Liz's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 22 Nov 2023 15:15:48 -0800 60 Liz's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia]]> 6650303 292 James Palmer Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.62 2008 The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia
author: James Palmer
name: Liz
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/22
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
One of my few non-fiction reads. This man was insane. He tried to take over Mongolia like he was channeling Genghis Kahn.
]]>
The Last Bookshop in London 53331577 Inspired by the true World War II history of the few bookshops to survive the Blitz, The Last Bookshop in London is a timeless story of wartime loss, love and the enduring power of literature.

August 1939: London prepares for war as Hitler’s forces sweep across Europe. Grace Bennett has always dreamed of moving to the city, but the bunkers and blackout curtains that she finds on her arrival were not what she expected. And she certainly never imagined she’d wind up working at Primrose Hill, a dusty old bookshop nestled in the heart of London.

Through blackouts and air raids as the Blitz intensifies, Grace discovers the power of storytelling to unite her community in ways she never dreamed—a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of the war.]]>
325 Madeline Martin 133528480X Liz 0 to-read, done 4.07 2021 The Last Bookshop in London
author: Madeline Martin
name: Liz
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/22
shelves: to-read, done
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body (Agatha Raisin, #21)]]> 7993959
Things have reached such a desperate pass that the Carsely Ladies� Society joins forces with the ladies in the neighboring village of Odley Cruesis to try to put a stop to Mr. Sunday’s meddling—only to find that someone has literally put a stop to him with a kitchen knife.

Agatha’s detective agency is on the case, but when a man has made as many enemies as John Sunday, it’s hard to know where to start.]]>
199 M.C. Beaton 184529954X Liz 0 mysteries, fiction I love Agatha Raisin! 3.70 2010 Agatha Raisin and the Busy Body (Agatha Raisin, #21)
author: M.C. Beaton
name: Liz
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2021/04/22
date added: 2021/04/22
shelves: mysteries, fiction
review:
I love Agatha Raisin!
]]>
<![CDATA[Sun Storm (Rebecka Martinsson, #1)]]> 7374342
Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the town she’d left in disgrace years before. A Stockholm attorney, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the revivalist church his charisma helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and a dogged policewoman. But to help her friend, and to find the real killer of a man she once adored and is now not sure she ever knew, Rebecka must relive the darkness she left behind in Kiruna, delve into a sordid conspiracy of deceit, and confront a killer whose motives are dark, wrenching, and impossible to guess....


From the Hardcover edition.]]>
320 Åsa Larsson 0440336252 Liz 2 thriller-suspense 3.46 2003 Sun Storm (Rebecka Martinsson, #1)
author: Åsa Larsson
name: Liz
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2003
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2017/12/07
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror]]> 7333703
In February 2002, Kiriakou was the head of counterterrorism in Pakistan. Under his command, in a spectacular raid coordinated with Pakistani agents and the CIA's best intelligence analyst, Kiriakou's field officers took down the infamous terrorist Abu Zubaydah. For days, Kiriakou became the wounded terrorist's personal "bodyguard." In circumstances stranger than fiction, as al-Qaeda agents scoured the streets for their captured leader, the best trauma surgeon in America was flown to Pakistan to make sure that Zubaydah did not die.

In The Reluctant Spy, Kiriakou takes us into the fight against an enemy fueled by fanaticism. He chillingly describes what it was like inside the CIA headquarters on the morning of 9/11, the agency leaders who stepped up and those who protected their careers. And in what may be the book's most shocking revelation, he describes how the White House made plans to invade Iraq a full year before the CIA knew about it—or could attempt to stop it.

Chronicling both mind-boggling mistakes and heroic acts of individual courage, The Reluctant Spy is essential listening for anyone who wishes to understand the inner workings of the U.S. intelligence apparatus, the truth behind the torture debate, and the incredible dedication of ordinary men and women doing one of the most extraordinary jobs on earth.]]>
0 John Kiriakou 1400115981 Liz 1 non-fiction 3.17 2010 The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror
author: John Kiriakou
name: Liz
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2010
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2015/05/28
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Not a big fan of this book. The author seems to be trashing the government for EVERYTHING that has effected this mans life.
]]>
The Distant Hours 6746018
Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours� of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.

Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring unforgettable characters beset by love and circumstance and haunted by memory, that reminds us of the rich power of storytelling.]]>
562 Kate Morton 1439152780 Liz 4 fiction 3.88 2010 The Distant Hours
author: Kate Morton
name: Liz
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/05/06
shelves: fiction
review:
I actually was stunned when the 2 story lines came together. The last 100 pages of this book are the best part.
]]>
<![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Liz 0 4.57 2005 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter, #6)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Liz
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/29
shelves: vampires-and-other-ridiculous-creat
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America]]> 397483
Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison.

The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims.

Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. - John Moe]]>
464 Erik Larson 0609608444 Liz 4 non-fiction 4.02 2003 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
author: Erik Larson
name: Liz
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/12/04
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]>
The Lovely Bones 12232938
So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.]]>
372 Alice Sebold 0316166685 Liz 4 thriller-suspense 3.87 2002 The Lovely Bones
author: Alice Sebold
name: Liz
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/08/09
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Red Dahlia (Anna Travis, #2)]]> 839826 485 La Plante. Lynda. 0743257073 Liz 3 4.03 2006 The Red Dahlia (Anna Travis, #2)
author: La Plante. Lynda.
name: Liz
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2011/03/02
date added: 2011/03/02
shelves:
review:
So far so good. I have bever read anything by Lynda LaPlante before. The story line is good and I like the characters.
]]>
Wishin' and Hopin' 8152697 New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much Is True, and She’s Come Undone, delivers a holiday treat with Wishin� and Hopin�—an unforgettable novella that captures the warmth and joy of the holiday season. Poignant and hilarious, in a vein similar to Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story and David Sedaris’s The Santaland Diaries, Lamb’s Christmas tale focuses on a feisty parochial school fifth grader named Felix Funicello—a distant cousin of the iconic Annette!]]> 268 Wally Lamb Liz 0 fiction 3.56 2009 Wishin' and Hopin'
author: Wally Lamb
name: Liz
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2010/02/12
date added: 2010/12/20
shelves: fiction
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Crescent Dawn (Dirk Pitt, #21)]]> 8219033
NUMA director Dirk Pitt is about to find out, as Roman artifacts discovered in Turkey and Israel unnervingly connect to the rise of a fundamentalist movement determined to restore the glory of the Ottoman Empire, and to the existence of a mysterious "manifest," lost long ago, which if discovered again . . . just may change the history of the world as we know it.]]>
548 Clive Cussler 039915714X Liz 3 3.96 2010 Crescent Dawn (Dirk Pitt, #21)
author: Clive Cussler
name: Liz
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/12/08
shelves:
review:
James Bond for the reading set. Pitt has some serious skills.
]]>
<![CDATA[Eighteen Acres (Charlotte Kramer, #1)]]> 7804338
Eighteen Acres, a description used by political insiders when referring to the White House complex, follows the first female President of the United States, Charlotte Kramer, and her staff as they take on dangerous threats from abroad and within her very own cabinet.

Charlotte Kramer, the 45th US President, Melanie Kingston, the White House chief of staff, and Dale Smith, a White House correspondent for one of the networks are all working tirelessly on Charlotte’s campaign for re-election. At the very moment when they should have been securing success, though, Kramer’s White House implodes under rumors of her husband’s infidelity and grave errors of judgment on the part of her closest national security advisor. In an upheaval that threatens not only the presidency, but the safety of the American people, Charlotte must fight to regain her footing and protect the the country she has given her life to serving.

Eighteen Acres combines political and family drama into one un-put-downable novel. It is a smart, juicy and fast-paced read that we’re sure fans of commercial women’s fiction will fall in total love with.]]>
336 Nicolle Wallace 1439194823 Liz 2 3.50 2010 Eighteen Acres (Charlotte Kramer, #1)
author: Nicolle Wallace
name: Liz
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/12/08
shelves:
review:
I thought this oculd have been better. it's bvery chick lit-y. All the women are beautiful, smart successful and wind up winning in the end. The men are all dogs. It was interesting trying to figure out who the characters would be in real life.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Magician's Accomplice (Commander Jana Matinova, #3)]]> 8131132
Devastated by her lover’s death in an explosion—on the same day a student was shot and killed in sleepy Bratislava after sneaking into a hotel to steal food—Jana is transferred to The Hague, headquarters of the international police force Europol.

On the flight, she encounters the dead student’s uncle—a retired magician who is determined to help Jana investigate his nephew’s death. And his help is indeed needed, as Jana faces an international criminal conspiracy that may emanate from Europol itself...
]]>
335 Michael Genelin 1569478945 Liz 4 mysteries, thriller-suspense 3.55 2010 The Magician's Accomplice (Commander Jana Matinova, #3)
author: Michael Genelin
name: Liz
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves: mysteries, thriller-suspense
review:
I had never read this author. The story was great. The detective is a woman with real world porblems. Well written and a good story!
]]>
The Wolves of Andover 7933820
A love story and a tale of courage, The Wolves of Andover confirms Kathleen Kent's ability to craft powerful stories of family from colonial history.]]>
305 Kathleen Kent 0316068624 Liz 4 3.59 2010 The Wolves of Andover
author: Kathleen Kent
name: Liz
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves:
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Hangman (Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus, #19)]]> 7006959
When LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker reluctantly agrees to do a big favour for old friend Teresa McLaughlin, he knows that his involvement will bring her sociopathic husband, Chris Donatti, back into his life. But then Terry goes missing and Donatti disappears, leaving their 14-year-old son Gabe behind.

Meanwhile Adrianna Blanc, a party-loving nurse, is found swinging from the rafters of a house in a wealthy suburban area. Her last phone call announced she was breaking up with her philandering boyfriend and Decker questions whether it was in fact suicide.

With lives hanging in the balance, Decker and his team need to find answers fast. At home matters are just as precarious: while Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus want to look after young Gabe, with Donatti on the loose, no one is really ever safe…]]>
432 Faye Kellerman 0061702560 Liz 3 mysteries, thriller-suspense 4.00 2010 Hangman (Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus, #19)
author: Faye Kellerman
name: Liz
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves: mysteries, thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen]]> 7897065
So often viewed in her relationships with men, the Virgin Queen is portrayed here as the product of women: the mother she lost so tragically, the female subjects who worshiped her, and the peers and intimates who loved, raised, challenged, and sometimes opposed her.

In vivid detail, Borman presents Elizabeth’s bewitching mother, Anne Boleyn, eager to nurture her new child, only to see her taken away and her own life destroyed by damning allegations--which taught Elizabeth never to mix politics and love. Kat Astley, the governess who attended and taught Elizabeth for almost thirty years, invited disaster by encouraging her charge into a dangerous liaison after Henry VIII’s death. Mary Tudor (“Bloody Mary�) envied her younger sister’s popularity and threatened to destroy her altogether. And animosity drove Elizabeth and her cousin Mary Queen of Scots into an intense thirty-year rivalry that could end only in death.

Elizabeth’s Women contains more than an indelible cast of characters. It is an unprecedented account of how the public posture of femininity figured into the English court, the meaning of costume and display, the power of fecundity and flirtation, and how Elizabeth herself, long viewed as the embodiment of feminism, shared popular views of female inferiority and scorned and schemed against her underlings� marriages and pregnancies.

Brilliantly researched and elegantly written, Elizabeth’s Women is a unique take on history’s most captivating queen and the dazzling court that surrounded her.]]>
482 Tracy Borman 055380698X Liz 4 4.01 2009 Elizabeth's Women: Friends, Rivals, and Foes Who Shaped the Virgin Queen
author: Tracy Borman
name: Liz
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves:
review:
Interesting take on Elizabeth I life. Not a political book but a social history of her life.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet]]> 7141642
But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?�

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.]]>
479 David Mitchell 1400065453 Liz 2 4.01 2010 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
author: David Mitchell
name: Liz
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves:
review:
I liked this book. it is set in an interesting time. But the middle of the book seems like it belongs to a different story. I wanted to skip through the whole monk portion. It really changed how I felt about the book.
]]>
<![CDATA[Holy Ghosts: Or, How a (Not So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night]]> 8857743 224 Gary Jansen 1101443375 Liz 2 3.78 2005 Holy Ghosts: Or, How a (Not So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night
author: Gary Jansen
name: Liz
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves:
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Housekeeper and the Professor]]> 3181564
She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities--like the Housekeeper’s shoe size--and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.]]>
180 Yōko Ogawa 0312427808 Liz 4 4.04 2003 The Housekeeper and the Professor
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Liz
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves:
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals]]> 7385814 “Hilariously informative. . . . This book will remind you why you always wanted to be a naturalist.”—Outside

In this thrilling foray into the animal kingdom, Richard Conniff takes readers on an adventure-packed journey as he courts the most dangerous animals and lives to tell the tale. He lets African wild dogs sniff his neck to test the idea that they are vicious man-eaters, sticks his hand in a fire ant mound and does multiple takes for a pretty camerawoman on a television shoot, and flings chicken carcasses into piranha-infested waters to clock how quickly they disappear—before diving in himself. This collection offers a rare chance to go along on these death-defying treks and see life through the eyes of a bona-fide field naturalist.]]>
300 Richard Conniff 0393304574 Liz 4 3.90 2009 Swimming with Piranhas at Feeding Time: My Life Doing Dumb Stuff with Animals
author: Richard Conniff
name: Liz
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves:
review:
This book is a great study of man's quest to do dumb things even though we are supposed to be the most evolved species. This book made me laugh out loud and thank God my kids didn't do this dumb stuff.
]]>
So Cold the River 7047432
In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary history -- a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once mingled, and hot springs whose miraculous mineral water cured everything from insomnia to malaria. Neglected for years, the resort has been restored to its former grandeur just in time for Eric's stay.

Just hours after his arrival, Eric experiences a frighteningly vivid vision. As the days pass, the frequency and intensity of his hallucinations increase and draw Eric deeper into the town's dark history. He discovers that something besides the hotel has been restored -- a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to regain its lost glory. Brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, So Cold the River is a tale of irresistible suspense with a racing, unstoppable current.]]>
503 Michael Koryta 0316053635 Liz 3 mysteries, thriller-suspense 3.53 2010 So Cold the River
author: Michael Koryta
name: Liz
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves: mysteries, thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior]]> 7997108 New York Times Book Review Editorsâ ChoiceWe all relish a good scandal. Why do people feel compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them? The motifs are classicâ revenge, betrayal, ambition, madnessâ though the pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily. After all, every one of us is a potential scandal in the failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deceptionâ the necessary ingredientsâ are our collective plight. How to Become a Scandal is â an extremely smart, funny, acid, and beautifully written meditation on a scary truth that we all try desperately to ignoreâ (David Shields, author of Reality A Manifesto).]]> 224 Laura Kipnis 0805089799 Liz 2 non-fiction 3.32 2010 How to Become a Scandal: Adventures in Bad Behavior
author: Laura Kipnis
name: Liz
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves: non-fiction
review:
More a psychological profile than a scandal book. Interesting though.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases]]> 2577557 Thrilling, true tales from the Vidocq Society, a team of the world's finest forensic investigators whose monthly gourmet lunches lead to justice in ice-cold murders

Three of the greatest detectives in the world--a renowned FBI agent turned private eye, a sculptor and lothario who speaks to the dead, and an eccentric profiler known as "the living Sherlock Holmes"-were heartsick over the growing tide of unsolved murders. Good friends and sometime rivals William Fleisher, Frank Bender, and Richard Walter decided one day over lunch that something had to be done, and pledged themselves to a grand quest for justice. The three men invited the greatest collection of forensic investigators ever assembled, drawn from five continents, to the Downtown Club in Philadelphia to begin an audacious quest: to bring the coldest killers in the world to an accounting. Named for the first modern detective, the Parisian eugène François Vidocq-the flamboyant Napoleonic real-life sleuth who inspired Sherlock Holmes-the Vidocq Society meets monthly in its secretive chambers to solve a cold murder over a gourmet lunch.

The Murder Room draws the reader into a chilling, darkly humorous, awe-inspiring world as the three partners travel far from their Victorian dining room to hunt the ruthless killers of a millionaire's son, a serial killer who carves off faces, and a child killer enjoying fifty years of freedom and dark fantasy.

Acclaimed bestselling author Michael Capuzzo's brilliant storytelling brings true crime to life more realistically and vividly than it has ever been portrayed before. It is a world of dazzlingly bright forensic science; true evil as old as the Bible and dark as the pages of Dostoevsky; and a group of flawed, passionate men and women, inspired by their own wounded hearts to make a stand for truth, goodness, and justice in a world gone mad.]]>
426 Michael Capuzzo 1592401422 Liz 3 non-fiction 3.60 2008 The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases
author: Michael Capuzzo
name: Liz
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Bloody, gory and I was sick of murders by the end of the book.
]]>
To the End of the Land 7779571
Ora, a middle-aged Israeli mother, is on the verge of celebrating her son Ofer’s release from army service when he returns to the front for a major offensive. In a fit of preemptive grief and magical thinking, she sets out for a hike in the Galilee, leaving no forwarding information for the “notifiers� who might darken her door with the worst possible news. Recently estranged from her husband, Ilan, she drags along an unlikely companion: their former best friend and her former lover Avram, once a brilliant artistic spirit. Avram served in the army alongside Ilan when they were young, but their lives were forever changed one weekend when the two jokingly had Ora draw lots to see which of them would get the few days� leave being offered by their commander—a chance act that sent Avram into Egpyt and the Yom Kippur War, where he was brutally tortured as POW.

In the aftermath, a virtual hermit, he refused to keep in touch with the family and has never met the boy. Now, as Ora and Avram sleep out in the hills, ford rivers, and cross valleys, avoiding all news from the front, she gives him the gift of Ofer, word by word; she supplies the whole story of her motherhood, a retelling that keeps Ofer very much alive for Ora and for the reader, and opens Avram to human bonds undreamed of in his broken world. Their walk has a “war and peace� rhythm, as their conversation places the most hideous trials of war next to the joys and anguish of raising children. Never have we seen so clearly the reality and surreality of daily life in Israel, the currents of ambivalence about war within one household, and the burdens that fall on each generation anew.

Grossman’s rich imagining of a family in love and crisis makes for one of the great antiwar novels of our time.]]>
581 David Grossman 0307592979 Liz 0 3.96 2008 To the End of the Land
author: David Grossman
name: Liz
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves:
review:
I didn't finish this book. I have a hard time with books about sons in the military. Too close to home.
]]>
In The Name Of Honor 6902794
Home from Iraq, a lieutenant kills his commanding officer—was it self-defense or premeditated murder? An enthralling novel of suspense about the high cost of war and secrets
The McCarrans and the Gallaghers, two military families, have been close for decades, ever since Anthony McCarran � now one of the army's most distinguished generals � became best friends with Jack Gallagher, a fellow West Pointer who was later killed in Vietnam. Now a new generation of soldiers faces combat, and Lt. Brian McCarran, the general's son, has returned from a harrowing tour in Iraq. Traumatized by wartime experiences he will not reveal, Brian depends on his lifelong friendship with Kate Gallagher, Jack's daughter, who is married to Brian's commanding officer in Iraq, Capt. Joe D'Abruzzo. But since coming home, D'Abruzzo also seems changed by the experiences he and Brian shared � he's become secretive and remote.

Tragedy strikes when Brian shoots and kills D'Abruzzo on their army post in Virginia. Brian pleads self-defense, claiming that D'Abruzzo, a black-belt martial artist, came to his quarters, accused him of interfering with his marriage, and attacked him. Kate supports Brian and says that her husband had become violent and abusive. But Brian and Kate have secrets of their own, and now Capt. Paul Terry, one of the army's most accomplished young lawyers, will defend Brian in a high-profile court-martial. Terry's co-counsel is Meg McCarran, Brian's sister, a brilliant and beautiful attorney who insists on leaving her practice in San Francisco to help save her brother. Before the case is over, Terry will become deeply entwined with Meg and the McCarrans—and learn that families, like war, can break the sturdiest of souls.

]]>
401 Richard North Patterson 0805087745 Liz 3 thriller-suspense 3.84 2010 In The Name Of Honor
author: Richard North Patterson
name: Liz
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[A River in the Sky (Amelia Peabody, #19)]]> 6571644 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Peters comes one of her most baffling and intriguing mysteries in her phenomenally popular Amelia Peabody series.

August 1910. Banned from the Valley of the Kings, Amelia Peabody and husband Emerson are persuaded to follow would-be archaeologist Major George Morley on an expedition to Palestine. Somewhere in this province of the corrupt, crumbling Ottoman Empire—the Holy Land of three religions—Morley is determined to unearth the legendary Ark of the Covenant.

At the request of British Intelligence, Emerson will be keeping an eye on the seemingly inept Morley, believed to be an agent of the Kaiser sent to stir up trouble in this politically volatile land. Amelia hopes to prevent a catastrophically unprofessional excavation from destroying priceless historical finds and sparking an armed protest by infuriated Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Meanwhile, Amelia's headstrong son, Ramses, working on a dig at Samaria, encounters an unusual party of travelers and makes a startling discovery—information that he must pass along to his parents in Jerusalem...if he can get there alive.]]>
307 Elizabeth Peters 0061246263 Liz 3 historical-fiction, mysteries 3.97 2010 A River in the Sky (Amelia Peabody, #19)
author: Elizabeth Peters
name: Liz
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/11/23
shelves: historical-fiction, mysteries
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Nine Dragons (Harry Bosch, #14; Harry Bosch Universe, #21)]]> 6413193
Joined by members of the department's Asian Crime Unit, Bosch relentlessly investigates the killing and soon identifies a suspect, a Los Angeles member of a Hong Kong triad. But before Harry can close in, he gets the word that his young daughter Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong with her mother, is missing.

Bosch drops everything to journey across the Pacific to find his daughter. Could her disappearance and the case be connected? With the stakes of the investigation so high and so personal, Bosch is up against the clock in a new city, where nothing is at it seems.]]>
374 Michael Connelly 0316166316 Liz 4 thriller-suspense So far so good. 4.00 2009 Nine Dragons (Harry Bosch, #14; Harry Bosch Universe, #21)
author: Michael Connelly
name: Liz
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/11/13
date added: 2010/11/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
So far so good.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Ghosts of Belfast (Jack Lennon Investigations #1)]]> 6388743
Gerry Fegan, a former paramilitary contract killer, is haunted by the ghosts of the 12 people he has slaughtered. Every night, on the point of losing his mind, he drowns their screams in drink. His solution is to kill those who engineered their deaths.

From the greedy politicians to the corrupt security forces, the street thugs to the complacent bystanders who let it happen, all are called to account. But when Fegan's vendetta threatens to derail a hard-won truce and destabilise the government, old comrades and enemies alike want him dead.


Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Thriller.]]>
336 Stuart Neville 1569476004 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.91 2009 The Ghosts of Belfast (Jack Lennon Investigations #1)
author: Stuart Neville
name: Liz
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/08/23
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
Little Bee 4078927 288 Chris Cleave 038566530X Liz 4 fiction 3.62 2008 Little Bee
author: Chris Cleave
name: Liz
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/08/23
shelves: fiction
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[This Body of Death (Inspector Lynley, #16)]]> 7264206 692 Elizabeth George 0061160881 Liz 0 mysteries, thriller-suspense Love the good inspector. 4.02 2010 This Body of Death (Inspector Lynley, #16)
author: Elizabeth George
name: Liz
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2010/08/20
date added: 2010/08/23
shelves: mysteries, thriller-suspense
review:
Love the good inspector.
]]>
The Uncommon Reader 1096390 120 Alan Bennett 0374280967 Liz 0 fiction 3.75 2007 The Uncommon Reader
author: Alan Bennett
name: Liz
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2010/07/25
date added: 2010/08/23
shelves: fiction
review:
A little bitty book (120 pages)this book pokes great fun at the Queen of England and the lack or reading that is apparently common in the UK.
]]>
Evidence (Alex Delaware, #24) 6310964
Veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis is shocked at the sight: a twisted crime that only Milo and psychologist Alex Delaware can hope to solve. While the female victim’s identity remains in question, her companion is ID’d as eco-friendly architect Desmond Backer, notorious for his power to seduce women. The deeper Milo and Alex dig for clues, the longer the list of suspects grows. But when the investigation veers suddenly in a startling direction, it’s the investigators who may wind up on the wrong end of a cornered predator’s final fury.]]>
355 Jonathan Kellerman 0345495152 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.86 2009 Evidence (Alex Delaware, #24)
author: Jonathan Kellerman
name: Liz
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home]]> 6365221 241 Rhoda Janzen 080508925X Liz 0 3.21 2009 Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home
author: Rhoda Janzen
name: Liz
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves:
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter]]> 7825850 Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness."

"My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.

Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.

When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.]]>
336 Seth Grahame-Smith 184901454X Liz 0 3.63 2010 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
author: Seth Grahame-Smith
name: Liz
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: vampires-and-other-ridiculous-creat
review:
Great book for teen age boys who hate to read. Vampires and history all rolled into one.
]]>
Alice I Have Been 6540352 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Now, in this spellbinding historical novel, we meet the young girl whose bright spirit sent her on an unforgettable trip down the rabbit hole–and the grown woman whose story is no less enthralling.

But oh my dear, I am tired of being Alice in Wonderland. Does it sound ungrateful?

Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege, and greater tragedy. But as she nears her eighty-first birthday, she knows that, to the world around her, she is and will always be only “Alice.� Her life was permanently dog-eared at one fateful moment in her tenth year–the golden summer day she urged a grown-up friend to write down one of his fanciful stories.

That story, a wild tale of rabbits, queens, and a precocious young child, becomes a sensation the world over. Its author, a shy, stuttering Oxford professor, does more than immortalize Alice–he changes her life forever. But even he cannot stop time, as much as he might like to. And as Alice’s childhood slips away, a peacetime of glittering balls and royal romances gives way to the urgent tide of war.

For Alice, the stakes could not be higher, for she is the mother of three grown sons, soldiers all. Yet even as she stands to lose everything she treasures, one part of her will always be the determined, undaunted Alice of the story, who discovered that life beyond the rabbit hole was an astonishing journey.

A love story and a literary mystery, Alice I Have Been brilliantly blends fact and fiction to capture the passionate spirit of a woman who was truly worthy of her fictional alter ego, in a world as captivating as the Wonderland only she could inspire.]]>
345 Melanie Benjamin 0385344139 Liz 3 fiction 3.63 2009 Alice I Have Been
author: Melanie Benjamin
name: Liz
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: fiction
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[I, Alex Cross (Alex Cross, #16)]]> 8152181 When a beloved relative is murdered, Detective Alex Cross vows to hunt down the killer . . . and discovers a secret that could rock the entire world.Detective Alex Cross is pulled out of a family celebration and given the awful news that a beloved niece was brutally murdered. Alex vows to hunt down the killer, and soon learns that she was mixed up in one of Washington, D. C.'s wildest scenes. And she was not this killer's only victim.The hunt for the murderer leads Alex and his girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, to Washington's most infamous club-a place where every fantasy is possible, if you have the credentials to get in. The killer could be one of their patrons, one of Washington's elite who will do anything to keep their secrets buried. With astonishing plot twists and electrifying revelations that will keep readers on the edge of their seat, I, Alex Cross is the master of suspense at his sharpest and best.]]> 401 James Patterson Liz 0 thriller-suspense 4.35 2009 I, Alex Cross (Alex Cross, #16)
author: James Patterson
name: Liz
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum, #15)]]> 7624258 SAVE THE DATE: Tuesday, June 23, 2009

EVENT: The next Stephanie Plum novel, in which complications arise, loyalties are tested, cliffhangers are resolved, and donuts are eaten.

WHERE: Wherever books are sold across America

WHAT TO BRING: Sunglasses, insect repellant, a flotation device, suntan lotion, cheez-doodles, extra-large towel, fire extinguisher, baseball bat, lip balm, monkey leash, sixty three pieces of chewing gum, and one canister of oxygen (don’t ask). Hey, it’s a Stephanie Plum novel!

STEPHANIE PLUM'S BURG COMES TO LIFE!

]]>
320 Janet Evanovich 1616801131 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.77 2009 Finger Lickin' Fifteen (Stephanie Plum, #15)
author: Janet Evanovich
name: Liz
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Plum Lovin' (Stephanie Plum #12.5)]]> 7168589 176 Janet Evanovich 0641935269 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.66 2007 Plum Lovin' (Stephanie Plum #12.5)
author: Janet Evanovich
name: Liz
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Bad Book Affair (Mobile Library Mystery, #4)]]> 6332097 Publishers Weekly

Author Ian Sansom “clearly loves a good laugh� (Washington Post), as his delightful mystery series featuring rumpled, fish-out-of-water, Jewish vegetarian librarian Israel Armstrong indisputably proves. The Bad Book Affair is Israel’s fourth hilarious adventure as he tools around Ireland in a rattletrap bookmobile trying to solve the mystery of a missing teenage girl while trying to keep his mess of a personal life in order. Sansom’s Mobile Library Mystery series has made a big splash with critics on both sides of “the Pond.� The New York Times Book Review loves their “formidable reserves of insight and humor,� while the London Times calls Israel “one of the most original and exciting amateur sleuths around.”]]>
228 Ian Sansom 0061452017 Liz 2 mysteries 3.39 2010 The Bad Book Affair (Mobile Library Mystery, #4)
author: Ian Sansom
name: Liz
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at: 2010/02/06
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: mysteries
review:
This is part of a series. I haven't read any of the others. it was ok. The main character is kind of quirky, but I was expecting more of a mystery. Easy reading.
]]>
<![CDATA[The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival]]> 6693876
Father Steve Sibille has come home to the bayou to take charge of St. Pete’s church. Among his challenges are teenybopper altar girls, insomnia-curing confessions, and alarmingly alluring congregant Vicky Carrier. Then there’s Miss Rita, an irrepressible centenarian with a taste for whiskey, cracklins, and sticking her nose in other people’s business.

When an outsider threatens to poach Father Steve’s flock, Miss Rita suggests he fight back by staging an event that will keep St. Pete’s parishioners loyal forever. As The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival draws near, help comes from the strangest places. And while the road to the festival may be paved with good intentions—not to mention bake sales, an elephant, and the most bizarre cook-out ever—where it will lead is anyone’s guess…]]>
320 Ken Wheaton 0758238525 Liz 3 fiction 3.37 2009 The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival
author: Ken Wheaton
name: Liz
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: fiction
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History]]> 7071759 On February 15, 2003, a group of thieves broke into an allegedly airtight vault in the international diamond capital of Antwerp, Belgium and made off with over $108 million dollars worth of diamonds and other valuables. They did so without tripping an alarm or injuring a single guard in the process.

Although the crime was perfect, the getaway was not. The police zeroed in on a band of professional thieves fronted by Leonardo Notarbartolo, a dapper Italian who had rented an office in the Diamond Center and clandestinely cased its vault for over two years. The “who� of the crime had been answered, but the “how� remained largely a mystery.

Enter Scott Andrew Selby, a Harvard Law grad and diamond expert, and Greg Campbell, author of Blood Diamonds, who undertook a global goose chase to uncover the true story behind the daring heist. Tracking the threads of the story throughout Europe—from Belgium to Italy, in seedy cafés and sleek diamond offices—the authors sorted through an array of conflicting details, divergent opinions and incongruous theories to put together the puzzle of what actually happened that Valentine’s Day weekend.

This real-life Ocean’s Eleven—a combination of diamond history, journalistic reportage, and riveting true-crime story—provides a thrilling in-depth study detailing the better-than-fiction heist of the century.



]]>
336 Scott Andrew Selby 1402766513 Liz 3 non-fiction 3.87 2010 Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History
author: Scott Andrew Selby
name: Liz
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York]]> 7054123 The Poisoner's Handbook Blum draws from highly original research to track the fascinating, perilous days when a pair of forensic scientists began their trailblazing chemical detective work, fighting to end an era when untraceable poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime.

Drama unfolds case by case as the heroes of The Poisoner's Handbook—chief medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler—investigate a family mysteriously stricken bald, Barnum and Bailey's Famous Blue Man, factory workers with crumbling bones, a diner serving poisoned pies, and many others. Each case presents a deadly new puzzle and Norris and Gettler work with a creativity that rivals that of the most imaginative murderer, creating revolutionary experiments to tease out even the wiliest compounds from human tissue. Yet in the tricky game of toxins, even science can't always be trusted, as proven when one of Gettler's experiments erroneously sets free a suburban housewife later nicknamed "America's Lucretia Borgia" to continue her nefarious work.

From the vantage of Norris and Gettler's laboratory in the infamous Bellevue Hospital it becomes clear that killers aren't the only toxic threat to New Yorkers. Modern life has created a kind of poison playground, and danger lurks around every corner. Automobiles choke the city streets with carbon monoxide; potent compounds, such as morphine, can be found on store shelves in products ranging from pesticides to cosmetics. Prohibition incites a chemist's war between bootleggers and government chemists while in Gotham's crowded speakeasies each round of cocktails becomes a game of Russian roulette. Norris and Gettler triumph over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice during a remarkably deadly time. A beguiling concoction that is equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten New York.]]>
319 Deborah Blum 1594202435 Liz 4 non-fiction 4.00 2010 The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
author: Deborah Blum
name: Liz
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Don't let the chemistry scare you. This book fills several reading likes. A nonfiction look at the creation of pathology labs and coroner systems, a murder mystery, and a nonfiction book that reads like fiction.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce, #2)]]> 6777616
Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey are over—and then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who’d do such a thing, and why? For Flavia, the questions are intriguing enough to make her put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters. Astride Gladys, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the de Luces' crumbling family mansion in search of Bishop's Lacey's deadliest secrets.

Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What of the vicar's odd ministrations to the catatonic woman in the dovecote? Then there's a German pilot obsessed with the Brontë sisters, a reporachful spinster aunt, and even a box of poisoned chocolates. Most troubling of all is Porson’s assistant, the charming but erratic Nialla. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in way over her head?]]>
364 Alan Bradley 0385342314 Liz 4 mysteries Flavia is back!! 3.99 2010 The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag (Flavia de Luce, #2)
author: Alan Bradley
name: Liz
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: mysteries
review:
Flavia is back!!
]]>
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand 6643090
The Major leads a quiet life valuing the proper things that Englishmen have lived by for generations: honor, duty, decorum, and a properly brewed cup of tea. But then his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as the permanent foreigner. Can their relationship survive the risks one takes when pursuing happiness in the face of culture and tradition?]]>
359 Helen Simonson 1400068932 Liz 4 fiction ]]> 3.89 2010 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
author: Helen Simonson
name: Liz
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: fiction
review:
Great story on many levels. Pettigrew settles into his own life, a love story and the story of family relationships. One of the best books I've read this year.

]]>
Spooky Little Girl 6809339
Coming home from a Hawaiian vacation with her best girlfriends, Lucy Fisher is stunned to find everything she owns tossed out on her front lawn, the locks changed, and her fiancé’s phone disconnected—plus she’s just lost her job. With her world spinning wildly out of her control, Lucy decides to make a new start and moves upstate to live with her sister and nephew.

But then things take an even more dramatic A fatal encounter with public transportation lands Lucy not in the hereafter but in the nearly hereafter. She’s back in school, learning the parameters of spooking and how to become a successful spirit in order to complete a ghostly assignment. If Lucy succeeds, she’s guaranteed a spot in the next level of the afterlife—but until then, she’s stuck as a ghost in the last place she would ever want to be.

Trying to avoid being trapped on earth for all eternity, Lucy crosses the line between life and death and back again when she returns home. Navigating the perilous channels of the paranormal, she’s determined to find out why her life crumbled and why, despite her ghastly death, no one seems to have noticed she’s gone. But urgency on the spectral plane—in the departed person of her feisty grandmother, who is risking both their eternal lives—requires attention, and Lucy realizes that you get only one chance to be spectacular in death.]]>
293 Laurie Notaro 0345510976 Liz 3 3.70 2010 Spooky Little Girl
author: Laurie Notaro
name: Liz
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: vampires-and-other-ridiculous-creat
review:
Fun little summer read about a young woman who dies and has to "earn her wings" She does that by cleaning up the mess her life was on earth.
]]>
Push 71332 177 Sapphire 0679766758 Liz 1 fiction 3.89 1996 Push
author: Sapphire
name: Liz
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1996
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: fiction
review:

]]>
The Good Son 7667756 New York Times bestselling author Michael Gruber, a member of "the elite ranks of those who can both chill the blood and challenge the mind" (The Denver Post), delivers a taut, multilayered, riveting novel of suspense

Somewhere in Pakistan, Sonia Laghari and eight fellow members of a symposium on peace are being held captive by armed terrorists. Sonia, a deeply religious woman as well as a Jungian psychologist, has become the de facto leader of the kidnapped group. While her son Theo, an ex-Delta soldier, uses his military connections to find and free the victims, Sonia tries to keep them all alive by working her way into the kidnappers' psyches and interpreting their dreams. With her knowledge of their language, her familiarity with their religion, and her Jungian training, Sonia confounds her captors with her insights and beliefs. Meanwhile, when the kidnappers decide to kill their captives, one by one, in retaliation for perceived crimes against their country, Theo races against the clock to try and save their lives.

]]>
400 Michael Gruber 0805091289 Liz 1 3.76 2009 The Good Son
author: Michael Gruber
name: Liz
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2009
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves:
review:

]]>
31 Bond Street 7101914
During the trial, the two lawyers fight for truth, justice and their careers. This novel is set against the background of bustling, corrupt New York City, just four years before the Civil War. The author intertwines two main narratives: the trial through the perspective of the defense attorney Henry Clinton, and the story of the lovely young widow Emma Cunningham whose search for a husband brings her into the arms and home of Dr. Burdell.]]>
352 Ellen Horan Liz 3 thriller-suspense 3.37 2010 31 Bond Street
author: Ellen Horan
name: Liz
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
Impact (Wyman Ford, #3) 6735215 A brilliant meteor lights up the Maine coast... and two young women borrow a boat and set out for a distant island to find the impact crater.

A scientist at the National Propulsion Facility discovers an inexplicable source of gamma rays in the outer Solar System. He is found decapitated, the data missing.

High resolution NASA images reveal an unnatural feature hidden in the depths of a crater on Mars... and it appears to have been activated.

Sixty hours and counting.

]]>
364 Douglas Preston 0765317680 Liz 3 thriller-suspense 3.78 2010 Impact (Wyman Ford, #3)
author: Douglas Preston
name: Liz
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
Remarkable Creatures 6457081
Remarkable Creatures is the story of Mary Anning, who has a talent for finding fossils, and whose discovery of ancient marine reptiles such as that ichthyosaur shakes the scientific community and leads to new ways of thinking about the creation of the world.

Working in an arena dominated by middle-class men, however, Mary finds herself out of step with her working-class background. In danger of being an outcast in her community, she takes solace in an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth Philpot, a prickly London spinster with her own passion for fossils.

The strong bond between Mary and Elizabeth sees them through struggles with poverty, rivalry and ostracism, as well as the physical dangers of their chosen obsession. It reminds us that friendship can outlast storms and landslides, anger and jealousy.]]>
352 Tracy Chevalier 0007178379 Liz 4 fiction 3.87 2009 Remarkable Creatures
author: Tracy Chevalier
name: Liz
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: fiction
review:
This book was recommended to me by someone I don't know well. it's wonderful. The story of the a woman who comes to trems with her life. it was so much more than that.
]]>
The Faculty Club 7180712 At the world’s most exclusive law school, there’s a secret society rumored to catapult its members to fame and fortune. Everyone is dying to get in�

Jeremy Davis is the rising star of his first-year class. He’s got a plum job with the best professor on campus. He’s caught the eye of a dazzling Rhodes scholar named Daphne. But something dark is stirring behind the ivy. When a mysterious club promises success beyond his wildest dreams, Jeremy uncovers a macabre secret older than the university itself. In a race against time, Jeremy must stop an ancient ritual that will sacrifice the lives of those he loves most and blur the lines between good and evil.

In this extraordinary debut thriller, Danny Tobey offers a fascinating glimpse into the rarefied world of an elite New England school and the unthinkable dangers that lie within its gates. He deftly weaves a tale of primeval secrets and betrayal into an ingenious brain teaser that will keep readers up late into the night.

Packed with enigmatic professors, secret codes, hidden tunnels, and sinister villains, The Faculty Club establishes Danny Tobey as this season’s most thrilling new author.]]>
307 Danny Tobey 1439154295 Liz 2 thriller-suspense 3.03 2010 The Faculty Club
author: Danny Tobey
name: Liz
average rating: 3.03
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[A Curtain Falls (Simon Ziele, #2)]]> 7640654
Yet withall of the detectives and resources at Mulvaney’s disposal, a particularly puzzling crime compels him to look for someone he can trust absolutely. When a chorus girlis found dead on a Broadway stage dressed in the leading lady’s costume, there are no signs of violence, no cuts, no bruises—no marks at all. If pressed, the coroner wouldcall it a suicide, but then that would make her the second girl to turn up dead in such a manner in the last few weeks. And the news of a possible serial killer would be potentially disastrous to the burgeoning theater world, not to mention the citizens of New York.

Following on the heels of Stefanie Pintoff’s acclaimed and award-winning debut, A Curtain Falls is a moody and evocative tale that follows Ziele and his partners as they scour the dark streetsof early-twentieth-century New York in search of a true fiend.]]>
400 Stefanie Pintoff 0312583966 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.81 2010 A Curtain Falls (Simon Ziele, #2)
author: Stefanie Pintoff
name: Liz
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
Same character as "In the Shadow of Gotham" which I thought was very well written. This time Zeile is involved in the investigation of the murders of some actresses. Historically accurate.
]]>
<![CDATA[Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory]]> 7632329
Filled with spies, double agents, rogues, heroes & a corpse, the story of Operation Mincemeat reads like an international thriller. Unveiling never-before-released material, Macintyre goes into the minds of intelligence officers, their moles & spies, & the German Abwehr agents who suffered the “twin frailties of wishfulness & yesmanship.� He weaves together the eccentric personalities of Cholmondeley & Montagu & their improbable feats into an adventure that saved thousands & paved the way for the conquest of Sicily.

]]>
416 Ben Macintyre 0747598681 Liz 4 non-fiction 3.99 2010 Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Liz
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: non-fiction
review:
You just can't make this stuff up. Spies, disinformation, the invasion of Sicily, using false identities. A rollicking good read. While non-fiction it reads like fiction. Plus Ina Fleing was one of the intelligence officers who thought the plan up, so think of the possibilities.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Millennium, #3)]]> 6892870
Lisbeth Salander - the heart of Larsson's two previous novels - lies in critical condition, a bullet wound to her head, in the intensive care unit of a Swedish city hospital. She's fighting for her life in more ways than one: if and when she recovers, she'll be taken back to Stockholm to stand trial for three murders. With the help of her friend, journalist Mikael Blomkvist, she will not only have to prove her innocence, but also identify and denounce those in authority who have allowed the vulnerable, like herself, to suffer abuse and violence. And, on her own, she will plot revenge - against the man who tried to kill her, and the corrupt government institutions that very nearly destroyed her life.

Once upon a time, she was a victim. Now Salander is fighting back.

~from the jacket]]>
566 Stieg Larsson 030726999X Liz 4 done, thriller-suspense 4.23 2007 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Millennium, #3)
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Liz
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/12
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: done, thriller-suspense
review:
I like all these books. Not quite as violent at the second book, the story continues right where the second book leaves off. The details of Salander's life are horrific but this book explains who was behind the nightmare that was her life. Excellent.
]]>
Inside Out (Ben Treven, #2) 6947577 But other players are after the tapes, too, and to find Larison, Ben will have to survive CIA hit teams, Blackwater mercenaries, and the long reach of the White House. He’ll also have to find a way to handle Paula Lanier, a smart, sexy FBI agent who has her own reasons for wanting the tapes and is determined to get them before Ben does. With the stakes this high, everyone has an angle—everyone but Ben, who will have to find the right alliance if he wants to stay alive.

]]>
345 Barry Eisler Liz 3 thriller-suspense 4.08 2010 Inside Out (Ben Treven, #2)
author: Barry Eisler
name: Liz
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Liz 3 thriller-suspense 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: Liz
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[A Murderous Procession (Mistress of the Art of Death, #4)]]> 6575580 Also see: Alternate Cover Editions for this ISBN [ACE]
ACE #1

In 1176, King Henry II sends his daughter Joanna to Palermo to marry his cousin, the king of Sicily. Henry chooses Adelia Aguilar, his Mistress of the Art of Death, to travel with the princess and safeguard her health. But when people in the wedding procession are murdered, Adelia and Rowley must discover the killer's identity . . . and whether he is stalking the princess or Adelia herself.]]>
337 Ariana Franklin 0399156283 Liz 4 thriller-suspense Love these books! 4.12 2010 A Murderous Procession (Mistress of the Art of Death, #4)
author: Ariana Franklin
name: Liz
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
Love these books!
]]>
In the Shadow of the Cypress 7143313 256 Thomas Steinbeck 1439168253 Liz 4 fiction 3.35 2010 In the Shadow of the Cypress
author: Thomas Steinbeck
name: Liz
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: fiction
review:
I loved this book. it takes place in a time period I know little about and contains an ethnic group I really have no background info on. The story line moves along nicely. The book is divided into 3 parts, background, the actual meat of the story and the results (many years later) of the events. A really wonderful read.
]]>
<![CDATA[Deeper Than the Dead (Oak Knoll, #1)]]> 1747182
On the damp, leaf-strewn ground a gruesome trophy is displayed. It's a young woman. Although her battered body has been buried, her head is propped on a stone like an offering, her mouth and eyes glued shut, her eardrums destroyed.

This killer has struck this peaceful town before - and the savagery he inflicts on his victims is increasing. Vince Leone, a pioneering FBI profiler, is called in to try to unlock the mind of the killer - a strategy that pulls him deep into the devastated community.

Suspicions thicken, secrets spill out and reputations shatter as Vince draws ever nearer to evil . . .

Watch out for the next title in the Oak Knoll FBI Profiler thriller series SECRETS TO THE GRAVE]]>
432 Tami Hoag 0752891634 Liz 3 mysteries 4.08 2009 Deeper Than the Dead (Oak Knoll, #1)
author: Tami Hoag
name: Liz
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: mysteries
review:

]]>
Fever Dream (Pendergast, #10) 7122034 405 Douglas Preston 0446554960 Liz 4 thriller-suspense 4.11 2010 Fever Dream (Pendergast, #10)
author: Douglas Preston
name: Liz
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
Oh yea! deliciously creepy like all of this series. This one is written more like the early books than the more recent ones.
]]>
Unfinished Desires 6072275 New York Times bestselling author of Evensong and The Finishing School, comes a sweeping new novel of friendship, loyalty, rivalries, redemption, and memory.

It is the fall of 1951 at Mount St. Gabriel’s, an all-girls school tucked away in the mountains of North Carolina. Tildy Stratton, the undisputed queen bee of her class, befriends Chloe Starnes, a new student recently orphaned by the untimely and mysterious death of her mother. Their friendship fills a void for both girls but also sets in motion a chain of events that will profoundly affect the course of many lives, including the girls� young teacher and the school’s matriarch, Mother Suzanne Ravenel.

Fifty years on, the headmistress relives one pivotal night, trying to reconcile past and present, reaching back even further to her own senior year at the school, where the roots of a tragedy are buried.

In Unfinished Desires, a beloved author delivers a gorgeous new novel in which thwarted desires are passed on for generations–and captures the rare moment when a soul breaks free. ]]>
396 Gail Godwin 0345483200 Liz 2 fiction 3.12 2010 Unfinished Desires
author: Gail Godwin
name: Liz
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2010
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: fiction
review:
I read this after someone recommended it to me. I was not really thrilled. I wanted to shake all the main characters.
]]>
<![CDATA[The God of the Hive (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #10)]]> 6780920
It began as a problem in one of Holmes� beloved beehives, led to a murderous cult, and ended—or so they’d hoped—with a daring escape from a sacrificial altar. Instead, Mary Russell and her husband, Sherlock Holmes, have stirred the wrath and the limitless resources of those they’ve thwarted. Now they are separated and on the run, wanted by the police, and pursued across the Continent by a ruthless enemy with powerful connections.

Unstoppable together, Russell and Holmes will have to survive this time apart, maintaining tenuous contact only by means of coded messages and cryptic notes. With Holmes� young granddaughter in her safekeeping, Russell will have to call on instincts she didn’t know she had. But has the couple already made a fatal mistake by separating, making themselves easier targets for the shadowy government agents sent to silence them?

From hidden rooms in London shops and rustic forest cabins to rickety planes over Scotland and boats on the frozen North Sea, Russell and Holmes work their way back to each other while uncovering answers to a mystery that will take both of them to solve. A hermit with a mysterious past and a beautiful young female doctor with a secret, a cruelly scarred flyer and an obsessed man of the cloth, Holmes� brother, Mycroft, and an Intelligence agent who knows too much: Everyone Russell and Holmes meet could either speed their safe reunion or betray them to their enemies—in the most complex, shocking, and deeply personal case of their career.
(front flap)]]>
368 Laurie R. King 0553805541 Liz 4 thriller-suspense 4.17 2010 The God of the Hive (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #10)
author: Laurie R. King
name: Liz
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
I love these books. Just a nice well written mystery.
]]>
<![CDATA[Presumed Innocent (Kindle County Legal Thriller, #1)]]> 425029 Presumed Innocent brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes. It's the stunning portrayal of one man's all-too-human, all-consuming fatal attraction for a passionate woman who is not his wife, and the story of how his obsession puts everything he loves and values on trial—including his own life. It's a book that lays bare a shocking world of betrayal and murder, as well as the hidden depths of the human heart. And it will hold you and haunt you ... long after you have reached its shattering conclusion.]]> 421 Scott Turow 0446350982 Liz 3 thriller-suspense ]]> 4.10 1987 Presumed Innocent (Kindle County Legal Thriller, #1)
author: Scott Turow
name: Liz
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
Maybe it's the old lawyer in me but I am not a big fan of Turow's books. I know of no courtroom where you could get away with the stuff the lawyers in his book do. Also not all prosecuting attorneys are crooked. That kind of stuff distracts from the book as far as I am concerned.

]]>
<![CDATA[Banana Republican: From the Buchanan File]]> 8067606 256 Eric Rauchway 0374298947 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 2.88 2010 Banana Republican: From the Buchanan File
author: Eric Rauchway
name: Liz
average rating: 2.88
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2010/07/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
This book made me laugh out loud. Totally campy. Part James Bond, part Great Gatsby. I did read the ARC and I hope the published version didn't change much.
]]>
The Coffee Trader 49491 A Conspiracy of Paper was one of the most acclaimed debuts of 2000. In his richly suspenseful second novel, author David Liss once again travels back in time to a crucial moment in cultural and financial history. His destination: Amsterdam, 1659 � a mysterious world of trade populated by schemers and rogues, where deception rules the day.

On the world’s first commodities exchange, fortunes are won and lost in an instant. Miguel Lienzo, a sharp-witted trader in the city's close-knit community of Portuguese Jews, knows this only too well. Once among the city’s most envied merchants, Miguel has lost everything in a sudden shift in the sugar markets. Now, impoverished and humiliated, living on the charity of his petty younger brother, Miguel must find a way to restore his wealth and reputation.

Miguel enters into a partnership with a seductive Dutchwoman who offers him one last chance at success � a daring plot to corner the market of an astonishing new commodity called "coffee." To succeed, Miguel must risk everything he values and test the limits of his commercial guile, facing not only the chaos of the markets and the greed of his competitors, but also a powerful enemy who will stop at nothing to see him ruined. Miguel will learn that among Amsterdam’s ruthless businessmen, betrayal lurks everywhere, and even friends hide secret agendas.

With humor, imagination, and mystery, David Liss depicts a world of subterfuge, danger, and repressed longing, where religious and cultural traditions clash with the demands of a new and exciting way of doing business. Readers of historical suspense and lovers of coffee (even decaf) will be up all night with this beguiling novel.]]>
402 David Liss 0375760903 Liz 0 historical-fiction I love this author's books! 3.74 2003 The Coffee Trader
author: David Liss
name: Liz
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at: 2010/04/28
date added: 2010/04/28
shelves: historical-fiction
review:
I love this author's books!
]]>
The Drowning Tree 147918 467 Carol Goodman 0099468123 Liz 3 fiction 3.81 2004 The Drowning Tree
author: Carol Goodman
name: Liz
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2010/02/04
date added: 2010/02/16
shelves: fiction
review:
Wonderful read. Good story about a woman and the death of her friend, all tied together with a stained glass window.
]]>
<![CDATA[Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman]]> 6697432 304 Lisa Scottoline 0312587481 Liz 4 non-fiction 3.63 2009 Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman
author: Lisa Scottoline
name: Liz
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/02/06
date added: 2010/02/06
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Very funny. Her take on the everyday lives of women is spot on and filled with a wry sense of humor. Finished. I sent this book to two of my friends.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century]]> 4936457 319 Ian Mortimer 0224079948 Liz 3 non-fiction 3.99 2008 The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
author: Ian Mortimer
name: Liz
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2010/02/02
shelves: non-fiction
review:
I have no idea how this landed on my to read list. But it is filled with little facts about the 14th century in England. A little break for my mind!
]]>
<![CDATA[Jane Bites Back (Jane Fairfax, #1)]]> 6570140
To make matters worse, the manuscript she finished just before being turned into a vampire has been rejected by publishers�116 times. Jane longs to let the world know who she is, but when a sudden twist of fate thrusts her back into the spotlight, she must hide her real identity—and fend off a dark man from her past while juggling two modern suitors. Will the inimitable Jane Austen be able to keep her cool in this comedy of manners, or will she show everyone what a woman with a sharp wit and an even sharper set of fangs can do?]]>
299 Michael Thomas Ford 0345513657 Liz 2 3.45 2009 Jane Bites Back (Jane Fairfax, #1)
author: Michael Thomas Ford
name: Liz
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2010/02/02
shelves: vampires-and-other-ridiculous-creat
review:
Ok this book is over the top. A fairly funny send up a vampire novels and the current Jane Austen rewrite craze. Funny and a fast read for a winter weekend.
]]>
The Swan Thieves 5983057
Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.]]>
565 Elizabeth Kostova 1847442404 Liz 5 mysteries, thriller-suspense 3.57 2010 The Swan Thieves
author: Elizabeth Kostova
name: Liz
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2010/01/16
date added: 2010/01/28
shelves: mysteries, thriller-suspense
review:
Done. One of the best books I have read in a long time.
]]>
<![CDATA[Too Many Murders (Carmine Delmonico, #2)]]> 6786313 On, Off, Colleen McCullough, the bestselling author of The Thorn Birds, proves once again thatshe is a master of suspense.

1967. The world teeters on the brink of nuclear holocaust as the Cold War persists.

On a beautiful spring day in Holloman, Connecticut, twelve murders have taken place in one day, and chief of detectives Captain Carmine Delmonico is drawn into a gruesome web of secrets and lies.

All the murders are different and seem unconnected. Are they dealing with one killer, or many? And as if twelve murders were not enough, Carmine soon finds himself pitted against the mysterious Ulysses, a spy giving local armanents company Cornucopias secrets to the Russians.

As the overtaxed police force contends with small-town politics, academic rivalry and corporate greed, the death toll mounts, and Carmine and his team discover that the answers are not what they seem - but then, are they ever?]]>
371 Colleen McCullough 1439177473 Liz 0 mysteries 3.35 2009 Too Many Murders (Carmine Delmonico, #2)
author: Colleen McCullough
name: Liz
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2010/01/14
date added: 2010/01/16
shelves: mysteries
review:
Not bad. The book moves well although there are a lot of murders right away and they keep piling up. So you have to pay attention. Nice twists though.
]]>
Homer & Langley 6324914
Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers � the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for things they think they can use, hoarding the daily newspapers as research for Langley’s proposed dateless newspaper whose reportage will be as prophecy. Yet the epic events of the century play out in the lives of the two brothers � wars, political movements, technological advances � and even though they want nothing more than to shut out the world, history seems to pass through their cluttered house in the persons of immigrants, prostitutes, society women, government agents, gangsters, jazz musicians... and their housebound lives are fraught with odyssean peril as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves.

Brilliantly conceived, gorgeously written, this mesmerizing narrative, a free imaginative rendering of the lives of New York’s fabled Collyer brothers, is a family story with the resonance of myth, an astonishing masterwork unlike any that have come before from this great writer.]]>
208 E.L. Doctorow 1400064945 Liz 3 fiction 3.61 2009 Homer & Langley
author: E.L. Doctorow
name: Liz
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2010/01/16
date added: 2010/01/16
shelves: fiction
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution]]> 6540151 Rare Book 416 Joel Richard Paul 1594488835 Liz 4 non-fiction 3.84 2009 Unlikely Allies: How a Merchant, a Playwright, and a Spy Saved the American Revolution
author: Joel Richard Paul
name: Liz
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/01/12
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Ok this book was well worth the read. it gives a totally outside the box view of the American Revolution.
]]>
<![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]>
653 Hilary Mantel Liz 4 historical-fiction 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Liz
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/01/12
shelves: historical-fiction
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft]]> 4573498 The Gardner Heist by Ulrich Boser is a fascinating account of a brazen and amazing criminal act—a book that could help police and investigators solve the mystery of the 1990 break-in and burglary at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. “A tantalizing whodunit� (Boston Globe) and a “riveting, wonderfully vivid account [that] takes you into the underworld of obsessed art detectives, con men, and thieves� (Jonathan Harr, author of The Lost Painting), The Gardner Heist is true crime history at its most spellbinding.]]> 272 Ulrich Boser 0061451835 Liz 4 non-fiction 3.69 2009 The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft
author: Ulrich Boser
name: Liz
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/01
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves: non-fiction
review:
This is a nonfiction book that reads like fiction. One small art museum, night, and 2 thieves. Millions in paintings never found despite the best detectives searching. The book gives great insight into the "good" art world that everyone knows and loves to see and the "black" art world that deals in the stolen goods.
]]>
Still Alice 2153405 Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...]]>
292 Lisa Genova 0595440096 Liz 0 fiction 4.32 2007 Still Alice
author: Lisa Genova
name: Liz
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2009/12/14
date added: 2009/12/16
shelves: fiction
review:
So far it's not so sad, but it will be heartbreaking, I can tell. Ok, now that I am done I can tell you it is heartbreaking, but worth reading.
]]>
Heat Wave (Nikki Heat, #1) 6566722 Mystery sensation Richard Castle, blockbuster author of the wildly bestselling Derrick Storm novels, introduces his newest character, NYPD Homicide Detective Nikki Heat. Tough, sexy, professional, Nikki Heat carries a passion for justice as she leads one of New York City’s top homicide squads. She’s hit with an unexpected challenge when the commissioner assigns superstar journalist Jameson Rook to ride along with her to research an article on New York’s finest. Pulitzer- Prize-winning Rook is as much a handful as he is handsome. His wisecracking and meddling aren’t her only problems. as she works to unravel the secrets of the murdered real estate tycoon, she must also confront the spark between them. The one called Heat.]]> 198 Richard Castle 1401323820 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.57 2008 Heat Wave (Nikki Heat, #1)
author: Richard Castle
name: Liz
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/12/14
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
If you like the tv show you will like the book.
]]>
Pirate Latitudes 6428887
Word in port is that the Spanish treasure galleon El Trinidad, fresh from New Spain, is stalled in nearby Matanceros harbor awaiting repairs. Heavily fortified, the impregnable Spanish outpost is guarded by the blood-swiller Cazalla, a favorite commander of King Philip IV himself. With the governor′s backing, Hunter assembles a roughneck crew to infiltrate the enemy island and commandeer the galleon, along with its fortune in Spanish gold. The raid is as perilous as the bloody legends of Matanceros suggest, and Hunter will lose more than one man before he finds himself on the island′s shores, where dense jungle and the firepower of Spanish infantry are all that stand between him and the treasure.

With the help of his cunning crew, Hunter hijacks El Trinidad and escapes the deadly clutches of Cazalla, leaving plenty of carnage in his wake. But his troubles have just begun. . . .]]>
312 Michael Crichton 0061929379 Liz 3 thriller-suspense 3.46 2009 Pirate Latitudes
author: Michael Crichton
name: Liz
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/12/01
date added: 2009/12/14
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
Not quite a Disney version of pirates. it is a departure from the normal Crichton fare. It's an easy read but moves well.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Atlantis Code (Thomas Lourds, #1)]]> 3171154 Whoever controls the Lost Continent will control the world.]]> 432 Charles Brokaw 0765315319 Liz 3 thriller-suspense 3.64 2009 The Atlantis Code (Thomas Lourds, #1)
author: Charles Brokaw
name: Liz
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2009/12/11
date added: 2009/12/11
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
It bills itself as a DaVinci code type book. It's ok, but not as fast paced. I'm ready for someone to kill the bad guys already.
]]>
<![CDATA[There Goes the Bride (Agatha Raisin, #20)]]> 6348952 277 M.C. Beaton 0312387008 Liz 4 mysteries 3.72 2009 There Goes the Bride (Agatha Raisin, #20)
author: M.C. Beaton
name: Liz
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/12/09
shelves: mysteries
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters]]> 6425725 340 Ben H. Winters 1594744424 Liz 5 3.28 2009 Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
author: Ben H. Winters
name: Liz
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/12/09
shelves: vampires-and-other-ridiculous-creat
review:

]]>
Laura Rider's Masterpiece 5821844
Jenna Faroli is the host of a popular radio show, and in Laura's mind is "the single most famous person in the Town of Dover." When Jenna happens to cross Charlie's path one day, and they begin an e-mail correspondence, Laura cannot resist using Charlie to try out her new writing skills. Together, Laura and Charlie craft florid, strangely intimate messages that entice Jenna in an unexpected way. The "project" quickly spins out of control. The lines between Laura's words and Charlie's feelings are blurred and complicated, Jenna is transformed in ways that deeply disturb her, and Laura is transformed in her mind's eye into an artist. The transformations are hilarious and poignant, and for Laura Rider, beyond her wildest expectations.]]>
214 Jane Hamilton 0446538957 Liz 4 fiction 2.66 2009 Laura Rider's Masterpiece
author: Jane Hamilton
name: Liz
average rating: 2.66
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/12/09
shelves: fiction
review:
Laugh out loud funny at least until your heart breaks,
]]>
<![CDATA[The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name]]> 5742798
"

The Fourth Part of the World "is the story behind that map, a thrilling saga of geographical and intellectual exploration, full of outsize thinkers and voyages. Taking a kaleidoscopic approach, Toby Lester traces the origins of our modern worldview. His narrative sweeps across continents and centuries, zeroing in on different portions of the map to reveal strands of ancient legend, Biblical prophecy, classical learning, medieval exploration, imperial ambitions, and more. In Lester's telling the map comes alive: Marco Polo and the early Christian missionaries trek across Central Asia and China; Europe's early humanists travel to monastic libraries to recover ancient texts; Portuguese merchants round up the first West African slaves; Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci make their epic voyages of discovery; and finally, vitally, Nicholas Copernicus makes an appearance, deducing from the new geography shown on the Waldseemuller map that the earth could not lie at the center of the cosmos. The map literally altered humanity's worldview.

One thousand copies of the map were printed, yet only one remains. Discovered accidentally in 1901 in the library of a German castle it was bought in 2003 for the unprecedented sum of $10 million by the Library of Congress, where it is now on permanent public display. Lavishly illustrated with rare maps and diagrams, "The Fourth Part of the World "is the story of that map: the dazzling story of the geographical and intellectual journeys that have helped us decipher our world.]]>
480 Toby Lester 1416535314 Liz 4 non-fiction 4.04 2009 The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name
author: Toby Lester
name: Liz
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/09
date added: 2009/12/09
shelves: non-fiction
review:
I loved this book. I'm not a big non fiction reader. This book was fascinating from the beginning. Ancient maps, how they were created, how America got it's name. It's all in here.
]]>
This is Where I Leave You 6224935 A riotously funny, emotionally raw New York Times bestselling novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind—whether we like it or not.

The death of Judd Foxman’s father marks the first time that the entire Foxman clan has congregated in years. There is, however, one conspicuous absence: Judd's wife, Jen, whose affair with his radio- shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public. Simultaneously mourning the demise of his father and his marriage, Judd joins his dysfunctional family as they reluctantly sit shiva and spend seven days and nights under the same roof. The week quickly spins out of control as longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed and old passions are reawakened. Then Jen delivers the clincher: she's pregnant...

“Often sidesplitting, mostly heartbreaking...[Tropper is] a more sincere, insightful version of Nick Hornby, that other master of male psyche.”—USA Today

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JASON BATEMAN, TINA FEY, JANE FONDA, AND ADAM DRIVER
]]>
339 Jonathan Tropper 052595127X Liz 5 fiction 3.87 2003 This is Where I Leave You
author: Jonathan Tropper
name: Liz
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2009/11/22
date added: 2009/11/13
shelves: fiction
review:

]]>
The Music Lesson 129468
Her vigil becomes a tale of love, regret, and transformation. As Patricia immerses herself in the passions of her Irish heritage, she discovers what has been hidden beneath the surface of her own life--and what she must do to preserve the things she values most.]]>
192 Katharine Weber Liz 5 fiction 3.36 1998 The Music Lesson
author: Katharine Weber
name: Liz
average rating: 3.36
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/09/29
shelves: fiction
review:
I rarely give a 5 star review. This is a really good book. The characters are interesting, it involves some history (IRA) and it has a great ending.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)]]> 6411961
Washington DC: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned at the last minute to deliver an evening lecture in the Capitol Building. Within moments of his arrival, however, a disturbing object - gruesomely encoded with five symbols - is discovered at the epicentre of the Rotunda. It is, he recognises, an ancient invitation, meant to beckon its recipient towards a long-lost world of hidden esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon's revered mentor, Peter Solomon - philanthropist and prominent mason - is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes that his only hope of saving his friend's life is to accept this mysterious summons and follow wherever it leads him.

Langdon finds himself quickly swept behind the facade of America's most historic city into the unseen chambers, temples and tunnels which exist there. All that was familiar is transformed into a shadowy, clandestine world of an artfully concealed past in which Masonic secrets and never-before-seen revelations seem to be leading him to a single impossible and inconceivable truth.

A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories, arcane icons and enigmatic codes, The Lost Symbol is an intelligent, lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn. For, as Robert Langdon will discover, there is nothing more extraordinary or shocking than the secret which hides in plain sight...]]>
509 Dan Brown 0385504225 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.75 2009 The Lost Symbol (Robert Langdon, #3)
author: Dan Brown
name: Liz
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/29
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
Ok. It's a Dan brown book. But it's a fast entertaining read and I actually learned something about Washington, D.C.
]]>
<![CDATA[Blindman's Bluff (Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus, #18)]]> 5458573
Decker is plenty busy-and plenty thankful not to have to worry about his wife, Rina Lazarus, getting caught up in this deadly case. But then a chance encounter with a court translator who needs her help leads Rina into the terrifying heart of her husband's murder investigations.]]>
400 Faye Kellerman 0061702323 Liz 0 thriller-suspense 3.87 2009 Blindman's Bluff (Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus, #18)
author: Faye Kellerman
name: Liz
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/09/29
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
I love these 2. The books just move along.
]]>
<![CDATA[Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls, #1)]]> 5960325
In 1937, Shanghai is the Paris of Asia, a city of great wealth and glamour, the home of millionaires and beggars, gangsters and gamblers, patriots and revolutionaries, artists and warlords. Thanks to the financial security and material comforts provided by their father’s prosperous rickshaw business, twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister, May, are having the time of their lives. Though both sisters wave off authority and tradition, they couldn’t be more different: Pearl is a Dragon sign, strong and stubborn, while May is a true Sheep, adorable and placid. Both are beautiful, modern, and carefree . . . until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth and that in order to repay his debts he must sell the girls as wives to suitors who have traveled from California to find Chinese brides.

As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey of a lifetime, one that will take them through the Chinese countryside, in and out of the clutch of brutal soldiers, and across the Pacific to the shores of America. In Los Angeles they begin a fresh chapter, trying to find love with the strangers they have married, brushing against the seduction of Hollywood, and striving to embrace American life even as they fight against discrimination, brave Communist witch hunts, and find themselves hemmed in by Chinatown’s old ways and rules.]]>
309 Lisa See 1400067111 Liz 4 historical-fiction 3.91 2009 Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls, #1)
author: Lisa See
name: Liz
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/09/29
date added: 2009/09/29
shelves: historical-fiction
review:
I am currently reading this. I did not really like her other books, but this one is better for me. The characters, 2 sisters, live through the Japanese invasion of China and have to learn to live with their fate throug arranged marriages.
]]>
<![CDATA[Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities]]> 6106482
Menacing botanical illustrations and splendidly ghastly drawings create a fascinating portrait of the evildoers that may be lurking in your own backyard. Drawing on history, medicine, science, and legend, this compendium of bloodcurdling botany will entertain, alarm, and enlighten even the most intrepid gardeners and nature lovers.]]>
236 Amy Stewart 1565126831 Liz 3 non-fiction 3.83 2009 Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities
author: Amy Stewart
name: Liz
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Lady in Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce]]> 6440930 320 Hallie Rubenhold 0312359942 Liz 4 3.70 2008 The Lady in Red: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal, and Divorce
author: Hallie Rubenhold
name: Liz
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: non-fiction, thriller-suspense
review:
Well, I thought the Victorians were practically sexless. I was wrong judging by this book. An infamous trial for loss of consortium destroys 2 lives.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Scarecrow (Jack McEvoy, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #20)]]> 4527502
Think again, Jack.

Jack McEvoy is at the end of the line as a crime reporter. Forced to take a buy-out from the Los Angeles Times as the newspaper grapples with dwindling revenues, he's got only a few days left on the job. His last assignment? Training his replacement, a low-cost reporter just out of journalism school. But Jack has other plans for his exit. He is going to go out with a bang � a final story that will win the newspaper journalism's highest honor � a Pulitzer prize.
Jack focuses on Alonzo Winslow, a 16-year-old drug dealer from the projects who has confessed to police that he brutally raped and strangled one of his crack clients. Jack convinces Alonzo's mother to cooperate with his investigation into the possibility of her son's innocence. But she has fallen for the oldest reporter's trick in the book. Jack's real intention is to use his access to report and write a story that explains how societal dysfunction and neglect created a 16-year-old killer.
But as Jack delves into the story he soon realizes that Alonzo's so-called confession is bogus, and Jack is soon off and running on the biggest story he's had since The Poet crossed his path years before. He reunites with FBI Agent Rachel Walling to go after a killer who has worked completely below police and FBI radar—and with perfect knowledge of any move against him.
What Jack doesn't know is that his investigation has inadvertently set off a digital tripwire. The killer knows Jack is coming—and he's ready.]]>
423 Michael Connelly Liz 0 thriller-suspense 4.07 2009 The Scarecrow (Jack McEvoy, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #20)
author: Michael Connelly
name: Liz
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Neighbor (Detective D.D. Warren, #3)]]> 5422154
This is what happened...
It was a case guaranteed to spark a media feeding frenzy—a young mother, blond and pretty, disappears without a trace from her South Boston home, leaving behind her four-year-old daughter as the only witness and her handsome, secretive husband as the prime suspect.

In the last six hours...
But from the moment Detective Sergeant D. D. Warren arrives at the Joneses� snug little bungalow, she senses something off about the picture of wholesome normality the couple worked so hard to create. On the surface, Jason and Sandra Jones are like any other hardworking young couple raising a four-year-old child. But it is just under the surface that things grew murky.

Of the world as I knew it...
With the clock ticking on the life of a missing woman and the media firestorm building, Jason Jones seems more intent on destroying evidence and isolating his daughter than on searching for his “beloved� wife. Is the perfect husband trying to hide his guilt—or just trying to hide? And will the only witness to the crime be the killer’s next victim?]]>
384 Lisa Gardner 0553807234 Liz 3 thriller-suspense 4.07 2009 The Neighbor (Detective D.D. Warren, #3)
author: Lisa Gardner
name: Liz
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet]]> 6065179 Discover The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet for iPad.


A brilliant, boundary-leaping debut novel tracing twelve-year-old genius map maker T.S. Spivet's attempts to understand the ways of the world

When twelve-year-old genius cartographer T.S. Spivet receives an unexpected phone call from the Smithsonian announcing he has won the prestigious Baird Award, life as normal-if you consider mapping family dinner table conversation normal-is interrupted and a wild cross-country adventure begins, taking T.S. from his family ranch just north of Divide, Montana, to the museum's hallowed halls.

T.S. sets out alone, leaving before dawn with a plan to hop a freight train and hobo east. Once aboard, his adventures step into high gear and he meticulously maps, charts, and illustrates his exploits, documenting mythical wormholes in the Midwest, the urban phenomenon of "rims," and the pleasures of McDonald's, among other things. We come to see the world through T.S.'s eyes and in his thorough investigation of the outside world he also reveals himself.

As he travels away from the ranch and his family we learn how the journey also brings him closer to home. A secret family history found within his luggage tells the story of T.S.'s ancestors and their long-ago passage west, offering profound insight into the family he left behind and his role within it. As T.S. reads he discovers the sometimes shadowy boundary between fact and fiction and realizes that, for all his analytical rigor, the world around him is a mystery.

All that he has learned is tested when he arrives at the capital to claim his prize and is welcomed into science's inner circle. For all its shine, fame seems more highly valued than ideas in this new world and friends are hard to find.

T.S.'s trip begins at the Copper Top Ranch and the last known place he stands is Washington, D.C., but his journey's movement is far harder to track: How do you map the delicate lessons learned about family and self? How do you depict how it feels to first venture out on your own? Is there a definitive way to communicate the ebbs and tides of heartbreak, loss, loneliness, love? These are the questions that strike at the core of this very special debut.

Now a major motion picture directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Kyle Catlett and Helena Bonham Carter.]]>
375 Reif Larsen 1594202176 Liz 5 fiction The story is wonderful, but the illustrations in the margins really make the book.]]> 3.90 2009 The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
author: Reif Larsen
name: Liz
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: fiction
review:
This is a great story. A boy, who loves to make maps wins an award from the Smithsonian and must get to Washington D.C. So, he maps out a path and hops on a train, because after all he has had a "hoboing" unit in school.
The story is wonderful, but the illustrations in the margins really make the book.
]]>
Martyr (John Shakespeare, #1) 6397014
In a burnt-out house, one of Queen Elizabeth's aristocratic cousins is found murdered, her young flesh marked with profane symbols. At the same time, a plot to assassinate Sir Francis Drake, England's most famous sea warrior, is discovered, a plot which, if successful, could leave the country utterly defenseless against a Spanish invasion. It's 1587, the Queen's reign is in jeopardy, and one man is charged with the desperate task of solving both cases: John Shakespeare. With the Spanish Armada poised to strike, Mary Queen of Scots awaiting execution, and the pikes above London Bridge decorated with the grim evidence of treachery, the country is in peril of being overwhelmed by fear and chaos. Following a trail of illicit passions and family secrets, Shakespeare travels through an underworld of spies, sorcerers, whores, and theater people, among whom is his own younger brother, the struggling playwright, Will. Shadowed by his rival, the Queen's chief torturer, who employs his own methods of terror, Shakespeare begins to piece together a complex and breathtaking conspiracy whose implications are almost too horrific to contemplate. For a zealous and cunning killer is stalking England's streets. And as Shakespeare threatens to reveal a madman's shocking identity, he and the beautiful woman he desires come ever closer to becoming the next martyrs to a passion for murder and conspiracy whose terrifying consequences might still be felt today.

]]>
391 Rory Clements 0385342829 Liz 3 ]]> 3.71 2009 Martyr (John Shakespeare, #1)
author: Rory Clements
name: Liz
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves:
review:
I'd never read anything by this author. The book is ok. It moves well. If you like historical fiction and mysteries, this book will cover it.

]]>
Admission 5633771 Admission. Aren't there two sides to the word? And two opposing sides...It's what we let in, but it's also what we let out."

For years, 38-year-old Portia Nathan has avoided the past, hiding behind her busy (and sometimes punishing) career as a Princeton University admissions officer and her dependable domestic life. Her reluctance to confront the truth is suddenly overwhelmed by the resurfacing of a life-altering decision, and Portia is faced with an extraordinary test. Just as thousands of the nation's brightest students await her decision regarding their academic admission, so too must Portia decide whether to make her own ultimate admission.

Admission is at once a fascinating look at the complex college admissions process and an emotional examination of what happens when the secrets of the past return and shake a woman's life to its core.]]>
452 Jean Hanff Korelitz 0446540706 Liz 2 fiction 3.39 2009 Admission
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Liz
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: fiction
review:
I am the only person I know who did not like this book. I started it twice and barely finished it the second time. I felt like the author was trying to get me to buy something.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force, #6)]]> 5171894
"The Doomsday Key"

At Princeton University, a famed geneticist dies inside a biohazard lab. In Rome, a Vatican archaeologist is found dead in St. Peter's Basilica. In Africa, a U.S. senator's son is slain outside a Red Cross camp. The three murders on three continents bear a horrifying connection: all the victims are marked by a Druidic pagan cross burned into their flesh.

The bizarre murders thrust Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force into a race against time to solve a riddle going back centuries, to a ghastly crime against humanity hidden within a cryptic medieval codex. The first clue is discovered inside a mummified corpse buried in an English peat bog -- a gruesome secret that threatens America and the world.

Aided by two women from his past -- one his exlover, the other his new partner -- Gray must piece together the horrifying truth. But the revelations come at a high cost, and to save the future, Gray will have to sacrifice one of the women at his side. That alone might not be enough, as the true path to salvation is revealed in a dark prophecy of doom.

Sigma Force confronts humankind's greatest threat in an adventure that races from the Roman Coliseum to the icy peaks of Norway, from the ruins of medieval abbeys to the lost tombs of Celtic kings. The ultimate nightmare is locked within a talisman buried by a dead saint -- an ancient artifact known as the Doomsday Key.]]>
431 James Rollins 0061231401 Liz 3 thriller-suspense 4.17 2009 The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force, #6)
author: James Rollins
name: Liz
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:

]]>
<![CDATA[Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, #1)]]> 5899779 “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.�

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses,]]>
320 Seth Grahame-Smith 1594743347 Liz 5 The story line is the same as the original, but with some extras thrown in.]]> 3.32 2009 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, #1)
author: Seth Grahame-Smith
name: Liz
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: vampires-and-other-ridiculous-creat
review:
Do NOT read this book if you think Jane Austin is the greatest author to ever live. Most of the book is the original Pride and Prejudice, but every once in awhile a zombie appears and creates chaos.
The story line is the same as the original, but with some extras thrown in.
]]>
<![CDATA[Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire]]> 5978522
Lila Nova lives alone in a plain, white box of an apartment. Recovering from a heartbreaking divorce, Lila’s life is like her simple, new, and empty. But when she meets a handsome plant-seller named David Exley, an entire world opens up before her eyes. Late one night Lila stumbles across a strange Laundromat and sees ferns so highly-prized that a tiny cutting can fetch thousands of dollars. She learns about flowers with medicinal properties to rival anything found in drugstores. And she hears the legend of nine mystical plants that bring fame, fortune, immortality, and passion.

The owner of the Laundromat, Armand, presents Lila with a if she can make the cutting from a fire fern grow roots, he will show her the secret of his locked room. But Lila is too trusting, and with one terrible mistake she ruins her chance to see Armand’s plants. The only way to win it back is to travel, on her own, to the Yucatan.

Deep in the rain forests of Mexico, Lila enters a world of shamans and spirit animals, snake charmers, and sexy, heart-stopping Huichols. Alone in the jungle, Lila is forced to learn more than she ever wanted to know about nature—and about herself. An exhilarating journey of love and self-discovery, Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire brings together mystery, adventure, and heat, in every sense of the word.]]>
266 Margot Berwin 0307377849 Liz 2 fiction 3.44 2009 Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire
author: Margot Berwin
name: Liz
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: fiction
review:
I finished this book and I still don't know why. It was just not a great book. The characters are not developed well, the story line does not flow and the whole premise of the book simply escaped me.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (The Physick Book, #1)]]> 4836308
Harvard graduate student Connie Goodwin needs to spend her summer doing research for her doctoral dissertation. But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge.

As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined.

Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the witch trials of the 1690s and a modern woman's story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation.
(katherinehowe.com)]]>
371 Katherine Howe 1401340903 Liz 5 thriller-suspense 3.72 2009 The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane (The Physick Book, #1)
author: Katherine Howe
name: Liz
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2009/08/17
shelves: thriller-suspense
review:
This book is wonderful. A Harvard graduate student gets involved in the life of a woman whose journals she finds while cleaning out her mother's old house.
]]>