en-US Thu, 10 Apr 2025 19:56:47 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 226747693 An alchemist and his young nephew hunt down a legend in this profound and unsettling speculative Western, for fans of Karen Russell and Victor LaValle.

Alone in a frontier town in the nineteenth-century Northwest, Gentle Montgomery is grieving his best friend. Liam was an alchemist, killed when he tried to capture a creature that shouldn’t a giant salamander that drives men mad. When Gentle’s teenage nephew Kitt arrives at his doorstep, the two set out together to track the monster down, so they can use its blood in an alchemical formula that will bring Liam back to life.

It's a hard and haunted journey. The salamander produces surreal nightmares and waking dreams of a blighted, burning future. And Gentle and Kitt soon find themselves pursued by a bloodthirsty hunter, a sadistic judge, and a doomsday cult, all of whom have their own plans for the river monster. Armed with nothing but Liam’s alchemical notebooks, they must not only find the salamander but learn to understand it—and the terrifying visions it causes—before it’s too late. And as Gentle struggles to comprehend the creature, his lost friend, his nephew, and his fellow seekers, it becomes clear that the Great Work of the alchemists may pale in comparison to the small work of human connection.

Sheldon Costa’s dark, vivid, and strangely hopeful debut novel is a supernatural adventure through the wilderness of friendship and the rotten heart of the early American empire.]]> 336 Sheldon Costa 1683695054 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.50 2025
author: Sheldon Costa
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213618143 The brilliant detective Ana Dolabra may have finally met her match in the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.

In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.

To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.

Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.

Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.

Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.]]> 465 Robert Jackson Bennett 0593723821 Lynnae 0 currently-reading 4.56 2025
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 127278133 An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.]]> 304 Ferdia Lennon 1250893690 Lynnae 4 4.15 2024
author: Ferdia Lennon
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 208989840 We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.

Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto.

But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.]]> 0 Percival Everett Lynnae 0 currently-reading 4.29 2001
author: Percival Everett
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 71168125 0 Percival Everett Lynnae 4 *4.25 stars 4.25 2021
author: Percival Everett
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves:
review:
*4.25 stars
]]> 58824696 Welcome back to the streets of Sunder City, a darkly imagined world perfect for readers of Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.

AN ANGEL FALLS IN SUNDER CITY�

In a city that lost its magic, an angel falls in a downtown street. His wings are feathered, whole - undeniably magical - the man clearly flew, because he left one hell of a mess when he plummeted into the sidewalk.

But what sent him up? What brought him down? And will the answers help Fetch bring the magic back for good?

Working alongside necromancers, genies, and shadowy secret societies, through the wildest forests and dingiest dive bars, this case will leave its mark on Fetch's body, his soul, and the fate of the world.

Praise for the Fetch Phillips novels:

"Superb... With a lead who would be at home in the pages of a Raymond Chandler or James Ellory novel and a nicely twisty plot, this installment makes a strong case for Arnold's series to enjoy a long run." �Publishers Weekly

"Arnold's universe has everything, including the angst of being human. The perfect story for adult fantasy fans—a tough PI and a murder mystery wrapped around the mysticism of Hogwarts, sprinkled with faerie dust." �Library Journal (starred review)

Fetch Phillips Novels
The Last Smile in Sunder City
Dead Man in a Ditch
One Foot in the Fade]]> 465 Luke Arnold 0356516172 Lynnae 5 —â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�

What's worse than Fetch Phillips without a purpose in life? Fetch Phillips with a purpose in life. Mr. Arnold, you've done it again.

Still letting this marinate so all I have to offer are vibes and themes: desperation, the sunk cost fallacy, holding on to hope with a white knuckle grip, the power of friendship, resentment at people for moving on, the futility of your actions, the perils of industrialization, BIG Sisyphus energy, coming to terms with your own inadequacies and selfish motivations, thinking you're in your self-improvement era but really it's just a manic episode. The E.E. Cummings quote, "I'll live my life if it kills me", comes to mind.

I had a great time with Fetch, my pathetic king. (Even though he was less pathetic in this one I must say, but he was still down bad) I cried unexpectedly AGAIN. I think Arnold gets better with every book and you can see the improvement in each one, particularly in terms of character work. I love that he deviates from a mystery and throws in a quest to keep things fresh � I appreciate when a writer is solid enough in their narrative and what they're doing to be able to completely switch it up without feeling disjointed.

Don't sleep on this series!!]]> 4.46
author: Luke Arnold
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.46
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: fantasy, light-fantasy, magic, monsters, noir, quest
review:
reread 4/7/2025: oprah-shoot-i-wasnt-gonna-cry-here.gif
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�

What's worse than Fetch Phillips without a purpose in life? Fetch Phillips with a purpose in life. Mr. Arnold, you've done it again.

Still letting this marinate so all I have to offer are vibes and themes: desperation, the sunk cost fallacy, holding on to hope with a white knuckle grip, the power of friendship, resentment at people for moving on, the futility of your actions, the perils of industrialization, BIG Sisyphus energy, coming to terms with your own inadequacies and selfish motivations, thinking you're in your self-improvement era but really it's just a manic episode. The E.E. Cummings quote, "I'll live my life if it kills me", comes to mind.

I had a great time with Fetch, my pathetic king. (Even though he was less pathetic in this one I must say, but he was still down bad) I cried unexpectedly AGAIN. I think Arnold gets better with every book and you can see the improvement in each one, particularly in terms of character work. I love that he deviates from a mystery and throws in a quest to keep things fresh � I appreciate when a writer is solid enough in their narrative and what they're doing to be able to completely switch it up without feeling disjointed.

Don't sleep on this series!!
]]> 220292124 He’s a villain looking for a hero rebrand. She’s the marketing genius who can make it happen in this fantastical romantic comedy by the author of the Beasts of Gatamora series.

Over two decades ago, forty-eight young, gifted superheroes fell to Earth and were eventually marketed as opposing heroes and villains. Now, one exceptionally gruff bad guy is looking to hop teams. Hello, PR director Vanessa Theriot.

His real name is Roland Casteel a.k.a. the Pyro. First, swap that with the less incinerating the Wyvern. Next, put him in spandex to highlight that near-godlike body. Finally, give that hero in training a heroine—if Vanessa will play the part in a pretend romance guaranteed to make the city swoon. She’s game. As shy as Vanessa is, it’s her job to be Roland’s very own Lois Lane. Who knew that fake dating would change their worlds?

But falling head over heels for real makes for a dangerous shift in the narrative. A monstrous supervillain is bringing out Roland’s bad side again. This time, it’s to save a woman who, against all the odds, is becoming the human love of his superhero life.]]> 300 Elizabeth Stephens 1662523408 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.43 2025
author: Elizabeth Stephens
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10086782 The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. His tale runs from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten to give Adam and Eve the gift of speech, to the moment when Noah's Ark lands on the dry peak of Ararat. Cain, the despised, the murderer, is Saramago's protagonist.

Condemned to wander forever after he kills his brother Abel, Cain makes his way through the world in the company of a personable donkey. He is a witness to and participant in the stories of Isaac and Abraham, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf, the trials of Job. The rapacious Queen Lilith takes him as her lover. An old man with two sheep on a rope crosses his path. And again and again, Cain encounters a God whose actions seem callous, cruel, and unjust. He confronts Him, he argues with Him. "And one thing we know for certain," Saramago writes, "is that they continued to argue and are arguing still."

A startling book- sensual, funny- in all ways a fitting end to Saramago's extraordinary career.]]> 159 José Saramago 0547419899 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.74 2009
author: José Saramago
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 231014065
She goes on the hunt when the law doesn’t want to get its hands dirty.

Born and bred in the harsh northern winters, Hunter collects bounties on thieves and murderers for a handful of coin, dragging Rip, her animated corpse, behind her. Trust wears thin in the wild Territories, and the law doesn’t always land on the side of justice. Or the side of a necromancer.
Shadowed by the influence of a wealthy Shadesilver baron, Hunter takes on one last job. But instead of an easy payday, Hunter finds something she never expected, something that will tear open old wounds and set her on a path to find justice� for someone else.]]> Tori Tecken 1937363074 Lynnae 0 to-read 5.00
author: Tori Tecken
name: Lynnae
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 230272137 This highly anticipated follow-up to The Will of the Many—one of 2023’s most lauded and bestselling fantasy novels—follows Vis as he grapples with a dangerous secret that could change the course of history across alternate dimensions.


OMNE TRIUM PERFECTUM.

The Hierarchy still call me Vis Telimus. Still hail me as Catenicus. They still, as one, believe they know who I am.

But with all that has happened—with what I fear is coming—I am not sure it matters anymore.

I am no longer one. I won the Iudicium, and lost everything—and now, impossibly, the ancient device beyond the Labyrinth has replicated me across three separate worlds. A different version of myself in each of Obiteum, Luceum, and Res. Three different bodies, three different lives. I have to hide; fight; play politics. I have to train; trust; lie. I have to kill; heal; prove myself again, and again, and again.

I am loved, and hated, and entirely alone.

Above all, though, I need to find answers before it’s too late. To understand the nature of what has happened to me, and why.

I need to find a way to stop the coming Cataclysm, because if all I have learned is true, I may be the only one who can.]]> 736 James Islington 1982141239 Lynnae 0 to-read 0.0 2025
author: James Islington
name: Lynnae
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220772908 New Achievement! Total, Utter Failure.

You failed a quest less than five minutes after you received it. Now that’s talent.

A floating fortress occupied by warrior gnomes. A castle made of sand. A derelict submarine guarded by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt surrounded by lethal traps.

It was supposed to be easy. One bubble. Four castles. Fifteen days. Capture each one, and the stairwell is unlocked.

Here's the thing. It's never easy. Carl and his team can't go it alone. Not this time. They must rely on the help of the low-level, I-can't-believe-these-idiots-are-still-alive crawlers trapped in the bubble with them. But can they be trusted?

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the fifth floor of the dungeon.]]> 608 Matt Dinniman 0593955978 Lynnae 4 NOW we’re cooking with gas!! 4.53 2021
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
NOW we’re cooking with gas!!
]]> 208474799
Magic, mayhem, and a marauding dragon combine for extraordinary fun in this cheeky Discworld novel from New York Times bestselling author Terry Pratchett.

Insurrection is in the air in the city of Ankh-Morpork. The Haves and Have-Nots are about to face off. Again.

It’s old news to Captain Sam Vimes of the city’s ramshackle Night Watch. But this time, something is different—the Have-Nots have found the key to a dormant, lethal weapon that even they can’t fully control, and they’re about to unleash a campaign of terror on the city.

Long believed extinct, a draco nobilis can now be seen patrolling the skies above Discworld's greatest city. Not only does this unwelcome visitor have a nasty habit of charbroiling everything in its path, but it’s also soon crowned King.

Can Vimes, Captain Carrot, and the rest of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch restore order (before it's burned to a crisp)?

The Discworld novels can be read in any order but Guards! Guards! is the 1st book in the City Watch collection and the 8th Discworld book.

The City Watch collection in order:

Guards! Guards!
Men at Arms
Feet of Clay
Jingo
The Fifth Element
Night Watch
Thud!
Snuff]]> 353 Terry Pratchett Lynnae 0 to-read 4.40 1989
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004893
As they attempt to evade the boy's increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first, Jess thinks she understands what they're up against, but she's about to learn there's more to these surreal and grisly events than she could've ever imagined.

And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.]]> 304 Nat Cassidy 125035434X Lynnae 0 to-read 4.57 2025
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55835660 AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK

[Moore's] careful balance of the hard-bitten with the heartfelt is what elevates Long Bright River from entertaining page-turner to a book that makes you want to call someone you love." - The New York Times Book Review

This is police procedural and a thriller par excellence, one in which the city of Philadelphia itself is a character (think Boston and Mystic River). But it's also a literary tale narrated by a strong woman with a richly drawn personal life - powerful and genre-defying." - People

A thoughtful, powerful novel by a writer who displays enormous compassion for her characters. Long Bright River is an outstanding crime novel... I absolutely loved it.
--Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Girl on the Train

Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then one of them goes missing.

In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat. They don't speak anymore, but Mickey never stops worrying about her sibling.

Then Kacey disappears, suddenly, at the same time that a mysterious string of murders begins in Mickey's district, and Mickey becomes dangerously obsessed with finding the culprit--and her sister--before it's too late.

Alternating its present-day mystery with the story of the sisters' childhood and adolescence, Long Bright River is at once heart-pounding and heart-wrenching: a gripping suspense novel that is also a moving story of sisters, addiction, and the formidable ties that persist between place, family, and fate.]]> 497 Liz Moore 0525540687 Lynnae 3
a much better family saga/sister story than it is a mystery/thriller. moore didn’t put twists in the story so much as put wildly telegraphed false things into the story just to disprove them two pages later, and there was no explanation for why the person who did it dun it � you find out and it’s like ok…]]> 4.16 2020
author: Liz Moore
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: contemporary, family-saga, mystery, police-procedural, thriller
review:
*3.25 stars

a much better family saga/sister story than it is a mystery/thriller. moore didn’t put twists in the story so much as put wildly telegraphed false things into the story just to disprove them two pages later, and there was no explanation for why the person who did it dun it � you find out and it’s like ok�
]]> 211003787 From New York Times bestseller and Edgar-Award nominee Elle Cosimano, comes Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave—the hugely anticipated next installment in the fan-favorite Finlay Donovan series.

Finlay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet . . . but at least there's not a body in her backyard.

Finlay Donovan and her nanny/partner-in-crime, Vero, have not always gotten along with Finlay’s elderly neighbor, Mrs. Haggerty, the community busybody and president of the neighborhood watch. But when a dead body is discovered in her backyard, Mrs. Haggerty needs their help. At first a suspect, Mrs. Haggerty is cleared by the police, but her house remains an active crime scene. She has nowhere to go . . . except Finlay’s house, right across the street.

Finlay and Vero have no interest in getting involved in another murder case—or sacrificing either of their bedrooms. After all, they’ve dealt with enough murders over the last four months to last a lifetime and they both would much rather share their beds with someone else.]]> 320 Elle Cosimano 1250337348 Lynnae 4 *3.5 stars 4.16 2025
author: Elle Cosimano
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: contemporary, cozy-mystery, fiction, humor
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 211721809 Welcome to the Gun Show!

The top ten list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face.

The Iron Tangle. An impossibly-complicated subway system built out of the world's subterranean railway systems, all combined and then tied together into a knot. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations are less than safe, and the exit is always just a few stops away.

But there is hope. For the first time, the crawlers are all working together. The loot is better than ever. And the secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly-useless book. Welcome, crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon.]]> 544 Matt Dinniman 0593820282 Lynnae 4
carl is the most dramatic bitch in this dungeon fr (affectionate?) ]]> 4.43 2021
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: fantasy, sci-fi, adventure, aliens, apocalyptic, humor, monsters
review:
*3.5 stars

carl is the most dramatic bitch in this dungeon fr (affectionate?)
]]> 30139395
But behind the facade of respectable middle-age lies a turbulent and violent past. For Tom Badgerlock is actually FitzChivalry Farseer, bastard scion of the Farseer line, convicted user of Beast-magic, and assassin. A man who has risked much for his king and lost more�

On a shelf in his den sits a triptych carved in memory stone of a man, a wolf and a fool. Once, these three were inseparable friends: Fitz, Nighteyes and the Fool. But one is long dead, and one long-missing.

Then one Winterfest night a messenger arrives to seek out Fitz, but mysteriously disappears, leaving nothing but a blood-trail. What was the message? Who was the sender? And what has happened to the messenger?

Suddenly Fitz's violent old life erupts into the peace of his new world, and nothing and no one is safe.]]> 630 Robin Hobb 0008140278 Lynnae 4 *3.5 stars 4.50 2014
author: Robin Hobb
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: epic-fantasy, fantasy, classic-fantasy, magic
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 58318502 A walking scandal surviving on little more than wits, whisky, and wicked skills in the bedchamber, Benedict Chatham, the new Marquess of Rutherford, is at the end of his rope. Deeply in debt and down to his last farthing, he must marry nothing short of an absolute fortune, or risk utter ruin.

Must marry for money�
Enter Miss Charlotte Lancaster, unfashionably tall heiress to just such a fortune and a clumsy, redheaded disaster in her five London seasons. While she dreams of leaving England for a life of trade in America, her father schemes to trade her dowry for a title—and Marchioness of Rutherford will do nicely. Charlotte wants her independence, not a husband, and certainly not a disreputable devil who renders her weak and wobbly with a single scorching glance. But she’s a practical sort, and a year with the devil might buy her freedom � provided she can resist his seductive charms. That shouldn’t prove a problem, for he could not possibly want someone like her, and the feeling is mutual. Really. It is.

Love grows in the most unexpected places�
When her father demands a startling price for his daughter’s hand—one year of fidelity and sobriety—Chatham must change his libertine ways � at least temporarily. And when he does, Charlotte begins to see him in a new light—not as the scandalous charmer she married, but as the husband she just might adore.]]> 320 Elisa Braden Lynnae 5
now see, this is why you gotta give authors a second chance sometimes!]]> 4.38 2016
author: Elisa Braden
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: dislike-to-lovers, forced-proximity, pining, grumpy-sunshine, marriage-of-convenience, historical-romance, romance, erotica, slow-burn
review:
*4.5 stars

now see, this is why you gotta give authors a second chance sometimes!
]]> 58318632 What a girl wants
Miss Viola Darling always gets what she wants. Always. And what she wants more than anything is to marry James Kilbrenner, the Earl of Tannenbrook. She’s fallen hard for the giant, taciturn, surly brute, and she positively will have no other. The problem? He’s not interested. Not even a little. But Viola cannot afford to lose. And she has her heart set on James. If only he will bend to a bit of persuasion.

Is an earl like no other
James Kilbrenner knows how determined the entirely-too-beautiful Miss Darling can be—the daft woman cornered him at a perfectly respectable dinner and mangled his cravat before he could escape. He has no desire to marry, less desire to be pursued, and will certainly not kiss her kissable lips until they are both breathless, no matter how tempted he may be.

And only the right one will do
Thrown in her path by a meddling marchioness, James finds himself under sensual siege from a tiny, flirtatious sprite who puts both his heart and his vow to remain unwed at risk. And when scandal looms, he learns the hard way that a man can resist only so long before the indomitable Miss Darling gets her way.]]> 300 Elisa Braden Lynnae 3 *3.5 stars 4.25 2016
author: Elisa Braden
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: erotica, forced-proximity, grumpy-sunshine, pining, marriage-of-convenience, historical-romance, romance, insta-love
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 223603892 Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle toward self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understood themselves.

Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.]]> 9 James Baldwin 0593950445 Lynnae 0 4.00 1953
author: James Baldwin
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: audiobook, classic, fiction, religion, lgbt, family-saga, historical-fiction
review:

]]> 37677977
With her partner, the intimidating policeman Juan Manuel Vargas, Alicia discovers a possible clue—a rare book by the author Victor Mataix hidden in Valls� office in his Madrid mansion. Valls was the director of the notorious Montjuic Prison in Barcelona during World War II where several writers were imprisoned, including David Martín and Victor Mataix. Traveling to Barcelona on the trail of these writers, Alicia and Vargas meet with several booksellers, including Juan Sempere, who knew her parents.

As Alicia and Vargas come closer to finding Valls, they uncover a tangled web of kidnappings and murders tied to the Franco regime, whose corruption is more widespread and horrifying than anyone imagined. Alicia’s courageous and uncompromising search for the truth puts her life in peril. Only with the help of a circle of devoted friends will she emerge from the dark labyrinths of Barcelona and its history into the light of the future.

In this haunting new novel, Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn proves yet again that he is a masterful storyteller and pays homage to the world of books, to his ingenious creation of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, and to that magical bridge between literature and our lives.]]> 805 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn 0062668692 Lynnae 5 4.46 2016
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: family-saga, fiction, gothic, historical-fiction, mystery, noir, political-fiction, thriller, war
review:
it was everything, it was all of it
]]> 219206262 She only ever caught one gentleman’s fancy, the dishonorable Jeremy Vance who made her head spin as he singled her out for attention at the balls and assemblies. Her worldly chaperone warned her he was making a May game of her, but Emmeline had not heeded her warning. Consequently, her dreams were dashed, when at the close of the season, Jeremy announced his engagement to another.
Ten years later, their paths cross again in Bath. Emmeline is older and wiser, and a good deal poorer, and Jeremy is divorced. There is absolutely no chance of him making a fool of her again with his shocking offer of marriage. Is there?

A Foolish Flirtation is a stand alone romance set in Victorian England. It is over 130,000 words long. Please do not purchase if you are offended by strong language and or sex scenes.]]> 511 Alice Coldbreath Lynnae 4 4.35 2024
author: Alice Coldbreath
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: romance, second-chance-romance, historical-romance, marriage-of-convenience, single-parent-romance
review:

]]> 11301989
1. The Hunger Games
2. Catching Fire
3. Mockingjay]]> 1187 Suzanne Collins Lynnae 0 to-read 4.51 2010
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 226943506 In an isolated desert town, a young woman seeking a fresh start is confronted by ancient gods, malevolent supernatural forces, and eccentric neighbours. A witty horror-tinged fantasy, perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Chuck Tingle, and Rachel Harrison.

When Selena travels to the remote desert town of Quartz Creek in search of her estranged Aunt Amelia, she is desperate and short of options. Fleeing an unhappy marriage, she has exactly twenty-seven dollars to her name, and her only friend in the world is her dog, Copper.

On arrival, Selena learns Amelia is dead. But the inhabitants of Quartz Creek are only too happy to have a new resident. Out of money and ideas, Selena sees no harm staying in her aunt's lovely house for a few weeks, tending to her garden and enjoying the strange, desolate beauty of the desert. The people are odd, but friendly, and eager to help Selena settle into her new home.

But Quartz Creek's inhabitants share their town with others, old gods and spirits whose claim to the land long predates their human neighbours. Selena finds herself pursued by disturbing apparitions, visitations that come in the night and seem to want something from her.

Aunt Amelia owed a debt. Now her god has come to collect.]]> T. Kingfisher 1662525095 Lynnae 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Lynnae
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11451486 ¶ŮĂ©łŮ±đł¦łŮľ±´Ç˛Ô in her path as a teenager. Claire has grabbed this destiny with both hands but fate has been cruel. Twenty years later detection is her religion and ¶ŮĂ©łŮ±đł¦łŮľ±´Ç˛Ô is her Bible.

Now she is summoned to New Orleans, because someone has heard she is "the best," to search for an upstanding citizen lost in the miasma of Katrina. The battered and beggared New Orleans, second only to Claire, is the star of this story. Thus the title.

The style is slick, gripping, and mystical, as strange and as easy as the character of Claire DeWitt. You may be repelled by her earthiness or mesmerized by her off-the-wall devotion to her calling.

Though planned as the beginning of a series, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead is itself a complete novel. (less)]]> 289 Sara Gran Lynnae 0 to-read 3.80 2011
author: Sara Gran
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222419255
It’s the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor, back home in Portland, Oregon, after a tour in Vietnam, is struggling to quell his anger and keep his drinking in check, keep his young marriage intact, and keep the nightmares away. Things get even more complicated when his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, is sent across the country to live with Duane and his wife Heidi. But slowly, carefully, guided by Heidi’s love and patience, the three of them are building a family.

Then Minor crosses the wrong man: John Varley, a criminal with a bloody history and a trail of bodies behind him. Varley, who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In an act of brutal retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia filled with rage. The two of them are left united by only one thing: the desire for vengeance.

As their quest brings them into the dark orbit of immortal, undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men drawn to Varley’s ferocity, Minor and Julia follow his path of destruction from the gritty alleyways of 1970s Portland to the desolate highways of the Northwest and the snow-lashed plains of North Dakota—only to have Varley turn his vicious power back on them. Who will prevail, who will survive, and what remains of our humanity when our thirst for revenge trumps everything else?]]> 320 Keith Rosson 0593733401 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.68
author: Keith Rosson
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.68
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 27271705
For Forrester, the decision to accept this mission is even more difficult, as he is only recently married to Sophie, the wife he had perhaps never expected to find. Sophie is pregnant with their first child, and does not relish the prospect of a year in a military barracks while her husband embarks upon the journey of a lifetime. She has genuine cause to worry about her pregnancy, and it is with deep uncertainty about what their future holds that she and her husband part.

A story shot through with a darker but potent strand of the magic that illuminated The Snow Child, and with the sweep and insight that characterizes Rose Tremain's The Colour, this novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Eowyn Ivey singles her out as a major literary talent.

Set again in the Alaskan landscape that she bought to stunningly vivid life in The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey's second novel is a breathtaking story of discovery and adventure, set at the end of the nineteenth century, and of a marriage tested by a closely held secret.]]> 432 Eowyn Ivey 0316242837 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.14 2016
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 228959442
Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted to begin with.

A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing: a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every load-bearing beam and fine marble tile with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. But now Deniau’s been dead a year, and Rose House is locked up tight, as commanded by the architect’s will: all his possessions and files and sketches are confined in its archives, and their only keeper is Rose House itself. Rose House, and one other.

Dr. Selene Gisil, one of Deniau’s former protégé, is permitted to come into Rose House once a year. She alone may open Rose House’s vaults, look at drawings and art, talk with Rose House’s animating intelligence all she likes. Until this week, Dr. Gisil was the only person whom Rose House spoke to.

But even an animate intelligence that haunts a house has some failsafes common to all AIs. For instance: all AIs must report the presence of a dead body to the nearest law enforcement agency.

There is a dead person in Rose House. The house says so. It is not Basit Deniau, and it is not Dr. Gisil. It is someone else. Rose House, having completed its duty of care and informed Detective Maritza Smith of the China Lake police precinct that there is in fact a dead person inside it, dead of unnatural causes—has shut up.

No one can get inside Rose House, except Dr. Gisil. Dr. Gisil was not in North America when Rose House called the China Lake precinct. But someone did. And someone died there. And someone may be there still.]]> 128 Arkady Martine 1645240347 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.28 2023
author: Arkady Martine
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33839294 New York Times bestselling author of the Lady Julia Grey mysteries...

London, 1887 . . Victorian adventuress and butterfly hunter Veronica Speedwell receives an invitation to visit the Curiosity Club, a ladies-only establishment for daring and intrepid women. There she meets the mysterious Lady Sundridge, who begs her to take on an impossible task saving society art patron Miles Ramsforth from execution. Accused of the brutal murder of his artist mistress Artemisia, Ramsforth will face the hangman's noose in a week s time if Veronica cannot find the real killer.

But Lady Sundridge is not all that she seems and unmasking her true identity is only the first of the many secrets Veronica must uncover. Together with her natural historian colleague Stoker, Veronica races against time to find the true murderer a ruthless villain who not only took Artemisia s life in cold blood but is happy to see Ramsforth hang for the crime.

From a Bohemian artists colony to a royal palace to a subterranean grotto with a decadent history, the investigation proves to be a very perilous undertaking indeed....]]> 12 Deanna Raybourn Lynnae 5 —â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�-
Deanna Raybourn got me again! Veronica and Stoker have such a hold on me, they just make me chuckle and I love them so much. (Im)patiently waiting for them to confess their love for each other in the middle of one of their numerous fights. Book 2 is definitely more mystery-heavy because we don't have to spend half of the book developing the Veronica-Stoker dynamic. Plus, we get to meet Stoker's brothers which is very fun!

I can also tell that Raybourn is building up some tender emotional stuff what with Veronica's parentage and sense of self and Stoker's blacksheepiness and general melancholy/slight alcoholism. These two both play it close to the vest and we only scratch the surface of how they really feel and how they've been hurt by their families in the past, but you can tell it's going to be fraught. I'm pleasantly surprised that Raybourn is able to fit such tender moments and genuine meditations in an otherwise light and fast-paced series, so shoutout to her.

Another 5 stars!]]> 3.99 2017
author: Deanna Raybourn
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: cozy-mystery, grumpy-sunshine, historical-fiction
review:
reread, 3/5/2025: tiberius templeton-vane, you might have something i want idk…�
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�-
Deanna Raybourn got me again! Veronica and Stoker have such a hold on me, they just make me chuckle and I love them so much. (Im)patiently waiting for them to confess their love for each other in the middle of one of their numerous fights. Book 2 is definitely more mystery-heavy because we don't have to spend half of the book developing the Veronica-Stoker dynamic. Plus, we get to meet Stoker's brothers which is very fun!

I can also tell that Raybourn is building up some tender emotional stuff what with Veronica's parentage and sense of self and Stoker's blacksheepiness and general melancholy/slight alcoholism. These two both play it close to the vest and we only scratch the surface of how they really feel and how they've been hurt by their families in the past, but you can tell it's going to be fraught. I'm pleasantly surprised that Raybourn is able to fit such tender moments and genuine meditations in an otherwise light and fast-paced series, so shoutout to her.

Another 5 stars!
]]> 15818410
His appearance plunges Fermín and Daniel into a dangerous adventure that will take them back to the 1940s and the early days of Franco’s dictatorship. The terrifying events of that time launch them on a search for the truth that will put into peril everything they love, and will ultimately transform their lives.
--back cover]]> 278 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn 006220629X Lynnae 4 *3.5 stars 4.02 2011
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: fiction, gothic, historical-fiction, magical-realism, mystery, noir
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 8633604 London's most notorious rogue—decadent, depraved, forbidden...

The ladies of the ton won't stop whispering about deliciously wicked Jack Dodger—once a thieving street urchin, now the wealthy owner of London's most exclusive gentleman's club. There's no pleasure he hasn't enjoyed, no debauchery the handsome scoundrel won't provide for the lords who flock to his house of carnal intrigue.

London's most virtuous lady—honorable, uncorrupted, and all too human...

Olivia, Duchess of Lovingdon, would never associate with such a rogue. So when Jack is named sole heir to the duke's personal possessions, the beautiful, well-bred lady is outraged. Now, Olivia is forced to share her beloved home with this despicable man.

Caught between the devil and desire...

But Olivia's icy disdain is no match for Jack's dangerous charm. His touch awakens desire. His kiss demands surrender. She will struggle to bar Jack from her heart...but her body, coveting divine release, will not let her bar him from her bed.]]> 385 Lorraine Heath Lynnae 3 *3.5 stars 4.19 2008
author: Lorraine Heath
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: dislike-to-lovers, forced-proximity, historical-romance, romance, single-parent-romance, slow-burn
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 212393364
The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive.

They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose.

Carl still has no pants.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. For Carl and Donut, it's anything but a game.]]> 384 Matt Dinniman 0593820266 Lynnae 3 4.47 2021
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: adventure, aliens, apocalyptic, fantasy, humor, monsters, quest, sci-fi, single-setting
review:

]]> 38355440 �Outlander meets Camelot� (Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers) in the first book of an exciting historical trilogy that reveals the untold story of Languoreth—a powerful and, until now, tragically forgotten queen of sixth-century Scotland—twin sister of the man who inspired the legendary character of Merlin.

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

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

“Moving, thrilling, and ultimately spellbinding� (BookPage), The Lost Queen brings this remarkable woman to life—rescuing her from obscurity, and reaffirming her place at the center of the most enduring legends of all time. “Moving, thrilling, and ultimately spellbinding, The Lost Queen is perfect for readers of historical fiction like The Clan of the Cave Bear and Wolf Hall, and for lovers of fantasy like Outlander and The Mists of Avalon� (BookPage).]]> 527 Signe Pike 1501191411 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.14 2018
author: Signe Pike
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 24427052
Dragons will fly over Kelsingra once more

Attacked by hunters, Tintaglia is dying of her wounds. If she perishes, her ancestral memories will die with her and the dragons in the ancient city of Kelsingra will lose the secret knowledge they need to survive.

The dragon keepers immerse themselves in the dangerously addictive memory-stone records of the city in the hope of recovering the lost Elderling magic that once allowed humans and dragons to co-exist.

But war is coming: war between dragons and those who would destroy them.]]> 535 Robin Hobb 0008154465 Lynnae 4 *3.5 stars 4.07 2013
author: Robin Hobb
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: classic-fantasy, epic-fantasy, fantasy, survival, magic, lgbt
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 26841446
The dragon keepers and fledgling dragons have discovered a route to the lost city of Kelsingra but there is one problem: they need to be able to fly to cross the treacherous waters and enter the fabled city. At first, only a few dragons are willing to try � the others are either too ashamed of their deformed wings and feeble muscles or too proud to risk failure and humiliation.

But the rewards waiting at Kelsingra for those brave enough to take to the air are worth more than they could possibly imagine. This was a city built for dragons and their keepers. Alise Finbok is overwhelmed by the treasures she finds there, and spends hours carefully uncovering wonder after wonder, recording her findings for posterity. She knows the knowledge will change everything the world thought about dragons and the Elderlings.

Yet rumours of the city’s discovery have floated down the Rain Wild River and reached envious ears in Bingtown and beyond. Adventurers, pirates and fortune hunters are coming in droves to pillage what they can from the city. Will the dragons, only just finding their strength, and their keepers, who are changing in their own mysterious ways, be able to fend them off?

And what has happened to Tintaglia, the dragon-mother who started it all? Has she really abandoned her offspring forever? Or will she too return to seek the riches of Kelsingra…]]> 425 Robin Hobb 0008154414 Lynnae 3 *3.5 stars 3.97 2011
author: Robin Hobb
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: fantasy, classic-fantasy, political-fantasy, epic-fantasy, survival
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 26841427
One of the most gifted fantasy authors writing today, New York Times bestselling author Robin Hobb has dazzled readers with brilliantly imaginative, emotionally resonant, and compulsively readable tales set in far-flung realms not unlike our own. In this enthralling new novel, she returns to the territory of her beloved Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies with a story of dragons and humans, return and rebirth, and the search for meaning, belonging, and home.

For years, the Trader cities valiantly battled their enemies, the Chalcedeans. But they could not have staved off invasion without the powerful dragon Tintaglia. In return, the Traders promised to help her serpents migrate up the Rain Wild River after a long exile at sea--to find a safe haven and, Tintaglia hopes, to restore her species. But too much time has passed, and the newly hatched dragons are damaged and weak, and many die. The few who survive cannot use their wings; earthbound, they are powerless to hunt and vulnerable to human predators willing to kill them for the fabled healing powers of dragon flesh.

But Tintaglia has vanished and the Traders are weary of the labor and expense of tending useless dragons. The Trader leadership fears that if it stops providing for the young dragons, the hungry and neglected creatures will rampage--or die along the river's acidic muddy banks. To avert catastrophe, the dragons decree a move even farther up the treacherous river to Kelsingra, their ancient, mythical homeland whose mysterious location is locked deep within the dragons' uncertain ancestral memories.

To ensure their safe passage, the Traders recruit a disparate group of young people to care for the damaged creatures and escort them to their new home. Among them is Thymara, an unschooled forest girl of sixteen, and Alise, a wealthy Trader's wife trapped in a loveless marriage, who attaches herself to the expedition as a dragon expert. The two women share a deep kinship with the Thymara can instinctively communicate with them, and Alise, captivated by their beauty and majesty, has devoted her life to studying them.

Embarking on an arduous journey that holds no promise of return, the band of humans and dragons must make their way along the toxic and inhospitable Rain Wild River--an extraordinary odyssey that will teach them lessons about themselves and one another, as they experience hardships, betrayals, and joys beyond their wildest dreams.]]> 560 Robin Hobb 0008154392 Lynnae 4
Taking off points for repetitiveness in the first 2/3rds of the book but I couldn’t put this down for some reason??? (I know the reason, it’s Leftrin and Alise) ]]> 3.89 2009
author: Robin Hobb
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: classic-fantasy, epic-fantasy, fantasy, fantasy-romance, forbidden-love, lgbt, magic, quest, romance, maritime
review:
*3.75 stars

Taking off points for repetitiveness in the first 2/3rds of the book but I couldn’t put this down for some reason??? (I know the reason, it’s Leftrin and Alise)
]]> 7943633
When another killer begins snatching teenage girls off the streets, Archie has to pull himself together to head up a new task force, but even then he can't stop him without getting information from Gretchen—an encounter that may destroy him.

With Susan Ward, a hungry young newspaper reporter, profiling Archie and his team, Archie, the killer, and Gretchen enter into a dark and deadly game. Each novel in Chelsea Cain's scorching series leaves readers wanting more of the twisted and destructive relationship introduced in Heartsick.]]> 324 Chelsea Cain 0312657811 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.93 2007
author: Chelsea Cain
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 48615720 From the award-winning author of Wonder Valley and Visitation Street comes a serial killer story like you’ve never seen before—a literary thriller of female empowerment and social change

In West Adams, a rapidly changing part of South Los Angeles, they’re referred to as “these women.” These women on the corner … These women in the club � These women who won’t stop asking questions � These women who got what they deserved …�

In her masterful new novel, Ivy Pochoda creates a kaleidoscope of loss, power, and hope featuring five very different women whose lives are steeped in danger and anguish. They’re connected by one man and his deadly obsession, though not all of them know that yet. There’s Dorian, still adrift after her daughter’s murder remains unsolved; Julianna, a young dancer nicknamed Jujubee, who lives hard and fast, resisting anyone trying to slow her down; Essie, a brilliant vice cop who sees a crime pattern emerging where no one else does; Marella, a daring performance artist whose work has long pushed boundaries but now puts her in peril; and Anneke, a quiet woman who has turned a willfully blind eye to those around her for far too long. The careful existence they have built for themselves starts to crumble when two murders rock their neighborhood.

Written with beauty and grit, tension and grace, These Women is a glorious display of storytelling, a once-in-a-generation novel.]]> 352 Ivy Pochoda 0062656392 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.86 2020
author: Ivy Pochoda
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54122087
Rumour has it that Fetch is only one who can bring magic back into the world. So when a man is murdered in a way that can only be explained as magical, Fetch is brought in on the case. A case which just might unearth things best left buried...

This sequel to The Last Smile in Sunder City follows the adventures of Fetch Phillips - a character destined to be loved by readers of Ben Aaronovitch, Jim Butcher and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.]]> 448 Luke Arnold 0356512916 Lynnae 5 —â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�-
Luke Arnold has never heard of Second Book Syndrome, that's not a concept he's familiar with and it has never entered his consciousness.

Dead Man in a Ditch was SO good and a huge improvement from the first book (even if there wasn't a whole lot to improve on in my opinion. Now that Arnold has gotten the Sunder City lore out of the way and established who Fetch is as a character, he really gets into the good stuff with Dead Man and what he's done...it's a story, it's a narrative, it's a moment and really well done! This isn't just some actor trying his hand at writing in his free time, the man is talented! He certainly gives good noir.

The themes of hope, hopelessness, and redemption are even better in this book and I did cry at one point, the rumors are true. We get a steadily compelling mystery, character development and character regression, a chorus of the saddest and most downtrodden people you have ever met just trying to survive, anti-capitalist sentiments and anti-industrial rebellion, and banger lines. I could write a thesis on Fetch and his characterization based on Dead Man's events alone.

You just have to read it.]]> 4.30 2020
author: Luke Arnold
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: fantasy, magic, noir, light-fantasy, mystery, urban-fantasy, monsters
review:
reread, 2/20/25: i didn’t cry this time but i did �️ fetch, get behind me!!!
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�-
Luke Arnold has never heard of Second Book Syndrome, that's not a concept he's familiar with and it has never entered his consciousness.

Dead Man in a Ditch was SO good and a huge improvement from the first book (even if there wasn't a whole lot to improve on in my opinion. Now that Arnold has gotten the Sunder City lore out of the way and established who Fetch is as a character, he really gets into the good stuff with Dead Man and what he's done...it's a story, it's a narrative, it's a moment and really well done! This isn't just some actor trying his hand at writing in his free time, the man is talented! He certainly gives good noir.

The themes of hope, hopelessness, and redemption are even better in this book and I did cry at one point, the rumors are true. We get a steadily compelling mystery, character development and character regression, a chorus of the saddest and most downtrodden people you have ever met just trying to survive, anti-capitalist sentiments and anti-industrial rebellion, and banger lines. I could write a thesis on Fetch and his characterization based on Dead Man's events alone.

You just have to read it.
]]> 128889031 Excellent Book 304 Dennis Tafoya Lynnae 5 crime, fiction, thriller 4.00 2009
author: Dennis Tafoya
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: crime, fiction, thriller
review:

]]> 19887669
The year is 1919. The McNaughton Corporation is the pinnacle of American industry. They built airships that crossed the seas. Guns that won the Great War. And above all, they built the city of tomorrow, dominated by the immense McNaughton Tower. But something is rotten at the heart of Evesden and one man must uncover its dark secret before it all goes up in flames.

Caught between the union and the company, between the police and the victims, McNaughton investigator Cyril Hayes must find the truth behind the city of the future. Because if he doesn't . . . he's history.]]> 480 Robert Jackson Bennett Lynnae 3 *3.5 stars 3.96 2009
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: aliens, noir, sci-fi, spy, thriller, historical-fiction, magical-realism, mystery
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 127283729 Celebrated author Sofia Samatar presents a mystical, revolutionary space adventure for the exhausted dreamer in this brilliant science fiction novella tackling the carceral state and violence embedded in the ivory tower while embodying the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin.

"Can the University be a place of both training and transformation?"

The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out amongst the stars.

His whole world changes―literally―when he is yanked "upstairs" to meet the woman he will come to call “professor.� The boy is no longer one of the Chained, she tells him, and he has been gifted an opportunity to be educated at the ship’s university alongside the elite.

The woman has spent her career striving for acceptance and validation from her colleagues in the hopes of reaching a brighter future, only to fall short at every turn.

Together, the boy and the woman will learn from each other to grasp the design of the chains designed to fetter them both, and are the key to breaking free. They will embark on a transformation―and redesign the entire world.]]> 88 Sofia Samatar 1250881811 Lynnae 5 sci-fi, novella, dystopian *4.5 stars 3.75 2024
author: Sofia Samatar
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: sci-fi, novella, dystopian
review:
*4.5 stars
]]> 66178798 John Henry Days and The Intuitionist comes a new, brisk, comic tour de force about identity, history, and the adhesive bandage industry

When the citizens of Winthrop needed a new name for their town, they did what anyone would do—they hired a consultant.

The protagonist of Apex Hides the Hurt is a nomenclature consultant. If you want just the right name for your new product, whether it be automobile or antidepressant, sneaker or spoon, he’s the man to get the job done. Wardrobe lack pizzazz? Come to the Outfit Outlet. Always the wallflower at social gatherings? Try Loquacia.

And of course, whenever you take a fall, reach for Apex, because Apex Hides the Hurt. Apex is his crowning achievement, the multicultural bandage that has revolutionized the adhesive bandage industry. “Flesh-colored� be damned—no matter what your skin tone is—Apex will match it, or your money back.

After leaving his job (following a mysterious misfortune), his expertise is called upon by the town of Winthrop. Once there, he meets the town council, who will try to sway his opinion over the coming days.

Lucky Aberdeen, the millionaire software pioneer and hometown-boy-made-good, wants the name changed to something that will reflect the town’s capitalist aspirations, attracting new businesses and revitalizing the community. Who could argue with that?

Albie Winthrop, beloved son of the town’s aristocracy, thinks Winthrop is a perfectly good name, and can’t imagine what the fuss is about.

Regina Goode, the mayor, is a descendent of the black settlers who founded the town, and has her own secret agenda for what the name should be.

Our expert must decide the outcome, with all its implications for the town’s future. Which name will he choose? Or perhaps he will devise his own? And what’s with his limp, anyway?

Apex Hides the Hurt brilliantly and wryly satirizes our contemporary culture, where memory and history are subsumed by the tides of marketing.]]> 1 Colson Whitehead 1664469885 Lynnae 2 2.00 2006
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Lynnae
average rating: 2.00
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: audiobook, contemporary, fiction
review:

]]> 203578847 The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive―the iconic epic fantasy masterpiece that has sold more than 10 million copies, from acclaimed bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

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

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

At the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]> 1344 Brandon Sanderson 1250319188 Lynnae 3 4.36 2024
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: fantasy, epic-fantasy, quest, road-trip, war, magic, military-sff
review:

]]> 202542162
There’s only one catch . . . she didn’t realize chasing after her dream might cause someone else to lose hold of their own.

Ranar never actually wanted to inherit the family business. When Bloomerang, an online flower conglomerate, opens one of their soulless flower factories in Cambric Creek, Ranar knows it’s only a matter of time before he’s forced to close the door on his family’s flower shop for good. It doesn’t matter how pretty the sylvan owner is or how friendly she seems � she represents everything wrong in the industry, in his world. She’s bound to put him out of business eventually . . . but he can make her regret it first.

Sumi is positive there is room for two flower shops in Cambric Creek, if only the owner of The Perfect Petal wasn’t such a rude, condescending, infuriatingly handsome jerk. When she joins an online chat server for florists, discovering The Perfect Petal’s owner is chatting there as well, she decides it’s the perfect opportunity to discover his weaknesses and take him down . . . if she doesn’t wind up falling for him first.

He Loves Me Not is a high heat standalone monster romance in the Cambric Creek universe. One does not need prior knowledge of the world to enjoy.]]> 289 C.M. Nascosta Lynnae 3 3.35 2025
author: C.M. Nascosta
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: contemporary, dislike-to-lovers, grumpy-sunshine, humor, monster-romance, romance, single-parent-romance, slow-burn
review:

]]> 208209822
What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina during a global plague and then she was expected to carry on like everything was normal—but was this normal, and had she or anything ever been normal? Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases—Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing—through luminous, laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more. No one writes like Jenny Slate.]]> 240 Jenny Slate 0316263931 Lynnae 4 essays, memoir, non-fiction 3.72 2024
author: Jenny Slate
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: essays, memoir, non-fiction
review:

]]> 218200640 🎧Listening Length = 6 hours and 4 minutes

James Baldwin's classic groundbreaking novel has a new introduction, and new audiobook edition narrated by award-winning actor Matt Bomer.

Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni. With sharp, probing insight, James Baldwin's classic narrative delves into the mystery of love and tells a deeply moving story that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.]]> James Baldwin Lynnae 4 my goodness 4.38 1956
author: James Baldwin
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: audiobook, classic, fiction, historical-fiction, lgbt
review:
my goodness
]]> 60406379
A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!�), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 7 Jennette McCurdy 1797147943 Lynnae 0 4.44 2022
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: audiobook, memoir, non-fiction
review:

]]> 204079049
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.

In “The Feminist,� a young man’s passionate allyship turns to furious nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that it isn’t getting him laid.  A young woman’s unrequited crush in “Pics� spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of her sense of self. And in “Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,� a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship leads to a life-upending mistake. As the characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways our delusions can warp our desire for connection.

These brilliant satires explore the underrated sorrows of rejection with the authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a manifesto. Audacious and unforgettable, Rejection is a stunning mosaic that redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society, and oneself.]]> 272 Tony Tulathimutte 0063337894 Lynnae 5 3.89 2024
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: contemporary, fiction, humor, short-stories, lgbt
review:
hmm! will be thinking about this for as long as i live!
]]> 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Lynnae 4 4.24 2024
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: family-saga, historical-fiction, fiction, mystery, thriller
review:

]]> 211721806
You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what.

Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world—or just get to the next level—in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.

Includes part one of the exclusive bonus story “Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret.�]]> 450 Matt Dinniman 059382024X Lynnae 4 *3.75 stars 4.50 2020
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: fantasy, sci-fi, apocalyptic, humor, monsters, quest, single-setting, adventure, aliens
review:
*3.75 stars
]]> 209237457
She’s learning, too.

Doug says he loves that Annie’s artificial intelligence makes her seem more like a real woman, but the more human Annie becomes, the less perfectly she behaves. As Annie's relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder whether Doug truly desires what he says he does. In such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?]]> 10 Sierra Greer 0063312727 Lynnae 4 3.83 2024
author: Sierra Greer
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: audiobook, sci-fi, contemporary, fiction, survival
review:

]]> 57693516 From author Kia Abdullah, Take It Back is a harrowing and twisting courtroom thriller that keeps you guessing until the last page is turned.



One victim.
Four accused.
Who is telling the truth?

Zara Kaleel, one of London's brightest legal minds, shattered the expectations placed on her by her family and forged a brilliant legal career. But her decisions came at a high cost, and now, battling her own demons, she has exchanged her high profile career for a job at a sexual assault center, helping victims who need her the most. Victims like Jodie Wolfe.

When Jodie, a sixteen-year-old girl with facial deformities, accuses four boys in her class of an unthinkable crime, the community is torn apart. After all, these four teenage defendants are from hard-working immigrant families and they all have proven alibis. Even Jodie's best friend doesn't believe her.

But Zara does--and she is determined to fight for Jodie--to find the truth in the face of public outcry. And as issues of sex, race and social justice collide, the most explosive criminal trial of the year builds to a shocking conclusion.]]> 304 Kia Abdullah 1250827655 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.80 2019
author: Kia Abdullah
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59801782
Only the Order of Justices stands in the way of chaos. Sir Konrad Vonvalt is the most feared Justice of all, upholding the law by way of his sharp mind, arcane powers, and skill as a swordsman. At his side stands Helena Sedanka, his talented protégé, orphaned by the wars that forged the Empire. 

When the pair investigates the murder of a provincial aristocrat, they unearth a conspiracy that stretches to the very top of Imperial society. As the stakes rise and become ever more personal, Vonvalt and Helena must make a choice: Will they abandon the laws they’ve sworn to uphold, in order to protect the Empire?]]> 464 Richard Swan 0316361488 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.04 2022
author: Richard Swan
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50279680
Duchess Day Radley is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Rules are for other people. She is the fierce protector of her five-year-old brother, Robin, and the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids.

Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. And he's in overdrive protecting Duchess and her brother.

Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. And Duchess and Walk must face the trouble that comes with his return. We Begin at the End is an extraordinary novel about two kinds of families—the ones we are born into and the ones we create.]]> 384 Chris Whitaker 1250759668 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.10 2020
author: Chris Whitaker
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217388109 Status is hereditary, class is bestowed, trust must be earned.

When an arrogant prince (and his equally arrogant entourage) gets stuck in Orledder Halt as part of brutal political intrigue, competent and sunny deputy courier Elen―once a child slave meant to shield noblemen from the poisonous Pall―is assigned to guide him through the hills to reach his destination.

When she warns him not to enter the haunted Spires, the prince doesn’t heed her advice, and the man who emerges from the towers isn’t the same man who entered.

The journey that follows is fraught with danger. Can a group taught to ignore and despise the lower classes survive with a mere deputy courier as their guide?

The Witch Roads is the latest epic novel by fan favorite, Kate Elliott.]]> 448 Kate Elliott 1250338611 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.32 2025
author: Kate Elliott
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 49837505 1. Sobriety costs extra.
2. My services are confidential.
3. I don't work for humans.

It's nothing personal � I'm human myself. But after what happened, it's not the humans who need my help. I just want one real case. One chance to do something good. Because it's my fault the magic is never coming back.

The Last Smile in Sunder City is the debut novel from actor Luke Arnold - known for his lead role in Black Sails. This contemporary fantasy introduces Fetch Phillips - a character destined to be loved by readers of Ben Aaronovitch, Jim Butcher and Terry Pratchett's Discworld.]]> 320 Luke Arnold 0356512878 Lynnae 5 —â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�-

Fetch Phillips......I think you're beyond therapy bro, but we're gonna get you some anyway!!

This book hit all the pleasure centers in my brain. Noir, dark urban fantasy, mystery, a POWERFULLY sad and disturbed detective man? Hello, I'm here! Last Smile hits all of the familiar noir notes so if you like that I think you'll like this. Fetch's musings about the world and his negative self-talk and his reflections are just....MAN! It sneaks up on you! Arnold promised me a sad man and he certainly delivered.

More importantly, I'm in love with the worldbuilding in this! This is not a story in which the magic is gone and the townsfolk are like "Oh, bummer, now I have to use a match to start a fire and not my magic!" and then go about their lives a little sadder but pretty much OK. Sunder City is a disaster zone, it's post-apocalyptic, it's actively in nuclear meltdown, it's in industrial collapse, it's cracking at the seams and there's nothing left that hasn't been destroyed. Magic was in everything in Sunder City � from the buildings to the machinery to the people � and when the magic went away everything that magic ever touched died too. The magical creatures in SC are falling out of the sky, suddenly withering after centuries of age, losing their abilities, molting and deforming and falling apart at a molecular level. Delicious! It was so dark and gritty and unique in a way that didn't feel forced and fit perfectly into the noir vibes.

I had a great time with this, but I will say that you could tell this was the first book in a series so a lot of time was spent setting the stage. This is primarily done through fairytale storytelling-style info dumps throughout the chapters telling you about the history of Sunder, how these magical beings came to be, what life was like before and after the Coda. Personally, I didn't mind because I liked hearing about it and it served the worldbuilding, but I can see how some might find that tiresome. Very curious to see if that falls away in the second and third books and if so, I'm sure I'll like the sequels even more. Will definitely be continuing!]]> 4.02 2020
author: Luke Arnold
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: fantasy, light-fantasy, magic, monsters, mystery, noir, urban-fantasy
review:
reread 1/20/25: GOD i love this series so much!!!!!
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�-

Fetch Phillips......I think you're beyond therapy bro, but we're gonna get you some anyway!!

This book hit all the pleasure centers in my brain. Noir, dark urban fantasy, mystery, a POWERFULLY sad and disturbed detective man? Hello, I'm here! Last Smile hits all of the familiar noir notes so if you like that I think you'll like this. Fetch's musings about the world and his negative self-talk and his reflections are just....MAN! It sneaks up on you! Arnold promised me a sad man and he certainly delivered.

More importantly, I'm in love with the worldbuilding in this! This is not a story in which the magic is gone and the townsfolk are like "Oh, bummer, now I have to use a match to start a fire and not my magic!" and then go about their lives a little sadder but pretty much OK. Sunder City is a disaster zone, it's post-apocalyptic, it's actively in nuclear meltdown, it's in industrial collapse, it's cracking at the seams and there's nothing left that hasn't been destroyed. Magic was in everything in Sunder City � from the buildings to the machinery to the people � and when the magic went away everything that magic ever touched died too. The magical creatures in SC are falling out of the sky, suddenly withering after centuries of age, losing their abilities, molting and deforming and falling apart at a molecular level. Delicious! It was so dark and gritty and unique in a way that didn't feel forced and fit perfectly into the noir vibes.

I had a great time with this, but I will say that you could tell this was the first book in a series so a lot of time was spent setting the stage. This is primarily done through fairytale storytelling-style info dumps throughout the chapters telling you about the history of Sunder, how these magical beings came to be, what life was like before and after the Coda. Personally, I didn't mind because I liked hearing about it and it served the worldbuilding, but I can see how some might find that tiresome. Very curious to see if that falls away in the second and third books and if so, I'm sure I'll like the sequels even more. Will definitely be continuing!
]]> 217182392 From an electrifying new voice in epic fantasy comes The Raven Scholar, a masterfully woven and playfully inventive tale of imperial intrigue, cutthroat competition, and one scholar’s quest to uncover the truth.

Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best.

Then one of them is murdered.

It falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in.

If she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen.

We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.]]> 672 Antonia Hodgson 0316577227 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.68 2025
author: Antonia Hodgson
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.68
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214565598 From multiple award-winning author Daryl Gregory comes a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation.

JP and Dulin have been the best of friends for decades. When JP finds out his cancer has aggressively returned, Dulin decides it’s the perfect time for one last a week-long bus tour of North America’s Impossibles, the physics-defying glitches and geographic miracles that started cropping up seven years earlier—right after the Announcement that revealed our world to be merely a digital simulacrum. The outing, courtesy of Canterbury Trails Tours, promises the trip of a (not completely real) lifetime in a (not completely deluxe) coach.

Their fellow passengers are 21st-century pilgrims, each of them on the tour for their own reasons. There’s a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, a crew of horny octogenarians living each day like it’s their last, and a professor on the run from leather-clad sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. Each stop on this trip is stranger than the last—a Tunnel outside of time, a zero gravity Geyser, the compound of motivational-speaking avatar—with everyone barreling toward the tour’s iconic final stop Ghost City, where unbeknownst to our travelers the answer to who is running the simulation may await.

When We Were Real is a tour-de-force and exploration of what really matters, even in an artificial world.]]> 464 Daryl Gregory 1668060043 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.19 2025
author: Daryl Gregory
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004897 Head Cases follows an enigmatic group of FBI agents as they hunt down a murderer seeking his own justice in this electrifying—and commercial—series debut.

FBI Agent Gardner Camden is an analytical genius with an affinity for puzzles. He also has a blind spot on the human side of investigations, a blindness that sometimes even includes people in his own life, like his beloved seven-year-old daughter Camila. Gardner and his squad of brilliant yet quirky agents make up the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit, the FBI’s hidden edge, brought in for cases that no one else can solve.

When DNA links a murder victim to a serial killer long presumed dead, the team springs into action. A second victim establishes a pattern, and the murderer begins leaving a trail of clues and riddles especially for Gardner. And while the PAR team is usually relegated to working cold cases from behind a desk, the investigation puts them on the road and into the public eye, following in the footsteps of a killer.

Along with Gardner, PAR consists of a mathematician, a weapons expert, a computer analyst, and their leader, a career agent. Each of them must use every skill they have to solve the riddle of the killer’s identity. But with the perpetrator somehow learning more and more about the team at PAR, can they protect themselves and their families…before it’s too late?

With an enigmatic case that will keep readers on the edge of their seats and a thoroughly engaging ensemble cast, John McMahon’s Head Cases is a triumph.]]> 341 John McMahon 1250348293 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: John McMahon
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10237040
Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.]]> 353 Catherynne M. Valente 1429968400 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.92 2011
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 26237208 Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins

London, 1887. As the city prepares to celebrate Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, Veronica Speedwell is marking a milestone of her own. After burying her spinster aunt, the orphaned Veronica is free to resume her world travels in pursuit of scientific inquiry - and the occasional romantic dalliance. As familiar with hunting butterflies as she is fending off admirers, Veronica wields her butterfly net and a sharpened hatpin with equal aplomb, and with her last connection to England now gone, she intends to embark upon the journey of a lifetime.

But fate has other plans, as Veronica discovers when she thwarts her own abduction with the help of an enigmatic German baron with ties to her mysterious past. Promising to reveal in time what he knows of the plot against her, the baron offers her temporary sanctuary in the care of his friend Stoker - a reclusive natural historian as intriguing as he is bad-tempered. But before the baron can deliver on his tantalizing vow to reveal the secrets he has concealed for decades, he is found murdered. Suddenly Veronica and Stoker are forced to go on the run from an elusive assailant, wary partners in search of the villainous truth.

©2015 Deanna Raybourn (P)2015 Recorded Books]]> 11 Deanna Raybourn Lynnae 5 —â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�
I was SO pleasantly surprised by this! I've been on the hunt for a good mystery for a while and have never read a Victorian-era anything in my life, but I ate this up. Grinning ear to ear from the first page! Veronica and Stoker are SO FUNNY to me and the grumpy x sunshine vibes are immaculate, what with Stoker being a foul-mouthed gentleman who blushes at sexual stuff and Veronica being a free-wheelin' woman who couldn't care less about society's rules. They have amazing chemistry and Raybourn has set up some quality partners-to-lovers action. If you love rom-com vibes, you'll love this.

I'm putting this in the cozy mystery category because we literally spend the first 50% of the book watching Veronica and Stoker get to know each other and bicker (which we love) and then a light goes off and they're like "Hey, I guess we better get started solving that mystery!" It's too fun and Veronica-Stoker-driven to fit into the hardcore mystery category I feel, but when we actually do get to that part interesting things happen as we learn more about Veronica's past. I'd definitely pick this up if you want to laugh, if you're in the mood for a new obsession, or need to bust a reading slump!]]> 3.91 2015
author: Deanna Raybourn
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: cozy-mystery, grumpy-sunshine, historical-fiction
review:
1/22/25: enjoyed this just as much, if not more, rereading on audio!
—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�
I was SO pleasantly surprised by this! I've been on the hunt for a good mystery for a while and have never read a Victorian-era anything in my life, but I ate this up. Grinning ear to ear from the first page! Veronica and Stoker are SO FUNNY to me and the grumpy x sunshine vibes are immaculate, what with Stoker being a foul-mouthed gentleman who blushes at sexual stuff and Veronica being a free-wheelin' woman who couldn't care less about society's rules. They have amazing chemistry and Raybourn has set up some quality partners-to-lovers action. If you love rom-com vibes, you'll love this.

I'm putting this in the cozy mystery category because we literally spend the first 50% of the book watching Veronica and Stoker get to know each other and bicker (which we love) and then a light goes off and they're like "Hey, I guess we better get started solving that mystery!" It's too fun and Veronica-Stoker-driven to fit into the hardcore mystery category I feel, but when we actually do get to that part interesting things happen as we learn more about Veronica's past. I'd definitely pick this up if you want to laugh, if you're in the mood for a new obsession, or need to bust a reading slump!
]]> 195791081 We choose our own gods here.

Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch entity—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.

Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.

And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.]]> 432 Kerstin Hall 1250625432 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.16 2024
author: Kerstin Hall
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 221179150
Imogen Nel is in hiding. Hiding from a cruel kingdom that believes Sirens are monstrous, blood-hungry creatures. Hiding from a king and his captain who viciously hunt her kind. Hiding from her own alluring abilities. By keeping herself from the sea, Imogen’s bloodlust is dulled, and her black wings remain hidden beneath her skin.

When a neighboring king comes to visit, Imogen can no longer hide. He knows precisely what she is, and he believes she can save both their kingdoms from an even greater monster. But Imogen’s power threatens to violently reveal itself, and the two form a blood bond that protects them both. They flee the kingdom together, traversing waters teeming with the undead. As the lines between duty to their people and desire for each other begin to blur, Imogen worries her own ancestral powers may not be enough to kill what hunts her—the only way to defeat a monster may be to become one herself.]]> 384 Kalie Cassidy 0316587605 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.11 2025
author: Kalie Cassidy
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 53575905 Minor Detail begins during the summer of 1949, one year after the war that the Palestinians mourn as the Nakba—the catastrophe that led to the displacement and exile of some 700,000 people—and the Israelis celebrate as the War of Independence. Israeli soldiers murder an encampment of Bedouin in the Negev desert, and among their victims they capture a Palestinian teenager and they rape her, kill her, and bury her in the sand.

Many years later, in the near-present day, a young woman in Ramallah tries to uncover some of the details surrounding this particular rape and murder, and becomes fascinated to the point of obsession, not only because of the nature of the crime, but because it was committed exactly twenty-five years to the day before she was born. Adania Shibli masterfully overlays these two translucent narratives of exactly the same length to evoke a present forever haunted by the past.]]> 144 Adania Shibli Lynnae 0 to-read 4.17 2017
author: Adania Shibli
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 41951623
After an attack, Bianca’s oldest brother, the House von Hasenberg heir, disappears from Earth without a trace. Determined to find him, Bianca leaves against orders. When she refuses to return, her father sends Ian Bishop, the director of House von Hasenberg security, to haul her home like a recalcitrant child.

Bianca leads Ian on a merry chase across the universe, but when their paths finally collide, she persuades him that they would be far more successful at finding her brother if they worked together. She will do anything to save her sibling, even if it means spending time alone on a small ship with the handsome, infuriating man who once broke her heart.

As clues lead them deep into rival House Rockhurst territory, Bianca must decide if she can trust Ian with the one piece of information that could destroy her completely. . .]]> 400 Jessie Mihalik 0062802461 Lynnae 0
I like Bianca, I like Ian, I like how supportive they are of each other. Bianca’s tragic backstory is very interesting (and legitimately tragic and kinda f*cked up). Bianca and Ian give good bickering but…this installment was kinda meh. Sadly Bianca/Ian just don’t have that snap crackle pop and they don’t even have any good pining, even though this is billed as a second chance romance. They weren’t even dating before, they just had feelings for each other at the same time that they both thought were unrequited and that does not a second chance romance make!

Also, i think the transition from bickering to lovers was kind of abrupt in that they didnt have a WHOLE lot of sexually charged moments to make you go “Ok I see things are heating up now� it was kinda just…Ian woke up one day and was like “Yeah i want her, play time’s over� and I was like OK GREAT but where did this energy come from, where was the build up, where was the tension and the hand-wringing?? Where’s the zest?

On to book 3! ]]> 4.02 2019
author: Jessie Mihalik
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2022/07/19
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: romance, sci-fi-romance, slow-burn, spy, partners-to-lovers
review:
Ok listen…the material is there.

I like Bianca, I like Ian, I like how supportive they are of each other. Bianca’s tragic backstory is very interesting (and legitimately tragic and kinda f*cked up). Bianca and Ian give good bickering but…this installment was kinda meh. Sadly Bianca/Ian just don’t have that snap crackle pop and they don’t even have any good pining, even though this is billed as a second chance romance. They weren’t even dating before, they just had feelings for each other at the same time that they both thought were unrequited and that does not a second chance romance make!

Also, i think the transition from bickering to lovers was kind of abrupt in that they didnt have a WHOLE lot of sexually charged moments to make you go “Ok I see things are heating up now� it was kinda just…Ian woke up one day and was like “Yeah i want her, play time’s over� and I was like OK GREAT but where did this energy come from, where was the build up, where was the tension and the hand-wringing?? Where’s the zest?

On to book 3!
]]> 127282939 From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.08 2024
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56988057
January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.

Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

Meanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats� secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.

June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.]]> 400 Maggie Stiefvater 0593655508 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.04 2025
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 176443496
Nothing has happened. Not yet, anyway. This is how all things begin.

Welcome to Apex City, formerly Bangalore, where everything is decided by the mathematically perfect Bell Curve.

With the right image, values and opinions, you can ascend to the glittering heights of the Twenty Percent � the Virtual elite � and have the world at your feet. Otherwise you risk falling to the precarious Ten Percent, and deportation to the ranks of the Analogs, with no access to electricity, running water or even humanity.

The system has no flaws. Until the elusive “Ten Percent Thief� steals a single jacaranda seed from the Virtual city and plants a revolution in the barren soil of the Analog world.

Previously published in South Asia only as Analog/Virtual , The Ten Percent Thief is a striking debut by a ferocious new talent.]]> 384 Lavanya Lakshminarayan 1837860777 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.60 2020
author: Lavanya Lakshminarayan
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217388147 The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs.

Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbed to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.

The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As the rotating perspectives of five villagers quickly make clear, now is no exception. Even if local belief in witchcraft is waning, an aversion to difference is as widespread as ever, and these conflicting narratives all point to the same ultimate conclusion: something isn’t right in Little Nettlebed, and the sisters will be the ones to pay for it.

As relevant today as any time before, The Hounding celebrates the wild breaks from convention we’re all sometimes pulled toward, and wonders if, in a world like this one, it isn’t safer to be a dog than an unusual young girl.]]> 240 Xenobe Purvis 1250366380 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.18 2025
author: Xenobe Purvis
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 75552390 An eye-opening look at the psychology of why we keep the secrets we keep , how they affect us, and how to better understand and cope with them.

Think of a secret that you're keeping from others. It shouldn't take long; behavioral scientist Michael Slepian finds that on average, we are keeping as many as thirteen secrets at any given time. His research involving nearly 50,000 participants from around the globe shows that the most common secrets include: lies we've told, addiction or mental health challenges, a hidden relationship, financial struggles, and more.

Our secrets can weigh heavily upon us. Yet the burden of secrecy, Slepian argues, rarely stems from the work it takes to keep a secret hidden. Rather, secrets are something we must "carry" because we do so alone, without the support of others. Whether we are motivated to protect our reputation, a relationship, or a loved one's feelings, or are pursuing some personal or professional goal, one thing is clear: holding back some part of our inner world is often lonely and isolating. But it doesn't have to be.

Filled with fresh insight into one of the most universal--yet least understood--aspects of human behavior, The Secret Life of Secrets sheds a fascinating new light on questions like: At what age do children develop the cognitive capacity for secrecy? Do all secrets come with the same mental load? How can we reconcile our secrets with the human desire to relate, connect, and be known? When should we confess our secrets? Who makes for the ideal confidant? And can certain types of secrets actually enhance our well-being?

Drawing on over a decade of original research, Slepian reveals the surprising ways that secrets pervade our lives, and offers science-based strategies that make them easier to live with. The result is a rare window into the inner workings of our minds, our relationships, and our sense of who we are.]]> Michael Slepian Lynnae 0 to-read 2.67
author: Michael Slepian
name: Lynnae
average rating: 2.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61884833
Agrigento, Sicily, 1883. With the orsine destroyed, Cairndale lies in ruins, and Marlowe has vanished. His only hope of rescue lies in a fabled second orsine—long-hidden, thought lost—which might not even exist.

But when a body is discovered in the shadow of Cairndale, a body wreathed in the corrupted dust of the drughr, Charlie and the Talents realize there is even more at stake than they'd feared. For a new drughr has arisen, ferocious, horned, seemingly able to move in their world at will—and it is not alone. A malevolent figure, known only as the Abbess, desires the dust for her own ends. And deep in the world of the dead, a terrible evil stirs—an evil that the corrupted dust just might hold the secret to reviving or destroying forever.

So the dark journey begun in Ordinary Monsters surges forward, from the sinister underworld of the London exiles, to the mysteries of a sunlit villa in nineteenth-century Sicily, to the deep catacombs hidden under Paris. Against bone witches, mud glyphics, and a house of twilight that exists in a netherworld all its own, the Talents must work together—if they are to have any hope of staving off the world of the dead, and saving their long-lost friend.]]> 608 J.M. Miro 1250833833 Lynnae 4 4.16 2024
author: J.M. Miro
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: fantasy, found-family, historical-fantasy, horror, magic, monsters, quest, urban-fantasy
review:

]]> 53174713
Mark Sandoval—resolutely arrogant, covered head to foot in precise geometric scarring, and still marginally famous after Hollywood made an Oscar-winner based off his memoir years before—has been strongly advised by his lawyer to leave the country following a drunken and potentially fatal hit and run. When a woman sends Sandoval grainy footage of what appears to be a unicorn, he quickly hires an assistant and the two head off to the woman's farm in Hvíldarland, a tiny, remote island off the coast of Iceland. When they arrive on the island and discover that both a military base and the surrounding álagablettur, the nearby woods, are teeming with strangeness and secrets, they begin to realize that a supposed unicorn sighting is the least of their worries.]]> 300 Keith Rosson 1946154296 Lynnae 4 *3.5 stars 3.99 2020
author: Keith Rosson
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: contemporary, fiction, magical-realism, monsters, paranormal, sci-fi, thriller
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 45186604 A dogged, absurd quest through the nightmare of the Syrian civil war

Khaled Khalifa's Death Is Hard Work is the new novel from the greatest chronicler of Syria's ongoing and catastrophic civil war: a tale of three ordinary people facing down the stuff of nightmares armed with little more than simple determination.

Abdel Latif, an old man from the Aleppo region, dies peacefully in a hospital bed in Damascus. His final wish, conveyed to his youngest son, Bolbol, is to be buried in the family plot in their ancestral village of Anabiya. Though Abdel was hardly an ideal father, and though Bolbol is estranged from his siblings, this conscientious son persuades his older brother Hussein and his sister Fatima to accompany him and the body to Anabiya, which is--after all--only a two-hour drive from Damascus.

There's only one problem: Their country is a war zone.

With the landscape of their childhood now a labyrinth of competing armies whose actions are at once arbitrary and lethal, the siblings' decision to set aside their differences and honor their father's request quickly balloons from a minor commitment into an epic and life-threatening quest. Syria, however, is no longer a place for heroes, and the decisions the family must make along the way--as they find themselves captured and recaptured, interrogated, imprisoned, and bombed--will prove to have enormous consequences for all of them.]]> 180 Khaled Khalifa 1250251079 Lynnae 5
“as i lay dying� found dead in a ditch ]]> 3.76 2016
author: Khaled Khalifa
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: contemporary, family-saga, road-trip, war, novella, fiction, retelling
review:
*4.5 stars

“as i lay dying� found dead in a ditch
]]> 63588687
After Wax discovers a new type of explosive that can unleash unprecedented destruction and realizes that the Set must already have it, an immortal kandra serving Scadrial's god, Harmony, reveals that Bilming has fallen under the influence of another god: Trell, worshipped by the Set. And Trell isn't the only factor at play from the larger Cosmere—Marasi is recruited by offworlders with strange abilities who claim their goal is to protect Scadrial...at any cost.

Wax must choose whether to set aside his rocky relationship with God and once again become the Sword that Harmony has groomed him to be. If no one steps forward to be the hero Scadrial needs, the planet and its millions of people will come to a sudden and calamitous ruin.]]> 19 Brandon Sanderson 125085928X Lynnae 0 4.19 2022
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: audiobook, fantasy, epic-fantasy, political-fantasy, western, urban-fantasy
review:

]]> 59547627
A woman hunted

Once a hopeless wallflower, Clarissa Meadows blossomed into a beauty for a single splendid season—only to catch the eye of a madman bent on possessing her. Now, she must flee where he’ll never follow: a friend’s house in the Scottish Highlands. Except he does follow. And Clarissa has nowhere left to run.

A protector unbound

Campbell MacPherson shouldn’t be dreaming about the fair English lass who blushes like a sunrise, blurts out double entendres over breakfast, and shows a peculiar interest in the size of his hands. But when she reveals the threat putting fear in her eyes, this rough, solitary giant vows his protection, even if it means keeping temptation as close as his next breath.

A temptation too hot to deny

Clarissa couldn’t ask for a more imposing—or enthralling—bodyguard than Campbell MacPherson. But accepting his protection puts him squarely in a predator’s sights. And soon, she faces an impossible choice: stay in the shelter of his arms or save the man she loves from the wolf she’s brought to his door.]]> 321 Elisa Braden Lynnae 2
the sex was hot but at what cost! these two had zero chemistry and all their supposedly intense feelings for each other were told and not shown�.alexander and rannoch did intrigue me though, so maybe i’ll read their books if i can soften my heart/manage my expectations ]]> 4.15 2021
author: Elisa Braden
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: bodyguard-romance, erotica, forced-proximity, grumpy-sunshine, historical-romance, marriage-of-convenience, romance, magical-realism, insta-love, pining
review:
*2.5 stars

the sex was hot but at what cost! these two had zero chemistry and all their supposedly intense feelings for each other were told and not shown�.alexander and rannoch did intrigue me though, so maybe i’ll read their books if i can soften my heart/manage my expectations
]]> 61140164
This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.

Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.]]> Viola Davis 0063037343 Lynnae 5 4.65 2022
author: Viola Davis
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: audiobook, memoir, non-fiction
review:

]]> 200575453
He wants a nanny, not a bride�

Suddenly guardian to twins, Viscount Dominic Kelbourne is luckily betrothed to a suitable lady—until she elopes. With no time to woo, Dominic decides to marry his fiancée’s unconventional sister. Torie isn’t perfect, but their kisses are so passionate that society thinks he’s actually chosen her.

She wants to marry for love�

Torie has never been able to make sense of words on a page, so she has turned her talents to art. She longs for a man who values her as she is� but marries for the sake of the twins. She doubts Dominic is capable of love, let alone respect, but as their heated debates turn into something more, Torie begins to imagine a life as a wife, not a nanny. 

But when the arrogant viscount finds that his viscountess has stolen his heart, he’ll have to give all he has to win her love.]]> 382 Eloisa James 0063347423 Lynnae 4
i found the writing/pacing a little clunky at times but i love dom and torie together, plus EJ wrote their irrepressible horniness for each other in a charming way ]]> 4.37 2024
author: Eloisa James
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: grumpy-sunshine, dislike-to-lovers, historical-romance, marriage-of-convenience, single-parent-romance, romance
review:
*3.75 stars

i found the writing/pacing a little clunky at times but i love dom and torie together, plus EJ wrote their irrepressible horniness for each other in a charming way
]]> 219839626
Is it harder to find a killer or land a buyer? In this playful short story from New York Times bestselling author Elle Cosimano, two unlikely real estate agents become even unlikelier detectives.

A million problems arise when trying to flip a crumbling old Victorian. But Lyda, a newbie seller, and Dani, a TikTok-trained home stager, are fixated on one: the dead landscaper in the bedroom. The notorious lothario was one of many last-minute contractors swarming around, and now every jilted lover and business competitor is a suspect. It’s up to Lyda and Dani to close the case before the open house.

Elle Cosimano’s Staged is part of Busybodies, a collection of quirky mysteries featuring amateur gumshoes who stumble upon peculiar cases. Calling all snoops! Read or listen to each arresting story in a single sitting.]]> Elle Cosimano Lynnae 4
delightful, accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish, and the audio was well performed ]]> 3.42 2024
author: Elle Cosimano
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: audiobook, cozy-mystery, humor, novella
review:
*3.75 stars

delightful, accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish, and the audio was well performed
]]> 218333744 Do the promises of war ever survive the peace?

At the end of a brutal war, Remin of Andelin promised his knights that he would build them a good place, far from the carnage of war and the poisonous intrigues of the Empire. But the only thing more difficult than winning a war is securing the peace.

Welcome to the Andelin Valley, where the days are filled with the backbreaking labor of building a city and the nights bring monsters summoned in the waning days of the war. The Andelin devils dare even the sacred soil of the Empire, and it takes all of Remin’s military genius to keep his people alive. Yet even in the face of bandits, traitors, and the implacable hatred of the Emperor, the greatest danger to Remin might be his new wife.

Princess Ophele Agnephus. Daughter of the Stars, the Exile Princess, she is the daughter of the Divine Emperor who executed Remin’s family. Raised in secret and given in the place of her sister as a reward for Remin’s war victory, Ophele carries a secret that could topple the Empire: his family was innocent. But will she risk her life to reveal her family’s crimes to the most dangerous man in the Empire?

A tale of love and redemption. As the summer bleeds on and the walls of their city rise, Remin finds himself drawn to Ophele, who shares so many of his dreams and sorrows. She could be his love and his wife, the mother of his children, the foundation of a dynasty that will last forever. Or she could be the Emperor’s weapon, placed at his side to destroy everything he has left.

A marriage built in the ashes of betrayal. A land built on the ruins of a century of war. And a people determined to rise, with shattered trust and an unquenchable hope…if Ophele can only make them believe it is possible. Traitor Son is the story of a people broken by tragedy, a hero torn between his duty and his dreams, and a young woman who must find the courage to take her place at his side, before their own devils tear them apart.

Begin an unforgettable journey with Traitor Son, the first book of the Empire of the Stars. Perfect for fans of epic fantasy, knights and nobility, and tales of resilience and redemption.]]> 394 Melissa J. Cave Lynnae 0 to-read 4.11
author: Melissa J. Cave
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214175077 An extraordinary and urgent debut by a prize-winning Irish writer, Nesting introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction.

On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.

This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.

What will it take for Ciara to rebuild her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan’s control � and what will be the cost?

Tense, beautiful, and underpinned by an unassailable love, hope and resilience, this is the story of one woman’s bid to start over.]]> 400 Roisín O’Donnell 1643755706 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.30 2025
author: Roisín O’Donnell
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.28 2025
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210384823 An utterly gripping story of alien encounter and survival from Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning Children of Time.

They looked into the darkness and the darkness looked back . . .

New planets are fair game to asset strippers and interplanetary opportunists � and a commercial mission to a distant star system discovers a moon that is pitch black, but alive with radio activity. Its high-gravity, high-pressure, zero-oxygen environment is anathema to human life, but ripe for exploitation. They named it Shroud.

Under no circumstances should a human end up on Shroud’s inhospitable surface. Except a catastrophic accident sees Juna Ceelander and Mai Ste Etienne doing just that. Forced to stage an emergency landing, in a small, barely adequate vehicle, they are unable to contact their ship and are running out of time. What follows is a gruelling journey across land, sea and air. During this time, Juna and Mai begin to understand Shroud’s dominant species. It also begins to understand them . . .

If they escape Shroud, they’ll face a crew only interested in profiteering from this extraordinary world. They’ll somehow have to explain the impossible and translate the incredible. That is, if they make it back at all.]]> 436 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1035013797 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.15 2025
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214175244 Blood once turned the wheels of empire. Now it is money.

A new age of exploration and innovation has dawned, and the Empire of the Wolf stands to take its place as the foremost power in the known world. Glory and riches await.

But dark days are coming. A mysterious plague has broken out in the pagan kingdoms to the north, while in the south, the Empire's proxy war in the lands of the wolfmen is weeks away from total collapse.

Worse still is the message brought to the Empress by two heretic monks, who claim to have lost contact with the spirits of the afterlife. The monks believe this is the start of an ancient prophecy heralding the end of days-the Great Silence.

It falls to Renata Rainer, a low-ranking ambassador to an enigmatic and vicious race of mermen, to seek answers from those who still practice the arcane arts. But with the road south beset by war and the Empire on the brink of supernatural catastrophe, soon there may not be a world left to save . . .]]> 527 Richard Swan 0316577006 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.25 2025
author: Richard Swan
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 205335957
Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum's windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.

Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil's visions. But when Sybil's fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral's cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she'd rather avoid Rodrick's dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.]]> 400 Rachel Gillig 0356522962 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.61 2025
author: Rachel Gillig
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 206549834 Two brothers in dire straits, living on the edge of Yellowstone, agree to a desperate act of survival.

In an aging timber house hand-built into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains, two brothers are struggling to keep up with their debts. They live off the grid on the fringe of Yellowstone, surviving after the death of their father. Thad, the elder, is more capable of engaging with things like the truck registration and the medical bills from their father’s fatal illness and the tax lien on the cabin their grandfather built, while Hazen is... different, more instinctual, deeply attuned to the natural world. Desperate for money, they are approached by a shadowy out-of-towner with a proposition and agree to attempt a heist of natural resources from Yellowstone, a federal crime. Beartooth is a fast-paced tale set in the grandeur of the American West.]]> 256 Callan Wink 1954118023 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.71 2025
author: Callan Wink
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213941122 Fetch is done being a hero.
Once a detective, all he wants now is to run his café in peace. Sunder City is still recovering from the sudden and violent end of magic, and if one man can't solve all its problems, he can at least stop some people going hungry.
But when a kid on the run shelters in Fetch's café, and a chain of gruesome murders begins among Sunder's high and mighty, trouble is brought to Fetch's door.
There's a word whispered on the wind, and that word is revolution...]]> 417 Luke Arnold 0356521613 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.35
author: Luke Arnold
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3070570 513 Rabih Alameddine 0307386279 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.03 2008
author: Rabih Alameddine
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7929236 352 Dennis Tafoya 0312531168 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.70 2010
author: Dennis Tafoya
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11003233
In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.]]> 110 Steven L. Peck Lynnae 0 to-read 4.24 2011
author: Steven L. Peck
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208694393
In the wake of the events of Black Tide Son, Hart flees into pirate-infested waters to shelter on the island where former rogue James Demery and the Fleetbreaker, Anne Firth, now rule.

Reeling from their discoveries about the truths of the Mereish-Aeadine war, Mary and Sam hover on the precipice of a terrible, world-altering choice � they can stay silent and maintain their good names, or they can speak out, and risk igniting total war across the Winter Sea.

Meanwhile, Benedict captains The Red Tempest, a lawless ship of deserters and corrupted mages in search of an Usti spy with incendiary stolen documents. Benedict is determined to make the truth known, consequences be damned.

As rumours spread of a new Ghistwold sprouting in the Mereish South Isles, May and Sam sail once more into intrigue, espionage and an ocean on the brink of exploding into conflict. They must chart a course toward lasting, final peace, at the heart of the age-old battle for power upon the Winter Seas.]]> 416 H.M. Long 1835411371 Lynnae 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: H.M. Long
name: Lynnae
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217388276 I feared this was the best of times; I hoped it could not get any worse.

The fairies stole Sydney Carton as a child, and made him a mortal servant of the Faerie Realm. Now, he has a rare opportunity for revenge against the fae and Charles Darnay, the changeling left in his stead.

It will take magic and cunning—cold iron and Realm silver—to hide his intentions from humans and fae and bring his plans to fruition.

Shuttling between London and Paris during the Reign of Terror, generations of violence-begetting-violence lead him to a heartbreaking choice in the shadow of the guillotine.]]> 416 H.G. Parry 1250334187 Lynnae 0 to-read 4.17 2025
author: H.G. Parry
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33898886 A literary tour de force of a detective's ceaseless hunt for an elusive criminal

By Gaslight is a deeply atmospheric, haunting novel about the unending quest that has shaped a man’s life.

William Pinkerton is already famous, the son of the most notorious detective of all time, when he descends into the underworld of Victorian London in pursuit of a new lead on the fabled con Edward Shade. William’s father died without ever finding Shade, but William is determined to drag the thief out of the shadows.

Adam Foole is a gentleman without a past, haunted by a love affair ten years gone. When he receives a letter from his lost beloved, he returns to London to find her. What he learns of her fate, and its connection to the man known as Shade, will force him to confront a grief he thought long-buried.

A fog-enshrouded hunt through sewers, opium dens, drawing rooms, and séance halls ensues, creating the most unlikely of bonds: between Pinkerton, the great detective, and Foole, the one man who may hold the key to finding Edward Shade.

Steven Price’s dazzling, riveting By Gaslight moves from the diamond mines of South Africa to the battlefields of the Civil War, on a journey into a cityscape of grief, trust, and its breaking, where what we share can bind us even against our darker selves.]]> 752 Steven Price 1250141206 Lynnae 0 to-read 3.52 2016
author: Steven Price
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214537790 From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples� memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.]]> 432 Karen Russell 059380225X Lynnae 0 to-read 4.01 2025
author: Karen Russell
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197239494
It's 2014 in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, where the Prophet—a 70-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local dump, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael and the Prophet feels certain that she is his Big Fish, a messenger sent by God to take his apocalyptic warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet’s remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past—and perhaps change her future.

Moving through the worlds of the Prophet, the girl, and a beguiling devil figure who dances in the corner of their lives, Two-Step Devil is a propulsive, philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.]]> 269 Jamie Quatro 0802163130 Lynnae 4 *3.5 stars 3.76 2024
author: Jamie Quatro
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: contemporary, magical-realism, historical-fiction, fiction
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 40115875 Black Water Rising, returns to fight one last case, only to become embroiled once again in a dangerous game of shadowy politics and a witness to how far those in power are willing to go to win

Fifteen years after the events of Black Water Rising, Jay Porter is struggling to cope with catastrophic changes in his personal life and the disintegration of his environmental law practice. His victory against Cole Oil is still the crown jewel of his career, even if he hasn’t yet seen a dime thanks to appeals. But time has taken its toll. Tired and restless, he's ready to quit.

When a girl goes missing on Election Night, 1996, in the neighborhood of Pleasantville—a hamlet for upwardly-mobile blacks on the north side of Houston—Jay, a single father, is deeply disturbed. He’s been representing Pleasantville in the wake of a chemical fire, and the case is dragging on, raising doubts about his ability.

The missing girl was a volunteer for one of the local mayoral candidates, and her disappearance complicates an already heated campaign. When the nephew of one of the candidates, a Pleasantville local, is arrested, Jay reluctantly finds himself serving as a defense attorney. With a man’s life and his own reputation on the line, Jay is about to try his first murder in a case that will also put an electoral process on trial, exposing the dark side of power and those determined to keep it.]]> Attica Locke Lynnae 4 4.43 2015
author: Attica Locke
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: audiobook, legal, political-thriller, political-fiction, historical-fiction, mystery, thriller, crime
review:

]]> 203579268 Dive into the breakneck conclusion to the Slavic folklore-inspired Witch's Compendium of Monsters series, which began with Foul Days

With her magic reclaimed and her role in the community of Chernograd restored, Kosara’s life should finally be back to normal—but, of course, things can’t possibly be that simple.

She is now in possession of twelve witch’s shadows, which belonged to a series of young, magically powerful women lured into the deadly marriage with the Zmey that Kosara only narrowly escaped as a young woman. Holding them may grant her unprecedented power, but that doesn’t mean they’re always willing to do her bidding.

Across the wall in Belograd, Asen chases the only lead on his latest case, one of several unsolved witch murders, even against the orders of his direct superior and the mayor. He’s convinced the smuggling kingpin Konstantin Karaivanov is behind them, and follows his trail to an underground monster auction—which leads him right back to Chernograd.

There, sinister events follow one after snow falls in midsummer, a witch with two shadows is found dead, monsters that should only appear during the Foul Days have been sighted, and cracks appear in the sky that only Kosara seems able to see. The barrier between worlds thins... and Kosara can’t help but feel her actions are the cause.]]> 339 Genoveva Dimova 1250877350 Lynnae 4 *3.75 stars 4.06 2024
author: Genoveva Dimova
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: fantasy, fantasy-romance, ya-fantasy, paranormal, partners-to-lovers, urban-fantasy, grumpy-sunshine, monsters, mystery
review:
*3.75 stars
]]> 215760525
The first novella set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's epic Captive's War series.]]> 90 James S.A. Corey 0316575348 Lynnae 4 *3.5 stars 4.33 2024
author: James S.A. Corey
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: sci-fi, war, aliens, horror, military-sff, novella
review:
*3.5 stars
]]> 51629762
The thrilling follow-up to the award-winning Bluebird, Bluebird: Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is on the hunt for a boy who's gone missing - but it's the boy's family of white supremacists who are his real target
9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark.

Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.

An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town where the local economy thrives on nostalgia for ante-bellum Texas - and some of the era's racial attitudes still thrive as well. Levi's disappearance has links to Darren's last case, and to a wealthy businesswoman, the boy's grandmother, who seems more concerned about the fate of her business than that of her grandson.

Darren has to battle centuries-old suspicions and prejudices, as well as threats that have been reignited in the current political climate, as he races to find the boy, and to save himself.

Attica Locke proves that the acclaim and awards for Bluebird, Bluebird were justly deserved, in this thrilling new novel about crimes old and new.]]> 10 Attica Locke 1549100459 Lynnae 4 3.87 2019
author: Attica Locke
name: Lynnae
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/08
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: audiobook, contemporary, crime, history, mystery, thriller
review:

]]> 205409877 The case of a missing Black college student who has disappeared from her all-white sorority pulls Darren out of an early retirement; the third and final novel in the "timely and evocative" ( NPR ) Highway 59 trilogy, from Edgar Award-winning New York Times-Bestselling  author Attica Locke.

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn’t sure he’s been a good cop, but believes he’s got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It’s a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn’t hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who’s always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth—and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate.

Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again—his mother.

In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, Darren reckons with his life’s purpose as he’s forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good.]]> 303 Attica Locke Lynnae 5
reading this during this current moment (nov 2024) was not a smart choice but it did make it hit harder ]]> 4.50 2024
author: Attica Locke
name: Lynnae
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: audiobook, contemporary, political-fiction, political-thriller, thriller, mystery, family-saga
review:
*4.5 stars

reading this during this current moment (nov 2024) was not a smart choice but it did make it hit harder
]]>