Steven's bookshelf: all

Steven's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 22 Nov 2024 07:13:33 -0800 60 Steven's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Grapes of Wrath 18114322
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 496 John Steinbeck 067001690X Steven 0 currently-reading 4.06 1939 The Grapes of Wrath

author: John Steinbeck
name: Steven
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1939
rating: 0
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]]> The Sorrow of Angels 18250641
As the villagers gather in the inn to drink schnapps and coffee while the boy reads to them from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Jens the postman stumbles in half dead, having almost frozen to his horse. On his next journey to the wide open fjords he is accompanied by the boy, and both must risk their lives for each other, and for an unusual item of mail.

The Sorrow of Angels is a timeless literary masterpiece; in extraordinarily powerful language it brings the struggle between man and nature tangibly to life. It is the second novel in Stefánsson’s epic and elemental trilogy, though all can be read independently.]]> 333 Jón Kalman Stefánsson 0857051652 Steven 0 to-read 4.25 2009 The Sorrow of Angels

author: Jón Kalman Stefánsson
name: Steven
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> Of Love and Other Demons 23876
Unsettling and indelible, Of Love and Other Demons is an evocative, majestic tale of the most universal experiences known to woman and man.]]> 160 Gabriel García Márquez 0517405091 Steven 0 to-read 4.01 1994

author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Steven
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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]]> The General in His Labyrinth 23884
Gabriel García Márquez's most political novel is the tragic story of General Simón Bolívar, the man who tried to unite a continent.

Bolívar, known in six Latin American countries as the Liberator, is one of the most revered heroes of the western hemisphere; in García Márquez's brilliant reimagining he is magnificently flawed as well. The novel follows Bolívar as he takes his final journey in 1830 down the Magdalena River toward the sea, revisiting the scenes of his former glory and lamenting his lost dream of an alliance of American nations. Forced from power, dogged by assassins, and prematurely aged and wasted by a fatal illness, the General is still a remarkably vital and mercurial man. He seems to remain alive by the sheer force of will that led him to so many victories in the battlefields and love affairs of his past. As he wanders in the labyrinth of his failing powers-and still-powerful memories-he defies his impending death until the last.

The General in His Labyrinth is an unforgettable portrait of a visionary from one of the greatest writers of our time.]]> 248 Gabriel García Márquez 1400043336 Steven 0 to-read 3.74 1989

author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Steven
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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]]> The Autumn of the Patriarch 23887 The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power.

From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator of The Autumn of the Patriarch embodies the best but also the worst of human nature. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the renowned master of magical realism, vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictatorship. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, and overflowing with symbolic descriptions, the novel transports the reader to a world that is at once fanciful and vividly real.]]> 255 Gabriel García Márquez 0060882867 Steven 0 to-read 3.90 1975 The Autumn of the Patriarch

author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Steven
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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]]> Death at the Sanatorium 217970946
WELCOME TO THE SANATORIUM

High up in the mountains stands a sanatorium. Once a hospital dedicated to treating tuberculosis, it now sits haunted by the ghosts of its past.

One wing of the hospital remains open and houses six employees: the caretaker, two doctors, two nurses and a young research assistant.

Despite the wards closing decades ago, they remain at the hospital to conduct research. But the cold corridors, draughty windows and echoey halls are constant reminders of the building’s dark history.

When one of the nurses, Yrsa, is found brutally murdered, they discover that death has never left this place �� and neither did its secrets. None can escape this terrifying legacy.

Despite just five suspects the case is never solved and remains open for two decades. Until a young criminologist named Helgi Reykdal attempts to finally lay the ghosts of the hospital's past to rest . . .]]> 320 Ragnar Jónasson 0241493633 Steven 0 to-read 3.75 2019 Death at the Sanatorium

author: Ragnar Jónasson
name: Steven
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Elephant Trophy and Other Stories]]> 58527271 250 Paul GnanaSelvam 9814914010 Steven 0 currently-reading 4.24

author: Paul GnanaSelvam
name: Steven
average rating: 4.24
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> Holly 65916344 Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.

“Sometimes the universe throws you a rope.�� �� BILL HODGES

Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.

When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.

Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.

Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.]]> 449 Stephen King 1668016133 Steven 3 4.01 2023 Holly

author: Stephen King
name: Steven
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Arrow of God (The African Trilogy, #3)]]> 37774
Ezeulu, the headstrong chief priest of the god Ulu, is worshipped by the six villages of Umuaro. But his authority is increasingly under threat—from rivals within his tribe, from functionaries of the colonial government, and even from his own family members. Yet he believes himself to be untouchable: surely he is an arrow in the bow of his God? Armed with this belief, he is prepared to lead his people, even if it is towards their own destruction. But his people will not be dominated so easily.

Spare and powerful, Arrow of God is an unforgettable portrayal of the loss of faith, and the downfall of a man in a society forever altered by colonialism.]]> 230 Chinua Achebe Steven 0 to-read 3.81 1964 Arrow of God (The African Trilogy, #3)

author: Chinua Achebe
name: Steven
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[No Longer at Ease (The African Trilogy, #2)]]> 111085 here.

Obi Okonkwo is an idealistic young man who has now returned to Nigeria for a job in the civil service. However in his new role he finds that the way of government seems to be corruption. Obi manages to resist the bribes offered to him, but when he falls in love with an unsuitable girl, he sinks further into emotional and financial turmoil.]]> 196 Chinua Achebe Steven 0 to-read 3.87 1960 No Longer at Ease (The African Trilogy, #2)

No Longer at Ease (The African Trilogy, #2)

author: Chinua Achebe
name: Steven
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1960
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Down Among the Dead Men (Peter Diamond, #15)]]> 23602705
Meanwhile, detective Peter Diamond finds himself in Sussex, much against his wishes. His irritating and often obtuse supervisor, Assistant Chief Constable Georgina Dallymore, has made Diamond accompany her on a Home Office internal investigation. A Sussex detective has been suspended for failing to follow up on DNA evidence that linked a relative to a seven-year-old murder case—a bad breach of ethics if the allegations are true. Diamond is less than thrilled to be heading out on a road trip with his boss to investigate a fellow officer, but he becomes much more interested in the case when he realizes who the suspended officer is—an old friend, and not a person he knows to make mistakes.

As Diamond asks questions, he begins to notice unsettling connections between the seven-year-old murder and the missing art teacher. Could the two cases be connected? How many other area disappearances have gone unnoticed and uninvestigated? Diamond and his hapless supervisor have stumbled into a complicated web of related crimes. Will Diamond be able to disentangle them?]]> 384 Peter Lovesey 1616956267 Steven 0 to-read 3.88 2015 Down Among the Dead Men (Peter Diamond, #15)

Down Among the Dead Men (Peter Diamond, #15)

author: Peter Lovesey
name: Steven
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/21
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]]> <![CDATA[A Past Unearthed (Return of the Condor Heroes, #1)]]> 124927676
Genghis Khan is dead. The Mongolians, led by the conqueror's third son, Ogedai, have vanquished the Jurchen Jin Empire, and now turn their armies on their ally the Great Song Empire. A dozen years have passed since the second Contest of Mount Hua.

A new generation of martial artists are vying for recognition in the jianghu, but as the fall of their country looms closer, the making of a hero depends on more than mere kung fu skills.

A chance meeting with his father's sworn brother Guo Jing lifts Penance Yang from a life of vagrancy and initiates him into the martial world to which his parents Yang Kang and Mercy Mu once belonged.

Placed under the care of the Quanzhen Sect at their base in the Zhongnan Mountains, Penance stumbles across the mysterious history behind the founding of this most respected martial school and embarks on a journey during that forces him to come to terms with his family's past as well as secrets of his own heart.]]> 432 Jin Yong 1529417503 Steven 0 to-read 4.15 1958 A Past Unearthed (Return of the Condor Heroes, #1)

A Past Unearthed (Return of the Condor Heroes, #1)

author: Jin Yong
name: Steven
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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]]> The Father 26031407
An epic crime novel with the excitement of Jo Nesbo's Headhunters and the narrative depth of We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Father is inspired by the extraordinary true story of three brothers who committed ten audacious bank robberies in Sweden over the course of just two years.

None had committed a crime before. All were under 24 years old. All of them would be changed forever as individuals and as a family.

This intoxicating, heartbreaking thriller tells the story of how three boys are transformed over the course of their lives from innocent children to the most wanted criminals in Sweden. And of the man who made them that way: their father.]]> 592 Anders Roslund 1681445409 Steven 0 to-read 3.91 2014 The Father

author: Anders Roslund
name: Steven
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> Juice 207627291
Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place �� middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They’re exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they’ve seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

Problem is, they’re not alone.

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.]]> 524 Tim Winton 1035050838 Steven 0 to-read 3.95 2024 Juice

author: Tim Winton
name: Steven
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Winners (Beartown, #3) 60318890
As the locals of Beartown struggle to overcome the past, great change is on the horizon. Someone is coming home after a long time away. Someone will be laid to rest. Someone will fall in love, someone will try to fix their marriage, and someone will do anything to save their children. Someone will submit to hate, someone will fight, and someone will grab a gun and walk towards the ice rink.

So what are the residents of Beartown willing to sacrifice for their home?]]> 671 Fredrik Backman Steven 0 to-read 4.45 2022 The Winners (Beartown, #3)

author: Fredrik Backman
name: Steven
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/19
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]]> Before We Were Yours 32148570 Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.]]> 342 Lisa Wingate 0425284689 Steven 0 to-read 4.38 2017 Before We Were Yours

author: Lisa Wingate
name: Steven
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> The Porpoise 41087290 ‘I really am so very, very sorry about this,�� he says, in an oddly formal voice�� They strike the side of a grain silo. They are travelling at seventy miles per hour.

A newborn baby is the sole survivor of a terrifying plane crash.

She is raised in wealthy isolation by an overprotective father. She knows nothing of the rumours about a beautiful young woman, hidden from the world.

When a suitor visits, he understands far more than he should. Forced to run for his life, he escapes aboard The Porpoise, an assassin on his tail��

So begins a wild adventure of a novel, damp with salt spray, blood and tears. A novel that leaps from the modern era to ancient times; a novel that soars, and sails, and burns long and bright; a novel that almost drowns in grief yet swims ashore; in which pirates rampage, a princess wins a wrestler’s hand, and ghost women with lampreys�� teeth drag a man to hell �� and in which the members of a shattered family, adrift in a violent world, journey towards a place called home.]]> 336 Mark Haddon 1784742821 Steven 0 abandoned-reading 3.32 2019 The Porpoise

author: Mark Haddon
name: Steven
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: abandoned-reading
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]]> Human Acts 30091914 A riveting, poetic, and fearless portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice by the acclaimed author of The Vegetarian.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.

The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend, who meets his own fateful end, to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, both suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother, their collective heartbreak and acts of hope tell the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of a historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.]]> 218 Han Kang 1101906723 Steven 0 to-read 4.26 2014 Human Acts

author: Han Kang
name: Steven
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/12
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]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Steven 0 to-read 3.61 2007

author: Han Kang
name: Steven
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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]]> Greek Lessons 61686012 “Now and then, language would thrust its way into her sleep like a skewer through meat, startling her awake several times a night.��

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.

Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it’s the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence.

Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish—the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity—their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.

Greek Lessons is the story of the unlikely bond between this pair and a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.]]> 192 Han Kang 0593595270 Steven 0 to-read 3.54 2011 Greek Lessons

author: Han Kang
name: Steven
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> The White Book 40338442
In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book offers a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and of our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.]]> 157 Han Kang 0525573062 Steven 0 to-read 3.85 2016 The White Book

author: Han Kang
name: Steven
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> We, the Drowned 12793962 693 Carsten Jensen 0099512963 Steven 0 to-read 4.23 2006

author: Carsten Jensen
name: Steven
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/07
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]]> Baumgartner 202054616 A taut yet expansive novel of love, memory, and grief from Paul Auster, best-selling, award-winning author and “one of the great American prose stylists of our time" (New York Times)

Paul Auster’s brilliant eighteenth novel opens with a scorched pot of water, which Sy Baumgartner -- phenomenologist, noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor �� has just forgotten on the stove.

Baumgartner’s life had been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife, Anna, who was killed in a swimming accident nine years earlier. Now 71, Baumgartner continues to struggle to live in her absence as the novel sinuously unfolds into spirals of memory and reminiscence, delineated in episodes spanning from 1968, when Sy and Anna meet as broke students working and writing in New York, through their passionate relationship over the next forty years, and back to Baumgartner’s youth in Newark and his Polish-born father’s life as a dress-shop owner and failed revolutionary.

Rich with compassion, wit, and Auster’s keen eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient moments of ordinary life, Baumgartner asks: Why do we remember certain moments, and forget others? In one of his most luminous works and his first novel since the Booker-shortlisted tour-de-force 4 3 2 1, Paul Auster captures several lifetimes.]]> 202 Paul Auster 0571384943 Steven 0 to-read 4.00 2023 Baumgartner

author: Paul Auster
name: Steven
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Anthill Murders (K2 and Patricia #5)]]> 34734309 480 Hans Olav Lahlum 150980952X Steven 0 to-read 4.09 2014

The Anthill Murders (K2 and Patricia #5)

author: Hans Olav Lahlum
name: Steven
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> Two Caravans 1740908 Strawberry Fields.

The bestselling author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is back with an "effervescent comedy" (The New Yorker)

The follow up to her hugely popular first novel presents a Canterbury Tales inspired picaresque that is also a biting satire of economic exploitation. When a ragtag international crew of migrant workers is forced to flee the strawberry fields they have been working in, they set off across England looking for employment. Displaying the same sense of compassion, social outrage, and gift for hilarity that she showed in A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka chronicles their bumpy road trip with a tender affection for her downtrodden characters and their search for a taste of the good life.]]> 310 Marina Lewycka 1905490321 Steven 0 to-read 3.54 2007 Two Caravans

author: Marina Lewycka
name: Steven
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/03
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]]> A Spot of Bother 4701
At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased �� as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has “strangler’s hands.�� Katie can’t decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband’s ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials.

Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind.

The way these damaged people fall apart �� and come together �� as a family is the true subject of Haddon’s disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely.

A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddon’s unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness �� literally �� of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon’s crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.]]> 354 Mark Haddon 0385520514 Steven 2 3.50 2006 A Spot of Bother

author: Mark Haddon
name: Steven
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/03
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It was interesting at first, until it got mundane and boring ...
]]> <![CDATA[The Pier Falls: And Other Stories]]> 26109054 Mark Haddon, author of the international bestselling novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother, returns with a collection of unsparing short stories

In the prize-winning story "The Gun," a man's life is marked by a single afternoon and a rusty .45; in "The Island," a mythical princess is abandoned on an island in the midst of war; in "The Boys Who Left Home to Learn Fear," a cadre of sheltered artistocrats sets out to find adventure in a foreign land and finds the gravest dangers among themselves. These are but some of the men and women who fill this searingly imaginative and emotionally taut collection of short stories by Mark Haddon, that weaves through time and space to showcase the author's incredible versatility.
�� Yet the collection achieves a sum that is greater than its parts, proving itself a meditation not only on isolation and loneliness but also on the tenuous and unseen connections that link individuals to each other, often despite themselves. In its titular story, the narrator describes with fluid precision a catastrophe that will collectively define its victims as much as it will disperse them—and brilliantly lays bare the reader's appetite for spectacle alongside its characters'. Cut with lean prose and drawing inventively from history, myth, fairy tales, and, above all, the deep well of empathy that made his three novels so compelling, The Pier Falls reveals a previously unseen side of the celebrated author.]]> 320 Mark Haddon 0385540752 Steven 0 to-read 3.93 2016 The Pier Falls: And Other Stories

author: Mark Haddon
name: Steven
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Metamorphosis and Other Stories]]> 7723 The Metamorphosis,�� a story that is both harrowing and amusing, and a landmark of modern literature.

Bringing together some of Kafka’s finest work, this collection demonstrates the richness and variety of the author’s artistry. ��The Judgment,�� which Kafka considered to be his decisive breakthrough, and ��The Stoker,�� which became the first chapter of his novel Amerika, are here included. These two, along with ��The Metamorphosis,�� form a suite of stories Kafka referred to as “The Sons,�� and they collectively present a devastating portrait of the modern family.

Also included are ��In the Penal Colony,�� a story of a torture machine and its operators and victims, and ��A Hunger Artist,�� about the absurdity of an artist trying to communicate with a misunderstanding public. Kafka’s lucid, succinct writing chronicles the labyrinthine complexities, the futility-laden horror, and the stifling oppressiveness that permeate his vision of modern life.]]> 224 Franz Kafka 1593080298 Steven 0 to-read 4.08 1915 The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

author: Franz Kafka
name: Steven
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1915
rating: 0
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]]> The Gift of Rain 2440374
In 1939, sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton-the half-Chinese, half-English youngest child of the head of one of Penang's great trading families-feels alienated from both the Chinese and British communities. He at last discovers a sense of belonging in his unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat. Philip proudly shows his new friend around his adored island, and in return Endo teaches him about Japanese language and culture and trains him in the art and discipline of aikido. But such knowledge comes at a terrible price. When the Japanese savagely invade Malaya, Philip realizes that his mentor and sensei-to whom he owes absolute loyalty-is a Japanese spy. Young Philip has been an unwitting traitor, and must now work in secret to save as many lives as possible, even as his own family is brought to its knees.]]> 435 Tan Twan Eng 1602860246 Steven 0 abandoned-reading 4.18 2007 The Gift of Rain

author: Tan Twan Eng
name: Steven
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/17
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]]> Cancer Ward 254316 Cancer Ward is both a deeply compassionate study of people facing terminal illness and a brilliant dissection of the “cancerous�� Soviet police state.]]> 576 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Steven 3 4.22 1967

author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Steven
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1967
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/09/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Steven 5 3.89 2003

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

author: Mark Haddon
name: Steven
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/16
date added: 2024/09/16
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]]> Boom! 6116753 194 Mark Haddon 0385616295 Steven 0 to-read 3.40 1992 Boom!

author: Mark Haddon
name: Steven
average rating: 3.40
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/13
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]]> The Red House 12878667
The set-up of Mark Haddon's brilliant new novel is simple: Richard, a wealthy doctor, invites his estranged sister Angela and her family to join his for a week at a vacation home in the English countryside. Richard has just re-married and inherited a willful stepdaughter in the process; Angela has a feckless husband and three children who sometimes seem alien to her. The stage is set for seven days of resentment and guilt, a staple of family gatherings the world over.

But because of Haddon's extraordinary narrative technique, the stories of these eight people are anything but simple. Told through the alternating viewpoints of each character, The Red House becomes a symphony of long-held grudges, fading dreams and rising hopes, tightly-guarded secrets and illicit desires, all adding up to a portrait of contemporary family life that is bittersweet, comic, and deeply felt. As we come to know each character they become profoundly real to us. We understand them, even as we come to realize they will never fully understand each other, which is the tragicomedy of every family.

The Red House is a literary tour-de-force that illuminates the puzzle of family in a profoundly empathetic manner -- a novel sure to entrance the millions of readers of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.]]> 264 Mark Haddon 0385535775 Steven 0 to-read 2.94 2012 The Red House

author: Mark Haddon
name: Steven
average rating: 2.94
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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]]> House of Leaves 24800
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.]]> 710 Mark Z. Danielewski Steven 0 to-read 4.11 2000 House of Leaves

author: Mark Z. Danielewski
name: Steven
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, #3)]]> 43758 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

In 1976, a uniquely seductive world of vampires was unveiled in the now-classic Interview with the Vampire . . . in 1985, a wild and voluptous voice spoke to us, telling the story of The Vampire Lestat.�� The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice continues her extraordinary "Vampire Chronicles" in a feat of mesmeric storytelling, a chillingly hypnotic entertainment in which the oldest and most powerful forces of the night are unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

Three brilliantly colored narrative threads intertwine as the story unfolds:

- The rock star known as Vampire Lestat, worshipped by millions of spellbound fans, prepares for a concert in San Francisco.��Among the audience--pilgrims in a blind swoon of adoration--are hundreds of vampires, creatures who see Lestat as a "greedy fiend risking the secret prosperity of all his kind just to be loved and seen by mortals," fiends themselves who hate Lestat's power and who are determined to destroy him . . .

- The sleep of certain men and women--vampires and mortals scattered around the world--is haunted by a vivid, mysterious dream: of twins with fiery red hair and piercing green eyes who suffer an unspeakable tragedy.��It is a dream that slowly, tauntingly reveals its meaning to the dreamers as they make their way toward each other--some to be destroyed on the journey, some to face an even more terrifying fate at journey's end . . .

- Akasha--Queen of the Damned, mother of all vampires, rises after a 6,000 year sleep and puts into motion a heinous plan to "save" mankind from itself and make "all myths of the world real" by elevating herself and her chosen son/lover to the level of the gods: "I am the fulfillment and I shall from this moment be the cause" . . .

These narrative threads wind sinuously across a vast, richly detailed tapestry of the violent, sensual world of vampirism, taking us back 6,000 years to its beginnings.��As the stories of the "first brood" of blood drinkers are revealed, we are swept across the ages, from Egypt to South America to the Himalayas to all the shrouded corners of the globe where vampires have left their mark. Vampires are created--mortals succumbing to the sensation of "being emptied, of being devoured, of being nothing." Vampires are destroyed.��Dark rituals are performed--the rituals of ancient creatures prowling the modern world.��And, finally, we are brought to a moment in the twentieth century when, in an astonishing climax, the fate of the living dead--and perhaps of the living, all the living--will be decided.

From the Hardcover edition.]]> 448 Anne Rice 0345419626 Steven 0 3.93 1988 The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, #3)

The Queen of the Damned (The Vampire Chronicles, #3)

author: Anne Rice
name: Steven
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> We Need to Talk About Kevin 80660 The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

]]> 400 Lionel Shriver 006112429X Steven 0 4.07 2003 We Need to Talk About Kevin

author: Lionel Shriver
name: Steven
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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]]> Cry, the Beloved Country 6150 Cry, the Beloved Country, the most famous and important novel in South Africa’s history, was an immediate worldwide bestseller in 1948. Alan Paton’s impassioned novel about a black man’s country under white man’s law is a work of searing beauty.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.

The eminent literary critic Lewis Gannett wrote, “We have had many novels from statesmen and reformers, almost all bad; many novels from poets, almost all thin. In Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country the statesman, the poet and the novelist meet in a unique harmony.��

Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of the Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo and his son, Absalom, set against the background of a land and a people riven by racial injustice. Remarkable for its lyricism, unforgettable for character and incident, Cry, the Beloved Country is a classic work of love and hope, courage and endurance, born of the dignity of man.]]> 316 Alan Paton 074326195X Steven 0 to-read 3.91 1948

author: Alan Paton
name: Steven
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1)]]> 960
A devastating new weapon of destruction.
When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.
Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.]]> 736 Dan Brown 1416524797 Steven 0 3.95 2000 Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1)

author: Dan Brown
name: Steven
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> The English Patient 11713 320 Michael Ondaatje 0771068719 Steven 0 3.88 1992

author: Michael Ondaatje
name: Steven
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> Robinson Crusoe 2932 320 Daniel Defoe Steven 0 3.69 1719

author: Daniel Defoe
name: Steven
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1719
rating: 0
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]]> The BFG 6319
When Sophie hears that they are flush-bunking off in England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!]]> 199 Roald Dahl 0141311371 Steven 0 4.23 1982 The BFG

author: Roald Dahl
name: Steven
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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]]> The Hunchback of Notre-Dame 30597
The novel has been described as a key text in French literature[1] and has been adapted for film over a dozen times, in addition to numerous television and stage adaptations, such as a 1923 silent film with Lon Chaney, a 1939 sound film with Charles Laughton, and a 1996 Disney animated film with Tom Hulce (both as Quasimodo).

The novel sought to preserve values of French culture in a time period of great change, which resulted in the destruction of many French Gothic structures. The novel made Notre-Dame de Paris a national icon and served as a catalyst for renewed interest in the restoration of Gothic form.]]> 510 Victor Hugo 0451527887 Steven 0 to-read 4.01 1831 The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

author: Victor Hugo
name: Steven
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1831
rating: 0
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]]> White Fang 43035 252 Jack London Steven 0 4.00 1906

author: Jack London
name: Steven
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1906
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance, #1)]]> 32542 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780385338608

Before The Firm and The Pelican Brief made him a superstar, John Grisham wrote this riveting story of retribution and justice. In this searing courtroom drama, best-selling author John Grisham probes the savage depths of racial violence, as he delivers a compelling tale of uncertain justice in a small southern town, Clanton, Mississippi.

The life of a ten-year-old girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime. That is, until her black father acquires an assault rifle and takes matters into his hands.

For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life, and then his own.]]> 738 John Grisham Steven 0 4.11 1989 A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance, #1)

author: John Grisham
name: Steven
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)]]> 37781 Things Fall Apart is written with remarkable economy and subtle irony. Uniquely and richly African, at the same time it reveals Achebe's keen awareness of the human qualities common to men of all times and places.]]> 215 Chinua Achebe Steven 0 to-read 3.73 1958 Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)

Things Fall Apart (The African Trilogy, #1)

author: Chinua Achebe
name: Steven
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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]]> Never Let Me Go 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]> 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Steven 0 to-read 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Steven
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2)]]> 43814 481 Anne Rice 0345476883 Steven 0 4.10 1985

The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2)

author: Anne Rice
name: Steven
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> The God of Small Things 9777
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy 0679457313 Steven 0 to-read 3.97 1997 The God of Small Things

author: Arundhati Roy
name: Steven
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> The Green Mile 11566
There are more wonders in heaven and hell than anyone at Cold Mountain can imagine and one of those wonders might just have stepped in amongst them.]]> 592 Stephen King 0451933028 Steven 0 4.48 1996 The Green Mile

author: Stephen King
name: Steven
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter, #2)]]> 23807
Dr. Lecter is a former psychiatrist with a grisly history, unusual tastes, and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of "The Silence of the Lambs"—an ingenious, masterfully written book and an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.]]> 421 Thomas Harris Steven 0 to-read 4.25 1988 The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter, #2)

The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter, #2)

author: Thomas Harris
name: Steven
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)]]> 853510
One of the passengers is none other than detective Hercule Poirot. On vacation.

Isolated and with a killer on board, Poirot must identify the murderer—in case he or she decides to strike again.]]> 274 Agatha Christie 0007119313 Steven 0 to-read 4.22 1934 Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)

Murder on the Orient Express (Hercule Poirot, #10)

author: Agatha Christie
name: Steven
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1934
rating: 0
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]]> Atonement 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives and her precocious imagination bring about a crime that will change all their lives, a crime whose repercussions Atonement follows through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Steven 0 to-read 3.94 2001

author: Ian McEwan
name: Steven
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Perfume: The Story of a Murderer]]> 343 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.]]> 263 Patrick Süskind Steven 0 to-read 4.05 1985 Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

author: Patrick Süskind
name: Steven
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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]]> The Secret Life of Bees 37435 The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.]]> 302 Sue Monk Kidd 0142001740 Steven 0 to-read 4.10 2001 The Secret Life of Bees

author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Steven
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> The Old Man and the Sea 2165 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

This short novel, already a modern classic, is the superbly told, tragic story of a Cuban fisherman in the Gulf Stream and the giant Marlin he kills and loses—specifically referred to in the citation accompanying the author's Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.]]> 96 Ernest Hemingway 0684830493 Steven 0 to-read 3.81 1952 The Old Man and the Sea

author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Steven
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)]]> 33574273 It was a dark and stormy night.

Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure—one that will threaten their lives and our universe.

Winner of the 1963 Newbery Medal, A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L'Engle's classic Time Quintet.]]> 218 Madeleine L'Engle 1250153271 Steven 0 to-read 3.91 1962 A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)

author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: Steven
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Perks of Being a Wallflower]]> 22628 offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see
what it looks like from the dance floor.

This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being A WALLFLOWER

This is the story of what it's like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie's letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that the perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up.

(back cover)]]> 213 Stephen Chbosky Steven 0 to-read 4.24 1999 The Perks of Being a Wallflower

author: Stephen Chbosky
name: Steven
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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]]> Wuthering Heights 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

At the centre of this novel is the passionate love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff - recounted with such emotional intensity that a plain tale of the Yorkshire moors acquires the depth and simplicity of ancient tragedy.

This best-selling Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1847 first edition of the novel. For the Fourth Edition, the editor has collated the 1847 text with several modern editions and has corrected a number of variants, including accidentals. The text is accompanied by entirely new explanatory annotations.

New to the fourth Edition are twelve of Emily Bronte's letters regarding the publication of the 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights as well as the evolution of the 1850 edition, prose and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and poetry selections by the author, four reviews of the novel, and Edward Chitham's insightful and informative chronology of the creative process behind the beloved work.

Five major critical interpretations of Wuthering Heights are included, three of them new to the Fourth Edition. A Stuart Daley considers the importance of chronology in the novel. J. Hillis Miller examines Wuthering Heights's problems of genre and critical reputation. Sandra M. Gilbert assesses the role of Victorian Christianity plays in the novel, while Martha Nussbaum traces the novel's romanticism. Finally, Lin Haire-Sargeant scrutinizes the role of Heathcliff in film adaptations of Wuthering Heights.

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë Steven 0 to-read 3.89 1847

author: Emily Brontë
name: Steven
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 17125 The only English translation authorized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

This unexpurgated 1991 translation by H. T. Willetts is the only authorized edition available, and fully captures the power and beauty of the original Russian.]]> 182 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Steven 0 to-read 3.98 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Steven
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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]]> The Glass Hotel 45754981 From the award-winning author of Station Eleven, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events–a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea.

Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets Jonathan Alkaitis, a hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby’s glass wall: Why don’t you swallow broken glass. High above Manhattan, a greater crime is committed: Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme, moving imaginary sums of money through clients�� accounts. When the financial empire collapses, it obliterates countless fortunes and devastates lives. Vincent, who had been posing as Jonathan’s wife, walks away into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: a woman has seemingly vanished from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.

In this captivating story of crisis and survival, Emily St. John Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes: campgrounds for the near-homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping, service in luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. Rife with unexpected beauty, The Glass Hotel is a captivating portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences, and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.]]> 307 Emily St. John Mandel 0525521143 Steven 4 3.66 2020 The Glass Hotel

author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Steven
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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Unique writing style, going back and forth in time. Pleasant read but I wouldn't say the story is fantastic.
]]> Small Worlds 59634120 An exhilarating and expansive new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from Caleb Azumah Nelson, the no.1 bestselling, award-winning author of Open Water

The one thing that can solve Stephen's problems is dancing. Dancing at Church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his faith, but he does believe in rhythm. Dancing with his friends, somewhere in a basement with the drums about to drop, while the DJ spins garage cuts. Dancing with his band, making music which speaks not just to the hardships of their lives, but the joys too. Dancing with his best friend Adeline, two-stepping around the living room, crooning and grooving, so close their heads might touch. Dancing alone, at home, to his father's records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known.

Stephen has only ever known himself in song. But what becomes of him when the music fades? When his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice, when his home is no longer his own? How will he find space for himself: a place where he can feel beautiful, a place he might feel free?

Set over the course of three summers in Stephen's life, from London to Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exhilarating and expansive novel about the worlds we build for ourselves, the worlds we live, dance and love within.]]> 260 Caleb Azumah Nelson 024157434X Steven 0 to-read 4.29 2023

author: Caleb Azumah Nelson
name: Steven
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/01
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]]> Small Things Like These 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 Steven 0 to-read 4.14 2021

author: Claire Keegan
name: Steven
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Everything is Illuminated 256566 276 Jonathan Safran Foer 0060529709 Steven 0 to-read 3.91 2002

author: Jonathan Safran Foer
name: Steven
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Western Lane 60784812
A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete’s struggle to transcend herself.

Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.

But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.

An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.]]> 160 Chetna Maroo 0374607494 Steven 0 to-read 3.50 2023

author: Chetna Maroo
name: Steven
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

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

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

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

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

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

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Steven 0 to-read 4.04 2022

author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Steven
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Fault in Our Stars 11870085
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.]]> 313 John Green Steven 0 to-read 4.13 2012 The Fault in Our Stars

author: John Green
name: Steven
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)]]> 968 The da Vinci Code, The da Vinci Code, The da Vinci Code, and The da Vinci Code

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others.

In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth -- will be lost forever.

The Da Vinci Code heralds the arrival of a new breed of lightning-paced, intelligent thriller utterly unpredictable right up to its stunning conclusion.]]> 489 Dan Brown Steven 0 3.92 2003 The da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)

author: Dan Brown
name: Steven
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Boy in the Striped Pajamas]]> 39999
Fences like this exist all over the world. We hope you never have to encounter one.]]> 224 John Boyne 0385751079 Steven 0 to-read 4.17 2006

author: John Boyne
name: Steven
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Color Purple 52892857 Read the original inspiration for the new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug Avery and Sofia and their experience. The Color Purple broke the silence around domestic and sexual abuse, narrating the lives of women through their pain and struggle, companionship and growth, resilience and bravery. Deeply compassionate and beautifully imagined, Alice Walker's epic carries readers on a spirit-affirming journey towards redemption and love.

��𲹻徱�Բ� The Color Purple was the first time I had seen Southern, Black women’s literature as world literature. In writing us into the world—bravely, unapologetically, and honestly—Alice Walker has given us a gift we will never be able to repay.�� —Tayari Jones

��The Color Purple was what church should have been, what honest familial reckoning could have been, and it is still the only art object in the world by which all three generations of Black artists in my family judge American art.�� —Kiese Laymon]]> 287 Alice Walker 0143135694 Steven 0 to-read 4.40 1982 The Color Purple

author: Alice Walker
name: Steven
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book Thief 19063 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordian-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up, and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

(Note: this title was not published as YA fiction)]]> 592 Markus Zusak Steven 0 to-read 4.38 2005 The Book Thief

author: Markus Zusak
name: Steven
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bastard of Istanbul 98920
In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country’s violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the “bastard�� of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul: Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister who runs a tattoo parlor and is Asya’s mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazanci sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres. Full of vigorous, unforgettable female characters, The Bastard of Istanbul is a bold, powerful tale that will confirm Shafak as a rising star of international fiction.]]> 368 Elif Shafak 0670038342 Steven 0 to-read 3.87 2006

author: Elif Shafak
name: Steven
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow]]> 43088881 From the bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night comes a powerful and poetic novel of survival and sacrifice on the American frontier.

Wyoming, 1870. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.

Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.]]> 495 Olivia Hawker 1542091144 Steven 0 to-read 4.25 2019 One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow

author: Olivia Hawker
name: Steven
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Garden of Evening Mists 12031532 448 Tan Twan Eng 1905802498 Steven 0 to-read 4.11 2011

author: Tan Twan Eng
name: Steven
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Flowers for Algernon 18373 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
��
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence �� a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 311 Daniel Keyes 015603008X Steven 5 4.19 1966 Flowers for Algernon

author: Daniel Keyes
name: Steven
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/18
date added: 2024/05/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Skippy Dies 7146335
Why does Skippy, a fourteen-year-old boy at Dublin's venerable Seabrook College, end up dead on the floor of the local doughnut shop?

Could it have something to do with his friend Ruprecht Van Doren, an overweight genius who is determined to open a portal into a parallel universe using ten-dimensional string theory?

Could it involve Carl, the teenage drug dealer and borderline psychotic who is Skippy’s rival in love?

Or could "the Automator", the ruthless, smooth-talking headmaster intent on modernizing the school, have something to hide?

Why Skippy dies and what happens next is the subject of this dazzling and uproarious novel, unraveling a mystery that links the boys of Seabrook College to their parents and teachers in ways nobody could have imagined. With a cast of characters that ranges from hip-hop-loving fourteen-year-old Eoin "MC Sexecutioner�� Flynn to basketball-playing midget Philip Kilfether, packed with questions and answers on everything from Ritalin, to M-theory, to bungee jumping, to the hidden meaning of the poetry of Robert Frost, Skippy Dies is a heartfelt, hilarious portrait of the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of adolescence, and a tragic depiction of a world always happy to sacrifice its weakest members. As the twenty-first century enters its teenage years, this is a breathtaking novel from a young writer who will come to define his generation.]]> 661 Paul Murray 0241141826 Steven 1 3.78 2010 Skippy Dies

author: Paul Murray
name: Steven
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 1
read at: 2024/05/05
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves:
review:
I didn't enjoy it. The Bee Sting is so much better.
]]> The House of Doors 65215270
The year is 1921. Lesley Hamlyn and her husband, Robert, a lawyer and war veteran, are living at Cassowary House on the Straits Settlement of Penang. When “Willie�� Somerset Maugham, a famed writer and old friend of Robert's, arrives for an extended visit with his secretary Gerald, the pair threatens a rift that could alter more lives than one.

Maugham, one of the great novelists of his day, is beleaguered: Having long hidden his homosexuality, his unhappy and expensive marriage of convenience becomes unbearable after he loses his savings-and the freedom to travel with Gerald. His career deflating, his health failing, Maugham arrives at Cassowary House in desperate need of a subject for his next book. Lesley, too, is enduring a marriage more duplicitous than it first appears. Maugham suspects an affair, and, learning of Lesley's past connection to the Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen, decides to probe deeper. But as their friendship grows and Lesley confides in him about life in the Straits, Maugham discovers a far more surprising tale than he imagined, one that involves not only war and scandal but the trial of an Englishwoman charged with murder. It is, to Maugham, a story worthy of fiction.

A mesmerizingly beautiful novel based on real events, The House of Doors traces the fault lines of race, gender, sexuality, and power under empire, and dives deep into the complicated nature of love and friendship in its shadow.]]> 306 Tan Twan Eng 1639731938 Steven 0 to-read 3.98 2023 The House of Doors

author: Tan Twan Eng
name: Steven
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> All the Sinners Bleed 61884832 A Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust.

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.

Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.

As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.

Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction�� (The Washington Post).]]> 338 S.A. Cosby 1250831911 Steven 0 to-read 4.19 2023 All the Sinners Bleed

author: S.A. Cosby
name: Steven
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Buried Giant 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X Steven 1 nlb, abandoned-reading 3.56 2015 The Buried Giant

author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Steven
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 1
read at: 2024/01/21
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: nlb, abandoned-reading
review:
Could not finish the book, did not find it interesting.
]]> Exit 53153603 IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE MURDER ...Pensioner Felix Pink is about to find out that it’s never too late ... for life to go horribly wrong.

When Felix lets himself in to Number 3 Black Lane, he’s there to perform an act of kindness and charity: to keep a dying man company as he takes his final breath ... But just fifteen minutes later Felix is on the run from the police �� after making the biggest mistake of his life.

Now his routine world is turned upside down as he tries to discover what went wrong, while staying one step ahead of the law.

]]> 336 Belinda Bauer Steven 0 to-read 3.99 2020 Exit

author: Belinda Bauer
name: Steven
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Shut Eye 24099829 Five footprints are the only sign that Daniel Buck was ever here.

Yesterday they were a family just like any other: Anna and James, and their little boy, Daniel.

But in one careless moment everything changed.

A front door accidentally left ajar . . . and Daniel was gone.

Now they are a pair of strangers who can't even look each other in the eye.

Distrust and unspoken words fill the void where their son used to be.

Anna will go to any lengths to find Daniel - a four-year-old doesn't just vanish into thin air. But how far will this desperate search push her?

Right to the brink.

And beyond.]]> 318 Belinda Bauer Steven 0 to-read 3.85 2015 The Shut Eye

author: Belinda Bauer
name: Steven
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bee Sting 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Steven 5 3.92 2023 The Bee Sting

author: Paul Murray
name: Steven
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/11
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Finders Keepers (Exmoor Trilogy, #3)]]> 11936475 A spine-tingling, edge-of-your-seat thriller about an alarming killing spree in southwest England from the CWA Gold Dagger Award–winning author.
��
The eight-year-old boy had vanished from the car and—as if by slick, sick magic—had been replaced by a note on the steering wheel: “You don’t love him.�� At the height of summer a dark shadow falls across Exmoor, as children begin to disappear, with each disappearance marked only by a terse, accusatory note. There are no explanations, no ransom demands, and no hope. Policeman Jonas Holly (a character returning from Bauer’s first two novels) faces a precarious journey into the warped mind of the kidnapper if he’s to stand any chance of catching him. But—still reeling from a personal tragedy—is Jonas really up to the task? There are some who would say that, when it comes to being the first line of defense, Jonas Holly may be the last man to trust.
��
��Finders Keepers has an enjoyably creepy premise��.��.��. Bauer’s villain, incidentally, is one of the oddest in detective fiction: what he does with his victims is utterly weird.�� The Guardian]]> 393 Belinda Bauer 0593066901 Steven 0 to-read 3.84 2012 Finders Keepers (Exmoor Trilogy, #3)

author: Belinda Bauer
name: Steven
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rubbernecker 16071656
Life is already strange enough for Patrick - being a medical student with Asperger's Syndrome doesn't come without its challenges. And that's before he is faced with solving a possible murder, especially when no one believes a crime has even taken place. Now he must stay out of danger long enough to unravel the mystery. But as Patrick learns one truth from a dead man, he discovers there have been many other lies closer to home.]]> 313 Belinda Bauer 0593066928 Steven 0 to-read 4.07 2013 Rubbernecker

author: Belinda Bauer
name: Steven
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Borrowed Hills 200190910 'Half Tarantino and half pitch-black northern realism . . . A sucker-punch of a novel, edged with knife-sharp black humour and shot through with moments of startling beauty ' Guardian, Named a Best Book of 2024

With foot and mouth disease spreading across the hills of Cumbria, emptying the valleys of sheep and filling the skies with smoke, two neighbouring shepherds lose everything and put aside their rivalry to join forces. They set their sights on a wealthy farm in the south with its flock of prize-winning animals. So begins the dark tale of Steve Elliman and William Herne.

Their sheep rustling leads to more and more difficult decisions, and Steve's only distraction is his growing fascination with William's enigmatic and independent wife, Helen. As their home comes under the sway of a lawless outsider, it is left to Steve to save himself and Helen in a savage conflict that threatens an ancient way of life.

Lyrical, cinematic and steeping in folklore, Scott Preston creates an uncompromising vision of farmers lost in brutal devotion to their flocks, the aching love affairs that men and women use to sustain themselves and the painful consequences of a breathtaking heist gone bad. The Borrowed Hills is a thrilling adventure that reimagines the American Western for the fells of northern England.]]> 272 Scott Preston 139981284X Steven 0 to-read 3.88 2024

author: Scott Preston
name: Steven
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Killing Jericho 96036907
Fresh out of prison, former Detective Constable Scott Jericho is a desperate man.

Disgraced and penniless after his assault on a violent suspect, he is forced to seek refuge with the fairground family he once rejected. Now, troubled by his failure, Jericho’s brilliant mind stagnates.

That is until a series of bizarre murders reawaken his interest. Men and women with no obvious link to each other are being ritualistically slaughtered.

Slaughtered in ways that recall an old legend of the Jericho Travelling Fair.

Now, in a race against time, he must unpick the threads of a baffling mystery. But as his investigation unfolds and the corpses pile up, a shocking truth awaits him. A revelation that will test not only Jericho’s intellect but challenge the very core of his morality...]]> 400 William Hussey 1804181161 Steven 0 to-read 4.05 Killing Jericho

author: William Hussey
name: Steven
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The East Indian 61921629 272 Brinda Charry 1914484576 Steven 0 to-read 3.97 2023

author: Brinda Charry
name: Steven
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All the Dangerous Things 60784636
Except for the occasional catnap or small blackout where she loses track of time, she hasn’t slept in a year.

Isabelle's entire existence now revolves around finding him, but she knows she can’t go on this way forever. In hopes of jarring loose a new witness or buried clue, she agrees to be interviewed by a true-crime podcaster—but his interest in Isabelle's past makes her nervous. His incessant questioning paired with her severe insomnia has brought up uncomfortable memories from her own childhood, making Isabelle start to doubt her recollection of the night of Mason’s disappearance, as well as second-guess who she can trust... including herself. But she is determined to figure out the truth no matter where it leads.]]> 326 Stacy Willingham 1250803853 Steven 0 to-read 4.04 2023 All the Dangerous Things

author: Stacy Willingham
name: Steven
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blacklands (Exmoor Trilogy, #1)]]> 6596845
Only Steven's Nan is not convinced her son is dead. She still waits for him to come home, standing bitter guard at the front window while her family fragments around her. Steven is determined to heal the widening cracks between them before it's too late. And if that means presenting his grandmother with the bones of her murdered son, he'll do it.

So the boy takes the next logical step, carefully crafting a letter to Arnold Avery in prison. And there begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between a desperate child and a bored serial killer . . .]]> 240 Belinda Bauer 1439149445 Steven 0 to-read 3.70 2009 Blacklands (Exmoor Trilogy, #1)

author: Belinda Bauer
name: Steven
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Elmet 35711376 Fresh and distinctive writing from an exciting new voice in fiction, Elmet is an unforgettable novel about family, as well as a beautiful meditation on landscape.

Daniel is heading north. He is looking for someone. The simplicity of his early life with Daddy and Cathy has turned sour and fearful. They lived apart in the house that Daddy built for them with his bare hands. They foraged and hunted. When they were younger, Daniel and Cathy had gone to school. But they were not like the other children then, and they were even less like them now. Sometimes Daddy disappeared, and would return with a rage in his eyes. But when he was at home he was at peace. He told them that the little copse in Elmet was theirs alone. But that wasn't true. Local men, greedy and watchful, began to circle like vultures. All the while, the terrible violence in Daddy grew.

Atmospheric and unsettling, Elmet is a lyrical commentary on contemporary society and one family's precarious place in it, as well as an exploration of how deep the bond between father and child can go.

]]> 311 Fiona Mozley 1473660548 Steven 4 3.77 2017 Elmet

author: Fiona Mozley
name: Steven
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/10
shelves:
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]]> A Flicker in the Dark 57693172
Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren't really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?

In a debut novel that has already been optioned for a limited series by actress Emma Stone and sold to a dozen countries around the world, Stacy Willingham has created an unforgettable character in a spellbinding thriller that will appeal equally to fans of Gillian Flynn and Karin Slaughter.]]> 357 Stacy Willingham 1250803829 Steven 0 to-read 3.96 2022 A Flicker in the Dark

author: Stacy Willingham
name: Steven
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/06
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]]> Yellowface 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Steven 0 to-read 3.69 2023 Yellowface

author: R.F. Kuang
name: Steven
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Should We Stay or Should We Go]]> 55659646
Both medical professionals, Kay and her husband Cyril have seen too many elderly patients in similar states of decay. Although healthy and vital in their early fifties, the couple fears what may lie ahead. Determined to die with dignity, Cyril makes a modest proposal. To spare themselves and their loved ones such a humiliating and protracted decline, they should agree to commit suicide together once they’ve both turned eighty. When their deal is sealed, the spouses are blithely looking forward to another three decades together.

But then they turn eighty.

By turns hilarious and touching, playful and grave, Should We Stay or Should We Go portrays twelve parallel universes, each exploring a possible future for Kay and Cyril. Were they to cut life artificially short, what would they miss out on?��Something terrific?��Or something terrible? Might they end up in a home? A fabulous luxury retirement village, or a Cuckoo’s Nest sort of home? Might being demented end up being rather fun? What future for humanity awaits—the end of civilization, or a Valhalla of peace and prosperity? What if cryogenics were really to work? What if scientists finally cure aging?

Both timely and timeless, Lionel Shriver addresses serious themes—the compromises of longevity, the challenge of living a long life and still going out in style—with an uncannily light touch. Weaving in a host of contemporary issues, from Brexit and mass migration to the coronavirus, Shriver has pulled off a rollicking page-turner in which we never have to mourn perished characters, because they’ll be alive and kicking in the very next chapter.]]> 288 Lionel Shriver 006309424X Steven 0 to-read 3.56 2021 Should We Stay or Should We Go

author: Lionel Shriver
name: Steven
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Lifeless (Tom Thorne, #5) 964990 480 Mark Billingham 0751536164 Steven 0 to-read 4.00 2005

author: Mark Billingham
name: Steven
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Burning Girl (Tom Thorne, #4)]]> 964996 440 Mark Billingham 0751534897 Steven 0 to-read 3.87 2004

author: Mark Billingham
name: Steven
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> Lazybones (Tom Thorne, #3) 964995
It's only ten days since Douglas Remfry's release from prison, having served seven years for rape, and now he's dead: naked on a bare mattress in a grubby north London hotel room, his head hooded and his hands tied with a brown leather belt.

A DEADLY JUSTICE

Someone knew he was coming out. Someone wanted to mete out some punishment of his own.

A CASE NO ONE WANTS SOLVED

And when a second sex offender is found dead, DI Tom Thorne knows he has a vicious, calculating viliglante on his hands...]]> 436 Mark Billingham 0751534277 Steven 0 to-read 4.08 2003 Lazybones (Tom Thorne, #3)

author: Mark Billingham
name: Steven
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Appeal (The Appeal, #1) 54621096 447 Janice Hallett 1788165292 Steven 0 to-read 3.83 2021

author: Janice Hallett
name: Steven
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder]]> 61714633 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

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

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

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.]]> 331 David Grann 0385534264 Steven 0 to-read 4.14 2023 The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

author: David Grann
name: Steven
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/24
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]]> Kane & Abel (Kane & Abel, #1) 78983 592 Jeffrey Archer 0312995059 Steven 0 to-read 4.31 1979

author: Jeffrey Archer
name: Steven
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/21
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]]> Wrong Place Wrong Time 59947696
It is midnight on the morning of Halloween, and Jen anxiously waits up for her 18-year-old son, Todd, to return home. But worries about his broken curfew transform into something much more dangerous when Todd finally emerges from the darkness. As Jen watches through the window, she sees her funny, seemingly happy teenage son stab a total stranger.

She doesn’t know who the victim is, or why Todd has committed such a devastating act of violence. All she knows is that her life, and Todd’s, have been shattered.

After her son is taken into custody, Jen falls asleep in despair. But when she wakes up�� it is yesterday. The murder has not happened yet—and there may be a chance to stop it. Each morning, when Jen wakes, she is further back in the past, first weeks, then years, before the murder. And Jen realizes that somewhere in the past lies the trigger for Todd’s terrible crime…and it is her mission to find it, and prevent it from taking place.]]> 416 Gillian McAllister 0063252341 Steven 0 to-read 3.95 2022 Wrong Place Wrong Time

author: Gillian McAllister
name: Steven
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> Sleepyhead (Tom Thorne, #1) 482889
Already an international bestseller, Mark Billingham's "Sleepyhead" is a chilling masterwork of crime fiction -- a boldly original experiment in terror that will beget dark dreams and sleepless nights.]]> 432 Mark Billingham 0061032212 Steven 0 to-read 3.86 2001 Sleepyhead (Tom Thorne, #1)

author: Mark Billingham
name: Steven
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>