en-US Sun, 06 Apr 2025 18:15:11 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.44 2025
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
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average rating: 4.44
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]]> 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.50 2025
author: Sarah Damoff
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average rating: 4.50
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]]> 202644784 From a #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a powerful novel about family, the weight of secrets, the choices we make, and the repercussions of the decisions made for us.

When Bunny Linden abandons her three children with her older sister, Jayne, in 1972, she knows Jayne will be the perfect mother. The mother Bunny herself, a teen runaway, could never be.

As months turn into years without word, Jayne and her husband, Rodger, a rising journalism star, strive to give the children the opportunity to flourish and feel loved. When Jayne and Rodger finally have a child of their own, a seemingly stable home is built. But then, after nearly a decade, Bunny resurfaces and sets a chain of events in motion that detonates all their lives.

As adults, their children try to reassemble the pieces and solve the mystery that has always haunted them. Who were their parents? What really happened between them? And who is ultimately to blame for the destruction? But will the answers they seek set them free—or lead to something far more damaging than anyone imagined?]]> 260 Nicola Kraus 1662522630 DeAnna 0 to-read 3.90
author: Nicola Kraus
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]]> 203575540
Jacqueline Millender is a reclusive billionaire/women’s rights advocate, and thanks to a generous donation, she’s just become the director of the Inside being built on the bones of Manhattan. Her ideas are unorthodox, yet alluring—she's built a whole brand around rethinking the very concept of empowerment.

Shelby, a business major from a working-class family, is drawn to Jacqueline’s promises of power and impact. When she lands her dream job as Jacqueline’s personal assistant, she's instantly swept up into the glamourous world of corporatized feminism. Also drawn into Jacqueline's orbit is Olympia, who is finishing up medical school when Jacqueline recruits her to run the health department Inside. The more Olympia learns about the project, though, the more she realizes there's something much larger at play. As Ava, Olympia, and Shelby start to notice the cracks in Jacqueline's system, Jacqueline tightens her grip, becoming increasingly unhinged and dangerous in what she is willing to do—and who she is willing to sacrifice—to keep her dream alive.

At once a mesmerizing story of queer love, betrayal, and chosen family, and an unflinching indictment of cis, corporate feminism, Yours for the Taking holds a mirror to our own world, in all its beauty and horror.]]> 336 Gabrielle Korn DeAnna 0 3.79 2023
author: Gabrielle Korn
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.79
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]]> 217535780
“Brilliant and beautiful! One Level Down is a perfectly executed gem of a book. Deeply satisfying and completely mesmerizing, it’s full of depth, heart, and thought. A remarkable achievement!��
—Sarah Beth Durst, New York Times bestselling author of The Spellshop

Ella is the oldest five-year-old in the universe. For fifty-eight years, the founder of a simulated colony-planet has forced her to pretend to be his daughter. Her “Daddy�� has absolute power over all elements of reality, which keeps the colonists in line even when their needs are not met. But his failing experiments and despotic need for absolute control are increasingly dangerous.

Ella’s very life depends on her performance as a child. She has watched Daddy delete her stepmother and the loved ones of anyone who helps her.

But every sixty years, a Technician comes from the world above. Ella has been watching and working and biding her time. Because if she cannot make the technician help her, the only solution is a desperate measure that could lead to consequences for the entire universe.]]> 196 Mary G. Thompson 1616964308 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.22 2025
author: Mary G. Thompson
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.22
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]]> 59045863 London and Sarum -- a magnificent epic about love and war, family life and political intrigue in Ireland over the course of seventeen centuries. Like the novels of James Michener, The Princes of Ireland brilliantly interweaves engrossing fiction and well-researched fact to capture the essence of a place.

Edward Rutherfurd has introduced millions of readers to the human dramas that are the lifeblood of history. From his first bestseller, Sarum, to the #1 bestseller London, he has captivated audiences with gripping narratives that follow the fortunes of several fictional families down through the ages. The Princes of Ireland, a sweeping panorama steeped in the tragedy and glory that is Ireland, epitomizes the power and richness of Rutherfurd’s storytelling magic.

The saga begins in pre-Christian Ireland with a clever refashioning of the legend of Cuchulainn, and culminates in the dramatic founding of the Free Irish State in 1922. Through the interlocking stories of a wonderfully imagined cast of characters -- monks and noblemen, soldiers and rebels, craftswomen and writers -- Rutherfurd vividly conveys the personal passions and shared dreams that shaped the character of the country. He takes readers inside all the major events in Irish history: the reign of the fierce and mighty kings of Tara; the mission of Saint Patrick; the Viking invasion and the founding of Dublin; the trickery of Henry II, which gave England its foothold on the island in 1167; the plantations of the Tudors and the savagery of Cromwell; the flight of the “Wild Geese��; the failed rebellion of 1798; the Great Famine and the Easter Rebellion. With Rutherfurd’s well-crafted storytelling, readers witness the rise of the Fenians in the late nineteenth century, the splendours of the Irish cultural renaissance, and the bloody battles for Irish independence, as though experiencing their momentous impact firsthand.

Tens of millions of North Americans claim Irish descent. Generations of people have been enchanted by Irish literature, and visitors flock to Dublin and its environs year after year. The Princes of Ireland will appeal to all of them -- and to anyone who relishes epic entertainment spun by a master.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 800 Edward Rutherfurd DeAnna 0 currently-reading 4.24 2004
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2004
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]]> 214537674 “Much like fine wine, battle-hardened assassins grow better with age.”��#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a summons from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster with an iron fist, some serious criminal ambition, and a tendency to kill first and ask questions later. This new nemesis is murdering agents who got in the way of their power hungry plans and the aging quartet of killers is next.

Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster who seems to know their next move before they make it. Their enemy is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their killer experience to get out of this mission alive.]]> 359 Deanna Raybourn 0593638522 DeAnna 0 4.22 2025
author: Deanna Raybourn
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.22
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]]> 62929342 Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family, and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? ]]> 399 Rachel Khong 0593537254 DeAnna 0 to-read 3.94 2024
author: Rachel Khong
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.94
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]]> 46039404 Ariella Bannon has no she must put her precious children, Liesl and Erich, on that train or allow them to become prey for the Nazis.

Berlin 1939.
When her husband doesn't come home one day, Ariella realises that the only way she can ensure her Jewish children's safety is to avail of the Kindertransport, but can she bear to let them go?

A thousand miles away, Elizabeth Klein has closed herself off from the world. Losing her husband on the last day of the Great War, and her child months later, she cannot, will not, love again. It hurts too much.

But she is all Liesl and Erich Bannon have.
Thrown together in the wild countryside of Northern Ireland, Elizabeth and the Bannon children discover that life in the country is anything but tranquil. Danger and intrigue lurk everywhere, and some people are not what they seem.]]> 287 Jean Grainger DeAnna 0 to-read 4.39 2019
author: Jean Grainger
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2019
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]]> 203755764
But when childhood memories of her aunt's desertion and her then-uncle's best friend resurface, Gita ditches the books night after night in favor of partying and hooking up with strangers. Still, nothing can stop the nagging voice in her head that's growing louder and louder, insisting something's wrong... and the only way she can burst forward is to stop shutting-up about the past.]]> 400 Sonia Patel 0593463196 DeAnna 0 currently-reading 3.87 2024
author: Sonia Patel
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.87
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date added: 2025/03/17
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]]> 214152292 As relevant as it is comprehensive, Red Scare tells the story of McCarthyism and the Red Scare—based in part on newly declassified sources—by an award-winning writer of history and New York Times reporter.

The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, coupled with the terrifying onset of the Cold War. This defining moment in American history, unlike any that preceded it, was marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.

Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in 1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, opportunism, courage, and delirium of those years through the lives and experiences of a cast of towering historical figures, including President Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and many more individuals known and unknown. Red Scare takes us beyond the familiar story of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists to a fuller understanding of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived threat from the left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a result.

An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.]]> 480 Clay Risen 1982141808 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.42
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]]> 212431577 What would you do if you caught your brother cheating on your best friend?

While Beth is proud of her Malibu beach shop, Surf Sandwiches, she's even prouder of her charismatic brother, Rick, who rose from foster care all the way through surgical residency. She makes subs, he saves lives. Things takes a turn for the happy after she finds out Rick is dating her new best friend, Jana. Then Jana’s handsome brother adds even more sparkle to Beth’s days…and nights.

But when she catches Rick with another woman—like, with with—her visions of an idyllic family future disappear in one awful instant. Either she betrays her brother or she keeps his secret and risks losing the man she loves and her best friend.

Love and loyalty collide with secrets and betrayal in this witty and emotional tale about the lengths we’ll go to for family, from Susan Mallery, bestselling author of The Boardwalk Bookshop.]]> 384 Susan Mallery 1335402535 DeAnna 0 to-read 3.88
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]]> 782898 704 Susan Howatch 044920622X DeAnna 0 to-read 4.10 1971
author: Susan Howatch
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.10
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]]> 198366787 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Mallery comes an unforgettable tale about finding friendship with the unlikeliest person��

As the owner of Twisted, Seattle’s best salons, Erica knows that the sharpest cuts come from the people we love. She’s terrified that she’s losing her teen daughter, Summer, to her “other�� family, especially to her stepmom, Allison.

All it takes to blow up Allison’s happy life is one collect call. From prison. Her beloved husband, Peter, has been arrested, leaving Allison pregnant, broke, scared and alone with a toddler. But when her stepdaughter ferrets out the truth, the teen rushes to the last person Allison wants to ask for help—her husband’s battle-ax ex.

Erica would do anything for Summer, even take in the woman her daughter loves like a second mom. Allison feels intimidated by Erica—a woman who would never let herself become so dependent on a man. But the more time they spend together, the more Allison realizes what Erica truly needs is a friend. Can two women who married the same man move beyond their complicated past and rethink what it means to be family?]]> 401 Susan Mallery 0369747917 DeAnna 0 currently-reading 4.53 2024
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]]> 61273812 You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.]]> 320 Maggie Smith 1982185856 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.03 2023
author: Maggie Smith
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.03
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]]> 41977
On their first day at University College, Dublin, the inseparable pair are thrown together with fellow students Nan Mahon, beautiful but selfish, and handsome Jack Foley. But trouble is brewing for Benny and Eve's new circle of friends, and before long, they find passion, tragedy - and the independence they yearned for.]]> 722 Maeve Binchy 0099498596 DeAnna 5 currently-reading 4.06 1980
author: Maeve Binchy
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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]]> 145624514
Everyone who makes the journey faces an impossible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people who arrive every year at the US-Mexico border travel far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances.

This vast and unremitting crisis did not spring up overnight. Indeed, as Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, it is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists, government officials, and the politicians responsible for the country’s tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture for the first time.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an odyssey of struggle and resilience. With astonishing nuance and detail, Blitzer tells an epic story about the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and in doing so, he delves into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation’s turbulent politics and culture in countless ways—and will almost certainly determine its future.]]> 544 Jonathan Blitzer 1984880802 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.46 2024
author: Jonathan Blitzer
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.46
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]]> 211004190
It's a whole new moooooon.

One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters -- schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians -- as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.]]> 326 John Scalzi 0765389096 DeAnna 0 to-read 3.95 2025
author: John Scalzi
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.95
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]]> 213244534 New York Times bestselling author, whose books so many love, brings us a fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family.


Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.]]> 460 Jojo Moyes 1984879332 DeAnna 5 4.20 2025
author: Jojo Moyes
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 5
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Loved this book! Full of funny, imperfect characters.
]]> 125088936
In this brilliant volume, nothing is quite as it seems. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a lost man who bets on a horse that may—or may not—have spoken to him. Everything that readers love about the novels of Kate Atkinson is here—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations of human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.

Witty and wise, with subtle connections between the stories, Normal Rules Don’t Apply is a startling and funny feast for the imagination, stories with the depth and bite to create their own fully-formed worlds.]]> 212 Kate Atkinson 0385549512 DeAnna 2 3.85 2023
author: Kate Atkinson
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 2
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]]> 11328862
ETERNITY IN DEATH

A seductive killer is luring in victims with a promise of the impossible-immortality. Eve Dallas must strip away the fantasy to catch the coldhearted madman.

RITUAL IN DEATH

Eve is plunged into the violent aftermath of a ritualistic murder-and into the mind of an alleged witness who can't remember a thing to save his life.

MISSING IN DEATH

When a woman disappears from a New York City ferry, it's a case that only Eve Dallas can solve�� because the woman didn't jump, and yet she's not on board.]]> 306 J.D. Robb DeAnna 0 currently-reading 4.54 2011
author: J.D. Robb
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2011
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]]> 211491233 Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.

Nadya had three the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.

Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.

It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.

It wasn't her.

Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyrreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyrreka, she found herself understood for who she a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.

But even in Belyrreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 160 Seanan McGuire 1250848342 DeAnna 0 4.21 2025
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name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.21
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]]> 205837990 Acclaimed author Xavier Bosch weaves an emotional tale of love and intrigue in this novel about a woman on the cusp of middle age, her beloved grandma, and a strange houseguest who changes everything.

Seventeen-year-old Margaux doesn’t realize one photo could change the course of her life. But in German-occupied Paris of 1940, nothing makes sense anymore. Margaux fears the worst when her lover is arrested. And when her photo appears in Nazi propaganda, her family’s reputation—and prospects—suffer the consequences.

In 2008, Margaux moves into a retirement home, and her granddaughter Barbara comes to live in her Paris apartment. Eager to escape unhappy circumstances, Barbara works remotely for a publishing company and rents out a room in “Mamie�� Margaux’s apartment to help pay the bills.

One day, Barbara finds a stranger on her couch. Roger, who’s a curious photographer, uncovers shocking secrets about Barbara’s family. And when a snowstorm triggers a lockdown, he opens the door to tempting new possibilities.

A bestseller at the 2023 Sant Jordi Book Fair in its original Catalan, Bosch’s sweeping novel alternates between the two timelines, offering sustenance for historical fiction readers, WWII enthusiasts, and romantics alike.]]> 414 Xavier Bosch 1662520824 DeAnna 0 couldn-t-finish 4.06 2023
author: Xavier Bosch
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
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]]> 63275520
What no one knows is that Jess has inherited Huntington's disease from the mother that she cares for. And while witnessing her own future play out, Jess has learnt to keep everyone and everything at arm's length. But Alec is determined to break down those barriers. When she finally tells him why they have no future, he proposes a different option—just one month together.

One month to date. One month to live. One month to fall in love.

But as Jess grows closer to Alec, she knows she has to end it. It's better that he is hurt now rather than heartbroken later, isn't it?]]> 393 Suzanne Ewart 172825714X DeAnna 0 couldn-t-finish 4.00
author: Suzanne Ewart
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.00
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]]> 61054454
When Vanessa Blair is fired because of her "resting bitch face," her friends help her launch a revenge plan that'll bring down the whole company.

Telemarketer Vanessa Blair isn't in love with her job. It pays the bills and feeds her foster kittens, but offers only one other her friendships with Jane Delaney and Trisha Lam. But, as mind-numbing as her job is, things are about to get worse. Xavier Adams, her self-absorbed boss, calls Vanessa into the conference room and fires her. The reason? Her facial expressions. Apparently, her resting bitch face is wide awake, and it doesn't matter that her sales numbers are stellar or that she organizes office events.

After a girls' night of schnapps and imagining retribution, Vanessa awakens to find that Trisha is more literal than she thought, and has implemented a revenge strategy based on the classic business book The Art of War by Sun Tzu. At first, Vanessa wants nothing to do with it. She wants to file for unemployment and move on with her life, possibly with Carter Beckett, the cute, cat-loving unemployment rep assigned to her case. But when Xavier contests her unemployment and ruins her shot at her dream job, Vanessa is all in...]]> 360 Anastasia Ryan 1728253373 DeAnna 0 couldn-t-finish 3.76 2023
author: Anastasia Ryan
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: couldn-t-finish
review:

]]> 198529067
They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.]]> 496 Rainbow Rowell DeAnna 5 3.83 2024
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: author_glomm, fiction, consider-for-2025-top-3
review:
I loved this book!!! 2 such interesting characters who take a long time to find their way to each other. I didn’t want to let them go at the end.
]]> 212294441 “A stone-cold banger of a novel—a twisty journey through Silicon Valley’s dark side, wrapped in a stunning mystery package with some wild surprises along the way.”—Blake Crouch, New York Timesbestselling author of Dark Matter

Don’t call me a fixer. This isn’t HBO.

In her job as unofficial “problem solver�� for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets.

But this time, she’s in way over her head—or so it seems.

The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money�� frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line—and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast.

Mackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. Cracking this fiendishly clever killing, with its list of suspects that reads like a who’s-who of Valley power players, should be way out of her league.

Except that Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it.

Because the way she sees it, this isn’t an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.

Anything at all.

Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you ������’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery. Written by a longtime insider, it is also a dead-on snapshot of the Valley’s rich and famous—and a glimpse at the darkness lurking behind the tech world’s cheery facade.]]> 416 Jakob Kerr 0593726707 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.01 2025
author: Jakob Kerr
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 227912397 A young detective investigating crimes of the uncanny will learn that bargains can change your fate—for good or ill—in this darkly enthralling fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of the Others and the Black Jewels series.

Words have power. Intentions matter.

Most people come to Destiny Park for entertainment. They come to have their cards read to tell them a bit about their future. They come to walk through a beautiful park and to eat at the hotel’s restaurant. They come in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Arcana, the paranormal beings who rule the Isle of Wyrd.

But some people come to make a bargain with the Arcana—to change their fate. And some people come for dark purposes.

When Detective Beth Fahey is sent to Destiny Park to inquire about a “ghost gun,�� she will begin a strange journey on which she must learn to navigate the Arcana’s unforgiving laws and dangerous attractions. Her search will draw her into seemingly impossible cases and the secrets of her own past as tensions rise between the Arcana and their human neighbors across the river.

For the Isle of Wyrd is a place where the dead ride trains to their final destinations, predators literally become prey, and seekers�� true natures are revealed in the ripples of destiny unknowingly stirred in their wakes.

Who will live? Who will die? And who will be lost in between?]]> 432 Anne Bishop 0593954084 DeAnna 0 5.00 2025
author: Anne Bishop
name: DeAnna
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read, author_glomm, fiction, scifi-fantasy
review:

]]> 214331990
While overseeing the dig, she must try to make sense of a cloud of death and misfortune that hangs over the project-fueling rumors that the site is cursed. And she must cope with the presence of her irritating-but irresistible-ex-husband, Jake. Furthermore, when a stranger claims to know a secret about her privileged Boston childhood, she is forced to question her own past as well.

A rich, thrilling, suspenseful tale, Birthright follows an inspiring heroine, an intriguing hero, and a cast of fascinating characters whose intertwined lives remind us that there is much more going on under the surface than meets the eye.]]> 512 Nora Roberts DeAnna 0 4.61 2003
author: Nora Roberts
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 25489154 New York Times bestseller Wonder--the book that inspired the Choose Kind movement--and have fallen in love with Auggie Pullman, an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face.

Auggie & Me gives readers a special look at Auggie's world through three new points of view. Previously only available in ebook, now they'll be published all together--complete with an introduction from the author on how she came to write them--in a gorgeous hardcover package!

These stories are an extra peek at Auggie before he started at Beecher Prep and during his first year there. Readers get to see him through the eyes of Julian, the bully; Christopher, Auggie's oldest friend; and Charlotte, Auggie's new friend at school. Together, these three stories are a treasure for readers who don't want to leave Auggie behind when they finish Wonder.]]> 303 R.J. Palacio 1101934859 DeAnna 4 found-thru-npr, non-fiction 4.28 2015
author: R.J. Palacio
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: found-thru-npr, non-fiction
review:

]]> 177185804 From the James Beard Award–winning blogger behind The Everywhereist come hilarious, searing essays on how food and cooking stoke the flames of her feminism.

When celebrity chef Mario Batali sent out an apology letter for the sexual harassment allegations made against him, he had the gall to include a recipe—for cinnamon rolls, of all things. Geraldine DeRuiter decided to make the recipe, making food journalism history along with it. Her subsequent essay, with its scathing commentary about the pervasiveness of misogyny in the food world, would be read millions of times, lauded by industry luminaries from Martha Stewart to The New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells—and it would land DeRuiter in the middle of a media firestorm. She found herself on the receiving end of dozens of threats when all she wanted to do was make something to eat (and okay, maybe also take down the patriarchy).

In If You Can’t Take the Heat, DeRuiter shares stories about her shockingly true, painfully funny (and sometimes just painful) adventures in gastronomy. We’ll learn how she finally got a grip on her debilitating anxiety by emergency meal–planning for the apocalypse. (“You are probably deeply worried that in times of desperation I would eat your pets. And yes, I absolutely would.��) Or how she learned to embrace her hanger. (“Because women can be a lot of things, but we ������’t be angry. Or president, apparently.��) And how she inadvertently caused another international incident with a negative restaurant review. (She made it on to the homepage of The New York Times’s website! And got more death threats!)

Deliciously insightful and bitingly clever, If You Can’t Take the Heat is a fresh look at food and feminism from one of the culinary world’s sharpest voices.]]> 321 Geraldine DeRuiter 0593444493 DeAnna 5 4.27 2024
author: Geraldine DeRuiter
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: author_glomm, essays, non-fiction, favorite-3-of-the-year-read, book_club
review:
LOVED this book! Thought-provoking and super-funny. This is the first book I’ve read in 2024 to land on my best of the year list.
]]> 211004040 The #1 New York Times bestselling author spins an epic tale of loyalty, treachery, murder, and the long shadow of war��

His passport read Giovanni Rossi. But decades ago, during the Urban Wars, he was part of a small, secret organization called The Twelve. Responding to an urgent summons from an old compatriot, he landed in New York and eased into the waiting car. And died within minutes��

Lieutenant Eve Dallas finds the Rossi case frustrating. She’s got an elderly victim who’d just arrived from Rome; a widow who knows nothing about why he’d left; an as-yet unidentifiable weapon; and zero results on facial recognition. But when she finds a connection to the Urban Wars of the 2020s, she thinks Summerset―fiercely loyal, if somewhat grouchy, major-domo and the man who’d rescued her husband from the Dublin streets―may know something from his stint as a medic in Europe back then.

When Summerset learns of the crime, his shock and grief are clear―because, as he eventually reveals, he himself was one of The Twelve. It’s not a part of his past he likes to revisit. But now he must―not only to assist Eve’s investigation, but because a cryptic message from the killer has boasted that others of The Twelve have also died. Summerset is one of those who remain―and the murderous mission is yet to be fully accomplished…]]> 359 J.D. Robb 1250370795 DeAnna 0 4.41 2025
author: J.D. Robb
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: currently-reading, audiobook, author_glomm, fiction, mystery-suspense
review:

]]> 223199392 Two good neighbors make the best of a bad Valentine’s Day in a funny and improbably romantic short story by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer.

It’s Valentine’s Day weekend, and Charlotte and Seth are not looking for romance. Armed with emotional-support bear spray, Charlotte is in self-imposed isolation and on guard from men. Having a stalker can do that to a person’s nerves. Just across the hall and giving off woodsy vibes is Seth, a recently divorced arborist. As in today recently. Heights, he’s fine with. Trust? Not so much. But when disaster traps them one flight up and no way down, an outrageously precarious predicament forces a tree-loving guy and a rattled girl next door to embrace their captivity. Soon their defenses are breaking away. Considering how close they both are to the edge, Charlotte and Seth could be in danger of falling—in love.]]> 82 Abby Jimenez 1662529082 DeAnna 5 4.13 2025
author: Abby Jimenez
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: author_glomm, fiction, novella, romance_novels
review:

]]> 218484140
Cecily knows two things: that this is all her fault; and that her family must never learn the truth.

A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fuijwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an “Asia for Asians.�� Instead, Cecily helped usher in an even more brutal occupation by the Japanese. Ten years later as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction—and she will do anything to save them.

Spanning years of pain and triumph, told from the perspectives of four unforgettable characters, The Storm We Made is a dazzling saga about the horrors of war; the fraught relationships between the colonized and their oppressors, and the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake.]]> 350 Vanessa Chan DeAnna 3 3.96 2024
author: Vanessa Chan
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: consider-for-book-club, fiction
review:
Sad and not an easy book to read.
]]> 3722183 Life After Life Ursula Todd lived through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. In A God in Ruins, Atkinson turns her focus on Ursula’s beloved younger brother Teddy �� would-be poet, RAF bomber pilot, husband and father �� as he navigates the perils and progress of the 20th century. For all Teddy endures in battle, his greatest challenge will be to face living in a future he never expected to have.]]> 480 Kate Atkinson 0316176532 DeAnna 4 fiction 3.91 2015
author: Kate Atkinson
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: fiction
review:
I didn't love it the way I did Life After Life, and there's a bit at the end that I think would be extra-confusing (instead of just kind of confusing) to people who hadn't read LAL first. It was a good book, and I will try some more of Atkinson's work.
]]> 220377457 An original short story anthology based on master storyteller Stephen King’s #1 New York Times bestselling classic The Stand!

Since its initial publication in 1978, The Stand has been considered Stephen King’s seminal masterpiece of apocalyptic fiction, with millions of copies sold and adapted twice for television. Although there are other extraordinary works exploring the unraveling of human society, none have been as influential as this iconic novel—generations of writers have been impacted by its dark yet ultimately hopeful vision of the end and new beginning of civilization, and its stunning array of characters.

Now for the first time, Stephen King has fully authorized a return to the harrowing world of The Stand through this original short story anthology as presented by award-winning authors and editors Christopher Golden and Brian Keene. Bringing together some of today’s greatest and most visionary writers, The End of the World As We Know It features unforgettable, all-new stories set during and after (and some perhaps long after) the events of The Stand—brilliant, terrifying, and painfully human tales that will resonate with readers everywhere as an essential companion to the classic, bestselling novel.

Featuring an introduction by Stephen King, a foreword by Christopher Golden, and an afterword by Brian Keene. Contributors include Wayne Brady and Maurice Broaddus, Poppy Z. Brite, Somer Canon, C. Robert Cargill, Nat Cassidy, V. Castro, Richard Chizmar, S. A. Cosby, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, Meg Gardiner, Gabino Iglesias, Jonathan Janz, Alma Katsu, Caroline Kepnes, Michael Koryta, Sarah Langan, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, Josh Malerman, Ronald Malfi, Usman T. Malik, Premee Mohamed, Cynthia Pelayo, Hailey Piper, David J. Schow, Alex Segura, Bryan Smith, Paul Tremblay, Catherynne M. Valente, Bev Vincent, Catriona Ward, Chuck Wendig, Wrath James White, and Rio Youers.]]> 800 Christopher Golden 1668057557 DeAnna 0 4.46 2025
author: Christopher Golden
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read, author_glomm, fiction, horror
review:

]]> 204232553
What starts as a simple rescue mission for a crew of teen aliens to recover one of their own soon becomes an interstellar encounter no one will forget.

Captain Iona is organizing an impromptu retrieval for her brother, an undercover alien posing as a movie star. But her efforts go awry when a technical malfunction turns her heroic rescue into an unintentional invasion. With tales of disguised extraterrestrials stuck in theme parks, starship engineers hitchhiking to get home, and myth-inspired intergalactic sibling reunions, each story in this multi-author anthology explores the universal desire to be loved and understood, no matter where you come from. After all...aliens are just like us.

"This anthology twinkles with an adventurous spirit, quirky personalities, hope, and a sense of belonging. Stellar."
―Kirkus Reviews

“Out of this world!��
―Scott Reintgen, New York Times bestselling author of A Door in the Dark

“Epic fun exploring themes of acceptance and the desire to connect, regardless of species, Why on Earth is an absolute blast!��
―Alechia Dow, author of The Sound of Stars

“A delightful collection of offbeat, otherworldly stories filled with heartwarming moments and loads of entertaining, imaginative writing.��
―Kimberly Jones, New York Times bestselling author of I’m Not Dying with You Tonight

“An all-star lineup of brilliant authors with stories that make you laugh, feel, and cheer.��
―Danielle Paige, New York Times bestselling author of Wish of the Wicked

“Whether it’s a story to build the world we’re beaming into, misguided crushes in the middle of an alien invasion, or the most charmingly awkward teen alien this side of the Milky Way, there will be plenty for readers to enjoy in this anthology!��
―Preeti Chhibber, author of Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot]]> 336 Vania Stoyanova DeAnna 0 4.05 2025
author: Vania Stoyanova
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read, fiction, found-thru-whatever, short-stories, ya
review:

]]> 1067905 289 Tony Kushner 1854599828 DeAnna 3 banned-books-club 4.35 1995
author: Tony Kushner
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2012/11/12
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: banned-books-club
review:
I have a feeling I'm supposed to "get" a lot more of the symbolism than I did. I look forward to discussing this at Banned Books Club next month.
]]> 222376851 A delirious and gripping story of fatherhood and masculinity, told through the reimagined destinies of Greek mythic figures Daedalus, Icarus, King Minos, and the Minotaur.

Daedalus of Crete is many things. The greatest architect in the world. The constructor of the Labyrinth that imprisoned the Minotaur. And the grieving father of Icarus—plunged into the sea as father and son flew from the grasp of the tyrannical King Minos.

Now that Daedalus is dead, he seeks to reunite with Icarus in the Underworld. Daedalus will confront any terror to see his son again—whether it be the vengeful spirit of Minos, the cunning Queen Persephone, or even the insatiable ghost of the Minotaur.

But a shocking realization follows in his wake. As Daedalus encounters the souls from his past, he begins to worry that his identity as a husband and father, mentor and friend was all a lie. And that the truth, stalking him in the labyrinth of his own heart, might be too monstrous for him to bear.]]> 176 Seamus Sullivan 1250370477 DeAnna 0 to-read 5.00
author: Seamus Sullivan
name: DeAnna
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15790842
On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war.

Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can - will she?]]> 544 Kate Atkinson 0316176486 DeAnna 5 3.76 2013
author: Kate Atkinson
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: fiction, found-thru-review, favorite-3-of-the-year-read
review:
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this, given that at least two of the author's other books have ended up on my "Couldn't finish" shelf. However, this one was captivating from the very beginning and held my interest all the way through. I was sad to let these characters go when the book was over.
]]> 203020280 Cue The Sun! explores the morally charged, funny, and sometimes tragic consequences of the hunt for something real inside something fake.

Nussbaum traces four paths of reality innovation—game shows, prank shows, soap operas, and clip shows—that united in the Survivor format, sparking a tumultuous Hollywood gold-rush. Along the way, we meet tricksters and innovators—from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; Bachelor mastermind Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray, the visionary behind The Real World—along with dozens of crew members and ordinary people whose lives became fodder for the reality revolution. We learn about the tools of the trade—like Candid Camera’s brilliant “reveal�� and the notorious Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and the moral outrage that reality shows provoked. But Cue The Sun! also celebrates what made the genre so powerful: a jolt of authentic emotion.

Through broad-ranging reporting, Nussbaum examines seven tumultuous decades, exploring the celebreality boom, reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, and the dark truth behind The Apprentice. A shrewd observer who cares about television, she is the ideal voice for the first substantive cultural history of the genre that has, for better or worse, made America what it is today.]]> 464 Emily Nussbaum 0525508996 DeAnna 0 to-read 3.94 2024
author: Emily Nussbaum
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43517459 In the early 1900s, a young woman searches for her place in the world after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.]]> 385 Alix E. Harrow 0316421987 DeAnna 5
I assigned this book to a pop-up book club in January (ha!) 2025. These were the questions:

Do you normally read fantasy? Is this a book you would have chosen for yourself? Did you enjoy it overall?

Three of my favorite quotes from the book all relate to my next question��
“If we address stories as archaeological sites, and dust through their layers with meticulous care, we find at some level there is always a doorway. A dividing point between here and there, us and them, mundane and magical. It is at the moments when the doors open, when things flow between the worlds, that stories happen.��
Page 6 Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges).
Page 54 all stories, even the meanest folktales, matter. They are artifacts and palimpsests, riddles and histories. They are the red threads that we may follow out of the labyrinth.
What story has opened a new world for you/sent you in a new direction?

Is a book’s immersive power a useful measure of a book’s worth?

Some of the characters in the novel long for escape, while others long to return home. How do these two desires overlap and compete? Do you think this is a book about finding ways out or about finding ways back home?

Did you like the “book within a book�� and interwoven story structure, or do you prefer your novels to be more straightforward?

There are many books (like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland) that involve the protagonist finding themselves in another world. Do you like these kinds of books? Any favorites?

Any other aspects of the book you’d like to discuss?

Overall, how would you rate this book from 1-5? Would you read something else by Alix Harrow?
]]> 4.22 2019
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: fiction, scifi-fantasy, book_club, favorite-3-of-the-year-read
review:
THIS IS THE BEST BOOK I HAVE READ IN 2020!!! Beautifully written, I'm tempted to immediately listen to the audiobook so I can hear it as well as read it. Captivating story, with unexpected twists and turns, and it had my eyes prickling with tears at the end.

I assigned this book to a pop-up book club in January (ha!) 2025. These were the questions:

Do you normally read fantasy? Is this a book you would have chosen for yourself? Did you enjoy it overall?

Three of my favorite quotes from the book all relate to my next question��
“If we address stories as archaeological sites, and dust through their layers with meticulous care, we find at some level there is always a doorway. A dividing point between here and there, us and them, mundane and magical. It is at the moments when the doors open, when things flow between the worlds, that stories happen.��
Page 6 Sometimes I feel there are doors lurking in the creases of every sentence, with periods for knobs and verbs for hinges).
Page 54 all stories, even the meanest folktales, matter. They are artifacts and palimpsests, riddles and histories. They are the red threads that we may follow out of the labyrinth.
What story has opened a new world for you/sent you in a new direction?

Is a book’s immersive power a useful measure of a book’s worth?

Some of the characters in the novel long for escape, while others long to return home. How do these two desires overlap and compete? Do you think this is a book about finding ways out or about finding ways back home?

Did you like the “book within a book�� and interwoven story structure, or do you prefer your novels to be more straightforward?

There are many books (like The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland) that involve the protagonist finding themselves in another world. Do you like these kinds of books? Any favorites?

Any other aspects of the book you’d like to discuss?

Overall, how would you rate this book from 1-5? Would you read something else by Alix Harrow?

]]> 161025669
Eli Ward hasn’t been back to his suffocating hometown of New Port Stephen, Florida, in ages. Post-transition and sober, he’s a completely different person from the one who left years ago. But when a scandal threatens his career as a TV writer and comedian, he has no choice but to return home for the holidays. He can only hope he’ll survive his boisterous, loving, but often misguided family and hide the fact that his dream of comedy success has become a nightmare.

Just when he thinks this trip couldn’t get any worse, Eli bumps into his high school ex, Nick Wu, who’s somehow hotter than ever. Divorced and in his forties, Nick’s world revolves around his father, his daughter, and his job. But even a busy life ������’t keep him from being intrigued by the reappearance of Eli.

Against the backdrop of one weird Floridian Christmas, the two must decide whether to leave the past in the past…or move on together.]]> 0 T.J. Alexander 1668021978 DeAnna 4 4.14 2023
author: T.J. Alexander
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: fiction, lgbtq, romance_novels
review:

]]> 55769788 A USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller!

Learn how to fight better and end your arguments with your partner feeling closer, more loved, and better understood.

We take our cars in for oil changes. We mow our lawns and pull weeds. Why don't we do maintenance on our marriages? This relationship is the most important one we will ever have, so why not get better at it?

For the last several years, Penn and Kim Holderness of The Holderness Family have done the hard maintenance and the research to learn how to fight better. With the help of their marriage coach Dr. Christopher Edmonston, they break down their biggest (and in some cases, funniest) fights. How did a question about chicken wings turn into a bra fight (no, not a bar fight or a bra fight)? How did a roll of toilet paper lead to tears, resentment, and a stint in the guest bedroom?

With their trademark sense of humor and complete vulnerability, Penn and Kim share their 10 most common Fight Fails and how to combat them. Throughout the book, they offer scripts for how to start, continue, and successfully close hard conversations. Couples will emerge equipped to engage and understand, not do battle--and maybe laugh a little more along the way.

In Everybody Fights, couples will learn how


Use magic words for healthy conflict resolution
Address unspoken and unrealistic expectations
Banish the three Ds of unhealthy communication--distraction, denial, and delay
Carry individual baggage while helping your partner deal with theirs
Penn and Kim want you to know you're not alone. Everybody fights. Marriage is messy. Marriage is work. But marriage is worth it. Fight for it!]]> 250 Kim Holderness 0785235744 DeAnna 4 non-fiction 4.45 2021
author: Kim Holderness
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: non-fiction
review:
I read this really just because I like their videos a lot! It was an easy read and actually does contain some decent advice.
]]> 54627213
In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash . . .

The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all��

Powerfully told from an all-female perspective, A Thousand Ships gives voices to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.

In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective.]]> 366 Natalie Haynes DeAnna 5 fiction, kindle 4.09 2019
author: Natalie Haynes
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/25
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: fiction, kindle
review:
Really fascinating depiction of the Trojan War from the perspective of the women. Highly recommend.
]]> 46000520
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

Alternate cover edition can be found here .]]> 382 Richard Osman DeAnna 2 3.87 2020
author: Richard Osman
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: book_club, fiction, mystery-suspense
review:
I have a lot of friends who loved this book, but I didn’t find it especially engaging.
]]> 9267791 PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST �� Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the pivotal figure in colonial and revolutionary America, comes vividly to life in this “thorough biography of ... America’s first Renaissance man�� (The Washington Post) by the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War."The authoritative Franklin biography for our time.�� —Joseph J. Ellis, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding BrothersWit, diplomat, scientist, philosopher, businessman, inventor, and bon vivant, Benjamin Franklin's "life is one every American should know well, and it has not been told better than by Mr. Brands" (The Dallas Morning News). From penniless runaway to highly successful printer, from ardently loyal subject of Britain to architect of an alliance with France that ensured America’s independence, Franklin went from obscurity to become one of the world’s most admired figures, whose circle included the likes of Voltaire, Hume, Burke, and Kant.Drawing on previously unpublished letters and a host of other sources, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands has written a thoroughly engaging biography of the eighteenth-century genius. A much needed reminder of Franklin’s greatness and humanity, The First American is a work of meticulous scholarship that provides a magnificent tour of a legendary historical figure, a vital era in American life, and the countless arenas in which the protean Franklin left his legacy.Look for H.W. Brands's other ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN WHO SAVED THE UNION (Ulysses S. Grant), TRAITOR TO HIS CLASS (Franklin Roosevelt) and REAGAN.]]> 785 H.W. Brands DeAnna 0 couldn-t-finish 4.44 2000
author: H.W. Brands
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: couldn-t-finish
review:

]]> 215020997 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.]]> 560 Victoria E. Schwab 1035064642 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.38 2025
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58445515 An instant New York Times bestseller!From the��bestselling author of But What if We’re Wrong, a wise and funny reckoning with the decade that gave us slacker/grunge irony about the sin of trying too hard, during the greatest shift in human consciousness of any decade in American history.It was long ago, but not as long as it The Berlin Wall fell and the��Twin Towers collapsed. In between, one presidential election was allegedly decided by Ross Perot while another was plausibly decided by Ralph Nader. In the beginning, almost every name and address was listed in a phone book, and everyone answered their landlines because you didn’t know who it was. By the end, exposing someone’s address was an act of emotional violence, and nobody picked up their new cell phone if they didn’t know who it was. The 90s brought about a revolution in the human condition we’re still groping to understand. Happily, Chuck Klosterman is more than up to the job. Beyond epiphenomena like "Cop Killer" and Titanic and Zima, there ��were wholesale shifts in how society was the rise of the internet, pre-9/11 politics, and the paradoxical belief that nothing was more humiliating than trying too hard. Pop culture accelerated without the aid of a machine that remembered everything, generating an odd comfort in never being certain about anything. On a 90’s Thursday night, more people watched any random episode of Seinfeld than the finale of Game of Thrones. But nobody thought that was important; if you missed it, you simply missed it.��It was the last era that held to the idea of a true, hegemonic mainstream before it all began to fracture, whether you found a home in it or defined yourself against it. �� In The Nineties, Chuck Klosterman makes a home in all of the film, the music, the sports, the TV, the politics, the changes regarding race and class and sexuality, the yin/yang of Oprah and Alan Greenspan. In perhaps no other book ever written would a sentence like, “The video for ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit�� was not more consequential than the reunification of Germany�� make complete sense. Chuck Klosterman has written a multi-dimensional��masterpiece, a work of synthesis so smart and delightful that future historians might well refer to this entire period as Klostermanian.]]> 384 Chuck Klosterman 0735217971 DeAnna 4 3.95 2022
author: Chuck Klosterman
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:
I don’t know how accurate all these essays were, but they were certainly interesting.
]]> 201930181
How humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, but that history is about to end. The Carryx �� part empire, part hive �� have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy. ��Now, they are facing a great and deathless enemy. The key to their survival may rest with the humans of Anjiin. �� Caught up in academic intrigue and affairs of the heart, Dafyd Alkhor is pleased just to be an assistant to a brilliant scientist and his celebrated research team. ��Then the Carryx ships descend, decimating the human population and taking the best and brightest of Anjiin society away to serve on the Carryx homeworld, and Dafyd is swept along with them. They are dropped in the middle of a struggle they barely understand, set in a competition against the other captive species with extinction as the price of failure. ��Only Dafyd and a handful of his companions see past the Darwinian contest to the deeper game that they must play to learning to understand �� and manipulate �� the Carryx themselves. With a noble but suicidal human rebellion on one hand and strange and murderous enemies on the other, the team pays a terrible price to become the trusted servants of their new rulers. Dafyd Alkhor is a simple man swept up in events that are beyond his control and more vast than his imagination. ��He will become the champion of humanity and its betrayer, the most hated man in history and the guardian of his people. This is where his story begins.]]> 422 James S.A. Corey 031652557X DeAnna 0 4.11 2024
author: James S.A. Corey
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read, fiction, scifi-fantasy
review:

]]> 199798785
On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of a crew including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like 9/11 or JFK’s assassination, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in 20th-century history—yet the details of what took place that day, and why, have largely been forgotten. Until now.

Based on extensive archival records and meticulous, original reporting, Challenger follows a handful of central protagonists—including each of the seven members of the doomed crew—through the years leading up to the accident, a detailed account of the tragedy itself, and into the investigation that followed. It’s a tale of optimism and promise undermined by political cynicism and cost-cutting in the interests of burnishing national prestige; of hubris and heroism; and of an investigation driven by leakers and whistleblowers determined to bring the truth to light. Throughout, there are the ominous warning signs of a tragedy to come, recognized but then ignored, and ultimately kept from the public.

Higginbotham reveals the history of the shuttle program, the lives of men and women whose stories have been overshadowed by the disaster as well as the designers, engineers, and test pilots who struggled against the odds to get the first shuttle into space.]]> 576 Adam Higginbotham 198217661X DeAnna 0 4.53 2024
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read, consider-for-book-club, non-fiction
review:

]]> 54814676
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band �� and meeting the man who would become her husband �� her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 239 Michelle Zauner 0525657746 DeAnna 3 book_club 4.25 2021
author: Michelle Zauner
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: book_club
review:

]]> 208894426
Columnist Anna Appleby has left her love life behind after a painful divorce. Who needs a man when she has two kids, a cat, and uncontested control of the TV remote? Besides, she’d rather be single than subject herself to the hell of online dating. But her office rival is vying for her column, and no column means no stable source of income. In a desperate attempt to keep her job, Anna finds herself pitching a unique angle: seven dates, all found offline, chosen by her children.

From awkward encounters to unexpected connections, Anna gamely begins to put herself out there, asking out waiters, the mailman, and even her celebrity crush. But when a romantic connection appears where she least expected it, will she be brave enough to take another chance on love?]]> 367 Sophie Cousens DeAnna 3 4.24 2024
author: Sophie Cousens
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 212376261 From the author of Boyfriend Material comes the absurdist adventure of two friends determined to avoid marriage to unsuitable people as they race through Regency England to marry each other instead.

Sir Horley Comewithers isn’t particularly interested in getting married, especially when his match is a perfectly respectable young woman. Sir Horley is, after all, extravagantly gay. But he’s resigned to a fate there’s no point resisting—until a dear friend does it for him.

Arabella Tarleton has no interest in romance, but even she can see that Sir Horley’s nuptials are destined to end in a lifetime of misery. Well, not on her watch. And what are friends for, if not abducting you on your wedding night in an overdramatic attempt to save you from a terrible mistake?

Their journey to Gretna Green is a hodgepodge of colorful run-ins and near misses with questionable innkeepers, amateur highwaymen, overattentive writers, and scorned fiancées. Then again a bumpy road is better than an unhappy destination.

But when it comes to marriage, Belle and Sir Horley are about to discover that it’s not what you do or how you do it but the people who you choose to do it with that matter most.]]> 427 Alexis Hall 166250943X DeAnna 2 4.11 2024
author: Alexis Hall
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:
Not my favorite of Hall’s books. Too much of the book was just two people arguing back-and-forth and at the end it felt like he was throwing in everything but the kitchen sink. It was still engaging enough for me to finish it and there were plenty of places that made me laugh.
]]> 30780881
Roman Praetor Gaius Marcellinus came to North America as a conqueror, but after meeting with defeat at the hands of the city-state of Cahokia, he has had to forge a new destiny in this strange land. In the decade since his arrival, he has managed to broker an unstable peace between the invading Romans and a loose affiliation of Native American tribes known as the League.

But invaders from the west will shatter that peace and plunge the continent into war: The Mongol Horde has arrived and they are taking no prisoners.

As the Mongol cavalry advances across the Great Plains leaving destruction in its path, Marcellinus and his Cahokian friends must summon allies both great and small in preparation for a final showdown. Alliances will shift, foes will rise, and friends will fall as Alan Smale brings us ever closer to the dramatic final battle for the future of the North American continent.]]> 544 Alan Smale 0804177260 DeAnna 3 4.32 2017
author: Alan Smale
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 208516656 If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.��

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-������’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.]]> 512 Liane Moriarty 0593798600 DeAnna 4 fiction, audiobook 3.99 2024
author: Liane Moriarty
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: fiction, audiobook
review:

]]> 26194010 Perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Steve Berry, Naomi Novik, and Harry Turtledove, Alan Smale’s gripping alternate history series imagines a world in which the Roman Empire has survived long enough to invade North America in 1218. Now the stunning story carries hero Gaius Marcellinus deeper into the culture of an extraordinary people—whose humanity, bravery, love, and ingenuity forever change his life and destiny. �� In A.D. 1218, Praetor Gaius Marcellinus is ordered to conquer North America and turning it into a Roman province. But outside the walls of the great city of Cahokia, his legion is destroyed outright; Marcellinus is the only one spared. In the months and years that follow, Marcellinus comes to see North America as his home and the Cahokians as his kin. He vows to defend these proud people from any threat, Roman or native. �� After successfully repelling an invasion by the fearsome Iroqua tribes, Marcellinus realizes that a weak and fractured North America won’t stand a chance against the returning Roman army. Worse, rival factions from within threaten to tear Cahokia apart just when it needs to be most united and strong. Marcellinus is determined to save the civilization that has come to mean more to him than the empire he once served. But to survive the swords of Roma, he first must avert another Iroqua attack and bring Cahokia together. Only with the hearts and souls of a nation at his back can Marcellinus hope to know triumph.Praise for Alan Smale and Eagle in Exile �� “In Alan Smale, speculative fiction has been dealt a winning hand. Part historian, part anthropologist, part scientist, Smale is a Renaissance man with a storyteller’s gift for letting tireless research inform the narrative without overwhelming it. Smale entertains, educates, and enraptures.��—Myke Cole, author of Javelin Rain �� “[Eagle in Exile] has the pace and scope of a Michener or Uris epic. . . . Smale’s action scenes slash across page after page, intense and bloody. . . . Grab your dagger and sword, for the battle continues.��—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Warfare, political conflict, family strife—these are all presented in an epic scope where any decision or wrong move can forever change society.��—Tech Times �� “Thoroughly believable . . . Marcellinus is a complicated man, a hero we can all get behind.��—Historical Novels Review]]> 556 Alan Smale 0804177252 DeAnna 4 4.36 2016
author: Alan Smale
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 23508980 432 Alan Smale 0804177236 DeAnna 4 3.96 2015
author: Alan Smale
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 595375 ��
Of the author and the book, the Margaret A. Edwards Award committee said, “Using a fluid, readable style, Garden opens a window through which readers can find courage to be true to themselves.”]]> 234 Nancy Garden 0374404143 DeAnna 5 lgbtq, ya 4.02 1982
author: Nancy Garden
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: lgbtq, ya
review:

]]> 92052 Good Moon Rising is about two young women who fall in love while rehearsing a school play, realize they're gay, and resist a homophobic campaign against them. Good Moon Rising, both a New York Public Library Book for the Teenage and a Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, 'takes us into the dynamics of homophobia" (Horn Book). 'Garden, who gave us one of the first honest, sensitive portrayals of two young women in love in the brilliant Anne On My Mind, Farrar, 1982, offers us another thought-provoking story of homosexual love."-Voya]]> 240 Nancy Garden 0595347673 DeAnna 5 fiction, lgbtq, ya 3.81 1996
author: Nancy Garden
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: fiction, lgbtq, ya
review:

]]> 201306695 In her most imaginative novel yet, #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell (None of This Is True) launches the Marvel Crime series of thriller books for adults with an original story starring the private detective Jessica Jones.

Meet Jessica Jones: Retired super hero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York.

The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK. The twins don’t act like themselves, and they now have flawless skin, have lost their distinctive tics and habits, and keep talking about a girl named Belle. Amber insists her children have been replaced by something horrible, something “perfect.��

Traveling to a small village in the British countryside, Jessica meets the mysterious Belle, who lives a curiously isolated life in an old farmhouse with a strange woman who claims to be her guardian. Can this unworldly teenager really be responsible for the Randall twins�� new personas? Why does the strange little village of Barton Wallop seem to harbor dark energies and mysteries in its tight-knit community?

A mother’s intuition is never wrong. And Jessica knows that nothing in life is perfect—not these kids, not her on-again, off-again relationship with Luke Cage, and certainly not Jessica herself. But even as she tries to buy into the idea that better days are ahead, Jessica Jones has seen all too clearly that behind every promise of perfection trails a dark, dangerous shadow.

Breaking the Dark, the first book in the brand-new Marvel Crime series, introduces fans to a grittier, street-level side of the Marvel Universe, and will continue with original novels featuring fan-favorite characters like Luke Cage, written by S.A. Cosby, and Daredevil, written by Alex Segura.]]> 384 Lisa Jewell 1368090125 DeAnna 0 to-read 3.61 2024
author: Lisa Jewell
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50689515 Clutter, an expansive assessment of our relationship to the things that share and shape our lives. Sparked by the painful two-year process of cleaning out her mother's house in the wake of a devastating physical and emotional collapse, Howard sets her own personal struggle with clutter against a meticulously researched history of just how the developed world came to drown in material goods. With sharp prose and an eye for telling detail, she connects the dots between the Industrial Revolution, the Sears & Roebuck catalog, and the Container Store, and shines unsparing light on clutter's darker connections to environmental devastation and hoarding disorder. In a confounding age when Amazon can deliver anything at the click of a mouse and decluttering guru Marie Kondo can become a reality TV star, Howard's bracing analysis has never been more timely.]]> 192 Jennifer Howard 1948742721 DeAnna 0 3.76 2020
author: Jennifer Howard
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read, found-thru-whatever, non-fiction
review:

]]> 63126737 When a mysterious neighborhood boy befriends his young daughter, stay-at-home dad Craig considers him a godsend—until it becomes clear that there’s nothing angelic about him at all.

Craig Finnigan is determined to finish his book this summer, but being an aspiring writer while wrangling his seven-year-old daughter is not easy. So when Alice makes fast friends with a neighborhood boy, Levi, Craig is happy she has a distraction from her constant visits to his home office. But that happiness soon turns to misgivings as Levi’s behavior evolves from that of a shy, odd boy into something far more disturbing.

Strange noises in the middle of the night and things disappearing from their home could be explained away—maybe it’s the water heater, or maybe Craig simply misplaced his flash drive. Craig ������’t explain his paranoia, but he feels sure Levi is behind it. As Levi’s visits to their backyard become more and more frequent, Craig finds himself the unwilling participant in a game he never asked to play…and one he’s not sure he can win.]]> 287 Tony Wirt 166251378X DeAnna 0 3.82 2023
author: Tony Wirt
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read, fiction, found-thru-whatever, mystery-suspense
review:

]]> 62649600
Is it the right place at the wrong time? Or the wrong place at the right time?

Trapped in a dead-end town, Justin Warren has had his life defined by the suspicious deaths of his grandparents. The unsolved crime happened long before Justin was born, but the ripple effects are still felt after thirty-eight years. Justin always knew he wouldn’t have much of a future. He just never imagined that his life might take him backward.

In a cosmic twist of fate, Justin’s choices send him crashing into the path of determined optimist Rose Yin. Justin and Rose live in the same town and attend the same school, but have never met―because Rose lives in 1985. Justin won’t be born for another twenty years. And his grandparents are still alive―for now.

In a series of events that reverberate through multiple lifetimes, Justin and Rose have a week to get Justin unstuck in time and put each of them in control of their futures―by solving a murder that hasn’t even happened yet.

CW: I’LL STOP THE WORLD contains depictions of emotional abuse, alcoholism and excessive drinking, underage drinking, smoking, racism, discussions of homophobia, and violent bullying.]]> 446 Lauren Thoman 1662509979 DeAnna 0 3.82 2023
author: Lauren Thoman
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read, fiction, found-thru-whatever, ya
review:

]]> 23492799
Spanning 2,000 miles and traversing six states from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean, the Oregon Trail is the route that made America. In the fifteen years before the Civil War, when 400,000 pioneers used it to emigrate West--historians still regard this as the largest land migration of all time--the trail united the coasts, doubled the size of the country, and laid the groundwork for the railroads. The trail years also solidified the American character: our plucky determination in the face of adversity, our impetuous cycle of financial bubbles and busts, the fractious clash of ethnic populations competing for the same jobs and space. Today, amazingly, the trail is all but forgotten.

With "The Oregon Trail "he seeks to bring the most important road in American history back to life. At once a majestic American journey, a significant work of history, and a personal saga reminiscent of bestsellers by Bill Bryson and Cheryl Strayed, the book tells the story of Buck's 2,000-mile expedition across the plains with tremendous humor and heart. He was accompanied by three cantankerous mules, his boisterous brother, Nick, and an "incurably filthy" Jack Russell terrier named Olive Oyl.

Along the way, Buck dodges thunderstorms in Nebraska, chases his runaway mules across miles of Wyoming plains, scouts more than five hundred miles of nearly vanished trail on foot, crosses the Rockies, makes desperate fifty-mile forced marches for water, and repairs so many broken wheels and axels that he nearly reinvents the art of wagon travel itself.

Apart from charting his own geographical and emotional adventure, Buck introduces readers to the evangelists, shysters, natives, trailblazers, and everyday dreamers who were among the first of the pioneers to make the journey west. With a rare narrative power, a refreshing candor about his own weakness and mistakes, and an extremely attractive obsession for history and travel, "The Oregon Trail" draws readers into the journey of a lifetime.]]> 451 Rinker Buck 1451659164 DeAnna 0 3.79 2015
author: Rinker Buck
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read, botn-book-bingo-2015, non-fiction, rec-for-erik
review:

]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

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

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.39 2024
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201294595 Part memoir, part explosive window into the mind of a catfisher, a thrilling personal account of three women coming face-to-face with an internet predator and teaming up to expose them

In 2011 three successful and highly educated women fell head over heels for the brilliant and charming Ethan Schuman. Unbeknownst to the others, each exchanged countless messages with Ethan, staying up late into the evenings to deepen their connections with this fascinating man. His detailed excuses about broken webcams and complicated international calling plans seemed believable, as did last-minute trip cancellations. After all, why would he lie? Ethan wasn't after money—he never convinced his marks to shell out thousands of dollars for some imagined crisis. Rather, he ensnared these women in a web of intense emotional intimacy.

After the trio independently began to question inconsistencies in their new flame's stories, they managed to find one another and uncover a greater deception than they could have ever imagined. As Anna Akbari and the women untangled their catfish’s web, they found other victims and realized that without a proper crime, there was no legal reason for “Ethan�� to ever stop.

There is No Ethan catalogues Akbari's experience as both victim and observer. By looking at the bigger picture—a world where technology mediates our relationships; where words and images are easily manipulated; and where truth, reality, and identity have become slippery terms—Akbari provides an explanation for why these stories matter.]]> 304 Anna Akbari 1538742195 DeAnna 0 couldn-t-finish 3.57 2024
author: Anna Akbari
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: couldn-t-finish
review:

]]> 43189745 294 Sarah Miller 152471383X DeAnna 4 4.20 2019
author: Sarah Miller
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: autobiography-biography, non-fiction
review:
Their story really is a tragedy. So many people using them for their own ends.
]]> 20516903 425 Eleanor H. Porter 1596252693 DeAnna 2 childrens_books, fiction 4.10 1915
author: Eleanor H. Porter
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1915
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: childrens_books, fiction
review:

]]> 183915672
Note: This is not a full-length novel. It’s a novella set between the end of the Rockton series and the beginning of the Haven’s Rock spinoff]]> 120 Kelley Armstrong 1989046754 DeAnna 4 4.34 2023
author: Kelley Armstrong
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: author_glomm, fiction, mystery-suspense, novella
review:

]]> 42330753 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author, a novel about the power of family to harm—and to heal.

Within the walls of a tasteful, perfectly kept house in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, young Zane Bigelow feels like a prisoner of war. Strangers—and even Zane’s own aunt across the lake—see his parents as a successful surgeon and his stylish wife, making appearances at their children’s ballet recitals and baseball games. Zane and his sister know the There is something terribly wrong.

As his father’s violent, controlling rages—and his mother’s complicity—become more and more oppressive, Zane counts the years, months, days until he can escape. He looks out for little Britt, warning her Be smart. Be careful. In fear for his very life, he plays along with the insidious lie that everything is fine, while scribbling his real thoughts in a secret journal he must carefully hide away.

When one brutal, shattering night finally reveals cracks in the façade, Zane begins to understand that some people are willing to face the truth, even when it hurts. As he grows into manhood and builds a new kind of family, he will find that while the darkness of his past may always shadow him, it will also show him what is necessary for good to triumph—and give him strength to draw on when he once again must stand up and defend himself and the ones he loves…]]> 455 Nora Roberts DeAnna 4 4.38 2019
author: Nora Roberts
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/04
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: author_glomm, fiction, romance_novels
review:

]]> 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

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

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

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

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]> 340 Ashley Elston DeAnna 4 book_club, fiction 3.97 2024
author: Ashley Elston
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/25
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: book_club, fiction
review:

]]> 59576064
But before long, trouble arrives. Painful secrets rear their heads; jobs go off the rails; evictions loom. Sneha struggles to be truly close and open with anybody, even as her friendships deepen, even as she throws herself headlong into a dizzying romance with Marina. It's then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.]]> 320 Sarah Thankam Mathews 0593489128 DeAnna 3 3.83 2022
author: Sarah Thankam Mathews
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/23
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: fiction, found-thru-bookriot, book_club
review:

]]> 59109077 A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.

New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse--one studying the stallion's bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.]]> 401 Geraldine Brooks 0399562966 DeAnna 5 People of the Book is still my favorite of hers, but this one is a close second.]]> 4.17 2022
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/16
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: author_glomm, fiction, book_club, favorite-3-of-the-year-read
review:
Loved this heartbreaker book! People of the Book is still my favorite of hers, but this one is a close second.
]]> 15806231
A well-off accountant and a beloved wife and mother, Marta Dickenson doesn't seem the type to be on anyone's hit list. But when Eve and her partner, Peabody, find blood inside the building, the lieutenant knows Marta's murder was the work of a killer who's trained, but not professional or smart enough to remove all the evidence.

But when someone steals the files out of Marta's office, Eve must immerse herself in her billionaire husband Roarke's world of big business to figure out who's cruel and callous enough to hire a hit on an innocent woman. And as the killer's violent streak begins to escalate, Eve knows she has to draw him out, even if it means using herself as bait. . . .]]> 386 J.D. Robb 0399158820 DeAnna 3 fiction, mystery-suspense
11/2024 Re-listening to the entire series on audiobook.]]> 4.22 2013
author: J.D. Robb
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: fiction, mystery-suspense
review:
Not one of Robb's best, but definitely has some funny lines that I enjoyed.

11/2024 Re-listening to the entire series on audiobook.
]]> 11890813
Lieutenant Eve Dallas is no party girl, but she’s managing to have a reasonably good time at the celebrity-packed bash celebrating The Icove Agenda, a film based on one of her famous cases. It’s a little spooky seeing the actress playing her, who looks as though she could be her long-lost twin. Not as unsettling, though, as seeing the actress who plays Peabody—drowned in the lap pool on the roof of the director’s luxury building.

Talented but rude and widely disliked, K.T. Harris made an embarrassing scene during dinner. Now she’s at the center of a crime scene—and Eve is more than ready to get out of her high heels and strap on her holster to step into the role she was born to play: cop.]]> 389 J.D. Robb 0399158308 DeAnna 3 4.10 2012
author: J.D. Robb
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: mystery-suspense, romance_novels
review:

]]> 10402992
An unabridged recording on 12 CDs (13 hours, 54 minutes).]]> 14 J.D. Robb 1441836314 DeAnna 3 mystery-suspense Treachery in Death. I think I really missed the interactions between Dallas and Peabody, which are always a favorite part of Robb's books for me. I'd recommend the book to fans of the series who don't want to miss one, but it would definitely not be a good one for someone new to the series to begin with.]]> 4.41 2011
author: J.D. Robb
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: mystery-suspense
review:
Definitely not as good as its predecessor, Treachery in Death. I think I really missed the interactions between Dallas and Peabody, which are always a favorite part of Robb's books for me. I'd recommend the book to fans of the series who don't want to miss one, but it would definitely not be a good one for someone new to the series to begin with.
]]> 219359162 The aliens are here . . . and they want municipal services!

Ashley Perrin is fresh out of college and starting a job as a community liaison for the Third District—the city’s only sector with more alien residents than humans. Ashley’s barely found where the paper clips are kept when she’s beset with constituent complaints–from too much noise at the Annual Lupidian Celebration Parade to a trip-and-fall chicken to a very particular type of alien hornet that threatens the very city itself.

And if that’s not terrifying enough, Ashley is next up at the office karaoke night.

It's Parks and Recreation meets the Federation of Planets in this fast and funny audio exclusive by Hugo Award winner and Audible best seller John Scalzi.]]> 3 John Scalzi DeAnna 3 3.85 2024
author: John Scalzi
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: author_glomm, audiobook, fiction, novella, scifi-fantasy
review:
A fun book to listen to, though some of Scalzi's authorial tics are much more noticeable for me in audiobook form. The humor and setting are very enjoyable.
]]> 17817597
For Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the NYPSD, the job is a useful reminder of what she has to be grateful for this season. Hosting Roarke’s big Irish family for the holiday may be challenging, but it’s a joyful improvement on her own dark childhood.
Other couples aren’t as lucky as Eve and Roarke. The Reinholds, for example, are lying on the floor of their Downing Street apartment, stabbed and bludgeoned almost beyond recognition. Those who knew them are stunned—and even more heartbroken by the overwhelming evidence that they were murdered by their own son. Twenty-six-year-old Jerry hadn’t exactly made a good impression on all the bosses who fired him or the girlfriend who dumped him—but they didn’t think he was capable of this.

Turns out Jerry is not only capable of brutality but taking a liking to it. With the money he’s stolen from his parents, and a long list of grievances, he intends to finally make his mark on the world. Eve and her team already know the who, how, and why of this murder. What they need to pinpoint is where Jerry’s going to strike next.]]> 11 J.D. Robb 1480511439 DeAnna 4 audiobook, mystery-suspense 4.05 2013
author: J.D. Robb
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/02
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: audiobook, mystery-suspense
review:
Another visit with Roarke and Eve Dallas -- always a fun way to spend some time. I didn't buy how surprised they were by the 3rd victim, but this book is about average quality for this series. I probably won't re-read (or re-listen to) this one, but I enjoyed it the first time.
]]> 199298789
Many years ago, Odysseus sailed to war and never returned. For twenty years his wife Penelope and the women of Ithaca have guarded the isle against suitors and rival kings. But peace cannot be kept forever, and the balance of power is about to break . . .

A beggar has arrived at the Palace. Salt-crusted and ocean-battered, he is scorned by the suitors - but Penelope recognises in him something terrible: her husband, Odysseus, returned at last. Yet this Odysseus is no hero. By returning to the island in disguise, he is not merely plotting his revenge against the suitors - vengeance that will spark a civil war - but he's testing the loyalty of his queen. Has she been faithful to him all these years? And how much blood is Odysseus willing to shed to be sure?

The song of Penelope is ending, and the song of Odysseus must ring through Ithaca's halls. But first, Penelope must use all her cunning to win a war for the fate of the island and keep her family alive, whatever the cost...]]> 397 Claire North DeAnna 4 myth-retellings, fiction Ithaca, is definitely the best one.]]> 4.50 2024
author: Claire North
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: myth-retellings, fiction
review:
Brings the trilogy to a satisfying close, but the first book, Ithaca, is definitely the best one.
]]> 217885191 Find out how Maddy and Doug met in this sweet and hilarious short story from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just for the Summer.

Travel nurse Maddy doesn't have time for a relationship, not even with the ruggedly handsome farmer who she feels a spark of attraction to.

Doug is a walking green flag. After a run in with Maddy thanks to the Wakan town��mascot, Kevin Bacon the pig, he can't help but feel the spark too.

Even though she doesn't plan on staying in Minnesota forever, Maddy believes she and Doug can still have a fling�� or maybe they’ll just find themselves in a situationship.��

“The Situationship��was originally published as a bonus chapter in the Target exclusive edition of Just for the Summer. This ebook original also includes a first look at Abby’s new release, Say You’ll Remember Me.]]> 37 Abby Jimenez 1538773724 DeAnna 2 3.97 2024
author: Abby Jimenez
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: author_glomm, fiction, novella
review:

]]> 195769180
Gaia is dying.

That, at least, is what Dr. Lionel Scott believes. A renowned expert in tropical and infectious diseases, Scott has witnessed the devastating impact of illness and turmoil at critical scale. Society as it exists is untenable, and the direct link to Earth’s death spiral; population levels are out of control and people have allowed disarray and disorder to run rampant. While most are concerned about deadly disease, Scott knows that it is truly humanity itself that will destroy Gaia. It’s only by removing the threat then the planet can continue to prosper, and luckily, Scott is just the right man for the job��

When Scott then disappears without a trace, Letty Davenport is tasked with tracking down any and all leads. Scott’s connections to sensitive research into virus and pathogen spread has multiple national and international organizations on high alert, and his shockingly high clearance levels at various institutions, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, make him the last person they’d like to go missing. As the web around Scott becomes more tangled, Letty calls in her father, Lucas, help her lead a group of specialists to find Scott as soon as possible. But as Letty and Lucas begin to uncover startling and disturbing connections between Scott and Gaia conspiracists, their worst fears are confirmed, and it quickly becomes a race to find him before the virus he created becomes the perfect weapon.]]> 400 John Sandford 0593714504 DeAnna 3 4.43 2024
author: John Sandford
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/29
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: mystery-suspense, fiction, author_glomm
review:

]]> 62963459 New York Times bestseller Becky Albertalli explores the nuances of sexuality, identity, and friendship.

Imogen Scott may be hopelessly heterosexual, but she’s got the World’s Greatest Ally title locked down.

She's never missed a Pride Alliance meeting. She knows more about queer media discourse than her very queer little sister. She even has two queer best friends. There's Gretchen, a fellow high school senior, who helps keep Imogen's biases in check. And then there's Lili—newly out and newly thriving with a cool new squad of queer college friends.

Imogen's thrilled for Lili. Any ally would be. And now that she's finally visiting Lili on campus, she's bringing her ally A game. Any support Lili needs, Imogen's all in.

Even if that means bending the truth, just a little.

Like when Lili drops a tiny queer bombshell: she's told all her college friends that Imogen and Lili used to date. And none of them know that Imogen is a raging hetero—not even Lili’s best friend, Tessa.

Of course, the more time Imogen spends with chaotic, freckle-faced Tessa, the more she starts to wonder if her truth was ever all that straight to begin with. . .]]> 412 Becky Albertalli DeAnna 2 fiction, lgbtq, ya 4.32 2023
author: Becky Albertalli
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: fiction, lgbtq, ya
review:

]]> 34200946 Little House books.

In the frigid days of February, 1870, Caroline Ingalls and her family leave the familiar comforts of the Big Woods of Wisconsin and the warm bosom of her family, for a new life in Kansas Indian Territory. Packing what they can carry in their wagon, Caroline, her husband Charles, and their little girls, Mary and Laura, head west to settle in a beautiful, unpredictable land full of promise and peril.

The pioneer life is a hard one, especially for a pregnant woman with no friends or kin to turn to for comfort or help. The burden of work must be shouldered alone, sickness tended without the aid of doctors, and babies birthed without the accustomed hands of mothers or sisters. But Caroline’s new world is also full of tender joys. In adapting to this strange new place and transforming a rough log house built by Charles�� hands into a home, Caroline must draw on untapped wells of strength she does not know she possesses.

For more than eighty years, generations of readers have been enchanted by the adventures of the American frontier’s most famous child, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in the Little House books. Now, that familiar story is retold in this captivating tale of family, fidelity, hardship, love, and survival that vividly reimagines our past.]]> 368 Sarah Miller 0062685368 DeAnna 3 fiction, found-thru-dws 3.80 2017
author: Sarah Miller
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: fiction, found-thru-dws
review:

]]> 60655591 Haven’s Rock, Yukon. 0

Deep in the Yukon wilderness, a town is being built. A place for people to disappear, a fresh start from a life on the run. Haven’s Rock isn’t the first town of this kind, something detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, know first-hand. They met in the original town of Rockton. But greed and deception led the couple to financing a new refuge for those in need. This time around, they get to decide which applicants are approved for residency.

There’s only one rule in Haven’s stay out of the forest. When two of the town's construction crew members break it and go missing, Casey and Eric are called in ahead of schedule to track them down. When a body is discovered, well-hidden with evidence of foul play, Casey and Eric must find out what happened to the dead woman, and locate those still missing. The longer Casey and Eric don’t know what happened, the more danger everyone is in.]]> 352 Kelley Armstrong 1250865425 DeAnna 4 4.30 2023
author: Kelley Armstrong
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: mystery-suspense, fiction, author_glomm
review:

]]> 203924689 #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts continues the hauntingly spectacular Lost Bride Trilogy with book two, The Mirror.

When Sonya MacTavish inherits the huge Victorian mansion on the coast of Maine, she has no idea that the house is haunted. The footsteps she hears at night, the doors slamming, the music playing, are not figments of her imagination. In her dreams she sees glimpses of the past. In the present she finds portraits of brides. And when she has visions of an antique mirror, she is drawn to it, sensing it holds dark family secrets.

Then one night the mirror appears and Sonya glides through this looking glass, into the past—and sees a bride murdered on her wedding day, the circle of gold torn from her finger. It is a scene that will play out again and again—a centuries-old curse that must be broken—and a puzzle she must solve if there is any hope of breaking the curse.]]> 448 Nora Roberts 1250288789 DeAnna 3 4.51 2024
author: Nora Roberts
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: author_glomm, fiction, romance_novels
review:

]]> 199798217 A heartfelt novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.��

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls�� high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.]]> 327 Marjan Kamali 1668036584 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.48 2024
author: Marjan Kamali
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4782738
In The Hedgehog's Dilemma , Warwick gets to the bottom of the sudden boom in hedgehog popularity and examines the relationship between the hedgehog and man, covering both the mammal's natural and un-natural evolution, from despised vermin to much-beloved beast. A historical and cultural exploration of the hedgehog, this is an engaging, informative, and charming look at the fascinating world of hedgehogs.

For more than twenty years, Hugh Warwick has tracked hedgehogs across the globe in the slim hopes of coming across the hedgehog's tiny, but unmistakable, pawprints. Warwick isn't alone in his endeavors. In England and Wales, the Environment Agency, Great Britain's leading environmental group, recently selected the hedgehog as its new mascot; while in America, which lacks a native hedgehog species, fanciers flock to the biannual Mile High Hedgehog Show to celebrate en masse the little spiny urchin. But why does the hedgehog seem to have such universal appeal?]]> 304 Hugh Warwick 1596914777 DeAnna 4 non-fiction 3.62 2008
author: Hugh Warwick
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2009/02/08
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves: non-fiction
review:

]]> 211003790 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong returns to Haven’s Rock in Cold as Hell as Casey Butler hunts down a dangerous killer during a deadly blizzard.

Haven’s Rock is a sanctuary town hidden deep in the Yukon for those who need to disappear from the regular world. Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, are starting a family now that they’ve settled into their life here. As Casey nears the end of her pregnancy, she lets nothing, including her worried husband, stop her from investigating what happens in the forbidden forest outside the town of Haven’s Rock.

When one of the town's residents is drugged and wanders too close to the edge of town, she’s dragged into the woods kicking and screaming. She’s saved in the nick of time, but the women of the town are alarmed. Casey and Eric investigate the assault just as a snowstorm hits Haven’s Rock, covering the forest. It’s there they find a frozen body, naked in the snow. With mixed accounts of the woman's last movements, the two begin to question who they can trust—and who they can't—in their seemingly safe haven.]]> 341 Kelley Armstrong 1250351790 DeAnna 0 to-read 4.29 2025
author: Kelley Armstrong
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60524292 A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration

It’s 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have fled Lebanon and moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories.. She had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, and fast. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center as a hotline operator.

All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she’s Mona, and she’s good at listening. These strangers all have so much to say once someone shows interest in their lives--marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office Muna is privy to her clients�� deepest secrets.]]> 280 Dimitri Nasrallah 1550655949 DeAnna 0 4.14 2022
author: Dimitri Nasrallah
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves: to-read, consider-for-book-club, fiction, found-thru-miw
review:

]]> 60091367 From the author of Caroline, a revealing retelling of Louisa May Alcott's beloved Little Women, from the perspective of Margaret "Marmee" March, about the larger real-world challenges behind the cozy domestic concerns cherished by generations of readers.

In 1861, war is raging in the South, but in Concord, Massachusetts, Margaret March has her own battles to fight. With her husband serving as an army chaplain, the comfort and security of Margaret's four daughters-- Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy--now rest on her shoulders alone. Money is tight and every month, her husband sends less and less of his salary with no explanation. Worst of all, Margaret harbors the secret that these financial hardships are largely her fault, thanks to a disastrous mistake made over a decade ago which wiped out her family's fortune and snatched away her daughters' chances for the education they deserve.

Yet even with all that weighs upon her, Margaret longs to do more--for the war effort, for the poor, for the cause of abolition, and most of all, for her daughters. Living by her watchwords, "Hope and keep busy," she fills her days with humdrum charity work to keep her worries at bay. All of that is interrupted when Margaret receives a telegram from the War Department, summoning her to her husband's bedside in Washington, D.C. While she is away, her daughter Beth falls dangerously ill, forcing Margaret to confront the possibility that the price of her own generosity toward others may be her daughter's life.

A stunning portrait of the paragon of virtue known as Marmee, a wife left behind, a mother pushed to the brink, a woman with secrets.


]]> 423 Sarah Miller 0063041871 DeAnna 5 fiction 4.25 2022
author: Sarah Miller
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: fiction
review:
Loved this book! Little Women from the mother’s point of view �� such a treat!
]]> 149976026
It's a story about Dylan Ward, a woman who grew up in the frontier of human existence and misses it every single day.

It's a story about a man who went missing, and the man who wants to find out what he knew.

It's a story about what makes us human - and how we might live once we leave our home.

This is the story of the first murder on Mars.]]> 488 Sam Wilson 1409199185 DeAnna 0 3.61
author: Sam Wilson
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.61
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read, fiction, found-thru-whatever, scifi-fantasy
review:

]]> 139990980
From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations with his indelible command of stage and screen. Now, he presents his long-awaited memoir, Making It So, a revealing portrait of an artist whose astonishing life—from his humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England, to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim—proves a story as exuberant, definitive, and enduring as the author himself.]]> 479 Patrick Stewart 1982167750 DeAnna 4 4.45 2023
author: Patrick Stewart
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 58484901 From the creator of The Good Place and the cocreator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,500 years of deep thinking from around the world.

Most people think of themselves as “good,�� but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good�� or “bad”—especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.

Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?�� (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we’ll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we’ll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day.]]> 304 Michael Schur 1982159316 DeAnna 5 favorite-3-of-the-year-read 4.14 2022
author: Michael Schur
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: favorite-3-of-the-year-read
review:

]]> 193782136 120 Nisi Shawl DeAnna 0 4.25
author: Nisi Shawl
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/15
shelves: to-read, fiction, found-thru-whatever
review:

]]> 10305
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR WORST FEARS AREN’T ALL IN YOUR MIND?

Rae Newborn is a woman on the on the edge of sanity, on the edge of tragedy, and now on the edge of the world. She has moved to an island at the far reaches of the continent to restore the house of an equally haunted figure, her mysterious great-uncle; but as her life begins to rebuild itself along with the house, his story starts to wrap around hers. Powerful forces are stirring, but Rae cannot see where her reality leaves off and his fate begins.

Fifty-two years old, Rae must battle the feelings that have long tormented her--panic, melancholy, and a skin-crawling sense of watchers behind the trees. Before she came here, she believed that most of the things she feared existed only in her mind. And who can say, as disturbing incidents multiply, if any of the watchers on Folly Island might be real? Is Rae paranoid, as her family and the police believe, or is the threat real? Is the island alive with promise--or with dangers?

With Folly, award-winning author Laurie R. King once again powerfully redefines psychological suspense on a sophisticated and harrowing new level, and proves why legions of readers and reviewers have named her a master of the genre.]]> 523 Laurie R. King 0007111347 DeAnna 4 3.99 2001
author: Laurie R. King
name: DeAnna
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: book_club, fiction, mystery-suspense
review:

]]> 193388249
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And this was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.]]> 338 David Grann 0593470834 DeAnna 3 book_club, non-fiction 4.12 2017
author: David Grann
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/27
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: book_club, non-fiction
review:

]]> 13252406 After years on the force, Eve Dallas didn't think she could be shocked anymore... until now.

It was just another after-work happy-hour bar downtown, where business professionals unwound with a few drinks, complained about the boss, maybe hooked up with someone for the night. Until something went terribly wrong. At first it was just a friction in the air. The noise intensified. The crowd seemed oppressive. some sharp words were exchanged, some pushing and shoving.

Then the madness descended. And after twelve minutes of chaos and violence, eighty people lay dead.

Eve Dallas is trying to sort out the inexplicable events. Surviving witnesses talk about seeing things—monsters and swarms of bees. They describe sudden, overwhelming feelings of fear and rage and paranoia. When forensics makes its report, the mass delusions make more sense: it appears the bar patrons were exposed to a cocktail of chemicals and illegal drugs that could drive people to temporary insanity—if not kill them outright.

But that doesn't explain who would unleash such horror—or why. Eve's husband, Roarke, happens to own the bar, yet he's convinced the attack wasn't directed at him. It's bigger than that. And if Eve can't figure it out fast, it could happen again, anytime, anywhere. Because it's airborne....]]> 388 J.D. Robb 0399158812 DeAnna 3 mystery-suspense magic.]]> 4.29 2012
author: J.D. Robb
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: mystery-suspense
review:
Felt like Dallas discovered the killer too early in the book. I want her to be damn good at her job (that's one of the things that makes this series so fun to read), but I don't want her to be magic.
]]> 199119054
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic�� books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

But Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome�� dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.]]> 301 Kirsten Miller 0063348713 DeAnna 4 fiction 4.19 2024
author: Kirsten Miller
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/02
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: fiction
review:
Little bit simplistic, but still an enjoyable novel, especially if you like books about the effect books have on other people.
]]> 62015945 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin��-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass�� scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,�� and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she ������’t refuse.]]> 417 Abby Jimenez 1538704412 DeAnna 4 4.38 2023
author: Abby Jimenez
name: DeAnna
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/11
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves:
review:

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