces readers to the "Architects of Darkness "—Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy division Ěýand The Cure—the godfathers of goth who established the genre's roots. Following these early bands, Tolhurst discusses a group he calls the " Spiritual Alchemists ", consisting of bands like Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins and more, who helpedĚý the darkness expand into the culture. He also tracks the expansion of the genre overseas, from England to New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. Gothic fashion was an important part of the movement as well, and Tolhurst discusses Ěýthe clothing that accompanied and complemented the music. Finally, Tolhurst examines the legacy of goth music, and shows how its influence can still be seen to this day across music, film, TV, visual arts, social media, and so much more finally concluding “Why Goth matters!â€�
Ěý]]> 257 Lol Tolhurst 0306828421 Peter 3 non-fiction Cured when he spoke about the Cure albums. So, while there were some interested anecdotes, and I enjoyed it overall, it wasn't up to the level of his previous book.]]> 3.66 2023 Goth: A History
author: Lol Tolhurst
name: Peter
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/31
shelves: non-fiction
review:
I felt like the book was a little disjointed--started out going really in-depth song by song on classic goth albums, then switched to just personal connections to certain bands and then ended with a brief overview of some other bands (including more modern bands). He also included some of the same stuff he wrote about in Cured when he spoke about the Cure albums. So, while there were some interested anecdotes, and I enjoyed it overall, it wasn't up to the level of his previous book.
]]> The Spear Cuts Through Water 58258967 544 Simon Jimenez 0593156609 Peter 5 4.15 2022 The Spear Cuts Through Water
author: Simon Jimenez
name: Peter
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/26
date added: 2024/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of AnaĂŻs Nin, 1931-1932]]> 11038 Henry and June spans a single year in Nin's life when she discovers love and torment in one insatiable couple. From late 1931 to the end of 1932, Nin falls in love with Henry Miller's writing and his wife June's striking beauty. When June leaves Paris for New York, Henry and AnaĂŻs begin a fiery affair that liberates her sexually and morally, but also undermines her marriage and eventually leads her into psychoanalysis. As she grapples with her own conscience, a single question dominates her thoughts: What will happen when June returns to Paris? An intimate account of one woman's sexual awakening, Henry and June exposes the pain and pleasure felt by a single person trapped between two loves.]]> 274 AnaĂŻs Nin 015640057X Peter 0 to-read 3.97 1986 Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of AnaĂŻs Nin, 1931-1932
author: AnaĂŻs Nin
name: Peter
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The King's Deception (Cotton Malone, #8)]]> 15841850 Cotton Malone is back! Steve Berry’s new international adventure blends gripping contemporary political intrigue, Tudor treachery, and high-octane thrills into one riveting novel of suspense.
Ěý
Cotton Malone and his fifteen-year-old son, Gary, are headed to Europe. As a favor to his former boss at the Justice Department, Malone agrees to escort a teenage fugitive back to England. But after he is greeted at gunpoint in London, both the fugitive and Gary disappear, and Malone learns that he’s stumbled into a high-stakes diplomatic showdown—an international incident fueled by geopolitical gamesmanship and shocking Tudor secrets.
Ěý
At its heart is the Libyan terrorist convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103, who is set to be released by Scottish authorities for “humanitarian reasons.� An outraged American government objects, but nothing can persuade the British to intervene.
Ěý
Except, perhaps, Operation King’s Deception.
Ěý
Run by the CIA, the operation aims to solve a centuries-old mystery, one that could rock Great Britain to its royal foundations.
Ěý
Blake Antrim, the CIA operative in charge of King’s Deception, is hunting for the spark that could rekindle a most dangerous fire, the one thing that every Irish national has sought for generations: a legal reason why the English must leave Northern Ireland. The answer is a long-buried secret that calls into question the legitimacy of the entire forty-five-year reign of Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, who completed the conquest of Ireland and seized much of its land. But Antrim also has a more personal agenda, a twisted game of revenge in which Gary is a pawn. With assassins, traitors, spies, and dangerous disciples of a secret society closing in, Malone is caught in a lethal bind. To save Gary he must play one treacherous player against another—and only by uncovering the incredible truth can he hope to prevent the shattering consequences of the King’s Deception.]]> 612 Steve Berry 030799094X Peter 3 3.98 2013 The King's Deception (Cotton Malone, #8)
author: Steve Berry
name: Peter
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves: general-fiction, sayville-library-book-discussion
review:

]]> Wife No. 19 3079587 628 Ann Eliza Young 0766140482 Peter 0 to-read 3.87 1875 Wife No. 19
author: Ann Eliza Young
name: Peter
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1875
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>