en-US Mon, 07 Apr 2025 06:38:42 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 32866871
Republican President William McKinley in his two terms as president (1897 �� 1901) transformed America. He established the US as an imperial power. Although he does not register large in either public memory or in historians�� rankings, in this revealing account, Robert W. Merry unfolds the mystery of how this bland man managed so much powerful change.

McKinley settled decades of monetary controversy by taking the country to a strict gold standard; in the Spanish-American war he kicked Spain out of the Caribbean and liberated Cuba from Spain; in the Pacific he acquired Hawaii and the Philippines through war and diplomacy; he developed the doctrine of “fair trade��; forced the “Open Door�� to China; forged our “special relationship�� with Great Britain. In short, he established the non-colonial imperialism that took America into global preeminence. He expanded executive power and managed public opinion through his quiet manipulation of the press. McKinley paved the way for the bold and flamboyant leadership of his famous successor, Teddy Roosevelt, who built on his accomplishments (and got credit for them).

Merry writes movingly about McKinley’s admirable personal life, from his simple Midwestern upbringing to his Civil War heroism to his brave comportment just moments before his death by assassination (it was only six months into his second term when he was shot). Lively, definitive, and eye-opening, President McKinley resurrects this overlooked president and places him squarely on the list of one of the most important.]]> 608 Robert W. Merry 1451625448 Alexia 4 3.94 2017
author: Robert W. Merry
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/07
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]]> 217927444 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest - a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and 80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem - the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson - Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was only one among many that dotted the area.

As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of western smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives, but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers.

A propulsive non-fiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.]]> 480 Caroline Fraser 0593657225 Alexia 0 to-read 3.88 2025
author: Caroline Fraser
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
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]]> 217432781 In this million-copy international bestseller from Korea, the owner of a corner store takes in an unhoused man who does a good deed, a kind soul whose presence will transform the whole neighborhood—a heartwarming tale of community and redemption reminiscent of the bestselling novels of Matt Haig and Gabrielle Zevin.

Dok-go lives in Seoul Station. He can’t remember his past, and the only thing he knows for certain is that he could really use a drink. When he finds a lost wallet filled with documents, his life is drastically changed.

Mrs. Yeom, a retired history teacher and current owner of her neighborhood’s corner store, is distraught over the loss of her purse, until she receives a mysterious call from the person who found it. To thank this down-on-his-luck stranger, she offers him a free meal from the convenience store. Seeing the joy the food brings him, Mrs. Yeom impulsively invites him to stop by for lunch every day.

In a twist of fate, Dok-go saves the store from a robber—a brave act that propels Mrs. Yeom to offers the bear-like man a job working the night shift, despite the objections of her wary employees. The store’s new employee quickly wins over the quirky denizens of the neighborhood, becoming a welcoming ear and source of advice for his coworkers and neighbors�� problems, and helping his new boss save the store from financial ruin. But just when things are looking up for Dok-go, Mrs. Yeom's good-for-nothing son, eager to sell the store, hires a detective to dig into the mysterious man’s past and what he seems to be trying so hard to forget.

The Second Chance Convenience Store is a moving and joyful story of a woman fighting for her community and a man who has lost everything except the will to try again.]]> 208 Kim Ho-yeon 0063354772 Alexia 0 to-read 4.06 2021
author: Kim Ho-yeon
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 54860229 The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

The story begins in May 1536: Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?

Eagerly awaited and eight years in the making, The Mirror & the Light completes Cromwell’s journey from self-made man to one of the most feared, influential figures of his time. Portrayed by Mantel with pathos and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.]]> 759 Hilary Mantel 1250182492 Alexia 0 to-read 4.38 2020
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 57693457 After several deaths punctuating a series of all-too-brief life spans, a clone reassesses his purpose �� and his humanity �� in Edward Ashton’s Mickey7, “a unique blend of thought-provoking sci-fi concepts, farcical relationship drama, and exotic body horror�� (New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin).

EXPENDABLE \ik’spen-d��-b’l\ n. A human clone utilized for dangerous work on space exploration missions. An Expendable’s personality and memories may be transferred intact to a new body if and when the current host dies.

Mickey Barnes is an Expendable, now on his seventh iteration, living �� and dying �� among his fellow colonists on the near-uninhabitable ice world of Niflheim. Some consider him immortal. Others believe he’s a soulless monstrosity. For the past nine years, he has been deployed for hazardous assignments and subjected to experiments that test the limits of human endurance, his humanity sacrificed for the greater good.

While on reconnaissance, Mickey7 is injured and left for dead, only to be saved by Niflheim’s native species, thought to be insentient by the colonists. Returning to base, Mickey7 meets his next generation, Mickey8. Neither clone is willing to recycle himself, but if anyone discovers multiple Mickeys exist, they’ll both be executed �� and there won’t ever be a Mickey9.

But Mickey7’s premature twin isn’t his only secret. He hasn’t uploaded his memories in a month, leaving his clone in the dark about his near death and close encounter with the planet’s inhabitants. Mickey7 also doesn’t know how all of his previous selves died, and those he remembers have left him traumatized and mistrustful of the colony’s mission. A mission that has Mickey Barnes questioning his moral and mortal existence...again...and again....]]> 296 Edward Ashton 1250275032 Alexia 0 currently-reading 3.73 2022
author: Edward Ashton
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> 213816137 “Every sentence drips and unsettles, every character lusts and schemes, every landscape is alien and forbidding. . . . I am obsessed with these lush, feral stories.”—Carmen Maria Machado

“Beautiful, visceral, surprising stories, both wild and dangerous, with a Southern twang but universal appeal. Elliott is an Angela Carter for our times.”—Jeff VanderMeer

From the acclaimed author of The Wilds comes an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal.

In a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film The Exorcist. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods. With exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s Hellions jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, presenting earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.]]> 272 Julia Elliott 196310806X Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.23
author: Julia Elliott
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.23
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]]> 211934923 A pulse-quickening murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence by the renowned author of HHhH.

As dawn breaks over the city of Florence on New Year’s Day 1557, Jacopo da Pontormo is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him are the frescoes he labored over for more than a decade—masterpieces all, rivaling the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. When guards search his quarters, they find an obscene painting of Venus and Cupid—with the face of Venus replaced by that of Maria de�� Medici, the Duke of Florence’s oldest daughter. The city erupts in chaos.

Who could have committed these murder and lèse-majesté? Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation. Letters start to fly back and forth—between Maria and her aunt Catherine de�� Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and the scheming Piero Strozzi; and between Vasari and Michelangelo—carrying news of political plots and speculations about the identity of Pontormo’s killer. The truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot center of European art and intrigue.

Bursting with characters and historical color, Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s) is a whodunit like no other—a labyrinthine murder mystery that shows us Renaissance Florence as we’ve never seen it before. This is a dark, dazzling, unforgettable read.]]> 272 Laurent Binet 0374614601 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.92 2023
author: Laurent Binet
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 215808176 176 Andrés Felipe Solano 164009685X Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.12
author: Andrés Felipe Solano
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.12
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]]> 58340993
The definitive social history of tuberculosis, from its origins as a haunting mystery to its modern reemergence that now threatens populations around the world.

It killed novelist George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and millions of others �� rich and poor. Desmond Tutu, Amitabh Bachchan, and Nelson Mandela survived it, just.�� For centuries, tuberculosis has ravaged cities and plagued the human body.��

In�� Phantom Plague , Vidya Krishnan, traces the history of tuberculosis from the slums of 19th-century New York to modern Mumbai. In a narrative spanning century, Krishnan shows how superstition and folk-remedies, made way for scientific understanding of TB, such that it was controlled and cured in the West.��

The cure was never available to black and brown nations. And the tuberculosis bacillus showed a remarkable ability to adapt �� so that at the very moment it could have been extinguished as a threat to humanity, it found a way back, aided by authoritarian government, toxic kindness of philanthropists, science denialism and medical apartheid.

Krishnan’s original reporting paints a granular portrait of the post-antibiotic era as a new, aggressive, drug resistant strain of TB takes over. Phantom Plague is an urgent, riveting and fascinating narrative that deftly exposes the weakest links in our battle against this ancient foe.��]]> 320 Vidya Krishnan 1541768469 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.89 2022
author: Vidya Krishnan
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 36679056 A powerful, darkly glittering novel of violence, love, faith, and loss, as a young woman at an elite American university is drawn into acts of domestic terrorism by a cult tied to North Korea.

Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet their first month at prestigious Edwards University. Phoebe is a glamorous girl who doesn't tell anyone she blames herself for her mother's recent death. Will is a misfit scholarship boy who transfers to Edwards from Bible college, waiting tables to get by. What he knows for sure is that he loves Phoebe.

Grieving and guilt-ridden, Phoebe is increasingly drawn into a religious group—a secretive extremist cult—founded by a charismatic former student, John Leal. He has an enigmatic past that involves North Korea and Phoebe's Korean American family. Meanwhile, Will struggles to confront the fundamentalism he's tried to escape, and the obsession consuming the one he loves. When the group bombs several buildings in the name of faith, killing five people, Phoebe disappears. Will devotes himself to finding her, tilting into obsession himself, seeking answers to what happened to Phoebe and if she could have been responsible for this violent act.

The Incendiaries is a fractured love story and a brilliant examination of the minds of extremist terrorists, and of what can happen to people who lose what they love most.]]> 214 R.O. Kwon 0735213895 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.21 2018
author: R.O. Kwon
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Alexia 5 favorites 4.56 2025
author: John Green
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 218671843 An unexpected��road trip across America brings a family together, in this raucous and moving new novel from the bestselling author of Nothing to See Here.

Ever since��her dad left them twenty years ago,��it’s just been Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While she sometimes admits it’s a bit lonely and a less exciting life than she imagined for herself, it’s mostly OK. Mostly.

Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half siblings.��And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.

As Mad and Rube—and eventually the others—share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with each new incarnation. Who are they to one another? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad’s previously solitary life on the farm?

Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run for the Hills is a sibling story like no other—a novel about a family forged under the most unlikely circumstances and united by hope in an unknown future.]]> 256 Kevin Wilson 0063317516 Alexia 0 to-read 4.08 2025
author: Kevin Wilson
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
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]]> 216247489 Subversive and unexpectedly heartwarming, Sky Daddy hijacks the classic love story, exploring desire, fate, and the longing to be accepted for who we truly are.

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges in her true passion: taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could.

Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry�� one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.]]> 368 Kate Folk 059323149X Alexia 0 to-read 4.19 2025
author: Kate Folk
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.19
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]]> 210864316 560 Homer 022660442X Alexia 0 to-read 4.43 -800
author: Homer
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.43
book published: -800
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]]> 213263148 London, 1837.
Boston, 2019.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.

One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.

And all of them grow teeth.]]> 544 Victoria E. Schwab 1250320526 Alexia 0 to-read 4.57 2025
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.57
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]]> 212992132 Close to Cronenberg and deeply indebted to Kafka, this gaucho-punk novel offers an explosive interpretation of an ultra-capitalistic society at the grips with climate collapse.

The protagonist of this story has no understanding of the words “winter��,"cold��, or "snow" because he has never experienced the phenomena they describe. We find ourselves in Victorica, a province of La Pampa, Argentina, some time after 2197 �� the year in which the last of the Antarctic icecaps melted and an unprecedented climate catastrophe ensued, radically transforming the landscape of the region into a Caribbean Pampas. It is here that the Dengue Child grows up, a mutant mix of child and mosquito, the result of crazy experimenting driven by ultra-capitalistic corporations racing against each other to own viruses and their cures, destroying even their very own children’s existence to cash in on the stock exchange.

Another of the surprising effects of the thaw is the appearance of powerful telepathic pebbles from the bowels of the earth that seem to encapsulate the world's original wisdom, and which are the subject of lucrative smuggling. Meanwhile, the wealthy of the region chose to cruise around on ships where they can experience ice-skating and hand carve ice from valuable remains of glaciers. In their ultra-air conditioned homes, their kids play Indians vs Christians, a brutal video game set in the historical 19th century.����

The future according to Michel Nieva looks frenetic and shocking. He counts among the rising voices of Argentina, packing punches in a deeply intelligent, informed, and humorful prose which takes root in Latin American storytelling and sci-fi tradition.]]> 203 Michael Nieva Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.62 2023
author: Michael Nieva
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
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]]> 36698543 less well (and what hasn't worked at all)." --Paul Farmer, from the foreword

The field of global health has roots in the AIDS pandemic of the late 20th century, when the installation of health care systems supplanted older, low-cost prevention programs to help stem the spread of HIV in low- and middle-income Africa. Today's global health is rooted the belief that health
care is a human right, and that by promoting health we can cultivate equity and social justice in places where such values aren't always found.

An Introduction to Global Health Delivery is a short but immersive introduction to global health's origins, actors, interventions, and challenges. Informed by physician Joia Mukherjee's quarter-century of experience fighting disease and poverty in more than a dozen countries, it delivers a
clear-eyed overview of the movement underway to reduce global health disparities and establish sustainable access to care, including details of what has worked so far -- and what hasn't.

Grounded in the historical and social factors that propagate health disparities and enriched with case studies and exercises that encourage readers to think critically about the subject matter, this text is the essential starting point for readers of any background seeking a practical grounding in
global health's promise and progress.]]> 376 Joia S. Mukherjee 019066245X Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.65 2017
author: Joia S. Mukherjee
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2017
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date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> 61111247 A haunting, unforgettable memoir about a beloved younger sister and the painful memory of her murder, from one of Mexico's greatest living writers (Jonathan Lethem).

Can you enjoy yourself while you are in pain? The question, which is not new, arises over and over again during that eternity that is mourning.



In the early hours of July 16, 1990, Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive ex-boyfriend. A life full of promise and hope, cut tragically short, Liliana's story instead became subsumed into Mexico's dark and relentless history of domestic violence. With Liliana's case file abandoned by a corrupt criminal justice system, her family, including her older sister Cristina, was forced to process their grief and guilt in private, without any hope for justice.

In luminous, poetic prose, Rivera Garza tells a singular yet universally resonant story: that of a spirited, wondrously hopeful young woman who tried to survive in a world of increasingly normalized gendered violence. It traces the story of her childhood, her early romance with a handsome--but possessive and short-tempered--man, through the exhilarating weeks leading up to that fateful July morning, a summer when Liliana loved, thought, and traveled more widely and freely than she ever had before.

Using her remarkable talents as a scholar, novelist, and poet, Cristina Rivera Garza returns to Mexico after decades of living in the United States to collect and curate evidence--handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, architectural blueprints--in order to render and understand a life beyond the crime itself. Tracing the full arc of their childhood and adolescence in central Mexico, through the painful and confusing years after Liliana's death, Rivera Garza confronts the trauma of losing her sister, and examines from multiple angles how this tragedy continues to shape who she is--and what she fights for--today.]]> 320 Cristina Rivera Garza 0593244095 Alexia 4 3.98 2024
author: Cristina Rivera Garza
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 214151452 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

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

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

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668063700 Alexia 3 3.75 2023
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/29
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]]> 127282631 Following the death of her closest friend, Sloane Crosley explores multiple kinds of loss in this disarmingly witty and poignant memoir.

Grief Is for People is a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship and a book about loss packed with verve for life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behavior, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on full display. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend to suicide, Crosley looks for answers in friends, philosophy, and art, hoping for a framework more useful than the unavoidable stages of grief.]]> 208 Sloane Crosley 0374609845 Alexia 5 favorites 3.85 2024
author: Sloane Crosley
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 26872190 168 Brian K. Vaughan 1632157020 Alexia 5 favorites 3.63 2016
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: favorites
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Very good and unexpectedly topical.
]]> 55711264
WHAT ARE THE SECRETS OF THE SLAYERS?

Anya has been a key figure in Buffy’s life ever since she arrived in Sunnydale, but there’s more to the demon’s mission and mysterious past than anyone knows! It starts with her secret connection to the Watcher’s Council and... the first full appearance of the Slayer who came before Buffy??? And the truth behind Anya connects Buffy(s) - yes, plural - in ways no one ever saw coming�� Plus! Learn the secret truth behind the Slayer known as Faith and where she came from…it’s not what you think!

Acclaimed writer Jordie Bellaire & Jeremy Lambert team with artists Andres Genolet & Ramon Bachs to reveal the shocking secrets you - and Buffy - never expected! Collects Buffy the Vampire Slayer #21-22, Buffy the Vampire Faith #1.]]> 112 Jordie Bellaire 1684156874 Alexia 2 3.23 2021
author: Jordie Bellaire
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 54303251 112 Jordie Bellaire 1684156548 Alexia 4 3.44 2021
author: Jordie Bellaire
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 51100602 128 Jordie Bellaire 1684155959 Alexia 4 3.40 2020
author: Jordie Bellaire
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
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]]> 212426504 A delightfully insightful exploration of our obsession with gossip that weaves together journalism, cultural criticism, and memoir, from the host of the massively popular Normal Gossip podcast.

Can you keep a secret? As the pandemic forced us to socialize at a distance, Kelsey McKinney was mourning the juicy updates, jaw-dropping stories, and idle chatter that she’d typically collect over drinks with friends.��She realized she wasn’t the only one missing these little morsels and her hunger for this aspect of normalcy took on a life of its own��and��the blockbuster Normal Gossip podcast was born.��With listenership in the millions and gossip quickly becoming her day job, Kelsey found herself with the urge to think more critically about gossip as a form, to better understand the role that it plays in our culture.

In YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME, McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling. Why is gossip considered a sin and how can we better recognize when gossip is being weaponized against the oppressed? Why do we think we’re entitled to every detail of a celebrity’s personal life because they are a public figure? And how do we even define “gossip,�� anyway? She dishes on the art of eavesdropping and dives deep into how pop culture has changed the way that we look at hearsay. But as much as the book aims to treat gossip as a subject worthy of rigor, it also hopes to capture the heart of how enchanting and fun it can be to lean over and whisper something a little salacious into your friend’s ear. With wit and honesty, McKinney unmasks what we're actually searching for when we demand to know the truth �� and how much the truth really matters in the first place. ��]]> 288 Kelsey McKinney 1538757400 Alexia 5 3.90 2025
author: Kelsey McKinney
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 219303534 This second novel from Nebula Award-winning John Wiswell brings a humanizing, redemptive touch to the Hercules story in this mythological fantasy for fans of Jennifer Saint and Elodie Harper

Heracles, hero of Greece, dedicates all his feats to Hera, goddess of family. Heracles�� mother raised himto revere Hera, as her attempt to avoid the goddess�� wrath. Unbeknownst to Heracles, he is yet another child Hera’s husband, Zeus, had out of wedlock.

Hera loathes every minute of Heracles�� devotion. She finally snaps and sends the Furies to make Heracles kill himself. But the moment Heracles goes mad, his children playfully ambush him, and he slays them instead. When the madness fades, Heracles’s wife, Megara, convinces him to seek revenge. Together they’ll hunt the Furies and learn which god did this.

Believing Hera is the only god he can still trust, Heracles prays to Hera, who is wracked with guilt over killing his children. To mislead Heracles, Hera sends him on monster-slaying quests, but he is too traumatized to enact more violence. Instead, Heracles cares for the Nemean lion, cures the illness of the Lernaean hydra, and bonds with Crete’s giant bull.

Hera struggles with her role in Heracles life as Heracles begins to heal psychologically by connecting with the monsters—while also amassing an army that could lay siege to Olympos.

Nebula Award-winning author John Wiswell brings his signature humanizing touch to the Hercules story, forever changing the way we understand the man behind the myth—and the goddess reluctantly bound to him.]]> 384 John Wiswell 0756419549 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.44 2025
author: John Wiswell
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 216247494 The paths of four family members diverge drastically when the U.S. government begins detaining Vietnamese Americans, in this��sharp��and touching novel about growing up at��the intersection of ambition and assimilation.

Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family, but the truth about their family is much more complicated. As��young��adults, they're on the precipice of new ventures—Ursula as a budding journalist in Manhattan, Alvin as an engineering intern for Google, Jen as a naive freshman at NYU, and Duncan as a promising newcomer on his high school football team. Their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America create a national panic, prompting a government policy forcing Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions.

Cut off entirely from the outside world, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long dusty days in camp, forced to work jobs they hate and acclimate to life without the internet. That is until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this as an opportunity to tell the world about the horrors of detention—and bolster her own reporting career in the process.

Informed by real-life events from Japanese incarceration, the Vietnam War, and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own—much too close for comfort. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism in America, M�� Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family.��The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to each other, and to ourselves, after tragedy.]]> 352 Kevin Nguyen 0593731689 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.16
author: Kevin Nguyen
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> 213870084 From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human.

On Oct 25th, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.�� This tweet was viewed over 10 million times.��

One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture which has occurred for Black, brown, indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse.��

This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the west, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries—America, the UK, France and Germany.�� It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we’re undergoing a shift in the so-called ‘rules-based order,�� a generation that understands the west can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar’s own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11.��

This book is his heartsick breakup letter with the west. It is a breakup we are watching all over the U.S., on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the west has served up. This is the book for our time.]]> 208 Omar El Akkad 0593804147 Alexia 4 4.68 2025
author: Omar El Akkad
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.68
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> 60233239 Attention. Attention. The gates are down. The hunters are loose. Run, Run, Run.

A lush jungle teeming with danger. Savage dinosaurs seeking blood. A fallen princess intent on vengeance. A mysterious, end-of-floor celebration for the top crawlers, dubbed “The Butcher’s Masquerade.��

The sixth floor. The Hunting Grounds.

As the remaining crawlers battle for their lives, a new, terrible threat looms. Outside tourists are finally allowed to enter the game, and they are here and ready to hunt. Among them is Vrah, a famed and veteran hunter, intent on collecting the biggest trophy of her career.

But their prey is far from harmless, and this season they are fighting back.

Dungeon Crawler Carl and Princess Donut return in book five of the acclaimed litrpg series.]]> 732 Matt Dinniman Alexia 4 4.69 2022
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> 58877223 379 Jenny Erpenbeck 332860085X Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.35 2021
author: Jenny Erpenbeck
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: want-to-own
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]]> 54785501 Last Summer in the City is a witty and despairing classic of Italian literature. Biting, tragic, and endlessly quotable, this translated edition features an introductory appreciation from longtime fan New York Times bestselling author André Aciman.

In a city smothering under the summer sun and an overdose of la dolce vita, Leo Gazarra spends his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between run-down hotels and the homes of his rich and well-educated friends, without whom he would probably starve. At thirty, he’s still drifting: between jobs that mean nothing to him, between human relationships both ephemeral and frayed. Everyone he knows wants to graduate, get married, get rich—but not him. He has no ambitions whatsoever. Rather than toil and spin, isn’t it better to submit to the alienation of the Eternal City, Rome, sometimes a cruel and indifferent mistress, sometimes sweet and sublime? There can be no half measures with her, either she’s the love of your life or you have to leave her.

First discovered by Natalia Ginzburg, Last Summer in the City is a forgotten classic of Italian literature, a great novel of a stature similar to that of The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye. Gianfranco Calligarich’s enduring masterpiece has drawn comparisons to such writers as Truman Capote, Ernest Hemingway, and Jonathan Franzen and is here made available in English for the first time.]]> 192 Gianfranco Calligarich 0374600155 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.69 1970
author: Gianfranco Calligarich
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
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]]> 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever��

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]> 352 Oisín McKenna 0063319977 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.78 2024
author: Oisín McKenna
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
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]]> 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.57 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
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]]> 199798201
A house is a precious thing...

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.]]> 272 Yael van der Wouden 1668034344 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.05 2024
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/25
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]]> 219520778 A publishing event ten years in the making��a 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 0593802721 Alexia 3 4.00 2025
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 212807260 Your table awaits at the Chibineko Kitchen, where a soul-nourishing meal in the company of the resident kitten will transport you back in time to reunite with departed loved ones—for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and The Midnight Library.

In a remote seaside town outside of Tokyo, Kotoko makes her way along a seashell path, lured by whispers of an enigmatic restaurant whose kagezen, or traditional meals offered in remembrance of loved ones, promise a reunion with the departed. When a gust of wind lifts off her hat, she sees running after it a young man who looks like her recently deceased brother. But it’s not her brother; it’s Kai, the restaurant’s young chef, who returns her hat and brings her to the tiny establishment, where he introduces her to Chibi, the resident kitten, and serves her steaming bowls of simmered fish, rice, and miso soup—the exact meal her brother used to cook for her. As she takes her first delicious bite, the gulls outside fall silent, the air grows hazy, and Kotoko begins a magical journey of last chances and new beginnings.]]> 192 Yuta Takahashi 0143138618 Alexia 3 4.04 2020
author: Yuta Takahashi
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 222175384
Javier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background—murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activity—can be a key to doors he didn’t even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer.

As a college student, Javi embellishes his life story until there’s not even a kernel of truth left. The only real connection to his past is the occasional letter he trades with his childhood best friend, Gio, who doesn’t seem to care about Javi’s newfound awareness of white privilege or the school-to-prison pipeline. Soon after Javi graduates, a viral essay transforms him from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his “unique perspective.�� But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game. Once Gio’s released from prison and Javi offers to cut him in on the deal, will he play along with Javi’s charade, or will it all come crumbling down?

A satirical sendup of tear-jerking trauma plots with a tender portrait of friendship at its core, Victim asks what real diversity looks like and how far one man is willing to go to make his story hit the right notes.]]> 288 Andrew Boryga 0593471261 Alexia 0 to-read 3.60 2024
author: Andrew Boryga
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 223420465
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.

But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.]]> 896 Joe Hill 0062200607 Alexia 0 to-read 4.35 2025
author: Joe Hill
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 216434351 Romeo & Juliet meets The Vegetarian in the record-breaking instant classic which sold a quarter of a million copies in Korea

How should I proceed after I wrap up this story. What should I do. I could go to the police station and confess. I could find a priest and confess. I ate a person. Is that a sin?

This story begins with death. When Dam finds the body of her soulmate, Gu, bruised and battered on the street by a gang of government debt collectors, she is paralysed with grief. As she cradles his corpse in her defeated arms, Dam begins to tell it a story.

In a fragmented sequence of monologues and meditations, this unexpected novella slowly builds into a panoramic portrait of two like souls who have passed a lifetime in utter devotion to one another. It's a story that snakes between past and present where, as she narrates, Dam is committing one final act to the tale of their undying love.

Dam is slowly eating Gu, whose body she has lovingly washed, embalmed and elected to preserve in her own - where he will rest - for all eternity. At once romantic and horrific, HUNGER is a modern fable of metaphysical love cutting to the very heart of existence, loss, and how ferociously we rage - tooth and nail - against our own mortality.]]> Choi Jin-young 1840919035 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.00
author: Choi Jin-young
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/24
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]]> 222376983 With the awakening of fire-breathing dragons, Among the Burning Flowers sees the first sparks of danger that threaten to consume the world in The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Take your first steps into the epic.
Yscalin, land of sunshine and lavender, will soon be ablaze.

It has been centuries since the Draconic Army took wing, almost extinguishing humankind.

Marosa Vetalda is a prisoner in her own home, controlled by her cold father, King Sigoso. Over the mountains, her betrothed, Aubrecht Lievelyn, rules Mentendon in all but name. Together, they intend to usher in a better world.

A better world seems impossibly distant to Estina Melaugo, who hunts the Draconic beasts that have slept across the world for centuries.

And now the great wyrm Fýredel is stirring, and Yscalin will be the first to fall . . .

A story of human resilience in the face of dire circumstances, Among the Burning Flowers leads readers through the gripping and tragic circumstances that pave the way for the opening of the million-copy bestseller The Priory of The Orange Tree.

Richly illustrated with magical artwork by Rovina Cai (@rovinacai).]]> 288 Samantha Shannon 1639736018 Alexia 0 to-read 4.31 2025
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> 32895291 New York Times bestselling author of blockbuster thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10 comes Ruth Ware’s chilling new novel.

On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister...

The next morning, three women in and around London—Fatima, Thea, and Isabel—receive the text they had always hoped would NEVER come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, “I need you.��

The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty, with varying states of serious and flippant nature that were disturbing enough to ensure that everyone steered clear of them. The myriad and complicated rules of the game are strict: no lying to each other—ever. Bail on the lie when it becomes clear it is about to be found out. But their little game had consequences, and the girls were all expelled in their final year of school under mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the school’s eccentric art teacher, Ambrose (who also happens to be Kate’s father).]]> 370 Ruth Ware 1501156004 Alexia 3 own-yet-to-read 3.51 2017
author: Ruth Ware
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: own-yet-to-read
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]]> 220772908 New Achievement! Total, Utter Failure.

You failed a quest less than five minutes after you received it. Now that’s talent.

A floating fortress occupied by warrior gnomes. A castle made of sand. A derelict submarine guarded by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt surrounded by lethal traps.

It was supposed to be easy. One bubble. Four castles. Fifteen days. Capture each one, and the stairwell is unlocked.

Here's the thing. It's never easy. Carl and his team can't go it alone. Not this time. They must rely on the help of the low-level, I-can't-believe-these-idiots-are-still-alive crawlers trapped in the bubble with them. But can they be trusted?

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the fifth floor of the dungeon.]]> 608 Matt Dinniman 0593955978 Alexia 4 4.54 2021
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
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]]> 216522629 A stunning debut novel from the acclaimed young Irish poet Seán Hewitt, reminiscent of Garth Greenwell and Douglas Stuart in the intensity of its evocation of sexual awakening.

Set in a remote village in the North of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two sixteen year old boys meet and transform each other’s lives.

James—a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old—is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village’s leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents—his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man—Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle at their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him, like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre, drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke’s bravado is a deep wound—a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.

Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.]]> 224 Seán Hewitt 0593802845 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.26
author: Seán Hewitt
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.26
book published:
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date added: 2025/03/18
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]]> 220395156 Award-winning broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough and longtime collaborator Colin Butfield present a powerful call to action focused on our planet's oceans, exploring how critical this habitat is for the survival of humanity and the future of Earth.

Through personal stories, history and cutting-edge science, Ocean uncovers the mystery, the wonder and the frailty of the most unexplored habitat on our planet �� and the one which shapes the land we live on, regulates our climate and creates the air we breathe. The book showcase the oceans' remarkable resilience: they are the part of our world that can, and in some cases has, recovered the fastest, if we only give them the chance.

Drawing a course across David Attenborough's own lifetime, Ocean takes readers on an adventure-laden voyage through eight unique ocean habitats, through countless intriguing species, and through the most astounding discoveries of the last 100 years, to a future vision of a fully restored marine world, even richer and more spectacular than we could possibly hope. Ocean reveals the past, present and potential future of our blue planet. It is a book almost a century in the making, but one that has never been more urgently needed.]]> 400 David Attenborough 1538772299 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.83 2025
author: David Attenborough
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/17
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]]> 223889073 An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights

In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “a rough few years.�� She described the sessions in a journal she created for her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

For several months, Didion recorded conversations with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods. There were discussions about her own childhood—misunderstandings and lack of communication with her mother and father, her early tendency to anticipate catastrophe—and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, “what it’s been worth.�� The analysis would continue for more than a decade.

Didion’s journal was crafted with the singular intelligence, precision, and elegance that characterize all of her writing. It is an unprecedently intimate account that reveals sides of her that were unknown, but the voice is unmistakably hers—questioning, courageous, and clear in the face of a wrenchingly painful journey.]]> 224 Joan Didion 0593803671 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.67
author: Joan Didion
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.67
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]]> 57698624 From the Queen of Mystery—this all-new collection of stories about love gone horribly wrong will get your heart racing.

Love can propel us to our greatest heights . . . and darkest depths. In this new collection of Agatha Christie short stories, witness the dark side of love—crimes of passion, games of the heart, and deadly affairs. This pulse-pounding compendium features beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, master of charades Parker Pyne, the enigmatic Harley Quin, and the adventurous Tommy and Tuppence, all on the ready to solve a tantalizing mystery.

In “The Face of Helen,�� a night at the Royal Opera could reach a deadly crescendo for a woman caught in a dicey love triangle; “Finessing the King�� delivers a curious ad in the personals that could mask sinister intentions; who’s in danger of getting stung in “Wasp’s Nest�� depends on rounding up suspects and solving a murder—before it even happens; and more tales that make for essential reading that Christie fans old and new will simply love to death.]]> 263 Agatha Christie 0063142341 Alexia 3 3.79 2022
author: Agatha Christie
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Alexia 0 currently-reading 3.88 2024
author: Sally Rooney
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/14
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]]> 57001971 Welcome to the Gun Show!

The top ten list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face.

The Iron Tangle. An impossibly-complicated subway system built out of the world's subterranean railway systems, all combined and then tied together into a knot. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations are less than safe, and the exit is always just a few stops away.

But there is hope. For the first time, the crawlers are all working together. The loot is better than ever. And the secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly-useless book. Welcome, crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon.]]> 534 Matt Dinniman Alexia 4 4.49 2021
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> 220161593 In this follow-up to #1 New York Times bestselling author Ruth Ware’s multi-million copy mega-hit The Women in Cabin 10, Lo Blacklock returns to attend the opening of a luxury hotel, only to find herself in a white-knuckled race across Europe.

When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.

The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.

What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman…and if she can even trust her?]]> 400 Ruth Ware 1668025620 Alexia 0 to-read 3.83 2025
author: Ruth Ware
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 222419283
It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.
��
In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?
��
As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.]]> 384 Kristen Perrin 0593474023 Alexia 0 to-read 3.83 2024
author: Kristen Perrin
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 214151372 Harkening to Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None, this high-tension and ingenious thriller follows five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them.

Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she’s pretty sure they won’t extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren’t going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, The Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him. A whirlwind audition process later, Lyla find herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples—Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana—in order to win a cash prize.

But not long after they arrive on the deserted island, things start to go wrong. After the first challenge leaves everyone rattled and angry, an overnight storm takes matters from bad to worse. Cut off from the mainland by miles of ocean, deprived of their phones, and unable to contact the crew that brought them there, the group must band together for survival. As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real—and the stakes are life or death.

A fast-paced, spellbinding thriller rife with intrigue and characters that feel so true to life, this novel proves yet again that Ruth Ware is the queen of psychological suspense.]]> 432 Ruth Ware 1668025604 Alexia 0 to-read 3.71 2024
author: Ruth Ware
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 203956643 A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre, by “one of Latin America’s most exciting authors�� (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)

On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those birds were once women.

Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women—these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.

Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez’s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, A Sunny Place for Shady People showcases Enriquez’s unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and underscores why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”]]> 257 Mariana Enríquez 0593733258 Alexia 5 favorites 3.80 2024
author: Mariana Enríquez
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 56377548
The ratings and views are off the chart. The fans just can't get enough. The dungeon gets more dangerous each day. But in a grinder designed to chew up and spit out crawlers by the millions, Carl and Princess Donut need to work harder than ever just to survive.

They call it the Over City. A sprawling, once-thriving metropolis devastated by a mysterious calamity. But these streets are far from abandoned. An undead circus trawls the ruins. Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky. An ancient spell is finally ready to reveal its dark purpose.

Carl still has no pants.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. For Carl and Donut, it's anything but a game.]]> 364 Matt Dinniman Alexia 4 4.55 2021
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> 56791389 Alternate cover edition of ASIN B08BKGYQXW


The apocalypse will be televised!

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

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

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

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

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

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

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.]]> 446 Matt Dinniman Alexia 5 own-yet-to-read 4.49 2020
author: Matt Dinniman
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: own-yet-to-read
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]]> 28274420 A desperate man attempts to win a reality TV game where the only objective is to stay alive in this #1 national bestseller from Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman.It was the ultimate death game in a nightmare future America. The year is 2025 and reality TV has grown to the point where people are willing to wager their lives for a chance at a billion-dollar jackpot. Ben Richards is desperate—he needs money to treat his daughter’s illness. His last chance is entering a game show called The Running Man where the goal is to avoid capture by Hunters who are employed to kill him. Surviving this month-long chase is another issue when everyone else on the planet is watching—and willing to turn him in for the reward. Each night all Americans tune in to watch. So far, the record for survival is only eight days. Can Ben Richards beat the brutal odds, beat the rigged game, beat the entire savage system? He’s betting his life that he can�� With an introduction by Stephen King on “The Importance of Being Bachman,�� The Running Man is a terrifying novel about the eternal fight of good versus evil.]]> 417 Richard Bachman Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.03 1982
author: Richard Bachman
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> 625094 The Sicilian prince Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (1896-1957) died just after writing The Leopard, his only novel. Visconti's film adaptation, starring Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1963.

In Sicily, in 1860, a family from the high aristocracy suffered the consequences of the change of regime in favor of the Republicans. While Prince Salina lets himself be overcome by nostalgia, his nephew Tancred embodies the new force that is shaking his country. He asks for the hand of Angélique, daughter of an upstart, while this union marks the defeat of the family coat of arms.]]> 319 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa 0679731210 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.01 1958
author: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> 28187230 341 Ruth Ware 1501132938 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.73 2016
author: Ruth Ware
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/09
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]]> 25816604 Chicago Tribune)—examines the environmental legacy of FDR and the New Deal.

Douglas Brinkley’s The Wilderness Warrior celebrated Theodore Roosevelt’s spirit of outdoor exploration and bold vision to protect 234 million acres of wild America. Now, in Rightful Heritage, Brinkley turns his attention to the other indefatigable environmental leader—Teddy’s distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, chronicling his essential yet under-sung legacy as the founder of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and premier protector of America’s public lands. FDR built from scratch dozens of State Park systems and scenic roadways. Pristine landscapes such as the Great Smokies, the Everglades, Joshua Tree, the Olympics, Big Bend, Channel Islands, Mammoth Cave, and the slickrock wilderness of Utah were forever saved by his leadership.

Brinkley traces FDR’s love for the natural world from his youth exploring the Hudson River Valley and bird watching. As America’s president from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt—consummate political strategist—established hundreds of federal migratory bird refuges and spearheaded the modern endangered species movement. He brilliantly positioned his conservation goals as economic policy to combat the severe unemployment of the Great Depression. During its nine-year existence, the CCC put nearly three million young men to work on conservation projects—including building trails in the national parks, pollution control, land restoration to combat the Dust Bowl, and planting over two billion trees.

Rightful Heritage is an epic chronicle that is both an irresistible portrait of FDR’s unrivaled passion and drive, and an indispensable analysis that skillfully illuminates the tension between business and nature—exploiting our natural resources and conserving them. Within the narrative are brilliant capsule biographies of such environmental warriors as Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Rosalie Edge. Rightful Heritage is essential reading for everyone seeking to preserve our treasured landscapes as an American birthright.]]> 752 Douglas Brinkley 0062089234 Alexia 5 4.30 2016
author: Douglas Brinkley
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
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]]> 10306358
“A tremendously gifted writer whose highly personal voice should excite us in much the same way that Raymond Carver’s or Jeffrey Eugenides’s voice did when we first heard it."�� The Washington Post

Three brothers tear their way through childhood�� smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times. Life in this family is fierce and absorbing, full of chaos and heartbreak and the euphoria of belonging completely to one another. From the intense familial unity felt by a child to the profound alienation he endures as he begins to see the world, this beautiful novel reinvents the coming-of-age story in a way that is sly and punch-in-the-stomach powerful.

"We the Animals is a dark jewel of a book. It’s heartbreaking. It’s beautiful. It resembles no other book I’ve read.”—Michael Cunningham

"A fiery ode to boyhood . . . A welterweight champ of a book."�� NPR, Weekend Edition]]> 128 Justin Torres 0547576722 Alexia 5 favorites 3.72 2011
author: Justin Torres
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
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]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

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

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

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

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Alexia 3 3.67 2015
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Alexia 0 currently-reading 4.10 2018
author: Richard Powers
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/04
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]]> 39508663 A life-affirming anthem to kindness and self-sacrifice, The Travelling Cat Chronicles shows how the smallest things can provide the greatest joy.

We take journeys to explore exotic new places and to return to the comforts of home, to visit old acquaintances and to make new friends. But the most important journey is the one that shows us how to follow our hearts . . .

An instant international bestseller, The Travelling Cat Chronicles has charmed readers around the world. With simple yet descriptive prose, this novel gives voice to Nana the cat and his owner, Satoru, as they take to the road on a journey with no other purpose than to visit three of Satoru's longtime friends. Or so Nana is led to believe . . .

With his crooked tail--a sign of good fortune--and adventurous spirit, Nana is the perfect companion for the man who took him in as a stray. And as they travel in a silver van across Japan, with its ever-changing scenery and seasons, they will learn the true meaning of courage and gratitude, of loyalty and love.]]> 277 Hiro Arikawa 0451491335 Alexia 0 to-read 4.38 2012
author: Hiro Arikawa
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 216038747 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 320 Ann Patchett 0063327538 Alexia 0 to-read 3.84 2023
author: Ann Patchett
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 210191773 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.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang 0063021471 Alexia 0 to-read 4.27 2025
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> 2906039
A blind intruder visits a dying man - and saves his life, with a kiss.

A woman receives a phone call from her husband. Her LATE husband.

In the emotional aftermath of her baby's sudden death, Emily starts running. And running. Her curiosity leads her right into the hands of a murderer... and soon her legs are her only hope for survival.

Enter a world of masterful suspense, dark comedy and thrilling twists which will keep you riveted from the fist page.]]> 367 Stephen King 1416584080 Alexia 3 3.89 2008
author: Stephen King
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
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“The Things They Left Behind�� is the standout story here for me.
]]> 195644142
A girl can get in almost anywhere, even if she can’t get out.

In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist.

Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of personal and artistic freedom. But as Nila finds herself pulled further into Marlowe’s controlling orbit, ugly, barely submerged racial tensions begin to roil Germany—and Nila’s family and community. After a year of running from her future, Nila stops to ask herself the most important question: Who does she want to be?

A story of love and family, raves and Kafka, staying up all night and surviving the mistakes of youth, Good Girl is the virtuosic debut novel by a celebrated young poet and, now, a major new voice in fiction.]]> 368 Aria Aber Alexia 2 3.73 2025
author: Aria Aber
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
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I wish I had read this earlier in life, I have no patience right now for this amount of self-indulgence.
]]> 29397486
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 288 Robert Harris Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.01 2016
author: Robert Harris
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: want-to-own
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]]> 18293427
A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island—from Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who’s always felt kindly toward Fikry; from Ismay, his sister-in-law who is hell-bent on saving him from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who keeps on taking the ferry over to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.’s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, A.J. can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly.

And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It’s a small package, but large in weight. It’s that unexpected arrival that gives A. J. Fikry the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. It doesn’t take long for the locals to notice the change overcoming A.J.; or for that determined sales rep, Amelia, to see her curmudgeonly client in a new light; or for the wisdom of all those books to become again the lifeblood of A.J.’s world; or for everything to twist again into a version of his life that he didn’t see coming. As surprising as it is moving, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is an unforgettable tale of transformation and second chances, an irresistible affirmation of why we read, and why we love.]]> 260 Gabrielle Zevin 1616203218 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.00 2014
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: want-to-own
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]]> 217432789 Murder links past and present once again in this mind-boggling metafictional mystery from��Anthony Horowitz—another tribute to the golden age of Agatha Christie featuring detective Atticus Pund and editor Susan Ryland, stars of the New York Times bestsellers Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders.

Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel, and her Greek boyfriend Andreas in search of a new life back in England.

Freelancing for Causton Books, she’s working on the manuscript of a novel, Pund’s Last Case, by a young author named Eliot Crace, a continuation of the popular Alan Conway series. ��Susan is surprised to learn that Eliot is the grandson of legendary children’s author Marian Crace, who died some fifteen years ago—murdered, Elliot insists, by poison.

As Susan begins to read the manuscript’s opening chapters, the skeptical editor is relieved to find that Pund’s Last Case is actually very good. Set in the South of France, it revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, who, though mortally ill, is poisoned—perhaps by a member of her own family. But who did it? And why?

The deeper Susan reads, the more it becomes clear that the clues leading to the truth of Marian Crace’s death are hidden within this Atticus Pund mystery.

While Eliot’s accusation becomes more plausible, his behavior grows increasingly erratic.. Then he is suddenly killed in a hit-and-run accident, and Susan finds herself under police scrutiny as a suspect in his killing.

Three mysterious deaths. Multiple motives and possible murderers. If Susan doesn’t solve the mystery of Pund’s Last Case, she may well be the next victim.]]> 592 Anthony Horowitz 0063305704 Alexia 0 to-read 4.58 2025
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/26
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]]> 124081037
In a series of fast-paced essays, Insane Emperors, Sunken Cities, and Earthquake Machines answers 40 questions that ancient historian Garrett Ryan has been asked in the classroom and through his popular YouTube channel ToldinStone. As in Dr. Ryan's previous book - Naked Statues, Fat Gladiators, and War Elephants - the emphasis is on the fascinating details of daily life in the classical world.
Discover the answers

Did the ancient Greeks and Romans have tattoos? Did they practice Buddhism? Did they know when the Pyramids were built?

Did a tsunami inspire the Story of Atlantis? How deadly was the eruption that destroyed Pompeii?

What was it like to live through the fall of the Roman Empire?

Why are ancient cities buried? What happened to the treasures of the Roman emperors? How much was lost when the Library of Alexandria burned?]]> 245 Garrett Ryan 1633888932 Alexia 4 3.5 stars rounded up 4.00
author: Garrett Ryan
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
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3.5 stars rounded up
]]> 55711386 A tour through the human skeleton and the secrets our bones reveal, from��the author of All That Remains

In her memoir All That Remains , internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist Dame Sue Black recounted her life lived eye to eye with the Grim Reaper. During the course of it, she offered a primer on the basics of identifying human remains, plenty of insights into the fascinating processes of death, and a sober, compassionate understanding of its inescapable presence in our existence, all leavened with her wicked sense of humor.
��
In her new book, Sue Black builds on the first, taking us on a guided tour of the human skeleton and explaining how each person's life history is revealed in their bones, which she calls "the last sentinels of our mortal life to bear witness to the way we lived it." Her narrative follows the skeleton from the top of the skull to the small bones in the foot. Each step of the journey includes an explanation of the biology—how the bone is formed in a person's development, how it changes as we age, the secrets it may hold—and is illustrated with anecdotes from the author's career helping solve crimes and identifying human remains, whether recent or historical. Written in Bone is full of entertaining stories that read like scenes from a true-life CSI drama, infused with humor and no-nonsense practicality about the realities of corpses and death.]]> 336 Sue Black 1951627806 Alexia 4 4.16 2020
author: Sue Black
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
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]]> 61121126 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 272 Han Kang Alexia 5
1. There's an undercurrent of depression and suicidality throughout the book. There's a sadness in this book that's hard to sit with. I feel this as a reader but I'm having trouble pinpointing what creates this and where it comes from within the text. Anyone have any suggestions?
2. The writing is very beautiful and full of understated things that the reader is expected to fill. I’m a very overstated person and occasionally I don’t quite know how to fill those spaces. Has anyone else felt similarly? Or is unfilled space an experience a reader is supposed to have while reading this book?
3. Why do you think there was a decision to redact certain place names (ex: "Once we reach P--" on page 53) in the style of classical book such as Jane Eyre (ex: using --shire), but not censor other place names (ex: Jeju)?
4. If you've also read The White Book by Han Kang, you'll notice there are similarities (thematic and visual). Do those same themes and imagery run through the rest of her writing?]]> 4.04 2021
author: Han Kang
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves:
review:
Because I like hearing other people's responses rather than posting my own reviews.

1. There's an undercurrent of depression and suicidality throughout the book. There's a sadness in this book that's hard to sit with. I feel this as a reader but I'm having trouble pinpointing what creates this and where it comes from within the text. Anyone have any suggestions?
2. The writing is very beautiful and full of understated things that the reader is expected to fill. I’m a very overstated person and occasionally I don’t quite know how to fill those spaces. Has anyone else felt similarly? Or is unfilled space an experience a reader is supposed to have while reading this book?
3. Why do you think there was a decision to redact certain place names (ex: "Once we reach P--" on page 53) in the style of classical book such as Jane Eyre (ex: using --shire), but not censor other place names (ex: Jeju)?
4. If you've also read The White Book by Han Kang, you'll notice there are similarities (thematic and visual). Do those same themes and imagery run through the rest of her writing?
]]> 201102398 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593544372

A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,�� she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse content�� for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.�� She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.]]> 277 Danzy Senna Alexia 3 3.54 2024
author: Danzy Senna
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> 220458657 Three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this eerie multigenerational horror saga from the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches��: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.

In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.

Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.]]> 368 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0593874323 Alexia 0 to-read 4.38 2025
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> 38458438 122 Amparo Dávila 0811228215 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.58 2018
author: Amparo Dávila
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/01
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]]> 56572078 One of Japan’s great modern masters, Kaoru Takamura, makes her English-language debut with this two-volume publication of her magnum opus.

Tokyo, 1995. Five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on horses. They have little in common except a deep disaffection with their lives, but together they represent the social struggles and griefs of post-War Japan: a poorly socialized genius stuck working as a welder; a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder; a Zainichi Korean banker sick of being ostracized for his race; a struggling single dad of a teenage girl with Down syndrome. The fifth man bringing them all together is an elderly drugstore owner grieving his grandson, who has died suspiciously after the revelation of a family connection with the segregated buraku community, historically subjected to severe discrimination.

Intent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five conspirators decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company’s corrupt financiers.

Inspired by the unsolved true-crime kidnapping case perpetrated by "the Monster with 21 Faces", Lady Joker has become a cultural touchstone since its 1997 publication, acknowledged as the magnum opus by one of Japan’s literary masters, twice adapted for film and TV and often taught in high school and college classrooms.]]> 576 Kaoru Takamura 1616957018 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.59 1997
author: Kaoru Takamura
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/01
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]]> 63023577
In these daring and sonorous poems, Anaxagorou conducts a researched unpacking of two countries whose dividing lines of a colonial past are still visible and felt.

Uniquely engaged with the complexities of Cyprus and the diasporic experience, these poems map both an island's public history alongside a person's private reckoning. They offer a ferocious and uncompromising look towards the damaging historical structures that have led to now.

Fearless, intensely honest and hopeful, Heritage Aesthetics merges Anthony's gift for performance and his brilliant experimentation with form to create a vivid insistence to communicate a self in the world.]]> 104 Anthony Anaxagorou 1915051002 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.10 2022
author: Anthony Anaxagorou
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> 43596982
In The Windrush Betrayal Gentleman tells the full story of her investigation for the first time. Her writing shines a light on the people directly affected by the scandal and illustrates the devastating effect of politicians becoming so disconnected from the world outside Westminster that they become oblivious to the impact of their policy decisions. This is a vitally important account that exposes deeply disturbing truths about modern Britain.]]> 384 Amelia Gentleman 1783351845 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.54 2019
author: Amelia Gentleman
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/30
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]]> 1291848 368 Peter Landesman 0140263454 Alexia 0 to-read, own-yet-to-read 3.22 1995
author: Peter Landesman
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.22
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/27
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]]> 54038 SAMUEL BECKETT is the first biography of the Nobel Prizewinning novelist and playwright. A monumental work of scholarship - arguably the most important book about Beckett ever published - SAMUEL BECKETT is also fascinating reading. Beckett's life has been as rich as his writing is spare, and Deirdre Bair tells his story superbly: the upper-middle-class Irish childhood; the early years in Paris and Beckett's complex relationship to Joyce; the psychological anguish of his apprenticeship, poured out by Beckett in more than 300 remarkable, heretofore-unknown letters to a confidant, Thomas McGreevy; Beckett's heroic service with the French Resistance, also unknown till now; "the siege in the room," that extraordinary period after the Second World War during which Beckett created the first masterpieces that would make him world famous; Beckett's increasing involvement with the theatre and his desperate attempts to guard his privacy against the encroachments of celebrity.

SAMUEL BECKETT chronicles Beckett's tumultuous relationship with his family, recounts the psychosomatic illnesses that have often kept him from writing, and traces (where they exist) the autobiographical strains in his work. The book tells of his relationships with publishers, actors, directors, and friends. Above all, it portrays Beckett himself, the poet of despair, the angular, enigmatic artist who, in the words of his Nobel Prize citation, "has transmuted the destitution of modern man into his exaltation."

When Deirdre Bair began the research for this book, Beckett said he would not authorize it nor would he read it before it was published. To friends he wrote, "I am sure Mrs. Bair is a serious scholar and is out to do a fine book. I will neither help nor hinder her." After literally hundreds of interviews and years of research in Ireland, England, France, Italy, Spain, Northern Ireland, Canada and the United States, after correspondence with people living on every continent, Deirdre Bair has produced a book that is everything a scholar or a reader could hope for: SAMUEL BECKETT is one of the remarkable literary biographies of our time.

Deirdre Bair received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and worked as a journalist on newspapers and magazines before returning to academic life and taking a M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University. She has taught at Trinity College (Connecticut) and Yale University, and teaches now in the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania. She is married, has two children, and lives in Connecticut.

(Taken from the inside jacket material of the First Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Edition, 1978.) ]]> 736 Deirdre Bair 0671691732 Alexia 0 to-read, own-yet-to-read 4.05 1978
author: Deirdre Bair
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1978
rating: 0
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]]> 830445 283 Ellis Amburn 081840518X Alexia 0 to-read, own-yet-to-read 3.70 1990
author: Ellis Amburn
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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]]> 217402 The Liars' Club. In Cherry, we find Karr once again trying to run from the thrills and terrors of her psychological and physical awakening by violently crashing up against authority in all its forms, shuttling between the principal's office and the jail cell. Yearning, like a typical teenager, for the ideal love or heart's companion who will make her feel whole again, she throws in her lot with a varied and outrageous band: surfers, yogis and bona fide geniuses.]]> 276 Mary Karr 0330485768 Alexia 0 to-read, own-yet-to-read 3.80 2000
author: Mary Karr
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> 8715 Palimpsest is written from the vantage point of Vidal's library in his villa on the Italian coast. As visitors come and go, his memory ranges back and forth across a rich history. Vidal's childhood was spent in Washington, D.C., in the household of his grandfather, the blind senator from Oklahoma, T. P. Gore, and in the various domestic situations of his complicated and exasperating mother, Nina. Then come schooldays at St. Albans and Exeter; the army; life as a literary wunderkind in New York, London, Rome, and Paris in the forties and fifties; sex in an age of promiscuity; and a campaign for Congress in 1960. Vidal's famous skills as a raconteur, his forthrightness, and his wicked wit are brilliantly at work in these recollections of a difficult family, talented friends, and interesting enemies. The cast includes Tennessee Williams, the Kennedys, Eleanor Roosevelt, Truman Capote, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Christopher Isherwood, Jack Kerouac, Jane and Paul Bowles, Santayana, Anais Nin, Norman Mailer, Leonard Bernstein, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, among others. Beautifully rendered anecdotes are intermixed with meditations on writing, history, acting, and politics. Perhaps most surprising is the leitmotif of a great, lost love. "A memoir is how one remembers one's own life," Vidal says, "while an autobiography is history." Palimpsest is a true story, but also an extraordinary work of literary imagination.]]> 438 Gore Vidal 0140260897 Alexia 0 to-read, own-yet-to-read 4.02 1995
author: Gore Vidal
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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]]> 51204046
No one seems to take Naomi Pine's disappearance seriously, not even her father-with one exception. Hester Crimstein, a television criminal attorney, knows through her grandson that Naomi was relentlessly bullied at school. Hester asks Wilde-with whom she shares a tragic connection-to use his unique skills to help find Naomi.

Wilde can't ignore an outcast in trouble, but in order to find Naomi he must venture back into the community where he has never fit in, a place where the powerful are protected even when they harbor secrets that could destroy the lives of millions . . . secrets that Wilde must uncover before it's too late.]]> 371 Harlan Coben 1538748142 Alexia 0 to-read, own-yet-to-read 3.84 2020
author: Harlan Coben
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 60012295 The New York Times��bestselling author of��Stuff Matters��presents a rollicking guided tour of the secret lives of the magnificent, strange, and fascinating substances that shape our world.

Gases are all around us—they fill our lungs, power our movement, create stars, and warm our atmosphere. Often invisible and sometimes odorless, these ubiquitous substances are also the least understood materials in our world, and always have been.

It wasn’t long ago that they were seen as the work of ancient the sudden closing of a door after a change in airflow signaled a ghost’s presence. Scientists and engineers have struggled with their own gaseous demons. The development of high-pressure steam power in the eighteenth century literally blew away some researchers, ushering in a new era for both safety regulations and mass transit. And carbon dioxide, that noxious byproduct of fossil fuel consumption and cow burps, gave rise to modern civilization. Its warming properties known for centuries, it now spells ruin for our fragile atmosphere.

As bestselling science writer and materials scientist Mark Miodownik shows in this entertaining, often hilarious tour of gases, we’ve long harnessed the power of gases to create life-altering technologies, without fully understanding their potential.

In the perfect follow-up to his bestselling��Stuff Matters��and��Liquid Rules,��It’s a Gas��chronicles twelve gases and technologies that shaped human history. From hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and neon to laughing gas, steam, and even wind, the story of gases is the story of that tricky space where science and belief collide, and of the elusive limits of human understanding.]]> 304 Mark Miodownik 0358157137 Alexia 4 3.89
author: Mark Miodownik
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
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]]> 211003810 Some people think foxes are similar to ghosts because we go around collecting qi, but nothing could be further than the truth. We are living creatures, just like you, only usually better looking . . .

Manchuria, 1908.
In the last years of the dying Qing Empire, a courtesan is found frozen in a doorway. Her death is clouded by rumors of foxes, which are believed to lure people by transforming themselves into beautiful women and handsome men. Bao, a detective with an uncanny ability to sniff out the truth, is hired to uncover the dead woman’s identity. Since childhood, Bao has been intrigued by the fox gods, yet they’ve remained tantalizingly out of reach—until, perhaps, now.

Meanwhile, a family who owns a famous Chinese medicine shop can cure ailments but can’t escape the curse that afflicts them—their eldest sons die before their twenty-fourth birthdays. When a disruptively winsome servant named Snow enters their household, the family’s luck seems to change—or does it?

Snow is a creature of many secrets, but most of all she’s a mother seeking vengeance for her lost child. Hunting a murderer, she will follow the trail from northern China to Japan, while Bao follows doggedly behind. Navigating the myths and misconceptions of fox spirits, both Snow and Bao will encounter old friends and new foes, even as more deaths occur.

New York Times bestselling author Yangsze Choo brilliantly explores a world of mortals and spirits, humans and beasts, and their dazzling intersection. Epic in scope and full of singular, unforgettable characters, The Fox Wife is a stunning novel about old loves and second chances, the depths of maternal love, and ancient folktales that may very well be true.]]> 400 Yangsze Choo 1250266033 Alexia 0 to-read 3.94 2024
author: Yangsze Choo
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/26
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]]> 213618143 The brilliant detective Ana Dolabra may have finally met her match in the gripping sequel to The Tainted Cup—from the bestselling author of The Founders Trilogy.

In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard.

To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.

Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future.

Worse still, the killer seems to be targeting the high-security compound known as the Shroud. Here, the Empire's greatest minds dissect fallen Titans to harness the volatile magic found in their blood. Should it fall, the destruction would be terrible indeed—and the Empire itself will grind to a halt, robbed of the magic that allows its wheels of power to turn.

Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.]]> 480 Robert Jackson Bennett 0593723821 Alexia 0 to-read 4.58 2025
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 209784594 280 Arati Kumar-Rao 1571315985 Alexia 0 to-read 4.64
author: Arati Kumar-Rao
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.64
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rating: 0
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]]> 220161325 An essay collection from culture critic Lawrence Burney that is a personal and analytical look at his home city of Baltimore, music from throughout the global Black diaspora, and the traditions that raised him. For fans of Hanif Abdurraqib, Kiese Laymon, and Isaac Fitzgerald.

There are moments throughout our lives when we discover an artist, an album, a film, or a cultural artifact that leaves a lasting impression, helping inform how we understand the world, and ourselves, moving forward. In No Sense in Wishing, Lawrence Burney explores these profound interactions with incisive and energizing prose, offering us a personal and critical perspective on the people, places, music, and art that transformed him.

In a time when music is spearheading Black Americans�� connection with Africans on The Continent, Burney takes trips to cover the bubbling creative scenes in Lagos and Johannesburg that inspire teary-eyed reflections of self and belonging. Seeing his mother perform as the opening act at a Gil Scott-Heron show as a child inspires an essay about parent-child relationships and how personal taste is often inherited. And a Maryland crab feast with family facilitates an assessment of how the Black people in his home state have historically improvised paths for their liberation.

Taking us on a journey from the streets of Baltimore to the concert halls of Lagos, No Sense in Wishing is a kaleidoscopic exploration of Burney’s search for self. With its gutsy and uncompromising criticism alongside intimate personal storytelling, it’s like an album that hits all the right notes, from a promising writer on the rise.]]> 320 Lawrence Burney 1668051850 Alexia 0 to-read 4.75
author: Lawrence Burney
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.75
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]]> 62315624 Witnesses were mysteriously murdered. The FBI, NSA, CIA, and even the IRS were on the warpath. It was 1975, and a senator named Frank Church stood almost alone in the face of extraordinary abuses of power.
��
For decades now, America’s national security state has grown ever bigger, ever more secretive and powerful, and ever more abusive. Only once did someone manage to put a stop to any of it.

Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the Vietnam War and had become a scathing, radical critic of what he saw as American imperialism around the world. But he was still politically ambitious, privately yearning for acceptance from the foreign policy establishment that he hated and eager to run for president. Despite his flaws, Church would show historic strength in his greatest moment, when in the wake of Watergate he was suddenly tasked with investigating abuses of power in the intelligence community. The dark truths that Church exposed—from assassination plots by the CIA, to links between the Kennedy dynasty and the mafia, to the surveillance of civil rights activists by the NSA and FBI—would shake the nation to its core, and forever change the way that Americans thought about not only their government but also their ability to hold it accountable.

Drawing upon hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and reams of unpublished letters, notes, and memoirs, some of which remain sensitive today, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter James Risen tells the gripping, untold story of truth and integrity standing against unchecked power—and winning—in The Last Honest Man.]]> 480 James Risen 031656513X Alexia 4
]]> 4.07 2023
author: James Risen
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves:
review:
What I find most fascinating about this book is that the CIA reviewed it (see the link below) and pointed out areas that it saw as inaccurate. Given the CIA's known history of misdeeds (MKULTRA, illegal domestic spying, etc.), I view their assessment of truth skeptically. I would love to read someone with a better knowledge of CIA history review their review.


]]> 3656 The Untouchable (“contemporary fiction gets no better than this”—Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review) now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory. The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife’s death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.

The seductive mother; the imperious father; the twins—Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless—in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled, each of them a part of the “barely bearable raw immediacy�� of his childhood memories. Interwoven with this story are Morden’s memories of his wife, Anna—of their life together, of her death—and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him “like a second heart.�� What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel—among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer]]> 195 John Banville 1400097029 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.54 2005
author: John Banville
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/23
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]]> 60766189 A Day of Fallen Night, Samantha Shannon sweeps readers back to the universe of Priory of the Orange Tree and into the lives of four women, showing us a course of events that shaped their world for generations to come.

Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For fifty years, she has trained to slay wyrms �� but none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory's purpose.

To the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hróth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow �� exactly where she wants to be.

The dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber. Now someone from her mother's past is coming to upend her fate.

When the Dreadmount erupts, bringing with it an age of terror and violence, these women must find the strength to protect humankind from a devastating threat.]]> 868 Samantha Shannon 1635577926 Alexia 4 own-yet-to-read 4.34 2023
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Alexia
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
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]]> 13426198 544 Victor Cha 0061998508 Alexia 0 own-yet-to-read, to-read 3.93 2012
author: Victor Cha
name: Alexia
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> 213870706 Drawing on private and previously classified documents, this definitive history of women's contributions to the intelligence services is the first authoritative account of the hidden female army of clerks, typists, telephonists, and secretaries who were the cornerstone of the British secret state across two world wars and beyond.

A must-read for fans of A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE by Sonia Purnell and THE SISTERHOOD by Liza Mundy.

To the undiscerning eye, they were secretaries, typists, personal assistants, and telephonists. But those innocuous job titles provided the perfect cover for what were in reality a range of complex technical, clerical, and occupational roles. Often overlooked and underestimated by outsiders, the women of British intelligence encoded, decoded, and translated enemy messages, wrote propaganda, and oversaw agents, performing duties as diverse as they were indispensable.

One of those women was Kathleen Pettigrew, super-secretary to three consecutive Chiefs of MI6, the secret foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, and widely regarded as the inspiration for author Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny. Serving her county loyally for four decades, Kathleen amassed a formidable knowledge of people and events. From the surprise apprehension of World War I courtesan spy Mata Hari to the unmasking of MI6 officer Kim Philby, the ‘Third Man�� of the Cambridge spy ring, Kathleen created, organized, and archived an empire of top-secret information.

Though most women toiled in offices and backrooms, there were also agent-runners and agents, prized for their ability to hide in plain sight. Drawing on extensive research and unique access to family archives, Claire portrays many of these remarkable figures—including the brilliant, multi-lingual Lunn sisters, glamorous spy Olga Gray; and Jane Sissmore, MI5’s first female officer�� and reconsiders the priceless contributions they made.

In a field where women were often assumed to be little more than window-dressing, Miss Moneypenny reveals their multi-faceted, essential roles, offering a powerful and compelling testament to their many accomplishments.]]> 352 Claire Hubbard-Hall 080654371X Alexia 0 to-read 3.86 2025
author: Claire Hubbard-Hall
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]]> 17740743
Philip Shenon, a veteran investigative journalist who spent most of his career at The New York Times, finally provides many of the answers. Though A Cruel and Shocking Act began as Shenon's attempt to write the first insider's history of the Warren Commission, it quickly became something much larger and more important when he discovered startling information that was withheld from the Warren Commission by the CIA, FBI and others in power in Washington. Shenon shows how the commission's ten-month investigation was doomed to fail because the man leading it �� Chief Justice Earl Warren �� was more committed to protecting the Kennedy family than getting to the full truth about what happened on that tragic day. A taut, page-turning narrative, Shenon's book features some of the most compelling figures of the twentieth century—Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Chief Justice Warren, CIA spymasters Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, as well as the CIA's treacherous "molehunter," James Jesus Angleton.

Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to the surviving commission staffers and many other key players, Philip Shenon's authoritative, scrupulously researched book will forever change the way we think about the Kennedy assassination and about the deeply flawed investigation that followed.

A groundbreaking, explosive account of the Kennedy assassination that will rewrite the history of the 20th century's most controversial murder investigation.
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2013]]> 640 Philip Shenon 0805094202 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.07 2013
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]]> 71984 Ghost Wars is the most accurate and revealing account yet of the CIA's secret involvement in al-Qaeda's evolution. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of Bin Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.]]> 712 Steve Coll 0143034669 Alexia 0 want-to-own 4.31 2004
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]]> 37889078 The landmark comic satire that asks, “What would happen if all black people in America turned white?��

It’s New Year’s Day 1933 in New York City, and Max Disher, a young black man, has just found out that a certain Dr. Junius Crookman has discovered a mysterious process that allows people to bleach their skin white—a new way to “solve the American race problem.�� Max leaps at the opportunity, and after a brief stay at the Crookman Sanitarium, he becomes Matthew Fisher, a white man who is able to attain everything he has ever wanted: money, power, good liquor, and the white woman who rejected him when he was black.

Lampooning myths of white supremacy and racial purity and caricaturing prominent African American leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois, Madam C. J. Walker, and Marcus Garvey,��Black No More��is a masterwork of speculative fiction and a hilarious satire of America’s obsession with race.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 204 George S. Schuyler 1524705748 Alexia 0 want-to-own 3.88 1931
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]]> 211003763
As she makes her way back to the revolution, her journey takes her to Venice, where she learns a dangerous secret �� one that could change the face of the war between humans and immortals. Before she can return to London, she must help the Domino Programme unravel the sinister Operation Ventriloquist.

And it soon becomes clear that the one person who could recover her memories �� Arcturus Mesarthim �� might also hold the key to saving Italy.

Lyrical and action-packed, The Dark Mirror drives the Bone Season series forward, showing Samantha Shannon at the height of her powers.]]> 576 Samantha Shannon 1639733965 Alexia 0 to-read 4.70 2025
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]]> 213395565 New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion’s cultural influence through the lens of American mythmaking in Hollywood.


With bylines spanning six decades, Joan Didion’s legacy towers over the landscape of American letters. Although she launched her career in New York City, she soon struck out for Los Angeles, where the nation’s dreams were manufactured—and every aspect of her work reflected what she saw there, whether she was writing on politics, society, or herself. In this riveting cultural biography, Wilkinson takes a fresh perspective on Didion’s career as a novelist, critic, and screenwriter deeply embroiled in the grit and glamour of Hollywood. In eloquent prose, she charts how Didion became intimately acquainted with power players of the Los Angeles elite, arriving in the twilight of the old studio system in time to see lines between the industry and public life blur. Peering through a scrim of celluloid, Wilkinson incisively dissects the motifs and machinations that informed Didion’s writing—and how her writing, ultimately, demonstrated Hollywood’s addictive grasp on American identity.]]> 272 Alissa Wilkinson 1324092610 Alexia 0 to-read 4.16 2025
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]]> 215748429 ��
In doing so, he adds a necessary and compelling layer to our perception of these giants �� whose achievements and failures are often one-dimensional in the eyes of the American public. Peter receives comments from Edward Hopper on his paintings, falls in love with Faye Dunaway, befriends his hero Muddy Waters, and sings with Aretha Franklin; Marilyn Monroe sleeps on his shoulder, Alfred Hitchcock serves him tea, and Bob Dylan gifts him a pair of his pants.
��
These intimate encounters don’t just shed light on celebrities we think we know; they also tell Peter’s own story, both public and private. Told with affection and humor, Waiting on the Moon is an appreciation of the genius, the wisdom, the charm, and above all the humanity, of certain American stars and dreamers like Peter.
��]]> 352 Peter Wolf 0316571709 Alexia 0 to-read 4.48
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