Rachel's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 18 Apr 2025 02:04:13 -0700 60 Rachel's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1) 28446947 Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That's what it felt like for Keats in 1819.

How about Autumn 2016?

Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer.

Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever.

Ali Smith's new novel is a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, on what harvest means. This first in a seasonal quartet casts an eye over our own time. Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearian jeu d'esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s Pop art: the centuries cast their eyes over our own history-making.

Here's where we're living. Here's time at its most contemporaneous and its most cyclic.

From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, and a story about ageing and time and love and stories themselves.

Here comes Autumn.]]> 264 Ali Smith 0241207002 Rachel 0 currently-reading 3.67 2016 Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1)
author: Ali Smith
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Less Than Zero 9915
Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs, and into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.]]> 208 Bret Easton Ellis Rachel 3 3.62 1985 Less Than Zero
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
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]]> Black Woods Blue Sky 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 Rachel 5 3.69 2025 Black Woods Blue Sky
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
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]]> Victorian Psycho 213395480 From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.

Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery . . . and creeping across the moonlit lawns. . . .

Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.]]> 208 Virginia Feito 1631498630 Rachel 4 3.62 2025 Victorian Psycho
author: Virginia Feito
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> At the Bottom of the Garden 212294435 A murderess becomes the guardian of two very unusual girls in this mesmerizing gothic novel from acclaimed author Camilla Bruce.

Clara Woods is a killer—and perfectly fine with it, too. So what if she takes a couple of lives to make her ownĚýa little bit better? At the bottom of her garden is a flowerbed, long overgrown, where her late husband rests in peace—or so she always thought.

Then the girls arrive.

Lily and Violet are her nieces,Ěýrecently orphaned after their affluent parents died on an ill-fated anniversary trip. In accordance with their parents' will, the sisters are to go to their closest relative—who just so happens to be Clara.ĚýDespite having no interest in children, Clara agrees to take them, hoping to get her hands on some of the girls' assets—not just to bolster her dwindling fortune, but also to establish what she hopes will be her legacy: a line of diamond jewelry.

There's only one problem. Violet can see the dead man at the bottom of the garden. She can see all of Clara's ghosts…andĚýcall them back into existence. Soon Clara is plagued by her victimsĚýand at war with the gifted girls in her care. Lily and Violet have become a liability—and know far more than they should…]]> 368 Camilla Bruce 059372495X Rachel 2 3.49 2025 At the Bottom of the Garden
author: Camilla Bruce
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Seasonal Quartet (Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer)]]> 58019516
Contents:
#1 - Autumn
A once-in-a-generation series, Ali Smith's Seasonal quartet is a tour-de-force about love, time, art, politics, and how we live now.
'Undoubtedly Smith at her best. Puckish, yet elegant; angry, but comforting' The Times
Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer.
Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever . . .

#2 - Winter
Winter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer's leaves? Dead litter.
The world shrinks; the sap sinks.
But winter makes things visible. And if there's ice, there'll be fire.
In Ali Smith's Winter, lifeforce matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to her sensational Autumn, Smith casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter.
It's the season that teaches us survival.
Here comes Winter.

#3 - Spring
What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times?
Spring. The great connective.
With an eye to the migrancy of story over time and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tell the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown, Smith opens the door.
The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story?
Hope springs eternal.

#4 - Summer
In the present, Sacha knows the world’s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile, the world’s in meltdown­—and the real meltdown hasn’t even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they’re living on borrowed time.
This is a story about people on the brink of change. They’re family, but they think they’re strangers. So: Where does family begin? And what do people who think they’ve got nothing in common have in common?
Summer.]]> 842 Ali Smith 0593315588 Rachel 0 to-read 4.26 Seasonal Quartet (Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer)
author: Ali Smith
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/07
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]]> Gliff 203164415 From a literary master, a moving and genre-bending story about our era-spanning search for meaning and knowing.

An uncertain near-future. A story of new boundaries drawn between people daily. A not-very brave new world.

Add two children. And a horse.

From a Scottish word meaning a transient moment, a shock, a faint glimpse, Gliff explores how and why we endeavour to make a mark on the world. In a time when western industry wants to reduce us to algorithms and data—something easily categorizable and predictable—Smith shows us why our humanity, our individual complexities, matter more than ever.]]> 288 Ali Smith 0593701569 Rachel 4 3.94 2024 Gliff
author: Ali Smith
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
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]]> Confess 22609310
For once, Auburn takes a chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is hiding a huge secret. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything Auburn loves most, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it—but can she do it?]]> 306 Colleen Hoover 1476791457 Rachel 5 4.14 2015 Confess
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2015/12/22
date added: 2025/03/01
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]]> This Girl's a Killer 202204691 Ask Cordelia Black why she did it. The answer will always be: He had it coming.

Cordelia Black loves exactly three things: Her chosen family, her hairdresser (worth every penny plus tip), and killing bad men.

By day she's an ambitious pharma rep with a flawless reputation and designer wardrobe. By night, she culls South Louisiana of unscrupulous men—monsters who think they've evaded justice, until they meet her. Sure, the evening news may have started throwing around phrases like "serial killer," but Cordelia knows that's absurd. She's not a killer, she is simply karma. And being karma requires complete and utter control.

But when Cordelia discovers a flaw in her perfectly designed system for eliminating monsters, pressure heightens. And it only intensifies when her best friend starts dating a man Cordelia isn't sure is a good person. Someone who might just unravel everything she has worked for.

Soon enough Cordelia has to come face to face with the choices she's made. The good, the bad, and the murderous. Both her family, and her freedom, depend on it.]]> 432 Emma C. Wells 1464218625 Rachel 3 3.65 2024 This Girl's a Killer
author: Emma C. Wells
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
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]]> The Sellout 22237161
Born in the "agrarian ghetto" of Dickens―on the southern outskirts of Los Angeles―the narrator of The Sellout resigns himself to the fate of lower-middle-class Californians: "I'd die in the same bedroom I'd grown up in, looking up at the cracks in the stucco ceiling that've been there since '68 quake." Raised by a single father, a controversial sociologist, he spent his childhood as the subject in racially charged psychological studies. He is led to believe that his father's pioneering work will result in a memoir that will solve his family's financial woes. But when his father is killed in a police shoot-out, he realizes there never was a memoir. All that's left is the bill for a drive-thru funeral.

Fueled by this deceit and the general disrepair of his hometown, the narrator sets out to right another wrong: Dickens has literally been removed from the map to save California from further embarrassment. Enlisting the help of the town's most famous resident―the last surviving Little Rascal, Hominy Jenkins―he initiates the most outrageous action conceivable: reinstating slavery and segregating the local high school, which lands him in the Supreme Court.]]> 289 Paul Beatty 0374260508 Rachel 0 currently-reading 3.75 2015 The Sellout
author: Paul Beatty
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)]]> 2247142
It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a “sissy.� Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley’s fascination with Dickie’s debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game.

“Sinister and strangely alluring,� (Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly) The Talented Mr. Ripley serves as an unforgettable introduction to this smooth confidence man, whose talent for self-invention is as unnerving—and unnervingly revealing of the American psyche—as ever.]]> 271 Patricia Highsmith Rachel 4 3.96 1955 The Talented Mr. Ripley (Ripley, #1)
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1955
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
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]]> Stone Yard Devotional 168632462 A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers.

"Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout." THE GUARDIAN UK]]> 320 Charlotte Wood Rachel 0 to-read 3.73 2023 Stone Yard Devotional
author: Charlotte Wood
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/11
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty]]> 211953307 A moving culinary memoir about the relationship between food and family—sustenance and survival—from a chef, award-winning journalist, and daughter of a Holocaust survivor.When you’re raised by someone who once survived on potato peels and coffee grounds, you develop a pretty healthy respect for food.Bonny Reichert avoided everything to do with the Holocaust until she found herself, in midlife, suddenly typing those words into an article she was writing. The journalist had grown up hearing stories about her father’s near-starvation and ultimate survival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but she never imagined she would be able to face this epic legacy head on.ĚýThen a chance encounter with a perfect bowl of borscht in Warsaw set Bonny on a journey to unearth her culinary lineage, and she began to dig for the roots of her food obsession, dish by dish. Tracing the defining moments of her life, from her colorful childhood in the restaurant business to the crumbling of her first marriage and the intensity of young motherhood, her decision to become a chef and that life-altering visit to Poland, the author recounts a tale of scarcity and plenty, stepping into the kitchen to connect her past to her future. Whether it's the flaky potato knishes and molasses porridge bread she learned to bake at her Baba Sarah’s elbow, the creamy vichyssoise she taught herself to cook in her tiny student apartment, or the brown butter eggs her father, now 93, still scrambles for her whenever she needs comfort, cuisine is both an anchor and an identity; a source of joy and a signifier of survival.How to Share an Egg is a journey of deep flavors and surprising contrasts. By turns sweet, salty, sour, and bitter, this is one woman's search to find her voice as a writer, chef, mother and daughter. Do the tiny dramas of her own life matter in comparison to everything her father has seen and done?ĚýThisĚýmoving exploration of heritage, inheritance, and self-discovery sets out to find the answer.]]> 304 Bonny Reichert 0593599160 Rachel 0 to-read 4.11 2025 How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty
author: Bonny Reichert
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/06
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]]> Breakfast at Tiffany's 59788904 Truman Capote Rachel 4 3.87 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's
author: Truman Capote
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/21
date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> No Exit 35522836
Darby Thorne is a college student stranded by a blizzard at a highway rest stop in the middle of nowhere. She’s on the way home to see her sick mother. She’ll have to spend the night in the rest stop with four complete strangers. Then she stumbles across a little girl locked inside one of their parked cars.

There is no cell phone reception, no telephone, no way out because of the snow, and she doesn’t know which one of the other travelers is the kidnapper.

Who is the little girl? Why has she been taken? And how can Darby save her?]]> 287 Taylor Adams 1912106760 Rachel 3 3.98 2017 No Exit
author: Taylor Adams
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> The Turn of the Screw 12948
A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate... An estate haunted by a beckoning evil. Half-seen figures who glare from dark towers and dusty windows- silent, foul phantoms who, day by day, night by night, come closer, ever closer. With growing horror, the helpless governess realizes the fiendish creatures want the children, seeking to corrupt their bodies, possess their minds, own their souls. But worse-much worse- the governess discovers that Miles and Flora have no terror of the lurking evil. For they want the walking dead as badly as the dead want them.

Excerpt:
I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days - found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house.]]> 121 Henry James 0140620613 Rachel 0 to-read 3.42 1898 The Turn of the Screw
author: Henry James
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1898
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/17
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]]> The Lotus Shoes 213888887 THE CAPTIVATING, HEART-RENDING STORY OF TWO WOMEN IN 1800S CHINA

Love and loss. Sisterhood and betrayal. Little Flower and Linjing's fates are bound together.

As a child, Little Flower is sold to Linjing's wealthy family to become a muizai. In a fit of childish jealousy over her new handmaiden's ladylike bound feet and talent for embroidery, Linjing ensures Little Flower can never leave her to ascend in society.

Despite their starkly different places in the Fong household, over the years the two girls must work together to secure both their futures through Linjing's marriage. As the two grow up, they are by turns bitter rivals and tentative friends.

Until scandal strikes the family, and Linjing and Little Flower's lives are unexpectedly thrown into chaos. Linjing's fall from grace could be an opportunity for Little Flower - but will their intertwined fates lead to triumph, or tragedy for them both?]]> 400 Jane Yang Rachel 0 to-read 4.23 2025 The Lotus Shoes
author: Jane Yang
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> Negative Space 52028992 364 B.R. Yeager 1733569456 Rachel 0 to-read 3.71 2020 Negative Space
author: B.R. Yeager
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)]]> 203956647 A brand new series. An iconic new detective duo. And a puzzling new murder to solve...

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job...

Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 059365322X.]]> 400 Richard Osman Rachel 4 4.06 2024 We Solve Murders (We Solve Murders, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Rachel 1 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health]]> 208920500 A revolutionary, science-based look at the ways nature can help make us healthier.

Fifteen years ago, University of Oxford Professor Kathy Willis read a study that radically changed her view of our relationship to the natural world. The study revealed that hospital patients recovering from surgery improved three times faster when they looked out of their windows at trees rather than seeing walls.

Since then, she has dedicated her research to proving this link between the amount of green space in our lives and our better health, mood and longevity. For the first time ever, Good Nature brings together these recent scientific findings and shares the simple changes we can all make in our lives. The book is full of surprising and practical ways that nature can improve our lives, such as: did you know that cedar enhances cancer-fighting cells in our immune system? Or that touching wood makes us feel calmer (the woodier, the knot-ier, the better)? Or that the scent of roses helps people drive more calmly and safely? Even having a pot plant by your desk can make a difference.

A book with applications to everything from which way we walk to work to choosing where our kids should go to school, Good Nature brings the latest scientific research into our homes and workplaces. It shows how nature can help reduce the costs of healthcare and how, by bringing nature into our towns and cities, we can create a better, happier and healthier environment for all.]]> 330 Kathy Willis 1526664860 Rachel 0 to-read 4.01 2024 Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health
author: Kathy Willis
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/02
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]]> I Made It Out of Clay 204169220 In this darkly funny and surprisingly sweet novel, a woman creates a golem in a desperate attempt to pretend her life is a romantic comedy rather than a disaster.

Nothing’s going well for Eve: She’s single, turning forty, stressed at work and anxious about a recent series of increasingly creepy incidents. Most devastatingly, her beloved father died last year, and her family still won’t acknowledge their sorrow.

With her younger sister’s wedding rapidly approaching, Eve is on the verge of panic. She can’t bear to attend the event alone. That’s when she recalls a strange story her Yiddish grandmother once told her, about a protector forged of desperation� and Eve, to her own shock, manages to create a golem.

At first everything seems great. The golem is indeed protective—and also attractive. But when they head out to a rural summer camp for the family wedding, Eve’s lighthearted rom-com fantasy swiftly mudslides into something much darker.]]> 352 Beth Kander 0778368122 Rachel 0 to-read 3.45 2024 I Made It Out of Clay
author: Beth Kander
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Lifeform 208209822
What happened was this: Jenny Slate was a human mammal who sniffed the air every morning hoping to find another person to love who would love her, and in that period there was a deep dark loneliness that she had to face and befriend, and then we are pleased to report that she did fall in love, and in that period she was like chimes, or a flock of clean breaths, and her spine lying flat was the many-colored planks on the xylophone, but also she was rabid with fear of losing this love, because of past injury. And then what happened was that she became a wild-pregnant-mammal-thing and then she exploded herself by having a whole baby blast through her vagina during a global plague and then she was expected to carry on like everything was normal—but was this normal, and had she or anything ever been normal? Herein lies an account of this journey, told in five phases—Single, True Love, Pregnancy, Baby, and Ongoing—through luminous, laugh-out-loud funny, unclassifiable essays that take the form of letters to a doctor, dreams of a stork, fantasy therapy sessions, gossip between racoons, excerpts from an imaginary olden timey play, obituaries, theories about post-partum hair loss, graduation speeches, and more. No one writes like Jenny Slate.]]> 240 Jenny Slate 0316263931 Rachel 0 to-read 3.72 2024 Lifeform
author: Jenny Slate
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> You Better Watch Out 203579200 From international bestselling authors James S. Murray (better known as "Murr" on the hit TV show Impractical Jokers) and Darren Wearmouth, comes You Better Watch Out, a suspenseful, serial killer thriller that leaves you wondering, is Christmas really the best time of the year? Forty-eight hours until Christmas, Jessica Kane wakes up with blurred vision, ears ringing, and in excruciating pain. A gash in her head and blood running down her face, the last thing she remembers is going for a run and something or someone hitting her in the head. It doesn't take her long to realize she is trapped in an unknown, deserted town with five other strangers who share similar stories of being attacked and stranded there. Unsure why and how they got there, she knows one thing for certain, she has to find a way out. That becomes nearly impossible when someone is meticulously orchestrating their deaths, one by one, and the only thing Jessica can do is watch the life leave their eyes. The fenced-in town is the killer’s very own playground and there's nowhere left to hide... she better watch out because she could be next.]]> 240 James S. Murray 1250286263 Rachel 0 to-read 3.61 2024 You Better Watch Out
author: James S. Murray
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
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]]> Shanghai 199798044 In this dazzling thriller, New York Times bestselling author Joseph Kanon gives us his richest setting pre-World War II Shanghai, where glamour and squalor exist side by side and murder is just a cost of doing business. A love affair against all odds, a city dancing on the rim of a volcano�Shanghai is the story of a political haven that becomes a minefield of conflicting loyalties.

After the violence of Kristallnacht (1938), European Jews, now desperate to emigrate, found the consular doors of the world closed to them. Only one port required no entry Shanghai, a self-governing Western trading enclave in what was technically Chinese territory, a political anomaly that became an escape hatch—if you were lucky enough to afford a ticket on one of the great Lloyd liners sailing to the East and safety.

Daniel Lohr was one of the lucky ones—lucky enough to have escaped the Gestapo when his colleagues in the resistance were caught, lucky to have an uncle waiting in Shanghai, lucky to find a casual shipboard flirtation turn unexpectedly passionate. But even lucky refugees have to confront the reality of Shanghai. With all their assets, and passports confiscated by the Nazis, they arrive penniless and stateless in a tumultuous, nearly lawless city notorious for vice. When you can sink fast, how far are you willing to go to survive? What lines do you cross? As Daniel tries to navigate his way through his uncle’s world in Shanghai’s fabled nightlife, he finds himself increasingly ensnared in a maze where politics and crime are two sides of the same shiny coin. The trick, his uncle tells him, is to stay one step ahead. But how do you stay ahead of murder? How do you outrun your own past?]]> 304 Joseph Kanon 1668006421 Rachel 0 to-read 3.60 2024 Shanghai
author: Joseph Kanon
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension]]> 181346634
There’s Always This Year is a triumph, brimming with joy, pain, solidarity, comfort, outrage, and hope. No matter the subject of his keen focus—whether it's basketball, or music, or performance—Hanif Abdurraqib’s exquisite writing is always poetry, always profound, and always a clarion call to radically reimagine how we think about our culture, our country, and ourselves.]]> 334 Hanif Abdurraqib 0593448790 Rachel 0 to-read 4.32 2024 There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
author: Hanif Abdurraqib
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> There Are Rivers in the Sky 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.�]]> 464 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Rachel 0 to-read 4.38 2024 There Are Rivers in the Sky
author: Elif Shafak
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> How to End a Love Story 63247365
“Emotional, relatable and binge-worthy." –Tessa Bailey

“I’ll read anything she writes. An absolute star." –Emily Henry

“I was hooked on the very first page. Don't miss this one!" � Carley Fortune

Two writers with a complicated history end up working on the same TV show. Can they write themselves a new ending? A sexy and emotional enemies-to-lovers romance guaranteed to pull on your heartstrings and give you a book hangover from brilliant new voice Yulin Kuang

Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever.

Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers� room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels, and if she can hide her imposter syndrome and overcome her writer’s block, surely the rest of her life will fall into place too. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except�

Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up.

Grant’s exactly as Helen remembers him—charming, funny, popular, and lovable in ways that she’s never been. And Helen’s exactly as Grant remembers too—brilliant, beautiful, closed off. But working together is messy, and electrifying, and Helen’s parents, who have never forgiven Grant, have no idea he’s in the picture at all.

When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet� the key to making peace with their past—and themselves—might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.]]> 384 Yulin Kuang Rachel 0 to-read 3.61 2024 How to End a Love Story
author: Yulin Kuang
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Breathe 56755557 A NOVEL OF LOVE AND LOSS FROM BESTSELLING AND PRIZEWINNING AUTHOR JOYCE CAROL OATES

Amid a starkly beautiful but uncanny landscape in New Mexico, a married couple from Cambridge, MA takes residency at a distinguished academic institute. When the husband is stricken with a mysterious illness, misdiagnosed at first, their lives are uprooted and husband and wife each embarks upon a nightmare journey.Ěý At thirty-seven, Michaela faces the terrifying prospect of widowhood - and the loss of Gerard, whose identity has greatly shaped her own.Ěý

In vividly depicted scenes of escalating suspense, Michaela cares desperately for Gerard in his final days as she comes to realize that her love for her husband, however fierce and selfless, is not enough to save him and that his death is beyond her comprehension.Ěý A love that refuses to be surrendered at death—is this the blessing of a unique married love, or a curse that must be exorcized?

Part intimately detailed love story, part horror story rooted in real life, BREATHE is an exploration of hauntedness rooted in the domesticity of marital love, as well as our determination both to be faithful to the beloved and to survive the trauma of loss.]]> 384 Joyce Carol Oates 006308547X Rachel 2 2.94 2021 Breathe
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Rachel
average rating: 2.94
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2022/01/01
date added: 2024/10/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

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

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

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
]]> 318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X Rachel 1 4.04 2022 The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
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]]> Foster 8143909
Winner of the Davy Byrnes Memorial Prize, Foster is now published in a revised and expanded version. Beautiful, sad and eerie, it is a story of astonishing emotional depth, showcasing Claire Keegan's great accomplishment and talent.]]> 89 Claire Keegan 0571255655 Rachel 0 to-read 4.32 2010 Foster
author: Claire Keegan
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nine Shiny Objects 50387483 A stunning literary saga in the tradition of Don DeLillo and Jennifer Egan—a luminous debut novel chronicling the unexpectedly, eerily intersecting lives of a line of dreamers over the course of half a century that reveals the divided heart of modern America itself.

June 26, 1947. Headlines across America report that an aviator from Idaho witnessed nine pulsating lights flying over the Cascade Mountains at speeds surpassing any aircraft built by humankind. Days later, a desperate Chicago pool hustler, inspired by the news, hitchhikes west in a fever-dream search for a possible extraterrestrial sign. From those he inspires along the way to the Cascades comes a new community—“The Seekers”—devoted to creating a society where divisions of race, ethnicity, and sexuality are a thing of the past.ĚýĚý

Believing that utopia will begin in a community of their own creation, The Seekers attempt to settle in the suburbs of Long Island. One night, a stranger arrives and a horrific crime ensues. In the decades that follow, the perpetrators, survivors, and their children will be forced to face the consequences of what happened.

Like an eroding Atlantic seashore, a Cascade mountain snowflake, and the branching crimson streaks in bloodshot eyes, Nine Shiny Objects is a fractal: a novel of intimate reveries that replicates to form a larger portrait of America’s cleaved soul—the perpetual clash between the optimism of those who seek inspiration from spacious skies and the venom of others who relish the underworld—not only via conspiratorial maneuverings, but the literal unearthing of the dead.


]]> 336 Brian Castleberry 006298442X Rachel 0 to-read 3.39 2020 Nine Shiny Objects
author: Brian Castleberry
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Rachel 5 3.34 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/24
date added: 2024/09/24
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]]> Galatea 18162954 An enchanting short story from Madeline Miller that boldly reimagines the myth of Galatea and Pygmalion.

In ancient Greece, a skilled marble sculptor has been blessed by a goddess who has given his masterpiece � the most beautiful woman the town has ever seen � the gift of life. Now his wife, he expects Galatea to please him, to be obedience and humility personified. But she has desires of her own and yearns for independence.

In a desperate bid by her obsessive husband to keep her under control, Galatea is locked away under the constant supervision of doctors and nurses. But with a daughter to rescue, she is determined to break free, whatever the cost...]]> 27 Madeline Miller 1408848147 Rachel 0 to-read 3.93 2013 Galatea
author: Madeline Miller
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Rachel 0 to-read 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hard Rain Falling 6553843 308 Don Carpenter 1590173244 Rachel 5 4.13 1966 Hard Rain Falling
author: Don Carpenter
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
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]]> The Life Impossible 198281740
“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…�

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.]]> 324 Matt Haig 0593489276 Rachel 0 to-read 3.45 2024 The Life Impossible
author: Matt Haig
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> Then She Was Gone 35297426 She was fifteen, her mother's golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.

NOW
It’s been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.

And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a café and sweeps Laurel off her feet.

Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.

Poppy is precocious and pretty - and meeting her completely takes Laurel's breath away.

Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.

What happened to Ellie? Where did she go?

Who still has secrets to hide?]]> 359 Lisa Jewell 1501154648 Rachel 2 4.02 2017 Then She Was Gone
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naĂŻve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TłÜ°ů˛Ô±đ»ĺ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Rachel 3 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Rachel 4 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at: 2009/06/25
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Nicked 200555176
"Miracles, marvels, saints, sinners, love, plague, and treachery! M. T. Anderson has laid out a medieval feast of a novel, stuffed with everything I could have wished for. If I could canonize him for it, I would. But I’ll settle for shouting about how much I love this book."—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

"M. T. Anderson is one of our greatest and most precious voices. His books aren't just brilliantly witty and vastly entertaining, they're fixed stars of wisdom and sanity in our increasingly unhinged universe. When lost, I use them to steer by."—Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians Trilogy

The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to serve the sick. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus.

Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for “liberating� holy relics from their tombs. The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas are rumored to weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick, Tyun says. For the humble price of a small fortune, he will steal the bones and deliver them to Bari, curing the plague and restoring glory to the fallen city. And Nicephorus, the “dreamer,� will be his guide.

What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides, and alongside even stranger bedfellows, to commit sacrilegious theft. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a swashbuckling saga, a medieval novel noir, a meditation on the miraculous, and a monastic meet-cute, filled with wide-eyed wonder at the world that awaits beyond our own borders.]]> 223 M.T. Anderson 0593701607 Rachel 0 to-read 3.67 2024 Nicked
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story]]> 70240470 289 Max Marshall 0063099551 Rachel 2 3.48 2023 Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story
author: Max Marshall
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/19
date added: 2024/06/19
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]]> The Familiar 133286777 From the New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent, and creator of the Grishaverse series comes a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.]]> 387 Leigh Bardugo 125088425X Rachel 0 to-read 3.74 2024 The Familiar
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/19
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]]> One of Us Knows 56197501 From the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author of When No One Is Watching comes a riveting thriller about the new caretaker of a historic estate who finds herself trapped on an island with a murderer—and the ghosts of her past.

Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance they can’t refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island, but she’s determined not to ruin their opportunity.

Then a surprise visit from the home’s conservation trust just as a Nor’easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers—including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect.

Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island—and their own past—or they risk losing not only their future, but their life.]]> 352 Alyssa Cole 006311495X Rachel 0 to-read 3.10 2024 One of Us Knows
author: Alyssa Cole
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Homeland (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #1)]]> 50027 Discover the origin story of one of the greatest heroes of the Realms—Drizzt Do’Urden—in this thrilling first installment of the Dark Elf Trilogy

Drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, first introduced in The Icewind Dale Trilogy, quickly became one of the fantasy genre’s standout characters. With Homeland, Salvatore pulls back the curtain to reveal the startling tale of how this hero came to be—how this one lone drow walked out of the shadowy depths of the Underdark; how he left behind an evil society and a family that wanted him dead.

As the third son of Mother Malice and weaponmaster Zaknafein, Drizzt Do’Urden is meant to be sacrificed to Lolth, the evil Spider Queen, per drow tradition. But with the unexpected death of his older brother, young Drizzt is spared—and, as a result, further ostracized by his family. As Drizzt grows older, developing his swordsmanship skills and studying at the Academy, he begins to realize that his idea of good and evil does not match up with those of his fellow drow. Can Drizzt stay true to himself in a such an unforgiving, unprincipled world?

Homeland is the first book in the Dark Elf Trilogy and the Legend of Drizzt series.]]> 343 R.A. Salvatore Rachel 0 to-read 4.26 1990 Homeland (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #1)
author: R.A. Salvatore
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future]]> 199797769
Country music had brought Randall and her activist mother together and even gave Randall a singular distinction in American music she is the first Black woman to cowrite a number one country hit, Trisha Yearwood’s “XXX’s and OOO’s�. Randall found inspiration and comfort in the sounds and history of the first family of Black country DeFord Bailey, Lil Hardin, Ray Charles, Charley Pride, and Herb Jeffries who, together, made up a community of Black Americans rising through hard times to create simple beauty, true joy, and sometimes profound eccentricity.

What emerges in My Black Country is a celebration of the most American of music genres and the radical joy in realizing the power of Black influence on American culture. As country music goes through a fresh renaissance today, with a new wave of Black artists enjoying success, My Black Country is the perfect gift for longtime country fans and a vibrant introduction to a new generation of listeners who previously were not invited to give the genre a chance.]]> 288 Alice Randall 1668018403 Rachel 0 to-read 3.99 My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present, and Future
author: Alice Randall
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.99
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Go Tell It On The Mountain (James Baldwin - Early Novels & Stories #1)]]> 60893886 216 James Baldwin Rachel 5 4.17 1953 Go Tell It On The Mountain (James Baldwin - Early Novels & Stories #1)
author: James Baldwin
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1953
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/07
date added: 2024/02/21
shelves:
review:

]]> The Shards 60880820 A sensational new novel from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city.

Bret Easton Ellis's masterful new novel is a story about the end of innocence, and the perilous passage from adolescence into adulthood, set in a vibrantly fictionalized Los Angeles in 1981 as a serial killer begins targeting teenagers throughout the city.

17-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is bright, handsome, charismatic, and shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret's obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling pre-occupation with The Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends, taunting them--and Bret in particular--with grotesque threats and horrific, sharply local acts of violence. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends--or his own mind--to make sense of the danger they appear to be in? Thwarted by the world and by his own innate desires, buffeted by unhealthy fixations, he spirals into paranoia and isolation as the relationship between The Trawler and Robert Mallory hurtles inexorably toward a collision.

Set against the intensely vivid and nostalgic backdrop of pre-Less Than Zero LA, The Shards is a mesmerizing fusing of fact and fiction, the real and the imagined, that brilliantly explores the emotional fabric of Bret's life at 17-sex and jealousy, obsession and murderous rage. Gripping, sly, suspenseful, deeply haunting and often darkly funny, The Shards is Ellis at his inimitable best.
]]> 595 Bret Easton Ellis 059353560X Rachel 5 3.98 2023 The Shards
author: Bret Easton Ellis
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2024/02/20
shelves:
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]]> Paris: The Memoir 61812425 Behind Paris Hilton's meteoric rise from Upper West Side club kid to household name lies her self-proclaimed "superpower" of ADHD and a hidden history that traumatized and defined her. Shocking, funny, and surprisingly profound, Paris is the deeply personal memoir of the ultimate It Girl and a stunning inside view of a pop culture phenomenon.

Until, in a revealing documentary, Paris Hilton disclosed that her childhood was shattered by two years of strip searches, isolation, beatings, restraint, and brainwashing within the now infamous "troubled teen industry," Paris Hilton was simply the billionaire heiress America had watched grow up on television, on the internet, and in tabloids. But there was always more to Paris Hilton than met the eye. Yes, she is the media personality, DJ, entrepreneur, model, singer, actress, and icon beloved all over the globe. And yet...

Paris is the story people have always wanted Paris Hilton to tell--the story of who she really is. In this revealing and thought-provoking book, Hilton will separate the creation from the creator, the brand from the ambassador, and show the woman who grew up with incredible privilege but was also trapped in a world of unreasonable expectation at a moment when young women were humiliated for sport in a gossip economy on steroids. Paris recounts her perilous journey through pre-#METOO sexual politics with grace, generosity, and plenty of fun, rising above a series of heart-wrenching challenges to find healing, lasting love, and a life of meaning and purpose.

The parallel story arcs in Hilton's braided narrative come to full bloom as a watershed portrait of the Aughts, challenging each of us to question our role in her story and her role in ours. The result is an intimate and unexpected memoir about persona and personification, the price of being young and disobedient, and the complexity of manifesting your dreams after watching part of yourself disappear.]]> 336 Paris Hilton 0063224623 Rachel 0 to-read 4.21 2023 Paris: The Memoir
author: Paris Hilton
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story]]> 24611929
When Jewel's first album, Pieces of You, topped the charts in 1995, her emotional voice and vulnerable performance were groundbreaking. In the tradition of Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell (she has been compared to both), a singer-songwriter of her kind had not emerged in decades. Now, with over 30 million albums sold worldwide, Jewel tells the story of her life and the lessons learned from her experience and her music.

Living on a homestead in Alaska, Jewel learned to yodel at age three and joined her parents' act, working in hotels, honky-tonks, and biker bars. Behind a strong-willed and independent family life, with an emphasis on music and artistic talent, was also instability, abuse, and trauma.

At age 15 Jewel was accepted into the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where she began writing her own songs as a means of expression. She was 18, homeless, and living out of her car in San Diego when a radio DJ aired a bootleg version of one of her songs. It was requested in the top-10 countdown, something unheard of for an unsigned artist. By age 21, her debut album went multiplatinum.

There is so much more to Jewel's story, one complicated by family and financial woes, by crippling fear and insecurity, by parents who forced a child to grow up far too quickly, and by the extraordinary circumstances in which she became a world-famous singer and songwriter. Here Jewel reflects on how she survived and how writing songs, poetry, and prose have saved her life many times over. She writes beautifully about the natural wonders of Alaska, about pain and childhood trauma, and about discovering her own identity years after the entire world had discovered the beauty of her songs.]]> 387 Jewel 0399174338 Rachel 0 to-read 4.11 2015 Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story
author: Jewel
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/19
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]]> The Pole 125484660 166 J.M. Coetzee 1324093862 Rachel 4 3.69 2023 The Pole
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/01/19
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]]> Sorrow and Bliss 49110165
Martha told Patrick before they got married that she didn't want to have children. He said he didn't mind either way because he has loved her since he was fourteen and making her happy is all that matters, although he does not seem able to do it.

By the time Martha finds out what is wrong, it doesn't really matter anymore. It is too late to get the only thing she has ever wanted. Or maybe it will turn out that you can stop loving someone and start again from nothing - if you can find something else to want.]]> 352 Meg Mason Rachel 0 to-read 4.08 2020 Sorrow and Bliss
author: Meg Mason
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/02
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]]> If You Want To Write 9990986 122 Brenda Ueland Rachel 5 3.33 2012 If You Want To Write
author: Brenda Ueland
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/12/02
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This is an outstanding book. Anyone who wants or needs a little encouragement and reassurance about how creative, talented, and good a writer you really are should read this book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Creative Act: A Way of Being]]> 60965426 From the legendary music producer, a master at helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity, comes a beautifully crafted book many years in the making that offers that same deep wisdom to all of us.

"A gorgeous and inspiring work of art on creation, creativity, the work of the artist. It will gladden the hearts of writers and artists everywhere, and get them working again with a new sense of meaning and direction. A stunning accomplishment." --Anne Lamott

"I set out to write a book about what to do to make a great work of art. Instead, it revealed itself to be a book on how to be." --Rick Rubin

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn't, he has learned that being an artist isn't about your specific output, it's about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone's life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.

The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime's work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments--and lifetimes--of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.]]> 406 Rick Rubin 0593652886 Rachel 2 4.00 2023 The Creative Act: A Way of Being
author: Rick Rubin
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/09/09
date added: 2023/09/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Rachel 4 3.66 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/09/09
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]]> <![CDATA[A Meaningful Life (New York Review Books Classics)]]> 3979476 214 L.J. Davis 1590173007 Rachel 0 to-read 3.60 1971 A Meaningful Life (New York Review Books Classics)
author: L.J. Davis
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human]]> 60916858
In her most provocative book yet, Dr. Naomi Wolf shows how these forces � from Big Tech and Big Pharma to the CCP and our oligarchical elites � seized upon two years of COVID-19 panic in sinister new ways, to not only undermine our Republic but to fundamentally reorient human relations.

Their target is humanity itself. Their end goal is to ensure that our pre-March 2020 world is gone forever. Irretrievable. To be replaced with a world in which all human endeavor-all human joy, all human fellowship, all human advancement, all human culture, all human song, all human drama, all worship, all surprise, all flirtation, all celebration-is behind a digital paywall. A world in which we will all have to ask technology's permission to be human.

But we, the people of the world, did not vote to abandon our old systems and destroy our old ways so absolutely they could never be recovered. And Wolf shows how, against overwhelming odds, we still might win.]]> 356 Naomi Wolf Rachel 5 4.53 The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human
author: Naomi Wolf
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/21
date added: 2023/07/21
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]]> Loyalty 61386676
Gaetano Catalano is an idealistic young lawyer, whose devotion for justice is a calling. Gaetano is a member of the Beati Paoli, a real-life secret society of aristocrats who investigate crime, since corruption riddles Palermo. Gaetano and the Beati Paoli set out to find the boy and bring him home, but for Gaetano, the mission turns to obsession. He risks everything to right the wrong and bring justice to his beloved city.

The kidnapped boy, Dante, grows up in a madhouse without even knowing his last name. He doubts his own sanity until he meets Lucia, a girl with a tragic past of her own. They fall in love, then set out to find Dante’s kidnapper and learn his true identity.]]> 417 Lisa Scottoline 0525539808 Rachel 4 3.65 2023 Loyalty
author: Lisa Scottoline
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/15
date added: 2023/07/15
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]]> Even Though I Knew the End 59807975
An exiled auspex who sold her soul to save her brother's life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can't resist―the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves.

To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago's most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await.]]> 136 C.L. Polk 1250849454 Rachel 1 3.80 2022 Even Though I Knew the End
author: C.L. Polk
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2023/06/29
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]]> The Trackers 61609871 From the New York Times bestselling author of Cold Mountain and Varina, a stunning new novel that paints a vivid portrait of life in the Great Depression

Hurtling past the downtrodden communities of Depression-era America, painter Val Welch travels westward to the rural town of Dawes, Wyoming. Through a stroke of luck, he's landed a New Deal assignment to create a mural representing the region for their new Post Office.

A wealthy art lover named John Long and his wife Eve have agreed to host Val at their sprawling ranch. Rumors and intrigue surround the couple: Eve left behind an itinerant life riding the rails and singing in a western swing band. Long holds shady political aspirations, but was once a WWI sniper--and his right hand is a mysterious elder cowboy, a vestige of the violent old west. Val quickly finds himself entranced by their lives.

One day, Eve flees home with a valuable painting in tow, and Long recruits Val to hit the road with a mission of tracking her down. Journeying from ramshackle Hoovervilles to San Francisco nightclubs to the swamps of Florida, Val's search for Eve narrows, and he soon turns up secrets that could spark formidable changes for all of them.

In The Trackers, singular American writer Charles Frazier conjures up the lives of everyday people during an extraordinary period of history that bears uncanny resemblance to our own. With the keen perceptions of humanity and transcendent storytelling that have made him beloved for decades, Frazier has created a powerful and timeless new classic.]]> 320 Charles Frazier 0062948083 Rachel 3 3.57 2023 The Trackers
author: Charles Frazier
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/28
date added: 2023/06/28
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]]> Among Wolves 60638121 My husband is a self-important asshole but he isn’t a murderer.

At least that’s what Sophia Claire believes when faced with a visit from detectives Adella Cruz and Trent Valletta. She has been enjoying what appears to be a storybook life with her fairytale husband, Robert Claire, in Deep River, Washington. Robert is the wealthy, intelligent and attractive CEO of massive pharmaceutical research company ANEXA. But the detectives tell her that they are investigating a string of murders of young women who all have at least one thing in common � they were all Rob’s lovers.

Faced with these accusations Sophia is forced to question the realities of her marriage, and the nature of their love for each other. When does love die, exactly? She still believes Rob loves her; he loves her body, her grace, and her ability to fit the lifestyle of a prominent CEO. But she also knows he has cheated. With a marriage on the brink of collapse how does one find their partner again?

As the detectives track clues that could lead to an arrest, Sophia begins to question her own commitments, the motivations of those around her and her sanity. Reaching her breaking point, she hunts for answers about her husband’s affairs and instead finds herself drawn to the sexual extremes of her husband’s secret life, all while uncovering dark surprises of her own.

A twisty, sexy, and surprising debut perfect for fans of Megan Miranda, Tarryn Fisher, and Shari LaPena, AMONG WOLVES will have you riveted until the last page is turned.]]> 320 Erica Blaque 1951709934 Rachel 2 3.98 2022 Among Wolves
author: Erica Blaque
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/06/28
date added: 2023/06/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden]]> 62919890 A seminal work that expands how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle Criticism finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage

In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013 with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant.

In resistance to the homogeneous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of the planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.

Definitive and singular, Soil functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage readers to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.]]> 321 Camille T. Dungy 1982195304 Rachel 0 to-read 4.15 2023 Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
author: Camille T. Dungy
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/02
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]]> The Cloisters 61054804 On the wheel of fortune, who will emerge on top... and who will die?

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she hopes to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval and Renaissance art.

There she is drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, including Patrick Roland, the museum's mercurial curator who specializes in the history of tarot; Rachel Mondray, Patrick's beautiful curatorial associate and sometime muse; and Leo Bitburg, the gardener who nurtures the museum's precious collection of medicinal and poison plants.

Relieved to have left her troubled past in rural Washington behind her, Ann longs for the approbation of her colleagues and peers and is happy to indulge their more outlandish theories, only to find that their fascination with fortune-telling runs deeper than academic obsession. Patrick is determined to prove that ancient divination holds the key to the foretelling of the future. And when Ann stumbles across a breakthrough in the form of a mysterious and previously-believed lost deck of 15th-century Italian tarot cards, she finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship and ambition.

Then there is an unexpected and devastating death, and suddenly everyone becomes a suspect. As the game being played within the Cloisters spirals out of control, Ann must decide if the tarot cards can not only teach her about the past, but also about her future.]]> 312 Katy Hays 1668004402 Rachel 0 to-read 3.35 2022 The Cloisters
author: Katy Hays
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/25
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]]> Crutches 22124833 This, she feels, can’t be done while living with her parents, Elderiah and Jessie Rose’s, in their comfortable middle class home. She knows they will care for the boys while she’s out drinking. However, the responsibility wasn’t theirs. Without the constant glare of it staring back at her, the recurring binging, arguing, being sick, followed by slow recovery periods, would never change the self-loathing she felt now. With tears and the burden of her shame, Vivian lays out her bold plan to recapture life.
They are moving. She has found an apartment in the Frederick Douglass projects. Little Von, 5, is frighten by the prospect of living away from the security of his grandparent’s quiet tree-lined neighborhood. Robin, on the other hands, is terrified. He has many friends who live in the “Freddy.� Despite being a black family moving to a black housing project, he knows they have no idea how to live in the tumultuous world of project survival—a way of life he and his brother have been sheltered from. The rules of living would be completely different. Their survival will depend on learning those rules quickly. This is the 1957 story of what happens to Vivian and her two boys as they fight to keep their family together in the Frederick Douglass projects.]]> 377 Jevon E. Thompson 148351532X Rachel 5 4.40 1996 Crutches
author: Jevon E. Thompson
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/25
date added: 2023/04/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The God of the Way: A Journey into the Stories, People, and Faith That Changed the World Forever]]> 59608970 288 Kathie Lee Gifford 0785290435 Rachel 2 4.10 The God of the Way: A Journey into the Stories, People, and Faith That Changed the World Forever
author: Kathie Lee Gifford
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2023/04/25
date added: 2023/04/25
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]]> The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone 40853191 'We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song and when one came back, she wasn't the one we were trying to recall to begin with.'

So begins Tikka Molloy's recounting of the summer of 1992 - the summer the Van Apfel sisters, Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth - disappear.

Eleven and one-sixth years old, Tikka is the precocious narrator of this fabulously endearing coming-of-age story, set in an eerie Australian river valley suburb with an unexplained stench. The Van Apfel girls vanish from the valley during the school's 'Showstopper' concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river. While the search for the sisters unites the small community on Sydney's urban fringe, the mystery of their disappearance remains unsolved forever.

Brilliantly observed, sharp, lively, funny and entirely endearing, this novel is part mystery, part coming-of-age story - and quintessentially Australian. Think The Virgin Suicides meets Jasper Jones meets Picnic at Hanging Rock.]]> 304 Felicity McLean 1460755065 Rachel 3 3.39 2019 The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone
author: Felicity McLean
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2019
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/03/17
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]]> The Matchmaker's Gift 59807961 From Lynda Cohen Loigman, the bestselling author of The Two-Family House and The Wartime Sisters, comes a heartwarming story of two extraordinary women from two different eras who defy expectations to utilize their unique gift of seeing soulmates in the most unexpected places in The Matchmaker's Gift.

Is finding true love a calling or a curse?

Even as a child in 1910, Sara Glikman knows her gift: she is a maker of matches and a seeker of soulmates. But among the pushcart-crowded streets of New York’s Lower East Side, Sara’s vocation is dominated by devout older men—men who see a talented female matchmaker as a dangerous threat to their traditions and livelihood. After making matches in secret for more than a decade, Sara must fight to take her rightful place among her peers, and to demand the recognition she deserves.

Two generations later, Sara’s granddaughter, Abby, is a successful Manhattan divorce attorney, representing the city’s wealthiest clients. When her beloved Grandma Sara dies, Abby inherits her collection of handwritten journals recording the details of Sara’s matches. But among the faded volumes, Abby finds more questions than answers. Why did Abby’s grandmother leave this library to her and what did she hope Abby would discover within its pages? Why does the work Abby once found so compelling suddenly feel inconsequential and flawed? Is Abby willing to sacrifice the career she’s worked so hard for in order to keep her grandmother’s mysterious promise to a stranger? And is there really such a thing as love at first sight?]]> 320 Lynda Cohen Loigman 1250278090 Rachel 4 4.10 2022 The Matchmaker's Gift
author: Lynda Cohen Loigman
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/17
date added: 2023/03/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt]]> 6691129
Mean Mothers reveals the multigenerational thread that often runs through these stories—many unloving mothers are the daughters of unloving or hypercritical women—and explores what happens to a daughter's sense of self and to her relationships when her mother is emotionally absent or even cruel. But Mean Mothers is also a narrative of hope, recounting how daughters can get past the legacy of hurt to become whole within and to become loving mothers to the next generation of daughters. The personal stories of unloved daughters and sons and those of the author herself, are both unflinching and moving, and bring this most difficult of subjects to life.

Mean Mothers isn't just a book for daughters who've had difficult or impossible relationships with their mothers. By exposing the myths of motherhood that prevent us from talking about the women for whom mothering a daughter is fraught with ambivalence, tension, or even jealousy, Mean Mothers also casts a different light on the extraordinary influence mothers have over their female children as well as the psychological complexity and emotional depth of the mother-daughter relationship.]]> 256 Peg Streep 0061651362 Rachel 0 to-read 3.60 2009 Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt
author: Peg Streep
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self]]> 4887 The bestselling book on childhood trauma and the enduring effects of repressed anger and pain.

Why are many of the most successful people plagued by feelings of emptiness and alienation? This wise and profound book has provided millions of readers with an answer—and has helped them to apply it to their own lives.

Far too many of us had to learn as children to hide our own feelings, needs, and memories skillfully in order to meet our parents' expectations and win their "love." Alice Miller writes, "When I used the word 'gifted' in the title, I had in mind neither children who receive high grades in school nor children talented in a special way. I simply meant all of us who have survived an abusive childhood thanks to an ability to adapt even to unspeakable cruelty by becoming numb.... Without this 'gift' offered us by nature, we would not have survived." But merely surviving is not enough. The Drama of the Gifted Child helps us to reclaim our life by discovering our own crucial needs and our own truth.]]> 136 Alice Miller 0465016901 Rachel 0 to-read 4.05 1979 The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
author: Alice Miller
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity]]> 33413909
The news of Burke Harris’s research is just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by ACEs—adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect,Ěýparental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. ChildhoodĚýadversityĚýchanges ourĚýbiologicalĚýsystems, and lasts a lifetime.Ěý For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the scientific insight and innovative, acclaimed health interventions inĚýThe Deepest WellĚýrepresent hope for preventingĚýlifelong illness for those we love and for generations to comeâ€�.]]> 251 Nadine Burke Harris 0544828704 Rachel 0 to-read 4.42 2018 The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity
author: Nadine Burke Harris
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts]]> 34146782
In this groundbreaking work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centered psychology. He argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans—our police.

My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.

This book paves the way for a new, body-centered understanding of white supremacy—how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system. It offers a step-by-step solution—a healing process—in addition to incisive social commentary.

Resmaa Menakem, MSW, LICSW, is a therapist with decades of experience currently in private practice in Minneapolis, MN, specializing in trauma, body-centered psychotherapy, and violence prevention. He has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil as an expert on conflict and violence. Menakem has studied with bestselling authors Dr. David Schnarch (Passionate Marriage) and Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score). He also trained at Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute.]]> 300 Resmaa Menakem 1942094477 Rachel 0 to-read 4.38 2017 My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts
author: Resmaa Menakem
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/27
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]]> <![CDATA[It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle]]> 26026054 Ěý
Depression. Anxiety. Chronic Pain. Phobias. Obsessive thoughts. The evidence is the roots of these difficulties may not reside in our immediate life experience or in chemical imbalances in our brains—but in the lives of our parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents. The latest scientific research, now making headlines, supports what many have long intuited—that traumatic experience can be passed down through generations. It Didn’t Start with You builds on the work of leading experts in post-traumatic stress, including Mount Sinai School of Medicine neuroscientist Rachel Yehuda and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score . Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has died, or the story has been forgotten or silenced, memory and feelings can live on. These emotional legacies are often hidden, encoded in everything from gene expression to everyday language, and they play a far greater role in our emotional and physical health than has ever before been understood.
Ěý
As a pioneer in the field of inherited family trauma, Mark Wolynn has worked with individuals and groups on a therapeutic level for over twenty years. It Didn’t Start with You offers a pragmatic and prescriptive guide to his method, the Core Language Approach. Diagnostic self-inventories provide a way to uncover the fears and anxieties conveyed through everyday words, behaviors, and physical symptoms. Techniques for developing a genogram or extended family tree create a map of experiences going back through the generations. And visualization, active imagination, and direct dialogue create pathways to reconnection, integration, and reclaiming life and health. It Didn’t Start With You is a transformative approach to resolving longstanding difficulties that in many cases, traditional therapy, drugs, or other interventions have not had the capacity to touch.]]> 256 Mark Wolynn 1101980362 Rachel 0 to-read 3.45 2016 It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
author: Mark Wolynn
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[From Generation to Generation: Healing Intergenerational Trauma Through Storytelling]]> 37772405

In From Generation to Generation: Healing Intergenerational Trauma Through Storytelling, Emily Wanderer Cohen connects the dots between her behaviors and choices and her mother’s Holocaust ex-periences. In a series of vivid, emotional—and sometimes gut-wrenching—stories, she illustrates how the Holocaust continues to have an impact on current and future generations. Plus, the prompts at the end of each chapter enable you to explore your own intergenerational trauma and begin your healing journey.



Part memoir and part self-discovery, if you’re a second-generation (2G) or third-generation (3G) Holo-caust survivor—or you’re experiencing intergenerational trauma of any kind—and you’re ready to heal from that trauma, you need to read this book.

]]> 159 Emily Wanderer Cohen Rachel 0 to-read 3.59 From Generation to Generation: Healing Intergenerational Trauma Through Storytelling
author: Emily Wanderer Cohen
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.59
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]]> <![CDATA[Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents]]> 23129659 If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.

In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents� emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.

Discover the four types of difficult parents:



The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety

The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone

The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting

The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory
Ěý]]> 201 Lindsay C. Gibson 1626251703 Rachel 0 to-read 4.36 2015 Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
author: Lindsay C. Gibson
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/26
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dissociation Made Simple: A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Daily Life]]> 62675006
Guided by clinical counselor Jamie Marich--a trauma-informed clinician living with a dissociative disorder herself--this book tells you everything you need to know about dissociation...but were too afraid to ask.
Here, you’ll learn:

What dissociation is--and why it’s a natural response to trauma

How to understand and work with your “parts�--the unique emotional and behavioral profiles that can develop from personality fragmentation

There’s nothing shameful about dissociating--that, in fact, we can all dissociate

Skills and strategies for living your best, authentic, and most fulfilled life

What to look for in a therapist: choosing a healer who sees you and gets it

Foundational elements of healing from trauma, including PTSD and C-PTSD

With practical guided exercises like “The Dissociative Profile� and “Parts Mapping,� this book is written for those diagnosed with dissociative disorders, clinicians and therapists who treat trauma and dissociation, and readers who are exploring whether they may have dissociative symptoms or a condition like dissociative identity disorder (DID). Dissociation Made Simple breaks it all down accessibly and comprehensively, with empowerment and support--and without stigma, judgment, or shame.]]> 288 Jamie Marich 1623177219 Rachel 0 to-read 4.06 Dissociation Made Simple: A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Daily Life
author: Jamie Marich
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time]]> 55881067 In this innovative title, celebrated trainer and trauma practitioner Laura Khoudari brings a fresh approach to healing after trauma, using strength training as an embodied movement practice. Compassionate, witty and fastidiously researched, Khoudari’s debut, Lifting Heavy Things , is a breakthrough title that will empower and inspire you to develop resilience and build emotional and physical strength through working out with weights, while mindful of the ways that trauma can compromise the wellbeing of the mind and body.
In Lifting Heavy Things , you’ll learn about:









With humor, tenderness and grit, Lifting Heavy Things takes readers on a journey of personal revelation and integration, helping them to lighten their emotional burden and build deep inner strength to lift all of the heavy things that life may bring with greater ease.]]> Laura Khoudari Rachel 0 to-read 3.63 Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time
author: Laura Khoudari
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.63
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life]]> 14096 304 Jon Kabat-Zinn 1401307787 Rachel 0 to-read 4.13 1994 Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
author: Jon Kabat-Zinn
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/26
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]]> Fellowship Point 58438505
Polly Wister has led a different kind of life than Agnes: that of a well-off married woman with children, defined by her devotion to her husband, a philosophy professor with an inflated sense of stature. She strives to create beauty and harmony in her home, in her friendships, and in her family. Polly soon finds her loyalties torn between the wishes of her best friend and the wishes of her three sons—but what is it that Polly wants herself?

Agnes’s designs are further muddied when an enterprising young book editor named Maud Silver sets out to convince Agnes to write her memoirs. Agnes’s resistance cannot prevent long-buried memories and secrets from coming to light with far-reaching repercussions for all.
]]> 592 Alice Elliott Dark 1982131810 Rachel 4 3.98 2022 Fellowship Point
author: Alice Elliott Dark
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/24
date added: 2023/02/24
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]]> The Passion According to G.H. 153426 173 Clarice Lispector 0816617120 Rachel 0 to-read 4.20 1964 The Passion According to G.H.
author: Clarice Lispector
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/30
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]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Rachel 0 to-read 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/30
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]]> The Book of Goose 59808607 A gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End.

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised--the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves--until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.]]> 348 Yiyun Li 037460634X Rachel 0 to-read 3.67 2022 The Book of Goose
author: Yiyun Li
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/30
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]]> Lakewood 51166519 A startling debut about class and race, Lakewood evokes a terrifying world of medical experimentation—part The Handmaid’s Tale, part The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

When Lena Johnson’s beloved grandmother dies, and the full extent of the family debt is revealed, the black millennial drops out of college to support her family and takes a job in the mysterious and remote town of Lakewood, Michigan.

On paper, her new job is too good to be true. High paying. No out of pocket medical expenses. A free place to live. All Lena has to do is participate in a secret program—and lie to her friends and family about the research being done in Lakewood. An eye drop that makes brown eyes blue, a medication that could be a cure for dementia, golden pills promised to make all bad thoughts go away.

The discoveries made in Lakewood, Lena is told, will change the world—but the consequences for the subjects involved could be devastating. As the truths of the program reveal themselves, Lena learns how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the sake of her family.

Provocative and thrilling, Lakewood is a breathtaking novel that takes an unflinching look at the moral dilemmas many working-class families face, and the horror that has been forced on black bodies in the name of science.]]> 288 Megan Giddings 0062913190 Rachel 0 to-read 3.46 2020 Lakewood
author: Megan Giddings
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/29
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]]> <![CDATA[She Weeps Each Time You're Born]]> 22291474 Ěý
At the peak of the war in Vietnam, a baby girl is born along the Song Ma River on the night of the full moon. This is Rabbit, who will journey away from her destroyed village with a makeshift family thrown together by war. Here is a Vietnam we’ve never encountered through Rabbit’s inexplicable but radiant intuition, we are privy to an intimate version of history, from the days of French Indochina and the World War II rubber plantations through the chaos of postwar reunification. With its use of magical realism—Rabbit’s ability to “hear� the dead—the novel reconstructs a turbulent historical period through a painterly human lens. This is the moving story of one woman’s struggle to unearth the true history of Vietnam while simultaneously carving out a place for herself within it.]]> 288 Quan Barry 0307911772 Rachel 0 to-read 3.67 2015 She Weeps Each Time You're Born
author: Quan Barry
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/29
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]]> <![CDATA[One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World]]> 60321431
The remarkable story of ninety-nine-year-old Stella Levi whose conversations with the author over the course of six years bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished ninety percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale.

With nearly a century of life behind her, Stella Levi had never before spoken in detail about her past. Then she met Michael Frank. He came to her Greenwich Village apartment one Saturday afternoon to ask her a question about the Juderia, the neighborhood on the Greek island of Rhodes where she’d grown up in a Jewish community that had thrived there for half a millennium.

Neither of them could know this was the first of one hundred Saturdays over the course of six years that they would spend in each other’s company. During these meetings Stella traveled back in time to conjure what it felt like to come of age on this luminous, legendary island in the eastern Aegean, which the Italians conquered in 1912, began governing as an official colonial possession in 1923, and continued to administer even after the Germans seized control in September 1943. The following July, the Germans rounded up all 1,700-plus residents of the Juderia and sent them first by boat and then by train to Auschwitz on what was the longest journey—measured by both time and distance—of any of the deportations. Ninety percent of them were murdered upon arrival.

Probing and courageous, candid and sly, Stella is a magical modern-day Scheherazade whose stories reveal what it was like to grow up in an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time—and to construct a life after that place has vanished. One Hundred Saturdays is a portrait of one of the last survivors drawn at nearly the last possible moment, as well as an account of a tender and transformative friendship between storyteller and listener, offering a powerful “reminder that the ability to listen thoughtfully is a rare and significant gift� ( The Wall Street Journal).]]> 240 Michael Frank 198216722X Rachel 4 4.21 2022 One Hundred Saturdays: Stella Levi and the Search for a Lost World
author: Michael Frank
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/17
date added: 2023/01/17
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]]> I'm Glad My Mom Died 59364173
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!�), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 320 Jennette McCurdy Rachel 3 4.45 2022 I'm Glad My Mom Died
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/12
date added: 2023/01/12
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]]> Novelist as a Vocation 60387307 A charmingly idiosyncratic look at writing, creativity, and the author’s own novels.

Haruki Murakami’s myriad fans will be delighted by this unique look into the mind of a master storyteller. In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author and famously reclusive writer shares with readers what he thinks about being a novelist; his thoughts on the role of the novel in our society; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians. Readers who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his strangely surreal worlds will be fascinated by this highly personal look at the craft of writing.]]> 224 Haruki Murakami 0451494644 Rachel 0 to-read 3.90 2015 Novelist as a Vocation
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers]]> 58837753
Portable Magic unfurls an exciting and iconoclastic new story of the book in human hands, exploring when, why and how it acquired its particular hold over us. Gathering together a millennium's worth of pivotal encounters with volumes big and small, Smith reveals that, as much as their contents, it is books' physical form - their 'bookhood' - that lends them their distinctive and sometimes dangerous magic. From the Diamond Sutra to Jilly Cooper's Riders , to a book made of wrapped slices of cheese, this composite artisanal object has, for centuries, embodied and extended relationships between readers, nations, ideologies and cultures, in significant and unpredictable ways.

Exploring the unexpected and unseen consequences of our love affair with books, Portable Magic hails the rise of the mass-market paperback, and dismantles the myth that print began with Gutenberg; it reveals how our reading habits have been shaped by American soldiers, and proposes new definitions of a 'classic'-and even of the book itself. Ultimately, it illuminates the ways in which our relationship with the written word is more reciprocal - and more turbulent - than we tend to imagine.]]> 352 Emma Smith 0241427266 Rachel 0 to-read 3.80 2022 Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers
author: Emma Smith
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/12/22
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]]> Babysitter 59687975 From one of America's most renowned storytellers comes a novel about love and deceit, and lust and redemption, against a background of child abductions in the affluent suburbs of Detroit.

In the waning days of the turbulent 1970s, in the wake of unsolved killings that have shocked Detroit, the lives of several residents are drawn together, with tragic consequences. There is Hannah, wife of a prominent local businessman, who has begun an affair with a darkly charismatic stranger whose identity remains elusive; Mikey, a canny street hustler who finds himself on an unexpected mission to rectify injustice; and the serial killer known as Babysitter, an enigmatic and terrifying figure at the periphery of elite Detroit. As Babysitter continues his rampage of killings, these individuals intersect with one another in startling and unexpected ways.

Suspenseful, brilliantly orchestrated and engrossing, Babysitter is a starkly narrated exploration of the riskiness of pursuing alternate lives, calling into question how far we are willing to go to protect those whom we cherish most. In its scathing indictment of corrupt politics, unexamined racism, and the enabling of sexual predation in America, Babysitter is a thrilling work of contemporary fiction.]]> 448 Joyce Carol Oates Rachel 3 3.14 2022 Babysitter
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2022
rating: 3
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date added: 2022/12/22
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]]> Nuclear Family 59349398
Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawaiʻi seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho's Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college and working for her parents, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales.

No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. and Mrs. Cho fear their son won't ever be able to return home, and Grace gets more and more stoned as she negotiates her family's undoing. Struggling with what they don't know about themselves and one another, the Chos must confront the separations that have endured in their family for decades.

Set in the months leading up to the 2018 false missile alert in Hawaiʻi, Joseph Han's profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.]]> 320 Joseph Han 1640094865 Rachel 1 3.21 2022 Nuclear Family
author: Joseph Han
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2022
rating: 1
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date added: 2022/11/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #1-3)]]> 236814 March Violets (a term of derision which original Nazis used to describe late converts.) The Olympic Games are about to start; some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realize that they should have left while they could; and Gunther himself has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party. In The Pale Criminal, it's 1938, and Gunther has been blackmailed into rejoining the police by Heydrich himself. And in A German Requiem, the saddest and most disturbing of the three books, it's 1947 as Gunther stumbles across a nightmare landscape that conceals even more death than he imagines. (For a review of Kerr's latest novel, The Grid, see our Thrillers section.)]]> 834 Philip Kerr 0140231706 Rachel 0 to-read 4.28 1993 Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #1-3)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[To Fall in Love, Drink This: A Wine Writer's Memoir]]> 59366217
Named a Best Wine Book of 2022 by The New York Times, Forbes, and The Washington Post

From veteran wine writer and James Beard Award winner Alice Feiring, an insightful and entertaining memoir of wine, love, heartbreak, and the never-ending process of coming-of-age.

Alice Feiring is a special sort of wine writer—the kind who dares to disagree with wine “experts�, and who believes wholeheartedly that the best wine writing is about life.

To Fall in Love, Drink This is both her love letter to wine and a lifelong coming-of-age story. In a series of candid, wise, and humorous personal essays, Feiring tells the story of her parents� divorce, her first big wine assignment, the end of an eleven-year relationship, the death of her father, a near-fatal brush with a serial killer, pandemic lockdown, and more—and suffuses each with love, romance, pain, joy, and wine. Each essay is “accompanied� by a no-nonsense wine take-away designed to answer the questions everyday wine lovers have about wine—age, price, grapes, vineyards, and vintners.

This frank, charismatic work is a refreshingly grounded addition to the genre of wine-writing. Feiring has crafted a timeless, positively unpretentious memoir that will appeal to everyone who has ever enjoyed a glass of wine.]]> 272 Alice Sari Feiring 1982176768 Rachel 0 to-read 3.82 To Fall in Love, Drink This: A Wine Writer's Memoir
author: Alice Sari Feiring
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.82
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/20
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]]> The Postmistress of Paris 56645991 416 Meg Waite Clayton 0063136872 Rachel 0 to-read 3.56 2021 The Postmistress of Paris
author: Meg Waite Clayton
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain / Giovanni’s Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man]]> 38456 The New York Times Book Review, “found eloquent expression in [Baldwin’s] novels. His historical importance is indisputable.� Here, in a Library of America volume edited by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, is the fiction that established James Baldwin’s reputation as a writer who fused unblinking realism and rare verbal eloquence.

His first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), tells the story, rooted in Baldwin’s own experience, of a preacher’s son coming of age in 1930’s Harlem. Ten years in the writing, its exploration of religious, sexual, and generational conflicts was described by Baldwin as “an attempt to exorcise something, to find out what happened to my father, what happened to all of us.�

Giovanni’s Room (1956) is a searching, and in its day controversial, treatment of the tragic self-delusions of a young American expatriate at war with his own homosexuality. Another Country (1962), a wide-ranging exploration of America’s racial and sexual boundaries, depicts the suicide of a gifted jazz musician and its ripple effect on those who knew him. Complex in structure and turbulent in mood, it is in many ways Baldwin’s most ambitious novel.

Going to Meet the Man (1965) collects Baldwin’s short fiction, including the masterful “Sonny’s Blues,� the unforgettable portrait of a jazz musician struggling with drug addiction in which Baldwin came closest to defining his goal as a writer: “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”]]> 970 James Baldwin 1883011515 Rachel 0 to-read 4.47 1998 Early Novels & Stories: Go Tell It on the Mountain / Giovanni’s Room / Another Country / Going to Meet the Man
author: James Baldwin
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Haven 59801788
Three men vow to leave the world behind them. They set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them. What they find is the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael. Haven has Emma Donoghue’s trademark world-building and psychological intensity—but this story is like nothing she has ever written before.]]> 272 Emma Donoghue 0316413933 Rachel 2 3.37 2022 Haven
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2022
rating: 2
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date added: 2022/10/08
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]]> Stay True 59900070 New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.

In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken--with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity--is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes 'zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn't seem to have a place for either of them.

But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the textbook successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.

Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends--his memories--Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he's been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging.]]> 208 Hua Hsu 0385547773 Rachel 0 to-read 4.00 2022 Stay True
author: Hua Hsu
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/26
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]]> The Orchard 58502683 Four teenagers grow inseparable in the last days of the Soviet Union--but not all of them will live to see the new world arrive in this powerful debut novel, loosely based on Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard.

Coming of age in the USSR in the 1980s, best friends Anya and Milka try to envision a free and joyful future for themselves. They spend their summers at Anya's dacha just outside of Moscow, lazing in the apple orchard, listening to Queen songs, and fantasizing about trips abroad and the lives of American teenagers. Meanwhile, Anya's parents talk about World War II, the Blockade, and the hardships they have endured.

By the time Anya and Milka are fifteen, the Soviet Empire is on the verge of collapse. They pair up with classmates Trifonov and Lopatin, and the four friends share secrets and desires, argue about history and politics, and discuss forbidden books. But the world is changing, and the fleeting time they have together is cut short by a sudden tragedy.

Years later, Anya returns to Russia from America, where she has chosen a different kind of life, far from her family and childhood friends. When she meets Lopatin again, he is a smug businessman who wants to buy her parents' dacha and cut down the apple orchard. Haunted by the ghosts of her youth, Anya comes to the stark realization that memory does not fade or disappear; rather, it moves us across time, connecting our past to our future, joys to sorrows.

Inspired by Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry's The Orchard powerfully captures the lives of four Soviet teenagers who are about to lose their country and one another, and who struggle to survive, to save their friendship, to recover all that has been lost.]]> 384 Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry 0593356012 Rachel 4 4.07 2022 The Orchard
author: Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/19
date added: 2022/09/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law]]> 56769577
Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem—and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.]]> 308 Mary Roach 1324001933 Rachel 0 to-read 3.81 2021 Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law
author: Mary Roach
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts]]> 28805
His rival: Lajos VarjĂş, the Inspector Clouseau of the Iron Curtain, whose knowledge of police work comes from Hungarian-dubbed episodes of Columbo. His deputy is nicknamed "Mound of Asshead" because of his propensity for crashing police cars. His forensics expert, known as "Dance Instructor" for his lucrative side career teaching ballet, wears a top hat and tails on the job.

Welcome to Julian Rubinstein's uproariously funny and unforgettable account of crime in the heart of the new Europe. With a supporting cast that includes car wash owners, exotic dancers, drunk army generals, cocaine-snorting Hungarian rappers, the Johnnie Cochran of Budapest, and a hockey team that seems to spend as much time breaking the law as it does practicing, Ballad of the Whiskey Robber gives us the most charming outlaw-hero since the Sundance Kid—and the Sundance Kid didn't play hockey.

As the Eastern bloc slips off its communist skin and replaces it with leopard-skin hot pants, Ballad of the Whiskey Robber is here to screw in the pink lightbulbs. Part Unbearable Lightness of Being, part Pink Panther, and part Slap Shot, Julian Rubinstein's tale is a spectacular literary debut—and a story so outrageous that it could only be true.]]> 352 Julian Rubinstein 0316010731 Rachel 0 to-read 4.02 2004 Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts
author: Julian Rubinstein
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1) 55196813
Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life's complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly's orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what's happening, Molly's unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it's too late?

A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.]]> 304 Nita Prose 0593356152 Rachel 3 3.71 2022 The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1)
author: Nita Prose
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/09/08
date added: 2022/09/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Rachel 5 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/08
date added: 2022/09/08
shelves:
review:

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