Amos's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 09 Apr 2025 06:36:28 -0700 60 Amos's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Black Wings Has My Angel 17561591
"I came back and searched dizzily under the trailer, muttering the way drunks do, and then I heard it. A shuffling around inside the trailer. The little tramp had knocked me in the head with her Southern Comfort and now she was in there loading up....She didn't know I was alive."

A legend among noir buffs, Chaze's long-lost pulp classic is the dreamlike tale of a man after a jailbreak who meets up with the woman of his dreams - and his nightmares.]]> 160 Elliott Chaze Amos 0 to-read 4.12 1953 Black Wings Has My Angel
author: Elliott Chaze
name: Amos
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Nightmare Room (The Messy Man, #1)]]> 38200785 A boy in a basement, a man in a booth and a darkness that threatens to swallow them both...

New York audiobook narrator Peter Larson and his wife Hannah head to his hometown of Maple City to help Peter's ailing father and to put a recent tragedy behind them. Though the small, Midwestern town seems the idyllic place to start afresh, Peter and Hannah will soon learn that evil currents flow beneath its surface.

They move into an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town—a house purchased by Peter's father at auction and kept secret until now—and start to settle into their new life.

But as Peter sets up his recording studio in a small basement room, disturbing things begin to occur—mysterious voices haunt audio tracks, malevolent shadows creep about the house. And when an insidious presence emerges from the woodwork, Peter must face old demons in order to save his family and himself.]]> 276 Chris Sorensen Amos 0 currently-reading 3.66 2018 The Nightmare Room (The Messy Man, #1)
author: Chris Sorensen
name: Amos
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Throat 906491 704 Peter Straub 0451179188 Amos 0 currently-reading 3.95 1993 The Throat
author: Peter Straub
name: Amos
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Empire Falls 187020
Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles� soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything� includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace]]> 483 Richard Russo 0375726403 Amos 0 to-read 3.93 2001 Empire Falls
author: Richard Russo
name: Amos
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Simple Plan 21727 417 Scott Smith 0307279952 Amos 3
As Mr Smith explains, nothing is as horrific as a simple plan, so always keep your mind on task, and remember, as you go along, that there are no take-backs. None, indeed...

3 1/2 Distressed Stars]]> 3.91 1993 A Simple Plan
author: Scott Smith
name: Amos
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:
I mean, what would you do??

As Mr Smith explains, nothing is as horrific as a simple plan, so always keep your mind on task, and remember, as you go along, that there are no take-backs. None, indeed...

3 1/2 Distressed Stars
]]> Rose of Jericho 211004018 From the New York Times bestselling author of Red Rabbit comes a supernatural horror where ghosts and ghouls are the least of a witch’s problems in historical New England.Not all is as it seems in the small village of Ascension, Massachusetts. A mother wasting away from cancer is suddenly up and about. A boy trampled by a milk cart walks away from the accident. A hanged man can still speak, broken neck and all. The dead are not dying. When Rabbit and Sadie Grace accompany their friend Rose to Ascension to help take care of her ailing cousin, they immediately notice that their new house, Bethany Hall, is occupied by dozens of ghosts. And there’s something in the attic that neither want to investigate. New England in the 1880s is notoriously unwelcoming to the weird, and the villagers are wary of their visitors. As the three women attempt to find out what’s happening in the town, they must be careful not to be found out. But a much larger—and dangerous—force is galloping straight for them…Also by Alex At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 352 Alex Grecian 1250874718 Amos 0 currently-reading 3.99 2025 Rose of Jericho
author: Alex Grecian
name: Amos
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War]]> 32191737
"America's funniest science writer" ( Washington Post ) Mary Roach explores the science of keeping human beings intact, awake, sane, uninfected, and uninfested in the bizarre and extreme circumstances of war. Grunt tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries―panic, exhaustion, heat, noise―and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed movie studio where amputee actors help prepare Marine Corps medics for the shock and gore of combat wounds. At Camp Lemmonier, Djibouti, in east Africa, we learn how diarrhea can be a threat to national security. Roach samples caffeinated meat, sniffs an archival sample of a World War II stink bomb, and stays up all night with the crew tending the missiles on the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee. She answers questions not found in any other book on the military: Why is DARPA interested in ducks? How is a wedding gown like a bomb suit? Why are shrimp more dangerous to sailors than sharks? Take a tour of duty with Roach, and you’ll never see our nation’s defenders in the same way again. 15 illustrations]]> 288 Mary Roach 0393354377 Amos 2 Blurg.

2 Plaguey Stars]]> 3.90 2016 Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War
author: Mary Roach
name: Amos
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
review:
Interesting topics written about with so much (attempted) humor crowbarred into each and every sentence that reading it more than five/ten minutes at a time became unbearable. I enjoyed reading some of her other works in my younger years, so maybe I'm just an old grump at this point and the problem is me..but her jokey-joke approach just felt super overdone here, annoying moi to no end. This months-long read was an exhausting experience.
Blurg.

2 Plaguey Stars
]]> Mirror of our Sorrows 75313877 Avril 1940. Louise, trente ans, court, nue, sur le boulevard du Montparnasse. Pour comprendre la scène tragique qu'elle vient de vivre, elle devra plonger dans la folie d'une période sans équivalent dans l'histoire où la France toute entière, saisie par la panique, sombre dans le chaos, faisant émerger les héros et les salauds, les menteurs et les lâches... Et quelques hommes de bonne volonté.
Il fallait toute la verve et la générosité d'un chroniqueur hors pair des passions françaises pour saisir la grandeur et la décadence d'un peuple broyé par les circonstances.
Secret de famille, grands personnages, puissance du récit, rebondissements, burlesque et tragique... Le talent de Pierre Lemaitre, prix Goncourt pour Au revoir là-haut, est ici à son sommet.

]]> 474 Pierre Lemaitre Amos 4
I loved every minute of my time with the insane characters that populated these books! A General petrified of people figuring out that he's a crook, one son who becomes a serial killer and the other who fails spectacularly at everything he does, a heroin-soaked soldier who wears a different homemade mask each day because half of his face was blown off during the war, a beautiful, mute daughter, a handicapped 8 year old who befriends and falls in love with a world-renowned opera star, a wife addicted to giving blowjobs to any and every man she meets, and on and on!! This was SO. MUCH. FUN!!
Hilarious, horrifying, heartbreaking and utterly human- Pierre Lemaitre's masterwork was an absolute JOY to absorb

4 Consummated Stars]]> 4.07 2020 Mirror of our Sorrows
author: Pierre Lemaitre
name: Amos
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
review:
Why oh why did this trilogy have to end?

I loved every minute of my time with the insane characters that populated these books! A General petrified of people figuring out that he's a crook, one son who becomes a serial killer and the other who fails spectacularly at everything he does, a heroin-soaked soldier who wears a different homemade mask each day because half of his face was blown off during the war, a beautiful, mute daughter, a handicapped 8 year old who befriends and falls in love with a world-renowned opera star, a wife addicted to giving blowjobs to any and every man she meets, and on and on!! This was SO. MUCH. FUN!!
Hilarious, horrifying, heartbreaking and utterly human- Pierre Lemaitre's masterwork was an absolute JOY to absorb

4 Consummated Stars
]]> <![CDATA[A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories]]> 48464
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
"The River"
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own"
"A Stroke of Good Fortune"
"A Temple of the Holy Ghost"
"The Artificial Nigger"
"A Circle in the Fire"
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy"
"Good Country People"
"The Displaced Person"
©1955 Flannery O'Connor; 1954, 1953, 1948 by Flannery O'Connor; renewed 1983, 1981 by Regina O'Connor; renewed 1976 by Mrs. Edward F. O'Connor; (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.]]> 252 Flannery O'Connor 0151365040 Amos 1 quit
Offensively unappetizing. Big time, yo. I just don't care to ingest anymore of this...

1 Repugnant Star]]> 4.19 1955 A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Amos
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1955
rating: 1
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: quit
review:
Racism reads worst when it's suuuuuuuper casual.

Offensively unappetizing. Big time, yo. I just don't care to ingest anymore of this...

1 Repugnant Star
]]> Bad Kids 61025688
One beautiful morning, Zhang Dongsheng pushes his wealthy in-laws off a remote mountain.

It’s the perfect crime. Or so he thinks.

For Zhang did not expect that teenager Chaoyang and his friends would catch him in the act. An opportunity for blackmail presents itself and the kids start down a dark path that will lead to the unravelling of all their lives.

Dark, heart-stopping and violent, Bad Kids is the suspense thriller that has taken China by storm, proving that anyone has what it takes to become a killer.]]> 336 Zijin Chen 1782277625 Amos 0 to-read 3.90 2014 Bad Kids
author: Zijin Chen
name: Amos
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control]]> 60018575 In his New York Times bestselling book Courage is Calling, author Ryan Holiday made the Stoic case for a bold and brave life. In this much-anticipated second book of his Stoic Virtue series, Holiday celebrates the awesome power of self-discipline and those who have seized it.

To master anything, one must first master themselves–one’s emotions, one’s thoughts, one’s actions. Eisenhower famously said that freedom is really the opportunity to practice self-discipline. Cicero called the virtue of temperance the polish of life. Without boundaries and restraint, we risk not only failing to meet our full potential and jeopardizing what we have achieved, but we ensure misery and shame. In a world of temptation and excess, this ancient idea is more urgent than ever.

In Discipline is Destiny, Holiday draws on the stories of historical figures we can emulate as pillars of self-discipline, including Lou Gehrig, Queen Elizabeth II, boxer Floyd Patterson, Marcus Aurelius and writer Toni Morrison, as well as the cautionary tales of Napoleon, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Babe Ruth. Through these engaging examples, Holiday teaches readers the power of self-discipline and balance, and cautions against the perils of extravagance and hedonism.

At the heart of Stoicism are four simple virtues: courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom. Everything else, the Stoics believed, flows from them. Discipline is Destiny will guide readers down the path to self-mastery, upon which all the other virtues depend. Discipline is predictive. You cannot succeed without it. And if you lose it, you cannot help but bring yourself failure and unhappiness.]]> 312 Ryan Holiday 0593191692 Amos 0 to-read 4.24 2022 Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control
author: Ryan Holiday
name: Amos
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> El Dorado Drive 220239062 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Turnout comes a simmering, atmospheric novel of friendship and betrayal, following a women-led pyramid scheme in suburban Detroit.

“Abbott is a superstar of the suspense genre.� —NPR

All I want is to be innocent again. But that’s not how it works. Especially not after the Wheel.

When Harper moves in with her sister Pam, she’s surprised to find Pam doing so well financially after her messy divorce. After all, Pam’s ex-husband wiped their bank accounts, even stole from their kids. But Pam managed to find her way back. Thanks to the Wheel�

Twice a month, the women of the Wheel meet. New members bring cash to the party that is pooled together and then gifted to one lucky member. It’s all about giving back. Lifting each other up. As women should. As they must.

But when Harper is invited, with the promise of an end to her financial burdens, the sisters inadvertently unleash a darkness lurking within the group. If they’re not careful, it might just get them killed.

Megan Abbott turns her keen eye toward women and money in El Dorado Drive, a riveting story about greed, power, and vulnerability, and how desperation draws out our most destructive impulses.]]> 368 Megan Abbott 0593084969 Amos 0 to-read 3.79 2025 El Dorado Drive
author: Megan Abbott
name: Amos
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cold Front 36189566 You might pity the girl, trapped in a snowbound cabin in the Canadian wilderness with three savage fugitives from the law.
But you would be wrong.
It's not the girl you should pity. It's the men... as they waken a power beyond all human control... and their burning lust turns into freezing fear... COLD FRONT.
The shivering starts long before the screams begin.

Cover Artist: Tom Hallman]]> 152 Barry Hammond Amos 0 to-read 4.09 Cold Front
author: Barry Hammond
name: Amos
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Are All Guilty Here 221544394
Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites.

For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home.

But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did.

Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?]]> 448 Karin Slaughter 0063336774 Amos 0 to-read 4.12 2025 We Are All Guilty Here
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Amos
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Blanks (The Shivers Collection, #3)]]> 229214159 New York Times bestselling author Grady Hendrix’s thrilling short story, one boy can’t look away—and pays the price.

Jeckle Island offers Rachel’s children the chance to spend summers roaming wild and free, as long as they follow the rules. But when her son comes face to face with a terror they dare not speak of, she must prepare for their perfect world to change. Forever.

Grady Hendrix’s The Blanks is part of The Shivers, a collection of haunting stories that reveal the otherworldly terrors all around us. Once you know, there’s no going back. Read or listen to each story in one unsettling sitting.]]> 36 Grady Hendrix 1662532407 Amos 0 to-read 4.14 The Blanks (The Shivers Collection, #3)
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Amos
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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

And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.]]> 304 Nat Cassidy 125035434X Amos 0 to-read 4.56 2025 When the Wolf Comes Home
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Amos
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Inhuman Resources 39089158 "you won't see the final twist coming" The New York Times
"A really excellent suspense novelist." Stephen King

Alain Delambre is a fifty-seven-year-old former HR executive, drained by four years of hopeless unemployment. The only job offers he gets are for low-level, demoralizing positions. He has reached rock bottom and can see no way out.
So when a major company finally invites him in for an interview, Alain is ready to do anything--borrow money, shame his wife and his daughters, and even participate in the ultimate recruitment a role-playing game that involves taking hostages.

Alain vows to commit body and soul in this struggle to regain his dignity. But if he had realized that the odds were stacked against him from the beginning, he never would have tried to land the position. Now, his fury is limitless. And what began as a role-playing game could quickly become a bloodbath.]]> 384 Pierre Lemaitre 1635060818 Amos 0 to-read 3.72 Inhuman Resources
author: Pierre Lemaitre
name: Amos
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hidden River 21281 480 Adrian McKinty 0743470575 Amos 3
3 Calculable Stars]]> 3.69 2004 Hidden River
author: Adrian McKinty
name: Amos
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves:
review:
Enjoyed the writing and lead character, though the plot and ending were easily foreseeable.

3 Calculable Stars
]]> The Unworthy 214151601 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668051885 Amos 0 to-read 3.67 2023 The Unworthy
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Amos
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Troop 28187199 355 Nick Cutter 1501144820 Amos 5 Cool.
Anywho- Troop was awesome. If you dig blood-drentched kookieness I highly recommend this here novel.
Cheers.

5 Horrific Stars]]> 3.91 2014 The Troop
author: Nick Cutter
name: Amos
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:
Already read and reviewed this years ago, but good ol' ŷ seems to have misplaced said review.
Cool.
Anywho- Troop was awesome. If you dig blood-drentched kookieness I highly recommend this here novel.
Cheers.

5 Horrific Stars
]]> King Sorrow 223420465
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.

But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.]]> 896 Joe Hill 0062200607 Amos 0 to-read 4.39 2025 King Sorrow
author: Joe Hill
name: Amos
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Red Rabbit 65212070 A folk horror epic about a ragtag posse that must track down a witch through a wild west beset by demons and ghosts―and where death is always just around the bend.

Sadie Grace is wanted for witchcraft, dead (or alive). And every hired gun in Kansas is out to collect the bounty on her head, including bona fide witch hunter Old Tom and his mysterious, mute ward, Rabbit.

On the road to Burden County, they’re joined by two vagabond cowboys with a strong sense of adventure � but no sense of purpose � and a recently widowed school teacher with nothing left to lose. As their posse grows, so too does the danger.

Racing along the drought-stricken plains in a stolen red stagecoach, they encounter monsters more wicked than witches lurking along the dusty trail. But the crew is determined to get that bounty, or die trying.

Written with the devilish cadence of Stephen Graham Jones and the pulse-pounding brutality of Nick Cutter, Red Rabbit is a supernatural adventure of luck and misfortune.]]> 455 Alex Grecian 1250874688 Amos 4
A ragtag gaggle of strangers embark on a journey across a magical, yet dangerous and death-filled, landscape- each for their own reasons. I loved the characters, the imaginative mayhem and the feeling that anything could happen to anybody at any time. Such a FUN read!!!

4 Swashbuckling Stars]]> 4.16 2023 Red Rabbit
author: Alex Grecian
name: Amos
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:
Witches and Ghosts and Demons, oh my!!

A ragtag gaggle of strangers embark on a journey across a magical, yet dangerous and death-filled, landscape- each for their own reasons. I loved the characters, the imaginative mayhem and the feeling that anything could happen to anybody at any time. Such a FUN read!!!

4 Swashbuckling Stars
]]> People Like Us 221251749 The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book

People Like Us is Jason Mott’s electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason’s life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don’t let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.

In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.

People Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognizable as a Jason Mott novel.

Finishing the novel will leave you absolutely breathless and, at the same time, utterly filled with joy for life, changed forever by characters who are people like us.]]> 288 Jason Mott Amos 0 to-read 4.58 People Like Us
author: Jason Mott
name: Amos
average rating: 4.58
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Freezer Burn 102135 245 Joe R. Lansdale 0753816709 Amos 4 2) Soak mixture in apathy and self-loathing
3) Bake in resentment
4) Wrap end result with a bow tied by Satan herself
5) Freezer Burn is served!

3 1/2 Sordid Stars]]> 3.73 1999 Freezer Burn
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves:
review:
1) Mix a repulsive waster, a carnival of freaks and a hoochie from hell
2) Soak mixture in apathy and self-loathing
3) Bake in resentment
4) Wrap end result with a bow tied by Satan herself
5) Freezer Burn is served!

3 1/2 Sordid Stars
]]> Audition 7280651 191 Ryū Murakami 039333841X Amos 4 3.43 1997 Audition
author: Ryū Murakami
name: Amos
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/02
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
review:
Starts off with a man thinking he's found the woman of his dreams..and then it gets really, REALLY fraked up. Brace yourself kiddies :)
]]> <![CDATA[Nobody’s Fool (Detective Sami Kierce #2)]]> 217394492 In this stunningly twisty thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben, a secret from former Detective Sami Kierce’s college days comes back to haunt him. His memory is clear, but all these years later, the facts don’t add up…which is something he cannot ignore.

Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There’s a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn’t know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts—and then he runs.

Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who’s working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City. One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It’s unmistakably her. As soon as Kierce makes eye contact with her, she bolts. For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day.

His investigation will bring him face-to-face with his past—and prove, after all this time, he’s nobody’s fool.]]> 352 Harlan Coben 1538756358 Amos 0 to-read 4.19 2025 Nobody’s Fool (Detective Sami Kierce #2)
author: Harlan Coben
name: Amos
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wizard of Oz 44076761 Follow the yellow brick road!
Dorothy thinks she is lost forever when a terrifying tornado crashes through Kansas and whisks her and her dog, Toto, far away to the magical land of Oz. To get home Dorothy must follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City and find the wonderfully mysterious Wizard of Oz. Together with her companions the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion whom she meets on the way, Dorothy embarks on a strange and enchanting adventure.]]> 189 L. Frank Baum 0241411203 Amos 0 to-read 3.90 1900 The Wizard of Oz
author: L. Frank Baum
name: Amos
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1900
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Broken Angels (Katie Maguire, #2)]]> 18395946
It is the bloated body of Father Heaney. His hands and feet are bound, and his neck bears the marks of garrotting wire. Worse still, he has been castrated.

When a second priest is found murdered, his body bruised and beaten and the same savage wound hidden beneath his soutane, Detective Inspector Katie Maguire finds evidence of a sinister cover-up at St Joseph's Orphanage.

But the Catholic diocese still wields considerable power here, and the Garda are under pressure to close the case. Katie has to work alone if she is to catch the killer in time - but first she must shatter a wall of silence that for decades has hidden a terrible secret.

A secret that is beyond belief...]]> 368 Graham Masterton Amos 3
2 1/2 Nonsensical Stars]]> 3.96 2012 Broken Angels (Katie Maguire, #2)
author: Graham Masterton
name: Amos
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves:
review:
It's hard to really invest in a lead character when everything not glued to the "we gotta catch the bad guys" central plot is grown in ground so shallow that it's unable to sustain anything of weight or worth. I'm all for a good popcorn thriller, but book two of this series delivered mostly kernels.

2 1/2 Nonsensical Stars
]]> <![CDATA[Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin, #4)]]> 222139807 #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner returns with the 4th installment in her bestselling Frankie Elkin series, in which Frankie is called to Tucson, Arizona, to find a missing Afghan refugee, whose friend suspects she is in grave danger, before it is too late.

A young mother haunted by war, determined to make a fresh start. But sometimes, the sins of the past aren't so easy to escape.

Recent Afghan refugee Sabera Ahmadi was last seen exiting her place of work three weeks ago. The local police have yet to open a case, while her older, domineering husband seems unconcerned. Sabera's closest friend, however, is convinced Sabera would never willingly leave her three‑year old daughter. At her insistence, missing persons expert Frankie Elkin agrees to take up the search through the broiling streets of Tucson. Just in time for a video of the young mother to surface—showing her walking away from the scene of a brutal double murder.

Frankie quickly realizes there's much more to the Ahmadi family than meets the eye. The father Isaad is a brilliant mathematician, Sabera a gifted linguist, and their little girl Zahra—she has an uncanny ability to remember anything she sees. Which given everything that has happened during the girl's short life, may be a terrible curse. When Isaad also disappears under mysterious circumstances and an attempt is made on Zahra's life, Frankie realizes she must quickly crack the code of this family's horrific past.

Someone is coming for the Ahmadis. And violence is clearly an option. When everything is on the line, how far would you go to protect the ones you love?

Frankie is about to find out.]]> 416 Lisa Gardner 1538765101 Amos 0 to-read 4.52 2025 Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin, #4)
author: Lisa Gardner
name: Amos
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> From Below 58830202 Hundreds of feet beneath the ocean's surface, a graveyard waits...

Years ago, the SS Arcadia vanished without a trace during a routine voyage. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course...a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean's surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life.

Cove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia's rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished.

But the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them.

Because once they're trapped beneath the ocean's waves, there's no going back.]]> 469 Darcy Coates 1728220238 Amos 3
2 1/2 So-So Stars]]> 3.94 2022 From Below
author: Darcy Coates
name: Amos
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:
For the first 300 pages nothing really happens..but Coates' writing kept playing off my fear of the deeeeeeeep ocean quite effectively. The final third of the book tries to raise the stakes...but, again, nothing really happens. There are some intriguing developments but it all comes a little too late. And with every character in the book making it home safely and (literally) living happily ever after, what exactly was the point of this story?

2 1/2 So-So Stars
]]> Deep Water 427281 Deep Water, set in the quiet, small town of Little Wesley, Patricia Highsmith has created a vicious and suspenseful tale of love gone sour. Vic and Melinda Van Allen's loveless marriage is held together only by a precarious arrangement whereby, in order to avoid the messiness of divorce, Melinda is allowed to take any number of lovers as long as she does not desert her family. Eventually, Vic can no longer suppress his jealousy and tries to win back his wife by asserting himself through a tall tale of murder � one that soon comes true. In this complex portrayal of a dangerous psychosis emerging in the most unlikely of places, Highsmith examines the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life.]]> 271 Patricia Highsmith 0393324559 Amos 0 to-read 3.64 1957 Deep Water
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Amos
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Terrible Beauty (Katie Maguire, #1)]]> 348321
"Of other worlds apart from this..."

In isolated darkness not far away, an American tourist is at the mercy of a serial killer. His tools are a boning knife, twine, and a doll fashioned from nails and fishhooks. The murder of his victims is second only to the pleasure of their pain.

"Darker places inhabited by evil monstrosities..."

As an eighty-year-old mystery unfolds, so does a modern-day ritual that's marked Katie Maguire as its next victim. For what happened once in this small picturesque village is happening again. It's more than a series of horrifying crimes. It's tradition.

"Take me there."]]> 384 Graham Masterton 0743462939 Amos 4
4 Riveting Stars]]> 3.87 2003 A Terrible Beauty (Katie Maguire, #1)
author: Graham Masterton
name: Amos
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves:
review:
Gritty and bleak- and that's just the landscape. Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire is spinning many (cracked) plates at once as she tries to solve the GRIZZLY murders of over eleven young women across two centuries. Suspenseful, engrossing and just pretty damn gross. Yahoo!! I am looking forward to more Maguire for sure...

4 Riveting Stars
]]> Irène (Camille Verhœven, #1) 19480636
But his blissful existence is punctured by a murder of unprecedented savagery. Worse still, the press seem to have it in for him � his every move is headline news. When he discovers that the killer has killed before � that each murder is a homage to a classic crime novel � the fourth estate are quick to coin a nickname� The Novelist�

With both men in the public eye, the case develops into a personal duel, each hell-bent on outsmarting the other. There can only be one winner � whoever has the least to lose…]]> 398 Pierre Lemaitre 0857052888 Amos 5 I want more, please.

Runoutandgetyousomerightquickmang




PS- There are some BRUTAL death scenes in this here book. You have been warned!!]]> 3.92 2006 Irène (Camille Verhœven, #1)
author: Pierre Lemaitre
name: Amos
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2020/11/23
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves:
review:
Burned through this with the quickness!! I grew quite fond of Commandant Camille and his team of fleshed-out detectives over the course of this blood soaked crime yarn. And while the framework of the third act was clearly visible early on, the journey through said act was crazy fun and just plain....crazy! Quite the enjoyable read.
I want more, please.

Runoutandgetyousomerightquickmang




PS- There are some BRUTAL death scenes in this here book. You have been warned!!
]]> <![CDATA[Rosy & John (Camille Verhœven, #3)]]> 18271724 Les rescapés tentent déjà de secourir les victimes restées au sol. Jean s'engouffre das le métro.
Lui ne va secourir personne. Il est le poseur de bombes.»
Jean Garnier n'a plus rien à perdre dans la vie: sa mère est en prison, sa petite amie a été tuée et il n'a plus de travail. Face à ce jeune paumé, Camille Verhœven doit agir avec plus de finesse que jamais; Jean est-il une vraie menace pour le pays entier, ou juste un loser atteint de la folie des grandeurs?]]> 142 Pierre Lemaitre 2253175951 Amos 4
3 1/2 Suitable Stars]]> 3.58 2011 Rosy & John (Camille Verhœven, #3)
author: Pierre Lemaitre
name: Amos
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves:
review:
A slim yet enjoyable mystery with Camille Verhoeven, one of my favorite investigators in fiction, leading the case. Not quite a "who dunnit", more like a "wtf" ?!

3 1/2 Suitable Stars
]]> <![CDATA[This Is Why We Lied (Will Trent, #12)]]> 213558169 The next thrilling suspense featuring Will Trent and Sara Linton from Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Girls and After That Night!

Everyone here is a liar, but only one of us is a killer�

A secluded cabin retreat

For GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton, McAlpine Lodge seems like the ideal getaway to celebrate their honeymoon. Set on a gorgeous, off-the-grid mountaintop property, it’s the perfect place to unplug and reconnect. Until a bone-chilling scream cuts through the night.

A murderer in their midst

Mercy McAlpine, the manager of the Lodge, is dead. With a vicious storm raging and the one access road to the property washed out, the murderer must be someone on the mountain. But as Will and Sara investigate the McAlpine family and the other guests, they realize that everyone here is lying�.Lying about their past. Lying to their family. Lying to themselves.

Who killed Mercy McAlpine?

It soon becomes clear that normal rules don’t apply at McAlpine Lodge, and Will and Sara are going to have to watch their step at every turn. Trapped on the resort, they must untangle a decades-old web of secrets to discover what happened to Mercy. And with the killer poised to strike again, the trip of a lifetime becomes a race against the clock…]]> 464 Karin Slaughter 0063336731 Amos 0 to-read 4.14 2024 This Is Why We Lied (Will Trent, #12)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Amos
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All Hallows 60784620 Stranger Things, this horror drama from NYT bestselling author Christopher Golden follows neighborhood families and a mysterious, lurking evil on one Halloween day.

It’s Halloween night, 1984, in Coventry, Massachusetts, and two families are unraveling. Up and down the street, horrifying secrets are being revealed, and all the while, mixed in with the trick-or-treaters of all ages, four children who do not belong are walking door to door, merging with the kids of Parmenter Road. Children in vintage costumes with faded, eerie makeup. They seem terrified, and beg the neighborhood kids to hide them away, to keep them safe from The Cunning Man. There’s a small clearing in the woods now that was never there before, and a blackthorn tree that doesn’t belong at all. These odd children claim that The Cunning Man is coming for them...and they want the local kids to protect them. But with families falling apart and the neighborhood splintered by bitterness, who will save the children of Parmenter Road?

New York Times bestselling, Bram Stoker Award-winning author Christopher Golden is best known for his supernatural thrillers set in deadly, distant locales...but in this suburban Halloween drama, Golden brings the horror home.

All Hallows. The one night when everything is a mask...]]> 325 Christopher Golden 125028029X Amos 2
2 Uninspiring Stars]]> 3.51 2023 All Hallows
author: Christopher Golden
name: Amos
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
review:
If you're out of sleeping pills just crack this baby open and you'll be snoozing in no time.

2 Uninspiring Stars
]]> The Dark Hours 218022032 For fans of Tana French and Jane Harper, this debut crime thriller follows a retired police detective who must face down a vicious killer and the memories that haunt her—thirty years after bringing down one of Ireland’s most prolific serial killers.

Julia Harte has found the perfect place to disappear: Cuan Beag, a secluded coastal village on the east coast of Ireland. Home to less than one thousand residents, a popular daytrip for tourists, it has proven to be a scenic corner in which to erase a life. This corner of the world is so peaceful, at times it feels uninhabited; that’s why she chose to disappear here. But Julia knows anything is possible in the dark hours.

Thirty years ago, Julia helped to bring down the most prolific serial killer Ireland had ever seen, and while that case spurred a successful career and a bestselling book, it's also the reason she's in hiding now, all alone and haunted by the things tha happened all those years ago, without the husband she had depended upon. When a copycat killer strikes, Julia is called back to active duty, but this time, she's not the young, naive officer she was then. She knows killers like this one, who hunt for sport, and she's determined to put a stop to his plans--or die trying.]]> 320 Amy Jordan 077838781X Amos 0 to-read 3.74 2025 The Dark Hours
author: Amy Jordan
name: Amos
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Mercy of the Tide 31426848
The Mercy of the Tide follows four people drawn irrevocably together by a recent tragedy as they do their best to reclaim their lives—leading them all to a discovery that will change them and their town forever. At the heart of the story are Sam Finster, a senior in high school mourning the death of his mother, and his sister Trina, a nine-year-old deaf girl who denies her grief by dreaming of a nuclear apocalypse as Cold War tensions rise. Meanwhile, Sheriff Dave Dobbs and officer Nick Hayslip must try to put their own sorrows aside to figure out who, or what, is wreaking havoc on their once-idyllic town.

Keith Rosson paints outside the typical genre lines with his brilliant debut novel. It is a gorgeously written book that merges the sly wonder of magical realism and alternate history with the depth and characterization of literary fiction.]]> 300 Keith Rosson 0996626247 Amos 1
-1 Pretentious Stars]]> 3.84 2017 The Mercy of the Tide
author: Keith Rosson
name: Amos
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
review:
What a self-indulgent wanker.

-1 Pretentious Stars
]]> <![CDATA[Rumble Tumble (Hap and Leonard, #5)]]> 219740 272 Joe R. Lansdale 0446607576 Amos 3
3 Sorta Samey Stars

PS- Bob the armadillo is pretty awesome tho:)]]> 4.02 1998 Rumble Tumble (Hap and Leonard, #5)
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
review:
Kinda repetitive but kinda still fun. Hap seems to be learning the same thing in every book...but maybe that's the point? That it takes a while to truly change? Dunno, but some character growth sure would make this series more interesting for moi. Just sayin'....

3 Sorta Samey Stars

PS- Bob the armadillo is pretty awesome tho:)
]]> <![CDATA[Captains Outrageous (Hap and Leonard, #6)]]> 219727 336 Joe R. Lansdale 0753816741 Amos 0 to-read 3.96 2001 Captains Outrageous (Hap and Leonard, #6)
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Anima Rising 217223362 dzNew York Timesbestselling author Christopher Moore comes a hilariously deranged tale of a mad scientist, a famous painter, and an undead woman’s electrifying journey of self-discovery.

Vienna, 1911. Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, the darling of Viennese society, spots a woman’s nude body in the Danube canal. He knows he should summon a policeman, but he can’t resist stopping to make a sketch first. And as he draws, the woman coughs. She’s alive!

Back at his studio, Klimt and his model-turned-muse Wally tend to the erstwhile-drowned girl. She’s nearly feral and doesn’t remember who she is, or how she came to be floating in the canal. Klimt names her Judith, after one of his most famous paintings, and resolves to help her find her memory.

With a little help from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Judith recalls being stranded in the arctic one hundred years ago, locked in a crate by a man named Victor Frankenstein, and visiting the Underworld.

So how did she get here? And why are so many people chasing her, including Geoff, the giant croissant-eating devil dog of the North?

Poor Things meets Bride of Frankenstein in Anima Rising, Christopher Moore’s most ingenious (and probably most hilarious) novel yet.


]]> 400 Christopher Moore 0062434152 Amos 0 to-read 4.02 Anima Rising
author: Christopher Moore
name: Amos
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Are All Guilty Here 222834820
Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites.

For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home.

But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did.

Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?]]> 448 Karin Slaughter 0008625875 Amos 0 to-read 4.40 2025 We Are All Guilty Here
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Amos
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Man Made of Smoke 217387838 The latest gripping serial killer thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Alex North.

Dan Garvie’s life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child—narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death. Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has returned after all these years?

With his signature shock and suspense, Alex North brings us The Man Made of Smoke. In turn emotional, introspective, and utterly terrifying, this is a story of fathers and sons, shadows and secrets, and the fight we all face to escape the trauma of the past.]]> 320 Alex North 1250757894 Amos 0 to-read 4.26 2025 The Man Made of Smoke
author: Alex North
name: Amos
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Greek Lessons 61686012 “Now and then, language would thrust its way into her sleep like a skewer through meat, startling her awake several times a night.�

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

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

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

Greek Lessons is the story of the unlikely bond between this pair and a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.]]> 192 Han Kang 0593595270 Amos 0 to-read 3.54 2011 Greek Lessons
author: Han Kang
name: Amos
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How to Find Your Way in the Dark (Sheldon Horowitz #1)]]> 53968527 368 Derek B. Miller 0358269601 Amos 2 Blurg...
The previous book starring this lead character (Sheldon) in the twilight of his life was so good that it really is a bummer how unbelievable his actions throughout his childhood were (he's Superboy mixed with Sherlock Holmes and the A-Team. Seriously??) and how irritating this prequel became. There were occasional witty lines and emotionally moving moments, but as a whole it was comically farfetched and (unintentionally) silly.
Meh...

2 1/2 Dissatisfied Stars]]> 4.08 2021 How to Find Your Way in the Dark (Sheldon Horowitz #1)
author: Derek B. Miller
name: Amos
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
Halfway through my read I began to realize how much fun I wasn't having, and by the end of said read I realized that the halfway point was the best part. Now I'm grumpy.
Blurg...
The previous book starring this lead character (Sheldon) in the twilight of his life was so good that it really is a bummer how unbelievable his actions throughout his childhood were (he's Superboy mixed with Sherlock Holmes and the A-Team. Seriously??) and how irritating this prequel became. There were occasional witty lines and emotionally moving moments, but as a whole it was comically farfetched and (unintentionally) silly.
Meh...

2 1/2 Dissatisfied Stars
]]> Courier 202459594 Meet Bob, your local courier.
You've barely noticed him. You've barely even looked his way.
But he's noticed you. He's noticed everything about you.
He's been paying very close attention indeed.
And he likes what he sees...]]> 173 Zoe Rosi 1738497615 Amos 0 to-read 3.89 Courier
author: Zoe Rosi
name: Amos
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Brave New World 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Amos 0 to-read 3.99 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Amos
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blood Standard (Isaiah Coleridge, #1)]]> 36189048 333 Laird Barron Amos 4 Can't wait to jump into part two!!

runoutandgogetyousomeyo]]> 3.91 2018 Blood Standard (Isaiah Coleridge, #1)
author: Laird Barron
name: Amos
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/02
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves:
review:
What a great surprise this turned out to be! Loved the writing style and the overall feel of this story. Add in a great anti-hero protagonist with a quickpaced mystery to solve and you have this here 4 Star story..
Can't wait to jump into part two!!

runoutandgogetyousomeyo
]]> <![CDATA[Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)]]> 222139827 #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner returns with the 4th installment in her bestselling Frankie Elkin series, in which Frankie is called to Tucson, Arizona, to find a missing Afghan refugee, whose friend suspects she is in grave danger, before it is too late.

A young mother haunted by war, determined to make a fresh start. But sometimes, the sins of the past aren't so easy to escape.

Recent Afghan refugee Sabera Ahmadi was last seen exiting her place of work three weeks ago. The local police have yet to open a case, while her older, domineering husband seems unconcerned. Sabera's closest friend, however, is convinced Sabera would never willingly leave her three‑year old daughter. At her insistence, missing persons expert Frankie Elkin agrees to take up the search through the broiling streets of Tucson. Just in time for a video of the young mother to surface—showing her walking away from the scene of a brutal double murder.

Frankie quickly realizes there's much more to the Ahmadi family than meets the eye. The father Isaad is a brilliant mathematician, Sabera a gifted linguist, and their little girl Zahra—she has an uncanny ability to remember anything she sees. Which given everything that has happened during the girl's short life, may be a terrible curse. When Isaad also disappears under mysterious circumstances and an attempt is made on Zahra's life, Frankie realizes she must quickly crack the code of this family's horrific past.

Someone is coming for the Ahmadis. And violence is clearly an option. When everything is on the line, how far would you go to protect the ones you love?

Frankie is about to find out.]]> 400 Lisa Gardner 1538771098 Amos 0 to-read 3.71 2025 Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)
author: Lisa Gardner
name: Amos
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bury Me Deep 6085704 By the author of Dare Me and The End of Everything

In October 1931, a station agent found two large trunks abandoned in Los Angeles' Southern Pacific Station. What he found inside ignited one of the most scandalous tabloid sensations of the decade.

Inspired by this notorious true crime, Edgar-winning author Megan Abbott's novel Bury Me Deep is the story of Marion Seeley, a young woman abandoned in Phoenix by her doctor husband. At the medical clinic where she finds a job, Marion becomes fast friends with Louise, a vivacious nurse, and her roommate, Ginny, a tubercular blonde. Before long, the demure Marion is swept up in the exuberant life of the girls, who supplement their scant income by entertaining the town's most powerful men with wild parties. At one of these events, Marion meets, and falls hard for, the charming Joe Lanigan, a local rogue and politician on the rise, whose ties to all three women bring events to a dangerous collision.

A story born of Jazz Age decadence and Depression-era desperation, Bury Me Deep, with its hothouse of jealousy, illicit sex and shifting loyalties, is a timeless portrait of the dark side of desire and the glimmer of redemption.]]> 255 Megan Abbott 1416599096 Amos 3
And then the bloody mayhem begins.
SA-WEEEEEEEET!!!

3 1/2 Shadow-Shrinking Stars]]> 3.68 2009 Bury Me Deep
author: Megan Abbott
name: Amos
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2021/01/31
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:
Megan Abbott takes on the 1930s as only she can in this noir-steeped tale of an innocent young lady, new to town, who gets turned OUT by the strangers populating her budding world...

And then the bloody mayhem begins.
SA-WEEEEEEEET!!!

3 1/2 Shadow-Shrinking Stars
]]> All Human Wisdom 52773477 February, 1927. The great and the good of Paris gather to attend the funeral of the powerful millionaire, Marcel Péricourt. His daughter, Madeleine, is poised to take charge of his financial empire, but it seems fate has other plans for her. Her young son, Paul, with one unexpected and tragic act, will place Madeleine on the path to ruin and degradation.

Faced with the adversity of men, the greed of her time, the corruption and the ambition of her associates, Madeleine will have to deploy reserves of intelligence, determination and also a Machiavellian instinct to survive and rebuild her life. This task is made all the more difficult in a France that can only watch, helpless, as the first flames of the inferno that will soon ravage Europe begin to take hold.

]]> 400 Pierre Lemaitre Amos 4 While book one of this trilogy was always going to be incredibly difficult to top, book two was a valiant effort and an immensely enjoyable return to the madness of the Péricourt family's comings and goings in the France of the late 1920's. Reminiscent of the classic movie The Sting, but on a much grander scale, with way kookier characters, and for much heavier stakes. Quite a great read!!

4 Artifice-Steeped Stars]]> 4.24 2018 All Human Wisdom
author: Pierre Lemaitre
name: Amos
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:
Hell hath no fury like Madeleine Péricourt scorned!!
While book one of this trilogy was always going to be incredibly difficult to top, book two was a valiant effort and an immensely enjoyable return to the madness of the Péricourt family's comings and goings in the France of the late 1920's. Reminiscent of the classic movie The Sting, but on a much grander scale, with way kookier characters, and for much heavier stakes. Quite a great read!!

4 Artifice-Steeped Stars
]]> Small Things Like These 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 Amos 0 to-read 4.14 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Amos
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Friends 217163697 #1New York Timesbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Amos 0 to-read 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Amos
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unworthy 214151452 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668063700 Amos 0 to-read 3.74 2023 The Unworthy
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Amos
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> King of Ashes 219833252 Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.

Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his himself, and his own particular set of skills.

Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.

Because everything burns.]]> 352 S.A. Cosby 1250832063 Amos 0 to-read 4.36 2025 King of Ashes
author: S.A. Cosby
name: Amos
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cop Town 18594594 416 Karin Slaughter 0345547497 Amos 3
3 1/2 Seventies-Styled Stars]]> 3.86 2014 Cop Town
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Amos
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
A gritty "fish outta water" tale set in 1974 and centered on a Jewish woman joining the 99% male/white/(largely)bigoted Atlanta police department while an unknown gunman runs around the city executing said department's officers and detectives. Dark, violent characters populate both sides of the law in this one, making you feel dirty regardless of who you're pulling for. Buyer beware!

3 1/2 Seventies-Styled Stars
]]> Mark Twain 219158874 Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain

Ron Chernow, the highly lauded biographer of Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, and Ulysses S. Grant, brings his considerable powers to bear on America’s first, and most influential, literary celebrity, Mark Twain. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, under Halley’s Comet, the rambunctious Twain was an early teller of tall tales. He left his home in Missouri at an early age, piloted steamboats on the Mississippi, and arrived in the Nevada Territory during the silver-mining boom. Before long, he had accepted a job at the local newspaper, where he barged into vigorous discourse and debate, hoaxes and hijinks. After moving to San Francisco, he published stories that attracted national attention for their brashness and humor, writing under a pen name soon to be immortalized.

Chernow draws a richly nuanced portrait of the man who shamelessly sought fame and fortune and crafted his celebrity persona with meticulous care. Twain eventually settled with his wife and three daughters in Hartford, where he wrote some of his most well-known works, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, earning him further acclaim. He threw himself into American politics, emerging as the nation’s most notable pundit. While his talents as a writer and speaker flourished, his madcap business ventures eventually forced him into bankruptcy; to economize, Twain and his family spent nine eventful years in exile in Europe. He suffered the death of his wife and two daughters, and the last stage of his life was marked by heartache, political crusades, and eccentric behavior that sometimes obscured darker forces at play.

Drawing on Twain’s bountiful archives, including his fifty notebooks, thousands of letters, and hundreds of unpublished manuscripts, Chernow masterfully captures a man whose career reflected the country’s westward expansion, industrialization, and foreign wars. No other white author of his generation grappled so fully with the legacy of slavery after the Civil War or showed such keen interest in African American culture. Today, more than one hundred years after his death, Twain’s writing continues to be read, debated, and quoted. In this brilliant work of scholarship, a moving tribute to the writer’s talent and humanity, Chernow reveals the magnificent and often maddening life of one of the most original characters in American history.]]> 1200 Ron Chernow 0525561722 Amos 0 to-read 4.06 2025 Mark Twain
author: Ron Chernow
name: Amos
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Smoke City 36319320 2019 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award Silver Winner
Powell's Books Best Fiction of 2018

Marvin Deitz has some serious problems. His mob-connected landlord is strong-arming him out of his storefront. His therapist has concerns about his stability. He’s compelled to volunteer at the local Children’s Hospital even though it breaks his heart every week.

Oh, and he’s also the guilt-ridden reincarnation of Geoffroy Thérage, the French executioner who lit Joan of Arc’s pyre in 1431. He’s just seen a woman on a Los Angeles talk show claiming to be Joan, and absolution seems closer than it’s ever been... but how will he find her?

When Marvin heads to Los Angeles to locate the woman who may or may not be Joan, he’s picked up hitchhiking by Mike Vale, a self-destructive alcoholic painter traveling to his ex-wife’s funeral. As they move through a California landscape populated with “smokes� (ghostly apparitions that’ve inexplicably begun appearing throughout the southwestern US), each seeks absolution in his own way.]]> 309 Keith Rosson Amos 0 to-read 4.29 2018 Smoke City
author: Keith Rosson
name: Amos
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> With a Vengeance 219603177 One train. No stops. A deadly game of survival and revenge.

In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family.Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution.

Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall ontoa luxurytrain from Philadelphia to Chicago,an overnightjourney of fourteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served.

But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. As the train barrels through the night, it becomes clear that someone else on board is enacting their own form of revenge—and that they won’t stop until everyone else is dead.

With time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them—even though it means putting her own life at risk.]]> 400 Riley Sager 0593472403 Amos 0 to-read 3.65 2025 With a Vengeance
author: Riley Sager
name: Amos
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fever House (Fever House, #1) 66087060 A small-time criminal. A has-been rock star. A shadowy government agency. And a severed hand whose dark powers threaten to destroy them all.

When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, to collect overdue drug money, a severed hand is the last thing he expects to find stashed in the client’s refrigerator. Hutch quickly realizes that the hand induces uncontrollable madness: Anyone in its proximity is overcome with a boundless compulsion for violence. Within hours, catastrophic forces are set into motion: Dark-op government agents who have been desperately hunting for the hand are on Hutch’s tail, more of the city’s residents fall under its brutal influence, and suddenly all of Portland stands at the precipice of disaster. . . .

But it’s all the same for Katherine Moriarty, a singer whose sudden fame and precipitous downfall were followed by the mysterious death of her estranged husband—suicide, allegedly. Her trauma has made her agoraphobic, shackled within the confines of her apartment. Her son, Nick, has moved home to care for her, quietly making his living working for Hutch’s boss.

When Hutch calls Nick in distress, looking for someone else to take the hand, Katherine and Nick are plunged into a global struggle that will decimate the walls of the carefully arranged life they’ve built. Mother and son must evade both crazed, bloodthirsty masses and deceitful government agents while exorcising family secrets that have risen from the dead—secrets, they soon discover, that might hold the very key to humanity’s survival.

Can you resist the hand? Find an excerpt from the next Fever House novel at the end of the book.]]> 417 Keith Rosson 0593595750 Amos 4 F CLIFFHANGERS FO REAL!!!
Grrrrr....

Other than that the book was a bloody blast!
Panic, carnage, death, demons, covert government programs, walking dead folks, love, lies, automated body parts, friends, frienamies, occult junkies, junkie junkies, buckets of blood and so much more.
Now that I think about it, even with the cliffhanger this book was pretty dang awesome. Yup.
Getyousomeyo

4 Sadistically Satanic Stars]]> 4.02 2023 Fever House (Fever House, #1)
author: Keith Rosson
name: Amos
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves:
review:
I'm trying to not let the cliffhanger ending ruin how much fun this book was...
F CLIFFHANGERS FO REAL!!!
Grrrrr....

Other than that the book was a bloody blast!
Panic, carnage, death, demons, covert government programs, walking dead folks, love, lies, automated body parts, friends, frienamies, occult junkies, junkie junkies, buckets of blood and so much more.
Now that I think about it, even with the cliffhanger this book was pretty dang awesome. Yup.
Getyousomeyo

4 Sadistically Satanic Stars
]]> <![CDATA[The Devil By Name (Fever House, #2)]]> 202102065 No one expected the apocalypse would be broadcast via phone call. But in this chilling sequel to Fever House, anyone who managed to survive that doomsday call has a harrowing answer to the question, “Where were you when the Message came through?�

Five years after the event that drove most of the global population to madness, the world is overrun with the “fevered”—once-human, zombielike creatures drawn indiscriminately to violence and murder. In a campaign to restabilize the country, the massive corporation known as Terradyne Industries has merged with the U.S. government in a partnership of dubious motives, quarantining major American cities behind towering walls and corralling the afflicted there with the hope, they say, of developing a vaccine.

In Portland, where it all began, guilt-ridden detective John Bonner scours the city’s darkest corners for clues to humanity’s redemption. In New England, Katherine Moriarty mourns the devastating losses of her husband and son while in hiding from Terradyne. And across the ocean in France, a sixteen-year-old girl named Naomi Laurent discovers she has a disturbing and powerful gift—which may just be the key to the world’s salvation.

Equal parts gruesome and beautiful, The Devil by Name is a heart-stopping, breakneck saga of survival. As its characters� paths inevitably collide across the ravaged landscape of a post-apocalyptic America, they are united by the desire to not just escape death but to carve out some way to live anew.

Everything starts and ends in the fever house.

]]> 400 Keith Rosson 0593595785 Amos 0 to-read 4.22 2024 The Devil By Name (Fever House, #2)
author: Keith Rosson
name: Amos
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pretty Girls 40017404 Librarian’s note: This is an updated cover image for Kindle.
See previously published cover here.

#1 internationally bestselling author Karin Slaughter returns with a sophisticated and chilling psychological thriller of dangerous secrets, cold vengeance, and unexpected absolution, in which two estranged sisters must come together to find truth about two harrowing tragedies, twenty years apart, that devastate their lives.

Sisters. Strangers. Survivors.

More than twenty years ago, Claire and Lydia's teenaged sister Julia vanished without a trace. The two women have not spoken since, and now their lives could not be more different. Claire is the glamorous trophy wife of an Atlanta millionaire. Lydia, a single mother, dates an ex-con and struggles to make ends meet. But neither has recovered from the horror and heartbreak of their shared loss—a devastating wound that's cruelly ripped open when Claire's husband is killed.

The disappearance of a teenage girl and the murder of a middle-aged man, almost a quarter-century apart: what could connect them? Forming a wary truce, the surviving sisters look to the past to find the truth, unearthing the secrets that destroyed their family all those years ago . . . and uncovering the possibility of redemption, and revenge, where they least expect it.

Powerful, poignant, and utterly gripping, packed with indelible characters and unforgettable twists, Pretty Girls is a masterful thriller from one of the finest suspense writers working today.]]> 432 Karin Slaughter Amos 0 to-read 4.14 2015 Pretty Girls
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Amos
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Small Mercies 61812308 The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River —an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston’s history.

In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,� the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.

One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.

Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.]]> 303 Dennis Lehane 0062129481 Amos 4
4 Fully Loaded Stars]]> 4.22 2023 Small Mercies
author: Dennis Lehane
name: Amos
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:
Half exploration of segregation's effects on black and white communities, half hell-hath-no-fury-like-a-mother-scorned revenge tale. It's a story bathed in blood that also effectively tugs at the heart strings...while also making you laugh out loud every now and then. Twas a pretty wild ride!

4 Fully Loaded Stars
]]> <![CDATA[The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore]]> 201751300 An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations

Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.

Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.

The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.]]> 416 Evan Friss 0593299922 Amos 0 to-read 3.93 2024 The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
author: Evan Friss
name: Amos
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Little Eve 59808007
“A great day is upon us. He is coming. The world will be washed away.�

On the wind-battered isle of Altnaharra, off the wildest coast of Scotland, a clan prepares to bring about the end of the world and its imminent rebirth.

The Adder is coming and one of their number will inherit its powers. They all want the honor, but young Eve is willing to do anything for the distinction.

A reckoning beyond Eve’s imagination begins when Chief Inspector Black arrives to investigate a brutal murder and their sacred ceremony goes terribly wrong.

And soon all the secrets of Altnaharra will be uncovered.]]> 271 Catriona Ward 1250812658 Amos 4 Enjoy gothic horror of the highest order? then this is the book for you.

3 1/2 Beguiling Stars]]> 3.69 2018 Little Eve
author: Catriona Ward
name: Amos
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:
The first 100 pages were a bit convoluted and felt overstuffed with beautiful yet dense prose, so much so that it almost became unbearable- like chewing a mouthful of sweets that never break down. But Ms Ward's words effectively set the stage for the horribly haunting tale that followed, the mindsets of the characters involved, and the cruelty their lives were bathed in.
Enjoy gothic horror of the highest order? then this is the book for you.

3 1/2 Beguiling Stars
]]> The Prophet 2547 The Prophet, is one of the most beloved classics of our time. Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.

The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.]]> 127 Kahlil Gibran 000100039X Amos 0 to-read 4.27 1923 The Prophet
author: Kahlil Gibran
name: Amos
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1923
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> More Better Deals 51197659 Edgar award-winning author Joe Lansdale returns with the hard-boiled story of a no-nonsense used car salesman ready to turn his life around

Ed Edwards is in the used car business, a business built on adjusted odometers, extra-fine print, and the belief that "buyers better beware." Burdened by an aging, alcoholic mother constantly on his case to do something worthier of his lighter skin tone and dreaming of a brighter future for himself and his plucky little sister, Ed is ready to get out of the game.

When Dave, his lazy, grease-stained boss at the eponymous dealership Smiling Dave's sends him to repossess a Cadillac, Ed finally gets the chance to escape his miserable life.

The Cadillac in question was purchased by Frank Craig and his beautiful wife Nancy, owners of a local drive-in and pet cemetery. Fed up with her deadbeat husband and with unfulfilled desires of her own, Nancy suggests to Ed- in the throes of their salacious affair- that they kill Frank and claim his insurance policy. It is a tantalizing offer: the girl, the car, and not one, but two businesses. Ed could finally say goodbye to Smiling Dave's, and maybe even send his sister to college. But does he have what it takes to see the plan through?

Told with Joe Lansdale's trademark grit, wit, and dark humor, More Better Deals is a gripping tale of the strange characters and odd dealings that define 1960s East Texas.]]> 258 Joe R. Lansdale 0316479918 Amos 4 Is he playing her?
Or are they both getting played like a new slick deck of 52?
Everybody best keep their stories straight because baaaad things happen to those that slip!

3 1/2 Duplicitous Stars]]> 3.70 2020 More Better Deals
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves:
review:
Is she playing him?
Is he playing her?
Or are they both getting played like a new slick deck of 52?
Everybody best keep their stories straight because baaaad things happen to those that slip!

3 1/2 Duplicitous Stars
]]> Parents Weekend 217387739 From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers.

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.]]> 320 Alex Finlay 1250360722 Amos 0 to-read 3.66 2025 Parents Weekend
author: Alex Finlay
name: Amos
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pine Lakes 35178539
When a freak summer storm forces Ted to lose control of their car and plummet off the road, they’re relieved just to have survived, but relief quickly turns to dread as they find out all too soon they’re not alone.

Strange lights in the forest, whispered warnings, the insurmountable threat of unseen forces lurking in the shadows; nothing could have prepared them for the horrors that lie ahead.

Escaping the wreck is just the beginning.

Is their love enough to save them, or will they become the latest victims on the road to Pine Lakes?

***

From the author of 'The Darkening' and 'The Farm' comes a new tale of suspense and claustrophobic horror that will have you questioning just how far you'd go to save those you love... and what you're capable of doing to save yourself.
]]> 299 Christopher Motz Amos 0 to-read 3.90 2017 Pine Lakes
author: Christopher Motz
name: Amos
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Used to Live Here 199798006
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it� (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).]]> 312 Marcus Kliewer 1982198788 Amos 5
4 1/2 Anxious Stars]]> 3.68 2024 We Used to Live Here
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: Amos
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves:
review:
Gobbled this tension-steeped story up like it was mashed potatoes and gravy and I was a buttery-ass biscuit! Hot DAMN that was fun!!

4 1/2 Anxious Stars
]]> <![CDATA[In the Mad Mountains: Stories Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft]]> 209357442
A sinister blues recording pressed on vinyl in blood conjures lethal shadows with its unearthly wails. In order to rescue Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn traverses the shifting horrors of the aptly named Dread Island. In the weird Wild West, Reverand Jebidiah Mercer rides into a possessed town to confront the unspeakable in the crawling sky. Legendary detective C. Auguste Dupin uncovers the gruesome secrets of both the blue lightning bug and the Necronomicon.

Exploring the darkest corners of the human psyche, here is a lethally entertaining journey through Joe Lansdale’s twisted landscape, where ancient evils lurk and sanity hangs by a rapidly fraying thread.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale
“The Bleeding Shadow�
Dread Island
“The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lightning�
“The Tall Grass�
"The Case of the Stalking Shadow"
“The Crawling Sky�
"Starlight, Eyes Bright"
In the Mad Mountains]]> 256 Joe R. Lansdale 1616964243 Amos 4 An enjoyably addictive collection of imaginative tales ranging from disarmingly pleasant to immensely spooky. I was so immersed in the stories that I was kinda shocked when I turned a page and the book was already finished. Good stuff!!

4 Sinister Stars]]> 4.01 2024 In the Mad Mountains: Stories Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves:
review:
Lansdale strikes again!!
An enjoyably addictive collection of imaginative tales ranging from disarmingly pleasant to immensely spooky. I was so immersed in the stories that I was kinda shocked when I turned a page and the book was already finished. Good stuff!!

4 Sinister Stars
]]> <![CDATA[The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War]]> 195608683 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston: Fort Sumter.

Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.�

At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous Secretary of State, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.

Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.]]> 565 Erik Larson 0385348746 Amos 0 to-read 4.13 2024 The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
author: Erik Larson
name: Amos
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dark Cities 31812795 400 Christopher Golden 1785652664 Amos 0 to-read 3.32 2017 Dark Cities
author: Christopher Golden
name: Amos
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Terror is Our Business: Dana Roberts' Casebook of Horrors]]> 39357320 Hap & Leonard, Bubba Ho Tep) and his daughter, author/country singer Kasey Lansdale, have joined forces to bring you a short story collection showcasing the new dynamic duo of supernatural sleuthing, Dana Roberts and her sidekick Jana!

Terror is Our Business gathers together all of Dana’s and Jana’s previous cases in a single volume, and features an all-new adventure, “The Case of the Ragman’s Anguish,� written exclusively for this collection.

Join Dana and Jana as they investigate - and battle - angry jinns, malevolent shadows, ancient travelers, and soul-sucking shapeshifters. With two tough, resourceful women on the case, the specters from “the other side� won’t know what hit them!]]> 248 Joe R. Lansdale 1732009007 Amos 0 to-read 3.72 2018 Terror is Our Business: Dana Roberts' Casebook of Horrors
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lying in Wait 36373425 My husband did not mean to kill Annie Doyle, but the lying tramp deserved it.

On the surface, Lydia Fitzsimons has the perfect life—wife of a respected, successful judge, mother to a beloved son, mistress of a beautiful house in Dublin. That beautiful house, however, holds a secret. And when Lydia’s son, Laurence, discovers its secret, wheels are set in motion that lead to an increasingly claustrophobic and devastatingly dark climax.

From the international bestselling author of Unraveling Oliver, an “unputdownable psychological thriller with an ending that lingers long after turning the final page� (The Irish Times) about a Dublin family whose dark secrets and twisted relationships are suddenly revealed.]]> 320 Liz Nugent 1501167774 Amos 4
4 Devious Stars]]> 3.76 2016 Lying in Wait
author: Liz Nugent
name: Amos
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves:
review:
What a crazy collection of (mostly) awful people, with the mom quite possibly being atop the rankings in the psycho hall of fame. A well paced kookie and enjoyable read.

4 Devious Stars
]]> The Answer Is No 219876684 In a hilarious short story from New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, the absurdities of modern life cause one man’s solitary world to spin suddenly, and comically, out of control.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone?

Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.]]> 68 Fredrik Backman 1662526520 Amos 0 to-read 3.94 2024 The Answer Is No
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Amos
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bad Chili (Hap and Leonard #4)]]> 102132 329 Joe R. Lansdale 2070498549 Amos 3 4.08 1997 Bad Chili (Hap and Leonard #4)
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:
Amply Sufficient, around 3 Stars worth.
]]> The Handyman Method 62919902 Black Mirror and The Amityville Horror.

When a young family moves into an unfinished development community, cracks begin to emerge in both their new residence and their lives, as a mysterious online DIY instructor delivers dark subliminal suggestions about how to handle any problem around the house. The trials of home improvement, destructive insecurities, and haunted house horror all collide in this thrilling story perfect for fans of Nick Cutter’s bestsellers The Troop and The Deep.]]> 292 Nick Cutter 1982196718 Amos 2
Ugh.

Since I'm such a Cutter fan, I'll just lay the blame at Sullivan's feet :)

1 1/2 Wearisome Stars

P.S. Following the book, Cutter writes that this book started out as a super short story/movie idea, but his agent told them to fatten the story up...and that is exactly how it reads- like a good nugget of an idea with waaaay too much fat on it. Bummer.]]> 3.26 2023 The Handyman Method
author: Nick Cutter
name: Amos
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves:
review:
Ever read something pretty short that feels incredibly bloated and endless? Slow and repetitive? Something that thinks it's grabbing you by the lapels but is actually giving you visions of sprinting towards an early exit? No? Welllllllllllllllll....HERE YOU GO!

Ugh.

Since I'm such a Cutter fan, I'll just lay the blame at Sullivan's feet :)

1 1/2 Wearisome Stars

P.S. Following the book, Cutter writes that this book started out as a super short story/movie idea, but his agent told them to fatten the story up...and that is exactly how it reads- like a good nugget of an idea with waaaay too much fat on it. Bummer.
]]> Goblin 54610996 From the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and Malorie, a novella collection in which every story reveals a sinister secret about a mysterious small town

Goblin seems like any other ordinary small town. But with the master storyteller Josh Malerman as your tour guide, you'll discover the secrets that hide behind its closed doors. These six novellas tell the story of a place where the rain is always falling, nighttime is always near, and your darkest fears and desires await. Welcome to Goblin. . . .

A Man in Slices: A man proves his "legendary love" to his girlfriend with a sacrifice even more daring than Vincent van Gogh's--and sends her more than his heart.

Kamp: Walter Kamp is afraid of everything, but most afraid of being scared to death. As he sets traps around his home to catch the ghosts that haunt him, he learns that nothing is more terrifying than fear itself.

Happy Birthday, Hunter!: A famed big-game hunter is determined to capture--and kill--the ultimate prey: the mythic Great Owl who lives in Goblin's dark forests. But this mysterious creature is not the only secret the woods are keeping.

Presto: All Peter wants is to be like his hero, Roman Emperor, the greatest magician in the world. When the famous magician comes to Goblin, Peter discovers that not all magic is just an illusion.

A Mix-Up at the Zoo: The new zookeeper feels a mysterious kinship with the animals in his care . . . and finds that his work is freeing dark forces inside him.

The Hedges: When his wife dies, a man builds a hedge maze so elaborate no one ever solves it--until a little girl resolves to be the first to find the mysteries that wait at its heart.]]> 416 Josh Malerman 0593237803 Amos 1 quit
1 Arid Star]]> 3.34 2017 Goblin
author: Josh Malerman
name: Amos
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: quit
review:
190 pgs in (3 stories) and i just don't have it in me to read anymore of this collection of Twilight Zone rejects. Not scary, not interesting, and not fun.

1 Arid Star
]]> A Slow Fire Burning 56213354
Look what you started.]]> 307 Paula Hawkins 073521123X Amos 0 to-read 3.45 2021 A Slow Fire Burning
author: Paula Hawkins
name: Amos
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Good Daughter (Good Daughter, #1)]]> 33230889
InstantNew York TimesBestseller

theSkimm Book Club Pick!

The stunning new novel from the international #1 bestselling author—a searing, spellbinding blend of cold-case thriller and psychological suspense.

Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind�

Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father � Pikeville's notorious defense attorney � devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.

Twenty-eight years later, and Charlie has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself � the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again � and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized � Charlie is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it's a casethat unleashesthe terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress. Because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won't stay buried forever�

Packed with twists and turns, brimming with emotion and heart,The Good Daughteris fiction at its most thrilling.]]> 519 Karin Slaughter 0062430262 Amos 0 to-read 4.10 2017 The Good Daughter (Good Daughter, #1)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Amos
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Doorkeepers 1013126
But nothing Josh discovers makes any sense. Julia has been working for a company that went out of business sixty years ago, and living at an address that hasn't existed since World War II. The only one who might have been able to help Josh is Ella, a strange young woman with psychic abilities. But the doors she can open are far better left closed. For behind these doors lie secrets that should never be revealed - secrets too horrible to imagine.]]> 371 Graham Masterton 0843952407 Amos 3
3 Almost Above Average Stars]]> 3.89 2012 The Doorkeepers
author: Graham Masterton
name: Amos
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
An adventurous romp through cleverly disguised and accessed portals leading to countless alternate realities most often filled with death, horrors, and horrible deaths for those that find them. A four star tale reduced to three due to a few too many inconsistencies and silly happenings crammed into the book's final quarter. Still, the tale was enough fun overall that I will be reaching for another title from this author on the sooner side of later.

3 Almost Above Average Stars
]]> Skin Deep 33255561 'I could probably have been an actress.
It is not difficult to pretend to be somebody else.
Isn't that what I've been doing for most of my life?'

Cordelia Russell has been living on the French Riviera for twenty-five years, passing herself off as an English socialite. But her luck, and the kindness of strangers, have run out.

The arrival of a visitor from her distant past shocks Cordelia. She reacts violently to the intrusion and flees her flat to spend a drunken night at a glittering party. As dawn breaks she stumbles home through the back streets. Even before she opens her door she can hear the flies buzzing. She did not expect the corpse inside to start decomposing quite so quickly . . .]]> 373 Liz Nugent 1844883930 Amos 0 to-read 3.93 2018 Skin Deep
author: Liz Nugent
name: Amos
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Ushers 218362004 A young man who has improbably escaped death twice reveals his secret in a spine-tingling short story by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill.

Martin Lorensen is a twenty-three-year-old counselor for disturbed teenagers. He’s bright, compassionate, attractive, and outgoing. He’s also—and this is the most interesting thing—not dead. Martin has improbably survived not one but two deadly disasters that claimed dozens of lives. The kid is riding one hell of a lucky streak. Two federal agents think there is something darker at play. Now that they’ve arranged to interview Martin, they want answers. Martin is ready to share everything he knows. One thing is for certain: when it comes to escaping death, luck doesn’t figure into it at all.]]> 29 Joe Hill 1662527942 Amos 0 to-read 4.23 2024 Ushers
author: Joe Hill
name: Amos
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Two-Bear Mambo (Hap and Leonard #3)]]> 102117 Joe R. Lansdale 0575400374 Amos 4
4 Satisfying Stars]]> 4.16 1995 The Two-Bear Mambo (Hap and Leonard #3)
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
review:
Easily the best of the series so far. Lansdale is hitting his stride with these crazy dudes...

4 Satisfying Stars
]]> The Penguin Book of Demons 205064712 Three thousand years of encounters with malevolent beings that have invaded our waking lives and our nightmaresA Penguin ClassicFor millennia, societies have told tales of their fears incarnate—otherworldly couriers of plague, death, temptation, and moral decline. Drawing from three thousand years of religious traditions and world literature, The Penguin Book of Demons follows these supernatural creatures—and the humans who have hunted and been haunted by them—through accounts across cultures and continents, the daimones of ancient Greece and Rome; the Nephilim, the giant, biblical half-humans who stalked the earth before the Great Flood; corrupted angels, condemned to eternity in Hell; the sickness-spreading fairy folk of Celtic mythology; the djinn of Islamic Arabia; the female, child-eating gelloudes of Byzantium; the seductive incubi and succubi of northern Europe; the animal spirits of early modern China; and the cannibalistic wendigo of Native American folklore. From demonic possession to black magic, these accounts give life to a spellbinding, skin-crawling history of the paranormal.]]> 368 Scott G. Bruce 0143137867 Amos 0 to-read 3.83 2024 The Penguin Book of Demons
author: Scott G. Bruce
name: Amos
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[American by Day (Sheldon Horowitz #3)]]> 35721120
She knew it was a weird place. She’d heard the stories, seen the movies, read the books. But now police Chief Inspector Sigrid Ødegård has to leave her native Norway and actually go there; to that land across the Atlantic where her missing brother is implicated in the mysterious death of a prominent African American academic―America.

Sigrid is plunged into a United States where race and identity, politics and promise, reverberate in every aspect of daily life. Working with―or, if necessary, against―the police, she must negotiate the local political minefields and navigate the backwoods of the Adirondacks to uncover the truth before events escalate further.

Refreshingly funny, slyly perceptive, American by Day is “a superb novel on all levels� ( Times , UK).

“Ingenious. Humorous. Wonderful.”―Lee Child]]> 352 Derek B. Miller 1328876659 Amos 4 All in all, another enjoyable tale from Mr Miller!

3 1/2 Conflicting Stars]]> 4.14 2018 American by Day (Sheldon Horowitz #3)
author: Derek B. Miller
name: Amos
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves:
review:
A "fish out of water" story that occasionally gets a bit too politically heavyhanded, but I still enjoyed revisiting these characters and learning how they came to see their worlds as they do. There's also a new character, a theologian-turned-sheriff, who I couldn't get enough of; deadpanned and hilarious.
All in all, another enjoyable tale from Mr Miller!

3 1/2 Conflicting Stars
]]> The Girl in Green 28114442 From the author of Norwegian by Night, and Short Listed for the 2017 CWA Gold Dagger Award, a novel about two men on a misbegotten quest to save the girl they failed to save decades before

1991. Near Checkpoint Zulu, one hundred miles from the Kuwaiti border, Thomas Benton meets Arwood Hobbes. Benton is a British journalist who reports from war zones in part to avoid his lackluster marriage and a daughter he loves but cannot connect with; Arwood is a mid-western American private who might be an insufferable ignoramus, or might be a genuine lunatic with a death wish--it's hard to tell.

Desert Storm is over, peace has been declared, but as they argue about whether it makes sense to cross the nearest border in search of an ice cream, they become embroiled in a horrific attack in which a young local girl in a green dress is killed as they are trying to protect her. The two men walk away into their respective lives. But something has cracked for them both.

Twenty-twoyears later, in another place, in another war, they meet again and are offered an unlikely opportunity to redeem themselves when that same girl in green is found alive and in need of salvation. Or is she?]]> 336 Derek B. Miller 0544706250 Amos 0 to-read 3.98 2017 The Girl in Green
author: Derek B. Miller
name: Amos
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Donut Legion 61398924
Charlie Garner has a bad feeling. His ex-wife, Meg, has been missing for over a week and one quick peek into her home shows all her possessions packed up in boxes. Neighbors claim she’s running from bill collectors, but Charlie suspects something more sinister is afoot. Meg was last seen working at the local donut shop, a business run by a shadow group most refer to as ‘The Saucer People�; a space-age, evangelist cult who believe their compound to be the site of an extraterrestrial Second Coming.

Along with his brother, Felix, and beautiful, randy journalist Amelia “Scrappy� Moon, Charlie uncovers strange and frightening details about the compound ( a massive, doomsday storehouse of weapons, a leashed chimpanzee!) When the body of their key informer is found dead with his arms ripped out of their sockets, Charlie knows he’s in danger but remains dogged in his quest to rescue Meg.

Brimming with colorful characters and Lansdale’s characteristic bounce, this rollicking crime novel examines the insidious rise of fringe groups and those under their sway with black comedy and glints of pathos.]]> 291 Joe R. Lansdale 0316540684 Amos 0 to-read 3.55 2023 The Donut Legion
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand]]> 220377457 An original short story anthology based on master storyteller Stephen King’s #1 New York Times bestselling classic The Stand!

Since its initial publication in 1978, The Stand has been considered Stephen King’s seminal masterpiece of apocalyptic fiction, with millions of copies sold and adapted twice for television. Although there are other extraordinary works exploring the unraveling of human society, none have been as influential as this iconic novel—generations of writers have been impacted by its dark yet ultimately hopeful vision of the end and new beginning of civilization, and its stunning array of characters.

Now for the first time, Stephen King has fully authorized a return to the harrowing world of The Stand through this original short story anthology as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. Bringing together some of today’s greatest and most visionary writers, The End of the World As We Know It features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of The Stand—brilliant, terrifying, and painfully human tales that will resonate with readers everywhere as an essential companion to the classic, bestselling novel.

Featuring an introduction by Stephen King, a foreword by Christopher Golden, and an afterword by Brian Keene. Contributors include Wayne Brady and Maurice Broaddus, Poppy Z. Brite, Somer Canon, C. Robert Cargill, Nat Cassidy, V. Castro, Richard Chizmar, S. A. Cosby, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, Meg Gardiner, Gabino Iglesias, Jonathan Janz, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, Michael Koryta, Sarah Langan, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, Josh Malerman, Ronald Malfi, Usman T. Malik, Premee Mohamed, Cynthia Pelayo, Hailey Piper, David J. Schow, Alex Segura, Bryan Smith, Paul Tremblay, Catherynne M. Valente, Bev Vincent, Catriona Ward, Chuck Wendig, Wrath James White, and Rio Youers.]]> 800 Christopher Golden 1668057557 Amos 0 to-read 4.46 2025 The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King's The Stand
author: Christopher Golden
name: Amos
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Silent Wife (Will Trent, #10)]]> 53065750 The New York Times bestselling author of Pieces of Her and The Last Widow returns with another electrifying Will Trent thriller.

Investigating the killing of a prisoner during a riot inside a state penitentiary, GBI investigator Will Trent is confronted with disturbing information. One of the inmates claims that he is innocent of a brutal attack for which he has always been the prime suspect. The man insists that he was framed by a corrupt law enforcement team led by Jeffrey Tolliver and that the real culprit is still out there—a serial killer who has systematically been preying on women across the state for years. If Will reopens the investigation and implicates the dead police officer with a hero’s reputation of wrongdoing, the opportunistic convict is willing to provide the information GBI needs about the riot murder.

Only days ago, another young woman was viciously murdered in a state park in northern Georgia. Is it a fluke, or could there be a serial killer on the loose?

As Will Trent digs into both crimes it becomes clear that he must solve the cold case in order to find the answer. Yet nearly a decade has passed—time for memories to fade, witnesses to vanish, evidence to disappear, and lies to become truth. But Will can’t crack either mystery without the help of the one person he doesn’t want involved: his girlfriend and Jeffrey Tolliver’s widow, medical examiner Sara Linton.

When the past and present begin to collide, Will realizes that everything he values is at stake . . .]]> 496 Karin Slaughter 0062858106 Amos 2
Once again, Slaughter created a brutal case for Trent and Company to crack, but then fluffed up everything around it with horribly needy nonsense, courtesy of Sara, a.k.a. the most annoyingly offensive, constantly-in-emotional-distress-over-every-aspect-of-her-relationship styled, helplessly vanilla female character ever created. God, she really is something awful.

My revulsion might be taking years off my life.
Ugh....

2 1/2 Schmaltzy Stars]]> 4.16 2020 The Silent Wife (Will Trent, #10)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Amos
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves:
review:
I really wish she was...

Once again, Slaughter created a brutal case for Trent and Company to crack, but then fluffed up everything around it with horribly needy nonsense, courtesy of Sara, a.k.a. the most annoyingly offensive, constantly-in-emotional-distress-over-every-aspect-of-her-relationship styled, helplessly vanilla female character ever created. God, she really is something awful.

My revulsion might be taking years off my life.
Ugh....

2 1/2 Schmaltzy Stars
]]> Leather Maiden 3110246 The New York Times Book Review).

After a scandalous affair costs him his job in Houston, Cason Statler—Gulf War veteran and Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist—returns home to the small east Texas town of Camp Rapture. Cason is a wreck. He drinks too much, he’s stalking his ex-girlfriend, and he’s wallowing in envy of his successful older brother. To get back on his feet, he takes a job at the local paper, and when he stumbles across his predecessor’s notes on a cold case murder file, he thinks he’s found the thing that’ll keep him out of trouble. No such luck. The further he digs into the case, the more certain he is that the unsolved crime is connected to a series of eerie, inexplicable events that have recently occurred in town. And he knows his suspicions are right on when he finds himself dragged into a deadly game of blackmail and murder that clearly has evil as its only goal.

Leather Maiden is a brash amalgam of suspense, raw humor, and mystery that unfolds in the vividly rendered shadowy lowlands of eastern Texas. It’s country noir as only Joe Lansdale can do it.]]> 287 Joe R. Lansdale 0375414525 Amos 4 LET THE ICHOR FLOW, YO!!!
Lansdale crafted another dark one here, but, per usual, he also let a couple rays of sunshine in.

3 1/2 Skinned and Salted Stars]]> 3.79 2008 Leather Maiden
author: Joe R. Lansdale
name: Amos
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves:
review:
Some folks sure do have some strange (blood-permeated) hobbies, and this tale here tells you aaaaall about a couple of them. Oh, the wanton evil that lost souls do...
LET THE ICHOR FLOW, YO!!!
Lansdale crafted another dark one here, but, per usual, he also let a couple rays of sunshine in.

3 1/2 Skinned and Salted Stars
]]> <![CDATA[The Sentinel (Jack Reacher, #25)]]> 51053653
But there’s nothing pleasant about the place.

In broad daylight Reacher spots a hapless soul walking into an ambush. “It was four against one� . . . so Reacher intervenes, with his own trademark brand of conflict resolution.

The man he saves is Rusty Rutherford, an unassuming IT manager, recently fired after a cyberattack locked up the town’s data, records, information . . . and secrets. Rutherford wants to stay put, look innocent, and clear his name.

Reacher is intrigued. There’s more to the story. The bad guys who jumped Rutherford are part of something serious and deadly, involving a conspiracy, a cover-up, and murder—all centered on a mousy little guy in a coffee-stained shirt who has no idea what he’s up against.

Rule one: if you don’t know the trouble you’re in, keep Reacher by your side.]]> 386 Lee Child 1984818473 Amos 2 Ugh...
Blurg...
Dang it!!!
I used to get a big ol' satisfied smile on my face at the end of most Reacher novels. Sadly, it seems those days have passed.
Time to pour out a little liquor, yo. Guess we all gotta go someday......

2 Sad Sack Stars]]> 3.99 2020 The Sentinel (Jack Reacher, #25)
author: Lee Child
name: Amos
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2021/08/05
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves:
review:
In Andrew Child's hands Jack Reacher has become annoyingly sarcastic, condescending and jerk-like, and comes soaked in a bloodlust unknown during his original creators tenure. The lifeless prose I prayed would awaken turned out to be stillborn- with tedious mansplaining filling up at least half the book's length in place of, you know......plot.
Ugh...
Blurg...
Dang it!!!
I used to get a big ol' satisfied smile on my face at the end of most Reacher novels. Sadly, it seems those days have passed.
Time to pour out a little liquor, yo. Guess we all gotta go someday......

2 Sad Sack Stars
]]> Blood Ties (Kongeriket, #2) 213243951 384 Jo Nesbø 0593803612 Amos 0 to-read 3.85 2024 Blood Ties (Kongeriket, #2)
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Amos
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thunderstruck 40067
A true story of love, murder, and the end of the world’s “great hush�

In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men—Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication—whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time.

Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners, scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed, and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, “the kindest of men,� nearly commits the perfect crime.

With his superb narrative skills, Erik Larson guides these parallel narratives toward a relentlessly suspenseful meeting on the waters of the North Atlantic. Along the way, he tells of a sad and tragic love affair that was described on the front pages of newspapers around the world, a chief inspector who found himself strangely sympathetic to the killer and his lover, and a driven and compelling inventor who transformed the way we communicate. Thunderstruck presents a vibrant portrait of an era of séances, science, and fog, inhabited by inventors, magicians, and Scotland Yard detectives, all presided over by the amiable and fun-loving Edward VII as the world slid inevitably toward the first great war of the twentieth century. Gripping from the first page, and rich with fascinating detail about the time, the people, and the new inventions that connect and divide us, Thunderstruck is splendid narrative history from a master of the form.]]> 463 Erik Larson 1400080665 Amos 0 to-read 3.73 2006 Thunderstruck
author: Erik Larson
name: Amos
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Norwegian by Night (Sheldon Horowitz #2)]]> 15775210
Eighty-two years old, and recently widowed, Sheldon Horowitz has grudgingly moved to Oslo, with his grand-daughter and her Norwegian husband. An ex-Marine, he talks often to the ghosts of his past - the friends he lost in the Pacific and the son who followed him into the US Army, and to his death in Vietnam.

When Sheldon witnesses the murder of a woman in his apartment complex, he rescues her six-year-old son and decides to run. Pursued by both the Balkan gang responsible for the murder, and the Norwegian police, he has to rely on training from over half a century before to try and keep the boy safe. Against a strange and foreign landscape, this unlikely couple, who can't speak the same language, start to form a bond that may just save them both.

An extraordinary debut, featuring a memorable hero, Norwegian by Night is the last adventure of a man still trying to come to terms with the tragedies of his life. Compelling and sophisticated, it is both a chase through the woods thriller and an emotionally haunting novel about ageing and regret.]]> 303 Derek B. Miller 1921844884 Amos 4 The pace and flow of this story were truly something savorable, and the characters were authentic and alive- both the good and the creeps. I bought in to his world 100%, and I really didn't want this book to end....but Mr Miller stuck the landing like a champ so how bummed out could I be? Bottom line is- this dude can write! I'm such a fan that I just grabbed the other two books containing characters from this one.
Oh yeah. Bring it.


4 1/2 Sublime Stars]]> 3.88 2012 Norwegian by Night (Sheldon Horowitz #2)
author: Derek B. Miller
name: Amos
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves:
review:
LLLLLLLLLLLLoved it!!
The pace and flow of this story were truly something savorable, and the characters were authentic and alive- both the good and the creeps. I bought in to his world 100%, and I really didn't want this book to end....but Mr Miller stuck the landing like a champ so how bummed out could I be? Bottom line is- this dude can write! I'm such a fan that I just grabbed the other two books containing characters from this one.
Oh yeah. Bring it.


4 1/2 Sublime Stars
]]> Where They Wait 55540151 Clarity. It’s easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for the first time in years. The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas—relaxing white noise and guided meditations.

But then there are the “Sleep Songs.� A woman’s hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing—it’s disturbing, and more of a warning than a relaxation—but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows.

So do the nightmares. Vivid and chilling, they feature a dead woman who calls Nick by name and whispers guidance—or are they threats? And her voice follows him long after the song is done. As the effects of the nightmares begin to permeate his waking life, Nick makes a terrifying discovery: no one involved with Clarity has any interest in his article. Their interest is in him.]]> 390 Scott Carson 1982104627 Amos 2
2 Silly (sense a theme?) Stars]]> 3.56 2021 Where They Wait
author: Scott Carson
name: Amos
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/27
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves:
review:
Well, that was silly. To be fair, it was probably the best a story about people being sung to death could've been....but still.....it was quite silly.

2 Silly (sense a theme?) Stars
]]> <![CDATA[Those Who Dwell Below the Sidewalk]]> 199284010
Beneath the city, they are watching...

“The stuff of my freaking nightmares.� - Lesley Conner, Apex Magazine

During a bumper-to-bumper commute, Everard is almost murdered by a woman whose skin is covered in a living swarm of holes. Furious, Everard chases her down an impossible staircase. He’s thrown into the city’s supernatural underbelly where nightmares lurk around every corner.

In this world within the city's periphery, strange cults protect their members from monsters of urban legends. But something is riling up those monsters. Something ancient and evil, which has set its hungry sights on Everard.

For fans of horror epics like Stephen King’s Dark Tower or the wondrous horrors of Clive Barker’s Cabal & Nightbreed , Ben Farthing's The Who Dwell Below the Sidewalk is “non-stop terrifying action� with a villain who Apex Magazine Editor Lesley Conner called, “The stuff of my freaking nightmares.”]]> 404 Ben Farthing Amos 0 to-read 3.66 Those Who Dwell Below the Sidewalk
author: Ben Farthing
name: Amos
average rating: 3.66
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering]]> 216857785
Why is Miami…Miami? What does the heartbreaking fate of the cheetah tell us about the way we raise our children? Why do Ivy League schools care so much about sports? What is the Magic Third, and what does it mean for racial harmony? In this provocative new work, Malcolm Gladwell returns for the first time in twenty-five years to the subject of social epidemics and tipping points, this time with the aim of explaining the dark side of contagious phenomena.

Through a series of riveting stories, Gladwell traces the rise of a new and troubling form of social engineering. He takes us to the streets of Los Angeles to meet the world’s most successful bank robbers, rediscovers a forgotten television show from the 1970s that changed the world, visits the site of a historic experiment on a tiny cul-de-sac in northern California, and offers an alternate history of two of the biggest epidemics of our day: COVID and the opioid crisis. Revenge of the Tipping Point is Gladwell’s most personal book yet. With his characteristic mix of storytelling and social science, he offers a guide to making sense of the contagions of modern world. It’s time we took tipping points seriously.]]> 352 Malcolm Gladwell 0316575801 Amos 0 to-read 4.03 2024 Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Amos
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematorium]]> 29753876 254 Caitlin Doughty 1782111050 Amos 0 to-read 4.26 2014 Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematorium
author: Caitlin Doughty
name: Amos
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>