en-US Fri, 03 Jan 2025 15:26:03 -0800 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 206169039
Beneath Mt. Olympus, Theron of Tartarus has been groomed to become Hades, the god of the Underworld. Despised by everyone on Olympus and tormented by his mentor, he has only known a life of abuse and despair.

The two were never meant to cross paths, but when Theron is sent on a mission to Mt. Olympus, he finds the goddess who is meant to be his enemy and his greatest opposition.

One encounter is all it takes for everything to change.

Now, the sheltered Corre finds herself in a position she never could have falling in love with the God of Death and questioning everything. Even her destiny.


The Light in Hades is a low-spice romantic fantasy book perfect for fans of YA fantasy romance.]]> 466 Elise Nelson 1777632951 Nikki 0 to-read 3.93
author: Elise Nelson
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.93
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date added: 2025/01/03
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]]> 61530932 A woman discovers the father of the child she is nannying may be her biggest (Only)Fan in this steamy contemporary romance by Lana Ferguson.


After losing her job and being on the brink of eviction, Cassie Evans finds herself with two choices: get a new job (and fast) or fire up her long-untouched OnlyFans account. But there are no jobs to be found, and as for OnlyFans. . . . Well, there are reasons she can’t go back. Just when all hope seems lost, an ad for a live-in nanny position seems the solution to all her problems. It’s almost too perfect—until she meets her would-be employer.

Aiden Reid, executive chef and DILF extraordinaire is far from the stuffy single dad Cassie was imagining. She is shocked when he tells her she’s the most qualified applicant he’s met in weeks, practically begging her to take the job. With hands that make her hindbrain howl and eyes that scream sex, the idea of living under the same roof as Aiden feels dangerous, but with no other option, she decides to stay with him and his adorably tenacious daughter, Sophie.

Cassie soon discovers that Aiden is not a stranger at all, but instead someone who is very familiar with her—or at least, her body. She finds herself at a loss for what to do, given that he doesn’t remember her. As their relationship heats to temperatures hotter than any kitchen Aiden has ever worked in, Cassie struggles with telling Aiden the truth, and the more terrifying possibility—losing the best chance at happiness she’s ever had.]]> 421 Lana Ferguson 059354935X Nikki 0 to-read 3.54 2023
author: Lana Ferguson
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/03
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]]> 201627074 Two string players fight their attraction for each other as they compete for center stage in this spicy and emotional romance.

Gwen Jackson and Xander Thorne are both musical prodigies, but each has had very different paths to success. Xander was born into classical music royalty, while Gwen had a natural ear for music that was nurtured by a kind shop owner.

After Gwen performs at his friend’s wedding, she’s mortified when she realizes Xander has no clue who she is—despite having worked together for a year at the Pops Orchestra. But she’s more furious that he arrogantly critiques her performance.

When Gwen is offered the role of First Chair of the orchestra, something Xander had secretly coveted for years, their existing hostility goes up a notch. But their respect for each other's music is undeniable, and their onstage chemistry off the scale. As they begin to explore their feelings for one another, suddenly they're box office dynamite and the fragile romance that's growing between them is in danger of being crushed beneath a publicity stunt...]]> 384 Julie Soto 1538740915 Nikki 0 to-read 4.05 2024
author: Julie Soto
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/03
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]]> 123199658
Noah, interventional cardiologist and all-round grump, has spent his entire life hiding what he is - an unmated alpha. But when an anonymous tip brings everything to light, he's left with two choices: come clean to the board and risk his career or find himself a mate. So, when the chatty, overly friendly ER doctor asks him to be her fake boyfriend the same day he's called to meet the board, it must be kismet, right?

Mackenzie gets her grandmother off her back, and Noah gets the chance to prove he can continue to work without a real mate - it's a mutually beneficial business transaction. But when the fake-mate act turns to a very real friends-with-benefits arrangement, lines start to blur, and they quickly realise love is a whole different kind of animal.]]> 372 Lana Ferguson 0593549376 Nikki 0 to-read 3.62 2023
author: Lana Ferguson
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/03
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]]> 75668288 The heart is a battlefield.

All Talasyn has ever known is the Hurricane Wars. Growing up an orphan in a nation under siege by the ruthless Night Emperor, Talasyn has found her family among the soldiers who fight for freedom. But she is hiding a deadly secret: light magic courses through her veins, a blazing power believed to have been wiped out years ago that can cut through the Night Empire's shadows.

Prince Alaric, the emperor's only son and heir, has been forged into a weapon by his father. Tasked with obliterating any threats to the Night Empire's rule with the strength of his armies and mighty Shadow magic, Alaric has never been bested. That is until he sees Talasyn burning brightly on the battlefield with the magic that killed his grandfather, turned his father into a monster, and ignited the Hurricane Wars. In a clash of light and dark, their powers merge and create a force the likes of which has never been seen.

Talasyn and Alaric both know this war can only end with them. But a greater threat is coming, and the strange new magic they can create together could be the only way to overcome it. Thrust into an uneasy alliance, they will confront the secrets at the heart of the war and find, in each other, a searing passion--one that could save their world...or destroy it.

An exquisite fantasy brimming with unforgettable characters, sizzling enemies-to-lovers romance, and richly drawn worlds, The Hurricane Wars marks the breathtaking debut of an extraordinary new writer.]]> 472 Thea Guanzon 0063277271 Nikki 0 to-read 3.65 2023
author: Thea Guanzon
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/03
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]]> 58804246 A suspense filled tale of murder on the American frontier—shedding new light on a family of serial killers in Kansas, whose horrifying crimes gripped the attention of a nation still reeling from war.

In 1873 the people of Labette County, Kansas made a grisly discovery. Buried by a trailside cabin beneath an orchard of young apple trees were the remains of countless bodies. Below the cabin itself was a cellar stained with blood. The Benders, the family of four who once resided on the property were nowhere to be found. The discovery sent the local community and national newspapers into a frenzy that continued for decades, sparking an epic manhunt for the Benders.
��
The idea that a family of seemingly respectable homesteaders—one among the thousands relocating farther west in search of land and opportunity after the Civil War—were capable of operating "a human slaughter pen" appalled and fascinated the nation. But who the Benders really were, why they committed such a vicious killing spree and whether justice ever caught up to them is a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Set against the backdrop of postbellum America,��Hell’s Half-Acre��explores the environment capable of allowing such horrors to take place. Drawing on extensive original archival material, Susan Jonusas introduces us to a fascinating cast of characters, many of whom have been previously missing from the story. Among them are the families of the victims, the hapless detectives who lost the trail, and the fugitives that helped the murderers escape.
��
Hell’s Half-Acre��is a journey into the turbulent heart of nineteenth century America, a place where modernity stalks across the landscape, violently displacing existing populations and building new ones. It is a world where folklore can quickly become fact and an entire family of criminals can slip through a community’s fingers, only to reappear in the most unexpected of places.]]> 345 Susan Jonusas 1984879839 Nikki 0 currently-reading 3.41 2022
author: Susan Jonusas
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> 53137995 The owner of the world's leading disaster management company chronicles the unseen world behind the yellow tape, and explores what it means to be human after a lifetime of caring for the dead.



You have seen Robert A. Jensen--you just never knew it. As the owner of the world's largest disaster management company, he has spent most of his adult life responding to tragedy. From the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11, the Bali bombings, the 2004 South Asian Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina to the 2010 Haitian Earthquake and the Grenfell Tower Fire, Jensen is at the practical level of international incidents, assisting with the recovery of bodies, identifying victims, and repatriating and returning their personal effects to the surviving family members. He is also, crucially, involved in the emotional recovery that comes after a disaster: helping guide the families, governments, and companies involved, telling them what to expect and managing the unmanageable. As he puts it, "If journalists write the first rough draft of history, I put the punctuation on the past."

Personal Effects is an unsparing, up-close look at the difficult work Jensen does behind the yellow tape and the lessons he learned there. The chronicle of an almost impossible and grim job, Personal Effects also tells Jensen's own story, how he came to this line of work, how he manages the chaos that is his life, and the personal toll the repeated exposure to mass death brings, in becoming what GQ called "the best at the worst job in the world."

A rare glimpse into a world we all see but many know nothing about, Personal Effects is an inspiring and heartwarming story of survival and the importance of moving forward. Jensen allows his readers to see over his shoulder as he responds to disaster sites, uncovers the deceased, and cares for families to show how a strong will and desire to do good can become a path through the worst the world can throw at us.]]> 304 Robert A. Jensen 1250267994 Nikki 0 3.82 2021
author: Robert A. Jensen
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> 62919162 327 Daniel Kraus 1665918160 Nikki 0 to-read 3.66 2023
author: Daniel Kraus
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Nikki 0 4.17 1992
author: Donna Tartt
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> 123757046 204 Lindsey Wade 1944134700 Nikki 0 4.04 2023
author: Lindsey Wade
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
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]]> 382450
Marsh meant to turn down York’s offer. It was too full of secrets that spelled danger. But the promise of both gold and a grand new boat that could make history crushed his resolve—coupled with the terrible force of York’s mesmerizing gaze. Not until the maiden voyage of his new sidewheeler Fevre Dream would Marsh realize he had joined a mission both more sinister, and perhaps more noble, than his most fantastic nightmare...and mankind’s most impossible dream.

Here is the spellbinding tale of a vampire’s quest to unite his race with humanity, of a garrulous riverman’s dream of immortality, and of the undying legends of the steamboat era and a majestic, ancient river.]]> 334 George R.R. Martin 0553383051 Nikki 0 3.88 1982
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
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]]> 63120088
But to sixteen-year-old Joséphine and her best friend, Clara, the beast isn’t a curse. It’s an opportunity.

For years, the girls of Mende have been living in a nightmare—fathers who drink, brothers who punch, homes that feel like prisons—and this is a chance to get them out.

Using the creature’s attacks as cover, Joséphine and Clara set out to fake their friends�� deaths and hide them away until it’s safe to run. But escape is harder than they thought. If they can’t brave a harsh winter with little food�� If the villagers discover what they’re doing�� If the beast finds them first...

Those fake deaths might just become real ones.]]> 352 Gigi Griffis 0593707729 Nikki 0 to-read 3.71 2024
author: Gigi Griffis
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 35458733 When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting . . .

When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But with her husband dead just weeks after their marriage, her new servants resentful, and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure —a silent companion ��-that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself. The residents of The Bridge are terrified of the figure, but Elsie tries to shrug this off as simple superstition--that is, until she notices the figure's eyes following her.

A Victorian ghost story that evokes a most unsettling kind of fear, this is a tale that creeps its way through the consciousness in ways you least expect--much like the silent companions themselves.]]> 305 Laura Purcell 014313163X Nikki 0 currently-reading 3.86 2017
author: Laura Purcell
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 162900
Larry Lewis say, “The Dead and the Living is an unignorable book, something truly rare. The feeling behind it is painful, but exquisitely so. Pain made into art or what, in another time, people called ‘beauty.’�� It is an achievement of a poet writing in the full measure of her powers.

The Lamont poetry selection of the Academy of American Poets.]]> 95 Sharon Olds 0394715632 Nikki 0 4.17 1984
author: Sharon Olds
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
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]]> 1006306 322 Al Álvarez 0393306577 Nikki 0 3.98 1971
author: Al Álvarez
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
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]]> 54860353
Hailey McBride calls Cold Creek home. Her father taught her to respect nature, how to live and survive off the land, and to never travel the highway alone. Now he’s gone, leaving her a teenage orphan in the care of her aunt whose police officer husband uses his badge as a means to bully and control Hailey. Overwhelmed by grief and forbidden to work, socialize, or date, Hailey vanishes into the mountainous terrain, hoping everyone will believe she’s left town. Rumors spread that she was taken by the highway killer—who’s claimed another victim over the summer.

One year later, Beth Chevalier arrives in Cold Creek, where her sister Amber lived—and where she was murdered. Estranged from her parents and seeking closure, Beth takes a waitressing job at the local diner, just as Amber did, desperate to understand what happened to her and why. But Beth’s search for answers puts a target on her back—and threatens to reveal the truth behind Hailey’s disappearance…]]> 375 Chevy Stevens 1250133572 Nikki 0 to-read 3.93 2021
author: Chevy Stevens
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/02
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]]> 58936417 Why We Can't Sleep meets Furiously Happy in this hilarious, heartfelt memoir about one woman's midlife obsession with Benedict Cumberbatch, and the liberating power of reclaiming our passions as we age, whatever they may be.

Tabitha Carvan was a new mother, at home with two young children, when she fell for the actor Benedict Cumberbatch. You know the guy: strange name, alien face, made Sherlock so sexy that it became one of the most streamed shows in the world? The force of her fixation took everyone--especially Carvan herself--by surprise. But what she slowly realized was that her preoccupation was not about Benedict Cumberbatch at all, as dashing as he might be. It was about finally feeling passionate about something, anything, again at a point in her life when she had lost touch with her own identity and sense of self.

In This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Carvan explores what happens to women's desires after we leave adolescence...and why the space in our lives for pure, unadulterated joy is squeezed ever smaller as we age. She shines a light onto the hidden corners of fandom, from the passion of the online communities to the profound real-world connections forged between Cumberbatch devotees. But more importantly, she asks: what happens if we simply decide to follow our interests like we used to--unabashedly, audaciously, shamelessly? After all, Carvan realizes, there's true, untapped power in finding your "thing" (even if that thing happens to be a British-born Marvel superhero) and loving it like your life depends on it.
]]> 256 Tabitha Carvan 0593421914 Nikki 0 to-buy 3.80 2022
author: Tabitha Carvan
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-buy
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]]> 63051007 ��
Justin Brooks has spent his career freeing innocent people from prison. With You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent , he offers up-close accounts of the cases he has fought, embedding them within a larger landscape of innocence claims and robust research on what we know about the causes of wrongful convictions.
��
Putting readers at the defense table, this book forces us to consider how any of us might be swept up in the system, whether we hired a bad lawyer, bear a slight resemblance to someone else in the world, or are not good with awkward silence. The stories of Brooks's cases and clients paint the picture of a broken justice system, one where innocence is no protection from incarceration or even the death penalty. Simultaneously relatable and disturbing, You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent is essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand how injustice is served by our system.]]> 232 Justin Brooks 0520386833 Nikki 0 to-read 4.67
author: Justin Brooks
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.67
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> 56132724
The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they've been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line - conveniently labeled "crazy" so their voices are ignored.

No one is willing to fight for their freedom and, disenfranchised both by gender and the stigma of their supposed madness, they cannot possibly fight for themselves. But Elizabeth is about to discover that the merit of losing everything is that you then have nothing to lose...]]> 540 Kate Moore 1492696722 Nikki 5 to-buy 4.29 2021
author: Kate Moore
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
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]]> 23453099 So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back.

This is the story of how I disappeared.

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys�� prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.

Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature. Ottessa Moshfegh is also the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Homesick for Another World: Stories, and McGlue.]]> 260 Ottessa Moshfegh 1594206627 Nikki 0 3.57 2015
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
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]]> 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 Nikki 0 4.05 2020
author: Riley Sager
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
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]]> 126918202 Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.

It isn’t easy when she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone—including her blandly docile husband and two kids—falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails—the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.

(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)]]> 296 Jennifer Marie Thorne Nikki 0 to-read 3.85 2024
author: Jennifer Marie Thorne
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> 208430757
As Dia and her fellow interns delve into the heart of Darkly, they discover hidden symbols, buried clues, and a web of intrigue. Who are these other teens, and what secrets do they keep? Why were any of them really chosen? The answers lie within the twisted labyrinth of Darkly.]]> 399 Marisha Pessl 0593706552 Nikki 0 to-read 3.71 2024
author: Marisha Pessl
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/15
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]]> 214151452 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

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

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

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668063700 Nikki 0 to-read 3.73 2023
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 6033525
In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.]]> 352 Daniel James Brown 0061348104 Nikki 0 4.24 2009
author: Daniel James Brown
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
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]]> 210594739 Enter the dark side of discover the monsters, witches, and nightmarish traditions behind one of the most celebrated holidays in the world When we imagine the origins of Christmas, we picture halcyon images of mangers, glowing fireplaces, and snow-blanketed winter hills. But the holiday is celebrated during the darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere—a season so dark it has given rise to the most outlandish traditions imaginable. In The Dead of Winter, Oxford-trained historian Sarah Clegg delves deep into the folkloric roots of Christmas in Europe, comparing their often-horrific past to the way they continue to haunt and entertain us now in the 21st century. Detailing the hideous masks and curling horns of "Krampus runs" in Austria, the fearsome horseheads of "hoodenings"��in Southeast England, and the candle-crowned young witches of Finland's St. Lucy Festival, the author captures the wild revelry at heart of the winter madness. �� In Clegg’s fascinating investigation, these strange, wonderful traditions are cast in their illuminating historical context. And the closer we get to the dark magic and bright enchantment described in��The Dead of Winter, the more we start to see how fun it might be to let just a bit of the ancient darkness in.]]> 208 Sarah Clegg 1643757083 Nikki 0 to-read 3.73 2024
author: Sarah Clegg
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/05
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]]> 41015038 337 Grady Hendrix Nikki 5 3.94 2016
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2024/10/31
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]]> 203608430 In this epic and seductive gothic fantasy, a vampire escapes the thrall of Dracula and embarks on her own search for self-discovery and true love.

Her name was written in the pages of someone else's story: Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula's first victims.

But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire, and has spent her immortal life trying to escape from Dracula's clutches--and trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants.

Her undead life takes an unexpected turn when, in twenty-first-century London, she meets another woman who is also yearning to break free from her past. Iris’s family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret, and they’ll do anything to stay in power.

Lucy has long believed she would never love again. But she finds herself compelled by the charming Iris, while Iris is mesmerized by the confident and glamorous Lucy. But their intense connection and blossoming love is threatened by forces from without. Iris's mother won't let go of her without a fight, and Lucy's past still has fangs: Dracula is on the prowl again.

Lucy Westenra has been a tragically murdered teen, a lonesome adventurer, and a fearsome hunter, but happiness always eluded her. Can she find the strength to destroy Dracula once and for all, or will her heart once again be her undoing?]]> 464 Kiersten White 0593724402 Nikki 0 to-read 3.71 2024
author: Kiersten White
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> 23341578
If Lauren Beukes's internationally bestselling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again.]]> 441 Lauren Beukes 031621681X Nikki 0 3.59 2014
author: Lauren Beukes
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/25
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]]> 211025396
On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Cornell was found hanging in a barn, four months pregnant, after a disgraceful liaison with a charismatic Methodist minister, Reverend Ephraim Avery. Some (Avery’s lawyers) claimed her death was suicide…but others weren’t so sure. Determined to uncover the real story, intrepid Victorian writer Catharine Williams threw herself into the investigation and wrote what many claim is the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The case and Williams�� book became a sensation—one that divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. But the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.

In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to 19th century small town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements—such as “forensic knot analysis�� to determine cause of death, the prosecutor’s notes from 1833, and criminal profiling which was invented 55 years later with Jack the Ripper—Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams�� research to find the truth. Along the way she also examines how society decides who is the “right kind�� of crime victim and how America’s long history of religious evangelism may have clouded the facts both in the 1830s and today. Ultimately, The Sinners All Bow brings justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given.]]> 320 Kate Winkler Dawson 0593713613 Nikki 0 to-read 3.54 2025
author: Kate Winkler Dawson
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/23
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]]> 38101643 368 Cat Winters 1419733621 Nikki 0 to-read 3.58 2019
author: Cat Winters
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 28078791
In 1909, after a two-year absence, Od reappears with a suitcase supposedly full of weapons and a promise to rescue Tru from the monsters on their way to attack her. But it’s Od who seems haunted by something. And when the sisters�� search for their mother leads them to a face-off with the Leeds Devil, a nightmarish beast that’s wreaking havoc in the Mid-Atlantic states, Tru discovers the peculiar possibility that she and her sister—despite their dark pasts and ordinary appearances—might, indeed, have magic after all.]]> 368 Cat Winters 1419723103 Nikki 0 to-read 3.65 2017
author: Cat Winters
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 22838927
Dramatis personae:

Hanalee Denney, daughter of a white woman and an African American man

Hank Denney, her father—a ghost

Greta Koning, Hanalee’s mother

Clyde Koning, doctor who treated Hank Denney the night he died, now Hanalee’s stepfather

Joe Adder, teenage boy convicted of accidentally killing Hank Denney

Members of the Ku Klux Klan

Townspeople of Elston, Oregon

Question: Was Hank Denney’s death an accident…or was it murder most foul?]]> 352 Cat Winters 1419719157 Nikki 0 to-read 3.85 2016
author: Cat Winters
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> 25566506 The Uninvited comes a haunting historical novel with a compelling mystery at its core.

In 1925, Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There, she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren. A trained psychologist, Alice believes mysteries of the mind can be unlocked scientifically, but now her views are about to be challenged by one curious child.

Seven-year-old Janie O’Daire is a mathematical genius, which is surprising. But what is disturbing are the stories she tells: that her name was once Violet, she grew up in Kansas decades earlier, and she drowned at age nineteen. Alice delves into these stories, at first believing they’re no more than the product of the girl’s vast imagination. But, slowly, Alice comes to the realization that Janie might indeed be telling a strange truth.

Alice knows the investigation may endanger her already shaky professional reputation, and as a woman in a field dominated by men she has no room for mistakes. But she is unprepared for the ways it will illuminate terrifying mysteries within her own past, and in the process, irrevocably change her life.]]> 384 Cat Winters Nikki 0 to-read 3.51 2016
author: Cat Winters
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> 19547848
But Ivy’s life-long gift—or curse—remains. For she sees the uninvited ones—ghosts of loved ones who appear to her, unasked, unwelcomed, for they always herald impending death. On that October evening in 1918 she sees the spirit of her grandmother, rocking in her mother’s chair. An hour later, she learns her younger brother and father have killed a young German out of retaliation for the death of Ivy’s older brother Billy in the Great War.

Horrified, she leaves home, to discover the flu has caused utter panic and the rules governing society have broken down. Ivy is drawn into this new world of jazz, passion, and freedom, where people live for the day, because they could be stricken by nightfall. But as her ‘uninvited guests�� begin to appear to her more often, she knows her life will be torn apart once more, but Ivy has no inkling of the other-worldly revelations about to unfold.]]> 343 Cat Winters 0062347330 Nikki 0 to-read 3.69 2015
author: Cat Winters
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> 13112915
Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time.]]> 387 Cat Winters 141970530X Nikki 0 to-read 3.85 2013
author: Cat Winters
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 20702018 352 Cat Winters 1419712160 Nikki 0 3.92 2014
author: Cat Winters
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> 207252770
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.

Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.

But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.

And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge . . .

A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.]]> 320 Paula Hawkins 0063396521 Nikki 0 to-read 3.26 2024
author: Paula Hawkins
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/21
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]]> 51854625 A murder on the high seas. A detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.

It's 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Traveling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.

But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered.

And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel.

Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger onboard. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.

The breathtaking new novel from Stuart Turton, author of the The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, winner of the Costa Best First Novel Award.]]> 463 Stuart Turton Nikki 0 3.82 2020
author: Stuart Turton
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/18
date added: 2024/10/18
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]]> 50358154
Mystical beliefs and practices have existed for millennia, but why do we still chase the esoteric? From the beginning of human creativity itself, image-makers have been drawn to these unknown spheres and have created curious artworks that transcend time and place �� but what is it that attracts artists to these magical realms?

From theosophy and kabbalah , to the zodiac and alchemy ; spiritualism and ceremonial magic , to the elements and sacred geometry �� The Art of the Occult introduces major occult themes and showcases the artists who have been influenced and led by them. Discover the symbolic and mythical images of the Pre-Raphaelites ; the automatic drawing of Hilma af Klint and Madge Gill ; Leonora Carrington 's surrealist interpretation of myth , alchemy and kabbalah ; and much more.

Featuring prominent, marginalised and little-known artists , The Art of the Occult �� crosses mystical spheres in a bid to inspire and delight . Divided into thematic chapters (The Cosmos, Higher Beings, Practitioners), the book acts as an entertaining introduction to the art of mysticism �� with essays examining each practice and over 175 artworks to discover.

The art of the occult has always existed in the margins but inspired the masses, and this book will spark curiosity in all fans of magic, mysticism and the mysterious .]]> 240 S. Elizabeth 0711248834 Nikki 0 4.25
author: S. Elizabeth
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/17
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]]> 35274560
Only two people know of Carol’s eerie condition. One is her husband, Dwight, who married Carol for her fortune, and—when she lapses into another coma—plots to seize it by proclaiming her dead and quickly burying her . . . alive. The other is her lost love, the infamous outlaw James Moxie. When word of Carol’s dreadful fate reaches him, Moxie rides the Trail again to save his beloved from an early, unnatural grave.

And all the while, awake and aware, Carol fights to free herself from the crippling darkness that binds her—summoning her own fierce will to survive. As the players in this drama of life and death fight to decide her fate, Carol must in the end battle to save herself.]]> 367 Josh Malerman 0399180168 Nikki 0 3.32 2018
author: Josh Malerman
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> 13129925
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, ��ǰ����ǰ�����ö�� is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, ��ǰ����ǰ�����ö�� delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve.

Designed by Andie Reid, cover photography by Christine Ferrara.]]> 248 Grady Hendrix 1594745269 Nikki 0 3.64 2014
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves:
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]]> 35137915
I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter--for whom this book was written--from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers.

Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, O'Farrell captures the perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.]]> 304 Maggie O'Farrell 0525520228 Nikki 0 3.96 2017
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/08
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]]> 47085 St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves introduces a radiant new writer.]]> 246 Karen Russell 0307263983 Nikki 0 3.80 2005
author: Karen Russell
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
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]]> 30303793 For the first time in one volume, a collection of Shirley Jackson's scariest stories, with a foreword by PEN/Hemingway Award winner Ottessa Moshfegh

After the publication of her short story "The Lottery" in the New Yorker in 1948 received an unprecedented amount of attention, Shirley Jackson was quickly established as a master horror storyteller. This collection of classic and newly reprinted stories provides readers with more of her unsettling, dark tales, including the "The Possibility of Evil" and "The Summer People." In these deliciously dark stories, the daily commute turns into a nightmarish game of hide and seek, the loving wife hides homicidal thoughts and the concerned citizen might just be an infamous serial killer. In the haunting world of Shirley Jackson, nothing is as it seems and nowhere is safe, from the city streets to the crumbling country pile, and from the small-town apartment to the dark, dark woods. There's something sinister in suburbia.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 195 Shirley Jackson 0241295424 Nikki 0 4.00 2016
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/02
date added: 2024/10/02
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]]> 45998450 229 Linda Wagner-Martin 8869442047 Nikki 0 to-read 4.00 1987
author: Linda Wagner-Martin
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219813 253 Sarah Monette 0809557770 Nikki 0 4.09 2007
author: Sarah Monette
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
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]]> 233667 This a previously-published edition of ISBN 0451167805.

The Department of Scientific Intelligence (aka "The Shop") never anticipated that two participants in their research program would marry and have a child. Charlie McGee inherited pyrokinetic powers from her parents, who had been given a low-grade hallucinogen called "Lot Six" while at college. Now the government is trying to capture young Charlie and harness her powerful firestarting skills as a weapon.
--stephenking.com]]> 564 Stephen King Nikki 0 3.92 1980
author: Stephen King
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2024/09/30
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]]> 32075861
Moving between Essex and London, myth and modernity, Cora Seaborne's spirited search for the Essex Serpent encourages all around her to test their allegiance to faith or reason in an age of rapid scientific advancement. At the same time, the novel explores the boundaries of love and friendship and the allegiances that we have to one another. The depth of feeling that the inhabitants of Aldwinter share are matched by their city counterparts as they strive to find the courage to express and understand their deepest desires, and strongest fears.]]> 422 Sarah Perry 0062666371 Nikki 0 3.49 2016
author: Sarah Perry
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/25
date added: 2024/09/25
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]]> 195790835 Stories I Wrote for the Devil lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil, where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of living people. Ananda Lima speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences―of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging―and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.]]> 181 Ananda Lima 1250292972 Nikki 0 to-read 3.41 2024
author: Ananda Lima
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/23
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]]> 6185 You can find the redesigned cover of this edition HERE.

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

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

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

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

A Chronology and updated Selected Bibliography are also included.]]> 464 Emily Brontë Nikki 0 3.89 1847
author: Emily Brontë
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1847
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/09/20
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]]> 30285766
Tamsen Donner must be a witch. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the pioneers to the brink of madness. They cannot escape the feeling that someone--or something--is stalking them. Whether it was a curse from the beautiful Tamsen, the choice to follow a disastrous experimental route West, or just plain bad luck--the 90 men, women, and children of the Donner Party are at the brink of one of the deadliest and most disastrous western adventures in American history.

While the ill-fated group struggles to survive in the treacherous mountain conditions--searing heat that turns the sand into bubbling stew; snows that freeze the oxen where they stand--evil begins to grow around them, and within them. As members of the party begin to disappear, they must ask themselves "What if there is something waiting in the mountains? Something disturbing and diseased...and very hungry?"]]> 376 Alma Katsu 0735212511 Nikki 0 3.57 2018
author: Alma Katsu
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/18
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]]> 12005736 336 Sarah Monette 1607013053 Nikki 0 to-read 4.08 2011
author: Sarah Monette
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/15
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review:

]]> 15169331 FINE COPY 23 070761614X Nikki 0 0.0 1995
author: Edward;Ireland;Fitzpatrick Elizabeth Bourke
name: Nikki
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
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]]> 13169612 "I think people marry far too much; it is such a lottery, and for a poor woman--bodily and morally the husband's slave--a very doubtful happiness." --Queen Victoria to her recently married daughter Vicky.

Headstrong, high-spirited, and already widowed, Isabella Walker became Mrs. Henry Robinson at age 31 in 1844. Her first husband had died suddenly, leaving his estate to a son from a previous marriage, so she inherited nothing. A successful civil engineer, Henry moved them, by then with two sons, to Edinburgh's elegant society in 1850. But Henry traveled often and was cold and remote when home, leaving Isabella to her fantasies.

No doubt thousands of Victorian women faced the same circumstances, but Isabella chose to record her innermost thoughts - and especially her infatuation with a married Dr. Edward Lane - in her diary. Over five years the entries mounted-passionate, sensual, suggestive.

One fateful day in 1858 Henry chanced on the diary and, broaching its privacy, read Isabella's intimate entries. Aghast at his wife's perceived infidelity, Henry petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery. Until that year, divorce had been illegal in England, the marital bond being a cornerstone of English life. Their trial would be a cause celebre, threatening the foundations of Victorian society with the specter of "a new and disturbing figure: a middle class wife who was restless, unhappy, avid for arousal. Her diary, read in court, was as explosive as Flaubert's Madame Bovary, just published in France but considered too scandalous to be translated into English until the 1880s.

As she accomplished in her award-winning and bestselling "The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher," Kate Summerscale brilliantly recreates the Victorian world, chronicling in exquisite and compelling detail the life of Isabella Robinson, wherein the longings of a frustrated wife collided with a society clinging to rigid ideas about sanity, the boundaries of privacy, the institution of marriage, and female sexuality.]]> 303 Kate Summerscale 1608199134 Nikki 0 3.11 2012
author: Kate Summerscale
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
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]]> 213442979 848 Sylvia Plath 0571377645 Nikki 0 to-read 4.50
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/12
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]]> 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 Nikki 0 to-read 4.16 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/12
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]]> 46158562 thing, is haunting the Titanic. This is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the passengers of the ship from the moment they set mysterious disappearances, sudden deaths. Now suspended in an eerie, unsettling twilight zone during the four days of the liner's illustrious maiden voyage, a number of the passengers - including millionaires Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, the maid Annie Hebbley and Mark Fletcher - are convinced that something sinister is going on... And then, as the world knows, disaster strikes.

Years later and the world is at war. And a survivor of that fateful night, Annie, is working as a nurse on the sixth voyage of the Titanic's sister ship, the Britannic, now refitted as a hospital ship. Plagued by the demons of her doomed first and near fatal journey across the Atlantic, Annie comes across an unconscious soldier she recognises while doing her rounds. It is the young man Mark. And she is convinced that he did not - could not - have survived the sinking of the Titanic...

Brilliantly combining fact and fiction, the historical and the horrific, The Deep reveals a chilling truth in an unputdownable narrative full of unnerving moments and with a growing, inexorable sense of foreboding.]]> 432 Alma Katsu 1473564492 Nikki 0 3.30 2020
author: Alma Katsu
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/12
date added: 2024/09/12
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]]> 417656
Joining forces with Byron, Keats, and Shelley in a desperate journey that crisscrosses Europe, Crawford desperately seeks his freedom from this vengeful lover who haunts his dreams and will not rest until she destroys all that he cherishes.

Told in the guise of a secret history, this long-awaited tale of passion and terror is finally back in print after more than��20 years.]]> 470 Tim Powers 0441790976 Nikki 0 3.84 1989
author: Tim Powers
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
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This is the weirdest fanfic I've ever read.
]]> 207567842 From three-time Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy, and Nebula Award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first-ever authorized novel set in the world of Shirley Jackson's��The Haunting of Hill House.
��
Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, which is nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s enormous, old, and ever-so eerie—the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.

Despite her own hesitations, Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join her in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house’s peculiarities are made known: strange creatures stalk the grounds, disturbing sounds echo throughout the halls, and time itself seems to shift. All too soon Holly and her friends are at odds not just with one another but with the house itself. It seems something has been waiting in Hill House all these years, and it no longer intends to walk alone.]]> 336 Elizabeth Hand 0316527475 Nikki 0 to-read 3.49 2023
author: Elizabeth Hand
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/05
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]]> 37969723
When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis's people but also of the ancient world at large.

Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war—the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead—all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis's perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker's latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives—and it is nothing short of magnificent.]]> 325 Pat Barker Nikki 0 3.88 2018
author: Pat Barker
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/04
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]]> 42201100 A riveting true story about the sex lives of three real American women, based on nearly a decade of reporting.

Hailed as “a dazzling achievement�� (Los Angeles Times) and “riveting page-turner that explores desire, heartbreak, and infatuation in all its messy, complicated nuance�� (The Washington Post), Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women has captivated readers, booksellers, and critics—and topped bestseller lists—worldwide.

In suburban Indiana we meet Lina, a homemaker and mother of two whose marriage, after a decade, has lost its passion. Starved for affection, Lina battles daily panic attacks and, after reconnecting with an old flame through social media, embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming. In North Dakota we meet Maggie, a seventeen-year-old high school student who allegedly has a clandestine physical relationship with her handsome, married English teacher; the ensuing criminal trial will turn their quiet community upside down. Finally, in an exclusive enclave of the Northeast, we meet Sloane—a gorgeous, successful, and refined restaurant owner—who is happily married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other men and women.

Based on years of immersive reporting and told with astonishing frankness and immediacy, Three Women is both a feat of journalism and a triumph of storytelling, brimming with nuance and empathy. “A work of deep observation, long conversations, and a kind of journalistic alchemy�� (Kate Tuttle, NPR), Three Women introduces us to three unforgettable women—and one remarkable writer—whose experiences remind us that we are not alone.]]> 306 Lisa Taddeo 1451642296 Nikki 0 3.72 2019
author: Lisa Taddeo
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/03
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]]> 761381
Eight costumed boys running to meet their friend Pipkin at the haunted house outside town encounter instead the huge and cadaverous Mr. Moundshroud. As Pipkin scrambles to join them, he is swept away by a dark Something, and Moundshroud leads the boys on the tail of a kite through time and space to search the past for their friend and the meaning of Halloween.]]> 145 Ray Bradbury 0375803017 Nikki 0 3.81 1972
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
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]]> 550912 –from Five Quarts

In the national bestseller Sleep Demons, Bill Hayes took us on a trailblazing trip through the night country of insomnia. Now he is our guide on a whirlwind journey through history, literature, mythology, and science by means of the great red river that runs five quarts strong through our bodies.

Profusely illustrated, the journey stretches from ancient Rome, where gladiators drank the blood of vanquished foes to gain strength and courage, to modern-day laboratories, where high-tech machines test blood for diseases and dedicated scientists search for elusive cures. Along the way, there will be world-changing William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood; Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s advances in making the invisible world visible in the early days of the microscope; Dr. Paul Ehrlich’s Nobel-Prize-winning work in immunology; Dr. Jay Levy’s codiscovery of the virus that causes AIDS. Yet there will also be ignorance and the widespread practice of bloodletting via incision and the use of leeches, which harmed more than it healed; the introduction of hemophilia into the genetic pool of nineteenth-century European royalty thanks to the dynastic ambitions of Queen Victoria; the alleged spread of contaminated blood through a phlebotomist’s negligence in modern-day California.

This is also a personal voyage, in which Hayes recounts the impact of the vital fluid in his daily life, from growing up in a household of five sisters and their monthly cycles, to coming out as a gay man during the explosive early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, to his enduring partnership with an HIV-positive man.

As much a biography of blood as it is a memoir of how this rich substance has shaped one man’s life, Five Quarts is by turns whimsical and provocative, informative and moving. It will get under your skin.]]> 304 Bill Hayes 0345456874 Nikki 0 3.78 2005
author: Bill Hayes
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/28
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]]> 48915818
Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man—one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to.

In The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon, set in a dark-mirror version of postwar England. This Crimson Peak-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and Rebecca, and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished.]]> 362 Caitlin Starling 1250272580 Nikki 0 3.19 2021
author: Caitlin Starling
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/28
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]]> 64623481 A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.

When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street—for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price—they couldn’t believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.

Margaret is not most people.

Margaret is staying. It’s her house. But after four years Hal can’t take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he’s not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine—who knows nothing about the hauntings—arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.]]> 352 Carissa Orlando 0593548612 Nikki 0 to-read 3.87 2023
author: Carissa Orlando
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/23
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]]> 34261775
With It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we help others who have endured tragedy. Having experienced grief from both sides―as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner―Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing. She debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, "happy" life, replacing it with a far healthier middle path, one that invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it.

On this unabridged audio recording read by the author, Megan offers stories, research, life tips, and creative and mindfulness-based practices to guide us through an experience we all must face. With Megan’s gentle but direct guidance, you’ll

�� Why well-meaning advice, therapy, and spiritual wisdom so often end up making it harder for people in grief
�� How challenging the myths of grief―doing away with stages, timetables, and unrealistic ideals about how grief should unfold―allows us to accept it as a mystery to be honored instead of a problem to solve
�� Practical guidance for managing stress, improving sleep, and decreasing anxiety without trying to "fix" your pain

Many people who have suffered a loss feel judged, dismissed, and misunderstood by a culture that wants to "solve" grief. Megan writes, "Grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution." It’s OK That You’re Not OK is a book for grieving people, those who love them, and all those seeking to love themselves―and each other―better.]]> 0 Megan Devine 1683640365 Nikki 0 4.37 2017
author: Megan Devine
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/23
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]]> 48721389 The first biography of this great and tragic poet that takes advantage of a wealth of new material, this is an unusually balanced, comprehensive and definitive life of Sylvia Plath.

*A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND THE TIMES*

Determined not to read Plath's work as if her every act, from childhood on, was a harbinger of her tragic fate, Clark presents new materials about Plath's scientist father, her juvenile writings, and her psychiatric treatment, and evokes a culture in transition in the mid-twentieth century, in the shadow of the atom bomb and the Holocaust, as she explores Sylvia's world: her early relationships and determination not to become a conventional woman and wife; her conflicted ties to her well-meaning, widowed mother; her troubles at the hands of an unenlightened mental-health industry; and her Cambridge years and thunderclap meeting with Ted Hughes, a true marriage of minds that would change the course of poetry in English.

Clark's clear-eyed sympathy for Hughes, his lover Assia Wevill, and other demonized players in the arena of Plath's suicide promotes a deeper understanding of her final days, with their outpouring of first-rate poems. Along with illuminating readings of the poems themselves, Clark's meticulous, compassionate research brings us closer than ever to the spirited woman and visionary artist who blazed a trail that still lights the way for women poets the world over.]]> 1154 Heather Clark 1473579236 Nikki 5 4.56 2020
author: Heather Clark
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/20
date added: 2024/08/20
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]]> 161270 616 Susan Fromberg Schaeffer 0393329798 Nikki 0 to-read 2.72 2006
author: Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
name: Nikki
average rating: 2.72
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/16
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]]> 24455
Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English has never lost faith in science itself, but insist that we hold those who interpret it to higher standards. Women are entering the medical and scientific professions in greater numbers but as recent research shows, experts continue to use pseudoscience to tell women how to live. For Her Own Good provides today’s readers with an indispensable dose of informed skepticism.]]> 432 Barbara Ehrenreich 1400078008 Nikki 0 3.96 1976
author: Barbara Ehrenreich
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/12
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]]> 703292
Orphaned Kit Tyler knows, as she gazes for the first time at the cold, bleak shores of Connecticut Colony, that her new home will never be like the shimmering Caribbean island she left behind. In her relatives' stern Puritan community, she feels like a tropical bird that has flown to the wrong part of the world, a bird that is now caged and lonely. The only place where Kit feels completely free is in the meadows, where she enjoys the company of the old Quaker woman known as the Witch of Blackbird Pond, and on occasion, her young sailor friend Nat. But when Kit's friendship with the "witch" is discovered, Kit is faced with suspicion, fear, and anger. She herself is accused of witchcraft!]]> 256 Elizabeth George Speare Nikki 0 4.01 1958
author: Elizabeth George Speare
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/10
date added: 2024/08/10
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]]> 20926278
In a small New England town, over half a century ago, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls feel the same about Reverend Jacobs—including Jamie's mother and beloved sister, Claire. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond based on a secret obsession. When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, this charismatic preacher curses God, mocks all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town.

Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from the age of thirteen, he plays in bands across the country, living the nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll while fleeing from his family's horrific loss. In his mid-thirties—addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate—Jamie meets Charles Jacobs again, with profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil's devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings.

This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever written. It's a masterpiece from King, in the great American tradition of Frank Norris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe.]]> 405 Stephen King 1476770387 Nikki 0 3.78 2014
author: Stephen King
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/08
date added: 2024/08/08
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]]> 141456

The Bone Woman is Koff’s unflinching, riveting account of her seven UN missions to Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, and Rwanda, as she shares what she saw, how it affected her, who was prosecuted based on evidence she found, and what she learned about the world. Yet even as she recounts the hellish nature of her work and the heartbreak of the survivors, she imbues her story with purpose, humanity, and a sense of justice. A tale of science in service of human rights, The Bone Woman is, even more profoundly, a story of hope and enduring moral principles.]]> 304 Clea Koff 0812968859 Nikki 0 4.00 2001
author: Clea Koff
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> 62039640
From the mad mind of acclaimed chef, Zach Neil comes this killer plant-based cookbook inspired by your favourite horror movies and TV shows. The follow-up to his best-selling cookbook, Nightmare Before Dinner, the Death for Dinner Cookbook delivers gruesome goodness in 60 stick-to-your-guts comfort-food recipes, from startling starters and monstrous mains to depraved desserts and cursed cocktails, including:

�� Crystal Lake BBQ Sliders, inspired by Friday the 13th �� The only thing better than warm sunshine, campfires, and working up an appetite after escaping the clutches of Jason Vorhees are these pulled mushroom sliders.
�� Children of the Hominy, inspired by Children of the Corn �� An ancient recipe from Gatlin, Nebraska, this pozole will make anyone rise up from the stalks.
�� The Hills Have Fries, inspired by The Hills Have Eyes �� This hill of hand-cut french fries smothered in a béchamel and chilli sauce and topped with fresh scallions, red onion, fakon, cilantro and lime sour cream will have everyone watching you.
�� Blood Orange Cheesecake Trifle, inspired by Dexter �� Complete with blood orange, vegan cream cheese, and hints of lemon, this dessert is the right amount of sweet and airy—no gloves or plastic wrap are required to make.
�� Never Sleep Again, inspired by Nightmare on Elm Street �� Stay awake (and alive!) with this alternative take on an old-fashioned cocktail made with a shot of espresso.

Though the recipes may look terrifying, they are easy to make and will impress even the most stubborn carnivores. So, get ready to throw the ultimate Halloween party or some epic movie nights. Let’s just hope Freddy, Michael, and Jason stay on the screen and off the guest list. [cue the beet-juice splatter!}]]> 180 Zach Neil Nikki 0 to-read 3.81
author: Zach Neil
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.81
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rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/02
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]]> 207294788 From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, A Gothic Cookbook focuses on thirteen different Gothic stories and their edible motifs before bringing them to life—and to your table. Delicious yet devious, this cookbook is a culinary and literary delight.

Dracula lulls protagonist Jonathan Harker into a false sense of security with cold cuts and a spicy, smoky, peppery stew. Frankenstein’s “monster�� starts out as a benign vegetarian, while Mrs. Poole’s overindulgence in Mother’s Ruin triggers Mr. Rochester’s downfall in Jane Eyre �� and a bitter tangerine signals a sharp, yet unheeded, warning against marriage and Manderley in Rebecca. Notice, too, how a ghostly presence craves sugar and burnt bread in Toni Morrison’s Beloved...

Inspired by Dr Alessandra Pino’s academic studies into how food manifests itself on the pages of Gothic literature and combining her knife-sharp analysis with Ella Buchan’s experience as a food writer and recipe developer, A Gothic Cookbook pays homage to the most appetizing cuts of the genre, featuring over sixty original recipes illustrated by Lee Henry.

Including recipes such Mina's Chicken Paprikash from Bram Stoker's Dracula That Very Special Gingerbread from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca Acorn Bread inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein And many more]]> 224 Alessandra Pino 1524894087 Nikki 0 to-read 3.76
author: Alessandra Pino
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.76
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rating: 0
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]]> 61109069
1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike.

Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult. When Vaudeline is beckoned to England to solve a high-profile murder, Lenna accompanies her as an understudy. But as the women team up with the powerful men of London’s exclusive Séance Society to solve the mystery, they begin to suspect that they are not merely out to solve a crime, but perhaps entangled in one themselves��
]]> 352 Sarah Penner 0778387119 Nikki 0 3.46 2023
author: Sarah Penner
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
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]]> 57033436
Meet the mystical women and nonbinary people from US history who found strength through the supernatural—and those who are still forging the way today. From the celebrity spirit mediums of the nineteenth century to contemporary activist witches hexing the patriarchy, women have long used magic and mysticism to seize the power they’re so often denied.

Organized around different approaches women have taken to the occult over the decades—using the supernatural for political gain, seeking fame and fortune as spiritual practitioners, embracing their witchy identities, and more—this book shines a light on underappreciated magical pioneers, including:

�� Dion Fortune, who tried to marshal a magical army against Hitler
�� Bri Luna, the Hoodwitch, social media star and serious magical practitioner
�� Joan Quigley, personal psychic to Nancy Reagan
�� Marie Laveau, voodoo queen of New Orleans
�� Elvira, queer goth sex symbol who defied the Satanic Panic
�� And many more!]]> 336 Lisa Kröger Nikki 0 3.62 2022
author: Lisa Kröger
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/30
date added: 2024/07/30
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]]> 25937671 ��
For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently?
��
These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In��A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible. In the hope that the insights and understanding she has gained may help other families recognize when a child is in distress, she tells her story in full, drawing upon her personal journals, the videos and writings that Dylan left behind, and on countless interviews with mental health experts.
��
Filled with hard-won wisdom and compassion,��A Mother’s Reckoning��is a powerful and haunting book that sheds light on one of the most pressing issues of our time. And with fresh wounds from the recent Newtown and Charleston shootings, never has the need for understanding been more urgent.
��
All author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable organizations focusing on mental health issues.

]]> 336 Sue Klebold 1101902760 Nikki 0 4.11 2016
author: Sue Klebold
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
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]]> 53328395
The epitaph John Keats composed for his own gravestone - 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water' - seemingly damned him to oblivion. When he died at the age of twenty-five, having taken a battering from the conservative press, few critics imagined he would be considered one of the great English poets two hundred years later, though he himself had an inkling.

In this brief life, Lucasta Miller takes Keats's best-known poems - the ones you are most likely to have read - and excavates their backstories. In doing so, she resurrects the real a lower-middle-class outsider from a tragic and dysfunctional family, whose extraordinary energy and love of language allowed him to pummel his way into the heart of English literature; a freethinker and a liberal at a time of repression; a human being who delighted in the sensation of the moment; but a complex individual, not the ethereal figure of his posthumous myth.

Combining close-up readings of his writings with the story of his brief but teeming existence, Lucasta Miller shows us how Keats made his poetry, and explains why it retains its vertiginous originality and continues to speak to us across the generations.]]> 252 Lucasta Miller 178733161X Nikki 5 4.03
author: Lucasta Miller
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/25
date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> 40603982 Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) and Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City), New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills surrounding Florence, Italy.

In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy. Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more.

This is the true story of their search for—and identification of—the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide—and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.]]> 354 Douglas Preston Nikki 0 3.83 2008
author: Douglas Preston
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> 2785798 264 Mark S. Schantz 080143761X Nikki 0 3.59 2008
author: Mark S. Schantz
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/21
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]]> 41154327 New York Times bestselling author of Columbine offers a deeply moving account of the extraordinary teenage survivors of the Parkland shooting who pushed back against the NRA and Congressional leaders and launched the singular grassroots March for Our Lives movement.

Emma Gonzalez called BS. David Hogg called out Adult America. The uprising had begun. Cameron Kasky immediately recruited a colorful band of theatre kids and rising activists and brought them together in his living room to map out a movement. Four days after escaping Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, two dozen extraordinary kids announced the audacious March for Our Lives. A month later, it was the fourth largest protest in American history.

Dave Cullen, who has been reporting on the epidemic of school shootings for two decades, takes us along on the students�� nine-month odyssey to the midterms and beyond. With unrivaled access to their friends and families, meetings and homes, he pulls back the curtain to reveal intimate portraits of the quirky, playful organizers that have taken the nation by storm.

Cullen brings us onto the bus for the Road to Change tour showing us how these kids seized an opportunity. They hit the highway to organize the young activist groups mushrooming across America in their image. Rattled but undeterred, they pressed on in gun country even as adversaries armed with assault weapons tailed them across Texas and Utah trying to scare them off.

The Parkland students are genuinely candid about their experiences. We see them cope with shattered friendships and PTSD, along with the normal day-to-day struggles of school, including AP exams and college acceptances. Yet, with the idealism of youth they are mostly bubbling with fresh ideas. As victims refusing victimhood, they continue to devise clever new tactics to stir their generation to action while building a powerhouse network to match the NRA’s.

This spell-binding book is a testament to change and a perceptive examination of a pivotal moment in American culture. After two decades of adult hand-wringing, the MFOL kids are mapping a way out. They see a long road ahead, a generational struggle to save every kid of every color from the ravages of gun violence in America. Parkland is a story of staggering empowerment and hope, told through the wildly creative and wickedly funny voices of a group of remarkable kids.]]> 385 Dave Cullen 0062882945 Nikki 0 3.98 2019
author: Dave Cullen
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/19
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]]> 60097427 Kate Winkler Dawson tells the story of Edward Rulloff--a serial murderer who was called "too intelligent to be killed"--and the array of 19th century investigators who were convinced his brain held the key to finally understanding the criminal mind.

Edward Rulloff was a brilliant yet utterly amoral murderer--some have called him a "Victorian-era Hannibal Lecter"--whose crimes spanned decades and whose victims were chosen out of revenge, out of envy, and sometimes out of necessity. From his humble beginnings in upstate New York to the dazzling salons and social life he established in New York City, at every turn Rulloff used his intelligence and regal bearing to evade detection and avoid punishment. He could talk his way out of any crime...until one day, Rulloff's luck ran out.

By 1871 Rulloff sat chained in his cell--a psychopath holding court while curious 19th-century mind hunters tried to understand what made him tick. From alienists (early psychiatrists who tried to analyze the source of his madness) to neurologists (who wanted to dissect his brain) to phrenologists (who analyzed the bumps on his head to determine his character), each one thought he held the key to understanding the essential question: is evil born or made? Eventually, Rulloff's brain would be placed in a jar at Cornell University as the prize specimen of their anatomy collection...where it still sits today, slowly moldering in a dusty jar. But his story--and its implications for the emerging field of criminal psychology--were just beginning.

Expanded from season one of her podcast on the Exactly Right network, in All That Is Wicked Kate Winkler Dawson draws on hundreds of source materials and never-before-shared historical documents to present one of the first glimpses into the mind of a serial killer--a century before the term was coined--through the scientists whose work would come to influence criminal justice for decades to come.]]> 320 Kate Winkler Dawson 0593420063 Nikki 0 3.59 2022
author: Kate Winkler Dawson
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
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]]> 27774749
From the internationally bestselling author, a deeply researched and atmospheric murder mystery of late Victorian-era London

In the summer of 1895, Robert Coombes (age 13) and his brother Nattie (age 12) were seen spending lavishly around the docklands of East London -- for ten days in July, they ate out at coffee houses and took trips to the seaside and the theater. The boys told neighbors they had been left home alone while their mother visited family in Liverpool, but their aunt was suspicious. When she eventually forced the brothers to open the house to her, she found the badly decomposed body of their mother in a bedroom upstairs. Robert and Nattie were arrested for matricide and sent for trial at the Old Bailey.��

Robert confessed to having stabbed his mother, but his lawyers argued that he was insane. Nattie struck a plea and gave evidence against his brother. The court heard testimony about Robert's severe headaches, his fascination with violent criminals and his passion for 'penny dreadfuls', the pulp fiction of the day. He seemed to feel no remorse for what he had done, and neither the prosecution nor the defense could find a motive for the murder. The judge sentenced the thirteen-year-old to detention in Broadmoor, the most infamous criminal lunatic asylum in the land. Yet Broadmoor turned out to be the beginning of a new life for Robert--one that would have profoundly shocked anyone who thought they understood the Wicked Boy.

At a time of great tumult and uncertainty, Robert Coombes's case crystallized contemporary anxieties about the education of the working classes, the dangers of pulp fiction, and evolving theories of criminality, childhood, and insanity. With riveting detail and rich atmosphere, Kate Summerscale recreates this terrible crime and its aftermath, uncovering an extraordinary story of man's capacity to overcome the past.]]> 378 Kate Summerscale 1594205787 Nikki 0 3.43 2016
author: Kate Summerscale
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/15
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]]> 199215100
Ferns grow knee-deep along the shoulder, laced with briars and unripe raspberries, so thick they could hide a bear. Could hide anything, really.

In 1980s Appalachia, life isn’t easy for Sheila. She endures relentless taunting and bullying at the hands of her classmates; she takes care of her great-aunt, the garden and home, and the rabbits; and forages for mushrooms in the forest, all while her mother works long, back-breaking shifts at the nearby state asylum. But it’s her peculiar little sister, Angie, who worries her the most. Angie is obsessed with nuclear war, Rambo, zombies, a Russian invasion of their community, and the ominous, tarot-like cards that she creates that somehow speak to her. As if all that weren’t enough, Sheila feels an unexplainable weight around her neck. Is it the ancient and strange mountain that they live on that casts its shadow on her, or something or someone else unknown? Unseen?

When a pair of female hikers are brutally murdered on the nearby Appalachian trail, Sheila and Angie find themselves inexorably drawn into the hunt for the killer. As the ever-present threat of violence looms larger, the mountain might be the only thing that can save them from the darkness consuming their home and their community.

Unsettling, propulsive, and chillingly atmospheric, Alisa Alering’s Smothermoss opens a hidden door into a world caught between rural gothic and fairytale, inviting the reader to renegotiate what is seen and unseen, what is real and what is haunted]]> 256 Alisa Alering 1959030582 Nikki 0 to-read 3.48 2024
author: Alisa Alering
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/13
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]]> 57693601 Part memoir and part literary true crime, Tell Me Everything is the mesmerizing story of a landmark sexual assault investigation and the private investigator who helped crack it open.

Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,�� people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Krouse accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Krouse knows she should turn the assignment down; her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway, inspired by Grayson’s conviction that he could help change things forever--and maybe she could, too.

Over the next five years, Krouse learns everything she can about P. I. technique, tracking down witnesses and investigating a culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university’s football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and a historic civil rights case, she finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, she must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.]]> 288 Erika Krouse 1250240301 Nikki 5 3.74 2022
author: Erika Krouse
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/12
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]]> 57693184 Titanic meets The Shining in S.A. Barnes�� Dead Silence, a SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended.

A GHOST SHIP.
A SALVAGE CREW.
UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS.

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.]]> 343 S.A. Barnes 1250819997 Nikki 0 to-read 3.76 2022
author: S.A. Barnes
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40538605
The popular fascination with the Borden murders and its central, enigmatic character has endured for more than a hundred years, but the legend often outstrips the story. Based on transcripts of the Borden legal proceedings, contemporary newspaper articles, previously withheld lawyer's journals, unpublished local reports, and recently unearthed letters from Lizzie herself, The Trial of Lizzie Borden is a definitive account of the Borden murder case and offers a window into America in the Gilded Age, showcasing its most deeply held convictions and its most troubling social anxieties.]]> 375 Cara Robertson 1501168371 Nikki 0 3.38 2019
author: Cara Robertson
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
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]]> 7756979 ��
The prison library counter, his new post, attracts con men, minor prophets, ghosts, and an assortment of quirky regulars searching for the perfect book and a connection to the outside world. There’s an anxious pimp who solicits Steinberg’s help in writing a memoir. A passionate gangster who dreams of hosting a cooking show titled Thug Sizzle. A disgruntled officer who instigates a major feud over a Post-it note. A doomed ex-stripper who asks Steinberg to orchestrate a reunion with her estranged son, himself an inmate. Over time, Steinberg is drawn into the accidental community of outcasts that has formed among his bookshelves �� a drama he recounts with heartbreak and humor. But when the struggles of the prison library �� between life and death, love and loyalty �� become personal, Steinberg is forced to take sides.

Running the Books is a trenchant exploration of prison culture and an entertaining tale of one young man’s earnest attempt to find his place in the world while trying not to get fired in the process.��]]> 399 Avi Steinberg 0385529090 Nikki 0 3.50 2010
author: Avi Steinberg
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
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]]> 29036 The Great Influenza is ultimately a tale of triumph amid tragedy, which provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. John M. Barry has written a new afterword for this edition that brings us up to speed on the terrible threat of the avian flu and suggest ways in which we might head off another flu pandemic.]]> 546 John M. Barry 0143036491 Nikki 0 3.97 2004
author: John M. Barry
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/03
date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> 60052118 WANTED - Bloodmaid of exceptional taste. Must have a keen proclivity for life's finer pleasures. Girls of weak will need not apply.

A young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power, in this dark and enthralling gothic novel from the author of The Year of the Witching.

Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation is all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper, seeking a bloodmaid.

Though she knows little about the far north--where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service--Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery--and at the center of it all is her.

Countess Lisavet, who presides over this hedonistic court, is loved and feared in equal measure. She takes a special interest in Marion. Lisavet is magnetic, and Marion is eager to please her new mistress. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing in the night, Marion is thrust into a vicious game of cat and mouse. She'll need to learn the rules of her new home--and fast--or its halls will soon become her grave.]]> 304 Alexis Henderson 0593438469 Nikki 0 to-read 3.64 2022
author: Alexis Henderson
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 25954750 211 Lisa Morton 1780235372 Nikki 0 3.54 2015
author: Lisa Morton
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2024/06/29
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]]> 62040798 We never remember the dead girls. We never forget the killers.

Twelve years ago, 18-year-old University of Iowa freshman Abby Hartmann disappeared. Now, Jon Allan Blue, the serial killer suspected of her murder, is about to be executed. Abby's best friends, Bree and Chelsea, watch as Abby's memory is unearthed and overshadowed by Blue and his flashier crimes. The friends, estranged in the wake of Abby's disappearance, and suffering from years of unvoiced resentments, must reunite when a high-profile podcast dedicates its next season to Blue's murders.

Tense and introspective, for readers of Megan Goldin and Heather Gudenkauf, Don’t Forget the Girl is an astonishing debut thriller that mines the complexities of friendship and the secrets between us that we may take to the grave.]]> 320 Rebecca McKanna 1728270472 Nikki 0 to-read 3.72 2023
author: Rebecca McKanna
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> 114192

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions.

The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read Medical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.]]> 501 Harriet A. Washington 0385509936 Nikki 0 4.42 2007
author: Harriet A. Washington
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> 85157778
On February 13, 2017, two teenage girls��13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German—decided to enjoy a day off from school by exploring the popular hiking trails near the Monon High Bridge��just a few minutes�� drive from Libby’s home in Delphi, Indiana. Libby’s sister, Kelsi, dropped the two girls off at the head of the trail and waved to them as they walked down the path, which was the last time they’d ever be seen alive.��Less than 24 hours later, their bodies were found on the north bank of Deer Creek, about a mile from where they were last seen.��There were few clues and little to go on in terms of physical evidence, except for the visual and audio remnants of a strange encounter the girls had with a stranger just hours before their disappearance, an encounter unsettling enough that Libby had thought to record it on her cellphone as it unfolded. In the years since the murders were first made public, Libby’s audio and video recordings have been released and two very different composite sketches of the suspect have been shown, but local law enforcement remained vague about developments for years—until finally, in October 2022, the long-awaited suspect was arrested and a trial date was set.

Longtime anchor and journalist Susan Hendricks was one of the first reporters to cover the case. A broadcast veteran with decades�� worth of experience under her belt, she was no stranger when it came to sharing the tragedies of the day with viewers. But there was something about this case that rattled her to her core. A year after the murders, Susan went to Delphi to interview the victims�� families for an in-depth special report where Kelsi drove Susan down the same path that she drove her sister down on the last day of her life. Over the years, Susan has built close relationships with family members, and law enforcement officials and armchair detectives alike who are determined to get justice for Abby and Libby.

In�� Down the Hill,�� Hendricks digs deeper in into the mystery that has captivated our nation for years, exploring the family's enduring resilience and advocacy, as well as the rippling impact the case has had on not just Delphi, but the very heart of the American heartland.��As a result, this book is more than just a book about a double homicide; it’s about a small town in middle America that’s been haunted by an unfathomable act of violence; it’s about the ways families and communities cope with grief and move forward after tragedy; it’s about the limitations of local law enforcement and the rise of technology in helping to solve cases in new ways. But it’s also about compassion, connection, empathy, and resilience—on a very real, very human level.]]> 288 Susan Hendricks 0306830248 Nikki 0 to-read 3.58 2023
author: Susan Hendricks
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 103450619 A fascinating deep dive into the dark world of forensic science as experts team up to solve the identity of an unknown woman named "Ina Jane Doe," exploring the rapidly evolving techniques scientists are using to break the most notorious cold cases, written by the host of the popular true crime podcast, The Fall Line

Fans of true crime shows like CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Law and Order know that when it comes to "getting the bad guy" behind bars, your best chance of success boils down to the strength of your evidence--and the forensic science used to obtain it. Beyond the silver screen, forensic science has been used for decades to help solve even the most tough-to-crack cases. In 2018, the accused Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, was finally apprehended after a decades-long investigation thanks to a very recent technique called forensic genealogy, which has since led to the closure of hundreds of cold cases, bringing long-awaited justice to victims and families alike. But when it comes to solving these incredibly difficult cases, forensic genealogy is just the tip of the iceberg--and many readers have no idea just how far down that iceberg goes.

For Laurah Norton, forensic science was always more of a passion than anything else. But after learning about a mishandled 1990s cold case involving missing twins, she was spurred to action, eventually creating a massively popular podcast and building a platform that helped bring widespread attention and resources to the case. LAY THEM TO REST builds on Laurah's fascination with these investigations, introducing readers to the history and evolution of forensic science, from the death masks used in Ancient Rome to the 3-D facial reconstruction technology used today. Incorporating the stories of real-life John & Jane Does from around the world, Laurah also examines how changing identification methods have helped solve the most iconic cold cases. Along the way readers will also get to see Laurah solve a case in real time with forensic anthropologist Dr. Amy Michael, as they try to determine the identity of "Ina" Jane Doe, a woman whose head was found in a brush in an Illinois park in 1993.

More than just a chronicle of the history of forensics, LAY THEM TO REST is also a celebration of the growing field of experts, forensic artists, and anthropologists (many of whom Laurah talks to in the book), who work tirelessly to bring closure to these unsolved cases. And of course, this book asks why some cases go unsolved, highlighting the "missing missing," the sex workers, undocumented, the cases that so desperately need our attention, but so rarely get it.

Engrossing, informative, heartbreaking, and hopeful, LAY THEM TO REST is a deep dive into the world of forensic science, showing readers how far we've come in cracking cases and catching killers, and illuminating just how far we have yet to go.]]> 352 Laurah Norton 0306828804 Nikki 0 to-read 3.83 2023
author: Laurah Norton
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> 40196391 128 Maryse Meijer 1948226014 Nikki 0 to-read 3.64 2018
author: Maryse Meijer
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 7862424 27 Scott Davis 1616239468 Nikki 0 to-read 4.13 2011
author: Scott Davis
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/22
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]]> 39858933 Revealed are the intricacies and interconnectedness of characters and subjects throughout. We see how Akasha (Queen of Egypt and the first vampire) is connected to Mekare (the inheritor of the title of the Queen of the Damned), etc., and how these characters connect back to the darkest rebel outlaw of them all, Lestat de Lioncourt ...
And we see, as well, the ways in which Rice's vampires have evolved from warring civilizations to isolated covens to a unified race of blood drinkers led by their hero-wanderer and sole monarch, Prince Lestat.
For devoted and first-time Anne Rice readers alike, An Alphabettery of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles will be the holy grail of lore and revelation for those who have been, and continue to be, mesmerized by the worlds within worlds of these beloved tales of the undead.]]> 480 Becket 0525434739 Nikki 0 to-read 4.39 2018
author: Becket
name: Nikki
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 673480 Book by Dickinson, Joy 263 Joy Dickinson 0806516968 Nikki 0 to-read 3.90 1995
author: Joy Dickinson
name: Nikki
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>