Anne's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 05 Feb 2025 10:33:21 -0800 60 Anne's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The House on the Strand 50246
Alternate cover is available here.]]> 329 Daphne du Maurier Anne 2 3.85 1969 The House on the Strand
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Anne
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1969
rating: 2
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Anne 3 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Anne
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Three Cups of Tea 3788053 240 Sarah L. Thomson 0142414123 Anne 0 3.70 2006 Three Cups of Tea
author: Sarah L. Thomson
name: Anne
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2012/01/04
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Still Life 91519
Stephanie Potter gives up a promising academic career to marry Daniel Orton, while her sister, Frederica, enters Cambridge, and her brother, Marcus, begins recovering from a nervous breakdown.]]> 384 A.S. Byatt 0684835037 Anne 4 3.89 1985 Still Life
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Anne
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2009/03/24
date added: 2024/03/09
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]]> Sins of the 7th Sister 9670900 Sins of the Seventh Sister, a book he characterizes as “a novel based on a true story of the gothic South.�

It is his story and the story of the people of Elkins, West Virginia, a small town whose inhabitants included his mother, Billy-Pearl Curtiss, and her many sisters—all stunning blondes. Billy-Pearl would prove to be an irresistibly romantic figure in her son’s life. She was the seventh of eleven children, all girls to her father’s consternation. By the time of her arrival, her father felt he had been patient enough and insisted on calling her Billy; he taught her everything he had intended to impart to his firstborn son. She would grow up to be one of the most beautiful women in the county, but also one of the most opinionated and liberal. Her aim was so precise that she was barred from the local turkey shoot because none of the men had a chance against her. When a Klansman accused her of attempted homicide after she shot him through the shoulder to stop him from setting fire to the home of her black neighbors, she told the sheriff, “If I had meant to kill him, he’d be dead.� And with that defense, she was exonerated.

Curtiss Farm was large and the house had many rooms, which Billy-Pearl got in the habit of gathering people to fill, especially the downtrodden who had nowhere to go. In May 1929, Billy-Pearl brought home a boy from the local orphanage. Stanley was sixteen, the age at which the orphanage kicked children out, and Billy-Pearl, knowing his sad history, could not allow him to end up on the streets. Stanley had witnessed his father beat his mother to death in a drunken rage and had taken a straight razor and slit his father’s throat while he slept. A country judge had the boy castrated to control his aggressive ways. Not a boy, but not yet a man, Stanley was tall, willowy, and frightened as a colt upon his arrival at Curtiss Farm—not at all the playmate for whom Huston had hoped. But quickly a friendship developed between the two that would last a lifetime—a friendship that would survive murder, suicide, madness, and Stanley’s eventual transformation into Stella, a singer who would live her adult life as a glamorous woman.

Sins of the Seventh Sister is brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, as alive with flamboyant characters and wildly uncontained emotions as any book to come out of the South.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 358 Huston C. Curtiss 0965124762 Anne 5 4.14 2003 Sins of the 7th Sister
author: Huston C. Curtiss
name: Anne
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/10/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness, #1)]]> 13831 From now on I'm Alan of Trebond, the younger twin. I'll be a knight.

And so young Alanna of Trebond begins the journey to knighthood. Though a girl, Alanna has always craved the adventure and daring allowed only for boys; her twin brother, Thom, yearns to learn the art of magic. So one day they decide to switch places: Thom heads for the convent to learn magic; Alanna, pretending to be a boy, is on her way to the castle of King Roald to begin her training as a page.

But the road to knighthood is not an easy one. As Alanna masters the skills necessary for battle, she must also learn to control her heart and to discern her enemies from her allies.

Filled with swords and sorcery, adventure and intrigue, good and evil, Alanna's first adventure begins - one that will lead to the fulfillment of her dreams and the magical destiny that will make her a legend in her land.

]]> 274 Tamora Pierce 0689878559 Anne 0 to-read 4.28 1983 Alanna: The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness, #1)
author: Tamora Pierce
name: Anne
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hero and the Crown (Damar, #2)]]> 77366
It was the story of her mother, the witchwoman who enspelled the king into marrying her, to get an heir that would rule Damar; and it was told that she turned her face to the wall and died of despair when she found she had borne a daughter instead of a son.
Aerin was that daughter.

But there was more of the story yet to be told; Aerin's destiny was greater than even she had dreamed--for she was to be the true hero who would wield the power of the Blue Sword...]]> 240 Robin McKinley 0441328091 Anne 0 to-read 4.21 1984 The Hero and the Crown (Damar, #2)
author: Robin McKinley
name: Anne
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/04/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Orphan Train 15818107 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780061950728, found here.

The author of Bird in Hand and The Way Life Should Be delivers her most ambitious and powerful novel to date: a captivating story of two very different women who build an unexpected friendship: a 91-year-old woman with a hidden past as an orphan-train rider and the teenage girl whose own troubled adolescence leads her to seek answers to questions no one has ever thought to ask.

Nearly eighteen, Molly Ayer knows she has one last chance. Just months from "aging out" of the child welfare system, and close to being kicked out of her foster home, a community service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping her out of juvie and worse.

Vivian Daly has lived a quiet life on the coast of Maine. But in her attic, hidden in trunks, are vestiges of a turbulent past. As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly discovers that she and Vivian aren't as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

The closer Molly grows to Vivian, the more she discovers parallels to her own life. A Penobscot Indian, she, too, is an outsider being raised by strangers, and she, too, has unanswered questions about the past. As her emotional barriers begin to crumble, Molly discovers that she has the power to help Vivian find answers to mysteries that have haunted her for her entire life - answers that will ultimately free them both.

Rich in detail and epic in scope, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, of unexpected friendship, and of the secrets we carry that keep us from finding out who we are.]]> 278 Christina Baker Kline Anne 2 4.18 2013 Orphan Train
author: Christina Baker Kline
name: Anne
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2013
rating: 2
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date added: 2015/03/26
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]]> Alif the Unseen 13239822
When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.]]> 433 G. Willow Wilson 0802120202 Anne 3 3.83 2012 Alif the Unseen
author: G. Willow Wilson
name: Anne
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/03/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy (Southern Reach, #1-3)]]> 22752442 From Book 1:

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third expedition in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.
The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one anotioner, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it's the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.

]]> 595 Jeff VanderMeer 0374261172 Anne 5 3.87 2014 Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy (Southern Reach, #1-3)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Anne
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/03/06
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]]> The Queen of Palmyra 7248007
Florence is, by all accounts, a happy, spirited girl. She doesn't understand why her father leaves each night with a mysterious box or why her mama drinks so much. What Florence knows are sultry days spent with her grandparents, being cared for by their maid, Zenie, on the colored side of town.

Tension builds during the summer of 1963. Mama bakes cakes at all hours to scrape by. And Zenie's niece Eva is in town, selling insurance to the blacks and stepping on Mr. Forrest's toes. When Eva is brutally assaulted, all hell breaks loose: Mama crashes her car, Florence's grandfather dies, a woman is murdered, and Florence finally gets a look in Daddy's box.

Florence sees things that summer that she won't understand for years to come: her mother's disappearance, her father's racism. Years later, she'll face the truth and how she was caught in the middle of it. The Queen of Palmyra is rich in both setting and characters. It's an affecting tale of a girl who is loved yet lost, trying to make sense of the world in a tumultuous time, finally forced to confront the sins of her father.]]> 390 Minrose Gwin 0061840327 Anne 4 3.82 2010 The Queen of Palmyra
author: Minrose Gwin
name: Anne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/03/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Story Keeper (Carolina Heirlooms, #2)]]> 21539471 448 Lisa Wingate 1414386893 Anne 2 4.12 2014 The Story Keeper (Carolina Heirlooms, #2)
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Anne
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2014
rating: 2
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date added: 2015/03/06
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]]> Dark Places 5886881
Since then, she has been drifting. But when she is contacted by a group who are convinced of Ben's innocence, Libby starts to ask questions she never dared to before. Was the voice she heard her brother's? Ben was a misfit in their small town, but was he capable of murder? Are there secrets to uncover at the family farm or is Libby deluding herself because she wants her brother back?

She begins to realise that everyone in her family had something to hide that day... especially Ben. Now, twenty-four years later, the truth is going to be even harder to find.

Who did massacre the Day family?]]> 424 Gillian Flynn 0307341569 Anne 4 3.95 2009 Dark Places
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Anne
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/03/06
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]]> Longbourn 17380041 Ěý
If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them.
Ěý
In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants� hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.Ěý]]> 332 Jo Baker 0385351232 Anne 4 3.63 2013 Longbourn
author: Jo Baker
name: Anne
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/03/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)]]> 6218281
For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.”]]> 374 Alan Bradley 0385342306 Anne 4 3.81 2009 The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1)
author: Alan Bradley
name: Anne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/03/06
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]]> The Casual Vacancy 13497818 A BIG NOVEL ABOUT A SMALL TOWN�

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford appears to be an English idyll—with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey—but behind its charming façade lies a town at war. The rich clash with the poor, teenagers battle their parents, wives contend with their husbands, and teachers struggle with their pupils. Pagford is far from what it seems.

The empty seat Barry leaves on the town council becomes the catalyst for the fiercest conflict the town has ever seen. The election to fill his seat is fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations. Who will triumph in this battle of wills?

Blackly comic, thought-provoking, and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults.]]> 503 J.K. Rowling 0316228532 Anne 4 3.28 2012 The Casual Vacancy
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Anne
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/03/06
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]]> The Waterworks 207874 253 E.L. Doctorow 0812978196 Anne 5 to-read 3.45 1994 The Waterworks
author: E.L. Doctorow
name: Anne
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1994
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/05/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> All the Birds, Singing 18142324 Granta's Best Young British Novelists, a stunningly insightful, emotionally powerful new novel about an outsider haunted by an inescapable past: a story of loneliness and survival, guilt and loss, and the power of forgiveness.

Jake Whyte is living on her own in an old farmhouse on a craggy British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. Her disobedient collie, Dog, and a flock of sheep are her sole companions, which is how she wanted it to be. But every few nights something—or someone—picks off one of the sheep and sets off a new deep pulse of terror. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumors of an obscure, formidable beast. But there is also Jake's past—hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, held in the silences about her family and the scars that stripe her back—a past that threatens to break into the present.

With exceptional artistry and empathy, All the Birds, Singing reveals an isolated life in all its struggles and stubborn hopes, unexpected beauty, and hard-won redemption.]]> 240 Evie Wyld 0307907767 Anne 0 to-read 3.64 2013 All the Birds, Singing
author: Evie Wyld
name: Anne
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/04/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Life After Life (Todd Family, #1)]]> 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 Anne 5 3.76 2013 Life After Life (Todd Family, #1)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Anne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/08/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Field Gray (Bernard Gunther, #7)]]> 9568416
Philip Kerr delivers a novel with the noir sensibility of Raymond Chandler, the realpolitik of vintage John le Carré, and the dark moral vision of Graham Greene.
Striding across Europe through the killing fields of three decades-from riot-torn Berlin in 1931 to Adenauer's Germany in 1954, awash in duplicitous "allies" busily undermining one another-Field Gray reveals a world based on expediency, where the ends justify the means and no one can be trusted. It brings us a hero who is sardonic, tough- talking, and cynical, but who does have a rough sense of humor and a rougher sense of right and wrong. He's Bernie Gunther. He drinks too much and smokes excessively and is somewhat overweight (but a Russian prisoner-of-war camp will take care of those bad habits). He's Bernie Gunther-a brave man, because when there is nothing left to lose, honor rules.

"Bernie Gunther is the most antiheroic of antiheroes in this gripping, offbeat thriller. It's the story of his struggle to preserve what's left of his humanity, and his life, in a world where the moral bandwidth is narrow, satanic evil at one end, cynical expediency at the other." –Philip Caputo, author of A Rumor of War

"A thriller that will challenge preconceptions and stimulate the little grey cells." �The Times (London), selecting Field Gray as a Thriller of the Year

"Part of the allure of these novels is that Bernie is such an interesting creation, a Chandleresque knight errant caught in insane historical surroundings. Bernie walks down streets so mean that nobody can stay alive and remain truly clean." –John Powers, Fresh Air (NPR)

Bernie on Bernie: I didn't like Bernhard Gunther very much. He was cynical and world-weary and hardly had a good word to say about anyone, least of all himself. He'd had a pretty tough war . . . and done quite a few things of which he wasn't proud. . . . It had been no picnic for him since then either; it didn't seem to matter where he spread life's tartan rug, there was always a turd on the grass.

]]> 448 Philip Kerr 0399157417 Anne 4 4.16 2010 Field Gray (Bernard Gunther, #7)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Anne
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/08/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Prague Fatale (Bernard Gunther, #8)]]> 11448085
But he is obliged to drop everything when his old boss, Reinhard Heydrich of the SD, the new Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia, orders him to Prague to spend a weekend at his country house. It's an invitation Bernie feels he would gladly have been spared, especially when he meets his fellow guests - all of them senior loathsome figures in the SS and SD.

The weekend turns sour almost immediately when a body is found, in a room that was locked from the inside. Now the spotlight falls on Bernie to show off his investigative skills and solve this seemingly impossible mystery. If he fails to do so, he knows what is at stake - not only his reputation, but also that of Reinhard Heydrich, a man who does not like to lose face.

So begins the most diplomatically sensitive case of Bernie Gunther's police career.]]> 527 Philip Kerr 1780871430 Anne 4 4.20 2011 Prague Fatale (Bernard Gunther, #8)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Anne
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/08/14
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]]> <![CDATA[A Quiet Flame (Bernie Gunther, #5)]]> 3056685
A Quiet Flame opens in 1950. Falsely fingered a war criminal, Bernie Gunther has booked passage to Buenos Aires, lured, like the Nazis whose company he has always despised, by promises of a new life and a clean passport from the PerĂłn government. But Bernie doesn't have the luxury of settling into his new home and lying low. He is soon pressured by the local police into taking on a case in which a girl has turned up dead, gruesomely mutilated, and another--the daughter of a wealthy German banker--has gone missing. Both crimes seem to connect to an unsolved case Bernie worked on back in Berlin in 1932. It's not so far-fetched that the cases might be linked: after all, the scum of the earth has been washing up on Argentine shores--state-licensed murderers and torturers--so why couldn't a serial killer be among them?

But Argentina, just like Germany, holds terrible secrets within its corrupt halls of power. When beautiful Anna Yagubsky seeks Gunther out, desperate for help, to find out what happened to her Jewish aunt and uncle who have disappeared, he is drawn into a horror story that rivals everything he has tried so hard to leave behind half a world away.

In this new postwar world, Bernie Gunther is a man without a name or a country, but still in full possession of his conscience. He is "the right kind of hero for his time--and ours."]]> 368 Philip Kerr 1847243576 Anne 4 4.15 2008 A Quiet Flame (Bernie Gunther, #5)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Anne
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/08/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #1-3)]]> 236814 March Violets (a term of derision which original Nazis used to describe late converts.) The Olympic Games are about to start; some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realize that they should have left while they could; and Gunther himself has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party. In The Pale Criminal, it's 1938, and Gunther has been blackmailed into rejoining the police by Heydrich himself. And in A German Requiem, the saddest and most disturbing of the three books, it's 1947 as Gunther stumbles across a nightmare landscape that conceals even more death than he imagines. (For a review of Kerr's latest novel, The Grid, see our Thrillers section.)]]> 834 Philip Kerr 0140231706 Anne 5 4.28 1993 Berlin Noir: March Violets / The Pale Criminal / A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther #1-3)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Anne
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/08/14
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]]> <![CDATA[March Violets (Bernie Gunther, #1)]]> 236819 Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets introduces readers to Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin; until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. Bernhard Gunther, a hard-boiled Berlin detective who specializes in tracking down missing persons � mostly Jews. He is summoned by a wealthy industrialist to find the murderer of his daughter and son-in-law, killed during the robbery of a priceless diamond necklace. Gunther quickly is catapulted into a major political scandal involving Hitler's two main henchmen, Goering and Himmler. The search for clues takes Gunther to morgues overflowing with Nazi victims; raucous nightclubs; the Olympic games where Jesse Owens tramples the theory of Aryan racial superiority; the boudoir of a famous actress; and finally to the Dachau concentration camp. Fights with Gestapo agents, shoot-outs with adulterers, run-ins with a variety of criminals, and dead bodies in unexpected places keep readers guessing to the very end.

Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, March Violets is noir writing at its blackest and best.]]> 245 Philip Kerr 0142004146 Anne 5 3.82 1989 March Violets (Bernie Gunther, #1)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Anne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1989
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Financial Lives of the Poets]]> 6426026 The Financial Lives of the Poets is a comic and heartfelt novel from National Book Award nominee Jess Walter, author of Citizen Vince and The Zero, about how we get to the edge of ruin—and how we begin to make our way back. Walter tells the story of Matt Prior, who’s losing his job, his wife, his house, and his mind—until, all of a sudden, he discovers a way that he might just possibly be able to save it all . . . and have a pretty damn great time doing it.]]> 304 Jess Walter 0061916048 Anne 4 3.69 2009 The Financial Lives of the Poets
author: Jess Walter
name: Anne
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/08/14
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]]> Beautiful Ruins 11447921
A #1 New York Times bestseller, this “absolute masterpiece� (Richard Russo) is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces fifty years later in Hollywood. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, this is a dazzling, yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel.

The acclaimed author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet. Hailed by critics and loved by readers of literary and historical fiction, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.]]> 337 Jess Walter 0061928127 Anne 4 3.67 2012 Beautiful Ruins
author: Jess Walter
name: Anne
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/08/14
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]]> Brown Girl in the Ring 57504 In this “impressive debut� from award-winning speculative fiction author Nalo Hopkinson, a young woman must solve the tragic mystery surrounding her family and bargain with the gods to save her city and herself. (The Washington Post)

The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways-farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.]]> 256 Nalo Hopkinson 0446674338 Anne 0 to-read 3.83 1998 Brown Girl in the Ring
author: Nalo Hopkinson
name: Anne
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Time Traveler's Wife 207035 (back cover)]]> 546 Audrey Niffenegger Anne 5
I'd resisted reading it because I did't really like the cover (yes, I do design book jackets), but I'm sorry I waited so long.

What a heartbreakingly wonderful concoction. You know it's not going to end well, but you hurtle to the finish with Henry and Claire, needing to find out what's going on.]]> 3.98 2003 The Time Traveler's Wife
author: Audrey Niffenegger
name: Anne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2007/12/01
date added: 2013/07/31
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I snuck this book into work to surreptisiously finish it off the day after Christmas. I was almost done and couldn't wait until I got home to finish it off. Thanksfully, the office was empty, so I could tear up in peace

I'd resisted reading it because I did't really like the cover (yes, I do design book jackets), but I'm sorry I waited so long.

What a heartbreakingly wonderful concoction. You know it's not going to end well, but you hurtle to the finish with Henry and Claire, needing to find out what's going on.
]]> <![CDATA[Broken Harbour (Dublin Murder Squad, #4)]]> 10805160 Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin � half-built, half-inhabited, half-abandoned � two children and their father are dead. The mother is on her way to intensive care. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case because he is the Murder Squad’s star detective. At first he and his rookie partner, Richie, think this is a simple one: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, tried to kill his wife Jenny, and finished off with himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once.

Scorcher’s personal life is tugging for his attention. Seeing the case on the news has sent his sister Dina off the rails again, and she’s resurrecting something that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control: what happened to their family, one summer at Broken Harbour, back when they were children. The neat compartments of his life are breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk . . .]]> 533 Tana French 1444705105 Anne 4 3.92 2012 Broken Harbour (Dublin Murder Squad, #4)
author: Tana French
name: Anne
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)]]> 7093952
But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd given him the brush-off--probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.]]> 400 Tana French 0670021873 Anne 4 3.98 2010 Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)
author: Tana French
name: Anne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/02/25
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]]> The Book of Daniel 411761 320 E.L. Doctorow 0452275660 Anne 4 3.87 1971 The Book of Daniel
author: E.L. Doctorow
name: Anne
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1971
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/02/25
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]]> Girl Reading 10702453 342 Katie Ward 1844087387 Anne 3 3.59 Girl Reading
author: Katie Ward
name: Anne
average rating: 3.59
book published:
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/02/25
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]]> The Sense of an Ending 10746542 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

By an acclaimed writer at the height of his powers, The Sense of an Ending extends a streak of extraordinary books that began with the best-selling Arthur & George and continued with Nothing to Be Frightened Of and, most recently, Pulse.

This intense novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about - until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance, one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony Webster thought he'd left all this behind as he built a life for himself, and by now his marriage and family and career have fallen into an amicable divorce and retirement. But he is then presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he'd understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single sitting, with stunning psychological and emotional depth and sophistication, The Sense of an Ending is a brilliant new chapter in Julian Barnes's oeuvre.]]> 150 Julian Barnes 0224094157 Anne 3 to-read 3.73 2011 The Sense of an Ending
author: Julian Barnes
name: Anne
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/02/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Namesake 33917 Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail � the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase � that opens whole worlds of emotion.

The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves.]]> 304 Jhumpa Lahiri 0618485228 Anne 4 4.01 2003 The Namesake
author: Jhumpa Lahiri
name: Anne
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/01/06
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]]> Assassination Vacation 3110 Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other—a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.

From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue—it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and—the author's favorite� historical tourism. Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are all kinds of lighter diversions along the way into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a nineteenth-century biblical sex cult.]]> 258 Sarah Vowell 074326004X Anne 5 3.93 2005 Assassination Vacation
author: Sarah Vowell
name: Anne
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/01/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3: The Girl Hunters / The Snake / The Twisted Thing]]> 8782247
� There's a kind of power about Mickey Spillane that no other writer can imitate� ( New York Times ), and it's in full force in this collection of three of his greatest Mike Hammer

The Girl Hunters : Hammer's voluptuous, long-lost love is targeted by the mastermind assassin known as the Dragon.

The Snake : Protecting a runaway blonde, Hammer trades barbs and lead with crooked politicos, snarling hoods, and sex-hungry females.

The Twisted Thing : A kidnapping case links Hammer to a fourteen year-old mystery and the most venomous killer the private eye has ever faced.]]> 544 Mickey Spillane 0451231244 Anne 4 4.14 2010 The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 3: The Girl Hunters / The Snake / The Twisted Thing
author: Mickey Spillane
name: Anne
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2: One Lonely Night / The Big Kill / Kiss Me Deadly]]> 189219 The Big Kill
One Lonely Night
Kiss Me, Deadly

Includes a special introduction by Shamus and Edgar Award-winner Lawrence Block]]> 528 Mickey Spillane 0451204255 Anne 4 4.01 1953 The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 2: One Lonely Night / The Big Kill / Kiss Me Deadly
author: Mickey Spillane
name: Anne
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1953
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 1: I,the Jury / My Gun is Quick / Vengeance is Mine!]]> 278039
In Mickey Spillane's classic detective novels, the action exploded in a bone-crunching catharsis. Men and women didn't make love, they collided. Tough brutes used their fists to drive home a message. Tougher broads used guile. And no one's morals were loftier than the gutter. No apologies. Little redemption. They rendered critics powerless, shocked intellectuals, inspired a new wave of pulp mayhem, and left the public hungry for more. Given their hot, fever-pitch prose and breathless pacing, Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels quickly became one of the most successful series in publishing history—an innovative, no-holds-barred, ultravisceral explosion of sex and violence that made Hammer a literary legend, and Spillane, one of the bestselling authors of all time. After fifty years, neither has lost their power to sucker punch the reader. Find out for yourself in this omnibus featuring the first three Mike Hammer novels by the living master of the hard-boiled mystery...


I, the Jury
My Gun is Quick
Vengeance is Mine!]]> 513 Mickey Spillane 0451203526 Anne 4 3.91 1950 The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume 1: I,the Jury / My Gun is Quick / Vengeance is Mine!
author: Mickey Spillane
name: Anne
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1950
rating: 4
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]]> Gone Girl 8442457 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 399 Gillian Flynn Anne 4 3.93 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Anne
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Eye in the Door (Regeneration, #2)]]> 151928 280 Pat Barker Anne 5 4.03 1993 The Eye in the Door (Regeneration, #2)
author: Pat Barker
name: Anne
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ghost Road (Regeneration, #3)]]> 151926 Ěý
The Ghost Road is the culminating masterpiece of Pat Barker's towering World War I fiction trilogy. The time of the novel is the closing months of the most senselessly savage of modern conflicts. In France, millions of men engaged in brutal trench warfare are all "ghosts in the making." In England, psychologist William Rivers, with severe pangs of conscience, treats the mental casualties of the war to make them whole enough to fight again. One of these, Billy Prior, risen to the officer class from the working class, both courageous and sardonic, decides to return to France with his fellow officer, poet Wilfred Owen, to fight a war he no longer believes in. Meanwhile, Rivers, enfevered by influenza, returns in memory to his experience studying a South Pacific tribe whose ethos amounted to a culture of death. Across the gulf between his society and theirs, Rivers begins to form connections that cast new light on his--and our--understanding of war.

Combining poetic intensity with gritty realism, blending biting humor with tragic drama, moving toward a denouement as inevitable as it is devastating, The Ghost Road both encapsulates history and transcends it. It is a modern masterpiece
Ěý]]> 288 Pat Barker 0452276721 Anne 5 4.10 1995 The Ghost Road (Regeneration, #3)
author: Pat Barker
name: Anne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1995
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Regeneration (Regeneration, #1)]]> 5872 Regeneration, one in Pat Barker's series of novels confronting the psychological effects of World War I, focuses on treatment methods during the war and the story of a decorated English officer sent to a military hospital after publicly declaring he will no longer fight. Yet the novel is much more. Written in sparse prose that is shockingly clear—the descriptions of electronic treatments are particularly harrowing—it combines real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a work that examines the insanity of war like no other. Barker also weaves in issues of class and politics in this compactly powerful book. Other books in the series include The Eye in the Door and the Booker Award winner The Ghost Road.]]> 256 Pat Barker 0140236236 Anne 5 4.04 1991 Regeneration (Regeneration, #1)
author: Pat Barker
name: Anne
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1991
rating: 5
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]]> Townie 8248617
After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed - or killing someone else. He signed on as a boxer.

Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash of worlds couldn't have been more stark - or more difficult for a son to communicate to a father. Only by becoming a writer himself could Andre begin to bridge the abyss and save himself. His memoir is a riveting, visceral, profound meditation on physical violence and the failures and triumphs of love.]]> 387 Andre Dubus III 0393064662 Anne 0 to-read 3.78 2011 Townie
author: Andre Dubus III
name: Anne
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/12/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)]]> 13507212 9780805090031)

Though he battled for years to marry her, Henry VIII has become disenchanted with the audacious Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son, and her sharp intelligence and strong will have alienated his old friends and the noble families of England.

When the discarded Katherine, Henry's first wife, dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice, setting in motion a dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over a few terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally himself with his enemies. What price will he pay for Annie's head?]]> 412 Hilary Mantel Anne 0 to-read 4.26 2012 Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Anne
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/12/12
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]]> This Is How You Lose Her 13503109
In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender, and funny, the stories in This Is How You Lose Her lay bare the infinite longing and inevitable weakness of the human heart. They remind us that passion always triumphs over experience, and that “the half-life of love is forever.”]]> 217 Junot Díaz 1594487367 Anne 0 to-read 3.74 2010 This Is How You Lose Her
author: Junot DĂ­az
name: Anne
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/12/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> Chicago Noir (Akashic Noir) 72830 --Chicago Sun-Times

" Chicago Noir asks us to consider whether Chicago is, specifically, a noir city and, more significantly, how noir plays out in the current landscape...Its stories push us to think about how noir might still be relevant beyond a bad-ass sort of nostalgia."
--American Book Review

"Chicago shouts noir from the top of the Sears Tower to the nether regions of Wacker Drive, from the crime-ridden West Side to the moneyed taint of the North...Perhaps most impressive about Pollack's collection is the wide variety of writers selected to contribute."
--Newcity

"The stories that editor Pollack has chosen to represent his former hometown vary wildly in voices, approaches and style...New interpretations, juxtaposed with classic structures, bring together the different faces of North and South, old and new."
--TimeOut Chicago

"Marshaling the talents of eighteen award winning and acclaimed writers, most of whom have professional and/or personal ties to Chicago, Pollack . . . pays homage to the city that epitomizes the noir genre . . . Demonstrating crisp, riveting pacing, dialog redolent with sardonic despair, and dark, nihilistic atmosphere, nearly all the entries are stellar examples of noir at its best."
--ForeWord

"The latest urban noir anthology provides the audience with eighteen delightful tales that pay homage to the ethnic neighborhoods and to the sports teams."
--Midwest Book Review

" Chicago Noir is a highly readable story collection which offers numerous fresh, inventive takes on the well-worn noir genre . . . A very enjoyable effort overall."
--Pete Lit

" Chicago Noir is a legitimate heir to the noble literary tradition of the greatest city in America. Nelson Algren and James Farrell would be proud."
--Stephen Elliott, author of Happy Baby

"If ever a city was made to be the home of noir, it’s Chicago. These writers go straight to Chicago’s noir heart."
--Aleksandar Hemon, author of Nowhere Man

Brand new stories Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeffery Renard Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills, C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre-Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer.

The city of Chicago has spent much time and money over the last decade marketing itself as a tourist-friendly place for the whole family. It's got a shiny new Millennium Park, a spaceship in the middle of Soldier Field, and thousands of identical faux-brick condo buildings that seem to spring from the ground overnight. Chicago's rough-and-tumble tough-guy reputation has been replaced by a postcard with a lake view.

But that city's not gone. The hard-bitten streets once represented by James Farrell and Nelson Algren may have shifted locales, and they may be populated by different ethnicities, but Chicago is still a place where people struggle to survive and where, for many, crime is the only means for their survival. The stories in Chicago Noir reclaim that territory.

Chicago Noir is populated by hired killers and jazz men, drunks and dreamers, corrupt cops and ticket scalpers and junkies. It's the Chicago that the Department of Tourism doesn't want you to see, a place where hard cases face their sad fates, and pay for their sins in blood. These are stories about blocks that visitors are afraid to walk. They tell of a Chicago beyond Oprah, Michael Jordan, and deep-dish pizza. This isn't someone's dream of Chicago. It's not even a nightmare. It's just the real city, unfiltered. Chicago Noir .]]> 252 Neal Pollack 1888451890 Anne 0 3.07 2005 Chicago Noir (Akashic Noir)
author: Neal Pollack
name: Anne
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2012/01/04
date added: 2012/09/19
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]]> The Fifth Queen Series 6318396
This masterful performance of historical fiction centers on Katharine Howard--clever, beautiful, and outspoken--who catches the jaded eye of Henry VIII and becomes his fifth Queen. Corruption and fear pervade the King's court, and the dimly lit corridors vibrate with the intrigues of unscrupulous courtiers hungry for power. Soon Katharine is locked in a vicious battle with Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal, as she fights for political and religious change.

Ford saw the past as an integral part of the present experience and understanding, and his sharply etched vision of the court of Henry VIII--first published in 1908--echoes aspects of Edwardian England as it explores the pervading influence of power, lies, fear, and anxiety on people's lives.]]> 592 Ford Madox Ford 1434465357 Anne 3 3.00 1908 The Fifth Queen Series
author: Ford Madox Ford
name: Anne
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1908
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence]]> 2306
The four novels in this Library of America volume show Wharton at the height of her powers as a social observer and critic, examining American and European lives with a vision rich in detail, satire, and tragedy. In all of them her strong and autobiographical impulse is disciplined by her writer’s craft and her unfailing regard for her audience.

The House of Mirth (1905), Wharton’s tenth book and her first novel of contemporary life, was an immediate runaway bestseller, with 140,000 copies in print within three months of publication. The story of young Lily Bart and her tragic sojourn among the upper class of turn-of-the-century New York, it touches on the insidious effects of social convention and upon the sexual and financial aggression to which women of independent spirit were exposed.

The Reef (1912) is the story of two couples whose marriage plans are upset by the revelation of a past affair between George Darrow (a mature bachelor) and Sophy Vener, who happens to be the fiancée of his future wife’s stepson. Henry James called the novel “a triumph of method,� and it shares the rich nuance of his own The Golden Bowl.

The Custom of the Country (1913) is the amatory saga of Undine Spragg of Apex City—beautiful, spoiled, and ambitious—whose charms conquer New York and European society. Vulgar and voracious, she presides over a series of men, representing the old and new aristocracies of both continents, in a comedy drawn unmistakably from life.

The Age of Innocence (1920) is set in the New York of Wharton’s youth, when the rules and taboos of her social “tribe� held as-yet unchallenged sway. A quasi-anthropological study of a remembered culture and its curious conventions, it tells the story of the Countess Olenska (formerly Ellen Mingott), refugee from a disastrous European marriage, and Newland Archer, heir to a tradition of respectability and family honor, as they struggle uneasily against their sexual attraction.]]> 1328 Edith Wharton 0940450313 Anne 4 4.31 1920 The House of Mirth / The Reef / The Custom of the Country / The Age of Innocence
author: Edith Wharton
name: Anne
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1920
rating: 4
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]]> A Room Of One's Own 1359188 A Room of One's Own grew out of a lecture that Virginia Woolf had been invited to give at Girton College, Cambridge, in 1928. Covering a range of topics --vwhy neither Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte could have written War and Peace, the silent fate of Shakespeare's gifted (and imaginary) sister, the effects of poverty and chastity on female creativity -- Woolf has given us one of the greatest feminist polemics of the century. Stage and screen actress Eileen Atkins makes the words of the gifted author come alive for established and new audiences alike. Read by Eileen Atkins. Running time: approx. 3 hours.]]> 0 Virginia Woolf 0736601597 Anne 5 4.20 1929 A Room Of One's Own
author: Virginia Woolf
name: Anne
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1929
rating: 5
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date added: 2012/01/29
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]]> The Marriage Plot 10964693
As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead - charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy - suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus - who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange - resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.

Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.]]> 406 Jeffrey Eugenides 0374203059 Anne 4 3.46 2011 The Marriage Plot
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Anne
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/01/11
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]]> The Custom of the Country 26950 - Anita Brookner]]> 370 Edith Wharton 0143039709 Anne 4 4.04 1913 The Custom of the Country
author: Edith Wharton
name: Anne
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1913
rating: 4
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]]> Rules of Civility 10054335 335 Amor Towles Anne 4 4.06 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Anne
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris]]> 11297434 Death in the City of Light is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld.

The main suspect was Dr. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma.ĚýHe was the “People’s Doctor,â€� known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor.ĚýPetiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150.

Who was being slaughtered, and why?ĚýWas Petiot a sexual sadist, as the press suggested, killing for thrills?ĚýWas he allied with the Gestapo, or, on the contrary, the French Resistance?ĚýOr did he work for no one other than himself?ĚýTrying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness.ĚýWhen Petiot was finally arrested, the French police hoped for answers.Ěý

But the trial soon became a circus.ĚýAttempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease.ĚýHis attorney, RenĂ© Floriot, a rising star in the world of criminal defense, also effectively, if aggressively, countered the charges.Ěý Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day.

Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions.]]> 416 David King 0307452891 Anne 3 3.54 2011 Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris
author: David King
name: Anne
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/01/04
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The first half of the book was quite engrossing, as the detectives hunt down the killer in Nazi occupied Paris. Well done descriptions of Occupied Paris, as well as all the competing forces that allowed the killer to flourish. The second half, concerned with the trial of the suspect is a lot dryer and not as interesting.
]]> <![CDATA[Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting]]> 5633583 368 Michael Perry 0061240435 Anne 4 3.94 2009 Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
author: Michael Perry
name: Anne
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2012/01/04
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]]> Away 217086 Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York's Lower East Side, to Seattle's Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom's work—her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart—come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.]]> 240 Amy Bloom 1400063566 Anne 3 3.37 2007 Away
author: Amy Bloom
name: Anne
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/01/04
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]]> Loving Frank 898885 I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.

So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.

In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright.

Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion.

Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.]]> 384 Nancy Horan 0345494997 Anne 3 3.76 2007 Loving Frank
author: Nancy Horan
name: Anne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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date added: 2012/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World]]> 11361213 290 Sam Sommers 1594488185 Anne 0 to-read 3.76 2011 Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World
author: Sam Sommers
name: Anne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2012/01/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> American Dervish 11080141
Mina is Hayat's mother's oldest friend from Pakistan. She is independent, beautiful and intelligent, and arrives on the Shah's doorstep when her disastrous marriage in Pakistan disintegrates. . Her deep spirituality brings the family's Muslim faith to life in a way that resonates with Hayat as nothing has before. He feels an entirely new purpose mingled with a growing infatuation for his teacher.

When Mina meets and begins dating a man, Hayat is confused by his feelings of betrayal. His growing passions, both spiritual and romantic, force him to question all that he has come to believe is true. Just as Mina finds happiness, Hayat is compelled to act -- with devastating consequences for all those he loves most.]]> 368 Ayad Akhtar 0316183318 Anne 0 to-read 3.69 2012 American Dervish
author: Ayad Akhtar
name: Anne
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2012/01/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> The House on Mango Street 139253 The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero.

Told in a series of vignettes � sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous–it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.]]> 110 Sandra Cisneros 0679734775 Anne 4 3.69 1984 The House on Mango Street
author: Sandra Cisneros
name: Anne
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/01/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Maid In Waiting (The Forsyte Chronicles, #7)]]> 1729347 Often incorrectly called THE FORSYTE SAGA, the nine novel sequence properly known as THE FORSYTE CHRONICLES contains three trilogies, of which the first trilogy is THE FORSYTE SAGA (THE MAN OF PROPERTY, IN CHANCERY, TO LET). The second trilogy, A MODERN COMEDY (THE WHITE MONKEY, THE SILVER SPOON, SWAN SONG) is followed by the third and concluding trilogy, END OF THE CHAPTER (MAID IN WAITING, FLOWERING WILDERNESS, ONE MORE RIVER). THE FORSYTE CHRONICLES has become established as one of the most popular and enduring works of twentieth century literature, described by the New York Times as: "A social satire of epic proportions and one that does not suffer by comparison with Thackeray's VANITY FAIR...the whole comedy of manners, convincing both in its fidelity to life and as a work of art."

]]> 0 John Galsworthy 0736643826 Anne 3 3.93 1931 Maid In Waiting (The Forsyte Chronicles, #7)
author: John Galsworthy
name: Anne
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1931
rating: 3
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date added: 2011/01/10
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Not the best Galsworthy, but a good read
]]> Dogfight, A Love Story 7726403 What Jonathan Lethem did for Brooklyn, Matt Burgess does for Queens in this exuberant and brilliant debut novel about a young drug dealer having a very bad weekend.

Alfredo Batista has some worries. Okay, a lot of worries. His older brother, Jose—sorry, Tariq—is returning from a stretch in prison after an unsuccessful robbery, a burglary that Alfredo was supposed to be part of. So now everyone thinks Alfredo snitched on his brother, which may have something to do with the fact that Alfredo is now dating Tariq’s ex-girlfriend, Isabel, who is eight months pregnant. Tariq’s violent streak is probably the #1 worry on Alfredo’s list.

Also, he needs to steal a pit bull. For the homecoming dogfight.

Burgess brings to life the rich and vivid milieu of his hometown native Queens in all its glorious variety. Here is the real New York, a place where Pakistanis, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, An­glos, African Americans, and West Indians scrap and mingle and love. But the real star here is Burgess’s incredible ear for language—the voices of his characters leap off the page in riotous, spot-on dialogue. The outer boroughs have their own language, where a polite greeting is fraught with menace, and an insult can be the expression of the most tender love.

With a story as intricately plotted as a Shakespearean comedy—or revenge tragedy, for that matter—and an electrically colloquial prose style, Dogfight, a Love Story establishes Matt Burgess as an exuberant new voice in contemporary literature. The great Queens novel has arrived.]]> 304 Matt Burgess 0385532989 Anne 0 to-read 3.57 2010 Dogfight, A Love Story
author: Matt Burgess
name: Anne
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Reporting at Wit's End: Tales from the New Yorker]]> 7215140
His articles for the New Yorker were defined by their clean language and incomporable wit, by his love of New York's rough edges and his affection for the working man (whether that work was come by honestly or not). Like Joseph Mitchell and A. J. Liebling, McKelway combined the unflagging curiosity of a great reporter with the narrative flair of a master storyteller. William Shawn, the magazine's long-time editor, described him as a writer with the "lightest of light touches." His style is so striking, Shawn went on to say, that "it was too odd to be imitated."

The pieces collected here are drawn from two of McKelway's books-- True Tales from the Annals of Crime and Rascality (1951 ) and The Big Little Man from Brooklyn (1969). His subjects are the small players who in their particulars defined life in New York during the 36 years McKelway the junkmen, boxing cornermen, counterfeiters, con artists, fire marshals, priests, and beat cops and detectives. The "rascals."

An amazing portrait of a long forgotten New York by the reporter who helped establish and utterly defined New Yorker "fact writing," Untitled Collection is long overdue celebration of a truly gifted writer.]]> 620 St. Clair McKelway 160819034X Anne 0 to-read 4.00 2010 Reporting at Wit's End: Tales from the New Yorker
author: St. Clair McKelway
name: Anne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Passage (The Passage, #1) 6690798 THIRTY-TWO MINUTES FOR ONE WORLD TO DIE, ANOTHER TO BE BORN.

First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.

As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—toward the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun.

With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterly prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.]]> 784 Justin Cronin 0345504968 Anne 0 to-read 4.04 2010 The Passage (The Passage, #1)
author: Justin Cronin
name: Anne
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2011/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Still Alice 2153405 Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...]]> 292 Lisa Genova 0595440096 Anne 2 4.32 2007 Still Alice
author: Lisa Genova
name: Anne
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2007
rating: 2
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date added: 2011/01/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn]]> 106959 336 Janis Hallowell 0060559209 Anne 2 3.28 2004 The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn
author: Janis Hallowell
name: Anne
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2004
rating: 2
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date added: 2011/01/05
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]]> The Patron Saint of Liars 15957 352 Ann Patchett 1841150509 Anne 4 3.81 1992 The Patron Saint of Liars
author: Ann Patchett
name: Anne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2011/01/01
date added: 2011/01/05
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]]> Truck: A Love Story 73967 Truck: A Love Story is the tale of a man struggling to grow his own garden, fix his old pickup, and resurrect a love life permanently impaired by Neil Diamond. In the process, he sets his hair on fire, is attacked by wild turkeys, and proposes marriage to a woman in New Orleans. The result is a surprisingly tender testament to love.]]> 304 Michael Perry 0060571179 Anne 4 3.96 2006 Truck: A Love Story
author: Michael Perry
name: Anne
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/10/21
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]]> The Night Watch 550720 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked-out streets, illicit partying, and sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941,ĚýThe Night Watch tells the story of four Londoners—three women and a young man with a past—whose lives, and those of their friends and lovers, connect in tragedy, stunning surprise and exquisite turns, only to change irreversibly in the shadow of a grand historical event.]]> 528 Sarah Waters 1594482306 Anne 4 3.68 2006 The Night Watch
author: Sarah Waters
name: Anne
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/10/21
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]]> A Field Guide to Getting Lost 76479 Wanderlust), or using the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge as a lens to discuss the transformations of space and time in late nineteenth-century America (River of Shadows), Rebecca Solnit has emerged as an inventive and original writer whose mind is daring in the connections it makes. A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.]]> 209 Rebecca Solnit 0143037242 Anne 3 3.97 2005 A Field Guide to Getting Lost
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Anne
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2005
rating: 3
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date added: 2010/10/21
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]]> Time of My Life 3521419
Yet somehow all of the how-to magazine stories in the world can’t seem to fix her faltering marriage, banish the tedium of days spent changing diapers, or stop her from asking, “What if?�

Then one morning Jillian wakes up seven years in the past. Before her daughter was born. Before she married Henry. Suddenly she’s back in her post–grad school Ikea-furnished Manhattan apartment. She’s back in her fast-paced job with the advertising agency. And she’s still with Jackson, the ex-boyfriend and star of her what-if fantasies.

Armed with twenty-twenty hindsight, she’s free to choose all over again. She can use the zippy ad campaigns from her future to wow the clients and bosses in her present. She can reconnect with the mother who abandoned her so many years before. She can fix the fights at every juncture that doomed her relationship with Jackson. Or can she?

With each new choice setting off a trajectory of unforeseen consequences, Jillian soon realizes that getting to happily ever after is more complicated than changing the lines in her part of the script. Happiness, it turns out, isn’t an either-or proposition. As she closes in on all the things she thought she wanted, Jillian must confront the greatest what-if of What if the problem was never Henry or Jackson, but her?

Sharp, funny, and heartwarming, Time of My Life will appeal to anyone who has ever wanted to redo the past and will leave readers pondering, “Do we get the reality we deserve?”]]> 287 Allison Winn Scotch 0307408574 Anne 2 3.44 2008 Time of My Life
author: Allison Winn Scotch
name: Anne
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2008
rating: 2
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date added: 2010/10/21
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]]> The Melting Season 6990257
Catherine Madison is headed West with a suitcase full of cash that isn't hers. She's just left the only home she's ever known, a small town in Nebraska, after the only man she had ever known, her husband, Thomas, deserted her. She's also left behind her deepest, most shameful secrets-among them a dysfunctional family she's never quite been able to escape and a marriage whose most intimate moments have plagued her with self-doubt. On the road, she was going to become a new person. Or so she thought.

But running away from the past isn't as easy as she had hoped. When Catherine reaches Las Vegas, she forms surprising new friendships that compel her to reveal what she had sworn she'd keep hidden, and teach her what human connection really means. Armed with this new knowledge, she is finally emboldened to uncover the truth about her family, come to understand what destroyed her marriage, and prevent her troubled sister from repeating her mistakes.

Deeply compassionate and unflinchingly bold, The Melting Season is the story of an indelible character's journey from isolation to belonging, as well as an honest look at the things we feel we deserve from our lives- and how far we will go to find them.]]> 289 Jami Attenberg 1594488967 Anne 2 3.05 2010 The Melting Season
author: Jami Attenberg
name: Anne
average rating: 3.05
book published: 2010
rating: 2
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date added: 2010/10/21
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I enjoyed the writing style, but ultimately didn't quite believe the secret revealed at the end.
]]> <![CDATA[The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work]]> 5293573 336 Alain de Botton 037542444X Anne 0 to-read 3.64 2008 The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
author: Alain de Botton
name: Anne
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2010/09/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> Salt: A World History 2715 484 Mark Kurlansky 0142001619 Anne 3 3.75 2002 Salt: A World History
author: Mark Kurlansky
name: Anne
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2002
rating: 3
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date added: 2010/08/04
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review:
Informative, but I found myself wanting it to be more concise, like Cod.
]]> <![CDATA[Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers]]> 32145 Stiff an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. In this fascinating account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.]]> 304 Mary Roach 0393324826 Anne 3 4.06 2003 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
author: Mary Roach
name: Anne
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2003
rating: 3
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date added: 2010/08/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Venetian Stories (Venetian Stories, #1)]]> 251576 304 Jane Turner Rylands 1400032628 Anne 4 3.48 2003 Venetian Stories (Venetian Stories, #1)
author: Jane Turner Rylands
name: Anne
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2010/07/01
date added: 2010/08/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)]]> 5060378 Millenium publisher Mikael Blomkvist has made his reputation exposing corrupt establishment figures. So when a young journalist approaches him with an investigation into sex trafficking, Blomkvist cannot resist waging war on the powerful figures who control this lucrative industry.

The Murder
When a young couple is found dead in their Stockholm apartment, it's a straightforward job for Inspector Bublanski and his team. The killer left the weapon at the scene - and the fingerprints on the gun point in only one direction.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
Ex-security analyst Lisbeth Salander is wanted for murder. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her. The only way Salander can be reached is by computer. But she can break into almost any network she chooses...]]> 503 Stieg Larsson 0307269981 Anne 3 4.25 2006 The Girl Who Played With Fire (Millennium #2)
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Anne
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2010/08/01
date added: 2010/08/04
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I cannot believe I actually wanted to read this one after I hated the first one so much, but his writing sneaks up on you, compelling you to find out what happens next. This one was much better written, with a tighter storyline.
]]> <![CDATA[Tocqueville's Discovery of America]]> 7314570
Damrosch shows that Tocqueville found much to admire in the dynamism of American society and in its egalitarian ideals. But he was offended by the ethos of grasping materialism and was convinced that the institution of slavery was bound to give rise to a tragic civil war.

Drawing on documents and letters that have never before appeared in English, as well as on a wide range of scholarship, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America brings the man, his ideas, and his world to startling life.]]> 304 Leo Damrosch 0374278172 Anne 0 to-read 3.98 2010 Tocqueville's Discovery of America
author: Leo Damrosch
name: Anne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2010/03/22
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]]> The Painted Veil 99664 The Painted Veil is the story of the beautiful, but love-starved Kitty Fane.

When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic. Stripped of the British society of her youth and the small but effective society she fought so hard to attain in Hong Kong, she is compelled by her awakening conscience to reassess her life and learn how to love.

The Painted Veil is a beautifully written affirmation of the human capacity to grow, to change, and to forgive.]]> 246 W. Somerset Maugham 0307277771 Anne 4 3.95 1925 The Painted Veil
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Anne
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1925
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/03/05
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]]> In the Tenth House 1019850
Gennett is a “mad doctor,� one of the few physicians in London aware of the new Freudian theories of the mind. His confidence shaken by the encounter, Gennett vows to find this young woman again, partly to help her and largely to prove to himself that she is not as supernatural as she seems. She has to be either mistaken or mad.

The truth is much worse.

Lily Embly is a fake medium but a real psychic–or at least she believes she is. Struggling to free herself from a lifetime of poverty and schooled as a charlatan by her mother, Lily works the strings and magnets of trickery at séances that have become wildly popular in Victorian England. Her false spirit messages are guided by the tarot cards and horoscopes she consults in secret. But when her mother falls ill, debt threatens to destroy them both.

Desperate, Lily has teamed up with a dangerous con man, Monsieur St. Aubin, to pull off a risky–and potentially very lucrative–séance. And when Gennett discovers that his own sister has fallen under the sway of the spiritual frenzy that has gripped the city, his sanity depends on exposing Lily as a fraud.

Only one can be right, and only one will survive.

Richly atmospheric, In the Tenth House conjures up a world of obsession and passion; it transports readers to an era that saw science and faith collide. Full of wit, insight, and fascinating historical detail, it is an astonishing debut.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 368 Laura Dietz 0307352846 Anne 2 2.68 2007 In the Tenth House
author: Laura Dietz
name: Anne
average rating: 2.68
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2010/02/01
date added: 2010/03/05
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An intriguing premise where a chance meeting between a doctor interested in Freud and a woman who reads tarot leads both to assume many wrong things and in the end switch places. Evocative of turn of the 19th century Britian, but the prose was difficult to follow, unnecessarily.
]]> White Noise 11762 310 Don DeLillo 0140283307 Anne 4 3.86 1985 White Noise
author: Don DeLillo
name: Anne
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1985
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/03/05
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]]> Then We Came to the End 97782
The characters in Then We Came To The End cope with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, secret romance, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. By day they compete for the best office furniture left behind and try to make sense of the mysterious pro-bono ad campaign that is their only remaining "work."]]> 387 Joshua Ferris 0316016381 Anne 4 3.47 2007 Then We Came to the End
author: Joshua Ferris
name: Anne
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2010/02/01
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]]> How We Decide 3860977
Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we “blink� and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the mind’s black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, they’re discovering that this is not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reason—and the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, it’s best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when we’re picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think.

Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences of a wide range of “deciders”—from airplane pilots and hedge fund investors to serial killers and poker players.

Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions that are of interest to just about anyone, from CEOs to firefighters: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?]]> 259 Jonah Lehrer 0618620117 Anne 4 3.84 2009 How We Decide
author: Jonah Lehrer
name: Anne
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/02/01
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]]> The Longest Journey 3101 The Longest Journey as the book "I am most glad to have written." An introspective novel of manners at once comic and tragic, it tells of a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent. He sets out full of hope to become a writer, but gives up his aspirations for those of the conventional world, gradually sinking into a life of petty conformity and bitter disappointments.]]> 396 E.M. Forster 0141441488 Anne 2 3.46 1907 The Longest Journey
author: E.M. Forster
name: Anne
average rating: 3.46
book published: 1907
rating: 2
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date added: 2010/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food]]> 1002540 New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese), Jennifer 8. Lee, traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of sociology and history, Jenny Lee exposes the indentured servitude Chinese restaurants expect from illegal immigrant chefs, investigates the relationship between Jews and Chinese food, and weaves a personal narrative about her own relationship with Chinese food. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles speaks to the immigrant experience as a whole, and the way it has shaped our country.]]> 307 Jennifer 8. Lee 0446580074 Anne 4 3.67 2008 The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
author: Jennifer 8. Lee
name: Anne
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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date added: 2010/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)]]> 2429135
An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.]]> 480 Stieg Larsson 0670069019 Anne 1 4.17 2005 The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)
author: Stieg Larsson
name: Anne
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2009/12/30
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review:
I dragged the hard cover half way round the world to New Zealand and would have thrown it away there if I hadn't needed for a book club discussion.
]]> Castle Barebane 1710851 Joan Aiken 0575021829 Anne 1 3.67 1976 Castle Barebane
author: Joan Aiken
name: Anne
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1976
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2009/12/29
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review:
I had a strange sense of de ja vu upon realizing that I'd read this book before, but then and even stranger feeling when I only recognized the first couple pages. I'm afraid that it wasn't worth a second read. I've read other works by Joan Aiken and enjoyed them, but this read too much like a paperback romance.
]]> The Children's Book 6280379
When Olive Wellwood’s oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip sketching in the basement of the new Victoria and Albert Museum—a talented working-class boy who could be a character out of one of Olive’s magical tales—she takes him into the storybook world of her family and friends.

But the joyful bacchanals Olive hosts at her rambling country house—and the separate, private books she writes for each of her seven children—conceal more treachery and darkness than Philip has ever imagined. As these lives—of adults and children alike—unfold, lies are revealed, hearts are broken, and the damaging truth about the Wellwoods slowly emerges. But their personal struggles, their hidden desires, will soon be eclipsed by far greater forces, as the tides turn across Europe and a golden era comes to an end.

Taking us from the cliff-lined shores of England to Paris, Munich, and the trenches of the Somme, The Children’s Book is a deeply affecting story of a singular family, played out against the great, rippling tides of the day. It is a masterly literary achievement by one of our most essential writers.]]> 675 A.S. Byatt 0307272095 Anne 4 3.67 2009 The Children's Book
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Anne
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2009/12/29
date added: 2009/12/29
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]]> The Children's Book 6806546
Into their world comes a young stranger, a working-class boy from the potteries, drawn by the beauty of the Museum's treasures. And in midsummer a German puppeteer arrives, bringing dark dramas. The world seems full of promise but the calm is already rocked by political differences, by Fabian arguments about class and free love, by the idealism of anarchists from Russia and Germany. The sons rebel against their parents' plans; the girls dream of independent futures, becoming doctors or fighting for the vote.

This vivid, rich and moving saga is played out against the great, rippling tides of the day, taking us from the Kent marshes to Paris and Munich, and the trenches of the Somme. Born at the end of the Victorian era, growing up in the golden summers of Edwardian times, a whole generation grew up unaware of the darkness ahead. In their innocence, they were betrayed unintentionally by the adults who loved them. In a profound sense, this novel is indeed the children's book.]]> 617 A.S. Byatt 0701183896 Anne 0 3.61 2009 The Children's Book
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Anne
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2009/12/29
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]]> Black Swan Green 14316
Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys� games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping� through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.

Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s most subtlest and effective achievement to date.]]> 296 David Mitchell 0812974018 Anne 3 3.97 2006 Black Swan Green
author: David Mitchell
name: Anne
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2009/11/01
date added: 2009/12/22
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]]> When We Were Orphans 28923
Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when his mother and father both vanish under suspicious circumstances. Sent to live in England, he grows up to become a renowned detective and, more than twenty years later, returns to Shanghai, where the Sino-Japanese War is raging, to solve the mystery of the disappearances.

The story is straightforward. Its telling is remarkable. Christopher's voice is controlled, detailed, and detached, its precision unsurprising in someone who has devoted his life to the examination of details and the rigors of objective thought. But within the layers of his narrative is slowly revealed what he can't, or won't, see: that his memory, despite what he wants to believe, is not unaffected by his childhood tragedies; that his powers of perception, the heralded clarity of his vision, can be blinding as well as enlightening; and that the simplest desires--a child's for his parents, a man's for understanding--may give rise to the most complicated truths.

A masterful combination of narrative control and soaring imagination, When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro at his best.]]> 320 Kazuo Ishiguro 0571225403 Anne 2 3.53 2000 When We Were Orphans
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Anne
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2000
rating: 2
read at: 2009/11/01
date added: 2009/12/22
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intriguing with it's structure, the conclusion was unforunately fairly unbelievable.
]]> Cloud Atlas 49628 A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles of genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian lore of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profund as it is playful. Now in his new novel, David Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity.

Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . .
Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history.
But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon.

]]> 509 David Mitchell 0375507256 Anne 4 4.02 2004 Cloud Atlas
author: David Mitchell
name: Anne
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2009/11/01
date added: 2009/12/22
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]]> The World to Come 92644 336 Dara Horn 0393329062 Anne 2 3.87 2006 The World to Come
author: Dara Horn
name: Anne
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2009/12/22
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The book started out pretty grim, with Russina pogroms carried out against jewish citizens, but the author drew a dizzying interconnected story between past and present that was ultimately life affirming.
]]> The Uses of Enchantment 971027 356 Heidi Julavits 1400078113 Anne 2 3.17 2001 The Uses of Enchantment
author: Heidi Julavits
name: Anne
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2001
rating: 2
read at: 2008/02/01
date added: 2009/12/22
shelves:
review:
The story line was compelling enough to race through the book, trying to figure out the truth about what actually happend 19 years earlier when a girl gets into a car with a stranger. Most of my book club didn't like the book, but I found the storytelling to be compelling
]]> <![CDATA[The Sixth Wife (Tudor Saga, #7)]]> 156587 Dangerous court intrigue and affairs of the heart collide as renowned novelist Jean Plaidy tells the story of Katherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's six queens.

Henry VIII's fifth wife, Katherine Howard, was both foolish and unfaithful, and she paid for it with her life. Henry vowed that his sixth wife would be different, and she was. Katherine Parr was twice widowed and thirty-one years old. A thoughtful, well-read lady, she was known at court for her unblemished reputation and her kind heart. She had hoped to marry for love and had set her heart on Thomas Seymour, the dashing brother of Henry's third queen. But the aging king--more in need of a nurse than a wife--was drawn to her, and Katherine could not refuse his proposal of marriage.

Queen Katherine was able to soothe the King's notorious temper, and his three children grew fond of her, the only mother they had ever really known. Trapped in a loveless marriage to a volatile tyrant, books were Katherine's consolation. But among her intellectual pursuits was an interest in Lutheranism--a religion that the king saw as a threat to his supremacy as head of the new Church of England. Courtiers envious of the Queen's influence over Henry sought to destroy her by linking her with the "radical" religious reformers. Henry raged that Katherine had betrayed him, and had a warrant drawn up for her arrest and imprisonment. At court it was whispered that the king would soon execute yet another wife. Henry's sixth wife would have to rely on her wits to survive where two other women had perished. . . .]]> 304 Jean Plaidy 060981026X Anne 2 3.94 1953 The Sixth Wife (Tudor Saga, #7)
author: Jean Plaidy
name: Anne
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1953
rating: 2
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date added: 2009/12/22
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Made me glad to not be a queen
]]> Sense and Sensibility 14935 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780141439662

'The more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!'

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love.

This edition includes explanatory notes, textual variants between the first and second editions, and Tony Tanner's introduction to the original Penguin Classic edition.]]> 409 Jane Austen 0141439661 Anne 4 4.10 1811 Sense and Sensibility
author: Jane Austen
name: Anne
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1811
rating: 4
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date added: 2009/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Mary, Queen of France (Tudor Saga, #9)]]> 159828 Legendary historical novelist Jean Plaidy brings to life the story of Princess Mary Tudor, a celebrated beauty and born rebel who would defy the most powerful king in Europe--her older brother.

Princess Mary Rose is the youngest sister of Henry VIII, and one of the few people whom he adores unconditionally. Known throughout Europe for her charm and good looks, Mary is the golden child of the Tudor family and is granted her every wish.

Except when it comes to marriage. Henry VIII, locked in a political showdown with France, decides to offer up his pampered baby sister to secure peace between the two mighty kingdoms. Innocent, teenage Mary must become the wife of the elderly King Louis, a toothless, ailing man in his sixties. Horrified and furious, Mary has no choice but to sail for France. There she hones her political skills, bides her time, and remains secretly in love with Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. When King Louis dies after only two years of marriage, Mary is determined not to be sold into another unhappy union. She must act quickly; if she wants to be with the man she truly loves, she must defy the laws of church and state by marrying without her brother's permission. Together, Mary and Charles devise a scheme to outwit the most ruthless king in Europe and gain their hearts' desire, not knowing if it will lead to marital bliss or certain death.]]> 304 Jean Plaidy 0609810219 Anne 2 3.81 1964 Mary, Queen of France (Tudor Saga, #9)
author: Jean Plaidy
name: Anne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1964
rating: 2
read at: 2007/09/01
date added: 2009/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2)]]> 1914973 In the Woods, itʼs six months later and Cassie Maddox has transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad with no plans to go back—until an urgent telephone call summons her to a grisly crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries ID identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Cassie must discover not only who killed this girl, but, more important, who was this girl?]]> 466 Tana French 0670018864 Anne 2 4.05 2008 The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2)
author: Tana French
name: Anne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2008
rating: 2
read at: 2009/09/24
date added: 2009/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen]]> 13747
Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year.

At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crépes, she realizes there’s more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye. With Julia’s stern warble always in her ear, Julie haunts the local butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads. She sends her husband on late-night runs for yet more butter and rarely serves dinner before midnight. She discovers how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian, the trick to extracting marrow from bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver.

And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life’s ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.]]> 310 Julie Powell 031610969X Anne 3 3.74 2005 Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
author: Julie Powell
name: Anne
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2007/12/01
date added: 2009/12/22
shelves:
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A fellow book club member told me she never picks up a book unless she likes the first sentence. With that thought in my head, I wasn't sure if I actually liked the writer in the first chapter, but I actually never put any book down after starting it, so I ate through (forgive the pun) the entire thing yesterday, sequestered by an ice storm. After all the heavy reading I've been doing, it was nice to have a pleasant end to a book. It's a hopeful tale about finding a path by following ones passion.
]]> Middlemarch 19089 "People are almost always better than their neighbours think they are"

George Eliot’s most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people".]]> 912 George Eliot 0451529170 Anne 5 4.00 1872 Middlemarch
author: George Eliot
name: Anne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1872
rating: 5
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date added: 2009/12/22
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]]> My Cousin Rachel 50239
Now Rachel has arrived at Philip's newly inherited estate. Could this exquisite woman, who seems to genuinely share Philip's grief at Ambrose's death, really be as cruel as Philip imagined? Or is she the kind, passionate woman with whom Ambrose fell in love? Philip struggles to answer this question, knowing Ambrose's estate, and his own future, will be destroyed if his answer is wrong.

Bonus Reading Group Guide Included]]> 374 Daphne du Maurier 1579125697 Anne 3 3.87 1951 My Cousin Rachel
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Anne
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2009/12/22
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review:

]]>