en-US Thu, 01 May 2025 09:25:48 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 18693644
The Hundred-Year House unfolds a generational saga in reverse, leading the reader back in time on a literary scavenger hunt as we seek to uncover the truth about these strange people and this mysterious house. With intelligence and humor, a daring narrative approach, and a lovingly satirical voice, Rebecca Makkai has crafted an unforgettable novel about family, fate and the incredible surprises life can offer.]]> 338 Rebecca Makkai 052542668X Laura 3 3.44 2014
author: Rebecca Makkai
name: Laura
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 220161593 In this follow-up to #1 New York Times bestselling author Ruth Ware’s multi-million copy mega-hit The Women in Cabin 10, Lo Blacklock returns to attend the opening of a luxury hotel, only to find herself in a white-knuckled race across Europe.

When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.

What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman…and if she can even trust her?]]> 400 Ruth Ware 1668025620 Laura 0 to-read 3.73 2025
author: Ruth Ware
name: Laura
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 230847692 When a restaurateur and serial philanderer turns up stone-cold dead, his trio of exes falls under suspicion in a sharp-witted and suspenseful short story by the New York Times bestselling author of Darling Girls.

Celebrity chef Ian Curley is found dead in his walk-in freezer. The prime suspects are his three ex-wives, who meet up every Friday evening in their favorite corner booth of his restaurant. It’s a tradition for Anita, Mary-Jane, and Rosie to drink, dine, and commiserate. But commit murder? All aggrieved, each one has a motive and an alibi. And a brilliant detective has reservations. Who did it? The night will tell.

Sally Hepworth’s The Ex-Wives Club is part of Alibis, a collection of stories about lies, truth, and deception. It’s just a matter of what you can get away with. They can be read or listened to in one sitting.]]> 84 Sally Hepworth 1662531370 Laura 0 to-read 3.67 2025
author: Sally Hepworth
name: Laura
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 218671812 From the��New York Times��bestselling author of��The Kind Worth Killing�����Ի���Eight Perfect Murders��comes an inventive, utterly propulsive murder-mystery in reverse, tracing a marriage back in time to uncover the dark secret at its heart.

Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well…except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.

What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives—their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason’s birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague—all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.

Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.]]> 288 Peter Swanson 0063433621 Laura 0 to-read 3.59 2025
author: Peter Swanson
name: Laura
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216930682
Twice a month the women of the Wheel meet. New members bring cash to add to a pool and then gift to one lucky member. It’s all about giving back. Lifting each other up—as women should, as they must.

When Harper is invited, with the promise of an end to her financial burdens, the sisters inadvertently unleash a darkness lurking within the group. If they’re not careful it might just get them killed.]]> Megan Abbott Laura 0 to-read 3.95 2025
author: Megan Abbott
name: Laura
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216351856 When a daring art heist takes place at the Regency Grand, Molly’s life is threatened. The question is who’s out to get her, and why? Long-buried secrets will be revealed in this intriguing and heartwarming novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest

A wedding. A heist. A secret.

Molly Gray’s life is about to change in ways she could never have imagined. As the esteemed Head Maid and recently promoted Special Events Manager of the Regency Grand Hotel, good things are just around the corner, including her marriage to her beloved fiancé, Juan Manuel, only two months away.��

But Molly’s entire existence is upended when a film crew descends upon the hotel to shoot the hit reality TV show Hidden Treasures, starring popular art appraisers Brown and Beagle. On a whim, Molly brings in a shoebox containing a few of her gran’s old things for appraisal, and much to everyone's surprise, one item turns out to be a rare and priceless treasure. Instantly, Molly is both a multi-millionaire and a media sensation—the world’s rags-to-riches darling—until the priceless piece vanishes from the hotel in the boldest, brashest antiquities heist in recent memory.

The key to the mystery lies in the past, in a long-forgotten diary written by Molly’s gran. For the first time ever, Molly learns about Gran’s true-to-life fairytale, a young girl to the manor born, the only child of a wealthy magnate. But when Gran falls head over heels in love with a young man her parents deem below her station, her life is thrown into turmoil. As fate would have it, the greatest love of Gran’s life is someone Molly knows quite well��.

Together with her friends, Molly combs the past and the present to catch the thief before looming threats against her become real.

A spirited heist caper and an epic love story, The Maid’s Secret is a spellbinding whodunnit that will capture and warm your heart.]]> 336 Nita Prose 0593875419 Laura 0 to-read 3.91 2025
author: Nita Prose
name: Laura
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 431907 638 Agatha Christie 0396065546 Laura 0 currently-reading 4.23 1953
author: Agatha Christie
name: Laura
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 217223453 Highly acclaimed��New York Times��bestseller Laura Lippman returns with an irresistible mystery featuring Muriel Blossom, a former private investigator and middle-aged widow whose vacation on a Parisian river cruise turns into a deadly international mystery…that only she can solve.��

Mrs. Blossom is not the kind of woman to play the lottery. She is practical, a devoted grandmother, and has a knack for blending into the background, which was an asset during her days assisting private investigator Tess Monaghan. But when Mrs. Blossom finds a winning ticket in a parking lot, everything changes...including Mrs. Blossom. She is determined to see the world that sometimes feels as if it’s passing her by.

But when Mrs. Blossom booked her cruise through France on the MS Solitaire, she did not expect to meet Allan on her transatlantic flight. He is the first man who’s sparked something inside her since her beloved husband passed.

She also didn’t expect Allan to be found, dead, twenty-four hours later in Paris, a city he wasn’t supposed to be in.

Now Mrs. Blossom doesn’t know who to trust on board the ship, especially when a new, mystifying man, Danny, keeps popping up around every corner, always present when things go awry. He claims that Allan was involved in the transport of a stolen, precious piece of art, and he’s convinced that Mrs. Blossom knows more than she lets on, regarding both the artifact and Allan’s murder.

Mrs. Blossom’s questions only increase as the cruise sails down the Seine. Why does it feel like she is being followed? Who was Allan, and why was he killed? Most alarmingly, why do these mysterious men keep flirting with her?

What follows is a charming one-of-a-kind mystery from one of��Time magazine’s “essential crime writers of the last 100 years.�� The perfect combination of cozy and thrilling, this novel and the delightful Mrs. Blossom are sure to be unforgettable.]]> 272 Laura Lippman 0062998102 Laura 0 to-read 3.69 2025
author: Laura Lippman
name: Laura
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220160814 From #1 New York Times bestseller Lisa Jewell, an author “at the very top of her game�� (Lucy Foley)—three women are connected by one man in this kaleidoscopic thriller.

“Who are you? Who are you really?��

Nick Radcliffe is a man of substance and good taste. He has a smile that could melt the coldest heart and a knack for putting others at ease. He’s just what Nina Swann needed in her life after her husband’s unexpected death. But to Nina’s adult daughter, Ash, Nick seems too slick, too polished, too good to be true. Without telling her mother, Ash begins digging into Nick’s past. What she finds is more than unsettling��

“Because there are things that don’t make sense, and I’ve been so patient, so very patient…��

Martha is a florist living in a neighboring town with her infant daughter and her devoted husband Alistair. But lately, Alistair has been traveling more and more frequently for work, disappearing for days at a time. When Martha questions him about his frequent absences, he always has a legitimate explanation, but Martha can’t share the feeling that something isn't right.

“You know that’s mad, don’t you? I’m your husband. We know everything there is to know about each other.��

Nina, Martha, and Ash are on a collision course with a shocking truth that is far darker than anyone could have imagined. And all three are about to wish they had heeded the same warning: Don’t let him in. But the past won’t stay buried forever.]]> 368 Lisa Jewell 1668033879 Laura 0 to-read 3.99 2025
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Laura
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216850869
She is freelancing for Causton Books, where she is asked to work on a ‘continuation�� novel , Pünd’s Last Case, by a young author, Eliot Crace. Eliot Crace is the grandson of one of the most well known children’s authors ever, Marian Crace. Think Enid Blyton, then double her sales. Marian Crace died some 15 years previously and Eliot is sure she was poisoned.

Rather doubtfully, Susan starts to read the opening chapters, finding to her relief that Pünd’s Last Case is actually pretty good. Set in the South of France, it revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont who, though mortally ill, is poisoned �� perhaps by a member of her own family. But why? And who did it?

It soon becomes clear to Susan that the clues to who was responsible for the death of Eliot’s grandmother, Marian Crace, are hidden from view in this Atticus Pünd mystery.

Eliot’s behaviour becomes increasingly erratic as his alcohol and gambling addictions increase. But when he is killed in a hit and run accident, Susan realises that she is suspected of his murder.

Three mysterious deaths and a group of people with multiple motives for Susan realises that if she doesn’t solve the mystery in Pünd’s Last Case, her death may well be next …]]> 579 Anthony Horowitz 1804943010 Laura 0 to-read 4.54 2025
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Laura
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> 224277538 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Greer Hendricks comes a chilling story about the hidden cost of perfection.

Anne is barely keeping it together. A frazzled ghostwriter and aspiring novelist, she juggles nine-year-old twins and a listless marriage from an overcrowded Manhattan apartment, spreading herself thinner each day. Just as Anne is about to give up on her dreams, she lands her biggest client Melody Wells.

Melody paints a picture of serenity and empowerment in the lavender haze of her visualization workshops—however, the one thing she can’t manifest are the pages her publisher is demanding for her new motivational book. Enter Anne.

As Melody invites Anne deeper into her magical world, Anne finds herself working impossibly long days and traveling far beyond her comfort zone.

When Melody passes along a lead on a spacious sublet complete with East River views, built-in closets, and three bedrooms, Anne can’t believe her luck. Melody seems to know just what her family needs. But as small, unsettling incidents begin to accumulate, Anne starts to wonder what price she’s willing to pay for the good life.]]> 61 Greer Hendricks 1662528515 Laura 0 to-read 3.23 2025
author: Greer Hendricks
name: Laura
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> 215805795 Two strangers find themselves stranded at sea together in this epic new love story by bestselling author Beth O’Leary.

What if you were lost at sea…with your one-night stand?

Zeke and Lexi thought it would just be a night of fun. They had no intentions of seeing each other again. Zeke is only in town for the weekend to buy back his late father’s houseboat. Lexi has no time for dating when she needs to help take care of her best friend's daughter.

Going back home with a stranger seems like a perfect escape from their problems. But a miscommunication in the dark, foggy night means no one tied the houseboat to the dock. The next morning, Zeke and Lexi realize all they can see is miles and miles of water.

With just a few provisions on the idle boat, Zeke and Lexi must figure out how to get back home. But aside from their survival, they’re facing another challenge. Because when you’re stuck together for days on end, it gives you a lot of time to get to know someone—and to fall in love with them.]]> 384 Beth O'Leary 0593640144 Laura 0 to-read 3.64 2025
author: Beth O'Leary
name: Laura
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 218559595 Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years--or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.]]> 432 Emily Henry Laura 0 to-read 4.13 2025
author: Emily Henry
name: Laura
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> 211965585 From the author who brought you the jaw-dropping twist of I Let You Go, the gasp-out-loud ending of Let Me Lie, and the loveable, unpredictable Ffion Morgan in The Last Party and A Game of Lies.]]> 352 Clare Mackintosh 1408726025 Laura 0 to-read 4.46 2025
author: Clare Mackintosh
name: Laura
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 213870083 A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy

In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.

In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,�� a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,�� a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,�� Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.

Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.]]> 320 Curtis Sittenfeld 0593446739 Laura 4 3.91 2025
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Laura
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> 212806627 The most dramatic installment yet in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost and Parker series, as Will scrambles to solve a shocking murder before Lillian takes the fall for the crime.

NEW YORK CITY, 1947:��Wealthy financier and ghoulish connoisseur of crime, Jessup Quincannon, is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Means, motive, and a mountain of evidence leave everyone believing she's guilty. Everyone, that is, except Willowjean “Will�� Parker, who knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it.

With Lillian locked away in the House of D–New York City’s infamous women’s prison–Will is left to root out the real killer. Was it a member of Quincannon’s murder-obsessed Black Museum Club? Maybe it was his jilted lover? Or his beautiful, certainly-sociopathic bodyguard? And what about the mob hit-man who just happened to disappear after the shots were fired?��

With the city barreling toward the trial of the century, each day brings fresh headlines and hints of long-buried scandals from Lillian’s past. Will is desperate to get her boss out from behind bars before her reputation is destroyed. Because the House of D is no kind place, especially for a woman with multiple sclerosis. Or one with so many enemies. Her health failing and targeted by someone who wants her dead, Lillian needs to survive long enough to take the stand.��

With time running out on both sides of the prison walls, Will and Lillian must wager everything to uncover who put their thumb on the scales and a bullet in Quincannon’s head. Before Lady Justice brings her sword down, ending Pentecost and Parker's adventures once and for all.]]> 384 Stephen Spotswood 0385550464 Laura 3 4.30
author: Stephen Spotswood
name: Laura
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 199611917
New Jersey State Trooper Jon Mazer has been charged with killing Black investigative reporter Stewart Marshall in a racially charged, headline-making murder. The evidence against criminal defense attorney Erin McCabe’s new client is overwhelming. The gun used is Mazer’s off-duty weapon. Fingerprints and carpet fibers link Mazer to the crime. And Mazer was patrolling Marshall’s neighborhood shortly before the victim took three bullets to the chest. Mazer’s argument? He’s a gay officer being set up to take the fall in an even bigger story.

Mazer swears he was a secret source for Marshall’s exposé about the Lords of Discipline. The covert gang operating within the New Jersey State Police is notorious for enforcing their own code of harassing women, framing minorities, and out-powering any troopers who don’t play their rogue and racist games. With everyone from the governor to the county prosecutor on the wrong side of justice, Erin and her partner, Duane Swisher, are prepared to do anything to make sure Mazer doesn’t become another victim.

As Erin deals with an intensely personal issue at home, and faces an uphill battle to prove her client’s innocence, both she and Duane find themselves mired in a conspiracy of corruption deeper than they imagined—and far more dangerous than they feared.]]> 400 Robyn Gigl 149674179X Laura 3 3.93
author: Robyn Gigl
name: Laura
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/28
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]]> 208425024 A story of family, I'll Come to You chronicles intersecting lives over the course of 1995, anchored by the anticipation and arrival of a child.

With empathy, insight, and humor, Rebecca Kauffman explores overlapping narratives involving a couple whose struggle to become pregnant has both softened and hardened them; a woman whose husband of forty years has left her for reasons he’s unwilling to share and the man who is now disastrously attempting to woo her; a couple in denial about a looming health crisis, and their son who is fumbling toward middle age and can’t stop lying. These storylines converge into a dramatic and harrowing turn of events.]]> 224 Rebecca Kauffman 164009671X Laura 4 3.66 2025
author: Rebecca Kauffman
name: Laura
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 127811353 294 Rumer Godden Laura 3 3.67 1939
author: Rumer Godden
name: Laura
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1939
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 213243921 A remote Scottish island hides shocking secrets in this page-turning debut mystery laced with dark folklore.

An island lost in time. A cryptic, pagan past. Some secrets should stay buried.

Eilean Eadar is a barren, windswept rock inhabited by a few hundred humans and sheep. Until now, the island was best known for the unsolved mystery of the three lighthouse keepers who vanished back in 1919. But when a young man is found dead at the base of the same lighthouse, two detective inspectors are sent from Glasgow to investigate.

Georgina ‘George�� Lennox is finally back from leave after a devastating accident and happy to be on the case with her partner, Richie Stewart. That is, until she meets the hostile islanders who seem determined to thwart their investigation, and their enigmatic, omnipresent priest who inserts himself into every interview. Then there’s Richie, who just wants to close the case and head home to his family. He doesn’t see that there is something off about the island and its tiny community. He hasn’t heard the wolves howling or seen the dark figures at their window at night. He’s too busy watching George as if waiting for her to break.

With the dark secrets of Eilean Eadar swirling around them, George and Richie must decide who to trust and what to believe as they spin closer to the terrible truth. Laced with Scottish legend, yet sharp and modern in voice, The Wolf Tree announces a spellbinding new voice in crime and mystery fiction.]]> 336 Laura McCluskey 0593852540 Laura 2 3.72 2025
author: Laura McCluskey
name: Laura
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 213243915 The #1 New York Times bestselling author, whose books so many love, brings us a fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is... complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach about love, and what it actually means to be family.]]> 450 Jojo Moyes 1984879324 Laura 3 3.86 2025
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Laura
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> 211004123 The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.

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

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

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

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.]]> 306 Alice Feeney 125033778X Laura 4 3.63 2025
author: Alice Feeney
name: Laura
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves:
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]]> 211399773 A vacation in the Hamptons goes terribly wrong for three friends with a complicated history.

It was meant to be a harmless prank.

Growing up, May Hanover was a good girl, always. Well-behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May didn’t have room to slip up, let alone fail. Her friends didn’t call her the Little Sheriff for nothing.

But even good girls have secrets. And regrets. When it comes to her friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she's had her fair share of both. Their bond—forged when May was just twelve years old—has withstood a tragic accident, individual scandals, heartbreak and loss. Now the three friends have reunited for the first time in years for a few days of sun and fun in the Hamptons. But a chance encounter with a pair of strangers leads to a drunken prank that goes horribly awry.��

When she finds herself at the center of an urgent police investigation, May begins to wonder whether Lauren and Kelsey are keeping secrets from her, testing the limits of her loyalty to lifelong friends.

What had they gone and done?

The Note is a page-turner of the highest order��from one of our greatest contemporary suspense writers.]]> 287 Alafair Burke 0593537084 Laura 3 3.35 2025
author: Alafair Burke
name: Laura
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/07
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]]> 205363955 Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life �� one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves.

Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, it offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism��. How can we embrace our non-negotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? What if purposeful productivity were often about letting things happen, not making them happen?

Reflecting on ideas drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective. The result is a bracing challenge to much familiar advice, and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully.

To be read either as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind�� or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.]]> 208 Oliver Burkeman 0374611998 Laura 4 4.26 2024
author: Oliver Burkeman
name: Laura
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 208584952 From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations.

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,�� says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign�� wife.

Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?]]> 224 Weike Wang 0593545540 Laura 2 3.30 2024
author: Weike Wang
name: Laura
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves:
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]]> 59097122 Detective Elise King investigates a man's disappearance in a seaside town where the locals and weekenders are at odds with each other in this rich and captivating new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow.

Elise King is a successful and ambitious detective--or she was before a medical leave left her unsure if she'd ever return to work. She now spends most days watching the growing tensions in her small seaside town of Ebbing--the weekenders renovating old bungalows into luxury homes, and the locals resentful of the changes.

Elise can only guess what really happens behind closed doors. But Dee Eastwood, her house cleaner, often knows. She's an invisible presence in many of the houses in town, but she sees and hears everything.

The conflicts boil over when a newcomer wants to put the town on the map with a giant music festival, and two teenagers overdose on drugs. When a man disappears the first night of the festival, Elise is drawn back into her detective work and starts digging for answers. Ebbing is a small town, but it's full of secrets and hidden connections that run deeper and darker than Elise could have ever imagined.]]> 384 Fiona Barton 1984803042 Laura 3 3.42 2022
author: Fiona Barton
name: Laura
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves:
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]]> 213243949 A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life,��Three Days in June��is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers

]]> 165 Anne Tyler 0593803485 Laura 4 3.60 2025
author: Anne Tyler
name: Laura
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
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]]> 195430687 Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.

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

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.]]> 342 Coco Mellors 0593723767 Laura 3 3.93 2024
author: Coco Mellors
name: Laura
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
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]]> 202774975 Detective Elise King’s investigation into a woman’s murder is getting derailed by a reporter who insists on doing her own investigation in this nail-biting mystery from the author of Local Gone Missing.

When Karen Simmons is murdered on Valentine’s Day, Detective Elise King wonders if she was killed by a man she met online. Karen was all over the dating apps, leading some townspeople to blame her for her own death, while others band together to protest society’s violence against women. Into the divide comes Kiki Nunn, whose aggressive newsgathering once again antagonizes Elise.

A single mother of a young daughter, Kiki is struggling to make a living in the diminished news landscape. Getting a scoop in the Simmons murder would do a lot for her career, and she’s willing to go up against not just Elise but the killer himself to do it.]]> 400 Fiona Barton 1984803077 Laura 3 3.74 2024
author: Fiona Barton
name: Laura
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves:
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]]> 199797837
In May 1954, Lionel Kane witnesses his apartment engulfed in flames with his lover and writing partner, Roger Raymond, inside. Police declare it a suicide due to gas ignition, but Lionel refuses to believe Roger was suicidal.

A month earlier, Judy Nightingale and Philippa Watson—the tenacious and troubled heroines from The Savage Kind —attend a lecture by Roger and, being eager fans, befriend him. He has just been fired from his day job at the State Department, another victim of the Lavender Scare, an anti-gay crusade led by figures like Senator Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, claiming homosexuals are security risks. Little do Judy and Philippa know, but their obsessive manhunt of the past several years has fueled the flames of his dismissal.

They have been tracking their old enemy Adrian Bogdan, a spy and vicious serial killer protected by powerful forces in the government. He’s on the rampage again, and the police are ignoring his crimes. Frustrated, they send their research to the media and their favorite mystery writer anonymously, hoping to inspire someone, somehow, to publish on the crimes—anything to draw Bogdan out. But has their persistence brought deadly forces to the writing team behind their most beloved books?

In the wake of Roger’s death, Lionel searches for clues, but Judy and Philippa threaten his quest, concealing dark secrets of their own. As the crimes of the past and present converge, danger mounts, and the characters race to uncover the truth, even if it means bending their moral boundaries to stop a killer.]]> 336 John Copenhaver 1639366504 Laura 3 3.69
author: John Copenhaver
name: Laura
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/18
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]]> 56897678
Two lonely teenage girls in 1940s Washington, DC, discover they have a penchant for solving crimes—and an even greater desire to commit them—in the new mystery novel by Macavity Award-winning novelist John Copenhaver.

Philippa Watson, a good-natured yet troubled seventeen-year-old, has just moved to Washington, DC. She’s lonely until she meets Judy Peabody, a brilliant and tempestuous classmate. The girls become unlikely friends and fashion themselves as intellectuals, drawing the notice of Christine Martins, their dazzling English teacher, who enthralls them with her passion for literature and her love of noirish detective fiction.

When Philippa returns a novel Miss Martins has lent her, she interrupts a man grappling with her in the shadows. Frightened, Philippa flees, unsure who the man is or what she’s seen. Days later, her teacher returns to school a dark shell of herself. On the heels of her teacher’s transformation, a classmate is found dead in the Anacostia River—murdered—the body stripped and defiled with a mysterious inscription.

As the girls follow the clues and wrestle with newfound feelings toward each other, they suspect that the killer is closer to their circle than they imagined—and that the greatest threat they face may not be lurking in the halls at school, or in the city streets, but creeping out from a murderous impulse of their own.]]> 352 John Copenhaver 164313809X Laura 3 3.52 2021
author: John Copenhaver
name: Laura
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
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]]> 119294206
If the evidence were simply circumstantial, Erin is sure she and her law partner, Duane Swisher, could prevail. But there are entanglements that can’t be easily explained, and connections to powerful unscrupulous politicians who hold a lot of grudges. While the investigation unfolds, Erin and Duane are called on to represent a mother charged with abducting her child—a hot-button case that has both private and public implications for Erin.

As she battles one prosecutor who wants to see her charged with murder, and another determined to send her to jail for refusing to divulge her client’s location, Erin also faces a devastating family tragedy. With her career and her relationship on the line, and her life being targeted by a desperate nemesis, there has never been more at stake—or fewer places to turn . . .]]> 368 Robyn Gigl 1496741765 Laura 3 3.92 2023
author: Robyn Gigl
name: Laura
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
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]]> 58598284
At first, the death of millionaire businessman Charles Parsons seems like a straightforward suicide. There’s no sign of forced entry or struggle in his lavish New Jersey mansion—just a single gunshot wound from his own weapon. But days later, a different story emerges. Computer techs pick up a voice recording that incriminates Parsons�� adoptive daughter, Ann, who duly confesses and pleads guilty.

Erin McCabe has little interest in reviewing such a slam-dunk case—even after she learns that Ann, like herself, is a trans woman. Yet despite their misgivings, Erin and her law partner, Duane Swisher, ultimately can’t ignore the pieces that don’t fit. As their investigation deepens, they convince Ann to withdraw her guilty plea. But Ann clearly knows more than she’s willing to share, even if it means a life sentence. Who is she protecting, and why?

Fighting against time and a prosecutor hell-bent on notching another conviction, Erin and Swish work tirelessly to clear Ann’s name. But despite Parsons�� former associates�� determination to keep his—and their own—illegal activities buried, a horrifying truth emerges—a web of human exploitation, greed, and murder. Soon, a quest to see justice served becomes a desperate struggle to survive . . .]]> 352 Robyn Gigl 1496728289 Laura 3 3.86 2022
author: Robyn Gigl
name: Laura
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/09
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]]> 50611690 In a fresh and riveting thriller debut, Robyn Gigl introduces Erin McCabe, a New Jersey criminal defense attorney doing her best to live a quiet life in the wake of profound personal change--until a newsworthy case puts both her career and safety in jeopardy . . .

Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, William E. Townsend, Jr., son of a New Jersey State Senator, was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a nineteen-year-old transgender prostitute, is in custody, and given the evidence against her, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict.

Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open, and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet as a trans woman, she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise, and duty-bound to protect her from the possibility of a death sentence.

Sharise claims she killed the senator's son in self-defense. As Erin assembles the case with her partner, former FBI agent Duane Swisher, the circumstances hint at a more complex and chilling story with ties to other brutal murders. Senator Townsend is using the full force of his prestige and connections to publicly discredit everyone involved in defending Sharise. Behind the scenes, his tactics are even more dangerous. His son had secrets that could destroy the senator's political aspirations--secrets worth killing for. And as leads begin mysteriously disappearing, it's not just the life of Erin's client at stake, but her own . . .]]> 304 Robyn Gigl 1496728254 Laura 4 3.78 2021
author: Robyn Gigl
name: Laura
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
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]]> 203578851 Fresh off his career-changing standalone co-written with Icelandic PM, Reykjavík, #1 Icelandic bestseller Jonasson presents a riveting new thriller spinoff from The Darkness, soon to be a TV series. 1983 At a former sanatorium in the north of Iceland, now a hospital ward, an old nurse, Yrsa, is found murdered. Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir and her boss, Sverrir, are sent to investigate her death. There, they discover five the chief physician, two junior nurses, a young doctor, and the caretaker, who is arrested following false testimony from one of the nurses, but subsequently released. Less than a week after the murder, the chief physician, is also found dead, having apparently fallen from a balcony. Sverrir, rules his death as suicide and assumes that he was guilty of the murder as well. The case is closed. 2012 Almost thirty years later, Helgi Reykdal, a young police officer, has been studying criminology in the UK, but decides to return to Iceland when he is offered a job at the Reykjavik police department—the job which detective Hulda Hermannsdottir is about to retire from. He is also a collector of golden age detective stories, and is writing his thesis on the 1983 murders in the north. As Helgi delves deeper into the past, and starts his new job, he decides to try to meet with the original suspects. But soon he finds silence and suspicion at every turn, as he tries to finally solve the mystery from years before.]]> 320 Ragnar Jónasson 1250770769 Laura 2 3.56 2019
author: Ragnar Jónasson
name: Laura
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
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]]> 176443873
With a rollicking pace and shocking twists and turns, The Split captivatingly explores how little we know the ones we love—and how one small choice can change everything.]]> 288 Kit Frick 1668022478 Laura 2 3.35 2024
author: Kit Frick
name: Laura
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
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]]> 209192698 In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.��

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.]]> 320 Ina Garten 0593799895 Laura 3 4.24 2024
author: Ina Garten
name: Laura
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves:
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]]> 52623750 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593189481.

An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.

A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.

Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.]]> 241 Katherine May Laura 3 3.82 2020
author: Katherine May
name: Laura
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> 199531828 READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY

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

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

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

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

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.]]> 352 Nikki May 0063084295 Laura 3 4.21 2024
author: Nikki May
name: Laura
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
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]]> 19311 128 Astrid Lindgren 014032609X Laura 5 kid-books 4.26 1946
author: Astrid Lindgren
name: Laura
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1946
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: kid-books
review:

]]> 182506558 With acidic humor, true stories and brutal honesty, Anna Härmälä explores the ups and downs of single motherhood in this colorful, irreverent graphic novel.

After her partner suddenly leaves her, Li finds herself alone, with the baby. She’s a single mother, and it seems like nobody will ever see her as anything else, and her eyebags are now permanent features of her face. As her daughter gets older, she finds herself passing through the different stages of single wondering if she’ll ever meet anyone on a dating app who isn’t also a sad, single parent just wanting to be friends; wondering if she can start socializing again without people asking her why she’s not home with the baby; wondering if she can sit and watch TV without falling straight to sleep. Can Li get over the hurdles of being a single mother without losing herself in the process?

Fans of Fleabag and irreverent comedy will love this debut non-fiction graphic novel from Finnish creator, Anna Härmälä which gives us a glimpse into what it feels like to piece yourself back together and re-discover your identity when you’re running on less than an hour’s sleep a night and someone depends on you for survival.]]> 168 Anna Härmälä 1913123227 Laura 3 4.04 2024
author: Anna Härmälä
name: Laura
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
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]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Laura 0 to-read 4.50 2025
author: John Green
name: Laura
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 212806569 A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to��peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of��Horse

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz �� just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy �� collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied ways��those of��other cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls��that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.]]> 224 Geraldine Brooks 059365398X Laura 0 to-read 4.33 2025
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Laura
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 214329001 The future of storytelling is here.

Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.

In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.

What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.]]> 448 Nnedi Okorafor 0063391155 Laura 0 to-read 4.03 2025
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Laura
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213570821 From the bestselling author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and Midnight is the Darkest Hour comes a chilling, compulsive story of five amateur sleuths, whose hunt for an elusive killer catapults them into danger as the world watches.

It's the most famous crime in modern history. But only she knows the true story.

After the unexpected death of her father, college student Jane Sharp longs for a distraction from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar. In this morbid internet underground, Jane finds friendship, purpose, and even glory...

So when news of the shocking deaths of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho takes the world by storm, and sleuths everywhere race to solve the crimes, Jane and her friends are determined to beat them. But the case turns out to be stranger than anyone expected. Details don't add up, the police are cagey, and there seems to be more media hype and internet theorizing than actual evidence. When Jane and her sleuths take a step closer, they find that every answer only begs more questions. Something's not adding up, and they begin to suspect their killer may be smarter and more prolific than any they've faced before. Placing themselves in the center of the story starts to feel more and more like walking into a trap...

Told one year after the astounding events that concluded the case and left the world reeling, when Jane has finally decided to break her silence about what really happened, she tells the true story of the Delphine Massacres. And what she has to confess will shock even the most seasoned true crime fans...


]]> 480 Ashley Winstead 1728270006 Laura 0 to-read 3.67 2025
author: Ashley Winstead
name: Laura
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213243937 An exclusive thriller writer’s retreat hosted on a private island turns lethal when one of the authors is found murdered in this twisty locked room mystery.

When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance—particularly since she has an ax to grind with one of the invitees. The guest list? Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection, and mayhem.

Confess the crimes, survive the tropes.

Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two—the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead—and it’s not the murder she planned—Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether.

One by one, you’ll lose your turn.

With a storm cutting off the island, and the body count rising, Mila must outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book.

Until only one of us remains��]]> 371 Ande Pliego 059387157X Laura 0 to-read 3.57 2025
author: Ande Pliego
name: Laura
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217245582 In this dazzling debut, Stegner Fellow Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

Before Arin, Genevieve Yang was an only child. Living with her parents and grandmother in a single-room flat in working-class Bedok, Genevieve is saddled with an unexpected sibling when Arin appears, the shameful legacy of a grandfather long believed to be dead. As the two girls grow closer, they must navigate the intensity of life in a place where the urgent insistence on achievement demands constant sacrifice. Knowing that failure is not an option, the sisters learn to depend entirely on one another as they spurn outside friendships, leisure, and any semblance of a social life in pursuit of academic perfection and passage to a better future.

When a stinging betrayal violently estranges Genevieve and Arin, Genevieve must weigh the value of ambition versus familial love, home versus the outside world, and allegiance to herself versus allegiance to the people who made her who she is.

In the story of a family and its contention with the roiling changes of our rapidly modernizing, winner-take-all world, The Original Daughter is a major literary debut, rife with emotional clarity and searing social insight.]]> 368 Jemimah Wei 0385551010 Laura 0 to-read 4.18 2025
author: Jemimah Wei
name: Laura
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217245618 In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.]]> 336 Florence Knapp 0593833902 Laura 0 to-read 4.34 2025
author: Florence Knapp
name: Laura
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Laura 0 to-read 4.26 2025
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Laura
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 213618132 The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick

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

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

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

In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.]]> 368 Charmaine Wilkerson 0593358368 Laura 0 to-read 4.04 2025
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Laura
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 208430621
In this fresh take on love and trouble in America, Brock Hobson, an insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher, finds his equilibrium disturbed by the results of a predictive blood test. Baxter, a master storyteller, brings us a gradually building rollercoaster narrative, and a protagonist who is impertinent, searching, and hilariously relatable. From his good-as-gold, gentle girlfriend to the excessively macho subcontractor guy his ex-wife left him for, not to mention his well-raised teenage kids, now exploring sex and sexuality, the secondary characters in Brock's life all contribute meaningfully to the drama, as increasing challenges to his sense of self and purpose crash over him. The final battle—no spoilers, but there is one—couldn't be more delightful, as this quick and bracing novel reminds us to choose the best people to love, accept the ones we love even if we didn’t choose them, and love them all well.]]> 224 Charles Baxter 0593700856 Laura 3 3.07 2024
author: Charles Baxter
name: Laura
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> 202951635 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 �� a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the ‘sidekick�� 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.]]> 324 Kate Atkinson 1473568757 Laura 3 3.95 2024
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Laura
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> 205435922 New York Times bestselling author-illustrator Eliza Wheeler welcomes readers to Acorn Village, where a��community of adorable forest animals celebrates all the wonder that winter offers.The busy animals of Acorn Village love to spend winter days doing all sorts of cozy activities together, whether they’re indoors reading, baking, and doing art projects or outside playing in the snow. And at the end of the day, the coziest activities await—sharing songs, hot drinks, and stories in front of a crackling fireplace, and then snuggling into bed and drifting off into dreamy sleep.��Eliza Wheeler’s charming illustrations give her story the feel of a beloved classic and are full of rich, cozy details sure to ignite imaginations and make readers want to visit Acorn Village again and again.]]> 40 Eliza Wheeler 0593617207 Laura 0 kid-books 3.89
author: Eliza Wheeler
name: Laura
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: kid-books
review:

]]> 195030839 Lemony Snicket meets Jon Klassen meets Grimms' fairy tales in an outrageously original picture book debut by BAFTA Award–winning and Oscar-nominated animation director Mikey Please. In The Café at the Edge of the Woods, an aspiring chef opens a café beside an enchanted forest and discovers locals with a most peculiar palette.

Rene and Glumfoot are ready to serve Very Fine Cuisine at the Café at the Edge of the Woods. But when their first customer, an ogre, demands pickled bats that smell like farts, Rene is ready to give up! She can't possibly serve such rubbish. Or can she?

With a little bit of compromise, perhaps she can satisfy her customer and still serve the most delicious grub.

Full of humor, unlikely friendship, themes of teamwork, and unexpected surprises, this charming and hilarious picture book is a winning recipe for readers who loved A Spoonful of Frogs by Casey Lyall, The Dark by Lemony Snicket, The Skull by Jon Klassen, and any fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm!]]> 0 Mikey Please 0008639027 Laura 0 kid-books 4.25 2024
author: Mikey Please
name: Laura
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: kid-books
review:

]]> 208580627 192 Ingvild H. Rishøi 0802163491 Laura 4 3.67 2021
author: Ingvild H. Rishøi
name: Laura
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 171793386
From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Murder Rule comes an emotional novel of suspense about two families at war.

Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.

WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?

Nobody knows. Simon’s explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn’t add up. Nina’s parents push the police for answers, and Simon’s parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign.

HOW FAR WILL HIS FAMILY GO TO KEEP HIM SAFE?

Soon, facts are lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fueled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina’s social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive "fans."

HOW FAR WILL HER FAMILY GO TO GET TO THE TRUTH?

Nina’s family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters—finding their daughter. Out-gunned by Simon’s wealthy, powerful family, Nina’s parents recognize that if playing by the rules won’t get them anywhere, it’s time to break them.]]> 328 Dervla McTiernan Laura 3 4.05 2024
author: Dervla McTiernan
name: Laura
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> 209207517 Cold cases are a lot easier to solve when you can travel back in time to find new evidence—unless, that is, you get stuck in the nineteenth century.

Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old they’re frozen—or so their inside joke goes. Ali’s work seems like a safe desk job, but what her friends—and even her beloved son—don’t know is that her team has a secret: They can travel back in time to look for evidence.

So far Ali has made trips only to the recent past, so she’s surprised when she’s asked to investigate a murder that took place in 1850. The killing has been pinned on an aristocratic patron of the arts and antiquities, a member of a sinister group called "The Collectors." She arrives in the Victorian era during a mini ice age to find another dead woman at her feet and far too many unanswered questions. But when her son is arrested, Ali attempts to return home only to find herself trapped in 1850.]]> 352 Elly Griffiths 1529433355 Laura 0 to-read 4.24 2025
author: Elly Griffiths
name: Laura
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> 209891170 A cat a day keeps the doctor away��.

Discover this utterly charming, vibrant celebration of the healing power of cats in the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel that has become an international sensation.

Tucked away on the fifth floor of an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can be found only by people who are struggling in their lives and who genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take�� their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, and occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.

Throughout these pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a hardened handbag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha learns to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients grapple with their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.]]> 297 Syou Ishida 0593818741 Laura 1 3.78 2023
author: Syou Ishida
name: Laura
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> 205063378 “I adore this book as much as I adore empowered spiders, poker-faced narrators, and cooperative bookstores. It’s wry, whip-smart, and freaking gorgeous. Sid Sharp is a maestro of comic timing and subversion.�� —Kyo Maclear, author of It Began With a Page

From the acclaimed author of The Wolf Suit comes another weirdly hilarious, masterfully thought-provoking, and lushly painted early reader graphic novel.

Two sisters, one stubbornly cheerful (Beatrice) and one relentlessly grumpy (Magnolia), live in a drafty old house with a family of helpful spiders. When Beatrice is gifted magic yarn from a giant forest spider obsessed with sustainability named Bog Myrtle, she and the spiders set to work knitting up a perfectly warm sweater.

But greedy Magnolia sees only the opportunity for profit, and quickly converts the old house into a magic sweater factory. The exhausted spiders are driven to strike, and Bog Myrtle is not pleased . . .

Bog Myrtle is a witty modern folktale that touches on themes of capitalism, environmentalism, labor rights, and being a nice person.]]> 144 Sid Sharp 1773218921 Laura 4 4.49 2024
author: Sid Sharp
name: Laura
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2025/01/03
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]]> 207252770
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.

Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.

But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.

And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge . . .

A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.]]> 320 Paula Hawkins 0063396521 Laura 2 3.27 2024
author: Paula Hawkins
name: Laura
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/03
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]]> 203578881 The nineteenth mystery in the #1 New York Times bestselling Armand Gamache series

Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.

That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin The Grey Wolf, the nineteenth novel in Louise Penny's #1 New York Times bestselling series. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading "This might interest you," a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list—and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.

Armand Gamache; Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command; and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Québec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail, the devastating consequences would reach into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages.]]> 421 Louise Penny 1250328136 Laura 3 3.95 2024
author: Louise Penny
name: Laura
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 206005312
My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong.

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

THE MAGICIAN

THE ASSISTANT

THE EXECUTIVE

THE HYPNOTIST

THE IDENTICAL TWIN

THE COUNSELLOR

THE TECH

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

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

After all, a good murder is just like a magic trick, isn’t it?]]> 175 Benjamin Stevenson 0063412861 Laura 2 3.70 2024
author: Benjamin Stevenson
name: Laura
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/31
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]]> 201608156
Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love �� and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.

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

Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams' beloved This Is Happiness, Time of the Child is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.]]> 304 Niall Williams 1639734201 Laura 5 4.17 2024
author: Niall Williams
name: Laura
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/31
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]]> 59841388
It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 2 Claire Keegan 1696604923 Laura 5 3.97 2021
author: Claire Keegan
name: Laura
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> 122846491 Length = 1 hour, 26 minutes

An international bestseller and one of the Times's "Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century," Claire Keegan's piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US

It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas' house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.

Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan's great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.]]> Claire Keegan Laura 4 4.23 2010
author: Claire Keegan
name: Laura
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> 375981
High up in the heavens, Star Mother’s youngest child makes a wish, too. “Mother!�� he wails, “just once I want to celebrate Christmas like they do down there!�� So Star Mother sends him to earth, where he finds a hut and knocks on the door . . .

In this original, heartwarming fable, Louise Moeri tells the story of an unlikely friendship and how it made two Christmas wishes come true.

"In three words I can state clearly why I wanted to be a part of the children's book field: Trina Schart Hyman. In 1975, the year I graduated from college, I won a literary prize for my own writing and with the money I bought books. One book in particular altered the course of my life: STAR MOTHER'S YOUNGEST CHILD. Both the story and Trina's heartfelt illustrations propelled me to be a part of the wondrous world of children's books. I still have my first edition copy, a bit tattered from frequent readings and poring over Trina's artwork. Whenever I needed encouragement this book, with all its magic, gave me that artistic boost." Olivier Dunrea, author.
]]> 48 Louise Moeri 0618616837 Laura 3 4.08 1975
author: Louise Moeri
name: Laura
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/24
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]]> 209364649
The oldest mystery specialty bookstore in the world, The Mysterious Bookshop, has for most of its forty-five-year history commissioned an original short story as a holiday gift for its customers. Written exclusively for the store and never published elsewhere, the stories were given as a holiday gift to its customers as a thank you for their business, handed out or mailed between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

The prompt for the story requires three that it be set at Christmastime, that it involve a crime of some kind, or the suspicion of one, and that it be set at least partially in the bookstore. And from these loose structural guidelines, diverse tales took flight. The thirteen tales included in this volume are among the finest to be produced in this annual tradition, sure to charm any reader looking for a holiday-themed escape.

Included herein are the ingenious “Snowflake Time�� by Laura Lippman; Lyndsay Faye’s tale of vengeance “A Midnight Clear��; the challenging brainteaser, “A Christmas Puzzle,�� by Ragnar Jónasson; “Hester’s Gift,�� an impossible crime story by Tom Mead; the suspenseful “The Christmas Party�� by Jeffery Deaver; Thomas Perry’s hilarious comedy of errors, “Here We Come A-Wassailing;�� and other tales appropriate for the season, collected and introduced by Otto Penzler. The result is, objectively speaking, the finest “stocking stuffer�� that a mystery fan could hope to find.]]> 332 Otto Penzler 1613165722 Laura 3 3.51 2024
author: Otto Penzler
name: Laura
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> 906543 But the children who lived under the bridge recognized a true friend when they met one, even if the friend seemed a trifle unwilling at the start. And it did not take Armand very long to realize that he had gotten himself ready-made family; one that he loved with all his heart, and one for whom he would have to find a better home than the bridge.

Armand and the children's adventures around Paris -- complete with gypsies and a Santa Claus -- make a story which children will treasure.]]> 97 Natalie Savage Carlson 0064402509 Laura 2 3.97 1958
author: Natalie Savage Carlson
name: Laura
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1958
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> 130727324 255 Michael Frayn Laura 2 2.00 1967
author: Michael Frayn
name: Laura
average rating: 2.00
book published: 1967
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves:
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]]> 28952912
Now a Netflix movie starring Kristen Wiig, Maggie Smith and Henry Lawfull!

Eleven-year-old Nikolas–nicknamed "Christmas"–has received only one toy in his a doll carved out of a turnip. But he's happy with his turnip doll, because it came from his parents, who love him. Then one day his father goes missing, and Nikolas must travel to the North Pole to save him.

Along the way, Nikolas befriends a surly reindeer, bests a troublesome troll, and discovers a hidden world of enchantment in the frozen village of Elfhelm. But the elves of Elfhelm have troubles of their Christmas spirit and goodwill are at an all-time low, and Nikolas may be the only person who can fix things-if only he can reach his father before it's too late. . . .

"Irresistibly readable. Destined to become a Christmas and anytime-before-or-after-Christmas classic!" �� Chris Grabenstein, New York Times bestselling author of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library

"The definitive (and funny) history of ho, ho, ho! My children loved it." �� Yann Martel, bestselling author of Life of Pi

"Matt Haig has an empathy for the human condition, the light and the dark of it, and he uses the full palette to build his excellent stories." �� Neil Gaiman, Newbery-winning author of The Graveyard Book]]> 240 Matt Haig 0399552650 Laura 3 4.09 2016
author: Matt Haig
name: Laura
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves:
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]]> 128714412 A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and small-town secrets that won’t stay buried

As Ballina in the west of Ireland prepares for its biggest weekend of the year, the simmering feud between small-time dealer Cillian English and County Mayo's fraternal enforcers, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, spills over into violence and an ugly ultimatum. When the reclusive Dev answers his door on Friday night, he finds Doll—Cillian's bruised, sullen, teenage brother—in the clutches of Gabe and Sketch. Jostled by his nefarious cousins, goaded by his dead mother's dog, and struck by spinning lights, Dev is unwillingly drawn headlong into the Ferdias' revenge fantasy.

Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Nicky can't shake the feeling that something bad has happened to her boyfriend Doll. Hungover, reeling from a fractious Friday night, and plagued by ghosts of her own, Nicky sets out on a feverish mission to save Doll, even as she questions her future in Ballina.]]> 272 Colin Barrett 0802160948 Laura 3 3.68 2024
author: Colin Barrett
name: Laura
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/11
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]]> 203579186 From the author of the critically acclaimed Laura & Emma comes a The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. for our times: Kate Greathead's razor-sharp but big-hearted excavation of millennial masculinity, The Book of George.

If you haven’t had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He’s a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following through; noncommittal to his long-suffering girlfriend, Jenny; distant from but still reliant on his mother; funny one minute, sullenly brooding the next. Here, Kate Greathead paints one particular, unforgettable George in a series of droll and surprisingly poignant snapshots of his life over two decades.

And yet, it’s hard not to root for George at least a little. Beneath his cynicism is a reservoir of fondness for Jenny’s valiant willingness to put up with him. Each demonstration of his flaws is paired with a self-eviscerating comment. No one is more disappointed in him than himself (except maybe Jenny and his mother). As hilarious as it is astute and singular as it is universal, The Book of George is a deft, unexpectedly moving portrait of one man �� but also countless others.]]> 288 Kate Greathead 1250351022 Laura 4 3.43 2024
author: Kate Greathead
name: Laura
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves:
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]]> 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Laura 3 3.34 2024
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Laura
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 4782738
In The Hedgehog's Dilemma , Warwick gets to the bottom of the sudden boom in hedgehog popularity and examines the relationship between the hedgehog and man, covering both the mammal's natural and un-natural evolution, from despised vermin to much-beloved beast. A historical and cultural exploration of the hedgehog, this is an engaging, informative, and charming look at the fascinating world of hedgehogs.

For more than twenty years, Hugh Warwick has tracked hedgehogs across the globe in the slim hopes of coming across the hedgehog's tiny, but unmistakable, pawprints. Warwick isn't alone in his endeavors. In England and Wales, the Environment Agency, Great Britain's leading environmental group, recently selected the hedgehog as its new mascot; while in America, which lacks a native hedgehog species, fanciers flock to the biannual Mile High Hedgehog Show to celebrate en masse the little spiny urchin. But why does the hedgehog seem to have such universal appeal?]]> 304 Hugh Warwick 1596914777 Laura 2 3.62 2008
author: Hugh Warwick
name: Laura
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2009/05/06
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
review:
Charming, but rambly. Also totally British, why was it published in the US? (And I've had two hedgehogs as pets, so I'm more interested in them than most people, but I still don't see why this was published here.)
]]> 176451879
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you.

In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?

Intricate, heart-racing, and from an author who “is the real deal�� (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Kill for Me, Kill for You will keep you breathless until the final page.]]> 340 Steve Cavanagh 1668049341 Laura 2 4.13 2023
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Laura
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 202772969 Effie is Deaf, and no one in her family speaks sign language, her language. This heart-filled story of survival and found family is inspired by a true court case.

Effie and her older sister, Deja, have recently moved into their father's trailer after an incident at their mom's house. Daddy communicates with Effie by pointing, stomping on the floor, and making thoughtless jokes. Even if they could understand each other, could Effie tell the terrible secret she carries when telling feels impossible-and dangerous?

But what if telling is the only way to be seen?

Tender, spare, and emotionally charged, Deer Run Home explores what it feels like to be a stranger in your own family and to awaken-through friendship, poetry, and kinship with the natural world-to a new understanding of yourself.]]> 224 Ann Clare LeZotte 1339021900 Laura 2 4.26 2024
author: Ann Clare LeZotte
name: Laura
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 199797939 Quickly, While They Still Have Horses offer a fresh, irreverent look at life in post-conflict Northern Ireland. From first loves to strained relationships to the thrills and terrors of growing up to the dangers and challenges of parenthood, Carson infuses her stories with empathy, dark wit, and a surreal edge.

In “A Certain Degree of Ownership,�� a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously toward the sea. In “Grand So,�� the ghost of a car’s previous owner haunts the backseat. In “Troubling the Water,�� a rumor of miraculous healing creates chaos at a public swimming pool.

Carson never fails to shock and delight as kids go missing in jungle gyms, a baby washes up on a riverbank in a biscuit tin, and a bloody hand appears (and reappears) in a refrigerator. Every so often, these stories travel into alternative versions of our world, where pillars of fire are a new treatment for mental illness and animals deemed nonessential are going extinct by legislative orders. While the legacy of the Troubles is never far from Carson’s mind, it is only a backdrop to the worlds she’s woven in these stories, driven by characters who feel real enough to touch.]]> 288 Jan Carson 1668056615 Laura 4 4.10 2024
author: Jan Carson
name: Laura
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> 122883536
On the evening of Father’s Day, 2005, separated husband Robert Farquharson was driving his three young sons back to their mom’s house when the car veered off the road and plunged into a dam. Farquharson survived the crash, but his boys drowned. Was this a tragic accident, or an act of revenge? The court case that followed became a national obsession—a macabre parade of witnesses, family members, and the defendant himself, each forced to relive the unthinkable for an audience of millions.

In This House of Grief , celebrated writer Helen Garner tells the definitive and deeply absorbing story of it all, from crash to final verdict. Through a panoply of perspectives, including her own as a member of the public, Garner captures the exacting procedure and brutal spectacle of Australia’s criminal justice system. The result is a richly textured portrait—of a man and his broken life, of a community wracked by tragedy, and of the long and torturous road to closure.

Considered a literary institution in Australia, Helen Garner’s incisive nonfiction evokes the keen eye of the New Journalists. Brisk, candid, and never dismissive of its flawed subjects, This House of Grief is a masterwork of literary journalism.]]> 320 Helen Garner 055338743X Laura 2 3.89 2014
author: Helen Garner
name: Laura
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves:
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]]> 204316865 A Hitchcock fanatic with an agenda invites old friends for a weekend stay at his secluded themed hotel in this fiendishly clever, suspenseful new novel.

Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.

To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.

But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.

After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.]]> 352 Stephanie Wrobel 059354711X Laura 3 3.57 2024
author: Stephanie Wrobel
name: Laura
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 199531664 People

"Heavenly hilarity for readers."��Good Housekeeping

A whip-smart, satirical romp through the minefield of modern motherhood, in the vein of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Fleishman Is in Trouble

It takes a village...just not this one.

Annie Lewin is at the end of her rope. She’s a mother of three young children, her workaholic husband is never around, and the vicious competition for spots in New York City’s kindergartens is heating up. An advice-columnist for a parenting website, Annie can’t help but judge the insanity of it all—even as she finds herself going to impossible lengths to secure the best spot for her own son.

As Annie comes to terms with the infinitesimal odds of success, she is pushed to the brink. Of course, this newly raw and unhinged version of Annie is great for her advice column: the more she spins out, the more clicks and comments she gets.

But when she commits a ghastly social faux pas that goes viral, she’s forced to confront the question: is she really any better than the cutthroat parents she always judged?]]> 320 Sophie Brickman 0063371200 Laura 0 to-read 2.98
author: Sophie Brickman
name: Laura
average rating: 2.98
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 120874563 From the internationally bestselling author of the Ruth Galloway Mysteries, an eclectic, thrilling collection of short stories, featuring many characters that readers have come to know and love.

Elly Griffiths has always written short stories to experiment with different voices and genres as well as to explore what some of her fictional creations such as Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur, and Max Mephisto might have done outside of the novels. The Man in Black gathers these bite-sized tales all together in one splendid volume.

There are ghost stories, cozy mysteries, tales of psychological suspense, and poignant vignettes of love and loss.

In the title story, Ruth Galloway crosses paths with a mysterious man in a bookstore, setting in motion a rescue mission that hinges on the legends and lore of Norfolk.

Looking into the past, a young magician in 1920s Leeds wonders just what happened to his missing landlady in Max Mephisto and the Disappearing Act.

In Justice Jones and the Etherphone, a witty girl detective investigates the dire prediction of a fortune teller in dreary postwar London.

A flashback in time reveals Harbinder Kaur as a Detective Sergeant surviving her first day on the job at Shoreham DCI.

To celebrate the holidays, Ruth gets her very first Christmas tree, and her beloved cat narrates his own seasonal story in Flint’s Fireside Tale.

And readers can armchair travel with stories set on the Amalfi Coast, in Capri, and in Egypt as Ruth and DCI Nelson experience their very own version of Death on the Nile.

The Man in Black illustrates the breadth and variety of Elly Griffiths’s talent for blood-chilling, page-turning stories all with her trademark humor and heart.]]> Elly Griffiths 1529420512 Laura 3 4.20 2024
author: Elly Griffiths
name: Laura
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves:
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]]> 198902265 Before love at first sight, there were things no one saw.


Annie never much believed in love. That is, until meeting Mark. After crossing paths on morning commutes, they connect at a group counseling session for trauma survivors. Each recognizes something in the other, though both hide their own troubled pasts.

It’s a whirlwind romance that propels Annie through their courtship, all the way to her wedding day—a day she couldn’t have predicted for herself once upon a time yet now feels surer about than anything in her life.

But as Annie stands at the altar, casting her eyes over the rows of well-wishers, she spots a stranger in the crowd, and she soon learns that her new life isn’t going to be the happily ever after that she had planned. Who is the stranger at the wedding? What really happened to Mark’s first wife? And was Annie and Mark’s meeting as random as it first appeared, or is something more sinister at work?

A sizzling thriller, A. E. Gauntlett's The Stranger at the Wedding will make you think twice before saying “I do.”]]> 288 A.E. Gauntlett 1250343364 Laura 3 3.01 2024
author: A.E. Gauntlett
name: Laura
average rating: 3.01
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves:
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]]> 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 Laura 2 4.06 2024
author: Richard Osman
name: Laura
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/01
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]]> 198563717
Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists, and a thirst for long overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets.

After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged 46, unmarried with no children, spent 16 months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt like less of a risk than a necessity.

What follows is a decadent, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.

The weeks in Paris are filled with friendship and food and sex. There is dancing on the Seine; a plethora of gooey cheese; midnight bike rides through empty Paris; handsome men; afternoons wandering through the empty Louvre; nighttime swimming in the ocean off a French island. And yes, plenty of nudity.

In the spirit of Deborah Levy and Annie Ernaux, I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expands far beyond the personal narrative. MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission.

The pursuit of enjoyment is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. Enjoying yourself—as you are—is not something the world tells you is possible, but it is.

Here’s the proof.]]> 288 Glynnis MacNicol 0593655753 Laura 2 3.39 2024
author: Glynnis MacNicol
name: Laura
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves:
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]]> 202468451 From a #1 internationally bestselling author comes an��atmospheric, chilling novel about a family who thinks there's someone hiding in their attic.

“Andrea Mara is a star.�� —Lee Child

You thought you were home alone.

Anya is enjoying a relaxing bath when she hears a noise coming from the ceiling. Through the open bathroom door, she sees the attic hatch swing down, and a masked figure drops to the floor. Thirty seconds later, Anya is dead.

You're not afraid of being alone in the dark. You're afraid you're not alone.

Across town, Anya's old school friend, Julia, sees an online video of a masked figure climbing out of an attic. She suddenly realizes why the footage is eerily familiar: it was filmed inside her house in a luxury gated community, designed to keep intruders out.

And now your worst fears are coming true.

Why would a stranger target Julia? Unless of course, it's not a stranger at all.]]> 368 Andrea Mara Laura 3 3.63 2024
author: Andrea Mara
name: Laura
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves:
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]]> 200555235 A searing novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars out of us all, from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments.

“Painful and brilliant—I loved it.”—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I’d always known that. But I’d never suspected how easily I’d fall into one anyway.

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joy and labor of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

Combining the intensity of Elena Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment and the pithy wisdom of Jenny Offill’s Dept of Speculation, Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.]]> 272 Sarah Manguso 0593241258 Laura 3 3.66 2024
author: Sarah Manguso
name: Laura
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves:
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]]> 203578763 The Afterword. After all, how hard can it really be to write a universally lauded bestseller?

But when Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. Something has gone wrong, and someone out there knows far too much about her late brother, her late husband, and possibly about Anna herself. What does this person want, and what are they prepared to do? She has come too far and worked too hard to lose what she values most: the sole and uncontested right to her own story—and she is, by any standard, a master storyteller.]]> 304 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250875471 Laura 3 3.59 2024
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Laura
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves:
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]]> 209330233 A novel of money and morality from the New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind.

Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?

Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination.]]> 288 Rumaan Alam 0593718461 Laura 0 didn-t-finish 2.99 2024
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Laura
average rating: 2.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: didn-t-finish
review:

]]> 179542451 0 Jonny Sweet 0571379907 Laura 0 to-read 3.31 2024
author: Jonny Sweet
name: Laura
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

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

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

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 Laura 4 3.98 2024
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Laura
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves:
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]]> 207299448
Though the authorities rule Liam's death accidental, Nora and her estranged brother, Sam, believe otherwise. As they form an uneasy alliance to unpack the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father’s past and uncover a family secret that changes everything.

With Laura Dave’s “signature blend of pulse-pounding suspense�� (PEOPLE) and “trademark emotional heft�� (The New York Post), The Night We Lost Him is a “propulsive�� (Oprah Daily) must-read, with a heartbreaking final twist you’ll never see coming.]]> 298 Laura Dave 1668002930 Laura 2 3.56 2024
author: Laura Dave
name: Laura
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves:
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]]> 208516656 If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.��

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.]]> 512 Liane Moriarty 0593798600 Laura 2 3.98 2024
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Laura
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 75500826
To everyone else, the Magical Land of Gumbling is something out of fairy tales. But to Nell Starkeeper, it’s just home. Sure, the town community center might be a castle, her dads run a star farm, and her best friend Myra is a fairy, but Nell is much more interested in finding out if she’ll get the seventh grade apprenticeship of her dreams with world-famous artist Wiz Bravo.��

She’s pretty sure her entire life has been RUINED when she’s instead matched with boring old Mrs. Birdneck in the town archives. And of course her perfect rival Leabelle gets to work with Wiz, and mean girl Viola won’t let Nell forget it. Meanwhile, suddenly Myra seems more into hanging out with Leabelle and saving the town from some weird strangers who keep talking about turning Gumbling into a fancy resort than being friends with Nell anymore. Can Nell find a way to save everything that makes her world magical, while figuring out where she belongs in it?]]> 224 Emma Steinkellner 0593570669 Laura 4 kid-books 4.13 2023
author: Emma Steinkellner
name: Laura
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/12
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: kid-books
review:

]]> 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Laura 3 4.11 2024
author: Alison Espach
name: Laura
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 201102398 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593544372

A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,�� she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse content�� for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.�� She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.]]> 277 Danzy Senna Laura 4 3.53 2024
author: Danzy Senna
name: Laura
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/26
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 199700426 From the New York Times bestselling author of Long Bright River, an immersive, propulsive novel about a missing child whose disappearance sends equal shockwaves through three very different worlds—an opulent Adirondack summer estate, the rustic teen summer camp that operates in its shadow, and the blue-collar community that serves them both.

When Barbara Van Laar is discovered missing from her summer camp bunk one morning in August 1975, it triggers a panicked, terrified search. Losing a camper is a horrific tragedy under any circumstances, but Barbara isn’t just any camper; she’s the daughter of the wealthy family that owns the camp—as well as the opulent nearby estate and most of the land in sight. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared in this Barbara’s older brother also went missing sixteen years ago, never to be found. How could this have happened yet again?

Out of this gripping beginning, Liz Moore weaves a richly textured drama, both emotionally nuanced and propelled by a double-barreled mystery. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded drama brings readers into the hearts of characters whose lives are forever changed by this eventful summer.

Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet, The God of the Woods is a story of love, inheritance, identity, and second chances, a thrillingly layered drama about the tensions between a family and a community, and a history of secrets that will not let any of them go.]]> 476 Liz Moore 0593719700 Laura 5 4.07 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Laura
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 134221625 277 Anne Ursu 0062275151 Laura 3 kid-books 4.04 2024
author: Anne Ursu
name: Laura
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves: kid-books
review:

]]> 200634908 A novel of family, secrets, ghosts, and homecoming set on the seaside cliffs of Maine, by the New York Times best-selling author of Friends and Strangers.

On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.

Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers—of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than Maine itself.

Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.]]> 384 J. Courtney Sullivan 059331915X Laura 3 3.51 2024
author: J. Courtney Sullivan
name: Laura
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 210040063 Molly the Maid has a whole new mystery to solve in this heartwarming novella from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid and The Mystery Guest.

Molly Gray has always loved the holidays. When Molly was a child, her gran went to great lengths to make the season merry and bright, full of cherished traditions. The first few Christmases without Gran were hard on Molly, but this year, her beloved boyfriend and fellow festive spirit, Juan Manuel, is intent on making the season Molly’s mofinst joyful yet.

But when a Secret Santa gift exchange at the Regency Grand Hotel raises questions about who Molly can and cannot trust, she dives headfirst into solving her most consequential—and personal—mystery yet. Molly has a bad feeling about things, and she starts to wonder: has she yet again mistaken a frog for a prince?

A heartwarming, magical story about the true spirit of the season, The Mistletoe Mystery reminds us that love is the greatest mystery of all.]]> 112 Nita Prose 0593875443 Laura 0 to-read 3.41 2024
author: Nita Prose
name: Laura
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: to-read
review:

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The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. Triggered by the death of their patriarch, Rudy, the glue that held them all together, everyone’s lives soon take a dramatic turn.

Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to immerse herself in the emerging (and lucrative) world of technology. Her sister, Nancy, gets married at the age of twenty-one to a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle, while their mother, Frieda, hurls herself into a boozy, troubled existence in Miami, trying to forget the past even as it haunts her.

But they each learn in different ways that running from the past can’t save you—and then must make life-altering decisions about what they want their family to be and what they need to move forward.

Beginning in the 1970s and spanning forty years, A Reason to See You Again takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another, and the many unexpected forms that love can take.]]> 240 Jami Attenberg 0063039842 Laura 0 to-read 3.20 2024
author: Jami Attenberg
name: Laura
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: to-read
review:

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