Victoria's bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 13 May 2025 20:58:35 -0700 60 Victoria's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Writer 215749267 “Consider blocking out a few hours of uninterrupted reading time�forThe Writer, #1 New York Timesbestselling author James Patterson’sExcellent…perfectly executed…genuinely suspenseful�(Booklist) thriller about a true-crime author swept up in a murder plot.

“EԳٱٲԾԲ…one gonzo plot twist follows the next…loads of fun.�(Publishers Weekly)

NYPD Detective Declan Shaw gets a call:How fast can you get to the Beresford building on Central Park West?
In the tower apartment, Shaw finds a woman waiting for him. She’s covered in blood. A body is lying dead on the floor of the luxurious living room.
Every book in the apartment’s floor-to-ceiling shelves is by the same author: bestselling true-crime writer Denise Morrow.
"This is you?" Shaw asks the woman. "You're a writer?"
Only one person knows the ending to this story. Is it the victim or the killer?

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400 James Patterson 0316570001 Victoria 4 4.25 2025 The Writer
author: James Patterson
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/13
date added: 2025/05/13
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Mystic River 21671
Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to hold his marriage together and keep his demons at bay -- demons that urge him to do terrible things. When Jimmy's daughter is found murdered, Sean is assigned to the case. His investigation brings him into conflict with Jimmy, who finds his old criminal impulses tempt him to solve the crime with brutal justice. And then there is Dave, who came home the night Jimmy's daughter died covered in someone else's blood.

A tense and unnerving psychological thriller, Mystic River is also an epic novel of love and loyalty, faith and family, in which people irrevocably marked by the past find themselves on a collision course with the darkest truths of their own hidden selves.]]>
416 Dennis Lehane 0060584750 Victoria 0 currently-reading 4.17 2001 Mystic River
author: Dennis Lehane
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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<![CDATA[The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)]]> 41212753
With no other options, Rin joins forces with the powerful Dragon Warlord, who has a plan to conquer Nikan, unseat the Empress, and create a new Republic. Rin throws herself into his war. After all, making war is all she knows how to do.

But the Empress is a more powerful foe than she appears, and the Dragon Warlord’s motivations are not as democratic as they seem. The more Rin learns, the more she fears her love for Nikan will drive her away from every ally and lead her to rely more and more on the Phoenix’s deadly power. Because there is nothing she won’t sacrifice for her country and her vengeance

The sequel to R.F. Kuang’s acclaimed debut THE POPPY WAR, THE DRAGON REPUBLIC combines the history of 20th-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating effect.]]>
654 R.F. Kuang 0062662635 Victoria 5 4.35 2019 The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/11
date added: 2025/05/11
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We Could Be Rats 214195234 A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.]]>
252 Emily R. Austin Victoria 3 4.05 2025 We Could Be Rats
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/11
date added: 2025/05/11
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Guess Again 220999770
For fans of Riley Sager, Anna Downes, Alex Finlay, Stacy Willingham, and Karin Slaughter.

Ten years ago, 17-year-old high school volleyball star Callie Jones vanished from her quiet Wisconsin lake community. A highly publicized search followed but her body was never found. The case went cold, but the echoes still linger.

Ethan Hall, a former renegade detective turned ER doctor, left law enforcement to escape the horrors of the kid crime division. But on the tenth anniversary of Callie’s disappearance, his former partner, Pete Kramer, makes a desperate request. Pete is the veteran detective who originally investigated the case. Now he’s dying, and to ease his conscience and get closure for the Jones family, he needs Ethan to return to the haunting work he left behind—and solve what happened to Callie, once and for all.

Word soon spreads and everyone in the small town of Cherryview feels a rush of hope that answers will finally be found. Amid a sweltering heatwave, Ethan’s investigation gains momentum, but reexamining old evidence won’t be enough. He needs a new way into the case, no matter how dangerous or unconventional. And it comes from the least likely of sources—an inmate in a maximum-security prison.

Soon Ethan’s methods draw him deeper into a twisted psychological game. Because there is much more to the nightmare of Callie’s disappearance than he imagined, including a connection with his own dark past . . . and secrets that are still worth killing for.]]>
352 Charlie Donlea 1496753968 Victoria 5 Best one yet! That ending 4.56 2025 Guess Again
author: Charlie Donlea
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/10
date added: 2025/05/10
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Best one yet! That ending
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The Unworthy: A Novel 214208266 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.]]>
188 Agustina Bazterrica Victoria 0 currently-reading 3.75 2023 The Unworthy: A Novel
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: currently-reading
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<![CDATA[We Are All the Same in the Dark]]> 49189494 The discovery of a girl abandoned by the side of the road threatens to unearth the long-buried secrets of a Texas town's legendary cold case in this superb, atmospheric novel from the internationally bestselling author of Black-Eyed Susans.

It's been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her pretty face still hangs like a watchful queen on the posters on the walls of the town's Baptist church, the police station, and in the high school. They all promise the same thing: We will find you. Meanwhile, her brother, Wyatt, lives as a pariah in the desolation of the old family house, cleared of wrongdoing by the police but tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and in a new documentary about the crime.

When Wyatt finds a lost girl dumped in a field of dandelions, making silent wishes, he believes she is a sign. The town's youngest cop, Odette Tucker, believes she is a catalyst that will ignite a seething town still waiting for its own missing girl to come home. But Odette can't look away. She shares a wound that won't close with the mute, one-eyed mystery girl. And she is haunted by her own history with the missing Tru.

Desperate to solve both cases, Odette fights to save the lost girl in the present and to dig up the shocking truth about a fateful night in the past--the night her friend disappeared, the night that inspired her to become a cop, the night that wrote them all a role in the town's dark, violent mythology.

In this twisty psychological thriller, Julia Heaberlin paints unforgettable portraits of a woman and a girl who redefine perceptions of physical beauty and strength.]]>
352 Julia Heaberlin 0525621679 Victoria 0 currently-reading 3.75 2020 We Are All the Same in the Dark
author: Julia Heaberlin
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: currently-reading
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Such Quiet Girls 222668031 Ten children, abducted in broad daylight—and buried alive.

Sage and her sister won’t make it home from school today. Neither will the other children on Bus 315. But that’s only the beginning of the nightmare.

New bus driver Jessa blames herself for what happened. She couldn’t protect the kids she was supposed to deliver to daycare, just like she couldn’t protect her own daughter three years ago. But this time, everything will be different. It has to be.

Trapped in a shipping container buried twenty feet underground, Jessa and the children do their best to stay calm. The kidnappers insist that if everyone behaves, they’ll be freed when the ransom is paid. But Sage isn’t sure they’ll last that long. Neither is Jessa. It’s dark and cramped, and with every passing minute it’s getting harder to breathe.

With time—and air—running thin, Jessa and the children must find a way to outsmart their captors, or face an unthinkable fate.

Such Quiet Girls was inspired by actual events.


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354 Noelle W. Ihli Victoria 5 4.16 2025 Such Quiet Girls
author: Noelle W. Ihli
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/07
date added: 2025/05/07
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<![CDATA[Strength beyond the Shadows: Overcoming a Childhood of Trauma, Neglect, and Sexual Abuse]]> 221989223 As seen on the Youtube channel Soft White Underbelly

Strength beyond the Shadows is a raw, hard-truth, light-shining-bright-into-some-dark-places story few have the courage to reveal and Seth is on an undeniable quest to change lives.� —NICK LAVERY, Green Beret, U.S. Army Special Forces, Founder / CEO, Precision Components LLC

Seth Gehle's story is a testament to the courage and strength within each of us to overcome adversity and our personal traumas. For nearly sixteen years, Seth suffered unspeakable crimes and endured tragedy that no human should have to face. Growing up in a broken home filled with abuse and neglect, a young Seth left and found himself further down the path to hell.

In this painfully honest account, Seth describes the horrific trauma and sexual abuse he withstood as a child. Seth’s story is all too common. What makes him an anomaly is his willingness to recount his experiences, bringing understanding of not only what he endured but the devastating aftermath suffered by millions who are victims of childhood trauma.

Through an unrelenting will to survive, Seth fought for his life and discovered the power of the human spirit. His ability to articulate the darkest moments of his life as well as his courage to live beyond such horrendous suffering are found within the pages of Strength beyond the Shadows.]]>
218 Seth Gehle Victoria 0 currently-reading 4.56 Strength beyond the Shadows: Overcoming a Childhood of Trauma, Neglect, and Sexual Abuse
author: Seth Gehle
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.56
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/04
shelves: currently-reading
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Notes on an Execution 57698794
Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. He hoped it wouldn’t end like this, not for him.

Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the homicide detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake.

Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.]]>
308 Danya Kukafka Victoria 4 4.12 2022 Notes on an Execution
author: Danya Kukafka
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/04
date added: 2025/05/04
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<![CDATA[Perfume: The Story of a Murderer]]> 343 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

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

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.]]>
263 Patrick Süskind Victoria 3 4.05 1985 Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
author: Patrick Süskind
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/03
date added: 2025/05/03
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Bluebeard 214153853 In 1919, Kathryn Wombacher finds a lonely-hearts ad placed by one Walter Andrew:

"Would be pleased to correspond with a refined young lady or widow. Object, matrimony."

Kathryn and Walter fall in love and marry within weeks.

What Kathryn doesn’t know� is that her new husband is really James "Bluebeard" Watson, a notorious West Coast serial killer who catfished and married 22 women, murdering 10..

Based on newly unearthed evidence, Bluebeard is the definitive story of a sociopath who wielded love as a deadly weapon.

And it’s the story of a woman who discovered the unthinkable about her husband�

And dared to fight back.]]>
4 Jim Clemente Victoria 4 3.74 Bluebeard
author: Jim Clemente
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.74
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
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<![CDATA[The Perfect Divorce (Perfect, #2)]]> 219234429 From the author of the multimillion-copy bestselling thriller The Perfect Marriage

Till death do us part. Yours. Not Mine.

It’s been eleven years since high-powered attorney Sarah Morgan defended her husband, Adam, against the charge of murdering his mistress. Sarah has long since moved on, starting a family with her new husband, Bob Miller, and changing careers. Her life is back to being exactly how she always wanted � or is it?

After discovering Bob engaged in a one-night stand, Sarah wastes no time filing for divorce. However, amid their ugly separation, new DNA evidence is uncovered in the case against Adam, forcing the police to reopen the investigation and putting Sarah right back in the spotlight. Everyone wants to know what really happened, most of all former deputy Marcus Hudson, who is hell-bent on finding the truth.

But when the woman Bob slept with is reported missing, he and Sarah start to fight dirty, and a high-stakes game of cat and mouse ensues. Filled with page-turning suspense and Jeneva Rose’s signature twists and turns, this book will have readers wondering: Can Bob and Sarah achieve the perfect divorce? Or will it be “’til death do us part�?]]>
304 Jeneva Rose Victoria 0 currently-reading 4.27 2025 The Perfect Divorce (Perfect, #2)
author: Jeneva Rose
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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The Tradwife’s Secret 220349809
She spends her days baking sourdough and picking vegetables from the garden while watching her children play in the fields surrounding her Montana homestead.

Dinner is always on the table for her husband and they end their days sitting on the porch, watching the sun go down.

It’s a life anyone would dream of.

And it’s all a lie.]]>
350 Liane Child 0008744092 Victoria 4 3.77 The Tradwife’s Secret
author: Liane Child
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.77
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
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Choice 61121529 Listening Length: 38 minutes

In this thought-provoking short, #1 New York Times best-selling and award-winning author Jodi Picoult explores a dystopian crisis through the pinhole lens of an ex-couple experiencing an unwanted pregnancy.

Margot and James are broken up—for good this time. James made sure of it when he dropped the bomb on Margot: that he doesn’t want kids, ever.

Then, on the biggest morning of his life, James—an ambitious lawyer at a high-powered firm—wakes up pregnant. He realizes with dread that he is part of a recent epidemic of men suddenly and inexplicably becoming pregnant. His condition obvious to the higher-ups, James is denied the promotion he was expecting, sending him reeling.

Meanwhile, Margot, a social worker, must handle the influx of desperate, pregnant teenage boys suddenly seeking her help. When she receives a call from James with the same problem, the challenge of navigating post-Roe America hits even closer to home.

Please note: This content is intended for adults only. It features themes of pregnancy loss that may be upsetting to some listeners. Discretion is advised.]]>
1 Jodi Picoult Victoria 4 4.11 2022 Choice
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
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<![CDATA[Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)]]> 56791389 Alternate cover edition of ASIN B08BKGYQXW


The apocalypse will be televised!

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.

In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.

The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.

Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.

You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.

You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.]]>
446 Matt Dinniman Victoria 3 4.49 2020 Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #1)
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
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Thirteen (Eddie Flynn #4) 59055851 The serial killer isn’t on trial. He’s on the jury.

It’s the murder trial of the century. And Joshua Kane has killed to get the best seat in the house � and to be sure the wrong man goes down for the crime. Because this time, the killer isn’t on trial. He’s on the jury.

But there’s someone on his tail. Former-conman-turned-criminal-defense-attorney Eddie Flynn doesn’t believe that his movie-star client killed two people. He suspects that the real killer is closer than they think � but who would guess just how close?]]>
323 Steve Cavanagh Victoria 4 4.27 2018 Thirteen (Eddie Flynn #4)
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
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Nightwatching 213995382 Sekunda za reakciju.
Trenutak od kojeg im zavisi ceo život.

„Jedan od najstrašnijih i najbriljantnijih trilera koji ćete pročitati.�
� Guardian

Napolju besni snežna mećava. Ona je kod kuće sama sa decom. Spremaju se za spavanje. Čuje nešto � škripa naizgled uobičajena za stare kuće, ili bar tako umiruje sebe. Međutim, zvuci deluju poznato i uznemirujuće dok odjekuju hodnikom. Koraci neobično teški i spori.

Obris muškarca pomalja se kroz hodnik. Preplašena budi decu i požuruje ih ka najstarijem delu kuće, majušnoj tajnoj sobi sakrivenoj iza zida. Do dece dopire njegov reski glas pun pretnji dok ih čeka da mu razotkriju skrovište.

U zaglušujućoj tami, bori se da ostane pribrana. Da li da potraži neko oružje ili da pokuša da pobegnu? Ugledala ga je opet. To lice. Taj glas. Istog trena njenim telom prostrujali su strah i nemoć. Ona tačno zna ko je on i šta želi. I ne zna da li će izbaviti sebe i decu iz ove opasnosti.

„Čitalac je gurnut u scenario nepatvorenog straha. Opisati ovaj roman kao noćnu moru u suprotnosti je sa živopisnošću te noći. Sama u noći je zastrašujući triler igre mačke i miša u kojem je škripa na stepenicama samo blaga uvertira u borbu za opstanak.�
� Washington Post

„Izvanredan. Šlag na torti je sjajan završetak, koji deluje i iznenađujuće i neizbežno.�
� Publishers Weekly

„Ovim romanom trijumfuje ekstremna napetost. Fantastično, ali rizično za one slabog srca.�
� Daily Mail

„Čitate Samu u noći na sopstveni rizik.�
� Kris Vitaker

„Zastrašujuće i neodoljivo.�
� Karin Sloter]]>
360 Tracy Sierra 0593654773 Victoria 0 currently-reading 3.96 2024 Nightwatching
author: Tracy Sierra
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: currently-reading
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The Best Lies 200555213 Bestselling and award-winning author David Ellis delivers a fast-paced, twisty thriller that will surprise readers at every turn.

Leo Balanoff is a diagnosed pathological liar with unthinkable skeletons in his family's closet. He's also a crusading attorney who seeks justice at all costs. When a ruthless drug dealer is found dead and Leo’s fingerprints show up on the murder weapon, no one believes a word he says. But he might be the FBI’s only shot at taking down the dealer’s brutal syndicate.

Risk his life going undercover for the feds or head straight to prison for murder? Leo accepts the FBI’s offer—but it comes with a price, including a collision course with his ex, Andi Piotrowski, a former cop and “the one who got away.� Forced to walk a tightrope between an ambitious FBI agent and a cruel, calculating crime boss, Leo’s trapped in a corner. But he has more secrets than anyone realizes, and a few more cards left to play …]]>
373 David Ellis 0399170936 Victoria 5 3.85 2024 The Best Lies
author: David Ellis
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
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A Calamity of Souls 198494052
Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.

Desiree DuBose is a Black lawyer from Chicago who has devoted her life to furthering the causes of justice and equality for everyone. She comes to Freeman County and enters a fractious and unwieldy partnership with Lee in a legal battle against the best prosecutor in the Commonwealth. Yet DuBose is also aware that powerful outside forces are at work to blunt the victories achieved by the Civil Rights era.

Lee and DuBose could not be more dissimilar. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution’s deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.

Over a decade in the writing, A Calamity of Souls breathes richly imagined and detailed life into a bygone era, taking the reader through a world that will seem both foreign and familiar.]]>
480 David Baldacci 1538765020 Victoria 5 4.38 2024 A Calamity of Souls
author: David Baldacci
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
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<![CDATA[The Hidden Man (Jason Kolarich, #1)]]> 6158114 Another exhilarating thriller from Edgar Award winner David Ellis, introducing the new series protagonist Jason Kolarich. Jason Kolarich is a midwestern Everyman with a lineman's build and an easy smart-ass remark. He's a young, intelligent maverick, but he's also struggling with an overwhelming emotional burden--one that threatens to unravel his own life, and possibly the lives of those around him.

Twenty-seven years ago, two-year-old Audrey Cutler disappeared from her home in the middle of the night. She was never found. All the detectives had to go on were vague eyewitness accounts of a man running down the Cutlers' street, apparently carrying someone. Without enough evidence to suggest otherwise, Griffin Perlini--a neighbor with prior offenses against minors--was arrested, but never convicted.

The case is long closed when Perlini is murdered nearly thirty years later. Now a man named Mr. Smith appears in Jason Kolarich's office, saying only that he represents a third party who wants the man charged with murder off the hook and that Kolarich is perfect for the job. The new client: Audrey Cutler's older brother, Sammy--Kolarich's estranged childhood best friend--a man he hasn't seen in nearly twenty years.

But when Kolarich starts receiving violent threats from Mr. Smith's enigmatic employer, he figures out that the secrecy behind this nameless third party--and the key to winning Sammy's case--is entangled with the mystery of Audrey's disappearance. With his own life and Sammy's in the balance, Kolarich has to put aside not only the mounting anxiety of the job but also a heart-wrenching personal tragedy in order to find out what really happened to Audrey all those years ago.

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325 David Ellis 0399155791 Victoria 0 currently-reading 3.73 2009 The Hidden Man (Jason Kolarich, #1)
author: David Ellis
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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Spontaneous Remission 216038050
Desperate to rid her husband of the burden of caring for her scleroderma and end-stage kidney failure, Betsy Daniels seeks out help to end her life. But her friend, a cancer survivor, convinces Betsy instead to pray like she’s never prayed before. Several weeks later, the gambit seems to have paid off. Her kidney failure has resolved and even her family doctor, Regina Thomas, can’t find a reason why. Her body is miraculously healing, the scleroderma vanishing as if it never existed. Betsy is convinced she’s been blessed with a miracle and wants the world to know the word of God.

But Regina isn’t convinced they’re witnessing God’s work. She’s a woman of science, and she fears Betsy’s spontaneous remission may have other consequences. Betsy is changing, both outwardly and inwardly. And Regina is suffering from her own medical problems, and if she can find out why Betsy is healing, perhaps she can help herself as well.

What Betsy and Regina don’t know is that a hired killer is also seeking that answer. He’s already murdered a biotech researcher who claimed to have developed a panacea for all disease, but the prototype itself is missing and all the supporting research destroyed. Having tortured and eliminated the researcher’s friends and coworkers, the killer has tracked the prototype to Clearwater, Florida, where Betsy and Regina live. And he will stop at nothing to get it.

He’s not the only one. Before his murder, the researcher reached out to his friend, Swiss Professor Friedrich Gersch, a genius who has tackled some of the biggest biotechnological threats to society, and gave him clues to finding the prototype. Gersch has also traced those clues to Clearwater, and is determined to find the prototype before it falls into the hands of his greatest enemies.

Whoever finds Betsy first will hold the key to the greatest medical discovery in human history—or its greatest threat.]]>
432 Joel Shulkin Victoria 4 4.56 Spontaneous Remission
author: Joel Shulkin
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.56
book published:
rating: 4
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The Woman in the Cabin 137992406
Deep in the woods, you can hide more than secrets...

Every day, in a remote cabin hidden deep in the woods in the Scottish Highlands, Mary wakes up before dawn to make breakfast from scratch. She tends the garden and feeds the animals. Every night, Mary makes sure she has dinner on the table for when her husband Cal gets home from work.

She puts on his favorite lipstick and greets him with a smile. 'I've missed you.' It's not true and he knows it. But he likes to hear it all the same.

Mary is the perfect wife and like any good wife she knows her job is to keep her husband happy.

But lately as she notices her first wrinkles appear, she can sense Cal change. A scowl at dinner not being ready on time, a too tight grip as he leads her to the bedroom tells her he's noticed too. And old memories are coming back too, of her life before the cabin...

Then she finds a stack of letters hidden under the floorboards detailing a life eerily similar to her own. They're addressed to her: 'To the next woman.'

If she's not the first to play the role of Cal's perfect wife, what happened to the woman in the cabin before her? And how long does she have until she is next?]]>
Becca Day 1471413837 Victoria 0 currently-reading 4.04 2024 The Woman in the Cabin
author: Becca Day
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: currently-reading
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The Favorites 211399784 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER � An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating, starring a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice

“P Wuthering Heights and part Daisy Jones & The Six, this novel is as brilliantly choreographed as a gold medal performance and will keep you guessing until its last page.”—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name

She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating—and each other—to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and roller-coaster relationship.

Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real story� through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary, but she can’t stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy. So, after a decade of silence, she’s telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.]]>
448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 Victoria 4 4.16 2025 The Favorites
author: Layne Fargo
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 4
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Worst Case Scenario 210331622 Following her explosive debut thriller Falling and its harrowing follow-up Drowning, #1 internationally bestselling author T.J. Newman is back with Worst Case Scenario.

When a pilot suffers a heart attack at 35,000 feet, a commercial airliner filled with passengers crashes into a nuclear power plant in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, which becomes ground zero for a catastrophic national crisis with global implications.

The International Nuclear Event Scale tracks nuclear disasters. It has seven levels. Level 7 is a Major Accident, with only two on record: Fukushima and Chernobyl. There has never been a Level 8. Until now.

In this heart-stopping thriller, ordinary people—power plant employees, firefighters, teachers, families, neighbors, and friends� are thrust into an extraordinary situation as they face the ultimate test of their lives. It will take the combined courage, ingenuity, and determination of a brave few to save not only their community and loved ones, but the fate of humanity at large.]]>
336 T.J. Newman 0316576794 Victoria 4 4.05 2024 Worst Case Scenario
author: T.J. Newman
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
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Convenience Store Woman 51031906
Sayaka Murata brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the familiar convenience store that is so much part of life in Japan. With some laugh-out-loud moments prompted by the disconnect between Keiko’s thoughts and those of the people around her, she provides a sharp look at Japanese society and the pressure to conform, as well as penetrating insights into the female mind. Convenience Store Woman is a fresh, charming portrait of an unforgettable heroine that recalls Banana Yoshimoto, Han Kang, and é.]]>
176 Sayaka Murata Victoria 3 3.74 2016 Convenience Store Woman
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/16
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A Very Bad Thing 202991908 From New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison comes a taut thriller about one author at the pinnacle of her career, whose past threatens to destroy everything she has—and everyone she knows.

A great writer knows when to deliver a juicy plot twist. But for one author, the biggest twist of all is her own murder.

With a number of hit titles and a highly anticipated movie tie-in, celebrated novelist Columbia Jones is at the top of her game. Fans around the world adore her. But on the final night of her latest book tour, one face in the crowd makes the author collapse. And by the next morning, she’s lying dead in a pool of blood.

Columbia’s death shocks the world and leaves Darian, her daughter and publicist, reeling. The police have nothing to go on—at first. But then details emerge, pointing to the author’s illicit past. Turns out many people had motive to kill Columbia. And with a hungry reporter and frustrated cop on the trail, her secrets won’t stay buried long. But how many lives will they shatter as the truth comes out?]]>
446 J.T. Ellison 1662520328 Victoria 4 4.16 2024 A Very Bad Thing
author: J.T. Ellison
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
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<![CDATA[Rebel Witch (The Crimson Moth, #2)]]> 60217777 The stakes are even higher in this epic, romantic conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Crimson Moth duology.

A WITCH...
Rune Winters is on the run. Ever since the boy she loved, Gideon Sharpe, revealed who she was and delivered her into enemy hands, everyone wants her dead. If Rune hopes to survive, she must ally herself with the cruel and dangerous Cressida Roseblood, who’s planning to take back the Republic and reinstate a Reign of Witches—something Cressida needs Rune to accomplish.

A WITCH HUNTER...
Apparently it wasn’t enough for Rune to deceive Gideon; she’s now betrayed him by allying herself with the witch who made his life a living hell. Gideon won’t allow the Republic to fall to the witches and be plunged back into the nightmares of the past. In order to protect this new world he fought for, every last witch must die—especially Rune Winters.

AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE...
When Rune makes Gideon an offer he can’t refuse, the two must pair up to accomplish dangerous goals. The more they’re forced into each other’s company, the more Gideon realizes the feelings he had for Rune aren’t as dead and buried as he thought. Now he’s faced with a terrible choice: sacrifice the girl he loves to stop a monster taking back power, or let Rune live and watch the world he fought so hard for burn.

In Kristen Ciccarelli's Rebel Witch, the exciting conclusion to The Crimson Moth duology, love has never been so deadly.]]>
464 Kristen Ciccarelli Victoria 4 4.22 2025 Rebel Witch (The Crimson Moth, #2)
author: Kristen Ciccarelli
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/08
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FantasticLand 30832565 Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where “Fun is Guaranteed!� But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares. How could a group of survivors, mostly teenagers, commit such terrible acts?

Presented as a fact-finding investigation and a series of first-person interviews, FantasticLand pieces together the grisly series of events. Park policy was that the mostly college-aged employees surrender their electronic devices to preserve the authenticity of the FantasticLand experience. Cut off from the world and left on their own, the teenagers soon form rival tribes who viciously compete for food, medicine, social dominance, and even human flesh. This new social network divides the ravaged dreamland into territories ruled by the Pirates, the ShopGirls, the Freaks, and the Mole People. If meticulously curated online personas can replace private identities, what takes over when those constructs are lost?
FantasticLand is a modern take on Lord of the Flies meets Battle Royale that probes the consequences of a social civilization built online.
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274 Mike Bockoven Victoria 4 3.94 2016 FantasticLand
author: Mike Bockoven
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
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Count My Lies 214151565 A read-in-one-night suspense thriller narrated by a compulsive liar whose little white lies allow her to enter into the life and comfort of a wealthy married couple who are harboring much darker secrets themselves. For the millions of us still chasing those gone girls, this is perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Lucy Foley, and Laura Dave.

Sloane Caraway is a liar.

Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.

So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can't help herself—she tells the girl's (very attractive) dad she's a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl's foot.

With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy, and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island.

But maybe Sloane isn't the only one lying, and all that's picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth. To say anything more is to spoil the most exciting, twisty, and bitingly smart suspense novel to come out in years.

The thing about lies is that they add up, form their own truth and a twisted prison of a world. And in Count My Lies, Sophie Stava spins a breakneck, unputdownable thriller about the secrets we keep, and the terrifying dangers that lurk just under the images we spend so much time trying to maintain.

Careful what you lie for.]]>
336 Sophie Stava 1668079348 Victoria 4 3.72 2025 Count My Lies
author: Sophie Stava
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
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She's Not Sorry 140111148
Meghan Michaels is trying to find balance between being a single mom to a teenage daughter and working as a full time nurse. While on duty at the hospital one day, a patient named Caitlin arrives in a coma with a traumatic brain injury, having jumped from a bridge and plunging over twenty feet to the train tracks below.

But when a witness comes forward with shocking details about the fall, it calls everything they know into question. Was Caitlin pushed and if so, by whom and why?

Meghan has always tried to stay emotionally detached from her patients, but this time, she mistakenly lets herself get too close until she’s deeply entangled in Caitlin’s and her family’s lives. Only when it’s too late, does she realize that she and her daughter could be the next victims.]]>
330 Mary Kubica 0778308065 Victoria 4 3.77 2024 She's Not Sorry
author: Mary Kubica
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/02
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The Green Mile 11566
There are more wonders in heaven and hell than anyone at Cold Mountain can imagine and one of those wonders might just have stepped in amongst them.]]>
592 Stephen King 0451933028 Victoria 5 4.48 1996 The Green Mile
author: Stephen King
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.48
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/02
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The Quiet Tenant 74824568
When Aidan’s wife dies, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter Cecilia are forced to move. Aidan has no choice but to bring Rachel along, introducing her to Cecilia as a “family friend� who needs a place to stay. Aidan is betting on Rachel, after five years of captivity, being too brainwashed and fearful to attempt to escape. But Rachel is a fighter and survivor, and recognizes Cecilia might just be the lifeline she has waited for all these years. As Rachel tests the boundaries of her new living situation, she begins to form a tenuous connection with Cecilia. And when Emily, a local restaurant owner, develops a crush on the handsome widower, she finds herself drawn into Rachel and Cecilia’s orbit, coming dangerously close to discovering Aidan’s secret.

Told through the perspectives of Rachel, Cecilia, and Emily, The Quiet Tenant explores the psychological impact of Aidan’s crimes on the women in his life—and the bonds between those women that give them the strength to fight back. Both a searing thriller and an astute study of trauma, survival, and the dynamics of power, The Quiet Tenant is an electrifying debut thriller by a major talent.]]>
320 Clémence Michallon 0593534654 Victoria 4 3.98 2023 The Quiet Tenant
author: Clémence Michallon
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
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Witness 8 (Eddie Flynn, #8) 214152415 This riveting psychological thriller from master of twists Steve Cavanagh, author of the �unguessable and unputdownable� (Alex Michaelides, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Kill For Me, Kill for You, What if the witness was more twisted than the killer?

Something is wrong with Ruby Johnson.

A former resident of the ultra-elite Manhattan upper class, Ruby now works as a maid in the type of houses she used to live in. Unassuming, she sees everyone’s dirty secrets from the inside of their beautiful, renovated brownstones. But when Ruby witnesses a murder, she has wicked plans in mind that don’t involve telling the authorities the truth.

Eddie Flynn, streetwise ex con-artist-turned-defense attorney, is the only lawyer in New York City willing to take on hopeless cases. And none is more hopeless than John Jackson’s—the gun that killed his neighbor found, with Jackson’s DNA, in his own home. Flynn and his unconventional team will need to use every trick they know to keep an innocent man from being locked up. But to save his client’s life, Eddie must first protect his own, as the scariest organized criminals in the city are out for his head.

Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell and Megan Miranda, Witness 8 is a fresh knockout page-turner from an author who is “the real deal� (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author).]]>
406 Steve Cavanagh 1668049376 Victoria 5 4.10 2024 Witness 8 (Eddie Flynn, #8)
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/28
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<![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]>
387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Victoria 5 I love Haymitch. The end. 4.59 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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I love Haymitch. The end.
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<![CDATA[The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)]]> 55225045
When Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to find the most talented youth to learn at the Academies—it was a shock to everyone: to the test officials, who couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; to Rin’s guardians, who believed they’d finally be able to marry her off and further their criminal enterprise; and to Rin herself, who realized she was finally free of the servitude and despair that had made up her daily existence. That she got into Sinegard—the most elite military school in Nikan—was even more surprising.

But surprises aren’t always good.

Because being a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south is not an easy thing at Sinegard. Targeted from the outset by rival classmates for her color, poverty, and gender, Rin discovers she possesses a lethal, unearthly power—an aptitude for the nearly-mythical art of shamanism. Exploring the depths of her gift with the help of a seemingly insane teacher and psychoactive substances, Rin learns that gods long thought dead are very much alive—and that mastering control over those powers could mean more than just surviving school.

For while the Nikara Empire is at peace, the Federation of Mugen still lurks across a narrow sea. The militarily advanced Federation occupied Nikan for decades after the First Poppy War, and only barely lost the continent in the Second. And while most of the people are complacent to go about their lives, a few are aware that a Third Poppy War is just a spark away . . .

Rin’s shamanic powers may be the only way to save her people. But as she finds out more about the god that has chosen her, the vengeful Phoenix, she fears that winning the war may cost her humanity . . . and that it may already be too late.]]>
545 R.F. Kuang Victoria 5 4.15 2018 The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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Missing in Flight 212032163 From USA Today bestselling author Audrey J. Cole comes a harrowing thriller about a woman faced with the unthinkable, when her infant goes missing aboard a plane to New York.

Rushing back to her seat, Makayla Rossi is relieved that all’s still quiet. But when she checks on her sleeping baby, relief morphs into fear. The bassinet is empty.

Liam is gone.

It was a long flight from Anchorage to New York, and with every flight attendant busy, Makayla reluctantly ran to the restroom, asking a seat neighbor to watch her son. She stepped away for just a few minutes. Yet at thirty thousand feet, he still vanished.

Passengers and crew scour the plane to no avail, and since no one recalls seeing her with a baby, suspicions begin to mount about Makayla’s mental state. She’s certain this is nothing like her mother’s on-air memory meltdown. If only Jack, her husband, were there. He would believe her. A high-profile banker featured in Forbes, maybe he could even help.

But Makayla is squarely on her own. And she’ll have to think fast in order to find her son—before it’s too late.]]>
284 Audrey J. Cole 1662520719 Victoria 4 3.94 2025 Missing in Flight
author: Audrey J. Cole
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/22
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<![CDATA[Gone to See the River Man (Gone to See the River Man Series Book 1)]]> 212010278
These people will give anything for the idols they worship, be they rock stars, actor, or authors. Or even serial killers.

Lori’s obsession is with Edmund Cox, who was convicted of butchering more than twenty women. She will do anything to get close to him, so when he gives her a task, she accepts.

She has no idea of the horror that awaits her.

Edmund says she must go to his cabin in the woods and retrieve a key to deliver to a mysterious figure known only as The River Man.

She brings along her sister, and the trip becomes a surreal nightmare, one that digs up Lori’s personal demons, the ones she feels bonds her to Edmund. Soon she will learn The River Man is not quite fact or folklore, and definitely not human . . . at least not anymore.]]>
179 Kristopher Triana Victoria 3 3.76 2020 Gone to See the River Man (Gone to See the River Man Series Book 1)
author: Kristopher Triana
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
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Swan Song (Nantucket, #4) 200484931 In the grand finale of "queen of the beach read" Elin Hilderbrand's beloved Nantucket novels, there's a new couple in town... and they instantly shake things up. Amid the extravagant parties on land and sea, there's trouble on the island, forcing Chief of Police Ed Kapanesh to postpone his retirement and changing the fabric of life on the picturesque island forever...

After thirty-five years serving as the Chief of Police on the island of Nantucket, Ed Kapenash's heart can no longer take the stress. But his plans to retire are thwarted when, with only three days left to serve, he receives a phone call. A 22-million-dollar summer home, recently purchased by the flashy new couple in town, the Richardsons, has burned to the ground. The Richardsons are far from hurt—in fact, they're out on the water, throwing a lavish party on their yacht—but when news of the fire reaches them, they discover that their personal assistant has vanished. The Chief is well-acquainted with the Richardsons, and his daughter is best friends with the now-missing girl, leaving him no choice but to postpone his retirement and take on the double case.

On a small island like Nantucket, the Richardsons shook things up from the second they stepped on to the scene, throwing luxurious parties and doing whatever they could to gain admittance to the coveted lunches at the Field & Oar Club (with increasing desperation). They instantly captured the attention of local real estate agent Fast Eddie, and the town gossip Blond Sharon, both dealing with their own personal dramas. Blond Sharon is going through a divorce, and in order to avoid becoming a cliché, she's enrolled in a creative writing class, putting her natural affinity for scandal towards a more noble purpose. To solve the case of the fire and track down his daughter's best friend, the Chief will have to string together the pieces of the lives of all of these characters and more, rallying his strength for his final act of service to the tight-knit community he knows and loves.

The last of Elin Hilderbrand's bestselling Nantucket novels, Swan Song is a propulsive medley of glittering gatherings, sun-soaked drama, wisdom and heart, featuring the return of some of her most beloved characters, including, most importantly, the beautiful and timeless island of Nantucket itself.]]>
384 Elin Hilderbrand 0316258873 Victoria 4 3.98 2024 Swan Song (Nantucket, #4)
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
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Someone Knows 220161384 An English professor’s deadly past comes back to haunt her in this chilling and sexy thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Vi Keeland.

As a college English professor, Elizabeth looks forward to the start of each new semester teaching her creative writing seminar. At least until she reads chapter one of The Reckoning, a tale about a high school senior who has an affair with her teacher. To anyone else it would be the beginning of a great page-turner, but to Elizabeth it is the beginning of the end.

She knows this story. It’s all familiar because she lived it. The girl in the story was her best friend Jocelyn, and Elizabeth knows exactly how the story will end—with the professor dead. Because she was the one who killed him.

Someone knows what Elizabeth did twenty years ago and her secret is about to be exposed, but who is the mystery student submitting the chapters? In an effort to find out, Elizabeth returns to her Louisiana hometown where it soon becomes clear that no matter how many years have gone by, she can’t escape her past.]]>
288 Vi Keeland 1668047497 Victoria 5 4.22 2025 Someone Knows
author: Vi Keeland
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
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4.5 ⭐️ WOW. Please give us more thrillers IMMEDIATELY. I could not put this book down for the life of me. And that ending! You are 2 for 2 Miss Keeland!
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You Killed Me First 212375021 Three women. Three smouldering secrets. Who will make it out alive?

It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in � she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this?

Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret � and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.

As cracks widen in the veneer of perfection and lies escalate out of control, tension ignites. Bonfire Night is approaching and someone is set to burn…But who will it be?]]>
385 John Marrs 166250649X Victoria 4 3.94 2025 You Killed Me First
author: John Marrs
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
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Tell Me What You Did 210606225 She gets people to confess their crimes for a living. He knows she's hiding a terrible secret. It's time for the truth to come out�

Poe Webb, host of a popular true crime podcast, invites people to anonymously confess crimes they've committed to her audience. She can't guarantee the police won't come after her "guests," but her show grants simultaneous anonymity and instant fame—a potent combination that's proven difficult to resist. After an episode recording, Poe usually erases both criminal and crime from her mind.

But when a strange and oddly familiar man appears on her show, Poe is forced to take a second look. Not only because he claims to be her mother's murderer from years ago, but because Poe knows something no one else does. Her mother's murderer is dead.

Poe killed him.

From the USA Today bestselling author of The Dead Girl in 2A and The New Neighbor comes a chilling new thriller that forces the are murderers always the bad guys?]]>
435 Carter Wilson 1464226237 Victoria 5 3.88 2025 Tell Me What You Did
author: Carter Wilson
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/13
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Sometimes I Lie 32326398 1. I’m in a coma.
2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore.
3. Sometimes I lie

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?]]>
387 Alice Feeney 0008225354 Victoria 3 3.73 2017 Sometimes I Lie
author: Alice Feeney
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
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Fifty-Fifty (Eddie Flynn, #5) 50805422 Alexandra Avellino has just found her father's mutilated body, and needs the police right away. She believes her sister killed him, and that she is still in the house with a knife.

Sofia Avellino has just found her father's mutilated body and needs the police right away. She believes her sister, Alexandra did it, and that she is still in the house, locked in the bathroom.

Both women are to go on trial at the same time. A joint trial in front of one jury.

But one of these women is lying. One of them is a murderer. Sitting in a jail cell, about to go on trial with her sister for murder, you might think that this is the last place she expected to be.

You'd be wrong.

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349 Steve Cavanagh Victoria 4 4.31 2020 Fifty-Fifty (Eddie Flynn, #5)
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
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<![CDATA[Don’t Tell Me How to Die: A Novel]]> 215541906 I have one thing to do before I die.
And time is running out.

I had it all: a fantastic husband, two great kids, an exciting career. And then, at the age of forty-three, I found out I would be dead before my next birthday.

My mother also died at forty-three. I was seventeen, and she warned me that women would flock to my suddenly single father like stray cats to an overturned milk truck. They did. And one absolutely evil woman practically destroyed his life, mine, and my sister’s.

I am not letting that happen to my family.

I have three months, and I plan to spend every waking minute searching for the perfect woman to take my place as Alex’s wife, and mother to Kevin and Katie.

You’re probably thinking, she’ll never do it. Did I mention that in high school I was voted “Most Likely to Kill Someone to Get What She Wants�?

From thriller writer Marshall Karp (cocreator with James Patterson of the #1 New York Times bestselling NYPD Red series), and rich with Karp’s deft array of three-dimensional characters and his signature biting humor, Don’t Tell Me How to Die has so many twists and turns, you’d swear he wrote it with a corkscrew.]]>
Marshall Karp Victoria 4 4.48 2025 Don’t Tell Me How to Die: A Novel
author: Marshall Karp
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
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Beautiful Ugly 211004123 The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible � a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.
]]>
306 Alice Feeney 125033778X Victoria 4 3.63 2025 Beautiful Ugly
author: Alice Feeney
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
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Bad Mother 61033683
When Sienna Walker is nearly fired from the NYPD, the last thing she expects is a second chance in the one place she vowed never to return to. But she can’t afford to turn down the job offer, even if a painful familial past and a broken engagement hardly make Reno, Nevada, home sweet home.

It’s made even less sweet by Sienna’s first case―a serial killer with a curious fixation on her. Along with his victims, the killer leaves perplexing clues and chilling journal entries addressed to Sienna detailing the murders he claims his mother committed. The case continues to get personal when her ex-fiancé is called out by the killer as well. Whoever’s behind the diabolical murders, Sienna can only be sure of one thing…it’s someone close to home.

As the twisted truth forces Sienna to face her complicated feelings, she learns that no matter how far you run from your past, it always catches up to you in the end.]]>
344 Mia Sheridan 1662508220 Victoria 4 4.03 2023 Bad Mother
author: Mia Sheridan
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
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Tell Me You Trust Me 213725553 In a twisty and provocative thriller debut, Elle Owens tells the story of a young mother whose husband vanishes without a trace, and their shared playlist holds the only key to bringing him back.

When her husband goes missing, Marissa Creighton fears the worst. Tell me you trust me was the last thing Ethan said to her, and she’d shrugged it off. Now she can’t get those words out of her head.

Marissa’s family has always been her rock. But when they come to help her with two-year-old Logan, their overprotectiveness borders on oppression—occupational hazard of the family’s surveillance business, or is it? Seeking comfort in the playlist she and Ethan share, Marissa is shocked to find a new song “Trust Me.� She’s certain it’s a message.

Using song titles as code, she and Ethan start communicating back and forth. But she still doesn’t understand why he left. While his messages point to incriminating documents, her family uncovers evidence of an affair. But their discoveries come with their own baggage, including personal threats, secret bank accounts, and dusty surveillance devices. All the while Marissa wonders whether she’ll ever learn the truth—or see her husband again.]]>
297 Elle Owens 1662525583 Victoria 3 3.98 Tell Me You Trust Me
author: Elle Owens
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.98
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
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Love, Mom 220838350 A best-selling author. A mother. A murderer�

Mackenzie Casper is a brilliant student. But she is best known for her mother, a best-selling author whose dark, twisted thrillers have a dedicated worldwide fanbase.

When her mother dies in an accident, fans across the world are left grieving, and the investigators are asking: Was that really an accident?

The day of the memorial service, Mackenzie gets the first mysterious envelope, signed,
From #1 fan. XOXO

Inside are the pages of her mother’s diary that start with the lines:
Want to know a secret?
Love, Mom.


What Mackenzie reads leaves her in shock.
But then comes the second letter.
And the third...

Mackenzie starts her own investigation and stumbles upon secrets that her family has lived with for years.
Quickly, she realizes that her mother's path to stardom was etched with sinister lies that might have caught up with her.

Sometimes fame is worth a murder. Or worse.
Soon, Mackenzie will come to find out that there are worse things than murder�]]>
348 Iliana Xander Victoria 4 4.27 2024 Love, Mom
author: Iliana Xander
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
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An Echo in Time 201793870 A woman delves into a centuries-old murder to find the truth behind her self-destructive behavior in a powerful novel about love, loss, and healing by the bestselling author of An Unfinished Story and The Stars Don’t Lie.

Unable to catch a break in life or love as she approaches thirty, Charli Thurman sees red lights at every crossroads. And given the Thurman family’s tumultuous history, she knows things will only get worse, unless she can break the cycle and figure out where—and when—it all went wrong.

Charli is skeptical when her best friend introduces her to a “soul reader� who specializes in generational trauma. But during family constellation therapy with the guru, Charli experiences an inexplicable memory of terrible violence. Whatever happened in the past, it created an imbalance that’s still in the Thurman blood.

When Charli’s research leads her to Winchester, England, she meets a charming pub owner named Noah, whose own family history is similarly twisted. As the mystery deepens around a damaged inheritance and a tragic death, Charli is resolved to find the truth—and create the fresh start she has been hoping for her whole life.]]>
387 Boo Walker 1662508808 Victoria 4 4.19 2024 An Echo in Time
author: Boo Walker
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
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Not Our Daughter 211180780 Propelled on a cross-country chase, devoted parents become desperate fugitives in a heart-racing novel of suspense by the author of Family Money and All He Has Left.

Thirteen years ago, Cole and Lisa Shipley were fostering an infant with hopes of adopting her. Overnight everything was turned upside down, when the child’s mother bled to death on their front doorstep. Her last He’s coming here…for her! Save her. Afraid, bewildered, and with a baby in their arms, they fled. The longer they hid, the guiltier they looked.

Now in a small Colorado town under assumed identities, they’ve been seemingly safe. But when a tip exposes them and Cole is framed for another murder, they take it on the run again, barreling across the western US—this time with a confused and resistant teenage girl awakening to a terrifying new reality. In the rearview is the relentless FBI agent who has never given up the hunt. And he’s not the only one.

Every frightening mile brings a family closer to the truth about that fateful night thirteen years ago. And to a killer who’s determined to finish what he started.]]>
236 Chad Zunker 1662516096 Victoria 4 4.13 2025 Not Our Daughter
author: Chad Zunker
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
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The Psychopath Next Door 213725649
Ethan Dove’s family has moved to a new home in a safe community, and it’s exactly the fresh start they need. Not only is his marriage to Emma hanging by a thread, but his son, Dylan, and twelve-year-old daughter, Rose, deserve to have a happy childhood.

After Rose is bullied by the boys across the road, Ethan is relieved when the woman who lives next door steps in. Fiona Smith has come into their lives at just the right moment, and when she offers to look after Rose during the school holidays, Ethan and Emma can’t believe their luck.

Which is exactly what Fiona wants. Because, far from being the perfect neighbour, Fiona is the last person you should trust with your child. With a vicious plot for revenge, Fiona is happy to train Rose to be her accomplice, especially when she begins to suspect that Rose might not be as innocent as she appears�

The Psychopath Next Door is a gripping and twisted psychological suspense thriller set in the terrifying world of Mark Edwards’s bestselling The Magpies universe.]]>
340 Mark Edwards 1662508964 Victoria 4 3.99 2025 The Psychopath Next Door
author: Mark Edwards
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
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<![CDATA[This Is Why We Lied (Will Trent, #12)]]> 199793571 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 0063336723 Victoria 4 4.18 2024 This Is Why We Lied (Will Trent, #12)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
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None Left to Tell 217074544 Three women, connected by one of the most brutal mass slayings in US history.

Lucy is sick of turning the other cheek. Ten years ago, an anti-Mormon mob drove her family and friends from their homes in Illinois. But now, the tables have turned. Rumor has it, some of those same men are traveling through Utah on their way to California. And this time, Lucy won’t run.

Katrina knew the trek west would be difficult. But she had no idea she’d be walking straight into hell. The young mother of four is prepared to do whatever it takes to protect her family from the violence closing in, but the battle to survive will be more harrowing than anything she can imagine.

Sally has just been “gifted� to a man she barely knows—as his fourth wife. Trapped and lonely, she tries to make the best of her new life. But when her husband insists on joining a group of religious zealots� plans for revenge, she’s forced to reconsider her loyalties. Even if it means putting her own life on the line.

Based on true events, None Left to Tell is the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre.]]>
383 Noelle W. Ihli Victoria 4 4.20 2024 None Left to Tell
author: Noelle W. Ihli
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/20
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<![CDATA[The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino, #1)]]> 31682141 He surfaced two years ago. Then he disappeared ...

But Detective Angie Pallorino never forgot the violent rapist who left a distinctive calling card—crosses etched into the flesh of his victim’s foreheads.

When a comatose Jane Doe is found in a local cemetery, sexually assaulted, mutilated, and nearly drowned, Angie is struck by the eerie similarities to her earlier unsolved rapes. Could he be back?

Then the body of a drowned young woman floats up in the Gorge, also bearing the marks of the serial rapist, and the hunt for a predator becomes a hunt for a killer. Assigned to the joint investigative task force, Angie is more than ready to prove that she has what it takes to break into the all-male homicide division. But her private life collides with her professional ambitions when she’s introduced to her temporary partner, James Maddocks—a man she’d met the night before in an intense, anonymous encounter.

Together, Angie and Maddocks agree to put that night behind them. But as their search for the killer intensifies so does their mutual desire. And Angie’s forays into the mind of a monster shake lose some unsettling secrets about her own past . . .

How can she fight for the truth when it turns out her whole life is a lie? ]]>
526 Loreth Anne White 1503996220 Victoria 4 4.25 2017 The Drowned Girls (Angie Pallorino, #1)
author: Loreth Anne White
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
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100% Match 75453617 96 Patrick C. Harrison III Victoria 4 3.04 2022 100% Match
author: Patrick C. Harrison III
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves:
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This man may be the most disgusting human ever. What in the world. He got what he deserved. I will be washing my eyes out with soap.
]]>
<![CDATA[The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
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318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X Victoria 3 4.04 2022 The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/07
date added: 2025/02/13
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<![CDATA[How Does It Feel? (Infatuated Fae, #1)]]> 122789832 Unyielding family allegiance
Three deadly challenges THE HUMAN.
When a trip into the forest to collect a rare mushroom goes horribly wrong, I find myself falling through a fairy portal and straight into the arms of the Unseelie Fae prince. The dangerously unhinged and handsome Unseelie Fae prince.
What could be more horrible than that? He thinks I'm an assassin sent by the humans to kill him, not a biologist.
Determined to kill me first, and rid himself of the human he has unwillingly grown obsessed with, yet also needing to entertain his people, the villain challenges me to three deadly trials.
If I survive, I gain my freedom. But if not...
The Fae.
I've never felt anything but hate and loathing until my eyes found hers--the vile human assassin's. She is a parasite that has mercilessly latched onto my mind and won't let me free.
My hand itches to be ungloved and feel her smooth skin, even though I would never. The Unseelie Fae royals would rather burn than touch a repulsive human.
I fear that if I do not destroy the girl soon, she may be the only thing that's capable of truly destroying me.]]>
355 Jeneane O'Riley Victoria 2 4.02 2023 How Does It Feel? (Infatuated Fae, #1)
author: Jeneane O'Riley
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/09/30
date added: 2025/02/13
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Malice 39898505 The perfect life becomes the perfect nightmare in a twisting novel of psychological suspense from #1 USA Today bestselling author Jennifer Jaynes�

Dr. Daniel Winters is living a fairy-tale life. He has a beachfront home in Malibu, a career as a respected pediatrician at a thriving Los Angeles practice, and a gorgeous new wife, Mia. For a man whose past was rife with mental illness, addiction, and thoughts of suicide, it seems too good to be true.

Then Daniel learns that a fellow pediatrician and his family were found slaughtered in their home. It’s just the first chip in the facade of Daniel’s perfect life. Little by little, everything starts to fall away. At work, his career becomes at risk when he’s asked to remain silent about a dangerous new drug. At home, Mia has gone from an affectionate newlywed to a mysterious woman carefully hiding secrets—and possibly a lover.

Then, another doctor is found dead, and as Mia’s behavior becomes increasingly suspicious, Daniel begins to Is paranoia getting the best of him…or has his fairy-tale life become a nightmare worse than he could have ever imagined?]]>
288 Jennifer Jaynes 1503958914 Victoria 4 4.02 2018 Malice
author: Jennifer Jaynes
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
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Spilled Milk 18858489
When social services jeopardize her safety condemning her to keep her father’s secret, it’s a glass of spilled milk at the dinner table that forces her to speak about the cruelty she’s been hiding. In her pursuit for safety and justice Brooke battles a broken system that pushes to keep her father in the home.

When jury members and a love interest congregate to inspire her to fight, she risks losing the support of family and comes to the realization that some people simply do not want to be saved.

Spilled Milk is a novel of shocking narrative, triumph and resiliency.]]>
388 K.L. Randis Victoria 5 4.42 2013 Spilled Milk
author: K.L. Randis
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
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<![CDATA[Flat-Out Matt (Flat-Out Love, #1.5)]]> 17611379
You saw geeky, damaged, loveable Matt Watkins through Julie's eyes in FLAT-OUT LOVE. Now go deeper into Matt's world in this FLAT-OUT MATT novella. Live his side of the story, break when his heart breaks, and fall for the unlikely hero all over again.

Take an emotional skydive for two prequel chapters and seven FLAT-OUT LOVE chapters retold from his perspective, and then land with a brand-new steamy finale chapter from Julie.


Author's Note: Two chapters, The Sleepover and Keep Going, contain more mature content than Flat-Out Love (Keep Going, in particular), and were written based on reader demand. They wouldn't have fit in well with the original Flat-Out Love, but given that this is a fan-driven companion piece, I think they work. While the content here is upped a bit, the scenes are tastefully done. (So, you know sorry to those who wanted lewd and graphic.)]]>
158 Jessica Park Victoria 4 4.06 2013 Flat-Out Matt (Flat-Out Love, #1.5)
author: Jessica Park
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
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The House We Grew Up In 42853195
Then one Easter weekend, tragedy comes to call. The event is so devastating that, almost imperceptibly, it begins to tear the family apart. Years pass as the children become adults, find new relationships, and develop their own separate lives. Soon it seems as though they've never been a family at all. But then something happens that calls them back to the house they grew up in -- and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

Told in gorgeous, insightful prose that delves deeply into the hearts and minds of its characters, The House We Grew Up In is the captivating story of one family's desire to restore long-forgotten peace and to unearth the many secrets hidden within the nooks and crannies of home.]]>
401 Lisa Jewell Victoria 4 3.97 2013 The House We Grew Up In
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
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<![CDATA[Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle (Fifty Shades, #1-3)]]> 13641626 New York Times #1 bestselling trilogy has been hailed by Entertainment Weekly as being "in a class by itself." Beginning with the GoodReads Choice Award Romance Finalist Fifty Shades of Grey, the Fifty Shades Trilogy will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever.


This bundle includes the following novels:

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY: When college student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly Ana realizes she wants this man, and Grey admits he wants her, too - but on his own terms. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian's secrets and explores her own desires.

FIFTY SHADES DARKER: Daunted by Christian's dark secrets and singular tastes, Ana has broken off their relationship to start a new career. But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and while Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Ana is forced to make the most important decision of her life.

FIFTY SHADES FREED: Now, Ana and Christian have it all - love, passion, intimacy, wealth, and a world of possibilities for their future. But Ana knows that loving her Fifty Shades will not be easy, and that being together will pose challenges that neither of them would anticipate. Just when it seems that their strength together will eclipse any obstacle, misfortune, malice, and fate conspire to turn Ana's deepest fears into reality.


This book is intended for mature audiences.]]>
1501 E.L. James Victoria 4 4.18 2005 Fifty Shades Trilogy Bundle (Fifty Shades, #1-3)
author: E.L. James
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
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Big Little Lies 20510868 Big Little Lies follows three women, each at a

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one. Her ex-husband and his yogi new wife have moved into her beloved beachside community, and their daughter is in the same kindergarten class as Madeline’s youngest (how is this possible?). And to top it all off, Madeline’s teenage daughter seems to be choosing Madeline’s ex-husband over her. (How. Is. This. Possible?).

Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. While she may seem a bit flustered at times, who wouldn’t be, with those rambunctious twin boys? Now that the boys are starting school, Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price, and Celeste is grappling with how much more she is willing to pay.

New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbors secret doubts about her son. But why? While Madeline and Celeste soon take Jane under their wing, none of them realizes how the arrival of Jane and her inscrutable little boy will affect them all.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.




From the Hardcover edition.]]>
465 Liane Moriarty 0698138635 Victoria 4 4.36 2014 Big Little Lies
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
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The Girl Who Came Home 41014534
Ireland, 1912 . . .

Fourteen members of a small village set sail on RMS Titanic, hoping to find a better life in America. For seventeen-year-old Maggie Murphy, the journey is bittersweet. Though her future lies in an unknown new place, her heart remains in Ireland with Séamus, the sweetheart she left behind. When disaster strikes, Maggie is one of the few passengers in steerage to survive. Waking up alone in a New York hospital, she vows never to speak of the terror and panic of that fateful night again.

Chicago, 1982 . . .

Adrift after the death of her father, Grace Butler struggles to decide what comes next. When her great-grandmother Maggie shares the painful secret about the Titanic that she's harbored for almost a lifetime, the revelation gives Grace new direction—and leads both her and Maggie to unexpected reunions with those they thought lost long ago.

Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Came Home poignantly blends fact and fiction to explore the Titanic tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.]]>
362 Hazel Gaynor Victoria 4 4.06 2012 The Girl Who Came Home
author: Hazel Gaynor
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
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<![CDATA[Flat-Out Love (Flat-Out Love, #1)]]> 15994590 Flat-Out Love is a warm and witty novel of family love and dysfunction, deep heartache and raw vulnerability, with a bit of mystery and one whopping, knock-you-to-your-knees romance.

It's not what you know - or when you see - that matters. It's about a journey.

Something is seriously off in the Watkins home. And Julie Seagle, college freshman, small-town Ohio transplant, and the newest resident of this Boston house, is determined to get to the bottom of it. When Julie's off-campus housing falls through, her mother's old college roommate, Erin Watkins, invites her to move in. The parents, Erin and Roger, are welcoming, but emotionally distant and academically driven to eccentric extremes. The middle child, Matt, is an MIT tech geek with a sweet side ... and the social skills of a spool of USB cable. The youngest, Celeste, is a frighteningly bright but freakishly fastidious 13-year-old who hauls around a life-sized cardboard cutout of her oldest brother almost everywhere she goes.

And there's that oldest brother, Finn: funny, gorgeous, smart, sensitive, almost emotionally available. Geographically? Definitely unavailable. That's because Finn is traveling the world and surfacing only for random Facebook chats, e-mails, and status updates. Before long, through late-night exchanges of disembodied text, he begins to stir something tender and silly and maybe even a little bit sexy in Julie's suddenly lonesome soul.

To Julie, the emotionally scrambled members of the Watkins family add up to something that ... well ... doesn't quite add up. Not until she forces a buried secret to the surface, eliciting a dramatic confrontation that threatens to tear the fragile Watkins family apart, does she get her answer.

Flat-Out Love comes complete with emails, Facebook status updates, and instant messages.]]>
355 Jessica Park 1477860258 Victoria 4 3.98 2011 Flat-Out Love (Flat-Out Love, #1)
author: Jessica Park
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/02/13
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<![CDATA[The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook]]> 33559315 In this classic work of developmental psychology, renowned psychiatrist and the coauthor of the #1New York TimesbestsellerWhat Happened to You?reveals how trauma affects children—and outlines the path to recovery"Fascinating and upbeat...Dr. Perry is both a world-class creative scientist and a compassionate therapist."—Mary Pipher, PhD, author of Reviving Ophelia How does trauma affect a child's mind—and how can that mind recover?

Child psychiatrist Dr. Bruce D. Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence. In the classic The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Dr. Perry tells their stories of trauma and transformation and shares their lessons of courage, humanity, and hope. Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what happens to children’s brains when they are exposed to extreme stress—and reveals the unexpected measures that can be taken to ease such pain and help them grow into healthy adults. Only when we understand the science of the mind and the power of love and nurturing can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.]]>
450 Bruce D. Perry Victoria 5 4.62 2007 The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook
author: Bruce D. Perry
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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Call Me Tuesday 17794511 328 Leigh Byrne 1621111679 Victoria 5 4.31 2012 Call Me Tuesday
author: Leigh Byrne
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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Just One Thing 19874150 “Sometimes, you find yourself inadvertently in the dark. But I’d discovered that if you stopped fighting against it and just stood still, sometimes something marvelous comes along.�

Artist Lexie McCain spends her days literally weaving the story of her life into a gorgeous tapestry. But on Monday nights, she walks to the Corner Bar, drinks a Killian’s, and answers the same question every week from Sam the bartender: “One thing?� She starts with her name, then her cottage, slowly moving on to the devastating tragedies that tore her life apart.

Sam Corner’s smile doesn’t seem to hide any pain. One night, Lexie turns the tables on him, asking Sam, “One thing?� To her surprise, Sam reveals his own tragic history. Together, Lexie and Sam learn that, with good beer and a trusted friend, sharing just “one thing� might lead to the one thing they both thought was lost forever: love.

From award-winning author Holly Jacobs comes the story of heartache, hope, and the power of sharing just one thing.

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197 Holly Jacobs 1477870075 Victoria 4 3.94 2002 Just One Thing
author: Holly Jacobs
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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The Surrogate Mother 40893132
But after years of failed infertility treatments and adoptions that have fallen through, it seems like motherhood is not in her future. That is, until her personal assistant Monica makes a generous offer that will make all of Abby's dreams come true.

Or all of her nightmares.

Because it turns out Monica isn't who she says she is. The woman now carrying Abby's child has dark, twisted secrets.

And she will stop at nothing to get what she wants. ]]>
341 Freida McFadden Victoria 4 3.94 2018 The Surrogate Mother
author: Freida McFadden
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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Close Your Eyes 205098502 Finding missing children is Matthew’s job—but this time it’s his own daughter who’s disappeared.

When private investigator Matthew Hill picks up the call from his wife, Sally, his world comes crashing down. Their eight-year-old daughter, Amelie, is missing. One second, she was there, the next, she was gone.

It’s the very nightmare they’ve been dreading. Long ago, Matthew left the force after a woman blamed him for her son’s death, promising that he too would one day feel her pain. It’s a threat that’s hung over his family ever since, and now it’s Amelie’s picture on the news.

Matthew knows how these things go—the longer their daughter is missing, the less hope there is of finding her alive.

As the clock ticks and a canal is searched, he and Sally must reckon with their greatest fear…]]>
330 Teresa Driscoll 1662523130 Victoria 4 4.09 2025 Close Your Eyes
author: Teresa Driscoll
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
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The Lodge 214152208 From the author of The Reunion, a cozy rom-com about a writer who decamps to a Vermont lodge for work but finds herself distracted by the charming ski instructor next door.

Alix Morgan just got her big break as the ghostwriter of a memoir by Sebastian Green, a former member of the boy band True North. And when he offers her a penthouse at a luxurious resort in Vermont, she jumps at the chance to work far away from her noisy, cramped apartment.

Her career as an entertainment journalist has been building toward this dream job—after all, she used to cover True North and was one of the last people to interview former front man Jett Beckett before he disappeared. As she combs through her client’s voice memos, the specter of the missing lead singer remains, and fans are desperate to know the full story.

But Alix also has time for some fun at this glamorous resort, where she begins ski lessons with a handsome instructor named Tyler. As Alix and Tyler fall in love on the slopes, Alix’s work takes a complicated turn—and the mystery of True North’s downfall may be hers to solve.]]>
352 Kayla Olson 1668033194 Victoria 4 3.70 2025 The Lodge
author: Kayla Olson
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
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Sundial 57693183 Sundial is a new, twisty psychological horror novel from Catriona Ward, internationally bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street.

You can't escape what's in your blood...

All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice.

Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive�

The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.]]>
292 Catriona Ward 1250812682 Victoria 4 3.77 2022 Sundial
author: Catriona Ward
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
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I love how strange and how unpredictable Catriona’s books are. This one was great! I loved the story
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<![CDATA[The Jigsaw Man (Inspector Anjelica Henley, #1)]]> 53331565
When body parts are found on the banks of the River Thames in Deptford, DI Anjelica Henley is tasked with finding the killer. Eerie echoes of previous crimes lead Henley to question Peter Olivier, aka The Jigsaw Killer, who is currently serving a life sentence for a series of horrific murders.

When a severed head is delivered to Henley's home, she realises that the copycat is taking a personal interest in her and that the victims have not been chosen at random.

To catch the killer, Henley must confront her own demons - - and when Olivier escapes from prison, she finds herself up against not one serial killer, but two.]]>
496 Nadine Matheson Victoria 4 3.80 2020 The Jigsaw Man (Inspector Anjelica Henley, #1)
author: Nadine Matheson
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
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A Sea of Unspoken Things 207677131 A woman investigates her brother's mysterious death while coming to terms with her own haunting past in this atmospheric novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Unmaking of June Farrow

The only thing James and Johnny Golden have ever had is each other. For as long as she can remember, James’sdeep connection with her twin brother,Johnny,has gone beyond intuition—she can feel what he feels.So, when Johnny is killed in a tragic accident, James knows before her phone even rings that her brother is gone and that she’s alone—truly alone—for the first time in her life.

When James arrives in the rural town of Hawthorne, California to settleher brother’saffairs,she’sforced to rehash the ominous past she and Johnny shared and finally face Micah, the only person who knows about it. He’s also the only man she’s ever loved.

But James soon discovers that the strange connection she had with Johnny isn’t quite gone, and the more she immerses herself into his world, the more questions she has about the brother she thought she knew. Johnny was keeping secrets, and he’s not the only one. What she uncovers will push her to unravel what happened in the days before Johnny’s death, but in the end, she’ll have to decide which truths should come to light, and which should stay buried forever.]]>
288 Adrienne Young 0593598709 Victoria 4 3.69 2025 A Sea of Unspoken Things
author: Adrienne Young
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
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And Now She's Gone 49247317
But is she missing?

It's up to Grayson Sykes to find her. Although she is reluctant to track down a woman who may not want to be found, Gray's search for Isabel Lincoln becomes more complicated and dangerous with every new revelation about the woman's secrets and the truth she's hidden from her friends and family.

Featuring two complicated women in a dangerous cat and mouse game, And Now She's Gone explores the nature of secrets -- and how violence and fear can lead you to abandon everything in order to survive.]]>
381 Rachel Howzell Hall 1250753171 Victoria 4 3.42 2020 And Now She's Gone
author: Rachel Howzell Hall
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
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Jar of Hearts 204169295 This is the story of three best friends: one who was murdered, one who went to prison, and one who's been searching for the truth all these years . . .

When she was sixteen years old, Angela Wong—one of the most popular girls in school—disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever suspected that her best friend, Georgina Shaw, now an executive and rising star at her Seattle pharmaceutical company, was involved in any way. Certainly not Kaiser Brody, who was close with both girls back in high school.

But fourteen years later, Angela Wong's remains are discovered in the woods near Geo's childhood home. And Kaiser—now a detective with Seattle PD—finally learns the truth: Angela was a victim of Calvin James. The same Calvin James who murdered at least three other women.

To the authorities, Calvin is a serial killer. But to Geo, he's something else entirely. Back in high school, Calvin was Geo's first love. Turbulent and often volatile, their relationship bordered on obsession from the moment they met right up until the night Angela was killed.

For fourteen years, Geo knew what happened to Angela and told no one. For fourteen years, she carried the secret of Angela's death until Geo was arrested and sent to prison.

While everyone thinks they finally know the truth, there are dark secrets buried deep. And what happened that fateful night is more complex and more chilling than anyone really knows. Now the obsessive past catches up with the deadly present when new bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela Wong.

How far will someone go to bury her secrets and hide her grief? How long can you get away with a lie? How long can you live with it? Find out in Jennifer Hillier's Jar of Hearts.
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306 Jennifer Hillier Victoria 4 4.25 2018 Jar of Hearts
author: Jennifer Hillier
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
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11/22/63 12530184 On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force.

Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life � a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.

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866 Stephen King Victoria 5 4.41 2011 11/22/63
author: Stephen King
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
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Dust (Silo, #3) 18866705 The much-anticipated final instalment of the Wool trilogy.

In the aftermath of the uprising, the people of Silo 18 are coming to terms with a new order.

Some embrace the change, others fear the unknown; none have control of their fate.

The Silo is still in danger.

There are those set on its destruction.

Jules knows they must be stopped.

The battle has been won.

The war is just beginning.]]>
416 Hugh Howey Victoria 5 4.19 2013 Dust (Silo, #3)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
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Shift (Silo, #2) 17306293 579 Hugh Howey Victoria 5 4.12 2013 Shift (Silo, #2)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
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Earthlings 52648997
Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?]]>
202 Sayaka Murata Victoria 4 3.50 2018 Earthlings
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
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This book was not what I expected at all. But I loved it. It made me feel so many things. I was laughing while having my heart broken at the same time. Such a terrifyingly moving story.
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By Any Other Name 203337138 From the New York Times bestselling co-author of Mad Honey comes an “inspiring� (Elle) novel about two women, centuries apart—one of whom is the real author of Shakespeare’s plays—who are both forced to hide behind another name.

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.

In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.]]>
528 Jodi Picoult 0593497228 Victoria 5 4.12 2024 By Any Other Name
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
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I love Jodi Picoult so much! This book started off a little slow for me but I’m so glad I stuck through it, I ended loving it and learning so much! #shakespeareisafraud
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Wool (Silo #1) 157608295
The first book in the acclaimed, New York Times best-selling trilogy, Wool is the story of mankind clawing for survival. The world outside has grown toxic, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. The remnants of humanity live underground in a single silo.

But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they want: They are allowed to go outside.

After the previous sheriff leaves the silo in a terrifying ritual, Juliette, a mechanic from the down deep, is suddenly and inexplicably promoted to the head of law enforcement. With newfound power and with little regard for the customs she is supposed to abide, Juliette uncovers hints of a sinister conspiracy. Tugging this thread may uncover the truth . . . or it could kill every last human alive.]]>
594 Hugh Howey Victoria 4 4.44 2012 Wool (Silo #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
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Are Your Parents Home? 212920160
But then a grizzled stranger arrives at the home. Although no one answers the front door, he knocks and talks, knocks and talks�knocks and talks. Not before long, the man’s bizarre, nonsensical ramblings turn into nasty threats.

He wants to get inside the house. He believes he’s meant to be with Ella. And he won’t let anything or anyone stop him from fulfilling his ‘destiny.�

Jon Athan, the author of Blender Babies and The Groomer, brings you a white-knuckle, high-tension, “one-shot� home invasion novel. Don't forget to lock your doors before reading...

This book contains graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.]]>
195 Jon Athan Victoria 3 3.53 2024 Are Your Parents Home?
author: Jon Athan
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/25
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The Devil and Mrs. Davenport 162505604 The bestselling author of The Witch of Tin Mountain and Parting the Veil mines the subtle horrors of 1950s America in a gripping novel about a woman under pressure—from the living and the dead.

The first day of autumn brought the fever, and with the fever came the voices.

Missouri, 1955. Loretta Davenport has led an isolated life as a young mother and a wife to Pete, an ambitious assistant professor at a Bible college. They’re the picture of domestic tranquillity—until a local girl is murdered and Loretta begins receiving messages from beyond. Pete dismisses them as delusions of a fevered female imagination. Loretta knows they’re real—and frightening. Defying Pete’s demands, Loretta finds an encouraging supporter in parapsychologist Dr. Curtis Hansen. He sees a woman with a rare gift, more blessing than curse.

With Dr. Hansen’s help, Loretta’s life opens up to an empowering new purpose. But for Pete, the God-fearing image he’s worked so hard to cultivate is under threat. No longer in control of his dutiful wife, he sees the Devil at work. As Loretta’s powers grow stronger and the pleading spirits beckon, Pete is determined to deliver his wife from evil. To solve the mysteries of the dead, Loretta must first save herself.]]>
347 Paulette Kennedy 1662514875 Victoria 5 4.21 2024 The Devil and Mrs. Davenport
author: Paulette Kennedy
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
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Exquisite Corpse 8144881
To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his “art� to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his “art� to limits even Compton hadn’t previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.

Swiftly moving from the grimy streets of London’s Piccadilly Circus to the decadence of the New Orleans French Quarter, Poppy Z. Brite dissects the landscape of torture and invites us into the mind of a killer. Exquisite Corpse confirms Brite as a writer who defies categorization. It is a novel for those who dare trespass where the sacred and profane become one.]]>
269 Poppy Z. Brite Victoria 5 3.61 1996 Exquisite Corpse
author: Poppy Z. Brite
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/20
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In the Waning Light 25882482 Two decades after her sister’s brutal attack and murder, Meg Brogan has finally found happiness…or so it appears. A bestselling true-crime writer, Meg has money, fame, and a wealthy fiancé. But when a television-show host presses her to tackle the one story everyone claims she cannot write—the story of her own family’s destruction—her perfect life shatters.

Determined to finally face her past, Meg returns to her hometown of Shelter Bay. Shrouded in cold, brooding fog, the close-knit coastal town harbors dark secrets and suspicious residents. One of the few people to welcome Meg back is Blake Sutton, her high-school sweetheart and the marina’s new owner. Desperate for clues, Meg digs through her family’s files. As Pacific storms brew outside, her passion for Blake reignites.

But someone doesn’t want Meg digging up the past. And that person will go to deadly lengths to prevent the writer from revealing a terrible truth.

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432 Loreth Anne White 150394655X Victoria 4 4.39 2015 In the Waning Light
author: Loreth Anne White
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
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Bluejay 123281893 ]]> 112 Megan Stockton Victoria 4 3.64 Bluejay
author: Megan Stockton
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.64
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
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Let this be a lesson to all you fellas out there
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Home Before Dark 50833559 What was it like? Living in that house.

Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.

Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.

In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?]]>
389 Riley Sager 1524745170 Victoria 3 4.05 2020 Home Before Dark
author: Riley Sager
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
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No One Rides For Free 62343413 Uninvited, unwanted, and unhinged...
The Man has no name, but he does have a gun... a knife... and a bag of "toys".
What starts as a forced ride into the desert escalates into a disturbing series of crimes and assaults.
Jodi and her children will soon pray for death.

AFTER YOU READ THIS BOOK ... BE SURE TO READ THE SEQUEL! NO ONE RIDES FOR FREE (ABSOLUTE CHAOS), CO-AUTHORED WITH OTIS BATEMAN!

This novella is incredibly disturbing. It features graphic scenes of sexual violence, torture, and gore. It is not intended for easily offended readers. The print edition of this book includes an exclusive short story, which is not availble on ebook. It is also gross and disturbing.]]>
76 Judith Sonnet Victoria 2 What did I just read 2.73 2022 No One Rides For Free
author: Judith Sonnet
name: Victoria
average rating: 2.73
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
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What did I just read
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The First Day of Spring 56807474 Meet Chrissie...

Chrissie is eight and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling made her belly fizz like soda pop. Her playmates are tearful and their mothers are terrified, keeping them locked indoors. But Chrissie rules the roost -- she's the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a feeling of power that she never gets at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.

Twenty years later, adult Chrissie is living in hiding under a changed name. A single mother, all she wants is for her daughter to have the childhood she herself was denied. That’s why the threatening phone calls are so terrifying. People are looking for them, the past is catching up, and Chrissie fears losing the only thing in this world she cares about, her child.

Nancy Tucker leaves the reader breathless as she inhabits her protagonist with a shocking authenticity that moves the reader from sympathy to humor to horror to heartbreak and back again.]]>
351 Nancy Tucker 0593191587 Victoria 5 3.93 2021 The First Day of Spring
author: Nancy Tucker
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
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In the Dark 44527037 A secluded mountain lodge. The perfect getaway. So remote no one will ever find you.

The promise of a luxury vacation at a secluded wilderness spa has brought together eight lucky guests. But nothing is what they were led to believe. As a fierce storm barrels down and all contact with the outside is cut off, the guests fear that it’s not a getaway. It’s a trap.

Each one has a secret. Each one has something to hide. And now, as darkness closes in, they all have something to fear—including one another.

Alerted to the vanished party of strangers, homicide cop Mason Deniaud and search and rescue expert Callie Sutton must brave the brutal elements of the mountains to find them. But even Mason and Callie have no idea how precious time is. Because the clock is ticking, and one by one, the guests of Forest Shadow Lodge are being hunted. For them, surviving becomes part of a diabolical game.]]>
413 Loreth Anne White 1542003822 Victoria 4 4.05 2019 In the Dark
author: Loreth Anne White
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
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<![CDATA[The Dark Bones (A Dark Lure, #2)]]> 41943994 An Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller.

She’s come back to solve the mystery of her father’s death and confront her own dark past.

When Detective Rebecca North left her rural hometown, she vowed never to return. Her father’s apparent suicide has changed that. The official report is that retired cop Noah North shot himself, knocked over a lantern, and set his isolated cabin ablaze. But Rebecca cannot believe he killed himself.

To prove it, she needs the help of Ash Haugen, the man she left behind. But Rebecca and Ash share more than broken hearts. Something darker lies between them, and the investigation is stirring it back to life. Clues lead them to the home of Olivia West and her deeply troubled twelve-year-old daughter, Tori. The child knows more about the murder than anyone can imagine, but she’s too terrified to say a word.

And as a cold-blooded killer resurfaces from the past, Rebecca and Ash begin to fear that their own secrets may be even harder to survive.]]>
440 Loreth Anne White 1542091551 Victoria 4 4.23 2019 The Dark Bones (A Dark Lure, #2)
author: Loreth Anne White
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
review:

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Misery 59053857 USA TODAY).

Paul Sheldon is a bestselling novelist who has finally met his number one fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes, and she is more than a rabid reader—she is Paul’s nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also furious that the author has killed off her favorite character in his latest book. Annie becomes his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house.

Annie wants Paul to write a book that brings Misery back to life—just for her. She has a lot of ways to spur him on. One is a needle. Another is an axe. And if they don’t work, she can get really nasty.

“Terrifying� (San Francisco Chronicle), “dazzlingly well-written� (The Indianapolis Star), and “truly gripping� (Publishers Weekly), Misery is “classic Stephen King...full of twists and turns and mounting suspense� (The Boston Globe).]]>
463 Stephen King Victoria 4 4.35 1987 Misery
author: Stephen King
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
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The Family Experiment 197108968 From the acclaimed author of The One and The Marriage Act, The Family Experiment is a dark and brilliant speculative thriller about families: real and virtual.

Some families are virtually perfect�

The world's population is soaring, creating overcrowded cities and an economic crisis. And in the UK, the breaking point has arrived. A growing number of people can no longer afford to start families, let alone raise them.

But for those desperate to experience parenthood, there is an alternative. For a monthly subscription fee, clients can create a virtual child from scratch who they can access via the metaverse and a VR headset. To launch this new initiative, the company behind Virtual Children has created a reality TV show called The Substitute. It will follow ten couples as they raise a Virtual Child from birth to the age of eighteen but in a condensed nine-month time period. The prize: the right to keep their virtual child, or risk it all for the chance of a real baby�

Set in the same universe as John Marrs's bestselling novel The One and The Marriage Act, The Family Experiment is a dark and twisted thriller about the ultimate Tamagotchi—a virtual baby.]]>
384 John Marrs 1335000364 Victoria 4 4.00 2024 The Family Experiment
author: John Marrs
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
review:

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The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]>
490 Liz Moore Victoria 4 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
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<![CDATA[The Liar's Crown (Dominions, #1)]]> 57693245 Some shadows protect you…others will kill you in this dazzling new fantasy series from award-winning author Abigail Owen.

Everything about my life is a lie. As a hidden twin princess, born second, I have only one purpose—to sacrifice my life for my sister if death comes for her. I’ve been living under the guise of a poor, obscure girl of no standing, slipping into the palace and into the role of the true princess when danger is present.

Now the queen is dead and the ageless King Eidolon has sent my sister a gift—an eerily familiar gift—and a proposal to wed. I don’t trust him, so I do what I was born to do and secretly take her place on the eve of the coronation. Which is why, when a figure made of shadow kidnaps the new queen, he gets me by mistake.

As I try to escape, all the lies start to unravel. And not just my lies. The Shadowraith who took me has secrets of his own. He struggles to contain the shadows he wields—other faces, identities that threaten my very life.

Winter is at the walls. Darkness is looming. And the only way to save my sister and our dominion is to kill Eidolon…and the Shadowraith who has stolen my heart.]]>
448 Abigail Owen 1649371527 Victoria 4 3.82 2022 The Liar's Crown (Dominions, #1)
author: Abigail Owen
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves:
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<![CDATA[Little Thieves (Little Thieves, #1)]]> 54017820 Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl...

Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love―and she’s on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja’s otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back� by stealing Gisele’s life for herself.

The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.

Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele’s sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja’s tail, she’ll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.]]>
512 Margaret Owen 1250191904 Victoria 4 4.24 2021 Little Thieves (Little Thieves, #1)
author: Margaret Owen
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[The Family Upstairs (The Family Upstairs, #1)]]> 43822820 here.

Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am.

She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby’s life is about to change. But what she can’t possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them.

Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.

The can’t-look-away story of three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets.]]>
352 Lisa Jewell 1501190105 Victoria 3 3.93 2019 The Family Upstairs (The Family Upstairs, #1)
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Victoria
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:
3.5 ⭐️ the story was okay but I felt like I strongly disliked every single character
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Little Doves 63350529
At the same time, someone calling themselves The Surgeon is maiming seemingly innocent men in very specific ways. The Surgeon isn’t hiding in the shadows; they record the attacks and post them on social media, with an invitation to watch as the assaults become more violent, and more final. They’re sending a message and demanding justice with a cryptic hashtag: #stopsabine]]>
280 Sara Ennis 1736772279 Victoria 5 4.38 Little Doves
author: Sara Ennis
name: Victoria
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
4.5⭐️ such a hard read but this is something that sadly actually goes on in the world. What a great story and great way to spread awareness
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