en-US Thu, 24 Apr 2025 07:54:06 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 209049995

Unaffordable housing in Canada is tearing communities apart. Rising prices force long-time residents to move elsewhere, while established businesses are forced to close their doors because they cannot find staff who can afford to live nearby.


In Home Truths, housing expert Carolyn Whitzman explores Canada’s crisis from all sides, including defining what adequate housing looks like, explaining why nonmarket housing is crucial for Canada, and outlining how and why to tackle ever-growing wealth disparities between renters and those who own. She details the decades of policy that got us into this mess and shows how all levels of government can work together to provide affordable housing where it is needed, using evidence-backed ideas from planners, politicians, developers, and advocates at home and abroad.]]> 334 Carolyn Whitzman 0774890703 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.27
author: Carolyn Whitzman
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.27
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]]> 62121600
The decisive moments in life are those pivot points when we’re called on to push past our fears and act with strength. With How We Learn to Be Brave , Bishop Mariann Budde teaches us to respond with clarity and grace even in the toughest times. Being brave is not a singular occurrence; it’s a journey that we can choose to undertake every day.
Here, Bishop Budde explores the full range of decisive moments, from the most visible and dramatic (the decision to go), to the internal and personal (the decision to stay), to brave choices made with an eye toward the future (the decision to start), those born of suffering (the decision to accept that which we did not choose), and those that come unexpectedly (the decision to step up to the plate). Drawing on examples ranging from Harry Potter to the Gospel According to Luke, she seamlessly weaves together personal experiences with stories from scripture, history, and pop culture to underscore both the universality of these moments and the particular call each one of us must heed when they arrive.
With Bishop Budde’s wisdom, readers will learn to live and to respond according to their true beliefs and in ways that align with their best selves. How We Learn to Be Brave will provide much-needed fortitude and insight to anyone searching for answers in uncertain times.]]> 201 Mariann Edgar Budde 0593539214 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.32 2023
author: Mariann Edgar Budde
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
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]]> 210943364
The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk� city of “old traditions and new machinery,� but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning� of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.]]> 232 Ta-Nehisi Coates 0593230388 Katsmewsings 4 4.51 2024
author: Ta-Nehisi Coates
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/22
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Beautifully written. Really makes you think.
]]> 55789065 A graphic edition of historian Timothy Snyder's bestselling book of lessons for surviving and resisting America's arc toward authoritarianism, featuring the visual storytelling talents of renowned illustrator Nora Krug.

Timothy Snyder's New York Times bestseller On Tyranny uses the darkest moments in twentieth-century history, from Nazism to Communism, to teach twenty lessons on resisting modern-day authoritarianism. Among the twenty include a warning to be aware of how symbols used today could affect tomorrow; an urgent reminder to research everything for yourself and to the fullest extent; a point to use personalized and individualized speech rather than cliched phrases for the sake of mass appeal; and more.

In this graphic edition, Nora Krug draws from her highly inventive art style in Belonging--at once a graphic memoir, collage-style scrapbook, historical narrative, and trove of memories--to breathe new life, color, and power into Snyder's riveting historical references, turning a quick-read pocket guide of lessons into a visually striking rumination. In a time of great uncertainty and instability, this edition of On Tyranny emphasizes the importance of being active, conscious, and deliberate participants in resistance.]]> 128 Timothy Snyder 1984860399 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.46 2017
author: Timothy Snyder
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2017
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]]> 53962509
Having retreated to her western Washington hometown after a scandal left her career in ruins, child psychiatrist Dr. Julia Cates is determined to free the extraordinary little girl she calls Alice from a prison of unimaginable fear and isolation. To reach her, Julia must discover the truth about Alice’s past—although doing so requires help from Julia’s estranged sister, a local police officer. The shocking facts of Alice’s life test the limits of Julia’s faith and strength, even as she struggles to make a home for Alice—and for herself.]]> 480 Kristin Hannah Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.01 2006
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
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]]> 42121525
Epic and intimate, heartbreaking and galvanizing, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is an ode to a disappearing world and a breathtaking page-turner about the possibility of hope against all odds.]]> 256 Charlotte McConaghy 125020402X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.11 2020
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/20
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]]> 217204419 “Razor-sharp, darkly comedic, and emotionally piercing. With the satirical bite of Richard Russo’s Straight Man, the introspection of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, and the reinvention of Andrew Sean Greer's Less, Kenney’s vivid prose transforms the mundane into unexpected hilarity.�
�Booklist (starred review)

An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick for April

The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story.

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting� man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.

As Bud awaits his fate at work, his life hangs in the balance. Given another shot by his boss and encouraged by his best friend, Tim, a worldly and wise former art dealer, Bud starts to attend the wakes and funerals of strangers to learn how to live.

Thurber Prize-winner and New York Times bestselling author John Kenney tells a funny, touching story about life and death, about the search for meaning, about finding and never letting go of the preciousness of life.]]> 304 John Kenney Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.26 2025
author: John Kenney
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.26
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date added: 2025/04/18
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]]> 211004023 A spine-tingling thriller by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about a 10-year-old girl with an impossible power, her father, and an unlikely stranger, who come together to confront the dangerous forces that want her at all costs. A strange story of family, love, comets, and bacon. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

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

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

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 1250890438 Katsmewsings 0 currently-reading 4.11 2018
author: T.J. Klune
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2018
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]]> 25310678 Ìý
In her coaching and programs for women, Tara Mohr saw how women were "playing small" in their lives and careers, were frustrated by it, and wanted to "play bigger." She has devised a proven way for them to achieve their dreams by playing big from the inside out. Mohr’s work helping women play bigger has earned acclaim from the likes of Maria Shriver and Jillian Michaels, and has been featured on the Today show, CNN, and a host of other media outlets.
Ìý
Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In gave many women new awareness about what kinds of changes they need to make to become more successful; yet most women need help implementing them. In the tradition of Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly , Playing Big provides real, practical tools to help women quiet self-doubt, identify their callings, “unhook� from praise and criticism, unlearn counterproductive good girl habits, and begin taking bold action.
Ìý
While not all women aspire to end up in the corner office, every woman aspires to something. Playing Big fills a major gap among women’s career books; it isn’t just for corporate women. The book offers tools to help every woman play bigger—whether she’s an executive, community volunteer, artist, or stay-at-home mom.
Ìý
Thousands of women across the country have been transformed by Mohr’s program, and now this book makes the ideas and practices available to everyone who is ready to play big.]]> 304 Tara Mohr 1592409601 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.18 2014
author: Tara Mohr
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2014
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date added: 2025/04/17
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]]> 213870133 A wickedly funny and audacious debut novel following an academic who flees from heartbreak and lands in Iraq with a one-of-a-kind job offer—only to be forced to do the work of confronting herself.

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

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

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

A fierce, wildly funny, and razor-sharp exploration of radicalism, family, and the quest for belonging, Fundamentally boldly inspects one of the defining controversies of our age and introduces a fearless new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 352 Nussaibah Younis 0593851382 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.83 2025
author: Nussaibah Younis
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
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]]> 15737147 A New York Times bestseller from the author of Hallelujah Anyway, Bird by Bird, and Almost Everything

Author Anne Lamott writes about the three simple prayers essential to coming through tough times, difficult days and the hardships of daily life

Readers of all ages have followed and cherished Anne Lamott’s funny and perceptive writing about her own faith through decades of trial and error. And in her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, she has coalesced everything she knows about prayer to these fundamentals.

It is these three prayers � asking for assistance from a higher power, appreciating what we have that is good, and feeling awe at the world around us � that can get us through the day and can show us the way forward. In Help, Thanks, Wow, Lamott recounts how she came to these insights, explains what they mean to her and how they have helped, and explores how others have embraced these same ideas.]]> 102 Anne Lamott Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.98 2012
author: Anne Lamott
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2012
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]]> 61054804 On the wheel of fortune, who will emerge on top... and who will die?

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she hopes to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval and Renaissance art.

There she is drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, including Patrick Roland, the museum's mercurial curator who specializes in the history of tarot; Rachel Mondray, Patrick's beautiful curatorial associate and sometime muse; and Leo Bitburg, the gardener who nurtures the museum's precious collection of medicinal and poison plants.

Relieved to have left her troubled past in rural Washington behind her, Ann longs for the approbation of her colleagues and peers and is happy to indulge their more outlandish theories, only to find that their fascination with fortune-telling runs deeper than academic obsession. Patrick is determined to prove that ancient divination holds the key to the foretelling of the future. And when Ann stumbles across a breakthrough in the form of a mysterious and previously-believed lost deck of 15th-century Italian tarot cards, she finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship and ambition.

Then there is an unexpected and devastating death, and suddenly everyone becomes a suspect. As the game being played within the Cloisters spirals out of control, Ann must decide if the tarot cards can not only teach her about the past, but also about her future.]]> 312 Katy Hays 1668004402 Katsmewsings 1 So bad I gave up at 80% in. 3.35 2022
author: Katy Hays
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2025/04/16
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So bad I gave up at 80% in.
]]> 301304 367 Pramoedya Ananta Toer 0140256350 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.14 1980
author: Pramoedya Ananta Toer
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1980
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]]> 217161768 She’s living a perfect life � so why does Laurence feel so torn?

Weekends in the country, weekdays in Paris � Laurence’s life features all the trappings of 1960s French bourgeoisie. She has money, a handsome husband, two daughters and a lover. She also has a successful career as an advertising copywriter, though her mind writes copy while she’s at home, and dreams of domesticity in the office.

All her life she has strived to meet the expectations of others. But when her 10-year-old daughter, Catherine, starts to vocalise her despair about the unfairness of the world, Laurence must finally grapple with a life that prizes image over truth.

Slim but powerful, this is a classic story of womanhood and its oppressors, parents and their children, and the quest for personal truth � by the iconic feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

TRANSLATED BY LAUREN ELKIN

Praise for The Inseparables:

‘Passionate and tragic� Vanity Fair

‘A ravishing work of art� Financial Times

‘Slim, elegant, achingly tragic and unaffectedly lovely in its evocation of the closeness between girls � and the pressures that sunder them� Spectator

‘In Lauren Elkin's fine translation, the lucid, sculpted prose can flare into starbursts of introspective sensuality... Beauvoir could write like a dutiful daughter of the French classics� The Times]]> 198 Simone de Beauvoir 1529936195 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.89 1966
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1966
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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 Katsmewsings 0 currently-reading 3.93 2024
author: Coco Mellors
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> 61918815
Painfully shy, Elizabeth Windsor’s personality was well suited to her youthful ambition of living quietly in the country, raising a family, and caring for her dogs and horses. But when her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated, she became heir to the throne—embarking on a journey that would test her as a woman and queen.

Ascending to the throne at only 25, this self-effacing monarch navigated endless setbacks, family conflict, and occasional triumphs throughout her 70 years as the Queen of England. As her mettle was tested, she endeavored to keep the monarchy relevant culturally, socially, and politically, often in the face of resistance from inside the institution itself. And yet the greatest challenges she faced were often inside her own family, forever under intense scrutiny; from rumors about her husband’s infidelity, her sister’s marital breakdown, Princess Diana’s tragic death, to the recent departure of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Now in The Queen , renowned biographer Andrew Morton takes an in-depth look at Britain’s longest reigning monarch, exploring the influence Queen Elizabeth had on both Britain and the rest of the world for much of the last century. From leading a nation struggling to restore itself after the devastation of the second World War to navigating the divisive political landscape of the present day, Queen Elizabeth was a reluctant but resolute queen. This is the story of a woman of unflagging self-discipline who will long be remembered as mother and grandmother to Great Britain, and one of the greatest sovereigns of the modern era.]]> 427 Andrew Morton 1538700433 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.00 2022
author: Andrew Morton
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
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]]> 55575384 Will Ned finally get a relationship right - even if it's fake?

Ned’s exhausted from his divorce, single parenting, and graduate school, so when his boss comes up with a plan to improve work-life balance, Ned wants no part of it.

But Dr. Charles Henry Abbot, PhD has other ideas. Once Ned’s least favorite professor and now his infuriating colleague, Ned needs Abbot’s help editing his dissertation. With their newly limited work schedules, Abbot suggests the worst idea Ned’s ever heard: pretend to date. Convince their co-workers � and their boss � that they’re in a relationship and nailing this whole personal life thing . . . and each other.

It’s an awful idea, but, if it means a graduation cap, would faking a relationship be worth it, so Ned can finish his degree and move home to his daughter?

The Place Between is a steamy, m/m romance novel. If you like enemies to lovers, fake dating, and the thin line between bickering and flirting, then you’ll love this fast paced romance.

Buy The Place Between to watch Ned and Abbot’s fake relationship unfold as they stumble into the most real thing either of them has ever done.]]> 413 Kit Oliver Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.01 2020
author: Kit Oliver
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2020
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]]> 195367844
Sure to resonate with fans of Daniel Woodrell, Donna Everhart, Ellen Marie Wiseman, and Jeannette Walls.

At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.

Fifty years later, Daisy Flowers is dumped on her grandmother Rose’s doorstep for the summer. A bright, inquisitive fifteen-year-old, Daisy bargains her way into an internship at the local newspaper—where she learns of the mysterious long-ago tragedy and its connection to her family. Rose, now the local funeral home director, grows increasingly alarmed as her impulsive granddaughter delves into Possum Flats� history, determined to uncover the horrors and heroes of the fiery blast.

For a small town, Possum Flats holds a multitude of big secrets, some guarded by the living, some kept by the dead. And through Rose, Daisy, Dash—a preacher who found his calling that fateful night—and others, those ghosts gradually come into the light, forcing a reckoning at last.]]> 368 Michelle Collins Anderson 149674828X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.91 2024
author: Michelle Collins Anderson
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
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]]> 229219958
The Book of Disappearance is set in contemporary Tel Aviv. Alaa is a young Palestinian man who is haunted by his grandmother’s memories of being displaced from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. His Jewish neighbour and friend, Ariel, is a journalist who believes in Israel’s national myth but is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. He begins to search for clues about why Alaa and the Palestinians have vanished. Their stories, and the stories of the ordinary people of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian question.

Ibtisam Azem’s spare and evocative novel is an unforgettable glimpse into contemporary Palestine as it grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory.]]> Ibtisam Azem 1923059521 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 0.0 2014
author: Ibtisam Azem
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2014
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]]> 206728658 In this intimate and open account—nothing like any rock-and-roll memoir you’ve ever read—Alex Van Halen shares his personal story of family, friendship, music and brotherly love in a remarkable tribute to his beloved brother and band mate.

Told with acclaimed New Yorker writer Ariel Levy Brothers is seventy-year-old drummer Alex Van Halen’s love letter to his younger brother, Edward, (Maybe “Ed,� but never “Eddie�), written while still mourning his untimely death.

In his rough yet sweet voice, Alex recounts the brothers� childhood, first in the Netherlands and then in working class Pasadena, California, with an itinerant musician father and a very proper Indonesian-born mother—the kind of mom who admonished her boys to “always wear a suit� no matter how famous they became—a woman who was both proud and practical, nonchalant about taking a doggie bag from a star-studded dinner. He also shares tales of musical politics, infighting, and plenty of bad-boy behavior. But mostly his is a story of brotherhood, music, and enduring love.

"I was with him from day one,â€� Alex writes. “We shared the experience of coming to this country and figuring out how to fit in. We shared a record player, an 800 square foot house, a mom and dad, and a work ethic. Later, we shared the back of a tour bus, alcoholism, the experience of becoming famous, of becoming fathers and uncles, and of spending more hours in the studio than I’ve spent doing anything else in this life. We shared a depth of understanding that most people can only hope to achieve in a lifetime."Ìý

There has never been an accurate account of them or the band, and Alex wants to set the record straight on Edward’s life and death.Ìý

Brothers includes never-before-seen photos from the author’s private archives.]]> 240 Alex Van Halen 0063265729 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Alex Van Halen
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/09
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]]> 18104725
Why are the Danes so happy despite having the highest taxes? Do the Finns really have the best education system? Are the Icelanders as feral as they sometimes appear? How are the Norwegians spending their fantastic oil wealth? And why do all of them hate the Swedes? In The Almost Nearly Perfect People, Booth explains who the Scandinavians are, how they differ and why, and what their quirks and foibles are, and he explores why these societies have become so successful and models for the world. Along the way, a more nuanced, often darker picture emerges of a region plagued by taboos, characterized by suffocating parochialism, and populated by extremists of various shades.]]> 416 Michael Booth 0224089625 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.84 2014
author: Michael Booth
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2014
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]]> 28014216
Moving to America in 2008, Finnish journalist Anu Partanen quickly went from confident, successful professional to wary, self-doubting mess. She found that navigating the basics of everyday life—from buying a cell phone and filing taxes to education and childcare—was much more complicated and stressful than anything she encountered in her homeland. At first, she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered they shared her deep apprehension. To understand why life is so different in the U.S. and Finland, Partanen began to look closely at both.

In The Nordic Theory of Everything, Partanen compares and contrasts life in the United States with life in the Nordic region, focusing on four key relationships—parents and children, men and women, employees and employers, and government and citizens. She debunks criticism that Nordic countries are socialist “nanny states,� revealing instead that it is we Americans who are far more enmeshed in unhealthy dependencies than we realize. As Partanen explains step by step, the Nordic approach allows citizens to enjoy more individual freedom and independence than we do.

Partanen wants to open Americans� eyes to how much better things can be—to show her beloved new country what it can learn from her homeland to reinvigorate and fulfill the promise of the American dream—to provide the opportunity to live a healthy, safe, economically secure, upwardly mobile life for everyone. Offering insights, advice, and solutions, The Nordic Theory of Everything makes a convincing argument that we can rebuild our society, rekindle our optimism, and restore true freedom to our relationships and lives.]]> 448 Anu Partanen 0062316567 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.85 2016
author: Anu Partanen
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/09
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]]> 123206645 A masterfully paced thriller about a reclusive ex–movie star and her famous friends whose spontaneous trip to a private Greek island is upended by a murder � from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient.

This is a tale of murder.

Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it?

Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island.

I tell you this because you may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time � it caused a real stir in the tabloids, if you remember. It had all the necessary ingredients for a press a celebrity; a private island cut off by the wind…and a murder.

We found ourselves trapped there overnight. Our old friendships concealed hatred and a desire for revenge. What followed was a game of cat and mouse � a battle of wits, full of twists and turns, building to an unforgettable climax. The night ended in violence and death, as one of us was found murdered.

But who am I?

My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.]]> 298 Alex Michaelides 125075898X Katsmewsings 0 currently-reading 3.34 2024
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> 207298106 Brought to you by Penguin.

Beloved award-winning actress Kelly Bishop, famous for playing the iconic Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls , finally tells the whole story of her six decades in show business.

Kelly Bishop’s storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing, but it is probably her role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy.
Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future, sharing some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced—among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer—Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life.
Full of witty insights, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and powerful memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades.

]]> 256 Kelly Bishop 1668023776 Katsmewsings 3 4.35 2024
author: Kelly Bishop
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
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review:
I really wanted to like this more but it was just alright.
]]> 53746805 In the spirit of Ruth Hogan and Adriana Trigiani, bestselling British author Debbie Johnson brings us the ultimate in “happy tears�: a heartfelt story about a woman seizing the chance to reconnect with her lost love.




The truth changes everything.

For years Jess believed that Joe—the father of her child and the only man she ever loved—had abandoned her during her greatest time of need. That belief nearly destroyed her. Seventeen years later, when cleaning out her mother’s house, Jess unpacks a box of cards and letters hidden in the attic and makes a discovery that changes everything about life as she knows it.

Shaken but empowered, Jess—and her two stalwart best friends—set out on a remarkable journey to follow a set of faded postmarks around the world. Is Joe still alive? Does he know that Jess never forgot him? Maybe their love story isn’t over.

Maybe one day they’ll find each other again…]]> 384 Debbie Johnson 0063003651 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.91 2020
author: Debbie Johnson
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 205761310 A teen social media star learns he can’t control everything in this delicious, queer graphic novel adaptation that relocates Jane Austen’s Emma to a modern-day high school in Queens, New York.

Evan Horowitz has it beauty, brains, and a not-so-secret flair for matchmaking! An Insta influencer with a talent for makeup and a taste for romance, he’s no stranger to playing cupid for those hopelessly clueless in finding love.

So when shy transfer student Natalia shuffles into school one day, Evan can’t help but get his hands messy! With so many matches to choose from, it’s not long before he sets a plan in motion for Natalia—much against the better judgement of his level-headed best friend, Davi.

But he takes things too far, creating a web of drama that spirals out of his control. Can Evan learn to put the people closest to him before his misguided ambition? Or will he lose them and his own chance at romance, too?Ìý]]> 264 Anne Camlin 0316704105 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.62 2024
author: Anne Camlin
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 208840265 A deliciously witty and inspiring memoir by One Tree Hill star Bethany Joy Lenz about her decade in a cult and her quest to break free.

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

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

Only when she became a mother did Lenz find the courage to leave and spare her child from a similar fate. After nearly a decade (and with the unlikely help of a One Tree Hill superfan), she finally managed to escape the family’s grip and begin to heal from the deep trauma that forever altered her relationship with God and her understanding of faith. Written with powerful honesty and dark humor, Dinner for Vampires is an inspiring story about the importance of identity and understanding what you believe.]]> 303 Bethany Joy Lenz 1668067307 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.28 2024
author: Bethany Joy Lenz
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 221452818 A spiky, edgy collection of five wickedly funny stories spotlighting clear-eyed and “difficult� women who are navigating their identities as workers and women in contemporary Japan—a feminist, anti-capitalist modern classic published outside Asia and in English for the first time.

The Dilemmas of Working Women is Fumio Yamamoto’s darkly witty look at modern Japanese women who are ambivalent about their lives and jobs. In “Naked,� a woman who’s simultaneously lost her business and her husband finds that it is surprisingly comfortable to stay at home sewing stuffed animals, even if it makes her a “loser� in the eyes of society. In “Planarian,� a young woman recovering from breast cancer tells her friends and boyfriend that she would prefer to be the titular worm to organically regenerate her body. Each of these spiky women—as well as the three other protagonists in this groundbreaking work—chafes against social expectations that equate work with worth and demand women squeeze into the confining and sometimes dehumanizing role of employee in a world built by and for men.

First published in Japan in 2000, The Dilemmas of Working Women struck a nerve with Japanese readers and became a bestselling literary sensation, selling nearly half a million copies and winning the prestigious Naoki Prize in Literature. A quarter of a century later, this brilliant modern classic—available for the first time outside Asia and in English—remains deliciously funny and astonishingly relevant.]]> 288 Fumio Yamamoto 0063423588 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.82 2000
author: Fumio Yamamoto
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 216052869 An American travel writer who has never found a place to belong and a reclusive Scot with a surprising secret find a shocking connection when she enters a Highlands manor house that has been turned into a three-week long Edwardian experience.

Katie Campbell has traveled her entire life. As the daughter of an army chaplain, changing homes--or even countries--was commonplace, so when her wild childhood storytelling turned into a lucrative career as a travel writer, she thought she'd found her perfect match. But as she's nearly thirty with no real place to settle down, she's starting to wonder where "home" actually is. Her own family hadn't felt like home since her sister's death left them all limping through life.

When a lengthy project in Scotland promises to not only give her travel fodder for months but also a shot at a coveted editing position, she accepts and is sent to spend three weeks in the newly created Craighill House, a Scottish home redesigned to offer guests an Edwardian experience. But her entrance to Craighill introduces her to a quirky group of characters and a surly Scot who is helping refurbish the magnificent woodwork of the estate house.

As Katie attempts to live "Edwardian," she learns that all that glitters does not a comfortable lifestyle make . . . and surly Scots may turn out to be dashing and creative uncles raising their orphaned nephews. When a few escapades from the Downton era lead Katie on hunts for mermaids and dragons or to a fireside chat with a family who has grown stronger through tragedy, Katie begins to wonder if "home" looks a whole lot like rolling green hills, magnificent braighs, and a few extra "ayes" thrown in for good measure. But can her world-traveling lifestyle fit in with a Scot whose heart is double-knotted to home?]]> 384 Pepper Basham 0840716745 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.03 2025
author: Pepper Basham
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 213570828 Ìý
1613: ÌýKing James â€� sixth of Scotland, first of England, son of Mary, Queen of Scots - has unified both countries under one crown. But the death of his eldest son, Henry, has plunged the nation into mourning, as the rumours rise the prince was poisoned.
Ìý
Andrew Logan’s heard the rumours, but he’s paid them little heed. As one of the King’s Messengers he has enough secrets to guard, including his own. In these perilous times, when the merest suggestion of witchcraft can see someone tortured and hanged, men like Andrew must hide well the fact they were born with the Sight.
Ìý
He’ll need all his gifts, though, when the king sends Andrew north to find and arrest Sir David Murray, once Prince Henry’s trusted courtier, and bring him a prisoner to London to stand trial before the dreaded Star Chamber.
Ìý
A story of treachery, betrayal and love�
Ìý

Praise for The Vanished

‘Fascinating and immersive� I love a novel that deals with the many ways in which people keep their secrets’� DIANA GABALDON

‘A hugely engrossing book and a complete world created’� IAN RANKIN

‘The Vanished Days is an absolute tour de force of historical storytelling, tender and dramatic, gripping and authentic. Kearsley manages effortlessly to balance the epic sweep of the drama with telling moments of gentle characterization, all delivered in pitch-perfect style. I thoroughly enjoyed a perfect escape in these dark days’� JANE JOHNSON , author of The Salt Road and The Tenth Gift
Ìý
‘An engrossing and deeply romantic novel of Scotland’s Jacobite rebellion’� RACHEL HORE

‘This novel tells of a tender love story set amid the Jacobite rebellion. For readers unfamiliar with the twists and turns of this period of Scottish history, author Kearsley provides a helpful map, along with rich details of the protagonists. Courage in this era lies not in acts of heroic daring, but in steadfast pursuit of truth and justice. Perfect for fans of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlande r� WOMAN & HOME
Ìý
Ìý]]> 352 Susanna Kearsley 149268905X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.17 2024
author: Susanna Kearsley
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 214537759 “Where are you, Mom?� So began Amy’s quest to solve a mystery trapped in the deep recesses of her own memory—a journey that would take her into the burgeoning field of psychedelic therapy, to the limits of the judicial system, and ultimately, home to the Texas panhandle, where her story began.

In her search for the truth, to understand and begin to recover from buried childhood trauma, Griffin interrogates the pursuit of perfectionism, control, and maintaining appearances that drives so many women, asking, when, in our path from girlhood to womanhood, did we learn to look outside ourselves for validation? What kind of freedom is possible if we accept the whole story and embrace who we really are? With hope, heart, and relentless honesty, she points a way forward for all of us, revealing the power of radical truth-telling to deepen our connections—with others and ourselves.]]> 288 Amy Griffin 0593731204 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.22 2025
author: Amy Griffin
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 31450766
Worsley examines the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons. She shows readers a passionate Jane Austen who fought for her freedom, a woman who had at least five marriage prospects, but--in the end--a woman who refused to settle for anything less than Mr. Darcy.

Illustrated with two sections of color plates, Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home is a richly entertaining and illuminating new book about one of the world’s favorite novelists and one of the subjects she returned to over and over in her unforgettable novels: home.]]> 387 Lucy Worsley 125013160X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.26 2017
author: Lucy Worsley
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 126917977
Cloistered takes the reader deep into the hidden world of a traditional Carmelite monastery as it approaches the third Millennium and tells the story of an intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, in Northumberland, Catherine trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfold her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, quite unaware of the complexity and dangers that lie ahead.

Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself. When Sister Catherine realises that a mesmerising cult of the personality, with the distortions it entails, has replaced the ancient ideal of religious obedience, she is faced with a dilemma. Will she submit to this, or will she be forced to speak out?

An exploration of the limits of trust, Cloistered shows us how far youthful idealism can take us along the road of self-surrender, and of how much harm is done when institutional flaws go unacknowledged. Catherine’s honest account of her time in the monastery � and her dramatic flight from it � is both a love song to a lost community and an exploration of what is most compelling, yet most potentially destructive when closed human groups become laws unto themselves.]]> 342 Catherine Coldstream Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.83 2024
author: Catherine Coldstream
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> 22609382
A college president teaches her daughter, by example, the importance of being a leader who connects with everyone—from the ground up, literally—in an organization. A popular entertainer and former child star urges her daughter to walk in her own truth, to not break glass ceilings if she yearns to nurture a family as a stay-at-home mother or to abandon a career if that’s her calling. One of the country’s only female police chiefs teaches her daughter the meaning of courage, how to respond to danger but more importantly how not to let fear stop her from experiencing all that life has to offer. A bestselling writer who has deliberated for years on empowering girls, wonders if we’re unintentionally leading them to believe they can never make mistakes, when “resiliency is more important than perfection.�

Contributors include : Geena Davis, Cecile Richards, Dolores Huerta, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Peggy Orenstein, Debora Black, Ayelet Waldman, Pat Benatar, Whoopi Goldberg, Dr. Susan Love, Nancy Pelosi, Alexandra Pelosi, Marie Osmond, Dr. Juliet Garcia, Jehan Sadat, Ph.D, Joanna Kerns, Madeleine Albright, Gloria Estefan, Nannerl O. Keohane, Jennifer Dulski, Dr. Marcia McNutt, Pamela Fryman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Brooke Shields, Laura Bush, Mona Sinha, Gloria Allred, Joy Marcus, Judy Vredenburgh, Sharon Osbourne, Beverly Johnson, Michelle King, Dr. Karen Antman, MD, Dr. Amy Antman Gelfand, MD, Mary Steenburgen, Kimberley Hatchett, Cheryl Saban, C. Noel Bairey Merz, Alex Guarneschelli, Dana Walden, Mia Hamm, Margaret Abe-Koga, Roma Downey, Chirlane McCray, Blythe Danner, Sheila Bair, Ruth W. Messinger, Norah O’Donnell, Donna de Varona, Nancy Josephson, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Jeanne Newman, and Christine Baranski.

In a time when childhood seems at once more fraught and more precious than ever, What I Told My Daughter is a book no one concerned with connecting with a young girl can afford to miss.]]> 304 Nina Tassler 1476734674 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.57 2015
author: Nina Tassler
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 59904786 She can’t recall what started her collection. Maybe it was in a fragment of conversation overheard as she cleaned a sink? Before long (as she dusted a sitting room or defrosted a fridge) she noticed people were telling her their stories. Perhaps they always had done, but now it is different, now the stories are reaching out to her and she gathers them to her�

When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs B � a shrewd and tricksy woman in her nineties � she meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the keeper of stories, she doesn’t have a story to tell. At least, not one she can share.

Mrs B is no fool and knows there is more to Janice than meets the eye. What is she hiding? After all, doesn’t everyone have a story to tell?]]> 386 Sally Page Katsmewsings 3 4.08 2022
author: Sally Page
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:
Not bad, not great. Found a few characters interesting.
]]> 5797 867 William Makepeace Thackeray 0141439831 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.80 1847
author: William Makepeace Thackeray
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1847
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> 204927599 From the author of Sapiens comes the groundbreaking story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.]]> 528 Yuval Noah Harari 059373422X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.14 2024
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> 123263354
Windsor, 1940: Secretly tasked with foiling a suspected plot, Sophie Klein is placed in the Royal Library at Windsor castle, where the princesses reside. But when she learns that Windsor is compromised, Sophie must sacrifice everything she knows to save the future queen of England�

Philadelphia, Present day: Looking through her grandmother's papers, Lacey Jones comes across a mysterious letter stamped with the Windsor Castle crest. But how did it come to be in her family's possession?

And so begins a journey that will take Lacey deep into the heart of the oldest inhabited castle in the world, and change her life forever. . .]]> 384 Daisy Wood 0008636923 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.88 2024
author: Daisy Wood
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> 62315838 Ìý
1940 - Stasia always found comfort in the idyllic French countryside where she spent her childhood summers, roaming the gardens of an old chateau and finding inspiration for fairy tales full of bravery and adventure. But these days are much darker, and with Nazis storming across Europe, she soon finds herself one of the most hunted agents of the Resistance. The only safe haven she can think of is Chateau de Montissaire. But she’s about to discover that it just may be the center of her biggest mission yet.
Ìý
Present day - When Isabelle purchases a crumbling chateau in Rouen, it’s not just a renovation project—it’s a chance to reconnect with her sister, Emilie, the only family she has left. What she uncovers instead is an intriguing mystery� As the siblings piece together the incredible truth behind the books written by their great-grandmother Stasia, they discover an exciting story of courage in the face of treachery and an explosive secret that will change everything they believed about their family.
Ìý]]> 432 Kelly Bowen 1538722143 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.17 2023
author: Kelly Bowen
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> 176442861 In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school.

A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt at aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.]]> 304 Charles Spencer 1668046385 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.94 2024
author: Charles Spencer
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> 203263120
Lily Fleury used to love visiting her eccentric grandmother Sylvia in Ireland, taking long sunset walks on the beach and exploring the nooks and crannies of the family’s old home Magnolia Manor. But when she arrives from Dublin broken-hearted, hoping to heal in Sylvia’s warm embrace, she finds the once ornate Georgian house in disrepair and the gardens wildly overgrown. Sylvia has always been fiercely independent, but Lily can’t believe she hasn’t told anyone she’s been struggling.

Lily knows she can’t leave until she gets Sylvia back on her feet. Although mysterious local builder Dominic agrees to help, from the moment Lily looks into his fierce green eyes they clash over how to fix the sprawling estate. It’s only when she hears the soft Irish lilt of his voice as he sings in the local pub that their arguments ignite a spark of passion neither can ignore�

But when Lily finds a trunk of tattered letters in the gatehouse, she discovers a devastating secret Sylvia has been hiding about Magnolia Manor. And she soon learns the real reason Dominic agreed to help out. Lily wanted to save her family home, and could see a life here with Dominic, but will the truth force her to leave the man who has captured her heart and never return?

Fans of Mary Alice Monroe, Sheila O’Flanagan and Debbie Macomber will fall head over heels for this gorgeous, feel-good new series set on the stunning windswept beaches of the west coast of Ireland.]]> 260 Susanne O'Leary 1835250858 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.23
author: Susanne O'Leary
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 27276875 A Two-Spirit Journey is Ma-Nee Chacaby’s extraordinary account of her life as an Ojibwa-Cree lesbian. From her early, often harrowing memories of life and abuse in a remote Ojibwa community riven by poverty and alcoholism, Chacaby’s story is one of enduring and ultimately overcoming the social, economic, and health legacies of colonialism.

As a child, Chacaby learned spiritual and cultural traditions from her Cree grandmother and trapping, hunting, and bush survival skills from her Ojibwa stepfather. She also suffered physical and sexual abuse by different adults, and by her teen years she was alcoholic herself. At twenty, Chacaby moved to Thunder Bay with her children to escape an abusive marriage. Abuse, compounded by racism, continued, but Chacaby found supports to help herself and others. Over the following decades, she achieved sobriety; trained and worked as an alcoholism counselor; raised her children and fostered many others; learned to live with visual impairment; and came out as a lesbian. In 2013, Chacaby led the first gay pride parade in her adopted city, Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Ma-Nee Chacaby has emerged from hardship grounded in faith, compassion, humor, and resilience. Her memoir provides unprecedented insights into the challenges still faced by many Indigenous people.]]> 256 Ma-Nee Chacaby 0887558127 Katsmewsings 0 currently-reading 4.24 2016
author: Ma-Nee Chacaby
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 60879915
We’ve all wrestled with questions like these, whether we’re shouting at a relative across the dinner table, quarreling with old classmates on social media, or chatting late into the night with friends. Many people give kneejerk answers that roughly align with their broader belief system, but flounder when asked for their reasoning, leading to a conversational stalemate—especially when faced with a political, generational, or cultural divide.

The truth is that our answers to these questions almost always rely on unexamined assumptions. In Arguing for a Better World , philosopher Arianne Shahvisi shows us how to work through thorny moral questions by examining their parts in broad daylight, equipping us to not only identify our own positions but to defend them as well. This book demonstrates the relevance of philosophy to our everyday lives, and offers some clear-eyed tools to those who want to learn how to better fight for justice and liberation for all.]]> 304 Arianne Shahvisi 0143136836 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.95 2023
author: Arianne Shahvisi
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 209628245 Welcome to Tenderness!

A quaint seaside town in Kitakyushu, Mojiko is full of hidden delights. And one unexpected treasure is the 24/7 convenience store, Tenderness.

At first glance, it’s a store like any other.

Sure, it’s a bit odd that the handsome manager has his own fan club. And perhaps the customers are somewhat eccentric. But there’s a warmth about Tenderness that draws you in.

The bright lights are always on. The employees know you by name. And the shelves are stacked with delicious treats, from strong hot coffee to sweet parfaits, egg sandos to ramen, crispy fried chicken to refreshing soba.

After a while, you get the feeling that whatever you need might just be waiting for you here�

Celebrating the joy of connection and community, The Convenience Store by the Sea is the heartwarming international bestseller from award-winning Japanese novelist Sonoko Machida.]]> 304 Sonoko Machida 1398722782 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.75 2020
author: Sonoko Machida
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 214152163 The striking sophomore poetry collection from the award-winning author of the “beautiful, vulnerable, honest� (Ross Gay, New York Times bestselling author) I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood.

Dive between the borders of ruined and radical love with this lyrical poetry collection that explores topics as expansive as divorce, the first Black Bachelorette, and the art world. Stanzas shift between reverence to irreverence as they take us on a journey through institutional and historical pains alongside sensuality and queer, Black joys.

From a generational voice that “earns a place among the pantheon of such emerging black poets as Eve Ewing, Nicole Sealy, and Airea D. Matthews� (Booklist, starred review), Scorched Earth is a transcendent anthology for our times.]]> 112 Tiana Clark 1668052075 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.21
author: Tiana Clark
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 54870217 From the wildly popular bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Things--an uplifting, slightly magical story about how it's never too late to find out who you really are.

Madame Burova--beloved Tarot reader, palmist, and clairvoyant--is retiring and leaving her booth on the Brighton seafront.

After inheriting her mother's fortune-telling business as a young woman, Imelda Burova has spent her life on the Brighton pier practicing her trade. She and her trusty pack of Tarot cards have seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Now, after a lifetime of keeping other people's secrets, Madam Burova is ready to have a little piece of life for herself. But she still has one last thing to do--to fulfill a promise made in the 1970s, when she and her girlfriends were carefree, with their whole lives still before them.

In London, it is time for another woman to make a fresh start. Billie has lost her university job, her marriage, and her place in the world when a sudden and unlikely discovery leaves her very identity in question. Determined to find answers, she must follow a trail...which leads to Brighton, the pier, and directly to Madame Burova's door.

In a story spanning over fifty years, Ruth Hogan has conjured a magical world of 1970s holiday camps and seaside entertainers, eccentrics, heroes and villains, the lost and the found. Young people will make careless choices which echo down the years....but it's never too late to put things right.]]> 304 Ruth Hogan 0063075431 Katsmewsings 4 3.83 2021
author: Ruth Hogan
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/01
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review:
Charming but difficult to follow in sections. It took me a while to parse all the character names.
]]> 55098820 An intimate work of autobiographical fiction by one of ex-Yugoslavia's greatest writers about his family's experience as refugees from the Bosnian war--a timeless story of love, memory, and the resilience of the human spirit.

"Today, it seems, was the day I was meant to die." When a writer suffers a heart attack at the age of fifty, he must confront his mortality in a country that is not his native home. Confined to a hospital bed and overcome by a sense of powerlessness, he reflects on the fragility of life and finds extraordinary meaning in the quotidian. In this affecting autobiographical novel, Semezdin Mehmedinovic explores the love he and his family have for one another, strengthened by trauma; their harrowing experience of the Bosnian war, which led them to flee for the United States as refugees; eerie premonitions of Donald Trump's presidency; the life and work of a writer; and the nature of memory and grief.

Poetically explosive and pure to the core, My Heart serves as a kind of mirror, reflecting our human strengths and weaknesses along with the most important issues on our minds--love and death, the present and the past, sickness and health, leaving and staying.]]> 228 Semezdin Mehmedinović 1646220072 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.06 2017
author: Semezdin Mehmedinović
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.11 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 54860577 288 Samantha Silva 1250159113 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.13 2021
author: Samantha Silva
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201606225 From the wildly popular bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Things: a heartfelt and inspiring story about a wealthy widow who revives a beloved famous local landmark—and restores joy and sparkle to her own life in the process.

It’s never too late to start dancing again...

For fifty years, Venetia Hargreaves’s world revolved around her husband. She built their life around his big career, with dinner on the table at six, a lovely home, and a dutiful son just as business-minded as his father. Now Venetia’s a wealthy widow left with a beautiful but empty home, an enviable bank balance, and a distinct feeling that she missed the boat. Once upon a time, she was a dance instructor who dreamed of opening her own ballroom school with a fellow teacher who won her heart. Instead, Venetia chose the safer path.

So, at seventy-four years of age, Venetia declares her independence, first with a makeover, and then by adopting a new dog. But something is still missing...until on one of her dog walks by the river she passes by a building she remembers all too well. In her youth it was the spectacular Phoenix Ballroom, where she used to teach waltzes and tangos. These days it’s a community center and spiritualist church, funded by a mysterious benefactor who only pays for the upkeep.

Eager to revive at least one meaningful thing from her past, Venetia buys the Phoenix Ballroom, and finds a supportive and loving community of lost souls who become a delightful multigenerational family-by-choice.

As the ballroom regains its former glory, the community and Venetia’s humdrum life are revived as well...proving wonderful things can come from the darkest of places.]]> 320 Ruth Hogan 0063386674 Katsmewsings 3 Cute, predictable, lovely. 4.00 2024
author: Ruth Hogan
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves:
review:
Cute, predictable, lovely.
]]> 48635408
Men Who Hate Women examines the rise of secretive extremist communities who despise women and traces the roots of misogyny across a complex spider web of groups. It includes eye-opening interviews with former members of these communities, the academics studying this movement, and the men fighting back.

Women's rights activist Laura Bates wrote this book as someone who has been the target of many hate-fueled misogynistic attacks online. At first, the vitriol seemed to be the work of a small handful of individual men... but over time, the volume and consistency of the attacks hinted at something bigger and more ominous. As Bates went undercover into the corners of the internet, she found an unseen, organized movement of thousands of anonymous men wishing violence (and worse) upon women.
In the book, Bates explores:

Extreme communities like incels, pick-up artists, MGTOW, Men's Rights Activists and more
The hateful, toxic rhetoric used by these groups
How this movement connects to other extremist movements like white supremacy
How young boys are targeted and slowly drawn in
Where this ideology shows up in our everyday lives in mainstream media, our playgrounds, and our government

By turns fascinating and horrifying, Men Who Hate Women is a broad, unflinching account of the deep current of loathing toward women and anti-feminism that underpins our society and is a must-read for parents, educators, and anyone who believes in equality for women.]]> 366 Laura Bates Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.34 2020
author: Laura Bates
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 199135971 295 Soraya M. Lane 166250408X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.48 2024
author: Soraya M. Lane
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 62919906
Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated—and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings� lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.

As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he’s determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family—Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit.

Set in the fraught summer of 2016, and drawing on the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, Little Monsters is an absorbing, sharply observed family story by a writer who knows Cape Cod inside and out—its Edenic lushness and its snakes.]]> 320 Adrienne Brodeur 1982198109 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.63 2023
author: Adrienne Brodeur
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 57415091 Bestselling, Scotiabank Giller Award-winning writer Ian Williams brings fresh eyes and new insights to today's urgent conversation on race and racism in startling, illuminating essays that grow out of his own experience as a Black man moving through the world.


With that one eloquent word, disorientation, Ian Williams captures the impact of racial encounters on racialized people--the whiplash of race that occurs while minding one's own business. Sometimes the consequences are only irritating, but sometimes they are deadly. Spurred by the police killings and street protests of 2020, Williams realized he could offer a perspective distinct from the almost exclusively America-centric books on race topping the bestseller lists, because of one salient fact: he has lived in Trinidad (where he was never the only Black person in the room), in Canada (where he often was), and in the United States (where as a Black man from the Caribbean, he was a different kind of only).

Inspired by the essays of James Baldwin, in which the personal becomes the gateway to larger ideas, Williams explores such things as the unmistakable moment when a child realizes they are Black; the ten characteristics of institutional whiteness; how friendship forms a bulwark against being a target of racism; the meaning and uses of a Black person's smile; and blame culture--or how do we make meaningful change when no one feels responsible for the systemic structures of the past. With these essays, Williams wants to reach a multi-racial audience of people who believe that civil conversation on even the most charged subjects is possible. Examining the past and the present in order to speak to the future, he offers new thinking, honest feeling, and his astonishing, piercing gift of language.
]]> 216 Ian Williams 1039000223 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.42 2021
author: Ian Williams
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219743601 In this taut Southern family drama, the sins of a favorite son rock a small Mississippi town.

Reverend Sabre Winfrey, shepherd of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. Besides the barbershop and radio station he owns, he has an iron hand on every aspect of Dominion, Mississippi, society. He and his wife, Priscilla, have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy—no one sings prettier, runs as fast, or turns as many heads. After a surprising encounter with a stranger, Wonderboy finds himself confronted by questions he’d never imagined, and his response will send shockwaves through the entire community. Told from the point of view of the women who love these two men, Dominion illustrates how we enable the everyday violence and casual sins of the patriarchy.

A Black Southern family drama that deals as much in tenderness and humor as it does in brutality, Addie Citchens’s Dominion reveals the many sinister ways in which we are shaped by fear and patriarchy.]]> 240 Addie E. Citchens 0374609330 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.23 2025
author: Addie E. Citchens
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58438558
Present day

Cassie Simmons, a museum curator, is enthusiastic about solving mysteries from the past, and she has a personal interest in the history of the rumrunners who ferried illegal booze across the Detroit River during Prohibition. So when a cache of whisky labeled Bailey Brothers� Best is unearthed during a local home renovation, Cassie hopes to find the answers she’s been searching for about the legendary family of bootleggers...

1918

Corporal Jeremiah Bailey of the 1st Canadian Tunnelling Company is tasked with planting mines in the tunnels beneath enemy trenches. After Jerry is badly wounded in an explosion, he finds himself in a Belgium field hospital under the care of Adele Savard, one of Canada’s nursing sisters, nicknamed “Bluebirds� for their blue gowns and white caps. As Jerry recovers, he forms a strong connection with Adele, who is from a place near his hometown of Windsor, along the Detroit River. In the midst of war, she’s a welcome reminder of home, and when Jerry is sent back to the front, he can only hope that he’ll see his bluebird again.

By war’s end, both Jerry and Adele return home to Windsor, scarred by the horrors of what they endured overseas. When they cross paths one day, they have a chance to start over. But the city is in the grip of Prohibition, which brings exciting opportunities as well as new dangerous conflicts that threaten to destroy everything they have fought for.

Pulled from the pages of history, Bluebird is a compelling, luminous novel about the strength of the human spirit and the power of love to call us home.]]> 352 Genevieve Graham 1982156651 Katsmewsings 2 4.09 2022
author: Genevieve Graham
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves:
review:
I wanted to like this. I live in the general vicinity that this book was set in. But it was just bad. Writing was not of the times. And felt very stilted.
]]> 214269388 Being a ranger means adventure, action, and protecting the weak. But who protects the ranger when they lose their way? From the bestselling author of The Moth Keeper and the Tea Dragon Society comes a must read MG graphic novel for fans of soft sweeping fantasy romances.

Rowan knows exactly what they to be a ranger, protecting their village alongside their trusted flying horse Kes. But when Rowan's eagerness to show off their worth gets Kes injured, Rowan is suddenly unsure if they're capable of being the protector they've always dreamed of becoming.Ìý

With Kes needing to heal, Rowan is assigned a slow and winding expedition across the outlying lands. Paired with a lackadasical sheep hearder Leone, Rowan only finds frustration as they seem to fail even the simplest tasks. But Leone's own struggles, and endless support brings a new possibility to Rowan. Could their unlikely friendship be something more? And if it is, will Rowan be able to leave Leone behind to pursue being a ranger once Kes is healed?]]> 240 K. O'Neill 0593182308 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.36 2025
author: K. O'Neill
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 216052935
Martha Berry is fifty years old, a spinster, and one of an army of polite and invisible women in 1956 Sydney who go to work each day and get things done without fuss, fanfare or reward.

Working at the country's national broadcaster, she's seen highly praised talent come and go over the years but when she is sent to work as a secretary on a brand-new radio serial, created to follow in the footsteps of Australia's longest running show, Blue Hills, she finds herself at the mercy of an egotistical and erratic young producer without a clue, a conservative broadcaster frightened by the word 'pregnant' and a motley cast of actors with ideas of their own about their roles in the show.

When Martha is forced to step in to rescue the serial from impending cancellation, she ends up secretly ghost-writing scripts for As The Sun Sets, creating mayhem with management, and coming up with storylines that resonate with the serial's growing and loyal audience of women listeners.

But she can't keep her secret forever and when she's threatened with exposure, Martha has to decide if she wants to remain in the shadows, or to finally step into the spotlight.]]> 368 Victoria Purman 140034803X Katsmewsings 3 4.05 2024
author: Victoria Purman
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:
3.5 rounded down, really liked the themes and the era this book was set in, but the dialogue was much more modern than what would have existed at the time and it was hard to extend the degree of disbelief needed to believe the dialogue.
]]> 32822135
Archer's Voice is the story of a woman chained to the memory of one horrifying night and the man whose love is the key to her freedom. It is the story of a silent man who lives with an excruciating wound and the woman who helps him find his voice. It is the story of suffering, fate, and the transformative power of love.]]> 377 Mia Sheridan 1538727374 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.14 2014
author: Mia Sheridan
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 198619824 319 Marc Guggenheim 1662518021 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.78 2024
author: Marc Guggenheim
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40890217 Ìý]]> 216 Sari Solden 168403261X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.61 2019
author: Sari Solden
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127282597
At twenty-four, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She’s sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup that Arthur has a wife—and that she has no idea Hera exists.

With its daringly specific and intimate voice, Green Dot is a darkly hilarious and deeply felt examination of the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century and the winding, tortuous, and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.]]> 320 Madeleine Gray 1250890594 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.62 2024
author: Madeleine Gray
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 214151747 From #1 bestselling author Genevieve Graham comes a gripping novel set in Toronto and Vietnam during the turbulent sixties about two women caught up in powerful social movements and the tragedy that will bring them together—perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah’s The Women .

Toronto, 1967. Two young women with different backgrounds, attitudes, and aptitudes are living in an exciting but confusing time, the most extreme counter-culture movement the modern world has ever seen. They have little in common except for the place they both call an apartment building on Isabella Street.

Marion Hart, a psychiatrist working in Toronto’s foremost mental institution, is fighting deinstitutionalization—the closing of major institutions in favour of community-based centres—because she believes it could one day cause major homelessness. When Alex Neumann, a vet with a debilitating wound, is admitted to the mental institution, Marion will learn through him that there is so much more to life than what she is living.

Sassy Rankin, a budding folk singer and carefree hippy from a privileged family, joins protests over the Vietnam War and is devastated that her brother chose to join the US Marines. At the same time, she must deal with the truth that her comfortable life is financed by her father, a real estate magnate bent on gentrifying the city, making it unaffordable for many of her friends.

The strength of their unlikely friendship means that when one grapples with a catastrophic event, the other must do all she can to make it right.

Inspired by the unfettered optimism and crushing disillusionment of the sixties, On Isabella Street is an extraordinary novel about the enduring bonds of friendship and family and the devastating cost of war.]]> 432 Genevieve Graham 1982197013 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.68
author: Genevieve Graham
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.68
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 30753703
Fortunately, Amélie has made a powerful ally. Having survived his own harrowing experience at the hands of the English, Corporal Connor MacDonnell is a reluctant participant in the British plan to expel the Acadians from their homeland. His sympathy for Amélie gradually evolves into a profound love, and he resolves to help her and her family in any way he can—even if it means treason. As the last warmth of summer fades, more ships arrive to ferry the Acadians away, and Connor is forced to make a decision that will alter the future forever.]]> 336 Genevieve Graham 1501142879 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.99 2017
author: Genevieve Graham
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40539184
In 1897, the discovery of gold in the desolate reaches of the Yukon has the world abuzz with excitement, and thousands of prospectors swarm to the north seeking riches the likes of which have never been seen before.

For Liza Peterson and her family, the gold rush is a chance for them to make a fortune by moving their general store business from Vancouver to Dawson City, the only established town in the Yukon. For Constable Ben Turner, a recent recruit of the North-West Mounted Police, upholding the law in a place overrun with guns, liquor, prostitutes, and thieves is an opportunity to escape a dark past and become the man of integrity he has always wanted to be. But the long, difficult journey over icy mountain passes and whitewater rapids is much more treacherous than Liza or Ben imagined, and neither is completely prepared for the forbidding north.

As Liza’s family nears the mountain’s peak, a catastrophe strikes with fatal consequences, and not even the NWMP can help. Alone and desperate, Liza finally reaches Dawson City, only to find herself in a different kind of peril. Meanwhile, Ben, wracked with guilt over the accident on the trail, sees the chance to make things right. But just as love begins to grow, new dangers arise, threatening to separate the couple forever.

Inspired by history as rich as the Klondike’s gold, At the Mountain’s Edge is an epic tale of romance and adventure about two people who must let go of the past not only to be together, but also to survive.]]> 368 Genevieve Graham 1501193392 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.88 2019
author: Genevieve Graham
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 36183441
Then, one day, a handsome stranger ventures into the store. He claims to be a trapper come from away, and as Grace gets to know him, she becomes enamoured by his gentle smile and thoughtful ways. But after a several weeks, she discovers that Rudi, her mysterious visitor, is not the lonely outsider he appears to be, but someone else entirely—someone not to be trusted. When a shocking truth about her family forces Grace to question everything she has so strongly believed, she realizes that she and Rudi have more in common than she had thought. And if Grace is to have a chance at love, she must not only choose a side, but take a stand.]]> 324 Genevieve Graham 1501142895 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.86 2018
author: Genevieve Graham
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 216351864
At thirty-six, Naomi Watts had just completed filming King Kong and was trying to start a family when she was told that she was on the brink of menopause. It is estimated that seventy-five million women in the United States are currently dealing with menopause symptoms (dry itchy skin, raging hormones, night sweats), and yet the very word “menopause� continues to be associated with stigma and confusion. With so little information, many women feel unprepared, ashamed, and deeply alone when the time comes.

This is the book Naomi Watts wishes she had when she first started experiencing symptoms. Like sitting down over coffee and having an intimate chat with your girlfriend, Dare I Say It blends funny and poignant stories from Naomi and her friends with advice from doctors, hormone experts, and nutritionists to take the secrecy and shame out of menopause and aging. Answering questions such as: What’s hormone therapy and should I be on it? Will I ever sleep again? Will I get myself back? What happened to my libido? Do I need eighteen serums for my aging skin? Whose body is this anyway? Who am I now? Naomi Watts shares the most up-to-date research on how to manage menopause symptoms and tackle the physical and emotional challenges we encounter as we age.

Irreverent, bold, and reassuring, Dare I Say It is the companion every woman needs to embrace the best version of herself as she moves into what can be the most powerful and satisfying period of her life.]]> 256 Naomi Watts 059372903X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.98 2025
author: Naomi Watts
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 202939207 From multi-award winner Whoopi Goldberg comes a new and unique memoir of her family and their influence on her early life.

If it weren’t for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010—and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later—she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone.

Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time. Growing up in the projects in New York City, there were trips to Coney Island, the Ice Capades, and museums, and every Christmas was a magical experience. To this day, she doesn’t know how her mother was able to give them such an enriching childhood, despite the struggles they faced—and it wasn’t until she was well into adulthood that Whoopi learned just how traumatic some of those struggles were.

Fans of personal memoirs such as Finding Me by Viola Davis and In Pieces by Sally Field will be touched by Bits and a moving tribute from a daughter to her mother, and beautiful portrait of three people who loved each other deeply. Whoopi writes, “Not everybody gets to walk this earth with folks who let you be exactly who you are and who give you the confidence to become exactly who you want to be. So, I thought I’d share mine with you.�]]> 256 Whoopi Goldberg Katsmewsings 4 4.24 2024
author: Whoopi Goldberg
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
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I quite enjoy Whoopi so while this was no amazingly written memoir, it was still quite interesting to learn about her past.
]]> 217245557 In this spellbinding historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father—and herself.

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can't contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny.

A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, My Name is Emilia del Valle introduces a character who will never let hold of your heart.]]> 304 Isabel Allende 059397509X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.03 2025
author: Isabel Allende
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> 223889073 An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights

In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.� She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods. There were discussions about her own childhood—misunderstandings and lack of communication with her mother and father, her early tendency to anticipate catastrophe—and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, “what it’s been worth.� The analysis would continue for more than a decade.

Didion’s journal was crafted with the singular intelligence, precision, and elegance that characterize all of her writing. It is an unprecedently intimate account that reveals sides of her that were unknown, but the voice is unmistakably hers—questioning, courageous, and clear in the face of a wrenchingly painful journey.]]> 224 Joan Didion 0593803671 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.31
author: Joan Didion
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.31
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]]> 214151292 From Hockey Night in Canada’s Scott Oake, a raw and honest memoir about his son’s struggle with opioid use and how he turned a father’s worst nightmare into a second chance for others battling addiction.

A father’s love. A devastating drug crisis. A stirring call to action.

When veteran broadcaster Scott Oake first held his infant son, Bruce, in his arms, he never imagined that Bruce would become a statistic in the losing battle to opioid abuse.

In those early days, Scott, a new father, watched Bruce with awe, marveling at the potential of his funny, charismatic boy. As Bruce got older, though, he struggled to fit in at school and began showing signs of having ADHD, including a streak of impulsiveness that often got him into trouble. Scott and his wife, Anne, did their best to support him, and for a time, he found community and belonging in boxing and local rap battles. But when Bruce was pulled into a world of drugs and gangs, Scott and Anne experienced a crash course in the reality of loving someone battling substance use disorder.

Then one quiet day in 2011, Scott got the phone call that every parent Bruce had accidentally overdosed. At just twenty-five, Scott’s vibrant, creative, first-born son was gone forever.

It was a loss that could have broken a man, a marriage, a family—but Scott, Anne, and their younger son, Darcy, instead turned the worst day of their lives into a way to help the thousands of Canadians struggling with addiction. After nearly a decade of fundraising and battling red tape and political machinations they launched the Bruce Oake Recovery Centre, a free, revolutionary treatment centre staffed by addicts and alcoholics in recovery.

For the Love of a Son is the story of a father’s unconditional love for his son. Above all, it’s the story of a young man who never got to grow up and a family who gives others the chance to find their way home.]]> 256 Scott Oake 1668045478 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.61
author: Scott Oake
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.61
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]]> 211953307 A moving culinary memoir about the relationship between food and family—sustenance and survival—from a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.When you’re raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food.Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head on.ÌýThen a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish. Tracing the defining moments of her life, from her colorful childhood in the restaurant business to the crumbling of her first marriage and the intensity of young motherhood, her decision to become a chef and that life-altering visit to Poland, the author recounts a tale of scarcity and plenty, stepping into the kitchen to connect her past to her future. Whether it's the flaky potato knishes and molasses porridge bread she learned to bake at her Baba Sarah’s elbow, the creamy vichyssoise she taught herself to cook in her tiny student apartment, or the brown butter eggs her father, now 93, still scrambles for her whenever she needs comfort, cuisine is both an anchor and an identity; a source of joy and a signifier of survival.How to Share an Egg is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. By turns sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman's search to find her voice as a writer, chef, mother and daughter. Do the tiny dramas of her own life matter in comparison to everything her father has seen and done?ÌýThisÌýmoving exploration of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery sets out to find the answer.]]> 304 Bonny Reichert 0593599160 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.11 2025
author: Bonny Reichert
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.11
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]]> 133120234 298 Jane Bettany 0008589690 Katsmewsings 1 3.94 2024
author: Jane Bettany
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 1
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Do not be swayed by Book Festivals�
]]> 23280208 Sisterhood in all its drama, hilarity and tears is at the heart of New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins's thoroughly captivating new novel, featuring the wit and romance that readers have come to expect from the much-loved creator of the Blue Heron series...

Wedding-dress designer Jenny Tate understands the happily-ever-after business, yet somehow she's still involved in her ex-husband's life. In fact, Owen's new wife may—inexplicably—be Jenny's new best friend. Sensing this, well, relationship isn't helping her move on, Jenny trades the Manhattan skyline for her hometown up the Hudson, where she'll be able to bask in her sister Rachel's picture-perfect family life…and hopefully make one of her own.

Her timing couldn't be more perfect, since Rachel will need her younger sister. Her idyllic marriage has just fallen to pieces in spectacular fashion after she discovers her husband sexting with one of his colleagues. Second chances aren't in Rachel's nature, but the desire for an intact family has her rethinking her stance on adultery, much to Jenny's surprise. Rachel points to their parents' "perfect" marriage as a shining example, but to protect her sister Jenny may have to tarnish that memory—and their relationship­—and reveal a secret about their family she's been keeping since childhood.

During this summer of secrets and lies, temptation and revelation, Jenny and Rachel will rely on each other to find the humor in their personal catastrophes, the joy in their triumphs…and the strength to keep hanging on.]]> 416 Kristan Higgins 037378497X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.00 2015
author: Kristan Higgins
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
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]]> 208954503 A captivating new historical novel from Madeline Martin, set in Victorian London about a forbidden book club, dangerous secrets, and the women who dare to break free.

You are cordially invited to the Secret Book Society�

London, 1895: Trapped by oppressive marriages and societal expectations, three women receive a mysterious invitation to an afternoon tea at the home of the reclusive Lady Duxbury. Beneath the genteel facade of the gathering lies a secret book club—a sanctuary where they can discover freedom, sisterhood, and the courage to rewrite their stories.

Eleanor Clarke, a devoted mother suffocating under the tyranny of her husband. Rose Wharton, a transplanted American dollar princess struggling to fit the mold of an aristocratic wife. Lavinia Cavendish, an artistic young woman haunted by a dangerous family secret. All are drawn to the enigmatic Lady Duxbury, a thrice-widowed countess whose husbands� untimely deaths have sparked whispers of murder.

As the women form deep, heartwarming friendships, they uncover secrets about their marriages, their pasts, and the risks they face. Their courage is their only weapon in the oppressive world that has kept them silent, but when secrets are deadly, one misstep could cost them everything.]]> Madeline Martin Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.58 2025
author: Madeline Martin
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.58
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]]> 215526423
Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.]]> 260 John Green Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.39 2006
author: John Green
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> 217245608 Falling in love with your husband is anything but convenient in this steamy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of Business or Pleasure.

Dani Dorfman has somehow made it to her thirties without knowing what she wants to do with her life. So when an office romance ends poorly and gets her fired, she applies for a job in Amsterdam, idly dreaming of escaping the mess she’s created, but never imagining she'll actually get it.

Except she does. By the end of her first week in Amsterdam, she’s never felt more adrift or alone. Then she crashes her bike into her high school ex-boyfriend—and suddenly life is blooming with new opportunities.

Wouter van Leeuwen was a Dutch exchange student Dani’s family hosted, a forbidden love that ended in a painful breakup. Years later, there’s still sizzling chemistry between them, and okay, maybe a little animosity. More importantly, Wouter needs to be married to inherit a gorgeous family home on a canal—and when Dani's job falls apart, she needs a visa.ÌýAs the marriage of convenience pushes them together in unexpected ways, Dani must decide whether her new life is yet another mistake—or if it's worth taking a risk on a second chance.]]> 384 Rachel Lynn Solomon 0593548558 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.12 2025
author: Rachel Lynn Solomon
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.12
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]]> 198663063 Toronto Star on The Paris Deception

For fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah, this sweeping love story follows a young couple whose lives are irrevocably changed when they’re separated overnight by the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Berlin 1961: When Uli Neumann proposes to Lise Bauer, she has every reason to accept. He offers her love, respect, and a life beyond the strict bounds of the East German society in which she was raised � which she longs to leave more than anything. But only two short days after their engagement, Lise and Uli are torn violently apart when barbed wire is rolled across Berlin, splitting the city into two hostile halves: capitalist West Berlin, an island of western influence isolated far beyond the iron curtain; and the socialist East, a country determined to control its citizens by any means necessary.

Soon, Uli and his friends in West Berlin hatch a plan to get Lise and her unborn child out of East Germany, but as distance and suspicion bleed into their lives and as weeks turn to months, how long can true love survive in the divided city?]]> 352 Bryn Turnbull 0778305457 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.17 2024
author: Bryn Turnbull
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.17
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]]> 220772795 New York Times Bestselling Author. Millions of books sold worldwide!

A Life-Changing Tool Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About

What if the key to happiness, success, and love was as simple as two words?

If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple wordsâ€�Let Them—will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you.ÌýThe Let Them TheoryÌýputs the power to create a life you love back in your hands—and this book will show you exactly how to do it.

In her latest groundbreaking book,ÌýThe Let Them Theory,ÌýMel Robbinsâ€�New York TimesÌýBestselling Author and one of the world's most respected experts on motivation, confidence, and mindset—teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life.

Using the same no-nonsense, science-backed approach that's madeÌýThe Mel Robbins PodcastÌýa global sensation, Robbins explains whyÌýThe Let Them TheoryÌýis already loved by millions and how you can apply it in eight key areas of your life to make the biggest impact. Within a few pages, you'll realize how much energy and time you've been wasting trying to control the wrong things—at work, in relationships, and in pursuing your goals—and how this is keeping you from the happiness and success you deserve.

Written as an easy-to-understand guide, Robbins shares relatable stories from her own life, highlights key takeaways, relevant research and introduces you to world-renowned experts in psychology, neuroscience, relationships, happiness, and ancient wisdom who championÌýThe Let Them TheoryÌýevery step of the way.

Learn how

Stop wasting energy on things you can't controlStop comparing yourself to other peopleBreak free from fear and self-doubtRelease the grip of people's expectationsBuild the best friendships of your lifeCreate the love you deservePursue what truly matters to you with confidenceBuild resilience against everyday stressors and distractionsDefine your own path to success, joy, and fulfillment...and so much more.

The Let Them TheoryÌýwill forever change the way you think about relationships, control, and personal power. Whether you want to advance your career, motivate others to change, take creative risks, find deeper connections, build better habits, start a new chapter, or simply create more happiness in your life and relationships, this book gives you the mindset and tools to unlock your full potential.

Order your copy ofÌýThe Let Them TheoryÌýnow and discover how much power you truly have. It all begins with two simple words.]]> 311 Mel Robbins 1788176650 Katsmewsings 3 4.37 2024
author: Mel Robbins
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 3
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More sophisticated than I expected.
]]> 1227743
No more rec-room train sets. Now Linwood was hauling fish guts to the woods for burial, answering distress calls from women in the ladies� room who found themselves without toilet paper, and standing in leaky chest-waders pounding dock posts into the lake bottom.

The chores weren’t so bad, especially when he could help his father, who had been a commercial artist before he bought his way into the tourist business. And in other ways, it was a good life for a boy. He had wheels (a John Deere riding mower), a small aluminum boat with a 9.5-horsepower outboard and only one speed (fast), and Chipper, a dog that chased boats the way other dogs chase cars, sometimes with catastrophically comic results. Linwood also had access to The Chart, a cottage reservations list that was, for him, a guide to the arrivals and departures of the guests� teenaged daughters. Summer romances could be as intense as they were heartbreaking.

When he was sixteen, an unexpected tragedy changed Linwood’s life again. His older brother, Rett, helped out as best he could, but he was wrestling with demons of his own � often withdrawing into his own complicated inner world. Linwood found an extended family in the resort’s guests, who lent him a hand, and shaped him into the man he would become.

His mother’s eccentricities (she quit driving to shame the police for having given her a ticket) made Linwood’s new responsibilities heavier than they might otherwise have been. When he finally decided to move away from Green Acres to make a separate life, she made it as difficult as possible for him.

In the midst of all this, Linwood found his vocation, and mentors, too, in Margaret Laurence, and in Kenneth Millar, who (under the pen name Ross MacDonald) wrote a highly successful series of detective novels.

In this memoir, Linwood Barclay looks back with humour, sadness, and affection on the singular circumstances of his coming of age.]]> 288 Linwood Barclay 0771010818 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.96 2000
author: Linwood Barclay
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.96
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]]> 1225261
Sometimes better not to know. . .

Cynthia is happily married with a young daughter, a new family. But the story of her old family isn't over. A strange car in the neighborhood, untraceable phone calls, ominous gifts, someone has returned to her hometown to finish what was started twenty-five years ago. And no one's innocence is guaranteed, not even her own. By the time Cynthia discovers her killer's shocking identity, it will again be too late . . . even for goodbye.]]> 338 Linwood Barclay 055380555X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.02 2007
author: Linwood Barclay
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2007
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]]> 17618286
As the twisted truth emerges, Ariel Lawhon’s wickedly entertaining debut mystery transports us into the smoky jazz clubs, the seedy backstage dressing rooms, and the shadowy streets beneath the Art Deco skyline.]]> 304 Ariel Lawhon 038553762X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.68 2014
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2014
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]]> 60693378 From three bestselling authors comes an interwoven tale about a trio of World War II nurses stationed in the South Pacific who wage their own battle for freedom and survival.

The Philippines, 1941. When U.S. Navy nurse Eleanor Lindstrom, U.S. Army nurse Penny Franklin, and Filipina nurse Lita Capel forge a friendship at the Army Navy Club in Manila, they believe they’re living a paradise assignment. All three are seeking a way to escape their pasts, but soon the beauty and promise of their surroundings give way to the heavy mantle of war.

Caught in the crosshairs of a fight between the U.S. military and the Imperial Japanese Army for control of the Philippine Islands, the nurses are forced to serve under combat conditions and, ultimately, endure captivity as the first female prisoners of the Second World War. As their resiliency is tested in the face of squalid living arrangements, food shortages, and the enemy’s blatant disregard for the articles of the Geneva Convention, the women strive to keep their hope—and fellow inmates—alive, though not without great cost.

In this sweeping story based on the true experiences of nurses dubbed the “Angels of Bataan,� three women shift in and out of each other’s lives through the darkest days of the war, buoyed by their unwavering friendship and distant dreams of liberation.]]> 424 Ariel Lawhon 0785253343 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.10 2022
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
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]]> 223436601 An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 400 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391237 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.31 2025
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
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date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> 98652044
Marco Calvo always knew his grandfather, affectionately called Papoo, was a good man. After all, he was named for him. A first-generation Jewish immigrant, Papoo was hardworking, smart, and caring. When Papoo peacefully passes away, Marco expects the funeral to be simple. However, he is caught off guard by something unusual. Among his close family and friends are mourners he doesn’t recognize—Japanese American families—and no one is quite sure who they are or why they are at the service. How did these strangers know his grandfather so well?

Set in the multicultural Central District of Seattle during World War II and inspired by author and artist Josh Tuininga’s family experiences, We Are Not Strangers explores a unique situation of Japanese and Jewish Americans living side by side in a country at war. Following Marco’s grandfather’s perspective, we learn of his life as a Sephardic Jewish immigrant living in America and his struggles as he settles into an America gearing up its war efforts. Despite the war raging just outside US borders, Papoo befriends Sam Akiyama, a Japanese man who finds his world upended from President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Determined to keep Sam’s business afloat while he and his family are unjustly incarcerated, Papoo creates a plan that not only changes the lives of the Akiyamas but of the entire Nihonmachi community.]]> 197 Josh Tuininga 1419759949 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.34 2023
author: Josh Tuininga
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
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]]> 217159488 From generational icon Brooke Shields comes an intimate and empowering exploration of ageing that flips the script on the idea of what it means for a woman to grow older

Brooke Shields has spent a lifetime in the public eye. Growing up as a child actor and model, her every feature was scrutinised, her every decision judged. Today Brooke faces a different kind of that of being a 'woman of a certain age'.

And yet, for Brooke, the passage of time has brought freedom. At fifty-nine, she feels more comfortable in her skin, more empowered and confident than she did decades ago in those famous Calvin Kleins. Now, in Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, she's changing the narrative about women and ageing.

This is an era, insists Brooke, when women are reclaiming agency and power, not receding into the shadows. These are the years when we get to decide how we want to live - when we get to write our own stories.

With remarkable candour, Brooke bares all, painting a vibrant and optimistic picture of being a woman in the prime of her life, while dismantling the myths that have, for too long, dimmed that perception. Sharing her own life experiences with humour and humility, and weaving together research and reporting, Brooke takes aim at the systemic factors that contribute to age-related bias.

By turns inspiring, moving, and galvanising, Brooke's honesty and vulnerability will resonate with women everywhere, and spark a new conversation about the power and promise of midlife.]]> 250 Brooke Shields 034944191X Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.71 2025
author: Brooke Shields
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> 195391623 From New York Times bestselling author Tracey Lange, a poignant story about the resilience of family, the importance of community, and the magic of middle school hockey

When Kyle McCray gets word his father has suffered a debilitating stroke, he returns to his hometown of Potsdam, New York, where he doesn’t expect a warm welcome. Kyle left suddenly two and a half years ago, abandoning people who depended on him: his father, his employees, his friends—not to mention Casey, his wife of sixteen years and a beloved teacher in town. He plans to lie low and help his dad recuperate until he can leave again, especially after Casey makes it clear she wants him gone.

The longer he’s home, the more Kyle understands the impact his departure has had on the people he left behind. When he’s presented with an opportunity for redemption as the coach of the floundering middle school hockey team, he begins to find compassion in unexpected places. Kyle even considers staying in Potsdam, but that’s only possible if he and Casey can come to some kind of peace with each other.

Full of love and hope, What Happened to the McCrays? takes an intimate look at both sides of a failed marriage and two people who must finally confront the awful pain of their past or risk being consumed by it.]]> 352 Tracey Lange 1250328438 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.09 2025
author: Tracey Lange
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
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]]> 61347974 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 320 Amanda Peters Katsmewsings 4 4.28 2023
author: Amanda Peters
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/03/14
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Really lovely writing but the pacing was off, for me.
]]> 214640627 David Roberts was Whitney Houston's bodyguard, the real one.
Roberts was hired in 1988 for Houston's UK portion of the Moment of Truth world tour. Accustomed to working for diplomats and Fortune 500 clients, Roberts had reservations about working with a pop star. But Houston's heart of gold won him over from the moment they met at Heathrow airport.
There's a high bar for those who work in this you must be willing to die for your boss. Houston made that easy. Roberts got to travel the globe with one of the most fun-loving and generous souls he'd ever met. His memoir reveals heartwarming anecdotes of life with one of the world's most recognizable stars, including privately shared moments such as the birth of Bobbi Kristina.
But there are also shocking and heartbreaking revelations. Roberts was present for some of Houston's most challenging ordeals. And he was helpless as he watched those who claimed to love and support her look the other way because they saw her voice box as a cash machine.
His heart was ultimately shattered as he witnessed her succumb to the one threat he could not protect her herself. ]]> 256 David Roberts 0914090372 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.97
author: David Roberts
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.97
book published:
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]]> 40028195 In the era of mass incarceration, over 600,000 people are released from federal or state prison each year, with many returning to chaotic living environments rife with violence. In these circumstances, how do former prisoners navigate reentering society? In Homeward, sociologist Bruce Western examines the tumultuous first year after release from prison. Drawing from in-depth interviews with over one hundred individuals, he describes the lives of the formerly incarcerated and demonstrates how poverty, racial inequality, and failures of social support trap many in a cycle of vulnerability despite their efforts to rejoin society.

Western and his research team conducted comprehensive interviews with men and women released from the Massachusetts state prison system who returned to neighborhoods around Boston. Western finds that for most, leaving prison is associated with acute material hardship. In the first year after prison, most respondents could not afford their own housing and relied on family support and government programs, with half living in deep poverty. Many struggled with chronic pain, mental illnesses, or addiction—the most important predictor of recidivism. Most respondents were also unemployed.Ìý Some older white men found union jobs in the construction industry through their social networks, but many others, particularly those who were black or Latino, were unable to obtain full-time work due to few social connections to good jobs, discrimination, and lack of credentials. Violence was common in their lives, and often preceded their incarceration. In contrast to the stereotype of tough criminals preying upon helpless citizens, Western shows that many former prisoners were themselves subject to lifetimes of violence and abuse and encountered more violence after leaving prison, blurring the line between victims and perpetrators.

Western concludes that boosting the social integration of former prisoners is key to both ameliorating deep disadvantage and strengthening public safety. He advocates policies that increase assistance to those in their first year after prison, including guaranteed housing and health care, drug treatment, and transitional employment. By foregrounding the stories of people struggling against the odds to exit the criminal justice system, Homeward shows how overhauling the process of prisoner reentry and rethinking the foundations of justice policy could address the harms of mass incarceration.]]> 234 Bruce Western 1610448715 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.08 2018
author: Bruce Western
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> 58968268
Winner of the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop, Dandelion is a beautifully written and affecting novel about motherhood, family secrets, migration, isolation, and mental illness. With clarity and care, it delves into the many ways we define home, identity, and above all, belonging.]]> 336 Jamie Chai Yun Liew 1551528819 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.91
author: Jamie Chai Yun Liew
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.91
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> 58438555 Wherever you go�
she’ll be watching.

Sarah Goldman, mother to six-year-old Jacob, is relieved to move across the country. She has a lot she wants to leave behind, especially Holly Monroe, the pretty twenty-two-year-old babysitter she and her husband, Daniel, hired to take care of their young son last summer. It started out as a perfect arrangement—Sarah had a childminder her son adored, and Holly found the mother figure she’d always wanted. But Sarah’s never been one to trust very easily, so she kept a close eye on Holly, maybe too close at times. What she saw raised some questions, not only about who Holly really was but what she was hiding. The more Sarah watched, the more she learned—until one day, she saw something she couldn’t unsee, something so shocking that all she could do was flee.

Sarah has put it all behind her and is starting over in a different city with her husband and son. They’ve settled into a friendly suburb where the neighbors, a tight clique of good citizens, are always on the lookout for danger. But when Sarah finds hidden cameras in her new home, she has to wonder: Has her past caught up to her, and worse yet, who’s watching her now?

A tense psychological thriller about a mother who must keep watch at all times if she wants to keep her family safe—from USA TODAY and #1 national bestselling author Samantha M. Bailey.
A spine-tingling, page-turning novel from USA TODAY and #1 national bestselling author Samantha M. Bailey, Watch Out for Her is psychological suspense at its very best—a chilling look at trust, voyeurism, and obsession in the modern age, and how far we will go to watch out for those we love.]]> 336 Samantha M. Bailey 1982155191 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.58 2022
author: Samantha M. Bailey
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> 23249706 I've gone. I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. I will try to remember to come back.

Etta's greatest unfulfilled wish, living in the rolling farmland of Saskatchewan, is to see the sea. And so, at the age of eighty-two she gets up very early one morning, takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 2,000 miles to water.

Meanwhile her husband Otto waits patiently at home, left only with his memories. Their neighbour Russell remembers too, but differently - and he still loves Etta as much as he did more than fifty years ago, before she married Otto.]]> 277 Emma Hooper 0241003326 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.65 2015
author: Emma Hooper
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> 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 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.53 2024
author: Danzy Senna
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 214268974 Date night goes off the rails in this hilariously insightful take on midlife and marriage when one unhappy couple find themselves at the heart of a crime in progress, from the USA Today bestselling author of The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise.

Jane and Dan have been married for nineteen years, but Jane isn’t sure they’re going to make it to twenty. The mother of two feels unneeded by her teenagers, and her writing career has screeched to an unsuccessful halt. Her one published novel sold under five hundred copies. Worse? She’s pretty sure Dan is cheating on her. When the couple goes to the renowned upscale restaurant La Fin du Monde to celebrate their anniversary, Jane thinks it’s as good a place as any to tell Dan she wants a divorce.

But before they even get to the second course, an underground climate activist group bursts into the dining room. Jane is shocked—and not just because she’s in a hostage situation the likes of which she’s only seen in the movies. Nearly everything the disorganized and bumbling activists say and do is right out of the pages of her failed book. Even Dan (who Jane wasn’t sure even read her book) admits it’s eerily familiar.

Which means Dan and Jane are the only ones who know what’s going to happen next. And they’re the only ones who can stop it. This wasn’t what Jane was thinking of when she said “’til death do us part� all those years ago, but if they can survive this, maybe they can survive anything—even marriage.]]> 368 Colleen Oakley 0593200829 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.76 2025
author: Colleen Oakley
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> 61357120
Henry Hobbes isn't exactly thrilled to have Edith, who he assumes is an elderly widow, dumped on him as a houseguest for the summer. But he'd do almost anything for his niece, who is practically like a sister to him given how close they are in age. Especially since Edith will be working nights and Henry works most days. When he and Edith keep missing each other in person, they begin exchanging notes--short messages at first, then longer letters, sharing increasingly personal parts of their lives.

By the time Henry realizes his mistake--that Edith is actually the brown-eyed beauty he keeps bumping into around town--their hearts are so intertwined he hopes they never unravel. But with her departure date rapidly approaching, and Henry's roots firmly planted at home, Edith must ultimately decide if the adventure of her dreams is the one right in front of her.]]> 373 Becca Kinzer 149646608X Katsmewsings 1 3.60 2023
author: Becca Kinzer
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 1
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:
I really need to pay closer attention to what I’m grabbing from the library. About 80% through this, this book went aggressively Christian. Really put me off (and I’m a practicing Catholic)!
]]> 20613619
She showed me ways of using these simple things � our hands, a pen, and some paper � as both a navigation and expedition device, one that could reliably carry me into my past, deeper into my present, or farther into a place I have come to call "the image world" � a place we all know, even if we don't notice this knowing until someone reminds us of its ever-present existence.

I wasn't quite 20 years old when I started my first notebook. I had no idea that nearly 40 years later, I would not only still be using it as the most reliable route to the thing I've come to call my work, but I'd also be showing others how to use it too, as a place to practice a physical activity � in this case writing and drawing by hand � with a certain state of mind.

This practice can result in what I've come to consider a wonderful side effect: a visual or written image we can call 'a work of art,' although a work of art is not what I'm after when I'm practicing this activity.

What am I after? I'm after what Marilyn Frasca called "being present and seeing what's there."

This book is a collection of bits and pieces from the many notebooks I kept during my first three years of trying to figure out how to teach this practice to my students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison."]]> 200 Lynda Barry 1770461612 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.39 2014
author: Lynda Barry
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> 222631674 From bestselling author John Boyne, a gripping and profound exploration of guilt, blame, trauma, and the human capacity for redemption.

In The Elements, acclaimed Irish novelist John Boyne has created an epic saga that weaves together four interconnected narratives, each representing a different perspective on the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator, and the victim.

The narrative follows a mother on the run from her past, a young soccer star facing a trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and a father on a transformative journey with his son. Each is somehow connected to the next, and as the story unfolds, their lives intersect in unimaginable ways.

Boyne’s most ambitious work yet, The Elements is both an engrossing drama and a moving investigation of why and how we allow crime to occur. With masterful, spellbinding prose, he navigates this complex subject with extraordinary empathy and unflinching honesty. The story resonates on a deeply emotional level, challenging readers to confront their own conceptions of guilt and innocence at every step. Amid the wildly engrossing storytelling, the book ultimately What would you do when faced with the unthinkable?]]> 496 John Boyne 1250410363 Katsmewsings 0 to-read 4.64 2025
author: John Boyne
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 35068830
American Ella Durran has had the same plan for her life since she was thirteen: Study at Oxford. At 24, she’s finally made it to England on a Rhodes Scholarship when she’s offered an unbelievable position in a rising political star’s presidential campaign. With the promise that she’ll work remotely and return to DC at the end of her Oxford year, she’s free to enjoy her Once in a Lifetime Experience. That is until a smart-mouthed local who is too quick with his tongue and his car ruins her shirt and her first day.

When Ella discovers that her English literature course will be taught by none other than that same local, Jamie Davenport, she thinks for the first time that Oxford might not be all she’s envisioned. But a late-night drink reveals a connection she wasn’t anticipating finding and what begins as a casual fling soon develops into something much more when Ella learns Jamie has a life-changing secret.

Immediately, Ella is faced with a seemingly impossible decision: turn her back on the man she’s falling in love with to follow her political dreams or be there for him during a trial neither are truly prepared for. As the end of her year in Oxford rapidly approaches, Ella must decide if the dreams she’s always wanted are the same ones she’s now yearning for.]]> 352 Julia Whelan 0062740652 Katsmewsings 4 3.85 2018
author: Julia Whelan
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
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A lovely exploration of grief.
]]> 195213451
In the heart of Adenashire, where elfish enchantments and dwarven delights rule, Arleta Starstone, a human confectionist works twice as hard perfecting her unique blend of baking and apothecary herbs.

So when an orc neighbor secretly enters her creations into the prestigious Elven Baking Battle, Arleta faces a dilemma.

Being magicless, her participation in the competition could draw more scowls than smiles. And if Arleta wants to prove her talent and establish her culinary reputation, this human will need more than just her pastry craft to sweeten the odds.

While competing, she'll set off on a journey of mouthwatering pastries, self-discovery, heartwarming friendships and romance, while questioning whether winning the Baking Battle is the true prize.

Escape to for a delightful cozy fantasy where every twist is a treat and every turn a step closer to home.]]> 313 J. Penner Katsmewsings 0 to-read 3.89 2023
author: J. Penner
name: Katsmewsings
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/11
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