Michael's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 04 May 2025 13:17:52 -0700 60 Michael's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Gabriel Allon, #22)]]> 59609728 #1 New York Times bestselling author Daniel Silva delivers another stunning thriller in his latest action-packed tale of high stakes international intrigue.

Internationally bestselling author Daniel Silva has entertained readers with twenty-one thoughtful and gripping spy novels featuring the "much-loved Gabriel Allon" (Booklist) and ingenious plots that have taken him around the globe and back--from the United States to Europe, Russia to the Middle East.

Now, this master novelist who "tells his story with zest, wit and superb timing, and engineers enough surprises to startle even the most attentive reader" (Wall Street Journal) continues his remarkable success with this latest blockbuster. A powerhouse novel showcasing the outstanding narrative skills, brilliant imagination, and deep knowledge of emerging global threats that are the hallmarks of his "expertly crafted" (Bob Woodward) works, Silva's latest is a must read for both his multitudes of loyal fans and growing legions of converts.]]> 496 Daniel Silva 0062834924 Michael 0 currently-reading 4.25 2022 Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Gabriel Allon, #22)
author: Daniel Silva
name: Michael
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Narrow Road to the Deep North]]> 22471703 From the winner of Australia's National Fiction Prize, author of the hugely acclaimedGould's Book of Fish,a magisterial,Rashomon-like novel of love and war that traces the life of one man from World War II to the present.

In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma Death Railway in 1943, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. His life is a daily struggle to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from pitiless beatings. Until he receives a letter that will change him forever. Moving deftly from the POW camp to contemporary Australia, from the experiences of Dorrigo and his comrades to those of the Japanese guards, this savagely beautiful novel tells a story of death, love, and family; exploring the many forms of good and evil, war and truth, guilt and transcendence, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.]]> 353 Richard Flanagan 0385352867 Michael 4 4.08 2013 The Narrow Road to the Deep North
author: Richard Flanagan
name: Michael
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Prague Fatale (Bernard Gunther, #8)]]> 18376460 Indeed, a murder does occur, but the victim is a young adjutant on Heydrich's staff, found dead in his room, the door and windows bolted from the inside. Anticipating foul play, Heydrich had already ordered Bernie Gunther to Prague. After more than a decade in Berlin's Kripo, Bernie had jumped ship as the Nazis came to power, setting himself up as a private detective. But Heydrich, who managed to subsume Kripo into his own SS operations, has forced Bernie back to police work. Now, searching for the killer, Gunther must pick through the lives of some of the Reich's most odious officials.
A perfect locked-room mystery. But because Philip Kerr is a master of the sleight of hand, "Prague Fatale" is also a tense political a complex tale of spies, partisan terrorists, vicious infighting, and a turncoat traitor situated in the upper reaches of the Third Reich.]]> 408 Philip Kerr 1101580321 Michael 4 4.39 2011 Prague Fatale (Bernard Gunther, #8)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Michael
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Close (Maeve Kerrigan #10)]]> 60830236
But there are dark secrets behind the neat front doors, hidden dangers that include a ruthless criminal who will stop at nothing.

It’s up to DS Maeve Kerrigan and DI Josh Derwent to uncover the truth. Posing as a couple, they move into the Close, blurring the lines between professional and personal as never before.

And while Maeve and Josh try to gather the evidence they need, they have no idea of the danger they face � because someone in Jellicoe Close has murder on their mind.]]> 400 Jane Casey 0008404992 Michael 3 4.38 2023 The Close (Maeve Kerrigan #10)
author: Jane Casey
name: Michael
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/18
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome]]> 219737079
The stories of these real historical figures - their alliances and betrayals, their cruelties and seductions, their brilliance and their crimes - are all interleaved to form this epic novel. Its narrator is Tiro, a slave who serves as confidential secretary to the wily, humane, complex Cicero. He knows all his master's secrets - a dangerous position to be in.

From the discovery of a child's mutilated body, through judicial execution and a scandalous trial, to the brutal unleashing of the Roman mob, Lustrum (US: Conspirata) is a study in the timeless enticements and horrors of power.]]> 356 Robert Harris Michael 5 4.48 2009 Conspirata: A Novel of Ancient Rome
author: Robert Harris
name: Michael
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
review:

]]> Dictator (Cicero, #3) 25488982 Imperium...Conspirata...and now, the long-awaited final volume of the author's best-selling Cicero trilogy.

Withپٲٴǰ,Robert Harris brings the saga of Cicero's life to a time when some of the most epic events in human history occurred: the collapse of the Roman republic, the subsequent civil war, the murder of Pompey and the assassination of Julius Caesar. Yet the question it asks is a timeless one: how is political freedom to be safeguarded against the triple threat of unscrupulous personal ambition, of an electoral system dominated by vested financial interests, and of the corrupting impact of waging ceaseless foreign wars? And in the very human figure of Cicero--brilliant, flawed, frequently fearful, and yet ultimately brave--Harris gives us a hero for both his own time, and for ours.]]> 385 Robert Harris 0307957942 Michael 5 4.38 2015 Dictator (Cicero, #3)
author: Robert Harris
name: Michael
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
review:
The entire trilogy was brilliant, and many aspects of Cicero's life and times are eerily relevant to what is currently in the headlines of my country's newspapers. Cheers!
]]> Hard Times 22364136 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439679.

'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root everything else'

Coketown is dominated by the figure of Mr Thomas Gradgrind, school owner and model of Utilitarian success. Feeding both his pupils and his family with facts, he bans fancy and wonder from young minds. As a consequence his obedient daughter Louisa marries the loveless businessman and 'bully of humility' Mr Bounderby, and his son Tom rebels to become embroiled in gambling and robbery. And, as their fortunes cross with those of free-spirited circus girl Sissy Jupe and victimised weaver Stephen Blackpool, Gradgrind is eventually forced to recognise the value of the human heart in an age of materialism and machinery.

This edition of Hard Times is based on the text of the first volume publication of 1854. Kate Flint's introduction sheds light on the frequently overlooked character interplay in Dickens' great critique of Victorian industrial society.]]> 321 Charles Dickens Michael 4 reread 3.42 1854 Hard Times
author: Charles Dickens
name: Michael
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1854
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/28
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: reread
review:

]]> Money for Nothing 1256952 336 Donald E. Westlake 0446613789 Michael 3 3.63 2003 Money for Nothing
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Michael
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Three Days in June 213248309 A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant an inept mother of the bride attempts to navigate the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is long divorced from her husband, Max, and not especially close to her grown daughter, Debbie. Today is the day before Debbie's wedding. To start, Gail loses her job—or quits, depending who you ask. Then, Max arrives unannounced on Gail's doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband-to-be. It will not only throw the wedding itself into question but also send Gail back into her past and how her own relationship fell apart.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of her powers.]]> 156 Anne Tyler 0593803493 Michael 0 currently-reading 4.01 2025 Three Days in June
author: Anne Tyler
name: Michael
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Pilgrim (George Smiley, #8)]]> 35903404
To train new spies for this uncertain future, one must show them the past. Enter the man called Ned, the loyal and shrewd veteran of the Circus. With the inspiration of his inscrutable mentor George Smiley, Ned thrills all as he recounts forty exhilarating years of Cold War espionage across Europe and the Far East—an electrifying, clandestine tour of honorable old knights and notorious traitors, triumph and failure, passion and hate, suspicion, sudden death, and old secrets that haunt us still.]]> 420 John Le Carré 1524797626 Michael 5 4.32 1990 The Secret Pilgrim (George Smiley, #8)
author: John Le Carré
name: Michael
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Learn German with Stories: Karneval in Köln - 10 Short Stories for Beginners (Dino lernt Deutsch, #3)]]> 21487513 Take your German to the next level and boost your vocabulary, reading comprehension and grammar sense with these German stories for beginners! In this follow-up to Ferien in Frankfurt, Dino finds himself in Cologne, the Carnival Capital of Germany and home of the Cologne Cathedral. Struggling with tacky accommodations and an empty wallet, he stumbles over a gig which promises to be a walk down easy street. But before he knows it, the carnival begins and he’s faced with an onslaught of bewildering customs, an inebriated four-legged friend and sudden downpours of candy. Explore Cologne’s colorful carnival tradition, its very unique form of German humor (yes, it exists!), learn about local sights and sounds, and improve your German effortlessly along the way! Learning German Doesn't Have To Be A Chore Just got started learning German? Memorized a few words and phrases but struggle with anything more complex? We've all been there. This book of German learning stories is designed to help beginners make the leap from studying isolated words and phrases to reading (and enjoying!) German fiction. Using simplified sentence structure and a very basic vocabulary you can build upon, this German short stories book is carefully crafted to allow even novice learners to fully immerse themselves in authentic German literature. Each chapter comes with a complete German-English dictionary with special emphasis on collocative phrases (high frequency word combinations), short sentences and expressions designed for improved memorization. By working with these building blocks instead of just single words, learners can boost their active usage of new material instantly and make the language learning process more fluid and fun. What You'll Find In This Book 10 German stories about culture, language and cuisine a balance between easy vocabulary and introduction of new words tons of phrases and expressions you will actually use in daily life fun tidbits about the city of Cologne, its history, dialect and traditions a detailed German-English dictionary after every chapter enough support to make following along easy, without spoiling your own efforts fun short quizzes to check your text-comprehension (including answers) a relatable protagonist and other fun characters hand-drawn illustrations by the author the beginning of a grand German learning adventure ... Read, Learn & Collect Them All Yes! That's right. This is only the third episode of a whole series of exciting German short stories for beginners. Follow our protagonist to Munich, Zurich, Vienna and many other cities! Before you know it, you'll have travelled half of Europe and picked up more German than years' worth of expensive courses. Learning German has never been more fun. What You WON'T Find In This Book parallel translations that may seem convenient but don't teach you anything dull characters designed by academics and committees interspersed English sentences that take you out of the reading flow archaic German words and phrases nobody uses in real life]]> 65 André Klein Michael 0 currently-reading 4.28 2014 Learn German with Stories: Karneval in Köln - 10 Short Stories for Beginners (Dino lernt Deutsch, #3)
author: André Klein
name: Michael
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Secret Pilgrim: A Novel 2013292
The rules of the game, and of the world, have changed. Old enemies now yield to glasnost and perestroika. The killing shadows of the Cold War are flooded with light. The future is unfathomable.

To train new spies for this uncertain future, one must show them the past. Enter the man called Ned, the loyal and shrewd veteran of the Circus. With the inspiration of his inscrutable mentor George Smiley, Ned thrills all as he recounts forty exhilarating years of Cold War espionage across Europe and the Far East—an electrifying, clandestine tour of honorable old knights and notorious traitors, triumph and failure, passion and hate, suspicion, sudden death, and old secrets that haunt us still.

Praise for The Secret Pilgrim

“Intriguing . . . magisterial . . . The many ingredients are skillfully marshaled. . . . Lucidly and elegantly controlled.� � The New York Times Book Review

“Scorching . . . fascinating . . . seductive . . . a dazzler.� � Entertainment Weekly

“Powerful . . . a highly absorbing tale.� � Newsday

“Extraordinary.� � USA Today]]> 400 John Le Carré 0345504429 Michael 4 4.06 1990 The Secret Pilgrim: A Novel
author: John Le Carré
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 1995/10/01
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:

]]> The Quantum Spy 38212118
In this gripping cyber thriller, the United States' top-secret quantum research labs are compromised by a suspected Chinese informant, inciting a mole hunt of history-altering proportions. CIA officer Harris Chang leads the charge, pursuing his target from the towering cityscape of Singapore to the lush hills of the Pacific Northwest, the mountains of Mexico, and beyond. The investigation is obsessive, destructive, and--above all--uncertain. Do the leaks expose real secrets, or are they false trails meant to deceive the Chinese? The answer forces Chang to question everything he thought he knew about loyalty, morality, and the primacy of truth.

Grounded in the real-world technological arms race, The Quantum Spy presents a sophisticated game of cat and mouse cloaked in an exhilarating and visionary thriller.]]> 336 David Ignatius 0393356248 Michael 1 cast-aside-dnf 3.54 2017 The Quantum Spy
author: David Ignatius
name: Michael
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: cast-aside-dnf
review:
Plot driven, the most minimal character depth, and the overused, tired "find the mole" plot device. As I reached the halfway point, I was finding the American intelligence operatives portrayed here to be so obnoxious and annoying that I began rooting for the Chinese. This one was not for me. Time to move on. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[Learn German With Stories: Ferien in Frankfurt - 10 German Short Stories for Beginners (Dino lernt Deutsch 2)]]> 19185614 In this sequel to Café in Berlin, Dino makes his way towards the central German metropolis of Frankfurt am Main, caught in between quaint cider-pubs, the international banking elite, old acquaintances and the eternal question what to do with his life.Explore Frankfurt's city life, learn about local sights and sounds, and improve your German effortlessly along the way! Take your German to the next level and boost your vocabulary, reading comprehension and grammar sense by reading German fiction for beginners.Learning German Doesn't Have To Be A ChoreJust started to learn German? Memorized a few words but struggle with anything longer? We've all been there. This book is designed to help beginners make the leap from studying isolated words and phrases to reading (and enjoying!) real German literature. Using simplified sentence structure and a very basic vocabulary you can build upon, this set of 10 connected German short stories is carefully crafted to allow even novice learners to fully immerse themselves in authentic German fiction.Each chapter comes with a complete German-English dictionary with special emphasis on collocative phrases (high frequency word combinations), short sentences and expressions designed for improved memorization. By working with these building blocks instead of just single words, learners can boost their active usage of new material instantly and make learning the German language more fluid and fun.What You'll Find In This Book10 German stories about culture, language and cuisinea balance between cozy vocabulary and introduction of new wordstons of phrases and expressions you will actually use in daily lifefun tidbits about the city of Frankfurt, its history, dialect and traditionsa detailed German-English dictionary after every chapterenough support to make following along easy, without spoiling your own effortsfun short quizzes to check your text-comprehension (including answers)a relatable protagonist and other fun charactershand-drawn illustrations by the authorthe beginning of a grand German learning adventure ...Read, Learn & Collect Them AllYes! That's right. This is only the second episode of a whole series of exciting German short stories for beginners. Follow our protagonist to Cologne, Munich, Zurich, Vienna and many other cities! Before you know it, you'll have travelled half of Europe and picked up more German than years' worth of expensive courses. Learning German has never been more fun.What You WON'T Find In This Bookparallel translations that may seem convenient but don't teach you anythingdull characters designed by academics and committeesinterspersed English sentences that take you out of the reading flowarchaic German words and phrases nobody uses in real lifea jumble of unrelated places, people and eventswordy footnotes that only get in the way of immersioncondescending storytelling that insults your intelligencea teaching approach which takes itself too seriously]]> 64 André Klein Michael 4 4.32 2013 Learn German With Stories: Ferien in Frankfurt - 10 German Short Stories for Beginners (Dino lernt Deutsch 2)
author: André Klein
name: Michael
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves:
review:

]]> The Remains of the Day 57934597 From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, here is the universally acclaimed novel—winner of the Booker Prize and the basis for an award-winning film.

This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "great gentleman," Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "greatness," and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro 0307576183 Michael 5 4.25 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Michael
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1989
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Polish Officer (Night Soldiers, #3)]]> 918284 294 Alan Furst 0375758275 Michael 5 favorites, reread 4.06 1995 The Polish Officer (Night Soldiers, #3)
author: Alan Furst
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: favorites, reread
review:
It pleases me to continue to rate this gripping tale of survival, resistance, and romance during the dark days of eastern Europe in 1939-1941 at 5 stars on a reread. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[The Looking Glass War (George Smiley, #4)]]> 44171 288 John Le Carré 0743431707 Michael 4 reread 3.72 1965 The Looking Glass War (George Smiley, #4)
author: John Le Carré
name: Michael
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: reread
review:

]]> Night Soldiers 219559632 Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin's purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates
the European world of 1934-45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a work on a grand scale.]]> 498 Alan Furst Michael 4 reread 4.09 1988 Night Soldiers
author: Alan Furst
name: Michael
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: reread
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)]]> 205066300 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?�

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 327 Elizabeth Strout 0593446100 Michael 4 4.24 2024 Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Michael
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Café in Berlin 18806935
Newly arrived in Berlin, a young man from Sicily is thrown headlong into an unfamiliar urban lifestyle of unkempt bachelor pads, evanescent romances and cosmopolitan encounters of the strangest kind. How does he manage the new language? Will he find work?

Experience daily life in the German capital through the eyes of a newcomer, learn about the city and its people, and improve your German effortlessly and instantly.

Learning German Doesn't Have To Be A Chore

Just got started learning the language of poets and thinkers? Memorized a few words but struggle with longer texts? This book is designed to help beginners make the leap from studying isolated words and phrases to reading (and enjoying!) German fiction.

Using simplified sentence structures and a very basic vocabulary you can build upon, this German reader of 10 short stories for beginners is carefully crafted to allow even novice learners to fully immerse themselves in an authentic German learning experience.

Each chapter comes with a complete German-English dictionary with special emphasis on collocative phrases (high frequency word combinations), short sentences and expressions designed for improved memorization.

By working with these building blocks instead of just single words, learners can boost their active usage of new material instantly and make the language learning process more fluid and fun.

What You'll Find In This Book

10 Berlin stories about life and culture in the capital

a balance between cozy vocabulary and introduction of new words

tons of phrases and expressions you will actually use in daily life

fun facts about the city of Berlin, its quirks and cuisine

a detailed German-English dictionary after every chapter

enough support to make following along easy, without spoiling your own efforts

fun short quizzes to check your text-comprehension (including answers)

a relatable protagonist and other fun characters

hand-drawn illustrations by the author

the beginning of a grand German learning adventure ...



Read, Learn & Collect Them All

Yes! That's right. This is only the first episode of a whole series of exciting German short stories for beginners. Follow our protagonist to Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich, Zurich, Vienna and many other cities! Before you know it, you'll have travelled half of Europe and picked up more German than years' worth of expensive courses.

Learning German has never been more fun.

What You WON'T Find In This Book

parallel translations that may seem convenient but don't teach you anything

dull characters designed by academics and committees

interspersed English sentences that take you out of the reading flow

archaic German words and phrases nobody uses in real life

a jumble of unrelated places, people and events

wordy footnotes that only get in the way of immersion

condescending storytelling that insults your intelligence

a teaching approach which takes itself too seriously]]> 98 André Klein Michael 4 4.24 2013 Café in Berlin
author: André Klein
name: Michael
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:
Learning how to speak and read German at my late age has been a challenge. This was one of the best sources for beginning Deutsch readers I have come across. Learning new vocabulary in the context of a story seems to work for me. I plan to continue with the series. Prost!
]]> A Spy Alone 174943528 369 Charles Beaumont 1804364797 Michael 4 4.12 A Spy Alone
author: Charles Beaumont
name: Michael
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Short Stories in German for Beginners]]> 39324213
"I love Olly's work - and you will too!" - Barbara Oakley, PhD, Author of New York Times bestseller A Mind for Numbers

Short Stories in German for Beginners has been written especially for students from beginner to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, and most importantly - enjoyment! Mapped to A2-B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference, these eight captivating stories will both entertain you, and give you a feeling of progress when reading.

What does this book give you?

· Eight stories in a variety of exciting genres, from science fiction and crime to history and thriller - making reading fun, while you learn a wide range of new vocabulary

· Controlled language at your level, including the 1000 most frequent words, to help you progress confidently

· Authentic spoken dialogues, to help you learn conversational expressions and improve your speaking ability

· Pleasure! It's much easier to learn a new language when you're having fun, and research shows that if you're enjoying reading in a foreign language, you won't experience the usual feelings of frustration - 'It's too hard!' 'I don't understand!'

· Accessible grammar so you learn new structures naturally, in a stress-free way

Carefully curated to make learning a new language easy, these stories include key features that will support and consolidate your progress, including

· A glossary for bolded words in each text

· A bilingual word list

· Full plot summary

· Comprehension questions after each chapter.

As a result, you will be able to focus on enjoying reading, delighting in your improved range of vocabulary and grasp of the language, without ever feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. From science fiction to fantasy, to crime and thrillers, Short Stories in German for Beginners will make learning German easy and enjoyable.]]> 240 Olly Richards 1473683378 Michael 0 currently-reading 3.85 2018 Short Stories in German for Beginners
author: Olly Richards
name: Michael
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> A Small Town in Germany 46461
It is vital that the Germans do not learn that Harting is missing, nor that there's been a leak. With radical students and neo-Nazis rioting and critical negotiations under way in Brussels, the timing could not be worse -- and that's probably not an accident.

Alan Turner, London's security officer, is sent to Bonn to find the missing man and files as Germany's past, present, and future threaten to collide in a nightmare of violence.]]> 338 John Le Carré 0743431715 Michael 4 reread 3.79 1968 A Small Town in Germany
author: John Le Carré
name: Michael
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: reread
review:
I first read this one back in the '80s and, back then, I recall it being my least favorite by this author that I had grown to love. That said, I still enjoyed it. So, this was a reread, only this time I combined reading it and listening to it on audiobook. With 40 years of life experiences under my belt and having recently spent some time living in Germany and getting to know the place a little, I feel like I have a better understanding and appreciation of the nuances portrayed here. It remains a good read after all these years. One caveat, the reader on the audiobook was not very good (a rarity I find) and I ended up reading much more than listening. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis]]> 60141696 From award-winning, New York Times bestselling historian Adam Hochschild, a fast-paced, revelatory new account of a pivotal but neglected period in American history: World War I and its stormy aftermath, when bloodshed and repression on the home front nearly doomed American democracy.

The nation was on the brink. Angry mobs burned Black churches to the ground and chased down pacifists and immigrants. Well over a thousand men and women were jailed solely for what they had written or said, even in private. An astonishing 250,000 people joined a nationwide vigilante group—sponsored by the Department of Justice.

This was America during and after the Great War: a brief but appalling era blighted by torture, censorship, and killings. Adam Hochschild brings to life this troubled period, which stretched from 1917 to 1921, through the interwoven tales of a colorful cast of characters: some well-known, among them the sphinxlike Woodrow Wilson and the ambitious young bureaucrat J. Edgar Hoover; others less familiar, such as the fiery antiwar advocate Kate Richards O’Hare and the outspoken Leo Wendell, a labor radical who was frequently arrested and wholly trusted by his comrades—but who was in fact Hoover’s star undercover agent.

A groundbreaking work of narrative history, American Midnight recalls these horrifying yet inspiring four years, when some brave Americans strove to keep their fractured country democratic, while ruthless others stimulated toxic currents of racism, nativism, red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law—poisons that feel ominously familiar today.]]> 422 Adam Hochschild 0358455464 Michael 4 4.16 2022 American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis
author: Adam Hochschild
name: Michael
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves:
review:

]]> Spy Games (Philip Mangan #2) 25584117 In a world of lies, one man wants the truth.Journalist Philip Mangan is trying to stay out of trouble in East Africa, his reputation and his life in tatters. But when he is caught in a terrorist attack in East Africa and a shadowy Chinese figure approaches him in the dead of night with information on the origins of the attack, Mangan is suddenly back in the eye of the storm.Meanwhile, thousands of miles away on a humid Hong Kong night, a key British Intelligence source is murdered minutes after meeting spy Trish Patterson. From Washington, D.C. to the hallowed halls of Oxford University and dusty African streets, a sinister power is stirring, one which will use Mangan and Patterson as pawns -- if they survive.Deeply steeped in tension and paranoia, Adam Brookes's second novel is a remarkable, groundbreaking spy thriller.]]> 480 Adam Brookes 0316399884 Michael 5 4.08 2015 Spy Games (Philip Mangan #2)
author: Adam Brookes
name: Michael
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:
This was so well done. I was up until 2 am last night because I needed to know how it would end. A very satisfying literary espionage thriller for those discerning readers, like yours truly, who love this genre and genuinely appreciate it when an author just nails it. I look forward to the next book in the series. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[Call for the Dead (George Smiley, #1)]]> 46460
George Smiley had liked Samuel Fennan, and now Fennan was dead from an apparent suicide. But why? Fennan, a Foreign Office man, had been under investigation for alleged Communist Party activities, but Smiley had made it clear that the investigation -- little more than a routine security check -- was over and that the file on Fennan could be closed. The very next day, Fennan was found dead with a note by his body saying his career was finished and he couldn't go on. Smiley was puzzled...]]> 144 John Le Carré 0743431677 Michael 5 reread 3.78 1961 Call for the Dead (George Smiley, #1)
author: John Le Carré
name: Michael
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: reread
review:
A short but very satisfying reread of this early novel by the master.
]]> Lonesome Dove, Part 1 of 3 34857 0 Larry McMurtry 0736605827 Michael 5 4.66 Lonesome Dove, Part 1 of 3
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Michael
average rating: 4.66
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[A Murder of Quality (George Smiley, #2)]]> 622855
George Smiley was simply doing a favor for Miss Ailsa Brimley, and old friend and editor of a small newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried reader: "I'm not mad. And I know my husbad is trying to kill me." But the letter had arrived too late: its scribe, the wife of an assistant master at the distinguished Carne School, was already dead.

So George Smiley went to Carne to listen, ask questions, and think. And to uncover, layer by layer, the complex network of skeletons and hatreds that comprised that little English institution.]]> 146 John Le Carré 0743431685 Michael 4 reread 3.57 1962 A Murder of Quality (George Smiley, #2)
author: John Le Carré
name: Michael
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: reread
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]]> Single & Single 1574270 Single & Single is shot dead on a Turkish hillside by people with whom he thought he was in business. A children's magician in the English countryside is asked by his bank to explain the unsolicited arrival of more than five million pounds sterling in his young daughter's modest trust. A freighter bound for Liverpool is boarded by Russian coast guards in the Black Sea. The celebrated London merchant venturer "Tiger"Single disappears into thin air.

In Single & Single the writer who both epitomizes and transcends the novel of espionage opens with a haunting set piece, then establishes a sequence of events whose connections are mysterious, complex and compelling. This is a story of corrupt liaisons between criminal elements in the new Russian states and the world of legitimate finance in the West. Le Carré's finest novel in years, it is also an intimate portrait of two families: one Russian, the other English; one trading illicit goods, the other laundering the profits; one betrayed by a son-in-law, the other betrayed, and redeemed, by a son.

This is territory le Carré knows better than anyone. Masterful and prescient, he is writing at the height of his creative powers, and Oliver Single, the central protagonist, is one of his most fascinating characters.
]]> 416 John Le Carré 0340924381 Michael 5 3.53 1999 Single & Single
author: John Le Carré
name: Michael
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
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]]> Germany: Memories of a Nation 25242070
Whilst Germany s past is too often seen through the prism of the two World Wars, this series investigates a wider six hundred-year-old history of the nation through its objects. It examines the key moments that have defined Germany s past its great, world-changing achievements and its devastating tragedies and it explores the profound influence that Germany s history, culture, and inventiveness have had across Europe.

The objects featured in the radio series range from large sculptures to small individual artifacts and items that are prosaic, iconic, and symbolic. Each has a story to tell and a memory to invoke."]]> 640 Neil MacGregor 014197978X Michael 0 currently-reading 4.49 2014 Germany: Memories of a Nation
author: Neil MacGregor
name: Michael
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Crossing to Safety (Modern Library Classics)]]> 20576437

From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 370 Wallace Stegner Michael 5 4.24 1987 Crossing to Safety (Modern Library Classics)
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Michael
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
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]]> The Cricket on the Hearth 18622427
The title creature is a sort of barometer of life at the home of John Peerybingle and his much younger wife Dot. When things go well, the cricket on the hearth chirps; it is silent when there is sorrow. Tackleton, a jealous old man, poisons John's mind about Dot, but the cricket through its supernatural powers restores John's confidence and all ends happily.]]> 168 Charles Dickens Michael 3 3.71 1845 The Cricket on the Hearth
author: Charles Dickens
name: Michael
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1845
rating: 3
read at: 2016/12/18
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
review:

]]> Any Person Is the Only Self 195790626
Who are we when we read? When we journal? Are we more ourselves alone or with friends? Right now or in memory? How does time transform us and the art we love?

In sixteen dazzling, expansive essays, the acclaimed essayist and poet Elisa Gabbert explores a life lived alongside books of all dog-eared and destroyed, cherished and discarded, classic and clichėd, familiar and profoundly new. She turns her witty, searching mind to the writers she admires, from Plath to Proust, and the themes that bind them―chance, freedom, envy, ambition, nostalgia, and happiness. She takes us to the strange edges of art and culture, from hair metal to surf movies to party fiction. Any Person Is the Only Self is a love letter to literature and to life, inviting us to think alongside one of our most thrilling and versatile critics.]]> 240 Elisa Gabbert 0374605890 Michael 4 3.75 2024 Any Person Is the Only Self
author: Elisa Gabbert
name: Michael
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite]]> 36584248 170 Anthony Trollope Michael 4 4.00 1870 Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite
author: Anthony Trollope
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1870
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
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]]> Nobody Walks 22358131 Now for the first time since he cut all ties years ago, Bettany returns home to London to find out the truth about his son's death. Maybe it's the guilt he feels about losing touch with his son that's gnawing at him, or maybe he's actually put his finger on a labyrinthine plot, but either way he'll get to the bottom of the tragedy, no matter whose feathers he has to ruffle. But more than a few people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerated mob bosses to those in the highest echelons of MI5. He might have thought he'd left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody really just walks away.]]> 296 Mick Herron 1616954868 Michael 5 3.91 2015 Nobody Walks
author: Mick Herron
name: Michael
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves:
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]]> Wolf on a String 28696598
Christian Stern, an ambitious young scholar and alchemist, arrives in Prague in the bitter winter of 1599, intent on making his fortune at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, the eccentric Rudolf II. The night of his arrival, drunk and lost, Christian stumbles upon the body of a young woman in Golden Lane, an alley hard by Rudolf’s great castle. Dressed in a velvet gown, wearing a large gold medallion around her neck, the woman is clearly well-born―or was, for her throat has been slashed.

A lesser man would smell danger, but Christian is determined to follow his fortunes wherever they may lead. He quickly finds himself entangled in the machinations of several ruthless courtiers, and before long he comes to the attention of the Emperor himself. Rudolf, deciding that Christian is that rare thing―a person he can trust―sets him the task of solving the mystery of the woman’s murder. But Christian soon realizes that he has blundered into the midst of a power struggle that threatens to subvert the throne itself. And as he gets ever nearer to the truth of what happened that night in Golden Lane, he finally sees that his own life is in grave danger.

From the spectacularly inventive Benjamin Black, Wolf on a String is a historical crime novel that delivers both a mesmerizing portrait of a lost world and a riveting tale of intrigue and suspense.]]> 320 Benjamin Black 1627795170 Michael 4 audiobook 3.18 2017 Wolf on a String
author: Benjamin Black
name: Michael
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: audiobook
review:
Listened to this historical crime novel set in Prague in 1599 on audio-book. I have to credit the brilliant reader Simon Vance with my decision to add a fourth star to my rating. Atmospheric, filled with court intrigue, an interesting cast of characters, and quite a lot of sex, this was a very enjoyable listen. Prague is one of my favorite cities but here it is presented as a cold and sinister place where everyone is constantly looking over their shoulders. Cheers!
]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Michael 4 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Michael
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Folly and Glory (The Berrybender Narratives, #4)]]> 10308
As this finale opens, Tasmin and her family are under irksome, though comfortable, arrest in Mexican Santa Fe. Her father, the eccentric Lord Berrybender, is planning to head for Texas with his whole family and his retainers, English, American, and Native American. Tasmin, who would once have followed her husband, Jim Snow, anywhere, is no longer even sure she likes him, or knows where to go to next. Neither does anyone else—even Captain Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, is puzzled by the great changes sweeping over the West, replacing Native Americans and buffalo with towns and farms.

In the meantime, Jim Snow, accompanied by Kit Carson, journeys to New Orleans, where he meets up with a muscular giant named Juppy, who turns out to be one of Lord Berrybender’s many illegitimate offspring, and in whose company they make their way back to Santa Fe. But even they are unable to prevent the Mexicans from carrying the Berrybender family on a long and terrible journey across the desert to Vera Cruz.

Starving, dying of thirst, and in constant, bloody battle with slavers pursuing them, the Berrybenders finally make their way to civilization—if New Orleans of the time can be called that—where Jim Snow has to choose between Tasmin and the great American plains, on which he has lived all his life in freedom, and where, after all her adventures, Tasmin must finally decide where her future lies.

With a cast of characters that includes almost every major real-life figure of the West, Folly and Glory is a novel that represents the culmination of a great and unique four-volume saga of the early days of the West; it is one of Larry McMurtry’s finest achievements.]]> 358 Larry McMurtry 0743262727 Michael 4 3.90 2004 Folly and Glory (The Berrybender Narratives, #4)
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Michael
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves:
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]]> Veridian Sterling Fakes It 199541083 In this colorful and humorous tale, a hopeful young painter finds herself embroiled in the world of art heists…and possibly responsible for the counterfeits needed to cover them up.

Freshly graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, Veridian Sterling is ready to hang her work in any of the countless New York galleries that are sure to give her a show. The problem is only one will, and they’re not interested in her art so much as her personal assistant skills.

No glitz, no glam, and definitely none of the money she needs to help her struggling mother finally realize her dream of starting her own business after having sacrificed everything for Veri to go to art school. So when she overhears her new boss discussing the impressive finder’s fee for a lost Van Gogh, Veri takes matters into her own hands. Maybe her own artwork isn’t celebrated, but she knows how to copy what is, and maybe those skills can help lead to a discovery.

But when a famous art dealer takes her under his wing (and his charming driver takes her interest), Veri realizes she’s in deeper than she expected, and quite possibly with the wrong people. With her mother’s dreams and her own future at stake, Veri will have to pull out every trick she can think of to wipe her canvas clean and erase the mess she’s created before she goes down for someone else’s crimes.]]> 252 Jennifer Gooch Hummer 1662518986 Michael 0 currently-reading 3.74 2024 Veridian Sterling Fakes It
author: Jennifer Gooch Hummer
name: Michael
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Mary Barton 54620 480 Elizabeth Gaskell 0192805622 Michael 4 3.75 1848 Mary Barton
author: Elizabeth Gaskell
name: Michael
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1848
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ice Princess (Patrik Hedstrom, #1)]]> 19918861 anything—even commit murder—to protect it.

Fans of Scandinavian greats Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell will devour Camilla Läckberg’s penetrating portrait of human nature at its darkest.]]> 420 Camilla Läckberg Michael 4 3.85 2003 The Ice Princess (Patrik Hedstrom, #1)
author: Camilla Läckberg
name: Michael
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Thunderball (James Bond, #9) 177194
When a stranger arrives in the Bahamas, the locals barely turn their heads, seeing another ex-pat with money to burn at the casino tables. But James Bond has more than money on his mind: he's got less than a week to find two stolen atom bombs hidden among the coral reefs. While acting the playboy, Bond meets Domino, sultry plaything of secretive treasure hunter Emilio Largo. In getting close to this gorgeous Italian girl, Bond hopes to learn more about Largo's hidden operation ...]]> 258 Ian Fleming 0142003247 Michael 4 3.79 1961 Thunderball (James Bond, #9)
author: Ian Fleming
name: Michael
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves:
review:
Though a bit dated, this is one of the better entries in this series. Cheers!
]]> Sweet Tooth 13562049 In this stunning new novel, Ian McEwan's first female protagonist since Atonement is about to learn that espionage is the ultimate seduction.

Cambridge student Serena Frome's beauty and intelligence make her the ideal recruit for MI5. The year is 1972. The Cold War is far from over. England's legendary intelligence agency is determined to manipulate the cultural conversation by funding writers whose politics align with those of the government. The operation is code named "Sweet Tooth."

Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is the perfect candidate to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. At first, she loves his stories. Then she begins to love the man. How long can she conceal her undercover life? To answer that question, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage: trust no one.

Once again, Ian McEwan's mastery dazzles us in this superbly deft and witty story of betrayal and intrigue, love and the invented self.]]> 320 Ian McEwan Michael 4 3.41 2012 Sweet Tooth
author: Ian McEwan
name: Michael
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
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]]> Boone's Lick 63447 Boone's Lick is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry's return to the kind of story that made him famous -- an enthralling tale of the nineteenth-century west. Like his bestsellers Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man's Walk, Boone's Lick transports the reader to the era about which McMurtry writes better and more shrewdly than anyone else.
Told with McMurtry's unique blend of historical fact and sheer storytelling genius, the novel follows the Cecil family's arduous journey by riverboat and wagon from Boone's Lick, Missouri, to Fort Phil Kearny in Wyoming. Fifteen-year-old Shay narrates, describing the journey that begins when his Ma, Mary Margaret, decides to hunt down her elusive husband, Dick, to tell him she's leaving him. Without knowing precisely where he is, they set out across the plains in search of him, encountering grizzly bears, stormy weather, and hostile Indians as they go. With them are Shay's siblings, G.T., Neva, and baby Marcy; Shay's uncle, Seth; his Granpa Crackenthorpe; and Mary Margaret's beautiful half-sister, Rose. During their journey they pick up a barefooted priest named Father Villy, and a Snake Indian named Charlie Seven Days, and persuade them to join in their travels.
At the heart of the novel, and the adventure, is Mary Margaret, whom we first meet shooting a sheriff's horse out from underneath him in order to feed her family. Forceful, interesting, and determined, she is written with McMurtry's trademark deftness and sympathy for women, and is in every way a match for the worst the west can muster.
Boone's Lick abounds with the incidents, the excitements, and the dangers of life on the plains. Its huge cast of characters includes such historical figures as Wild Bill Hickok and the unfortunate Colonel Fetterman (whose arrogance and ineptitude led to one of the U.S. Army's worst and bloodiest defeats at the hands of the Cheyenne and Sioux) as well as the Cecil family (itself based on a real family of nineteenth-century traders and haulers).
The story of their trek in pursuit of Dick, and the discovery of his second and third families, is told with brilliance, humor, and overwhelming joie de vivre in a novel that is at once high adventure, a perfect western tale, and a moving love story -- it is, in short, vintage McMurtry, combining his brilliant character portraits, his unerring sense of the west, and his unrivaled eye for the telling detail.
Boone's Lick is one of McMurtry's richest works of fiction to date.]]> 287 Larry McMurtry 0671040588 Michael 4 3.67 2000 Boone's Lick
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Michael
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves:
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]]> Little Big Man 50667
So starts the story of Jack Crabb, the 111-year old narrator of Thomas Berger's masterpiece of American fiction. As a "human being", as the Cheyenne called their own, he won the name Little Big Man. He dressed in skins, feasted on dog, loved four wives and saw his people butchered by the horse soldiers of General Custer, the man he had sworn to kill.

As a white man, Crabb hunted buffalo, tangled with Wyatt Earp, cheated Wild Bill Hickok and survived the Battle of Little Bighorn. Part-farcical, part-historical, the picaresque adventures of this witty, wily mythomaniac claimed the Wild West as the stuff of serious literature.

]]> 422 Thomas Berger 1860466419 Michael 0 to-read 4.25 1964 Little Big Man
author: Thomas Berger
name: Michael
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Karla's Choice 205899901 An extraordinary new novel set in the world of John le Carré's most iconic spy, George Smiley, written by acclaimed novelist Nick Harkaway

It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West’s spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only for a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumor in Whitehall—unconfirmed and a little scandalous—that George Smiley might almost be happy.

But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple interview Szusanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But, as Smiley well knows, even the softest step in the shadows resounds with terrible danger. Soon, he is back there, in East Berlin, and on the trail of his most devious enemy’s hidden past.

Set in the missing decade between two iconic instalments in the George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Nick Harkaway’s Karla’s Choice is an extraordinary, thrilling return to the world of spy fiction’s greatest writer, John le Carré.]]> 320 Nick Harkaway Michael 5 3.99 2024 Karla's Choice
author: Nick Harkaway
name: Michael
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> Northline 2172703 192 Willy Vlautin 0571235700 Michael 4 4.03 2008 Northline
author: Willy Vlautin
name: Michael
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Night Heron (Philip Mangan #1)]]> 18453122
A lone man, Peanut, escapes a labor camp in the dead of night, fleeing across the winter desert of north-west China.

Two decades earlier, he was a spy for the British; now Peanut must disappear on Beijing's surveillance-blanketed streets. Desperate and ruthless, he reaches out to his one-time MI6 paymasters via crusading journalist Philip Mangan, offering military secrets in return for extraction.

But the secrets prove more valuable than Peanut or Mangan could ever have known. . . and not only to the British.]]> 400 Adam Brookes 0316399833 Michael 4 3.70 2014 Night Heron (Philip Mangan #1)
author: Adam Brookes
name: Michael
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/24
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves:
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]]> The Charm School 40606265 644 Nelson DeMille Michael 1 cast-aside-dnf 4.35 1988 The Charm School
author: Nelson DeMille
name: Michael
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1988
rating: 1
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: cast-aside-dnf
review:
About 1/3rd of the way through "The Charm School" I began to feel a slight disdain for the main character, Hollis. As the novel progressed (slowly progressed I might add), this slight disdain evolved into a more pronounced disdain. After finishing the 34th chapter, I really despised this character to the point where the book has been added to the DNF bin. Cheers!
]]> Quartet in Autumn 22255424 Shortlisted for the 1977 Booker Prize



This is the story of four people in late middle-age - Edwin, Norman, Letty and Marcia - whose chief point of contact is that they work in the same office and they suffer the same problem - loneliness. Lovingly, poignantly, satirically and with much humour, Pym conducts us through their small lives and the facade they erect to defend themselves against the outside world. There is nevertheless an obstinate optimism in her characters, allowing them in their different ways to win through to a kind of hope. Barbara Pym's sensitive wit and artistry are at their most sparkling in "Quartet in Autumn".



"An exquisite, even magnificent work of art" - Observer



"'Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of social behaviour" - The Times



"The wit and style of a twentieth century Jane Austen" - Harpers & Queen



"Barbara Pym's unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past 75 years ...spectacular" - Sunday Times



"Very funny and keenly observant of the ridiculous as well as the pathetic in humanity" - Financial Times
]]> 224 Barbara Pym 1101661976 Michael 4 4.05 1978 Quartet in Autumn
author: Barbara Pym
name: Michael
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[By Sorrow's River (The Berrybender Narratives, #3)]]> 54821 By Sorrow's River is an epic in its own right, with an extraordinary young woman as its leading figure.

At the heart of this third volume of his Western saga remains the beautiful and determined Tasmin Berrybender, now married to the "Sin Killer" and mother to their young son, Monty. By Sorrow's River continues the Berrybender party's trail across the endless Great Plains of the West toward Santa Fe, where they intend, those who are lucky enough to survive the journey, to spend the winter. They meet up with a vast array of characters from the history of the West: Kit Carson, the famous scout; Le Partezon, the fearsome Sioux war chief; two aristocratic Frenchmen whose eccentric aim is to cross the Great Plains by hot air balloon; a party of slavers; a band of raiding Pawnee; and many other astonishing characters who prove, once again, that the rolling, grassy plains are not, in fact, nearly as empty of life as they look. Most of what is there is dangerous and hostile, even when faced with Tasmin's remarkable, frosty sangfroid. She is one of the strongest and most interesting of Larry McMurtry's women characters, and is at the center of this powerful and ambitious novel of the West.

]]> 368 Larry McMurtry 0743262719 Michael 4 audiobook 3.84 2003 By Sorrow's River (The Berrybender Narratives, #3)
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Michael
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: audiobook
review:

]]> The Natural 16165814 241 Bernard Malamud Michael 4 3.76 1952 The Natural
author: Bernard Malamud
name: Michael
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 1988/11/10
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves:
review:

]]> Ten North Frederick 20165126 435 John O'Hara 0698141806 Michael 4 4.16 1955 Ten North Frederick
author: John O'Hara
name: Michael
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1955
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves:
review:
An epic chronicle of the lives of an upper middle class suburban American family in the first half of the 20th century centered on the family patriarch Joe Chapin. It is a tale of the privileges and entitlement of a certain class in America. Mr. O'Hara is a master at writing dialog and much of the plot here advances through the characters conversing with each other. The author pulls no punches and there are numerous frank and provocative discussions throughout. This was a fascinating and absorbing read even though just about all the characters are flawed and not the most likable. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[The Wandering Hill (The Berrybender Narratives, #2)]]> 54806 The Barnes & Noble Review

The second novel in Larry McMurtry's spirited and lively Berrybender series is packed with the the same blazing humor and satire as as its predecessor, Sin Killer. But The Wandering Hill also establishes a more thoughtful ambiance as the aristocratic Berrybender family perseveres on its quest through 1830s frontier America.

Trapped at a trading post by awful weather during a devastating winter, the contentious brood must contend with Indian attacks, a buffalo stampede, and boorish mountain men -- as well as one another. Raucous and playful, this installment in the saga is a highly amusing read populated with colorful, unforgettable characters -- a perfect blend of adventure, whimsy, and charismatic folktale. McMurtry's shrewd and astute narrative is filled with lissome prose, keen authenticity, and the kind of droll wit that will keep you chuckling nonstop. Tom Piccirilli

]]> 319 Larry McMurtry 0743262700 Michael 4 audiobook 3.80 2003 The Wandering Hill (The Berrybender Narratives, #2)
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Michael
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: audiobook
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sin Killer (The Berrybender Narratives, #1)]]> 54818
It is 1830, and the Berrybender family—rich, aristocratic, English, and hopelessly out of place—is on its way up the Missouri River to see the untamed West as it begins to open up. Lord and Lady Berrybender have abandoned their home in England to broaden the horizons for themselves and their three children. With irascible determination—and a great deal of outright chaos—the party experiences both the awesome majesty and brutal savagery of the unexplored land, from buffalo stampedes and natural disasters to Indian raids and encounters with frontiersmen and trappers, explorers, pioneers, and one part-time preacher known as "the Sin Killer." Sin Killer, the strong, silent Westerner, captures the heart of the strong-willed, beautiful Berrybender daughter, Tasmin. But their fast developing relationship can only bring more trouble for the Berrybender's.

Packed with breathtaking adventure, charming romance, and a sense of humor stretching clear over the horizon, Sin Killer is a truly unique view of the West that could only come from the boundless skill and imagination of Larry McMurtry.]]> 304 Larry McMurtry 0743246845 Michael 4 audiobook 3.65 2002 Sin Killer (The Berrybender Narratives, #1)
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Michael
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: audiobook
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mission to Paris (Night Soldiers #12)]]> 18881101 “A master spy novelist.”�The Wall Street Journal

“Page after page is dazzling.”—James Patterson

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Late summer, 1938. Hollywood film star Fredric Stahl is on his way to Paris to make a movie. The Nazis know he’s coming—a secret bureau within the Reich has been waging political warfare against France, and for their purposes, Fredric Stahl is a perfect agent of influence. What they don’t know is that Stahl, horrified by the Nazi war on Jews and intellectuals, has become part of an informal spy service run out of the American embassy. Mission to Paris is filled with heart-stopping tension, beautifully drawn scenes of romance, and extraordinarily alive characters: foreign assassins; a glamorous Russian actress-turned-spy; and the women in Stahl’s life. At the center of the novel is the city of Paris—its bistros, hotels grand and anonymous, and the Parisians, living every night as though it were their last. Alan Furst brings to life both a dark time in history and the passion of the human hearts that fought to survive it.

Praise for Mission to Paris

“The most talented espionage novelist of our generation.”—Vince Flynn

“Vividly re-creates the excitement and growing gloom of the City of Light in 1938�39... It doesn’t get more action-packed and grippingly atmospheric than this.�—The Boston Globe

“One of [Furst’s] best... This is the romantic Paris to make a tourist weep... In Furst’s densely populated books, hundreds of minor characters—clerks, chauffeurs, soldiers, whores—all whirl around his heroes in perfect focus for a page or two, then dot by dot, face by face, they vanish, leaving a heartbreaking sense of the vast Homeric epic that was World War II and the smallness of almost every life that was caught up in it.”�The New York Times Book Review

“A book no reader will put down until the final page... Critics compare [Alan] Furst to Graham Greene and John le Carré [as] a master of historical espionage.”�Library Journal (starred review)

“Alan Furst’s writing reminds me of a swim in perfect water on a perfect day, fluid and exquisite. One wants the feeling to go on forever, the book to never end... Furst is one of the finest spy novelists working today.”�Publishers Weekly]]> 224 Alan Furst 0679604227 Michael 4 3.98 2012 Mission to Paris (Night Soldiers #12)
author: Alan Furst
name: Michael
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
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]]> Innocence 19539252 “A delectable comedy of manners� set in 1950s Florence, by the Booker Prize–winning author of Offshore (The Boston Globe).

It’s 1955, and Italy is still struggling a decade after the end of World War II. So are the Ridolfis, a Florentine family of long and fading noble lineage. Like their decrepit villa, they’ve seen better days. Only eighteen-year-old Chiara shows anything like vitality—however impulsive and perilously naïve. Chiara has set her heart and her future on Salvatore Rossi, a brilliant, penniless young doctor and bull-headed son of a Communist, who has erased both politics and romance from his list of priorities.

With her plans stymied, Chiara calls on her resourceful and meddlesome British girlfriend, Barney, to help make an impossible match. Now, out of good intentions and the most innocent of instincts, two guileless friends are going to make a series of astonishingly wrong moves in the name of love.

From a winner of multiple major literary awards who was called “the best English novelist of her time� by Julian Barnes, Innocence is a novel “not just about Italians in love but of living and loving for all humans� (The Times).

“As intoxicating as a shot of aged brandy.� �The Washington Post]]> 224 Penelope Fitzgerald 0544227654 Michael 4 3.53 1986 Innocence
author: Penelope Fitzgerald
name: Michael
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2017/01/18
date added: 2024/09/24
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A surprisingly very Italian novel that had me wondering where it was going right to the last page. Ms. Fitzgerald has a knack for creating flawed but, for the most part, endearing main characters in her work. In "Innocence" this applies to just about all of the secondary characters as well. In fact, as the novel progressed I grew to embrace most of these secondary characters who with their faults, eccentricities and intentions added warmth and humor to the story. Recommended for fans of Ms. Fitzgerald, although I would not recommend it as an introduction to this author. I would suggest either "The Bookshop" or "Offshore" to readers who want to give her a try.
]]> <![CDATA[Death at La Fenice (Commissario Brunetti #1)]]> 73262623 Death at La Fenice is the first novel in Donna Leon's internationally best-selling Commissario Guido Brunetti series. During intermission at the famed La Fenice opera house in Venice, a notoriously difficult conductor is poisoned, and suspects abound. Brunetti, a native Venetian, sets out to unravel the mystery behind the high-profile murder. To do so, he he calls on his knowledge of Venice, its culture, and its dirty politics. Revenge, corruption, and even Italian cuisine play a role. The novel that started it all, Death at La Fenice is an entrancing mystery, rich in atmosphere.

“Few detective writers create so vivid, inclusive and convincing a narrative as Donna Leon, the expatriate American with the Venetian heart. . . . One of the most exquisite and subtle detective series ever." �The Washington Post ]]> 0 Donna Leon 0802194133 Michael 4 3.69 1992 Death at La Fenice (Commissario Brunetti #1)
author: Donna Leon
name: Michael
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2013/07/15
date added: 2024/09/23
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]]> Appointment in Samarra 17374935 301 John O'Hara Michael 5 3.86 1934 Appointment in Samarra
author: John O'Hara
name: Michael
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1934
rating: 5
read at: 1988/10/01
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves:
review:
Another of my Book-of-the Month Club reads.
]]> <![CDATA[The Girl in the Eagle's Talons (Millennium #7)]]> 62559935 Lisbeth Salander returns, in a trailblazing new installment to the best-selling Millennium series.

Change is coming to Sweden’s far north: its untapped natural resources are sparking a gold rush with the criminal underworld leading the charge. But it’s not the prospect of riches that brings Lisbeth Salander to the small town of Gasskas. She has been named guardian to her niece Svala, whose mother has disappeared. Two things soon become clear: Svala is a remarkably gifted teenager—and she’s being watched.

Mikael Blomkvist is also heading north. He has seen better days. Millennium magazine is in its final print issue, and relations with his daughter are strained. Worse still, there are troubling rumors surrounding the man she’s about to marry. When the truth behind the whispers explodes into violence, Salander emerges as Blomkvist’s last hope.

A pulse-pounding thriller, The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons sees Salander and Blomkvist navigating a world of conspiracy and betrayal, old enemies and new friends, ice-bound wilderness and the global corporations that threaten to tear it apart.]]> 368 Karin Smirnoff 0593536703 Michael 2 3.74 2022 The Girl in the Eagle's Talons (Millennium #7)
author: Karin Smirnoff
name: Michael
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/09/10
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While the character of Lisbeth Salander has always been compelling for this reader, this was just okay. The problem is that the chief villain here is more than a bit over the top, like something out of James Bond movie. I kept waiting for the scene where he was petting his cat while calling for lasers to be attached to sharks.
]]> The Three Musketeers 22049892 beautiful, unscrupulous spy, Milady. Behind the flashing blades and bravura, in this first adventure of the Musketeers, Dumas explores the eternal conflict between good and evil.

This new edition is the most fully annotated to date in English, providing explanatory notes which set the work in its historical, literary, and cultural context. - ;The Three Musketeers (1844) is one of the most famous historical novels ever written. It is also one of the world's greatest historical adventure stories, and its heroes have become symbols for the spirit of youth, daring, and comradeship. The action takes place in the 1620s at the court of Louis XIII, where the musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, with their companion, the headstrong d'Artagnan, are engaged in a battle against Richelieu, the King's minister, and the
beautiful, unscrupulous spy, Milady. Behind the flashing blades and bravura, in this first adventure of the Musketeers, Dumas explores the eternal conflict between good and evil.

This new edition is the most fully annotated to date in English, providing explanatory notes which set the work in its historical, literary, and cultural context. -]]> 705 Alexandre Dumas 019161114X Michael 4 4.41 1844 The Three Musketeers
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Michael
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1844
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/09/07
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]]> The Glass Palace 5915209 NATIONAL BESTSELLER � NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND LOS ANGELES TIMES“A rich, layered epic that probes the meaning of identity and homeland� a literary territory that is as resonant now, in our globalized culture, as it was when the sun never set on the British Empire.”—Los Angeles Times Book ReviewSet in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love will shape his life. He cannot forget her, and years later, as a rich man, he goes in search of her. The struggles that have made Burma, India, and Malaya the places they are today are illuminated in this wonderful novel by the writer Chitra Divakaruni calls“a master storyteller.�Praise for The Glass Palace“An absorbing story of a world in transition, brought to life through characters who love and suffer with equal intensity.�—J. M. Coetzee“There is no denying Ghosh’s command of culture and history. . . . [He] proves a writer of supreme skill and intelligence.�—The Atlantic Monthly“I will never forget the young and old Rajkumar, Dolly, the Princesses, the forests of teak, the wealth that made families and wars. A wonderful novel. An incredible story.�—Grace Paley“A novelist of dazzling ingenuity.�—San Francisco Chronicle]]> 600 Amitav Ghosh Michael 4 4.18 2000 The Glass Palace
author: Amitav Ghosh
name: Michael
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/27
date added: 2024/08/27
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A sweeping epic set in multiple locales in southeast Asia, covering over 125 years in the lives of a family which arose from humble beginnings to great wealth and affluence. Mr. Ghosh writes brilliantly in muscular prose of the horrors of colonialism, militarism and fascism and their effect on the family as it tries to cope with cataclysmic world events around them. He writes of Burma before the British occupation, "This is a golden land - no one ever starves here, and all can read and write". He tells the sad story of how the last King and Queen of Burma were treated by the colonizers. We readers learn about elephants and their handlers and how teak and rubber tree plantations operated in those early days. And we learn about the travails of exiles whose lives are uprooted by war and political change. It is a long read but one that this reader wished could have been longer. Cheers!
]]> Wanderers 42445130 A decadent rock star. A deeply religious radio host. A disgraced scientist. And a teenage girl who may be the world's last hope. In the tradition of The Stand and Station Eleven comes a gripping saga that weaves an epic tapestry of humanity into an astonishing tale of survival.

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and are sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other "shepherds" who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them--and an ultraviolent militia threatens to exterminate them--the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart--or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.]]> 800 Chuck Wendig Michael 4 4.11 2019 Wanderers
author: Chuck Wendig
name: Michael
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
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A long one, with a large cast of interesting characters. One could compare it to "The Stand", another apocalyptic novel on an epic scale. The author addresses some provocative contemporary issues while telling a thrilling tale. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[The Man in the Wooden Hat (Old Filth, #2)]]> 6570431 Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Old Filth was Eddie's story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.

They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s.

As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, the novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power. It will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and so thoroughly satisfying.]]> 233 Jane Gardam 1933372893 Michael 5 4.04 The Man in the Wooden Hat (Old Filth, #2)
author: Jane Gardam
name: Michael
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2020/07/18
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Farewell, Amethystine (Easy Rawlins, #16)]]> 201559449 Praise for Walter Mosley"Skitters across the spectrum between orthodox and radical like a polygraph needle wired to a nervy accomplice. Fans of his Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill series will not be disappointed, for we remain in the realm of deliciously gritty noir."? New York Times Book Review"Mosley is a master of craft and narrative, and through his incredibly vibrant and diverse body of work, our literary heritage has truly been enriched..." - National Book Foundation"The ability to simultaneously keep us readers in confusion and in thrall marks Mosley - winner of the National Book Foundation's 2020 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters - as a mystery master." - Washington Post"Rawlins is the greatest contributor to Los Angeles' literary culture and its native son's repute." - LA Times"Mosley's characteristic writing style is on full display." ? Publishers Weekly]]> 336 Walter Mosley 031649111X Michael 4 3.72 2024 Farewell, Amethystine (Easy Rawlins, #16)
author: Walter Mosley
name: Michael
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Leatherstocking Tales, Vol. 2: The Pathfinder / The Deerslayer]]> 38288 The Pioneers, one early reader said of his departure, “I longed to go with him.�

American readers couldn’t get enough of the Leatherstocking saga (collected in two Library of America volumes) and, fourteen years after he portrayed the death of Natty Bumppo in The Prairie, Cooper brought him back in The Pathfinder, or The Inland Sea (1841). During the Seven Years War, just after the events narrated in The Last of the Mohicans, Natty brings the daughter of a British sergeant to her father’s station on the Great Lakes, where the French and their Indian allies are plotting a treacherous ambush. Here, for the first time, he falls in love with a woman, before Cooper manages bring off Leatherstocking’s most poignant, and perhaps his most revealing, escape.

The Deerslayer (1842) brings the saga full circle and follows the young Natty on his first warpath. Instinctively gifted in the arts of the forest, pious in his respect for the unspoiled wilderness on which he loves to gaze, honorable to friend and foe alike, stoic under torture, and cool under fire, the young Leatherstocking emerges as Cooper’s noblest figure of the American frontier. Enacting a rite of passage both for its hero and for the culture he comes to represent, this last book in the series glows with a timelessness that readers everywhere will find enchanting.]]> 1051 James Fenimore Cooper 0940450216 Michael 5 3.95 1826 The Leatherstocking Tales, Vol. 2: The Pathfinder / The Deerslayer
author: James Fenimore Cooper
name: Michael
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1826
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Rivers of London: Body Work, #1]]> 23387877

Peter Grant is one of only two members of a very special branch of London's Metropolitan Police. He is, in fact, pretty much a wizard and it's his job to investigate those shadowy crimes that involve urban vampires, weird folk in the underground and, in this case, why cars are suddenly taking on lives of their own and killing innocent folk!

Written by Doctor Who writer Ben Aaronovitch (Remembrance of the Daleks) and set in the world of his own bestselling novels, with Doctor Who showrunner Andrew Cartmel!

Rivers of London novels have sold over 1,000,000 copies worldwide to date!

In continuity with the novels � not an adaptation, this is an all-new story set between books 4 and 5!

]]> Ben Aaronovitch Michael 4 graphic-novel 3.90 2016 Rivers of London: Body Work, #1
author: Ben Aaronovitch
name: Michael
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/05
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: graphic-novel
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]]> <![CDATA[Lehrter Station (John Russell, #5)]]> 12403191
Shchepkin admits that his own survival now depends on his ability to utilize Russell. The only way out for the two of them is to make a deal with the Americans. If they can come up with something the Americans want or need badly enough, then perhaps Russell will be forgiven for handing German atomic secrets over to Moscow and Shchepkin might be offered the sort of sanctuary that also safeguards the lives of his wife and daughter in Moscow. Every decision Russell makes now is a dangerous one.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 443 David Downing Michael 4 4.02 2012 Lehrter Station (John Russell, #5)
author: David Downing
name: Michael
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:
I had read the first four books in this series and then set it aside for some reason I can't recall. It was comforting to return to it. This story takes place in 1945. John Russell, who was living in London at the end of the war, returns to Berlin to find work as a journalist. Berlin is in ruins. The currency is worthless, and most people use cigarettes to barter for goods. Mr. Russell strikes a deal with both the Soviets and the Americans to gather intelligence. Intrigue and danger follow. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[Christopher's Ghosts (Paul Christopher, #10)]]> 577030 304 Charles McCarry 1585679143 Michael 5 3.89 2007 Christopher's Ghosts (Paul Christopher, #10)
author: Charles McCarry
name: Michael
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/12
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves:
review:
One of Mr. McCarry's best in this series. Full disclosure: I read this while living in Berlin for the past two months. This MAY have influenced my five-star review. Cheers!
]]> Less Than Angels 18217434
Catherine Oliphant writes for women’s magazines and lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow—although she’s starting to wonder if they’ll ever get married. Then Tom drops his bombshell: He’s leaving her for nineteen-year-old student Deirdre Swan. Though stunned by Tom’s betrayal, Catherine quickly becomes fascinated by another anthropologist, Alaric Lydgate, a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. As Catherine starts to weigh her options she gradually realizes who she is and what she really wants.

With its lively cast of characters, Less Than Angels is an incisive social satire that opens a window onto the insular world of academia. It’s also a poignant and playful riff on the messy mating habits of humans and the traits that separate us from our anthropological forebears—far fewer than we may imagine.]]> 256 Barbara Pym 145329595X Michael 4 3.83 1955 Less Than Angels
author: Barbara Pym
name: Michael
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1955
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/07
date added: 2024/07/07
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]]> <![CDATA[A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther, #3)]]> 558649 The disturbing climax to the Berlin Noir trilogy

Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels have won him an international reputation as a master of historical suspense. In A German Requiem, the private eye has survived the collapse of the Third Reich to find himself in Vienna. Amid decaying imperial splendor, he traces concentric circles of evil and uncovers a legacy that makes the wartime atrocities seem lily-white in comparison.]]> 306 Philip Kerr 0142004022 Michael 4 4.02 1991 A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther, #3)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Michael
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/05
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[G is for Gumshoe (Kinsey Millhone, #7)]]> 257990
It's this last matter that convinces Kinsey that even she can't handle whoever's been hired to whack her, and she gets herself a bodyguard: Robert Dietz, a Porsche-driving P.I. He takes guarding Kinsey's body very seriously. With Dietz watching her for the merest sign of her usual recklessness, Kinsey plunges into her case. And before it's over, she unearths the gruesome truth about a long-buried betrayal and, in the process, comes face-to-face with her own mortality. . .]]> 261 Sue Grafton 0449000621 Michael 2 reread, audiobook 3.93 1990 G is for Gumshoe (Kinsey Millhone, #7)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Michael
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1990
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: reread, audiobook
review:
This was a reread and, to be honest, it did not hold up on a reread. It's always interesting to go back to a book that you have fond memories of only to discover that one's taste may have changed over the years. Cheers!
]]> The Peacock and the Sparrow 62919887
During the Arab Spring, an American spy's final mission goes dangerously awry in this "crackling debut thriller" (The New Yorker) written by a former CIA officer and hailed as "an instant classic" (Paul Vidich, author of Beirut Station).

Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain off the coast of Saudi Arabia for his final tour, he's anxious to dispense with his mission—uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency against the monarchy. But then he meets Almaisa, a beautiful and enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask.

When his trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, Collins finds himself drawn deep into the conflict. His budding romance with Almaisa—and his loyalties—are upended; in an instant, he's caught in the crosswinds of a revolution. Drawing on all his skills as a spymaster, he sets out to learn the truth behind the Arab Spring, win Almaisa's love, and uncover the murky border where Bahrain's secrets end and America's begin.]]> 308 I.S. Berry 1982194545 Michael 4 3.60 2023 The Peacock and the Sparrow
author: I.S. Berry
name: Michael
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/26
date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Independence Square (Arkady Renko, #10)]]> 62919846
Martin Cruz Smith has written nine previous novels featuring Arkady Renko, one of modern detective fiction’s most popular characters. These novels, beginning with 1981’s international sensation Gorky Park, have collectively traced Russia's evolution over the last half-century. Now, with Independence Square, Smith focuses on the fraught and frenzied days leading up to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.

It’s June 2021, and Arkady knows that Russia is preparing to invade and subsequently annex Ukraine as it did Crimea in 2014. He is, however, preoccupied with other grievances. His longtime lover, Tatiana Petrovna, has deserted him for her work as an investigative reporter. His corrupt boss has relegated him to a desk job. And he is having trouble with his dexterity and balance. A visit to his doctor reveals that these are symptoms for Parkinson’s Disease.

Parkinson’s hasn’t stopped Smith from his work, and neither does it stop Arkady. Rather than dwell on his diagnosis, he throws himself into another case.

An acquaintance has asked him to find his daughter, Karina, an anti-Putin activist who has disappeared. In the course of the investigation, Arkady falls for Karina's roommate, Elena, a Tatar from Ukraine. The search leads them to Kyiv, where rumblings of an armed conflict grow louder. Later, in Crimea, Tatiana reemerges to complicate Arkady’s new romance. And as he gets closer to locating Karina, Arkady discovers something that threatens his life as well as the lives of both Elena and Tatiana.

Few fiction writers have better captured contemporary Russia with more insight or authenticity than Martin Cruz Smith. He does the same here for Ukraine and the events that preceded Russia’s invasion. Independence Square is timely and a uniquely personal mystery novel-meets-political thriller by a master of the form.]]> 272 Martin Cruz Smith 1982188308 Michael 4 3.73 2023 Independence Square (Arkady Renko, #10)
author: Martin Cruz Smith
name: Michael
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/06/25
shelves:
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]]> The Means of Escape: Stories 19719446 Booker. Her last novel, The Blue Flower, was the book of its year, garnering extraordinary acclaim in Britain, America and Europe.

This superb collection of stories, originally published in anthologies and newspapers, shows Penelope Fitzgerald at her very best. From the tale of a young boy in 17-century England who loses a precious keepsake and finds it frozen in a puddle of ice, to that of a group of buffoonish amateur Victorian painters on a trip to Brittany, these stories are characteristically wide ranging, enigmatic and very funny. They are each miniature studies of the endless absurdity of human behaviour.]]> 126 Penelope Fitzgerald 0544228111 Michael 4 4.17 2000 The Means of Escape: Stories
author: Penelope Fitzgerald
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/25
date added: 2024/06/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Days Without End (Days Without End, #1)]]> 30212107
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.]]> 259 Sebastian Barry 0525427368 Michael 5 3.93 2016 Days Without End (Days Without End, #1)
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Michael
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/18
date added: 2024/06/18
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Her Deadly Game (Keera Duggan, #1)]]> 60593682 A defense attorney is prepared to play. But is she a pawn in a master’s deadly match? A twisting novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.

Keera Duggan was building a solid reputation as a Seattle prosecutor, until her romantic relationship with a senior colleague ended badly. For the competitive former chess prodigy, returning to her family’s failing criminal defense law firm to work for her father is the best shot she has. With the right moves, she hopes to restore the family’s reputation, her relationship with her father, and her career.

Keera’s chance to play in the big leagues comes when she’s retained by Vince LaRussa, an investment adviser accused of murdering his wealthy wife. There’s little hard evidence against him, but considering the couple’s impending and potentially nasty divorce, LaRussa faces life in prison. The prosecutor is equally challenging: Miller Ambrose, Keera’s former lover, who’s eager to destroy her in court on her first homicide defense.

As Keera and her team follow the evidence, they uncover a complicated and deadly game that’s more than Keera bargained for. When shocking information turns the case upside down, Keera must decide between her duty to her client, her family’s legacy, and her own future.]]> 396 Robert Dugoni 1662500173 Michael 4 4.43 2023 Her Deadly Game (Keera Duggan, #1)
author: Robert Dugoni
name: Michael
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/15
date added: 2024/06/15
shelves:
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]]> The Kindly Ones 9870200
As volume six, The Kindly Ones (1962), opens, rumblings from Germany recall memories of Nick Jenkins's boyhood and his father's service in World War I; it seems clear that all too soon, uniforms will be back in fashion. The looming threat throws the ordinary doings of life into stark relief, as Nick and his friends continue to negotiate the pitfalls of adult life. Moreland's marriage founders, Peter Templer's wife--his second--is clearly going mad, and Widmerpool is, disturbingly, gaining prominence in the business world even as he angles for power in the coming conflict. War, with all its deaths and disruptions, is on the way.

"Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician." --Chicago Tribune

"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu... Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's." --Elizabeth Janeway, New York Times

"One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War... The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience." --Naomi Bliven, New Yorker

"The most brilliant and penetrating novelist we have." --Kingsley Amis]]> 272 Anthony Powell 0226677397 Michael 4 4.41 1962 The Kindly Ones
author: Anthony Powell
name: Michael
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2018/10/28
date added: 2024/06/14
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]]> In a Sunburned Country 24
Ignoring such dangers - and yet curiously obsessed by them - Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extroverted, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this...]]> 335 Bill Bryson 0767903862 Michael 4 4.06 2000 In a Sunburned Country
author: Bill Bryson
name: Michael
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/12
date added: 2024/06/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The Accidental Joe: The Top-Secret Life of a Celebrity Chef]]> 210354091 A maverick celebrity chef reluctantly agrees to let the CIA use his hugely popular international food, culture, and travel TV series as cover for a dangerous espionage mission.

When the CIA approaches celebrity chef Sebastian Pike about using his award-winning food and culture travel show as cover for espionage, the outspoken bad-boy host says no. When they point out how roaming the globe interviewing foodies, heads of state, rock stars, journalists-in-exile, poets, subversives, supermodels—even the pope—gives him perfect cover, Pike smiles and says, “F@#! no.�

They push. Promising it’s only one mission. Vowing he won’t be in danger. Calling him the Most Valuable Bystander. They’d embed their top agent in his crew to do the spy work.

It’s still no. But when they hit him with the patriotism card, he weakens. And when romantic sparks crackle between him and the female agent, Pike’s all in, kicking off a romantic spy thriller in which the globetrotting celebrity chef uses his TV series to help sneak Putin’s accountant out of Russia before he’s exposed as a mole for US intelligence.

The high-stakes mission quickly puts Pike in harm’s way. So much for MVB. There’s danger, there’s double dealing, there’s torture, there’s shooting with real bullets. Plus, a minefield of complications from the hot romance that grows between Pike and his gutsy CIA handler-producer, Cammie Nova.

From Paris to Provence, this chef is no bystander. Beyond their attraction, Pike and Nova become an operational team, not only to survive the perils they face but to pull off an operation fraught with one twist after another, capped by a shocking, emotional climax.]]> 302 Tom Straw Michael 0 cast-aside-dnf 3.99 The Accidental Joe: The Top-Secret Life of a Celebrity Chef
author: Tom Straw
name: Michael
average rating: 3.99
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/12
date added: 2024/06/12
shelves: cast-aside-dnf
review:
I really wanted to like this one but, at about the 50% mark, I opted to cast it aside. The problem is I am a long-time John Le Carré reader and have always loved the literary espionage genre. "The Accidental Joe:...", while co-opting some of the terminology invented by Mr. Le Carré, is NOT a literary espionage novel. It is a thriller with an interesting, sometimes annoying, protagonist. There are numerous chapters that end with a cliff-hanger, so if page-turners appeal to you, you may enjoy this. However, it is written in the first-person which is hard to pull off in an espionage setting and just did not work for this reader. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading]]> 65215109
Reading and eating, like Krazy and Ignatz, Sturm und Drang, prosciutto and melon, Simon and Schuster, and radishes and butter, have always, for me, simply gone together. The book you’re holding is a product of these combined gluttonies.

Dwight Garner, the beloved New York Times critic and the author of Garner’s Quotations , serves up the intertwined pleasures of books and food. The product of a lifetime of obsessively reading, eating, and every combination therein, The Upstairs On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading is a charming, emotional memoir, one that only Garner could write. In it, he records the voices of great writers and the stories from his life that fill his mind as he moves through the sections of the day and of this breakfast, lunch, shopping, the occasional nap, drinking, and dinner.

Through his lifelong infatuation with these twin joys, we meet the man behind the pages and the plates, and a portrait of Garner, eager and insatiable, emerges. He writes with tenderness and humor about his mayonnaise-laden childhood in West Virginia and Naples, Florida (and about his father’s famous peanut butter and pickle sandwich), his mind-opening marriage to a chef from a foodie family (“Cree grew up taking leftover frog legs to school in her lunch box�), and the words and dishes closest to his heart. This is a book to be savored, though it may just whet your appetite for more.]]> 256 Dwight Garner 0374603421 Michael 4 3.82 2023 The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading
author: Dwight Garner
name: Michael
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves:
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Recommended for those who love to eat, those who love to read, and those who love to read while eating. Cheers!
]]> 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 Michael 4 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/05/29
shelves:
review:
I have been staying with my son and daughter-in-law (and our new granddaughter!!) at their apartment in Berlin when I spied this imposing looking tome on their bookshelf. The compulsive reader in me could not resist and I was immediately drawn into Ms. Kuang's world of 19th century Oxford trained language specialists who had acquired some "special skills" having to do with the origin of words and certain silver bars. At first, I was a little concerned that the author was taking me into the realm of YA (not my thing) but, much to my relief, that was not the case. The plot twists were surprising and clever, the writing witty and sublime, and the world-building was very impressive. It's a long one but this reader thoroughly enjoyed it. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Kuang's work. Cheers!
]]> The Beginning of Spring 56675686
Into Frank’s life comes Lisa Ivanovna, a quiet, calming beauty from the country, untroubled to the point of seeming simple. But is she? And why has Frank’s bookkeeper, Selwyn Crane, gone to such lengths to bring these two together?

From a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, this novel, with a new introduction by Andrew Miller, author of Pure, is filled with “writing so precise and lilting it can make you shiver� (Los Angeles Times).

“Fitzgerald was the author of several slim, perfect novels. The Blue Flower and The Beginning of Spring both had me abuzz for days the first time I read them. She was curiously perfect.� —Teju Cole, author of Open City]]> 260 Penelope Fitzgerald Michael 4 3.75 1988 The Beginning of Spring
author: Penelope Fitzgerald
name: Michael
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/24
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]]> Deadlands 64611647 From debut author Victoria Miluch comes the riveting story of a girl on the cusp of womanhood living in an arid wasteland and the encounter with two outsiders that upends her understanding of the world beyond it.

Only the most hardened survivalists can endure living in the scorched deadlands of the former state of Arizona. Among them is nineteen-year-old Georgia Reno, who lives in an isolated desert settlement with her father and younger brother. Roads don’t exist here; visitors are more dark fairy tale than reality.

But when two mysterious strangers arrive on their land, Georgia begins to question her sheltered existence. Soon, her tentative curiosity blooms into a fledgling desire to leave the settlement, even if it means venturing into a world her father has only ever warned against.

As their tenuous situation deteriorates, Georgia uncovers secrets about the visitors that could threaten her family’s fragile existence in the desert. But to leave the newcomers at the hands of her father could put everyone’s lives at risk—and force Georgia into an impossible decision.

Welcome to the deadlands, where survival is never guaranteed…and loyalty is put to the ultimate test.]]> 255 Victoria Miluch 1662511000 Michael 2 3.42 2023 Deadlands
author: Victoria Miluch
name: Michael
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/18
date added: 2024/05/18
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]]> The Fraud 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith Michael 4 3.25 2023 The Fraud
author: Zadie Smith
name: Michael
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
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]]> Cut and Thirst 209411839 Three women scheme to avenge an old friend in a darkly witty short story about loyalty, ambition, and delicious retribution by Margaret Atwood, the #1 bestselling author of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Myrna, Leonie, and Chrissy meet every Thursday to sample fine cheeses, to reminisce about their former lives as professors, and lately, to muse about murder. Decades ago, a vicious cabal of male poets contrived—quite publicly and successfully—to undermine the writing career, confidence, and health of their dear friend Fern. Now, after Fern has taken a turn for the worse, her three old friends decide that it’s finally time to strike back—in secret, of course, since Fern is far too gentle to approve of a vendetta. All they need is a plan with suitably Shakespearean drama. But as sweet and satisfying as revenge can be, it’s not always so cut and dried.]]> 35 Margaret Atwood 1662523335 Michael 4 3.13 2024 Cut and Thirst
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Michael
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/14
date added: 2024/05/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Travels with Charley: In Search of America]]> 1038467
His course took him through almost forty northward from Long Island to Maine; through the Midwest to Chicago; onward by way of Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana (with which he fell in love), and Idaho to Seattle, south to San Francisco and his birthplace, Salinas; eastward through the Mojave, New Mexico, Arizona, to the vast hospitality of Texas, to New Orleans and a shocking drama of desegregation; finally, on the last leg, through Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey to New York.

Travels with Charley in Search of America is an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life—a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography.

Written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South—which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand� Travels with Charley is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade.]]> 210 John Steinbeck 0140187413 Michael 4
When he arrives at his home community of Salinas, California there is some poignant reflection from atop a prominent hill overlooking the valley where he spent his childhood. The writing is that of a keen observer who with great wit and humor shares this adventure with the reader. A very enjoyable read that remains relevant some fifty-five years later.

]]> 4.12 1961 Travels with Charley: In Search of America
author: John Steinbeck
name: Michael
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1961
rating: 4
read at: 2017/12/12
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves:
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“Travels with Charlie: In Search of America� documents John Steinbeck’s 1960 road trip across the northern states from Maine to Washington and then down to Northern California, through the southwest, some of the southern states and eventually back up north to his home in Sag Harbor, NY (not far from my own home). The author observes how the country was changing (the dominance of the interstate highway) and offers thoughts on such diverse subjects as trucker culture, trailers and trailer court living, the role hair dressers in a community and the bears of Yellowstone Park. Along the way he encounters people who, while sometimes a little rough around the edges, are generally kind and generous to this traveler. He is accompanied by his faithful poodle, Charlie, who provides his own unique observations along the way, including a comical turn when the author tries to get him to leave his mark on one of the majestic redwood trees.

When he arrives at his home community of Salinas, California there is some poignant reflection from atop a prominent hill overlooking the valley where he spent his childhood. The writing is that of a keen observer who with great wit and humor shares this adventure with the reader. A very enjoyable read that remains relevant some fifty-five years later.


]]> <![CDATA[Down the River Unto the Sea (King Oliver, #1)]]> 35173689 From trailblazing novelist Walter Mosley: a former NYPD cop once imprisoned for a crime he did not commit must solve two cases: that of a man wrongly condemned to die, and his own.

Joe King Oliver was one of the NYPD's finest investigators, until, dispatched to arrest a well-heeled car thief, he is framed for assault by his enemies within the NYPD, a charge which lands him in solitary at Rikers Island.

A decade later, King is a private detective, running his agency with the help of his teenage daughter, Aja-Denise. Broken by the brutality he suffered and committed in equal measure while behind bars, his work and his daughter are the only light in his solitary life. When he receives a card in the mail from the woman who admits she was paid to frame him those years ago, King realizes that he has no choice but to take his own case: figuring out who on the force wanted him disposed of--and why.

Running in parallel with King's own quest for justice is the case of a Black radical journalist accused of killing two on-duty police officers who had been abusing their badges to traffic in drugs and women within the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Joined by Melquarth Frost, a brilliant sociopath, our hero must beat dirty cops and dirtier bankers, craven lawyers, and above all keep his daughter far from the underworld in which he works. All the while, two lives hang in the balance: King's client's, and King's own.]]> 336 Walter Mosley 0316509647 Michael 4 3.58 2018 Down the River Unto the Sea (King Oliver, #1)
author: Walter Mosley
name: Michael
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/06
date added: 2024/05/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux, #3)]]> 55019 Book #3 from the series: Dave Robicheaux

BACK IN THE UNDERWORLD HE TRIED TO LEAVE BEHIND

Haunted by the memory of his wife's murder and his father's untimely death, ex-New Orleans cop Dave Robicheaux spends his days in a fish-and-tackle business. But when an old friend makes a surprise appearance, Robicheaux finds himself thrust back into the violent world of Mafia goons and wily federal agents. From the Louisiana bayou to Montana's tribal lands, Robicheaux is running from the bottle, a homicide rap, a professional killer and the demons of his past.

Rich with fascinating characters and dramatic plot twists, James Lee Burke and his Cajun detective Dave Robicheaux recall the best of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe -- tough, complex and thoroughly entertaining.
]]> 366 James Lee Burke 0380712040 Michael 4 4.14 1989 Black Cherry Blues (Dave Robicheaux, #3)
author: James Lee Burke
name: Michael
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)]]> 133539
He claims that people are defined by the objects that surround them and must piece together their identities bit by bit each time they wake up. The young Marcel is so nervous about sleeping alone that he looks forward to his mother's goodnight kisses, but also dreads them as a sign of an impending sleepless night. One night, when Charles Swann, a friend of his grandparents, is visiting, his mother cannot come kiss him goodnight. He stays up until Swann leaves and looks so sad and pitiful that even his disciplinarian father encourages "Mamma" to spend the night in Marcel's room.]]> 615 Marcel Proust 0375751548 Michael 4 4.28 1913 Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)
author: Marcel Proust
name: Michael
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1913
rating: 4
read at: 2000/03/01
date added: 2024/04/29
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]]> The Blue Flower: A Novel 19219975 A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER in Fiction. Booker Prize–winning novelist Fitzgerald's crowning literary work centers on the 18th-century German poet and philosopher Novalis and his love for the simple Sophie.

The Blue Flower is set in the age of Goethe among the small towns and great universities of 18th-century Germany. It tells the true story of Friedrich von Hardenberg, a passionate, impetuous student of philosophy who will later gain fame as the romantic poet Novalis. Fritz seeks his father's permission to wed his "heart's heart," his "spirit's guide"—a plain, simple child named Sophievon Kühn. It is an attachment that shocks his family and friends. Their brilliant young Fritz, betrothed to a twelve-year-old dullard? How can this be?

Their rationality of love, the transfiguration of the commonplace, the clarity of purpose that comes with knowing one's own fate� these are the themes of this beguiling novel, themes treated with a mix of wit, grace, and mischievous humor.

“An extraordinary imagining . . . an original masterpiece.”�Financial Times

"An astonishing book...Fitzgerald's greatest triumph."�New York Times Book Review]]> 244 Penelope Fitzgerald Michael 5 3.58 1995 The Blue Flower: A Novel
author: Penelope Fitzgerald
name: Michael
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/24
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves:
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Brilliant! I felt embedded in the lives of a fascinating upper-class family in 1790s Saxony. It was one of those rare novels that I did not want to end. A work of historical fiction by a true master. Sorry to gush but I loved this book. Cheers!
]]> <![CDATA[Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)]]> 62047992 The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.]]> 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 Michael 3 3.67 2010 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Michael
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/22
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves:
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]]> Picture 41724603 A classic look at Hollywood and the American film industry by The New Yorker's Lillian Ross, and named one of the "Top 100 Works of U.S. Journalism of the Twentieth Century."Lillian Ross worked atThe New Yorkerfor more than half a century, and might be described not only as an outstanding practitioner of modern long-form journalism but also as one of its inventors.Picture, originally published in 1952, is her most celebrated piece of reportage, a closely observed and completely absorbing story of how studio politics and misguided commercialism turn a promising movie into an all-around disaster. The charismatic and hard-bitten director and actor John Huston is at the center of the book, determined to make Stephen Crane’sThe Red Badge of Courage—one of the great and defining works of American literature, the first modern war novel, a book whose vivid imagistic style invites the description of cinematic—into a movie that is worthy of it. At first all goes well, as Huston shoots and puts together a two-hour film that is, he feels, the best he’s ever made. Then the studio bosses step in and the audience previews begin, conferences are held, and the movie is taken out of Huston’s hands, cut down by a third, and finally released—with results that please no one and certainly not the It was an expensive flop. InPicture, which Charlie Chaplin aptly described as “brilliant and sagacious,� Ross is a gadfly on the wall taking note of the operations of a system designed to crank out mediocrity.]]> 292 Lillian Ross 1681373165 Michael 4 4.20 1951 Picture
author: Lillian Ross
name: Michael
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1951
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/20
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves:
review:
In 1950 New Yorker magazine writer Lillian Ross arranged to have unprecedented access to the great director John Huston and the entire team at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer involved with the film, "The Red Badge of Courage". In modern parlance, she would be considered "imbedded" in the production. Ms. Ross provides so many interesting details of what it was like to work within the classic Hollywood studio system. As a long-time fan of Mr. Huston's work and the films of this time period, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Cheers!
]]> The Lola Quartet 12856198
Besides, Eilo has shown him a photo of a ten-year-old girl who could be homeless and in trouble. The little girl looks strikingly like Gavin and has the same last name as his high school girlfriend, Anna, from a decade ago. Gavin, obsessed with film noir and private detectives and otherwise at loose ends, begins his own private investigation in an effort to track down Anna and their apparent daughter—an investigation that soon takes a surprisingly dangerous turn.]]> 279 Emily St. John Mandel 1609530799 Michael 3 Really more like 3-1/2 stars

Ms. St. John Mandel continues to impress this reader with her skills as a writer, especially her ability to create a unique, engaging set of characters that, in this case, are not so nice to hang out with. The main characters here are all struggling with various demons and, while the awful economic realities of the post sub-prime mortgage crash play a background role, domestic turmoil during their formative years stacks the odds against them. That said, I enjoyed this read and look forward to reading more of this author's work. Cheers!]]> 3.50 2012 The Lola Quartet
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Michael
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves:
review:
Really more like 3-1/2 stars

Ms. St. John Mandel continues to impress this reader with her skills as a writer, especially her ability to create a unique, engaging set of characters that, in this case, are not so nice to hang out with. The main characters here are all struggling with various demons and, while the awful economic realities of the post sub-prime mortgage crash play a background role, domestic turmoil during their formative years stacks the odds against them. That said, I enjoyed this read and look forward to reading more of this author's work. Cheers!
]]> Burn Book: A Tech Love Story 195791688 From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.

Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. This is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.

When tech titans crowed that they would “move fast and break things,� Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order. Her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of “listening in the heating ducts� and prompted Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg to once observe: “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this.’�

While still in college, Swisher got her start at The Washington Post, where she became one of the few people in journalism interested in covering the nascent Internet. She went on to work for The Wall Street Journal, joining with Walt Mossberg to start the groundbreaking D: All Things Digital conference, as well as pioneering tech news sites.

Swisher has interviewed everyone who matters in tech over three decades, right when they presided over an explosion of world-changing innovation that has both helped and hurt our world. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few whom Swisher made sweat—figuratively and, in Zuckerberg’s case, literally.

Despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone.]]> 320 Kara Swisher 1982163895 Michael 4 3.88 2024 Burn Book: A Tech Love Story
author: Kara Swisher
name: Michael
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/15
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder]]> 61714633 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then . . . six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death--for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.]]> 331 David Grann 0385534264 Michael 4 4.14 2023 The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
author: David Grann
name: Michael
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2024/03/27
shelves:
review:

]]> ōܲ (Asian Saga, #1) 201918744 By the #1 New York Times bestselling author and unparalleled master of historical fiction, James Clavell’s ōܲ is soon to be a major FX/Hulu TV series!

ōܲ, the classic epic novel of feudal Japan that captured the heart of a culture and the imagination of the world, is now available for the first time in serial format. Part One contains the first half of the complete novel.

After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen—Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom. As internal political strife and a clash of cultures lead to seemingly inevitable conflict, Blackthorne’s loyalty and strength of character are tested by both passion and loss, and he is torn between two worlds that will each be forever changed.

Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, ōܲ is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, ōܲ is, as the New York Times put it, �'not only something you read—you live it.’�

Also available: ōܲ: Part Two]]> 699 James Clavell Michael 4 reread
Fast forward 45 years and I've decided to return to it. To my chagrin, the novel is now published in two parts. So, this is just a quick take upon finishing Part One. The biggest surprise for this reader, so far, was that I found myself growing to dislike the main character, John Blackthorne or Anjin-San, as he is known throughout. It may be the effect of an additional 45 years of accumulated knowledge and experience along with changing cultural mores, but I found him to be a self-centered, ill-tempered, stubborn, frustrating character to spend time with. Now, I have a feeling this may shift as I move through Part Two and this character learns more about this alien culture that he has been forced to live in. That said, I am very much enjoying this second reading. I intend to write a full essay of my thoughts on this reread upon completion of Part Two. Till then, cheers! ]]> 4.57 1975 ōܲ (Asian Saga, #1)
author: James Clavell
name: Michael
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2024/03/03
shelves: reread
review:
I first read "Shogun" in the late 1970s when my daily 1-hour commute to Manhattan on the Long Island Railroad offered plenty of reading time. I recall being completely enthralled by it back then.

Fast forward 45 years and I've decided to return to it. To my chagrin, the novel is now published in two parts. So, this is just a quick take upon finishing Part One. The biggest surprise for this reader, so far, was that I found myself growing to dislike the main character, John Blackthorne or Anjin-San, as he is known throughout. It may be the effect of an additional 45 years of accumulated knowledge and experience along with changing cultural mores, but I found him to be a self-centered, ill-tempered, stubborn, frustrating character to spend time with. Now, I have a feeling this may shift as I move through Part Two and this character learns more about this alien culture that he has been forced to live in. That said, I am very much enjoying this second reading. I intend to write a full essay of my thoughts on this reread upon completion of Part Two. Till then, cheers!
]]> The Rise 189900510 86 Ian Rankin 1662515340 Michael 4 3.65 2023 The Rise
author: Ian Rankin
name: Michael
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/09
date added: 2024/02/09
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (Time reading program special edition)]]> 2943014 The Gulag Archipelago.

In the madness of World War II, a dutiful Russian soldier is wrongfully convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in a Siberian labor camp. So begins this masterpiece of modern Russian fiction, a harrowing account of a man who has conceded to all things evil with dignity and strength.

First published in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is considered one of the most significant works ever to emerge from Soviet Russia. Illuminating a dark chapter in Russian history, it is at once a graphic picture of work camp life and a moving tribute to man’s will to prevail over relentless dehumanization.]]> 178 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0809435527 Michael 4 3.82 1962 One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich (Time reading program special edition)
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Michael
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2002/01/01
date added: 2024/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Night Owl (Trasker #1) 122996469 A shocking act of sabotage draws a retired spy into a deadly conspiracy in an explosive thriller by an Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestselling author.

After three decades in counterintelligence, Brad Trasker is retired, disillusioned, and dealing with a tragic loss. Spy games are behind him until he attends the launch of a next-generation aircraft. When the project of innovative aerospace CEO Kylie Connor explodes on the tarmac―nearly killing her in the process―Trasker is pulled back into the line of fire.

The mystery of the sabotage quickly deepens. All Kylie’s data has been wiped from the server. One of her engineers has disappeared. A seed investor has died in a suspicious car accident. And a cold-blooded murder raises the stakes even higher.

To discover who’s pulling the strings behind a dangerous conspiracy, Trasker needs to find a motive. Corporate espionage, revenge, or something he can’t yet see? Targeted by assassins, he finds himself overmatched when he realizes he can’t trust anyone―including Kylie. Too long out of a game he no longer understands, Trasker must adapt or die.]]> 312 Andrew Mayne 1662506449 Michael 4 4.17 2023 Night Owl (Trasker #1)
author: Andrew Mayne
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/16
date added: 2023/12/16
shelves:
review:

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