Sofia's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 27 Apr 2025 14:12:30 -0700 60 Sofia's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Project Hail Mary 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]>
476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Sofia 0 currently-reading 4.49 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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Piranesi 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]>
272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Sofia 4 fantasy 4.22 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: fantasy
review:

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The River Has Roots 211004176 Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.�

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters� bond but also their lives will be at risk…]]>
133 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341086 Sofia 0 to-read 4.19 2025 The River Has Roots
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
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Light from Uncommon Stars 56179360
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]>
372 Ryka Aoki 1250789060 Sofia 0 to-read 4.03 2021 Light from Uncommon Stars
author: Ryka Aoki
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
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Four Seasons in Japan 124798505
It is a story about Ayako, a fierce and strict old woman who runs a coffee shop in the small town of Onomichi, where she has just taken guardianship of her grandson, Kyo. Haunted by long-buried family tragedy, both have suffered extreme loss and feel unable to open up to each other. As Flo follows the characters across a year in rural Japan, through the ups and downs of the pair's burgeoning relationship, she quickly realises that she needs to venture outside the pages of the book to track down its elusive author. And, as her two protagonists reveal themselves to have more in common with her life than first meets the eye, the lines between text and translator converge. The journey is just beginning.

From the author of The Cat and The City, Four Seasons in Japan is a gorgeously crafted book-within-a-book about literature, purpose and what it is to belong.]]>
336 Nick Bradley 085752934X Sofia 0 to-read 4.19 2023 Four Seasons in Japan
author: Nick Bradley
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read
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The Island of Missing Trees 58557023
Years later, a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited - her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.]]>
345 Elif Shafak 024198873X Sofia 4 4.22 2021 The Island of Missing Trees
author: Elif Shafak
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
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<![CDATA[A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)]]> 40864030
They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Becky Chambers's new series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter?

They're going to need to ask it a lot.]]>
152 Becky Chambers Sofia 4 science-fiction 4.40 2022 A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk & Robot, #2)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: science-fiction
review:

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The Ministry of Time 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]>
339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Sofia 2 3.54 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/04/01
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<![CDATA[Manual of the Warrior of Light]]> 70746 268 Paulo Coelho 0007156324 Sofia 3 3.59 Manual of the Warrior of Light
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.59
book published:
rating: 3
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date added: 2025/03/04
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<![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 40864002 ASIN B08H831J18 moved to the more recent edition

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]>
151 Becky Chambers Sofia 4 science-fiction 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: science-fiction
review:

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Nettle & Bone 56179377
Seeking help from a powerful gravewitch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a prince—if she can complete three impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of princes, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.

On her quest, Marra is joined by the gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother, a strapping former knight, and a chicken possessed by a demon. Together, the five of them intend to be the hand that closes around the throat of the prince and frees Marra's family and their kingdom from its tyrannous ruler at last.]]>
243 T. Kingfisher 1250244048 Sofia 0 to-read 4.07 2022 Nettle & Bone
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
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The Dictionary of Lost Words 49354511 Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium�, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid� flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.]]>
384 Pip Williams 1925972593 Sofia 0 to-read 3.97 2020 The Dictionary of Lost Words
author: Pip Williams
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)]]> 45047384
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]>
394 T.J. Klune Sofia 3 fantasy 4.37 2020 The House in the Cerulean Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #1)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: fantasy
review:

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<![CDATA[Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics]]> 25135194 Geography shapes not only our history, but where we're headed...

All leaders are constrained by geography. Their choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Yes, to follow world events you need to understand people, ideas and movements - but if you don't know geography, you'll never have the full picture.

If you've ever wondered why Putin is so obsessed with Crimea, why the USA was destined to become a global superpower, or why China's power base continues to expand ever outwards, the answers are all here.

In ten chapters and ten maps, Prisoners of Geography looks at the past, present and future to offer an essential insight into one of the major factors that determines world history.

It's time to put the 'geo' back into geopolitics.

Ten maps; ten chapters:

Russia * China * United States of America * Latin America * the Middle East * Africa * India and Pakistan * Europe * Japan and Korea * the Arctic
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256 Tim Marshall 1783961414 Sofia 3 non-fiction 4.18 2015 Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics
author: Tim Marshall
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: non-fiction
review:

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<![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]>
528 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Sofia 0 to-read 4.56 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
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Small Things Like These 58639322
**A Book of the Year in The Times - The New Statesman - Observer - Financial Times - Irish Times - Irish Independent - Times Literary Supplement **

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING CILLIAN MURPHY!
WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE AND THE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE AND THE IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE DALKEY LITERARY AWARDS!

'Exquisite.' Damon Galgut
'Masterly.' The Times
'Miraculous.' Herald
'Astonishing.' Colm Tóibín
'Stunning.' Sunday Independent
'Absolutely beautiful.' Douglas Stuart]]>
116 Claire Keegan 0571368719 Sofia 4 4.23 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
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Friends of Dorothy 203627418 The funny, wise and brilliant new novel from the star of QI and the author of Between the Stops

After much searching, the happily married young couple, Amber and Stevie think they have found the perfect spot in Grimaldi Square. Despite the rundown pub across the way, the overgrown garden and a decidedly nosy neighbour, number 4 is the house of their dreams. Stevie, a woman who has never left anything to chance, has planned everything so nothing can spoil their happiness. But ... upstairs in their new home, seated on an old red sofa is the woman they bought the place from - eighty-year-old foul-mouthed, straight-talking, wise-cracking Dorothy - who has decided that she's not going anywhere. It turns out that Dorothy will be only the first in a line of life-changing surprises.

Friends of Dorothy is a touching, funny novel about a family that is not biological, but logical; a story close to Sandi Toksvig's heart.<]]>
320 Sandi Toksvig 0349018987 Sofia 2 4.02 Friends of Dorothy
author: Sandi Toksvig
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
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<![CDATA[The Great When (The Long London Quintet, #1)]]> 219833670 From the New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller Alan Moore, the first book in an enthralling new fantasy series about murder, magic, and madness in post-WWII London.

Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which, Dennis discovers, should not exist. A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole is a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author. Yet A London Walk is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.

Coffin Ada tells Dennis the book comes from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time. In the Great When, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur, while concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. But, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed.

So begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. Delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may endanger both Londons.

Mystical, hilarious, and magnificently imagined, The Great When is an unforgettable introduction to the consciousness-altering world of Long London.]]>
326 Alan Moore 1526682885 Sofia 3 fantasy 3.54 2024 The Great When (The Long London Quintet, #1)
author: Alan Moore
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: fantasy
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The Lost Bookshop 65137920 The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets.

‘The thing about books,� she said ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.�

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found�

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder� where nothing is as it seems.]]>
432 Evie Woods 0008609209 Sofia 4 fantasy 4.03 2023 The Lost Bookshop
author: Evie Woods
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: fantasy
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The Dream Hotel 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]>
336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Sofia 0 to-read 3.65 2025 The Dream Hotel
author: Laila Lalami
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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Hammajang Luck 213847219 HAMMAJANG | adjective. Definition: In a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up. Chiefly in predicative use, esp. in all hammajang. Etymology: A borrowing from Hawaiian Pidgin. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.

Edie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person - costs them too much time with too many of the people who need them most.

And it's all Angel's fault. She sold Edie out in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives. Instead, Edie was shipped off to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station - of home - to spend the best part of a decade alone.

But then a chance for early parole appears out of nowhere and Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find none other than Angel waiting - and she has an offer.

One last job. One last deal. One last target. The trillionaire tech god they failed to bring down last time. There's just one thing Edie needs to do - trust Angel again - which also happens to be the last thing Edie wants to do. What could possibly go all hammajang about this plan?

Ocean's 8 meets Blade Runner in this trail-blazing debut science fiction novel and swashbuckling love letter to Hawai'i about being forced to find a new home and striving to build a better one - unmissable for fans of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.]]>
368 Makana Yamamoto 0063430827 Sofia 0 to-read 3.63 2024 Hammajang Luck
author: Makana Yamamoto
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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The Queens of Crime 211003830 The Mystery of Mrs. Christie returns with a thrilling story of Christie’s legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers� own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.]]>
310 Marie Benedict 1250280753 Sofia 0 to-read 3.81 2025 The Queens of Crime
author: Marie Benedict
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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Dream Count 219521090 A publishing event ten years in the makinga searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists�the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until � betrayed and brokenhearted � she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America � but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]>
416 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 059380273X Sofia 0 to-read 3.94 2025 Dream Count
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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The City in Glass 209439468 In this new standalone, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.

A demon. An angel. A city that burns at the heart of the world.

The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot.

And then the angels come, and the city falls.

Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned.

She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever.

Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.

The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to burn a world to ashes and build it anew.]]>
216 Nghi Vo 1250348277 Sofia 3 3.74 2024 The City in Glass
author: Nghi Vo
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
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Our Infinite Fates 210395729 They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.

Evelyn remembers all her past lives. She also remembers that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her eighteenth birthday by Arden, a supernatural being whose soul―and survival―is tethered to hers.

The problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her for bone marrow transplants in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to:

1. Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life―before they find her first.
2. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse.
3. Try not to fall in love.

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue meets This is How You Lose The Time War in this fantastical love story that defies death as two souls reincarnate through the centuries.]]>
352 Laura Steven 1250333881 Sofia 0 to-read 3.76 2025 Our Infinite Fates
author: Laura Steven
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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Needy Little Things 211004954 In this debut speculative YA mystery, a Black teen with premonition-like powers must solve her friend's disappearance before she finds herself in the same danger.

Sariyah Lee Bryant can hear what people need—tangible things, like a pencil, a hair tie, a phone charger—an ability only her family and her best friend, Malcolm, know the truth about. But when she fulfills a need for her friend Deja who vanishes shortly after, Sariyah is left wondering if her ability is more curse than gift. This isn’t the first time one of her friends has landed on the missing persons list, and she’s determined not to let her become yet another forgotten Black girl.

Not trusting the police and media to do enough on their own, Sariyah and her friends work together to figure out what led to Deja’s disappearance. But when Sariyah’s mother loses her job and her little brother faces complications with his sickle cell disease, managing her time, money, and emotions seems impossible. Desperate, Sariyah decides to hustle her need-sensing ability for cash—a choice that may not only lead her to Deja, but put her in the same danger Deja found herself in.]]>
320 Channelle Desamours 1250334810 Sofia 0 to-read 4.10 2025 Needy Little Things
author: Channelle Desamours
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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The Manor of Dreams 214152076 Mexican Gothic meets Everything I Never Told You in Christina Li’s haunting novel about the secrets that lie in wait in the crumbling mansion of a former Hollywood starlet, and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese American families fighting to inherit it.

They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But silence can be deadly.

Vivian Yin is dead. The first Chinese actress to win an Oscar, the trailblazing ingénue rose to fame in the eighties, only to disappear from the spotlight at the height of her career and live out the rest of her life as a recluse.

Now her remaining family members are gathered for the reading of her will and her daughters expect to inherit their childhood Vivian’s grand, sprawling Southern California garden estate. But due to a last-minute change to the will, the house is passed on to another family instead—one that has suddenly returned after decades of estrangement.

In hopes of staking their claim, both families move into the mansion. Amidst the grief and paranoia of the families� unhappy reunion, Vivian’s daughters race to piece together what happened in the last weeks of their mother’s life, only to realize they are being haunted by something much more sinister and vengeful than their regrets. After so many years of silence, will the families finally confront the painful truth about the last fateful summer they spent in the house, or will they cling to their secrets until it’s too late?

Told in dual timelines, spanning three generations, and brimming with romance, betrayal, ambition and sacrifice, The Manor of Dreams is a thrilling family gothic that examines the true cost of the American dream—and what happens when the roots we set down in this country turn to rot.]]>
352 Christina Li 1668051729 Sofia 0 to-read 4.07 2025 The Manor of Dreams
author: Christina Li
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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Witchcraft for Wayward Girls 207611566 There’s power in a book�

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master� (NPR).]]>
482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Sofia 0 to-read 4.00 2025 Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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The Memory Collectors 219401075 Four strangers time travel to the past and find themselves stuck on the day all their lives were changed in this stunning speculative mystery from award-winning film and television producer Dete Meserve, perfect for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Wrong Place Wrong Time and The Paradox Hotel.

What would you do if you could spend an hour in your past? Four strangers in the beach town of Ventura, California are about to find out.

Elizabeth aches for one more precious hour with her son who died in a senseless accident. Andy is desperate to find his first love who vanished after a whirlwind romance. Logan craves the rush of surfing and mountain climbing, yearning to reclaim the freedom he lost after a missteplanded him in a wheelchair. Brooke is looking for an hour of relief from the guilt of an unforgivable mistake.

Enter Aeon Expeditions, the groundbreaking time travelinvention of Mark Saunders—which allowssome lucky clients the chanceto spend an hour in their past. Even though Aeon’s technology ensures time travel can’t alter the future, all four clients,including Mark’s ex-wife Elizabeth,yearn to revisit the hour that changed their lives forever.

But when their “hour� extends beyond sixty minutes, they find themselves stranded in the past. As their paths intertwine unexpectedly, they unearth shocking secrets hidden in the shadows of their shared All their lives were shattered the same night on a secluded highway by the beach. As they delve into the hidden truths of that pivotal hour, a startling revelation emerges. They were not alone. Someone else was present, harboring deadly intentions.

The Memory Collectors is a heart-wrenching, genre-bending novel brimming with hope, grief and second chances.

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336 Dete Meserve Sofia 0 to-read 4.19 2025 The Memory Collectors
author: Dete Meserve
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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Dissolution 215362027 A woman dives into her husband's memories to uncover a decades-old feud threatening reality itself in this staggering technothriller from the bestselling author of Ascension.

Maggie Webb has lived the last decade caring for elderly husband, Stanley, as memory loss gradually erases all the beautiful moments they created together. It's the loneliest she's ever felt in her life.

When a mysterious stranger named Hassan appears at her door, he reveals a shocking truth: Stanley isn't losing his memories. Someone is actively removing them to hide a long-buried secret from coming to light. If Maggie does what she's told, she can reverse it. She can get her husband back.

Led by Hassan and his technological marvels, Maggie breaks into her husband's mind, probing the depths of his past in an effort to save him. The deeper she dives, the more she unravels a mystery spanning continents and centuries, each layer more complex than the last.

But Hassan cannot be trusted. Not just memories are disappearing, but pieces of reality itself. If Maggie cannot find out what Stanley did all those years ago, and what Hassan is after now, she risks far more than her husband's life. The very course of human history hangs in the balance.]]>
384 Nicholas Binge 0593852168 Sofia 0 to-read 4.14 2025 Dissolution
author: Nicholas Binge
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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When the Moon Hits Your Eye 211004190
It's a whole new moooooon.

One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters -- schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians -- as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.]]>
326 John Scalzi 0765389096 Sofia 0 to-read 3.86 2025 When the Moon Hits Your Eye
author: John Scalzi
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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Death of the Author 214329001 The future of storytelling is here.

Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.

In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.

What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.]]>
448 Nnedi Okorafor 0063391155 Sofia 0 to-read 4.04 2025 Death of the Author
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
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Katabasis 210223811 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]>
400 R.F. Kuang Sofia 0 to-read 4.04 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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Water Moon 211479192 A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy novel.

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.]]>
384 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0593724992 Sofia 0 to-read 3.79 2025 Water Moon
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[We'll Prescribe You a Cat (We'll Prescribe You a Cat, #1)]]> 209891170 A cat a day keeps the doctor away�.

Discover this utterly charming, vibrant celebration of the healing power of cats in the award-winning, bestselling Japanese novel that has become an international sensation.

Tucked away on the fifth floor of an old building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto, the Nakagyō Kokoro Clinic for the Soul can be found only by people who are struggling in their lives and who genuinely need help. The mysterious clinic offers a unique treatment to those who find their way there: it prescribes cats as medication. Patients are often puzzled by this unconventional prescription, but when they “take� their cat for the recommended duration, they witness profound transformations in their lives, guided by the playful, empathetic, and occasionally challenging yet endearing cats.

Throughout these pages, the power of the human-animal bond is revealed as a disheartened businessman finds unexpected joy in physical labor, a middle-aged man struggles to stay relevant at work and home, a young girl navigates the complexities of elementary school cliques, a hardened handbag designer seeks emotional balance, and a geisha learns to move on from the memory of her lost cat. As the clinic’s patients grapple with their inner turmoil and seek resolution, their feline companions lead them toward healing, self-discovery, and newfound hope.]]>
297 Syou Ishida 0593818741 Sofia 4 3.78 2023 We'll Prescribe You a Cat (We'll Prescribe You a Cat, #1)
author: Syou Ishida
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
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<![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]>
410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 Sofia 0 to-read 4.28 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[When Among Crows (Curse Bearer, #1)]]> 195790597 When Among Crows is swift and striking, drawing from the deep well of Slavic folklore and asking if redemption and atonement can be found in embracing what we most fear.

We bear the sword, and we bear the pain of the sword.

On Kupala Night, Dymitr arrives in Chicago’s monstrous, magical underworld with a perilous mission: pick the mythical fern flower and offer it to a cursed creature in exchange for help finding the legendary witch Baba Jaga.

Ala is a fear-eating zmora afflicted with a bloodline curse that’s slowly killing her. She's just desperate enough to say yes to Dymitr, even if she doesn’t know his motives.

Over the course of one night, Ala and Dymitr risk life and limb in search of Baba Jaga, and begin to build a tentative friendship. . . but when Ala finds out what Dymitr is hiding, it could destroy them both.]]>
166 Veronica Roth 1250855489 Sofia 4 fantasy 3.71 2024 When Among Crows (Curse Bearer, #1)
author: Veronica Roth
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: fantasy
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<![CDATA[Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens]]> 152034931 A rollicking historyof England's earliest kings and queens, a story ofnarcissists, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars,and more, fromaward-winning British actor and comedian David Mitchell

Think you know the kings and queens of England? Think again.

In Unruly , David Mitchell explores how early England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects� destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky bastards who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

Taking us right back to King Arthur ( he didn’t exist), Mitchell tells the founding story of post-Roman England right up to the reign of Elizabeth I ( she dies), as the monarchy began to lose its power. It’s a tale of bizarre and curious ascensions, inadequate self-control, and at least one total Cnut, as the English evolved from having their crops stolen by the thug with the largest armed gang to bowing and paying taxes to a divinely anointed King.

How this happened, who it happened to, and why the hell it matters are all questions Mitchell answers with brilliance, wit, and the full erudition of a man who once studied history—and is damned if he’ll let it off the hook for the mess it’s made of everything.

A funny book that takes history seriously, Unruly is for anyone who has ever wondered how the monarchy came to be—and who is to blame.
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433 David Mitchell 0593728491 Sofia 0 to-read 4.13 2023 Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens
author: David Mitchell
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
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<![CDATA[The Hundred Years' War on Palestine]]> 52960854
Accepted interpretations of the confrontation tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same land. Drawing on archival materials and the accounts of generations of family members—judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists�The Hundred Years' War on Palestine instead shows that this war has always been colonial in nature, waged against the native population first by the Zionist movement and then by Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.

Neither a chronicle of victimization nor a whitewash of mistakes made by Palestinian leaders, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine offers both a compelling family history and an original, illuminating view of the Middle East's most intractable conflict.]]>
319 Rashid Khalidi 1250787653 Sofia 0 to-read 4.45 2020 The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
author: Rashid Khalidi
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America]]> 397483
Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison.

The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims.

Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. - John Moe]]>
464 Erik Larson 0609608444 Sofia 0 to-read 4.02 2003 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
author: Erik Larson
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2003
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The Psychology of Money 41881472 242 Morgan Housel 0857197681 Sofia 0 to-read 4.27 2020 The Psychology of Money
author: Morgan Housel
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2020
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Poverty, by America 61358638 Reimagining the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.]]>
304 Matthew Desmond 0593239911 Sofia 0 to-read 4.27 2023 Poverty, by America
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
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<![CDATA[Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things]]> 157095669 #1 New York Times bestseller

"This brilliant book will shatter your assumptions about what it takes to improve and succeed. I wish I could go back in time and gift it to my younger self. It would've helped me find a more joyful path to progress."
-Serena Williams, 23-time Grand Slam singles tennis champion

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again illuminates how we can elevate ourselves and others to unexpected heights.

We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distances we ourselves can travel. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.

Hidden Potential offers a new framework for raising aspirations and exceeding expectations. Adam Grant weaves together groundbreaking evidence, surprising insights, and vivid story­telling that takes us from the classroom to the boardroom, the playground to the Olympics, and underground to outer space. He shows that progress depends less on how hard you work than how well you learn. Growth is not about the genius you possess � it’s about the character you develop. Grant explores how to build the charac­ter skills and motivational structures to realize our own potential, and how to design systems that create opportunities for those who have been underrated and overlooked.

This book reveals how anyone can rise to achieve greater things. The true measure of your potential is not the height of the peak you’ve reached, but how far you’ve climbed to get there.]]>
304 Adam M. Grant 0593653149 Sofia 0 to-read 4.09 2023 Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things
author: Adam M. Grant
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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The Measure 58884736
"A story of love and hope as interweaving characters display: how all moments, big and small, can measure a life. If you want joy, love, romance, and hope—read with us." —Jenna Bush Hager
A luminous, spirit-lifting blockbuster that asks: would you choose to find out the length of your life?

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

The Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.

Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is an ambitious, invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.]]>
353 Nikki Erlick 0063204207 Sofia 0 to-read 3.96 2022 The Measure
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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The Unmaking of June Farrow 66087062 A woman risks everything to end her family’s centuries-old curse, solve her mother’s disappearance, and find love in this mesmerizing novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Spells for Forgetting.

In the small mountain town of Jasper, North Carolina, June Farrow is waiting for fate to find her. The Farrow women are known for their thriving flower farm—and the mysterious curse that has plagued their family line. The whole town remembers the madness that led to Susanna Farrow’s disappearance, leaving June to be raised by her grandmother and haunted by rumors.

It’s been a year since June started seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Faint wind chimes, a voice calling her name, and a mysterious door appearing out of nowhere—the signs of what June always knew was coming. But June is determined to end the curse once and for all, even if she must sacrifice finding love and having a family of her own.

After her grandmother’s death, June discovers a series of cryptic clues regarding her mother’s decades-old disappearance, except they only lead to more questions. But could the door she once assumed was a hallucination be the answer she’s been searching for? The next time it appears, June realizes she can touch it and walk past the threshold. And when she does, she embarks on a journey that will not only change both the past and the future, but also uncover the lingering mysteries of her small town and entangle her heart in an epic star-crossed love.

With The Unmaking of June Farrow, Adrienne Young delivers a brilliant novel of romance, mystery, and a touch of the impossible—a story you will never forget.]]>
320 Adrienne Young 0593598679 Sofia 0 to-read 4.13 2023 The Unmaking of June Farrow
author: Adrienne Young
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]>
393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Sofia 0 to-read 4.22 2018 Circe
author: Madeline Miller
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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The Song of Achilles 13623848 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062060624.

Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.

They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]>
408 Madeline Miller Sofia 0 to-read 4.30 2011 The Song of Achilles
author: Madeline Miller
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2011
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<![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]>
400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Sofia 0 to-read 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.36
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The Women 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]>
471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Sofia 0 to-read 4.58 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.58
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The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]>
384 Alison Espach Sofia 0 to-read 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.11
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<![CDATA[2,024 QI Facts To Stop You In Your Tracks]]> 41131701 EVERYTHING TO PLAY FOR - A NEW BOOK BY QI ELVES JAMES HARKIN AND ANNA PTASZYNSKI - IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER NOW*THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER* 'I love these books ... the best books ever. Brilliant' Chris EvansA bumper final edition of the most surprising, amazing, and hilarious facts on the planet from the clever-clogs at QI.QI is the smartest comedy show on British television. Here creator John Lloyd and QI Elves James Harkin and Anne Miller bring together 2,024 brain-tickling brand new facts to stop you in your tracks...Did you know Humans glow in the dark. The Pope drives a blue Ford Focus. One of the moons of Uranus is called Margaret. Scottish football referees are sponsored by Specsavers. Dogs visiting US National Parks can be certified as Bark Rangers. The world's smallest computer is smaller than a grain of sand. Candyfloss was invented by a dentist. Nobody knows who named the Earth.]]> 469 John Lloyd Sofia 4 non-fiction 4.19 2,024 QI Facts To Stop You In Your Tracks
author: John Lloyd
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]>
112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Sofia 4 non-fiction 4.38 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/29
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<![CDATA[Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot, #22)]]> 433035
Beautiful young Elinor Carlisle stood serenely in the dock, accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard, her rival in love. The evidence was damning: only Elinor had the motive, the opportunity and the means to administer the fatal poison.

Yet, inside the hostile courtroom, only one man still presumed Elinor was innocent until proven guilty: Hercule Poirot was all that stood between Elinor and the gallows…]]>
336 Agatha Christie Sofia 3 3.91 1940 Sad Cypress (Hercule Poirot, #22)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1940
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/23
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<![CDATA[Someone You Can Build a Nest In]]> 182506390 Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.]]>
310 John Wiswell 0756418852 Sofia 0 to-read 3.97 2024 Someone You Can Build a Nest In
author: John Wiswell
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.97
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<![CDATA[The Cure for Burnout: How to Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life]]> 185034564
In The Cure for Burnout , burnout management coach and TikTok influencer Emily Ballesteros combines scientific and cultural research, her expertise in organizational psychology, and the tried-and-true strategies she’s successfully implemented with clients around the globe to demystify burnout for our post-pandemic world � and set you on a path toward a life of personal and professional balance. Ballesteros outlines five areas in which you can build healthy habits to combat burnout � mindset, personal care, time management, boundaries , and stress management . She offers clear, easy-to-implement tools to help you find greater balance, energy, and fulfillment, showing you how

� break burnout habits that keep you in a pattern of chronic overwhelm
� create sustainable work/life balance through predictable personal care
� get more done in less time while creating forward momentum toward a meaningful life
� identify and set your personal and professional limits , guilt-free
� master your stress and detach from your stressors

The Cure for Burnout provides a holistic method for burnout management to address the epidemic of our always-on, chronically overextended culture, empowering us to reclaim control of our own lives once and for all.]]>
272 Emily Ballesteros 0593596315 Sofia 0 to-read 4.10 The Cure for Burnout: How to Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life
author: Emily Ballesteros
name: Sofia
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Spinning Silver 37168303 Spinning Silver draws readers deeper into a glittering realm of fantasy, where the boundary between wonder and terror is thinner than a breath, and safety can be stolen as quickly as a kiss.

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk—grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh—Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar.

But Tsar Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love.

Channeling the vibrant heart of myth and fairy tale, Spinning Silver weaves a multilayered, magical tapestry that readers will want to return to again and again.]]>
466 Naomi Novik 0399180982 Sofia 0 to-read 4.18 2018 Spinning Silver
author: Naomi Novik
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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Graveyard Shift 203578770 Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.]]>
144 M.L. Rio 1250356792 Sofia 2 3.18 2024 Graveyard Shift
author: M.L. Rio
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2024
rating: 2
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<![CDATA[Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil]]> 215020997 ALL first edition copies will be signed by the author! Signed copies available while supplies last.

From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger.

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life�
how it ends, and how it starts.


USA Today, 15 Most Anticipated of 2025
BookBub, Most Anticipated of 2025 (and Reader’s Pick)
Readers Digest, 20 Most Anticipated Books This Year
Paste Magazine, Most Anticipated Fantasy Books of 2025
BookRiot, Most Anticipated Books of 2025
Men's Health, 25 Best & Most Anticipated Books of 2025
The Nerd Daily, SFF to Devour in 2025
ŷ, Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2025]]>
560 Victoria E. Schwab 1035064642 Sofia 0 to-read 4.39 2025 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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Just Kids 206318521 Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work--from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.]]> 262 Patti Smith 006621131X Sofia 0 to-read 4.27 2010 Just Kids
author: Patti Smith
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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One Hundred Years of Solitude 320 417 Gabriel García Márquez Sofia 0 to-read 4.10 1967 One Hundred Years of Solitude
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir]]> 203708995 400 Griffin Dunne 0593652827 Sofia 0 to-read 4.01 2024 The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir
author: Griffin Dunne
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/04
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The Nightingale 25413486 In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.]]>
448 Kristin Hannah 1250066433 Sofia 0 to-read 4.62 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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First Lie Wins 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn’t like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]>
340 Ashley Elston Sofia 0 to-read 3.97 2024 First Lie Wins
author: Ashley Elston
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An Essay]]> 195820983
“There’s no single answer that will solve all our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers—at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.�

Originally published in Essence magazine in the year 2000, Octavia E. Butler’s essay “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future� offers an honest look into the inspiration behind her science fiction novels and the importance of studying history and taking responsibility for our actions if we are to move forward.

Organized into four main rules, this short essay reminds readers to learn from the past, respect the law of consequences, be aware of their perspectives, and count on the surprises. Citing the warning signs of fascism, the illusive effects of fear and wishful thinking, and the unpredictable nature of what is yet to come, Butler shares realistic but hopeful suggestions to shape our future into something good. An inspiring and motivational gift for students and recent graduates, fans of Butler's work, and anyone seeking a brighter day tomorrow, this exquisite gift book includes stunning Afrofuturist artwork by Manzel Bowman alongside the full text of the original essay.

LITERARY Octavia E. Butler was a pioneering science fiction writer whose novels, written decades ago, remain eerily relevant, reflecting on themes of racial injustice, women’s rights, environmental collapse, and political corruption. In 1995, she became the first science fiction author to win a MacArthur Genius grant, and her books are taught in over 200 colleges and universities nationwide. This book shares Butler's timely but lesser-known essay and is a must-read for fans of her classic sci-fi works.

CELEBRATE BLACK This book spotlights one of the greatest authors of Afrofuturism, a genre and philosophy that explores and reimagines Black culture, creativity, and liberation through fiction, art, music, film, and other media. Octavia E. Butler’s forward-thinking essay is paired with contemporary illustrations by Manzel Bowman, whose evocative images are also inspired by Afrofuturist visions.

INSPIRING A unique gift for students, recent graduates, and anyone celebrating life milestones or looking forward in life, this beautifully designed hardcover book is sure to inspire. Octavia E. Butler’s essay is also an important, evergreen reminder for writers, creatives, dreamers, and activists who want to envision and work toward a brighter future.

Perfect ]]>
56 Octavia E. Butler 1797229052 Sofia 4 non-fiction 4.34 2000 A Few Rules for Predicting the Future: An Essay
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
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<![CDATA[The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories]]> 16368
Some highlights: Mr. Parker Pyne must recover a priceless diamond which disappears during a dinner party trick; Hercule Poirot proves that a crowd is the best cloak for a murder, and Miss Marple solves a baffling crime by the fireside. There are six more good ones in this mystery anthology.

The stories are: 1. The Regatta Mystery, 2. The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest, 3. How Does Your Garden Grow, 4. Problem at Pollensa Bay, 5. Yellow Iris, 6. Miss Marple Tells a Story, 7. The Dream, 8. In a Glass Darkly, and 9. Problem at Sea.

Five are Hercule Poirot mysteries. The others are: #1 which features Parker Pyne although it was first written for Hercule Poirot; #4, a Parker Pyne mystery; #6, a Miss Marple mystery, and #8, one of the author's stand-alone sci fi stories.

Librarian's note: this is the entry for the collection of nine short stories, "The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories." Entries for each of the individual stories, including the title story, are located elsewhere on ŷ.]]>
214 Agatha Christie 0425100413 Sofia 2 mystery 3.89 1939 The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1939
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: mystery
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<![CDATA[Hercule Poirot's Christmas (Hercule Poirot, #20)]]> 16349 335 Agatha Christie 0007120699 Sofia 3 mystery 3.96 1938 Hercule Poirot's Christmas (Hercule Poirot, #20)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1938
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: mystery
review:

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The Teller of Small Fortunes 207611551 A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences�

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.]]>
336 Julie Leong 0593815912 Sofia 0 to-read 3.81 2024 The Teller of Small Fortunes
author: Julie Leong
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The City and Its Uncertain Walls]]> 209192695 From the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World comes a love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, and a parable for our peculiar times.

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a singular and towering achievement by one of modern literature’s most important writers.]]>
449 Haruki Murakami 0593801970 Sofia 0 to-read 3.72 2023 The City and Its Uncertain Walls
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[American Bulk: Essays on Excess]]> 205478800 Raised with hoarding and compulsive shopping, Emily Mester is caught in between. What happens when consumption begins to consume you back?

In a series of deeply personal essays, Mester explores how the things we buy, eat, amass, and discard become an intimate part of our lives. We guiltily watch Amazon boxes pile up on the porch, wade through endless reviews to find the perfect product, and crave the comforting indulgence of a chain restaurant. With humor and sharp intellect, Mester reflects on the joys and anxieties of Costco trips, how a seasonal stint at Ulta Beauty taught her the insidious art of the sale, and what it means to get “mall sad.� In a nuanced examination of diet culture and fatness, Mester recounts her teenage summer at fat camp and the unexpected liberation she finds there. Finally, she ventures to Storm Lake, Iowa, to reckon with her grandmother’s abandoned hoard, excavating the dysfunction that lies at the heart of her family’s obsession with stuff. American Bulk introduces readers to a striking new literary talent from the American heartland, one who dares to ask us to regard consumption not with guilt but with grace and empathy.]]>
240 Emily Mester 1324035234 Sofia 0 to-read 3.88 2024 American Bulk: Essays on Excess
author: Emily Mester
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[She Who Knows (She Who Knows #1)]]> 202470599 Part science fiction, part fantasy, and entirely infused with West African culture and spirituality, this novella offers an intimate glimpse into the life of a teenager whose coming of age will herald a new age for her world. Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, this is the first in the She Who Knows trilogy

When there is a call, there is often a response.

Najeeba knows.

She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come true: travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.

Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.]]>
161 Nnedi Okorafor 075641895X Sofia 0 to-read 3.99 2024 She Who Knows (She Who Knows #1)
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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Clear 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]>
196 Carys Davies 1668030667 Sofia 0 to-read 3.85 Clear
author: Carys Davies
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Appointment with Death (Hercule Poirot, #19)]]> 16363
With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he’d overheard back in Jerusalem: ‘You see, don’t you, that she’s got to be killed?� Mrs Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he’d ever met.]]>
303 Agatha Christie 0007119356 Sofia 3 mystery 3.87 1938 Appointment with Death (Hercule Poirot, #19)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1938
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: mystery
review:

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<![CDATA[The Watchers (The Watchers, #1)]]> 58321103
Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans—and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn't reach the bunker in time.

Afraid and trapped among strangers, Mina is desperate for answers. Who are the Watchers? Why are these creatures keeping them imprisoned? And, most importantly, how can she escape?]]>
310 A.M. Shine 1801102120 Sofia 0 to-read 3.82 2021 The Watchers (The Watchers, #1)
author: A.M. Shine
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Black Coffee (Hercule Poirot, #7.5)]]> 16352 Book 7.5 of 38: Hercule Poirot

Nearly a quarter-century after her death, Agatha Christie remains the most popular mystery writer of all time. Now, in a celebrated publishing event, fans and newcomers alike are treated to another Christie novel. Created in 1930 as a stage play and faithfully adapted by Charles Osborne, Black Coffee brings back beloved detective Hercule Poirot to exercise his "little grey cells" one more deliciously deductive time...

An urgent call from physicist Sir Claud Amory sends famed detective Hercule Poirot rushing from London to a sprawling country estate. Sir Claud fears a member of his own household wants to steal a secret formula destined for the Ministry of Defense. But Poirot arrives too late. The formula is missing. Worse, Sir Claud has been poisoned by his after-dinner coffee. Poirot soon identifies a potent brew of despair, treachery, and deception amid the mansion's occupants. Now he must find the formula and the killer...while letting no poison slip 'twix his low lips.]]>
304 Charles Osborne 0312970072 Sofia 2 mystery 3.62 1967 Black Coffee (Hercule Poirot, #7.5)
author: Charles Osborne
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1967
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: mystery
review:

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<![CDATA[Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot, #17)]]> 16344
So, on April 17th she wrote about her anxieties and suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. And included a request that he consult with her as soon as possible. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th � by which time Emily was already dead.]]>
317 Agatha Christie 0007120796 Sofia 3 mystery 3.88 1937 Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot, #17)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: mystery
review:

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<![CDATA[The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)]]> 52439531
To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man's touch -- and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes. Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. This includes the four Hawthorne grandsons: dangerous, magnetic, brilliant boys who grew up with every expectation that one day, they would inherit billions. Heir apparent Grayson Hawthorne is convinced that Avery must be a conwoman, and he's determined to take her down. His brother, Jameson, views her as their grandfather's last hurrah: a twisted riddle, a puzzle to be solved. Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.]]>
386 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1368052401 Sofia 0 to-read 4.13 2020 The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
review:

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Daisy Jones & The Six 40597810 Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n� roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.]]>
368 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798622 Sofia 0 to-read 4.20 2019 Daisy Jones & The Six
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Murder in the Mews: Four Cases of Hercule Poirot (Hercule Poirot, #16)]]> 8423700 In this official authorized edition from the Queen of Mystery, four mystifying criminal conundrums test the detecting skills of the unflappable Hercule Poirot.

How did a woman holding a pistol in her right hand manage to shoot herself in the left temple? What was the link between a ghost sighting and the disappearance of top secret military plans? How did the bullet that killed Sir Gervase shatter a mirror in another part of the room? And should the beautiful Valentine Chantry flee for her life from the holiday island of Rhodes?

Hercule Poirot is faced with four mystifying cases—each a miniature classic of characterization, incident, and suspense.

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300 Agatha Christie Sofia 3 mystery 3.93 1937 Murder in the Mews: Four Cases of Hercule Poirot (Hercule Poirot, #16)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1937
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: mystery
review:

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<![CDATA[Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot, #15)]]> 16297
Mr. Shaitana was famous, as were his parties. He was also a man of whom everybody was a little afraid. So, when he boasted to Poirot that he considered murder an art form, the detective had some reservations about accepting a party invitation of cards and viewing Shaitana’s private art collection. Indeed, what began as an absorbing evening of bridge was to turn into a more dangerous game altogether…]]>
324 Agatha Christie 0425205959 Sofia 4 mystery 3.94 1936 Cards on the Table (Hercule Poirot, #15)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1936
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: mystery
review:

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Orbital 123136728
Contudo, mesmo tão distantes do mundo, os seis astronautas não conseguem escapar à sua constante influência. Chegam notícias da morte de uma mãe, trazendo pensamentos de regresso e de saudades de casa. A fragilidade da vida humana torna-se um tema central nas suas conversas, nos seus medos e nos seus sonhos.

Apesar de tão longe da Terra, nunca antes se haviam sentido tão protetores dela, tão parte dela. Começam a refletir: o que será a vida sem a Terra? O que será a Terra sem a humanidade?]]>
207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Sofia 4 3.55 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/25
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves:
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<![CDATA[Murder in Mesopotamia (Hercule Poirot, #14)]]> 16360
It was clear to nurse Amy Leatheran that something sinister was going on at the Hassanieh dig, something associated with the presence of ‘Lovely Louise�, the wife of the celebrated archaeologist Dr. Leidner. But she couldn't pinpoint it.

In a few days� time Hercule Poirot was due to drop in at the excavation site. With Louise suffering terrifying hallucinations, and tension within the group becoming almost unbearable, Poirot might just be too late…]]>
264 Agatha Christie 0007113803 Sofia 2 mystery 3.92 1936 Murder in Mesopotamia (Hercule Poirot, #14)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1936
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: mystery
review:

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<![CDATA[Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)]]> 131359
Who is also on board? Christie's great detective Hercule Poirot is on holiday. He recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.� Despite the exotic setting, nothing is ever quite what it seems…]]>
352 Agatha Christie Sofia 4 mystery 4.13 1937 Death on the Nile (Hercule Poirot, #18)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: mystery
review:

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<![CDATA[The A.B.C. Murders (Hercule Poirot, #13)]]> 16322
There's a serial killer on the loose. His macabre calling card is to leave the ABC Railway Guide beside each victim's body. But if A is for Alice Asher, bludgeoned to death in Andover, and B is for Betty Bernard, strangled with her belt on the beach at Bexhill, who will then be Victim C? More importantly, why is this happening?

Often considered to be one of Agatha Christie's best.

Librarian's note: the first fifteen novels in the Hercule Poirot series are 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920; 2) The Murder on the Links, 1923; 3) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 1926; 4) The Big Four, 1927; 5) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928; 6) Peril at End House, 1932; 7) Lord Edgware Dies, 1933; 8) Murder on the Orient Express, 1934; 9) Three Act Tragedy, 1935; 10) Death in the Clouds, 1935; 11) The A.B.C. Murders, 1936; 12) Murder in Mesopotamia, 1936; 13) Cards on the Table, 1936; 14) Dumb Witness, 1937; and 15) Death on the Nile, 1937. These are just the novels; Poirot also appears in this period in a play, Black Coffee, 1930, and two collections of short stories, Poirot Investigates, 1924, and Murder in the Mews, 1937. Each novel, play and short story has its own entry on ŷ.]]>
232 Agatha Christie 1579126243 Sofia 3 4.03 1936 The A.B.C. Murders (Hercule Poirot, #13)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1936
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves:
review:

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Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2) 60652997 Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. Alex Stern is back and the Ivy League is going straight to hell.

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex� Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory―even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.

Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies� most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.

Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.]]>
481 Leigh Bardugo 1250313104 Sofia 4 fantasy 4.09 2023 Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: fantasy
review:

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Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1) 43263680
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs� are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.]]>
461 Leigh Bardugo 1250313074 Sofia 4 fantasy 4.00 2019 Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: fantasy
review:

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<![CDATA[Start Here, Volume 2: Read Your Way Into 25 Amazing Authors]]> 20331393
Each chapter presents an author, explains why you might want to try them, and lays out a 3- or 4-book reading sequence designed to help you experience fully what they have to offer. It’s a fun, accessible, informative way to enrich your reading life.

Each chapter is written with expertise and passion to help you get started reading authors you’ve always wanted to try.

Includes chapters on reading your way

Alan Moore
Anne Carson
Charles Portis
China Mieville
Colum McCann
Daniel Woodrell
Dave Eggers
David Mitchell
Dorothy Parker
Douglas Coupland
Flannery O'Connor
George Orwell
Isaac Asimov
James Salter
Jennifer Egan
John Green
John Steinbeck
Octavia Butler
Philip Roth
Roald Dahl
Salman Rushdie
Toni Morrison
Ursula K. LeGuin
Virginia Woolf
William Faulkner]]>
200 Jeff O'Neal 1483515567 Sofia 0 non-fiction 3.97 2013 Start Here, Volume 2: Read Your Way Into 25 Amazing Authors
author: Jeff O'Neal
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2014/08/05
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: non-fiction
review:

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The Simulacra 12660637
In classic Philip K. Dick fashion, "The Simulacra" combines time travel, psychotherapy, telekinesis, androids, and Neanderthal-like mutants to create a rousing, mind-bending story where there are conspiracies within conspiracies and nothing is ever what it seems."]]>
222 Philip K. Dick 0547601301 Sofia 2 science-fiction 3.74 1964 The Simulacra
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1964
rating: 2
read at: 2013/04/06
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: science-fiction
review:

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<![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Sofia 2 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm]]> 209594 304 Jacob Grimm 0486210804 Sofia 3 fantasy 4.01 1812 Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm
author: Jacob Grimm
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1812
rating: 3
read at: 2012/07/26
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: fantasy
review:
Read for Coursera: Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World.
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<![CDATA[The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains]]> 13454439 يُمكنني أن أسامح نفسي على أشياءَ كثيرة؛ على المكان الذي تركتُه فيه، على ما فعلتُ، لكنني لن أسامح نفسي أبدًا على العام الذي كرهتُ فيه ابنتي، حين اعتقدتُ أنها هربَت... إلى المدينة ربما. خلال ذلك العام حرَّجتُ ذِكر اسمها، وإذا شملَته صلواتي حينما أصلِّي، فلكي أدعو أن تُدرِك يومًا معنى ما فعلَته، معنى العار الذي جلبَته على أسرتي، والاحمرار الذي أحاطَ بعينَي أمِّها. لأجل هذا أكرهُ نفسي، ولا شيء من شأنه أن يُهوِّن الأمر، خاصَّةً بعد ما حدثَ في تلك اللَّيلة على جانب الجبل.]]> 23 Neil Gaiman Sofia 4 fantasy 4.06 2010 The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2021/12/07
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves: fantasy
review:

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A Clockwork Orange 8810
The basis for one of the most notorious films ever made, A Clockwork Orange is both a virtuoso performance from an electrifying prose stylist and a serious exploration of the morality of free will.

'I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language ... a very funny book'
William S. Burroughs]]>
159 Anthony Burgess 0141182601 Sofia 3 science-fiction Humanity is doomed. 3.97 1962 A Clockwork Orange
author: Anthony Burgess
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1962
rating: 3
read at: 2009/10/20
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: science-fiction
review:
Humanity is doomed.
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Beowulf 227409
A grand and glorious story that has endured for centuries, the ageless classic adventure takes on a breathtaking new life in a remarkable new version for a modern era. Brilliantly reimagined by acclaimed, award-winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan, based on the screenplay by #1 New York Times bestseller Neil Gaiman and Academy Award®-winning screenwriter Roger Avary, it is the tale of a noble liege and a terrible creature who has cursed his kingdom with death, blood, and destruction—and of the great hero, Beowulf, who is called to a land of monsters to triumph where so many have failed . . . or to die as so many of the brave before him.]]>
384 Caitlín R. Kiernan 0061341282 Sofia 3 fantasy 3.41 1000 Beowulf
author: Caitlín R. Kiernan
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.41
book published: 1000
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/06/26
shelves: fantasy
review:

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<![CDATA[Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)]]> 23437156 Alternate cover of ISBN 9781627792127

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone...

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.]]>
480 Leigh Bardugo 1627792120 Sofia 0 to-read 4.47 2015 Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[As Aventuras de Tom Bombadil e Outras Histórias]]> 6325241 As Aventuras de Tom Bombadil, Tolkien aproxima-se da genialidade. Para os apreciadores de O Hobbit, este livro será uma delícia, e para os que desconhecem a obra do autor será uma descoberta maravilhosa.]]> 168 J.R.R. Tolkien 9721043591 Sofia 3 fantasy 3.46 1997 As Aventuras de Tom Bombadil e Outras Histórias
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves: fantasy
review:

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<![CDATA[Yumi and the Nightmare Painter]]> 60531416 #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson brings us a gripping story set in the Cosmere universe told by Hoid, where two people from incredibly different worlds must compromise and work together to save their worlds from ruin.

Yumi comes from a land of gardens, meditation, and spirits, while Painter lives in a world of darkness, technology, and nightmares. When their lives suddenly become intertwined in strange ways, can they put aside their differences and work together to uncover the mysteries of their situation and save each other’s communities from certain disaster?]]>
480 Brandon Sanderson 1938570375 Sofia 4 fantasy 4.45 2023 Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/03
shelves: fantasy
review:

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<![CDATA[The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England (Secret Projects, #2)]]> 60531410 399 Brandon Sanderson 1938570332 Sofia 3 fantasy 3.75 2023 The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England (Secret Projects, #2)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Sofia
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/01/11
date added: 2024/01/11
shelves: fantasy
review:

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And Then There Were None 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]>
264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 Sofia 4 mystery 4.28 1939 And Then There Were None
author: Agatha Christie
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/05
date added: 2024/01/05
shelves: mystery
review:

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Tress of the Emerald Sea 60531406 #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson expands his Cosmere universe shared by The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn with a new standalone novel for everyone who loved The Princess Bride.

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?]]>
443 Brandon Sanderson Sofia 5 fantasy 4.35 2023 Tress of the Emerald Sea
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/30
date added: 2023/12/30
shelves: fantasy
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<![CDATA[This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor]]> 35510008 Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, Adam Kay's This is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking, this diary is everything you wanted to know � and more than a few things you didn't � about life on and off the hospital ward.

As seen on ITV's Zoe Ball Book Club

This edition includes extra diary entries and a new afterword by the author.

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285 Adam Kay Sofia 0 to-read 4.40 2017 This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor
author: Adam Kay
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/17
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood]]> 29780253
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents� indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.]]>
289 Trevor Noah 0385689225 Sofia 0 to-read 4.48 2016 Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
author: Trevor Noah
name: Sofia
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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