Charlotte's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 06:22:21 -0700 60 Charlotte's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Umbrella Maker's Son 213555988 For fans of Heather Morris and Lisa Barr, a powerful and unforgettable novel of survival against all odds and the remarkable power of love, in which a Jewish teenager in World War II Poland fights to save his life and find the young woman who holds his heart.

Born to a secure, middle-class Polish Jewish family, seventeen-year-old Reuven works alongside his father, an artisan businessman whose shop creates the finest handmade umbrellas in Poland. But the family’s peaceful life shatters when the Nazis invade their homeland, igniting World War II. With terrifying brutality, the Nazis confiscate their business, evict them from their home, and strip away their rights, threatening the lives of the city’s Jewish population, including Reuven and Zelda, the girl he loves.

Shortly after the Nazi occupation, Zelda and her family disappear, and Reuven and his father are forced into backbreaking physical labor that nearly kills them. For the young man and his family, the only chance to survive is escape—and some of them will die trying.

Fleeing a Nazi ambush through the surrounding forest, shot and wounded, Reuven is found by a local farmer who has never met a Jew—and agrees to help because he needs the boy to work the farm with him. The farmer’s wife, however, is not as kind. Her betrayal forces a desperate Reuven to escape. He embarks on a perilous journey through the Polish countryside, determined to reach the Kraków ghetto where he hopes to reunite with Zelda, whose life has also been forever changed by the horrors of occupation and war.

A love story and a story of family,ĚýThe Umbrella Maker’s SonĚýis a riveting, heartfelt, and beautiful tale of survival and unexpected hope in the face of terror and violence. A chronicle of triumph, it joins the ranks ofĚýThe Tattooist of AuschwitzĚýand other memorable works ofĚýmodern Holocaust literature.

Ěý]]> 400 Tod Lending 0063413841 Charlotte 0 to-read, to-read-not-bought 4.16 The Umbrella Maker's Son
author: Tod Lending
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: to-read, to-read-not-bought
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dragon Queen (The Dragon #2)]]> 36661214 From the bestselling author of Daughters of the Dragon comes the story of one of the most extraordinary queens in history.

As tensions rise on the Korean peninsula, US diplomat Nate Simon is sent to Seoul to gauge the political situation and advise the president. He also needs to find out why someone sent the president an ancient, intricately carved comb with an ivory inlay of a two-headed dragon. Though familiar with Korea’s language and culture, Nate knows little of its troubled history. Beautiful and mysterious embassy aide Anna Carlson believes it’s time he learns, starting with the extraordinary story of Korea’s last queen.

Seoul, 1866. The beautiful orphan Ja-young is chosen to be the child bride of Gojong, Korea’s boy king. Highly intelligent but shy, Ja-young faces a choice: she can be a stone queen—silent and submissive—or she can be a dragon queen and oppose enemies and empires that try to rule Korea during the age of imperialism. Her choice leads her to forge a legend that will endure far beyond her lifetime.

The more Nate discovers, the more he comes to realize that Queen Min’s story is still relevant today. Now the choice is up to him: be submissive and accepting…or change the world.]]> 322 William Andrews 1503955362 Charlotte 0 currently-reading 4.27 2018 The Dragon Queen (The Dragon #2)
author: William Andrews
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Have You Seen Me? 53402481
From New York Times bestselling author Kate White comes a gripping novel about one woman’s dangerous quest to recover lost memories someone would rather she never find.

The key to her missing memories could bring relief—or unlock her worst nightmares.

On a cold, rainy morning, finance journalist Ally Linden arrives early to work in her Manhattan office, only to find that she’s forgotten her keycard and needs to have a colleague she’s never met let her in. When her boss finally arrives, he seems surprised to see her—because she hasn’t worked there in five years.

Ally knows her name, but little else, and it’s only after several hours in an emergency room and multiple interviews with the hospital psychiatrist that she begins to piece together important facts: she lives on the Upper West Side; she’s now a freelance personal finance journalist; she’s married to a lovely man named Hugh. But she’s still can’t recall what happened to her during the previous two days. When she learns that she’s experienced a dissociative fugue state, Ally tries to think of triggers and remembers that she’d been seeing a therapist about a traumatic event from her childhood, in which she came across evidence for a murder that was never solved.

Desperate to unearth answers, Ally focuses on figuring out where she spent the missing forty-eight hours. As ominous details of the two days pile up, so does the terrifying pressure: she must recover the time she lost before the time she has left runs out.

Featuring Kate White’s signature twists and turns, Have You Seen Me is a harrowing read that will keep readers guessing until its shocking ending.]]> Kate White Charlotte 3 This one was kind of blah. I didn't care for the main character or the other characters. I was a little surprised at who done it at the end and that was a saving grace to this book.
Would I read this author again. No, not really. ]]> 3.27 2020 Have You Seen Me?
author: Kate White
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves:
review:
This one was just OK for me. I think I have been reading a lot of books like this lately for my Mystery Book Club. Woman forgets stuff, someone is always trying to kill her, romantic life is on the rocks, past lover. And there is nothing wrong with the story line but it is the way it is told also.
This one was kind of blah. I didn't care for the main character or the other characters. I was a little surprised at who done it at the end and that was a saving grace to this book.
Would I read this author again. No, not really.
]]> <![CDATA[Face to Face: Praying the Scriptures for Intimate Worship (v. 1)]]> 129085988 352 Kenneth D. Boa Charlotte 0 currently-reading 5.00 2011 Face to Face: Praying the Scriptures for Intimate Worship (v. 1)
author: Kenneth D. Boa
name: Charlotte
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Listen for the Lie 217387923 What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

After Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all, and if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life.

But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast "Listen for the Lie," and its too-good looking host Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one that did it.]]> 352 Amy Tintera 1250880335 Charlotte 0 to-read 4.35 2024 Listen for the Lie
author: Amy Tintera
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wedding People 222348800 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN 9781250899576 can be found here

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

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

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 367 Alison Espach 1250899575 Charlotte 0 to-read 4.14 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> There Are Rivers in the Sky 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.�]]> 464 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Charlotte 0 to-read, to-read-not-bought 4.38 2024 There Are Rivers in the Sky
author: Elif Shafak
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-not-bought
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Next Mrs. Parrish (Mrs. Parrish, #2)]]> 198563729 Daphne and Amber Parrish are thrust back into each other’s lives upon the resurgence of a long-forgotten threat, forcing a vicious game of cat and mouse where everything is on the line, in this thrilling sequel to the million-copy-bestselling Reese’s Book Club pick The Last Mrs. Parrish.

Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way from being an invisible wallflower. Her hard work and immaculate planning have paid off now that she’s a prominent socialite, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been bumps along the way. Less than a year since her husband Jackson’s tax-evasion scandal, Amber is still at the top of the Bishops Harbor community pecking order, free to do as she wishes while Jackson sits in prison. But that freedom is quickly coming to an end. With Jackson getting released from prison, Amber’s time—and money—is vanishing.

Meanwhile, Daphne Parrish left Bishops Harbor after her divorce from Jackson Parrish, swearing she would never go back. But when one of her daughters runs away from home, desperate to see her father, Daphne agrees to return for the summer to allow him supervised visits. Once out of prison, Jackson swears he’s a changed man, but Daphne knows all too well that he can’t be trusted.

When a ghost from Amber’s past emerges looking for revenge, the three of them find unlikely allies in one another, but who is playing who? When all is said and done, they’ll have to fight tooth and nail for everything they have left in this zero-sum game.

With shocking turns and entertaining characters, The Next Mrs. Parrish will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about duplicity and betrayal.]]> 336 Liv Constantine 0593599926 Charlotte 0 to-read, to-read-not-bought 3.75 2024 The Next Mrs. Parrish (Mrs. Parrish, #2)
author: Liv Constantine
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read, to-read-not-bought
review:

]]> A Harvest of Thorns 29492073 A beloved American corporation with an explosive secret. A disgraced former journalist looking for redemption. A corporate executive with nothing left to lose.

In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a garment factory burns to the ground, claiming the lives of hundreds of workers, mostly young women. Amid the rubble, a bystander captures a heart-stopping photograph—a teenage girl lying in the dirt, her body broken by a multi-story fall, and over her mouth a mask of fabric bearing the label of one of America’s largest retailers, Presto Omnishops Corporation.

Eight thousand miles away, at Presto’s headquarters in Virginia, Cameron Alexander, the company’s long-time general counsel, watches the media coverage of the fire in horror, wondering if the damage can be contained. When the photo goes viral, fanning the flames of a decades old controversy about sweatshops, labor rights, and the ethics of globalization, he launches an investigation into the disaster that will reach farther than he could ever imagine - and threaten everything he has left in the world.

A year later, in Washington, D.C., Joshua Griswold, a disgraced former journalist from the Washington Post, receives an anonymous summons from a corporate whistleblower who offers him confidential information about Presto and the fire. For Griswold, the challenge of exposing Presto’s culpability is irresistible, as is the chance, however slight, at redemption. Deploying his old journalistic skills, he builds a historic case against Presto, setting the stage for a war in the courtroom and in the media that Griswold is determined to win—both to salvage his reputation and to provoke a revolution of conscience in Presto’s boardroom that could transform the fashion industry across the globe.]]> 368 Corban Addison 0718042387 Charlotte 0 4.09 2017 A Harvest of Thorns
author: Corban Addison
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2024, books-i-own, authors-read-in-2024, thriftbook-reads, book-on-deck
review:

]]> Homecoming 61683285
Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.

Nora has always been a vibrant and strong presence: decisive, encouraging, young despite her years. When Jess visits her in the hospital, she is alarmed to find her grandmother frail and confused. It’s even more alarming to hear from Nora's housekeeper that Nora had been distracted in the weeks before her accident and had fallen on the steps to the attic—the one place Jess was forbidden from playing in when she was small.

At loose ends in Nora's house, Jess does some digging of her own. In Nora's bedroom, she discovers a true crime book, chronicling the police investigation into a long-buried tragedy: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. It is only when Jess skims through the book that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous crime—a crime that has never been resolved satisfactorily. And for a journalist without a story, a cold case might be the best distraction she can find�

An epic novel that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, and how we protect the lies we tell. It explores the power of motherhood, the corrosive effects of tightly held secrets, and the healing nature of truth. Above all, it is a beguiling and immensely satisfying novel from one of the finest writers working today.]]> 547 Kate Morton 0063020890 Charlotte 0 4.00 2023 Homecoming
author: Kate Morton
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, next-books-to-read
review:

]]> Miss Benson's Beetle 52674676 She's going too far to go it alone.

It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist--the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom sandals seems to attract trouble wherever she goes. But together these two British women find themselves drawn into a cross-ocean adventure that exceeds all expectations and delivers something neither of them expected to find: the transformative power of friendship.]]> 352 Rachel Joyce 0593230957 Charlotte 0 4.03 2020 Miss Benson's Beetle
author: Rachel Joyce
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, thriftbook-reads, to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Unknown Americans 18465852
After their daughter Maribel suffers a near-fatal accident, the Riveras leave MĂ©xico and come to America. But upon settling at Redwood Apartments, a two-story cinderblock complex just off a highway in Delaware, they discover that Maribel's recovery--the piece of the American Dream on which they've pinned all their hopes--will not be easy. Every task seems to confront them with language, racial, and cultural obstacles.

At Redwood also lives Mayor Toro, a high school sophomore whose family arrived from Panamá fifteen years ago. Mayor sees in Maribel something others do not: that beyond her lovely face, and beneath the damage she's sustained, is a gentle, funny, and wise spirit. But as the two grow closer, violence casts a shadow over all their futures in America.

Peopled with deeply sympathetic characters, this poignant yet unsentimental tale of young love tells a riveting story of unflinching honesty and humanity that offers a resonant new definition of what it means to be an American. An instant classic is born.]]> 286 Cristina HenrĂ­quez 0385350848 Charlotte 0 3.88 2014 The Book of Unknown Americans
author: Cristina HenrĂ­quez
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2021, library-audio-libby, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile]]> 12796941 No one believed I was destined for greatness.

So begins Isabella’s story, in this evocative, vividly imagined novel about one of history’s most famous and controversial queens—the warrior who united a fractured country, the champion of the faith whose reign gave rise to the Inquisition, and the visionary who sent Columbus to discover a New World. Acclaimed author C. W. Gortner envisages the turbulent early years of a woman whose mythic rise to power would go on to transform a monarchy, a nation, and the world.

Young Isabella is barely a teenager when she and her brother are taken from their mother’s home to live under the watchful eye of their half-brother, King Enrique, and his sultry, conniving queen. There, Isabella is thrust into danger when she becomes an unwitting pawn in a plot to dethrone Enrique. Suspected of treason and held captive, she treads a perilous path, torn between loyalties, until at age seventeen she suddenly finds herself heiress of Castile, the largest kingdom in Spain. Plunged into a deadly conflict to secure her crown, she is determined to wed the one man she loves yet who is forbidden to her—Fernando, prince of Aragon.

As they unite their two realms under “one crown, one country, one faith,� Isabella and Fernando face an impoverished Spain beset by enemies. With the future of her throne at stake, Isabella resists the zealous demands of the inquisitor Torquemada even as she is seduced by the dreams of an enigmatic navigator named Columbus. But when the Moors of the southern domain of Granada declare war, a violent, treacherous battle against an ancient adversary erupts, one that will test all of Isabella’s resolve, her courage, and her tenacious belief in her destiny.

From the glorious palaces of Segovia to the battlefields of Granada and the intrigue-laden gardens of Seville, The Queen’s Vow sweeps us into the tumultuous forging of a nation and the complex, fascinating heart of the woman who overcame all odds to become Isabella of Castile.]]> 400 C.W. Gortner Charlotte 0 3.91 2012 The Queen's Vow: A Novel of Isabella of Castile
author: C.W. Gortner
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2021, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Leopard at the Door 29940520
As Rachel struggles to find her place in her home and her country, she initiates a covert relationship, one that will demand from her a gross act of betrayal. One man knows her secret, and he has made it clear how she can buy his silence. But she knows something of her own, something she has never told anyone. And her knowledge brings her power.]]> 400 Jennifer McVeigh 0399158251 Charlotte 0 3.96 2017 Leopard at the Door
author: Jennifer McVeigh
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2021, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Sun Also Rises 91878 Vintage hardcover 256 Ernest Hemingway 0020518706 Charlotte 0 3.66 1926 The Sun Also Rises
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2021, classic-reading, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Stormy Weather 3384467 368 Paulette Jiles 0060537337 Charlotte 0 3.83 2007 Stormy Weather
author: Paulette Jiles
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2021, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> A Farewell to Arms 46167 The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse.

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway’s frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto—of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized—is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was thirty years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.]]> 332 Ernest Hemingway Charlotte 0 3.67 1929 A Farewell to Arms
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2021, classic-reading, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Sisters, Three Queens (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #8)]]> 28251813
“There is only one bond that I trust: between a woman and her sisters. We never take our eyes off each other. In love and in rivalry, we always think of each other.�

When Katherine of Aragón is brought to the Tudor court as a young bride, the oldest princess, Margaret, takes her measure. With one look, each knows the other for a rival, an ally, a pawn, destined—with Margaret’s younger sister Mary—to a sisterhood unique in all the world. The three sisters will become the queens of England, Scotland, and France.

United by family loyalties and affections, the three queens find themselves set against each other. Katherine commands an army against Margaret and kills her husband James IV of Scotland. But Margaret’s boy becomes heir to the Tudor throne when Katherine loses her son. Mary steals the widowed Margaret’s proposed husband, but when Mary is widowed it is her secret marriage for love that is the envy of the others. As they experience betrayals, dangers, loss, and passion, the three sisters find that the only constant in their perilous lives is their special bond, more powerful than any man, even a king.]]> 556 Philippa Gregory 1476758573 Charlotte 0 3.74 2016 Three Sisters, Three Queens (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #8)
author: Philippa Gregory
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2021, books-i-own, book-series-to-start-and-finish, library-audio-libby, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Universal Tone: My Life 21423243 In 1967 in San Francisco, just a few weeks after the Summer of Love, a young Mexican guitarist took the stage at the Fillmore Auditorium and played a blistering solo that announced the arrival of a prodigious musical talent. Two years later -- after he played a historic set at Woodstock -- the world came to know the name Carlos Santana, his sensual and instantly recognizable guitar sound, and the legendary band that blended electric blues, psychedelic rock, Latin rhythms, and modern jazz, and that still bears his name.
Carlos Santana's unforgettable memoir offers a page-turning tale of musical self-determination and inner self-discovery, with personal stories filled with colorful detail and life-affirming lessons. "The Universal Tone "traces his journey from his earliest days playing the strip bars in Tijuana while barely in his teens and brings to light the establishment of his signature guitar sound; his roles as husband, father, recording legend, and rock guitar star; his indebtedness to musical and spiritual influences -- from John Coltrane and John Lee Hooker to Miles Davis and Harry Belafonte; and his deep, lifelong dedication to a spiritual path that he developed from his Catholic upbringing, Eastern philosophies, and other mystical sources. It includes his recording some of the most popular and influential rock albums of all time, up to and beyond the 1999 sensation "Supernatural, "which garnered nine Grammy Awards and stands as arguably the most amazing career comeback in popular music history.
It's a profoundly inspiring tale of divine inspiration and musical fearlessness that does not balk at finding the humor in the world of high-flying fame, or at speaking plainly of Santana's personal revelations and the infinite possibility he sees in each person he meets. "Love is the light that is inside of all of us, everyone," he writes. "I salute the light that you are and that is inside your heart."]]> 526 Carlos Santana 0316244910 Charlotte 0 4.08 2014 The Universal Tone: My Life
author: Carlos Santana
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2021, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Girls Like Us 8584951

A deeply moving story by a survivor of the commercial sex industry who has devoted her career to activism and helping other young girls escape "the life"

At thirteen, Rachel Lloyd found herself caught up in a world of pain and abuse, struggling to survive as a child with no responsible adults to support her. Vulnerable yet tough, she eventually ended up a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. It took time and incredible resilience, but finally, with the help of a local church community, she broke free of her pimp and her past.

Three years later, Lloyd arrived in the United States to work with adult women in the sex industry and soon founded her own nonprofit— GEMS, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services—to meet the needs of other girls with her history. She also earned her GED and won full scholarships to college and a graduate program. Today Lloyd is executive director of GEMS in New York City and has turned it into one of the nation's most groundbreaking nonprofit organizations.

In Girls Like Us, Lloyd reveals the dark, secretive world of her past in stunning cinematic detail. And, with great humanity, she lovingly shares the stories of the girls whose lives she has helped—; small victories that have healed her wounds and made her whole. Revelatory, authentic, and brave, Girls Like Us is an unforgettable memoir.

]]> 277 Rachel Lloyd 0061582050 Charlotte 0 4.34 2011 Girls Like Us
author: Rachel Lloyd
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, under-300-pages, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2021, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity]]> 18289396 304 Nabeel Qureshi 0310515025 Charlotte 0 4.56 2014 Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity
author: Nabeel Qureshi
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, spiritual-faith-based, library-audio-libby, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Moon Women 501329
For here is Ashley, who has spent nineteen years running furiously away from home, now finding herself on a strange journey with her unraveling grandmother. And here is Cassandra, protected by layers of obesity and loneliness, wondering how to put magic back in her life. And Marvelle, slowly losing touch with reality, privately contemplating the story of her life and the secret that would change everything for everyone—if they only knew.... By turns fierce and tender, harrowing and heartbreaking, Moon Women resonates with emotional power, holding us captive under its beguiling spell.]]> 384 Pamela Duncan 0385335210 Charlotte 0 3.74 2001 Moon Women
author: Pamela Duncan
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2022, books-i-own, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Distance Between Us 13260227 325 Reyna Grande 1451661770 Charlotte 0 4.35 2012 The Distance Between Us
author: Reyna Grande
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Child in Time 6869 The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of the finest writers of his generation.]]> 263 Ian McEwan 0385497520 Charlotte 0 3.60 1987 The Child in Time
author: Ian McEwan
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Arctic Fury 49181796 408 Greer Macallister 1728215692 Charlotte 0 3.81 2020 The Arctic Fury
author: Greer Macallister
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Splendor Before the Dark (Nero, #2)]]> 38599383
With the beautiful and cunning Poppaea at his side, Nero Augustus commands the Roman empire, ushering in an unprecedented era of artistic and cultural splendor. Although he has yet to produce an heir, his power is unquestioned.

But in the tenth year of his reign, a terrifying prophecy comes to pass and a fire engulfs Rome, reducing entire swaths of the city to rubble. Rumors of Nero's complicity in the blaze start to sow unrest among the populace--and the politicians...

For better or worse, Nero knows that his fate is now tied to Rome's--and he vows to rebuild it as a city that will stun the world. But there are those who find his rampant quest for glory dangerous. Throughout the empire, false friends and spies conspire against him, not understanding what drives him to undertake the impossible.

Nero will either survive and be the first in his family to escape the web of betrayals that is the Roman court, or be ensnared and remembered as the last radiance of the greatest dynasty the world had ever known.]]> 528 Margaret George 0399584617 Charlotte 0 3.87 2018 The Splendor Before the Dark (Nero, #2)
author: Margaret George
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, book-series-to-start-and-finish, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Malibu Rising 55404546 Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them... and what they will leave behind.]]> 369 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798657 Charlotte 0 4.02 2021 Malibu Rising
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, to-read, thriftbook-reads, my-audible-books
review:

]]> The Social Graces 42292877 The author of Park Avenue Summer throws back the curtain on one of the most remarkable feuds in history: Mrs. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Astor's notorious battle for control of New York society during the Gilded Age.

In the glittering world of Manhattan's upper crust, where wives turn a blind eye to husbands' infidelities, and women have few rights and even less independence, society is everything. The more celebrated the hostess, the more powerful the woman. And none is more powerful than Caroline Astor—the Mrs. Astor.

But times are changing.

Alva Vanderbilt has recently married into one of America's richest families. But what good is money when society refuses to acknowledge you? Alva, who knows what it is to have nothing, will do whatever it takes to have everything.

Sweeping three decades and based on true events, this is a gripping novel about two fascinating, complicated women going head to head, behaving badly, and discovering what’s truly at stake.]]> 400 Renée Rosen 198480281X Charlotte 0 3.87 2021 The Social Graces
author: Renée Rosen
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Hummingbird's Daughter 91289
It is 1889, and the civil war is brewing in Mexico. Sixteen year old Teresita, illegitimate but beloved daughter of the wealthy and powerful rancher Don Tomas Urrea, wakes from the strangest dream - a dream that she has died. Only it was not a dream. This passionate and rebellious young woman has arisen from the dead with the power to heal - but it will take all her faith to endure the trials that await her and her family now that she has become the Saint of Cabora.

The Hummingbird's Daughter is a vast, hugely satisfying novel of love and loss, joy and pain. Two decades in the writing, this is the masterpiece that Luis Alberto Urrea has been building up to.]]> 499 Luis Alberto Urrea 0316154520 Charlotte 0 4.20 2005 The Hummingbird's Daughter
author: Luis Alberto Urrea
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Honor 56271394 Ěý
IndianĚýAmerican journalistĚýSmita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena—a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man—Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past. While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita tries in every way she can to right the scales. She also finds herself increasingly drawn to Mohan, an Indian man she meets while on assignment. But the dual love stories of Honor are as different as the cultures of Meena and Smita themselves: Smita realizes she has the freedom to enter into a casual affair, knowing she can decide later how much it means to her.

In this tender and evocative novel about love, hope, familial devotion, betrayal, and sacrifice, Thrity Umrigar shows us two courageous women trying to navigate how to be true to their homelands and themselves at the same time.]]> 326 Thrity Umrigar 161620995X Charlotte 0 4.32 2022 Honor
author: Thrity Umrigar
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, library-audio-libby, new-books-bought-2022, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ministry of Intercession (Updated and Annotated): A Plea for More Prayer (Murray Updated Classics Book 1)]]> 29587355 If ye abide in me and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. It becomes clear that the power to pray the effectual prayer of faith depends upon the life.

Let Andrew Murray show you what it means to live in Christ, and let his challenge for genuine intercessory prayer change your life � and the lives of those you are praying for.

About the Author
Andrew Murray (1828-1917) was a well-known South African writer, teacher, and pastor. More than 2 million copies of his books have been sold, and his name is mentioned among the other great leaders of the past such as Charles Spurgeon, T. Austin-Sparks, George Muller, D.L. Moody, and more.
]]> 207 Andrew Murray 1622453409 Charlotte 0 4.50 1897 The Ministry of Intercession (Updated and Annotated): A Plea for More Prayer (Murray Updated Classics Book 1)
author: Andrew Murray
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1897
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: books-i-own, new-books-bought-2022, spiritual-faith-based, under-300-pages, to-read, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Time in Between 10836813 The Time In Between is a word-of-mouth phenomenon that catapulted María Dueñas, a debut author, to the top of Spain's bestseller lists.

This sweeping novel, which combines the storytelling power of The Shadow of the Wind with the irresistible romance of Casablanca, moves at an unstoppable pace. Suddenly left abandoned and penniless in Morocco by her lover, Sira Quiroga forges a new identity. Against all odds she becomes the most sought-after couture designer for the socialite wives of German Nazi officers. But she is soon embroiled in a dangerous political conspiracy as she passes information to the British Secret Service through a code stitched into the hems of her dresses.]]> 615 María Dueñas 1451616880 Charlotte 0 4.12 2009 The Time in Between
author: María Dueñas
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2023, books-i-own, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Fair and Tender Ladies 2242943 320 Lee Smith 0330307983 Charlotte 0 4.02 1988 Fair and Tender Ladies
author: Lee Smith
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2023, books-i-own, authors-read-in-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Chocolat (Chocolat, #1) 321574
To make matters worse, Vianne does not go to church and has a penchant for superstition. Like her mother, she can read Tarot cards. But she begins to win over customers with her smiles, her intuition for everyone’s favourites, and her delightful confections. Her shop provides a place, too, for secrets to be whispered, grievances aired. She begins to shake up the rigid morality of the community. Vianne’s plans for an Easter Chocolate Festival divide the whole community. Can the solemnity of the Church compare with the pagan passion of a chocolate éclair?

For the first time, here is a novel in which chocolate enjoys its true importance, emerging as an agent of transformation. Rich, clever, and mischievous, reminiscent of a folk tale or fable, this is a triumphant read with a memorable character at its heart.

Says Harris: “You might see [Vianne] as an archetype or a mythical figure. I prefer to see her as the lone gunslinger who blows into the town, has a showdown with the man in the black hat, then moves on relentless. But on another level she is a perfectly real person with real insecurities and a very human desire for love and acceptance. Her qualities too - kindness, love, tolerance - are very human.� Vianne and her young daughter Anouk, come into town on Shrove Tuesday. “Carnivals make us uneasy,� says Harris, “because of what they represent: the residual memory of blood sacrifice (it is after all from the word "carne" that the term arises), of pagan celebration. And they represent a loss of inhibition; carnival time is a time at which almost anything is possible.�

The book became an international best-seller, and was optioned to film quickly. The Oscar-nominated movie, with its star-studded cast including Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) and Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love), was directed by Lasse Hallstrom, whose previous film The Cider House Rules (based on a John Irving novel) also looks at issues of community and moral standards, though in a less lighthearted vein.

The idea for the book came from a comment her husband made one day while he was immersed in a football game on TV. “It was a throwaway comment, designed to annoy and it did. It was along the lines of...Chocolate is to women what football is to men�� The idea stuck, and Harris began thinking that “people have these conflicting feelings about chocolate, and that a lot of people who have very little else in common relate to chocolate in more or less the same kind of way. It became a kind of challenge to see exactly how much of a story I could get which was uniquely centred around chocolate.�

Rich with metaphor and gorgeous writing...sit back and gorge yourself on Chocolat.]]> 306 Joanne Harris 0140282033 Charlotte 0 3.82 1999 Chocolat (Chocolat, #1)
author: Joanne Harris
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2023, books-i-own, book-series-to-start-and-finish, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Esperanza's Box of Saints 898584
Rescued from turmoil by her favorite saint, Esperanza embarks on a journey that tests her faith, teaches her the ways of the world, and transforms her from a fervently religious innocent to an independent, sexual, and passionately devout woman.

“Esperanza’s Box of Saints fills our souls with colors and flavors, but more importantly with a sense of genuine, heartfelt candor, born from true faith. With a smile on our face and a pang in our heart, we find renewed hope in Esperanza's quest.� —Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate

“The saints in María Amparo Escandón's novel take us on a journey that explores the nature of sin and absolution, the pain of loss, and the resurrection of desire...an enormously compassionate work about a woman who wrestles with her own faith and emerges victorious.� —John Sayles

� “A sweet and entertaining novel by an inventive writer.� —Oscar Hijuelos

� “A highly original, beautifully written, and heartwarming tale.� —Tony Hillerman]]> 256 María Amparo Escandón 068485614X Charlotte 0 3.88 1998 Esperanza's Box of Saints
author: MarĂ­a Amparo EscandĂłn
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter]]> 29010395
But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role.

Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed.

But it’s not long before Julia discovers that Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first kiss, first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out. Was Olga really what she seemed? Or was there more to her sister’s story? And either way, how can Julia even attempt to live up to a seemingly impossible ideal?]]> 344 Erika L. Sánchez 1524700487 Charlotte 0 4.00 2017 I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
author: Erika L. Sánchez
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Silver Sparrow 55879881
Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon’s families� the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich and flawed characters, she also reveals the joy, and the destruction, they brought to each other’s lives.

At the heart of it all are the two girls whose lives are at stake, and like the best writers, Jones portrays the fragility of her characers with raw authenticity as they seek love, demand attention, and try to imagine themselves as women.]]> 353 Tayari Jones 1786078627 Charlotte 0 3.86 2011 Silver Sparrow
author: Tayari Jones
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2023, books-i-own, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Rose Petal Beach 17689947
Tamia Challey is horrified when her husband, Scott, is accused of something terrible � but when she discovers who his accuser is, everything goes into freefall. Backed into a corner and unsure what to think, Tamia is forced to choose who she instinctively believes. But this choice has dire consequences for all concerned, especially when matters take a tragic turn.

Then a stranger arrives in town to sprinkle rose petals in the sea in memory of her lost loved one. This stranger carries with her shocking truths that will change the lives of everyone she meets, and will once again force Tamia to make some devastating choices...]]> 663 Dorothy Koomson 1780874995 Charlotte 0 4.03 2012 The Rose Petal Beach
author: Dorothy Koomson
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Imperial Woman 93521 384 Pearl S. Buck 1559210354 Charlotte 0 4.03 1956 Imperial Woman
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, classic-reading, new-books-bought-2023, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)]]> 256683
This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know...]]> 485 Cassandra Clare 1416914285 Charlotte 0 4.08 2007 City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)
author: Cassandra Clare
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, library-audio-libby, book-series-to-start-and-finish, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Cathedral of the Sea 1790237 A construction that moves parallel to the hazardous story of Arnau, son of a peasant serf, who flees from the abuses of his feudal lord and takes refuge in Barcelona, ​​where he becomes a citizen and, with it, a free man.
While his best friend and adopted brother Joan studies to become a priest, young Arnau becomes a member of the guild of the stone-workers, soldier and moneychanger. A strenuous life which leads him from the misery of the fugitive to nobility and wealth. But with this privileged position he also gets the envy of his peers, who devise a sordid plot that puts his life in the hands of the Inquisition. He finds himself face-to-face with his own brother. Will he lose his life just as his beloved Cathedral of the Sea is finally completed?]]> 611 Ildefonso Falcones 0525950486 Charlotte 0 4.06 2006 Cathedral of the Sea
author: Ildefonso Falcones
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Carrie Soto Is Back 60435878 Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular.

By the time Carrie retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Slam titles. And if you ask her, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father as her coach.

But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning, British player named Nicki Chan.

At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked the 'Battle-Axe' anyway. Even if her body doesn't move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.

In spite of it all: Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells a story about the cost of greatness and a legendary athlete attempting a comeback.]]> 384 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158687 Charlotte 0 4.19 2022 Carrie Soto Is Back
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, library-audio-libby, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Age of Vice 60177466 This is the age of vice, where money, pleasure, and power are everything, and the family ties that bind can also kill.

New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb and in the blink of an eye, five people are dead. It’s a rich man’s car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.

Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, Age of Vice is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption, and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family � loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all.

In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined: Ajay is the watchful servant, born into poverty, who rises through the family’s ranks. Sunny is the playboy heir who dreams of outshining his father, whatever the cost. And Neda is the curious journalist caught between morality and desire. Against a sweeping plot fueled by loss, pleasure, greed, yearning, violence and revenge, will these characters� connections become a path to escape, or a trigger of further destruction?

Equal parts crime thriller and family saga, transporting readers from the dusty villages of Uttar Pradesh to the urban energy of New Delhi, Age of Vice is an intoxicating novel of gangsters and lovers, false friendships, forbidden romance, and the consequences of corruption. It is binge-worthy entertainment at its literary best.]]> 544 Deepti Kapoor 0593328795 Charlotte 0 3.55 2023 Age of Vice
author: Deepti Kapoor
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, library-audio-libby, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Music Room 6240326
ĚýA bestseller in India, where itĚýwas a literary sensation, The Music Room is a deeply moving meditation on how traditionsĚýand life lessons are passed along generations, on the sacrifices made by women through the ages, andĚýon a largelyĚýunknown,ĚýbutĚývitalĚýaspect of Indian life and culture that will utterly fascinate American readers.]]> 320 Namita Devidayal 031253664X Charlotte 0 4.07 2007 The Music Room
author: Namita Devidayal
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Seamstress 2391128 656 Frances de Pontes Peebles 0060738871 Charlotte 0 3.99 2008 The Seamstress
author: Frances de Pontes Peebles
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Maureen (Harold Fry #3) 60192876 From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes a moving novel told from the point of view of Harold’s wife Maureen. Now undertaking her own journey, Maureen will discover a way to reconnect with the world she’s closed a door on.

Maureen Fry has settled into the quiet life she shares with her husband after his iconic walk across England ten years ago. When an unexpected message from the North disturbs her equilibrium again, it is now her turn to make a journey. But Maureen is not like Harold. By turns outspoken, then vulnerable, she struggles to form bonds with the people she meets, and the landscape she crosses has radically changed. And Maureen has no sense of what she will find at the end of the road. All she knows is that she has to get there.

Maureen is a deeply felt, lyrical, and powerful novel, full of warmth and kindness, about love, loss, and how we come to terms with the past in order to understand ourselves and our lives a little better. While it stands alone, it is also the extraordinarily moving finale to a trilogy that began with the phenomenal bestseller The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and continued in The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. What was started by Harold, only Maureen can complete.]]> 192 Rachel Joyce 0593446437 Charlotte 0 3.87 2023 Maureen (Harold Fry #3)
author: Rachel Joyce
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, book-series-to-start-and-finish, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Road from Raqqa: A Story of Brotherhood, Borders, and Belonging]]> 53251868 Crossing years and continents, the harrowing story of the road to reunion for two Syrian brothers who—despite diverging ideals, a homeland at war and an ocean between them—hold fast to the bonds of family.

The Alkasem brothers, Riyad and Bashar, spend their childhood in Raqqa, the city that would later became the capital of ISIS. As a teenager in the 1980s, Riyad witnesses the devastating aftermath of the Hama massacre—an atrocity by the Assad regime upon its people. Wanting to expand his notion of government and justice, Riyad moves to the United States to study the law, but his plans are derailed and he eventually falls in love with a Southern belle. They move to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, where they raise two sons and where Riyad opens a restaurant—Café Rakka—cooking the food his grandmother used to make. But he finds himself confronted with the darker side of American freedoms: the hardscrabble life of a newly-arrived immigrant, enduring bigotry, poverty, and loneliness. Years pass, and at the height of Syria's civil war, fearing for his family's safety halfway across the world, he risks his own life by making a dangerous trip back to Raqqa.

Bashar, meanwhile, stayed in Syria. After his older brother moved to America, Bashar embarked on a brilliant legal career under the same corrupt Assad government that Riyad despised. Reluctant to abandon his comfortable (albeit conflicted) life, he fails to perceive the threat of ISIS until it's nearly too late.

The Road from Raqqa brings us into the lives of two brothers bound by their love for each other and for the war-ravaged city they call home. It's about a family caught in the middle of the most significant global events of the new millennium, America's fraught-but-hopeful relationship to its own immigrants, and the toll of dictatorship and war on everyday families. It's a book that captures all the desperation, tenacity, and hope that come with the revelation that we can find home in each other when the lands of our forefathers fail us.]]> 272 Jordan Ritter Conn 1984817183 Charlotte 0 4.55 2020 The Road from Raqqa: A Story of Brotherhood, Borders, and Belonging
author: Jordan Ritter Conn
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dark Corners (Rachel Krall, #2)]]> 61884922
When they hit a wall in the investigation, the FBI reluctantly asks for Rachel’s help in finding the missing influencer. Maddison seems only to exist on social media; she has no family, no friends, and other than in her posts, most people have never seen her. Who is she, really? Using a fake Instagram account, Rachel Krall goes undercover to BuzzCon, a popular influencer conference, where she discovers a world of fierce rivalry that may have turned lethal.

When police find the body of a woman with a tattoo of a snake eating its tail, the FBI must consider a chilling possibility: Bailey has an accomplice on the outside and a dangerous obsession with influencers, including Rachel Krell herself. Suddenly a target of a monster hiding in plain sight, Rachel is forced to confront the very real dangers that lurk in the dark corners of the internet.

Rachel Krall, the true crime podcaster star of Megan Goldin’s acclaimed Night Swim returns to search for a popular social media influencer who disappeared after visiting a suspected serial killer.]]> 343 Megan Goldin 1250280680 Charlotte 0 3.82 2023 Dark Corners (Rachel Krall, #2)
author: Megan Goldin
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, book-series-to-start-and-finish, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2023, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Conquistadora 9678869
As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de León. And in handsome twin brothers Ramón and Inocente—both in love with Ana—she finds a way to get there. She marries Ramón, and in 1844, just eighteen, she travels across the ocean to a remote sugar plantation the brothers have inherited on the island.

Ana faces unrelenting heat, disease and isolation, and the dangers of the untamed countryside even as she relishes the challenge of running Hacienda los Gemelos. But when the Civil War breaks out in the United States,ĚýAna finds her livelihood, and perhaps even her life, threatened by the very people on whose backs her wealth has been the hacienda’s slaves, whose richly drawn stories unfold alongside her own. And when at last Ana falls for a man who may be her destiny—a once-forbidden love—she will sacrifice nearly everything to keep hold of the land that has become her true home.

This is a sensual, riveting tale, set in a place where human passions and cruelties thrilling history that has never before been brought so vividly and unforgettably to life.]]> 432 Esmeralda Santiago 0307268322 Charlotte 0 3.57 2011 Conquistadora
author: Esmeralda Santiago
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2023, books-i-own, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon, #8)]]> 2033217
It is not the grim, gray Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, awash in oil wealth and choked with bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and where critics of the ruling class are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of its old enemy, the United States.

One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel who built a global investment empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Hidden within that empire, however, is a more lucrative and deadly business. Kharkov is an arms dealer—and he is about to deliver Russia's most sophisticated weapons to al-Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11—and the clock is ticking fast.]]> 433 Daniel Silva 0399155015 Charlotte 0 4.18 2008 Moscow Rules (Gabriel Allon, #8)
author: Daniel Silva
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, book-series-to-start-and-finish, new-books-bought-2024, authors-read-in-2024, book-on-deck, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Murder of Quality (George Smiley #2)]]> 1855347
George Smiley was simply doing a favor for Miss Ailsa Brimley, and old friend and editor of a small newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried reader: "I'm not mad. And I know my husbad is trying to kill me." But the letter had arrived too late: its scribe, the wife of an assistant master at the distinguished Carne School, was already dead.

So George Smiley went to Carne to listen, ask questions, and think. And to uncover, layer by layer, the complex network of skeletons and hatreds that comprised that little English institution.]]> 160 John Le Carré 0140022716 Charlotte 0 3.51 1962 A Murder of Quality (George Smiley #2)
author: John Le Carré
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, book-series-to-start-and-finish, new-books-bought-2024, books-i-own, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Call for the Dead 13542506 From the New York Times bestselling author ofĚýA Delicate Truth andĚýTinker Tailor Soldier Spy

"Go back to Whitehall and look for more spies on your drawing boards."George Smiley is no one's idea of a spy—which is perhaps why he's such a natural. But Smiley apparently made a mistake. After a routine security interview, he concluded that the affable Samuel Fennan had nothing to hide. Why, then, did the man from the Foreign Office shoot himself in the head only hours later? Or did he?

The heart-stopping tale of intrigue that launched both novelist and spy,ĚýCall for the DeadĚýis an essential introduction to le CarrĂ©'s chillingly amoral universe.]]> 157 John Le CarrĂ© 0143122576 Charlotte 0 3.78 1961 Call for the Dead
author: John Le Carré
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, book-series-to-start-and-finish, new-books-bought-2024, books-i-own, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (George Smiley, #3)]]> 17707596 The 50th-anniversary edition of the bestselling novel that launched John le Carré’s career worldwide

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. For Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, the Cold War is over. As he faces the prospect of retirement or worse—a desk job—Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service—with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.

Setting a standard that has never been surpassed, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a devastating tale of duplicity and espionage.]]> 282 John Le Carré 0143124757 Charlotte 0 4.12 1963 The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (George Smiley, #3)
author: John Le Carré
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, book-series-to-start-and-finish, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> My Name is Anton 52518118 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde returns with a hopeful novel of sacrifice, two lost souls, and enduring love.

It’s 1965, and life has taken a turn for eighteen-year-old Anton Addison-Rice. Nearly a year after his brother died in a tragic accident, Anton is still wounded—physically and emotionally. Alone for the holidays, he catches a glimpse of his neighbor Edith across the street one evening and realizes that she’s in danger.

Anton is determined to help Edith leave her abusive marriage. Frightened and fifteen years Anton’s senior, Edith is slow to trust. But when she needs a safe place to stay, she lets down her guard, and over the course of ten days an unlikely friendship grows. As Anton falls hopelessly and selflessly in love, Edith fears both her husband finding her and Anton getting hurt. She must disappear without telling anyone where she’s going—even Anton.

If keeping Edith safe means letting her go, Anton will say goodbye forever. Or so he believes. What would happen, though, if one day their paths should cross again?]]> 364 Catherine Ryan Hyde 1542014344 Charlotte 0 4.15 2020 My Name is Anton
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, authors-read-in-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> A Soldier of the Great War 131641121
Half a century later, in August of 1964, Alessandro, a white-haired professor, still tall and proud, finds himself unexpectedly on the road with an illiterate young factory worker. As they walk toward Monte Prato, a village seventy kilometers distant, the old man tells the story of his life. How he became a soldier. A hero. A prisoner. A deserter. A wanderer in the hell that claimed Europe. And how he tragically lost one family and gained another.

The boy is dazzled by the action and envious of the richness and color of the story, and realizes that the old man's magnificent tale of love and war is more than a it is the recapitulation of his life, his reckoning with mortality, and above all, a love song for his family.]]> 880 Mark Helprin Charlotte 0 0.0 1991 A Soldier of the Great War
author: Mark Helprin
name: Charlotte
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Virgins of Venice 60659597 2023 1st Place Chaucer Award Winner for Best Historical Fiction!

In sixteenth-century Venice, one young noblewoman dares to resist the choices made for her

Venice in 1509 is on the brink of war. The displeasure of Pope Julius II is a continuing threat to the republic, as is the barely contained fighting in the countryside. Amid this turmoil, noblewoman Justina Soranzo, just sixteen, hopes to make a rare love marriage with her sweetheart, Luca Cicogna. Her hopes are dashed when her father decides her younger sister, Rosa, will marry in a strategic alliance and Justina will be sent to the San Zaccaria convent, in the tradition of aristocratic daughters. Lord Soranzo is not acting only to protect his family. It’s well known that he is in debt to both his trading partners and the most infamous courtesan in the city, La Diamante, and the pressure is closing in.

After arriving at the convent, Justina takes solace in her aunt Livia, one of the nuns, and in the growing knowledge that all is not strictly devout at San Zaccaria. Justina is shocked to discover how the women of the convent find their own freedom in what seems to her like a prison. But secrets and scandals breach the convent walls, and Justina learns there may be even worse fates for her than the veil, if La Diamante makes good on her threats.

Desperate to protect herself and the ones she loves, Justina turns to Luca for help. She finds she must trust her own heart to make the impossible decisions that may save or ruin them all.]]> 432 Gina Buonaguro 1443468398 Charlotte 0 4.26 2022 The Virgins of Venice
author: Gina Buonaguro
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Letter to My Daughter 4016515 Ěý
Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter transcends genres and guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.

Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.

Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,� or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice–Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family.

Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches; it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share.

“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”—from Letter to My Daughter]]> 192 Maya Angelou 1400066123 Charlotte 0 4.09 1987 Letter to My Daughter
author: Maya Angelou
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> A Woman of Endurance 58064083 Combining the haunting power of Toni Morrison’s Beloved with the evocative atmosphere of Phillippa Gregory’s A Respectable Trade, Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa’s groundbreaking novel illuminates a little discussed aspect of history—the Puerto Rican Atlantic Slave Trade—witnessed through the experiences of Pola, an African captive used as a breeder to bear more slaves.

A Woman of Endurance, set in nineteenth-century Puerto Rican plantation society, follows Pola, a deeply spiritual African woman who is captured and later sold for the purpose of breeding future slaves. The resulting babies are taken from her as soon as they are born. Pola loses the faith that has guided her and becomes embittered and defensive. The dehumanizing violence of her life almost destroys her. But this is not a novel of defeat but rather one of survival, regeneration, and reclamation of common humanity.

Readers are invited to join Pola in her journey to healing. From the sadistic barbarity of her first experiences, she moves on to receive compassion and support from a revitalizing new community. Along the way, she learns to recognize and embrace the many faces of love—a mother’s love, a daughter’s love, a sister’s love, a love of community, and the self-love that she must recover before she can offer herself to another. It is ultimately, a novel of the triumph of the human spirit even under the most brutal of conditions.]]> 352 Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa 0063062224 Charlotte 0 4.07 2022 A Woman of Endurance
author: Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Bookish Life of Nina Hill 42379022
When the father Nina never knew existed suddenly dies, leaving behind innumerable sisters, brothers, nieces, and nephews, Nina is horrified. They all live close by! They're all—or mostly all—excited to meet her! She'll have to Speak. To. Strangers. It's a disaster! And as if that wasn't enough, Tom, her trivia nemesis, has turned out to be cute, funny, and deeply interested in getting to know her. Doesn't he realize what a terrible idea that is?

Nina considers her options.

1. Completely change her name and appearance. (Too drastic, plus she likes her hair.)
2. Flee to a deserted island. (Hard pass, see: coffee).
3. Hide in a corner of her apartment and rock back and forth. (Already doing it.)

It's time for Nina to come out of her comfortable shell, but she isn't convinced real life could ever live up to fiction. It's going to take a brand-new family, a persistent suitor, and the combined effects of ice cream and trivia to make her turn her own fresh page.]]> 351 Abbi Waxman 0451491882 Charlotte 0 3.80 2019 The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
author: Abbi Waxman
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2024, books-i-own, library-audio-libby, book-club-choice, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Family She Never Met 58262973
The woman that Jessica meets is nothing like what she expected. Her grandmother is successful, intelligent, determined, and all too willing to take blame for what has happened to cause the estrangement, and, more importantly, to try and set things right. As Jessica spends time with her grandmother in her beautiful island home, she learns about her family's history and what caused the schism between her mother and grandmother.

As days with her grandmother turn to weeks, Jessica is determined to find a way to heal her fractured family. And in the end, Jessica might just learn something about herself and what it means to embrace the many facets of her identity.]]> 288 Caridad Piñeiro 1728249473 Charlotte 0 3.73 2022 The Family She Never Met
author: Caridad Piñeiro
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Beautiful Ones 55311334 From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a sweeping romance with a dash of magic.

They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail’s most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina’s chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun, and already Nina’s debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis—neighbors call her the Witch of Oldhouse—and the haphazard manifestations of her powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.

When entertainer Hector Auvray arrives to town, Nina is dazzled. A telekinetic like her, he has traveled the world performing his talents for admiring audiences. He sees Nina not as a witch, but ripe with potential to master her power under his tutelage. With Hector’s help, Nina’s talent blossoms, as does her love for him.

But great romances are for fairytales, and Hector is hiding a truth from Nina—and himself—that threatens to end their courtship before it truly begins. The Beautiful Ones is a charming tale of love and betrayal, and the struggle between conformity and passion, set in a world where scandal is a razor-sharp weapon.]]> 299 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 125078557X Charlotte 0 3.84 2017 The Beautiful Ones
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

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

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

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

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


]]> 423 Sarah Miller 0063041871 Charlotte 0 4.24 2022 Marmee
author: Sarah Miller
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> At the Wolf's Table: A Novel 45046935 The international bestseller based on a haunting true story that raises provocative questions about complicity, guilt, and survival.

They called it the Wolfsschanze, the Wolf's Lair. "Wolf" was his nickname. As hapless as Little Red Riding Hood, I had ended up in his belly. A legion of hunters was out looking for him, and to get him in their grips they would gladly slay me as well.

Germany, 1943: Twenty-six-year-old Rosa Sauer's parents are gone, and her husband Gregor is far away, fighting on the front lines of World War II. Impoverished and alone, she makes the fateful decision to leave war-torn Berlin to live with her in-laws in the countryside, thinking she'll find refuge there. But one morning, the SS come to tell her she has been conscripted to be one of Hitler's tasters: three times a day, she and nine other women go to his secret headquarters, the Wolf's Lair, to eat his meals before he does.

Forced to eat what might kill them, the tasters begin to divide into The Fanatics, those loyal to Hitler, and the women like Rosa who insist they aren't Nazis, even as they risk their lives every day for Hitler's. As secrets and resentments grow, this unlikely sisterhood reaches its own dramatic climax, as everyone begins to wonder if they are on the wrong side of history.]]> 288 Rosella Postorino 1250179165 Charlotte 0 3.49 2018 At the Wolf's Table: A Novel
author: Rosella Postorino
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, under-300-pages, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Shuggie Bain 55504502 Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland.

Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life.

Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good--her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamourous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits--all the family has to live on--on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs.

Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is "no right," a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her--even her beloved Shuggie.

A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction. Recalling the work of douard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.]]> 430 Douglas Stuart 0802148506 Charlotte 0 4.21 2020 Shuggie Bain
author: Douglas Stuart
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Woman in the White Kimono: A Novel]]> 45422561 Oceans and decades apart, two women are inextricably bound by the secrets between them.

Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura's prearranged marriage would secure her family's status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man--an American sailor--and to marry him would bring great shame upon her family. When it's learned Naoko carries the sailor's child, she is cast out in disgrace, forced to make unimaginable choices with far-reaching consequences.

America, present day. Tori Kovac finds a letter containing a shocking revelation about her father--one that calls into question everything she understood about her family and herself. Setting out to learn the truth behind the letter, Tori's journey leads her halfway around the world to a remote seaside village in Japan, where she must confront the demons of the past to pave a way for redemption.

In breathtaking prose and inspired by true stories from a devastating and little-known era in Japanese and American history, The Woman in the White Kimono illuminates a searing portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart, and another woman on a journey to discover the true meaning of home.]]> 352 Ana Johns 0778309762 Charlotte 0 4.26 2019 The Woman in the White Kimono: A Novel
author: Ana Johns
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, library-audio-libby, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Caravans 75030766 Ěý
Praise for Caravans
Ěý
“Brilliant . . . an extraordinary novel . . . The old nomadic trails across the mountains spring into existence.� � The New York Times
Ěý
“Romantic and adventurous . . . [Michener] has a wonderful empathy for the wild and free and an understanding of the reasons behind the kind of cruelty that goes with it.� � Newsday
Ěý
“Michener has done for Afghanistan what . . . his first [book] did for the South Pacific.� � The New York Herald Tribune]]> 448 James A. Michener Charlotte 0 4.33 1963 Caravans
author: James A. Michener
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Birdsong 6259 483 Sebastian Faulks 0679776818 Charlotte 0 4.11 1993 Birdsong
author: Sebastian Faulks
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, to-read, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Porcelain Maker 65213589 An epic story of love, betrayal, and art that spans decades, through the horrors of World War II to 21st century America, inspired by an actual porcelain factory in Dachau.

Two lovers caught at the crossroads of history.

A daughter’s search for the truth.

Germany, 1929. At a festive gathering of young bohemians in Weimar, two young artists, Max, a skilled Jewish architect, and Bettina, a celebrated avant-garde painter, are drawn to each other and begin a whirlwind romance. Their respective talents transport them to the dazzling lights of Berlin, but this bright beginning is quickly dimmed by the rising threat of Nazism. Max is arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Dachau where only his talent at making exquisite porcelain figures stands between him and seemingly certain death. Desperate to save her lover, Bettina risks everything to rescue him and escape Germany.

America, 1993. Clara, Bettina’s daughter, embarks on a journey to trace her roots and determine the identity of her father, a secret her mother has kept from her for reasons she’s never understood. Clara’s quest to piece together the puzzle of her origins transports us back in time to the darkness of Nazi Germany, where life is lived on a razor’s edge and deception and death lurk around every corner. Survival depends on strength, loyalty, and knowing true friend from hidden foe. And as Clara digs further, she begins to question why her mother was so determined to leave the truth of her harrowing past behind...

The Porcelain Maker is a powerful novel of enduring love and courage in the face of appalling brutality as a daughter seeks to unlock the mystery of her past.]]> 384 Sarah Freethy 1250289343 Charlotte 0 4.10 2023 The Porcelain Maker
author: Sarah Freethy
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Karolina's Twins 33574128 In the tradition of The Nightingale, Sarah's Key, and Lilac Girls, comes a saga inspired by true events of a Holocaust survivor's quest to return to Poland and fulfill a promise, from Ronald H. Balson, author of the international bestseller Once We Were Brothers.

She made a promise in desperation
Now it's time to keep it

Lena Woodward, elegant and poised, has lived a comfortable life among Chicago Society since she immigrated to the US and began a new life at the end of World War II. But now something has resurfaced that Lena cannot ignore: an unfulfilled promise she made long ago that can no longer stay buried.

Driven to renew the quest that still keeps her awake at night, Lena enlists the help of lawyer Catherine Lockhart and private investigator Liam Taggart. Behind Lena's stoic facade are memories that will no longer be contained. She begins to recount a tale, harkening back to her harrowing past in Nazi-occupied Poland, of the bond she shared with her childhood friend Karolina. Karolina was vivacious and beautiful, athletic and charismatic, and Lena has cherished the memory of their friendship her whole life. But there is something about the story that is unfinished, questions that must be answered about what is true and what is not, and what Lena is willing to risk to uncover the past. Has the real story been hidden these many years? And if so, why?

Two girls, coming of age in a dangerous time, bearers of secrets that only they could share.

Just when you think there could not be anything new to ferret out from World War II comes Karolina's Twins, a spellbinding new novel by the bestselling author of Once We Were Brothers and Saving Sophie. In this richly woven tale of love, survival and resilience during some of the darkest hours, the unbreakable bond between girlhood friends will have consequences into the future and beyond.]]> 306 Ronald H. Balson 1250089042 Charlotte 0 4.38 2016 Karolina's Twins
author: Ronald H. Balson
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2024, book-series-to-start-and-finish, books-i-own, authors-read-in-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Last Russian Doll 61261034 A novel about betrayal, revenge, and redemption that follows three generations of Russian women, from the 1917 revolution to the last days of the Soviet Union, and the enduring love story at the center.

In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land...

...a young girl lived happily in Moscow with her family: a sister, a father, and an eccentric mother who liked to tell fairy tales and collect porcelain dolls.

One summer night, everything changed, and all that remained of that family were the girl and her mother.

Now, a decade later and studying at Oxford University, Rosie has an English name, a loving fiancé, and a promising future, but all she wants is to understand--and bury--the past. After her mother dies, Rosie returns to Russia, armed with little more than her mother’s strange folklore--and a single key.

What she uncovers is a devastating family history that spans the 1917 Revolution, the siege of Leningrad, Stalin’s purges, and beyond.

At the heart of this saga stands a young noblewoman, Tonya, as pretty as a porcelain doll, whose actions—and love for an idealistic man—will set off a sweeping story that reverberates across the century....]]> 406 Kristen Loesch Charlotte 0 3.72 2022 The Last Russian Doll
author: Kristen Loesch
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament]]> 25159538
In the 2014 New York Times bestseller Jesus on Trial , David Limbaugh made a case for the Gospels as hard evidence of the existence of God, drawing on his own spiritual journey from skeptic to believer. Now, in The Emmaus Code , Limbaugh unlocks the mysteries of the Old Testament and reveals hints of Jesus Christ's arrival through all thirty-nine Old Testament books.

The key to the secrets of the Old Testament, Limbaugh argues, is the crucial New Testament encounter between the risen Jesus and two travelers on the road to Emmaus. With that key, and with Limbaugh as a deft guide, readers of The Emmaus Code will come to a startling new understanding of the Old Testament as a clear and powerful heralding of Jesus Christ's arrival. Limbaugh takes readers on a revealing journey from Genesis through Malachi, demonstrating that a consistent message courses through every one of the Old Testament's thirty-nine the power, wonder, and everlasting love of Jesus Christ.]]> 420 David Limbaugh 1621574156 Charlotte 0 4.13 2015 The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament
author: David Limbaugh
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, spiritual-faith-based, new-books-bought-2024, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Passionate Tudor: A Novel of Queen Mary I]]> 58456976
Adored only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife Katherine of Aragon, young Princess Mary grows up as the sole heiress to the English throne. But her father wants a son, and soon Mary's world begins to fall apart.

With her parents' marriage - and England - in crisis, Mary is banished from the court and kept apart from the mother she adores. The King promises to restore his daughter to favour, but first Mary must do something for which she will never forgive herself.

She seeks solace in her faith. But when her brother Edward VI dies, she finds herself fighting for the crown - and for her life. Emerging triumphant, all seems fair for the reign of Queen Mary. And then, very quickly, things began to go badly wrong...

MARY I. HER STORY.

Alison Weir's new Tudor novel, a tale full of drama and tragedy, tells the story of how a princess with such promise, loved by all who knew her, becomes the infamous Bloody Mary.

---

PRAISE FOR ALISON WEIR'S TUDOR FICTION

'History has the best stories and they should all be told like this' Conn Iggulden

'As always, Alison Weir is ahead of the curve - and at the top of her game' Sarah Gristwood

'Weir is excellent on the little details that bring a world to life' Guardian

'Profoundly moving... lingers long after the last page' Elizabeth Fremantle]]> Alison Weir Charlotte 0 3.99 2024 The Passionate Tudor: A Novel of Queen Mary I
author: Alison Weir
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Banker’s Wife 36398129
Meanwhile, ambitious society journalist Marina Tourneau has finally landed at the top. Now that she's engaged to Grant Ellis, she will stop writing about powerful families and finally be a part of one. Her entry into the upper echelons of New York's social scene is more appealing than any article could ever be, but, after the death of her mentor, she agrees to dig into one more story. While looking into Swiss United, Marina uncovers information that implicates some of the most powerful men in the financial world, including a few who are too close to home. The story could also be the answer to Annabel's heartbreaking search--if Marina chooses to publish it.]]> 341 Cristina Alger 0735218455 Charlotte 0 3.84 2018 The Banker’s Wife
author: Cristina Alger
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rembrandt Affair (Gabriel Allon, #10)]]> 7096123 Two families, one terrible secret, and a painting to die for ...

Determined to sever his ties with the Office, Gabriel Allon has retreated to the windswept cliffs of Cornwall with his beautiful Venetian-born wife Chiara. But once again his seclusion is interrupted by a visitor from his tangled past: the endearingly eccentric London art dealer, Julian Isherwood. As usual, Isherwood has a problem. And it is one only Gabriel can solve.

In the ancient English city of Glastonbury, an art restorer has been brutally murdered and a long-lost portrait by Rembrandt mysteriously stolen. Despite his reluctance, Gabriel is persuaded to use his unique skills to search for the painting and those responsible for the crime. But as he painstakingly follows a trail of clues leading from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires and, finally, to a villa on the graceful shores of Lake Geneva, Gabriel discovers there are deadly secrets connected to the painting. And evil men behind them.

Before he is done, Gabriel will once again be drawn into a world he thought he had left behind forever, and will come face to face with a remarkable cast of characters: a glamorous London journalist who is determined to undo the worst mistake of her career, an elusive master art thief who is burdened by a conscience, and a powerful Swiss billionaire who is known for his good deeds but may just be behind one of the greatest threats facing the world.
]]> 484 Daniel Silva 0399156585 Charlotte 0 4.28 2010 The Rembrandt Affair (Gabriel Allon, #10)
author: Daniel Silva
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, book-series-to-start-and-finish, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Defector (Gabriel Allon, #9)]]> 7361496
Grigori Bulganov once saved Gabriel Allon's life in Moscow—and Allon always repays his debts. So when the former Russian intelligence officer vanishes, Allon gathers his team of operatives to go after those responsible. But, in a running battle that rages across the globe, Allon soon realizes that his enemy may already hold the key to victory. And that if he continues, it will cost him more than he can bear...]]> 528 Daniel Silva 0451230663 Charlotte 0 4.28 2009 The Defector (Gabriel Allon, #9)
author: Daniel Silva
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, book-series-to-start-and-finish, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, next-books-to-read, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Trust (Liam Taggart & Catherine Lockhart, #4)]]> 33574190 368 Ronald H. Balson 1250127440 Charlotte 0 3.90 2017 The Trust (Liam Taggart & Catherine Lockhart, #4)
author: Ronald H. Balson
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dark Tides (Thorndike Press Large Print Basic: Fairmile)]]> 56641903 705 Philippa Gregory 143288476X Charlotte 0 3.30 2020 Dark Tides (Thorndike Press Large Print Basic: Fairmile)
author: Philippa Gregory
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, book-series-to-start-and-finish, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Hula 74877429 Set in Hilo, Hawai'i, a sweeping saga of tradition, culture, family, history, and connection that unfolds through the lives of three generations of women--a brilliant blend of There, There and Sharks in the Time of Saviors that is a tale of mothers and daughters, dance and destiny, told in part in the collective voice of a community fighting for its survival

"There's no running away on an island. Soon enough, you end up where you started."

Hi'i is the youngest of the legendary Naupaka dynasty, only daughter of Laka, once the pride of Hilo; granddaughter of Hulali, Hula matriarch on the Big Island. But the Naupka legacy is in jeopardy, buckling under the weight of loaded silences and unexplained absences, most notably the sudden disappearance of Laka when Hi'i was a child. Hi'i dreams of healing the rifts within her family by becoming the next Miss Aloha Hula--and prove herself worthy of carrying on the family dynasty. She demonstrates her devotion to her culture through hula--the beating heart of her people expressed through the movement of her hips and feet.

Yet she has always felt separate from her community, and the harder she tries to prove she belongs--dancing in the halau until her bones ache--the wider the distance seems to grow. Soon, fault lines begin to form, and secrets threaten to erupt. Everyone wants to know, Hi'i most of all: what really happened when her mother disappeared, and why haven't she and her grandmother spoken since? When a devastating revelation involving Hi'i surfaces, the entire community is faced with a momentous decision that will affect everyone--and determine the course of Hi'i's future.

Part incantation, part rallying cry, Hula is a love letter to a stolen paradise and its people. Told in part by the tribal We, it connects Hawaii's tortured history to its fractured present through the story of the Naupaka family. The evolution of the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement is reflected in the journeys of these defiant women and their community, in whose struggle we sense the long-term repercussions of blood quantum laws and colonization, the relationship between tribe and belonging, and the universal question: what makes a family?]]> 385 Jasmin Iolani Hakes 0063276976 Charlotte 0 4.06 2023 Hula
author: Jasmin Iolani Hakes
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Reminders of Him 58346977
The only person who hasn’t closed the door on her completely is Ledger Ward, a local bar owner and one of the few remaining links to Kenna’s daughter. But if anyone were to discover how Ledger is slowly becoming an important part of Kenna’s life, both would riskĚýlosing the trust of everyone important to them.

The two form a connection despite theĚýpressure surrounding them, but as their romance grows, so does the risk. Kenna must find a way to absolve the mistakes of her past in order to build a future out of hope and healing.

A troubled young mother yearns for a shot at redemption in this heartbreaking yet hopeful story from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover.]]> 320 Colleen Hoover Charlotte 0 4.36 2022 Reminders of Him
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, new-books-bought-2025, books-i-own, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty]]> 133486 The story of the love that ended an empire.

In this commanding book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs� lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history—the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.]]> 640 Robert K. Massie 0345438310 Charlotte 0 4.21 1967 Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
author: Robert K. Massie
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking]]> 8520610 The book that started the Quiet Revolution

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.Ěý

In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.

Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content.]]> 333 Susan Cain 0307352145 Charlotte 0 4.07 2012 Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
author: Susan Cain
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Regretting You 44582454
Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in her body.

With warring personalities and conflicting goals, Morgan and Clara find it increasingly difficult to coexist. The only person who can bring peace to the household is Chris—Morgan’s husband, Clara’s father, and the family anchor. But that peace is shattered when Chris is involved in a tragic and questionable accident. The heartbreaking and long-lasting consequences will reach far beyond just Morgan and Clara.

While struggling to rebuild everything that crashed around them, Morgan finds comfort in the last person she expects to, and Clara turns to the one boy she’s been forbidden to see. With each passing day, new secrets, resentment, and misunderstandings make mother and daughter fall further apart. So far apart, it might be impossible for them to ever fall back together.]]> 363 Colleen Hoover 154201641X Charlotte 0 4.12 2019 Regretting You
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> The Ones We Choose 36374033
The powerful forces of science and family collide when geneticist Paige Robson finds her world in upheaval: Her eight-year-old son Miles is struggling to fit in at his new school and begins asking questions about his biological father that Paige can’t answer—until fate thrusts the anonymous donor she used into their lives.

Paige’s carefully constructed life begins to unravel as the truth of Miles’s paternity threatens to destroy everything she has grown to cherish. As Paige slowly opens herself up—by befriending an eccentric mother, confronting her own deeply buried vulnerabilities, and trying to make sense of her absent father’s unexpected return—she realizes breakthroughs aren’t only for the lab. But when tragedy strikes, Paige must face the consequences of sharing a secret only she knows.

With grace and humor, Julie Clark shows that while the science is fascinating, solving these intimate mysteries of who we are and where we come from unleashes emotions more complex than the strands of DNA that shape us.]]> 359 Julie Clark 1501184474 Charlotte 0 3.93 2018 The Ones We Choose
author: Julie Clark
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> What You Leave Behind 199119064 Award-winning author Wanda Morris returns with a powerful, haunting thriller following a lawyer who after the mysterious disappearance of a local landowner and the death of his sister just months before, uncovers a conspiracy that dates back to Reconstruction and persists in half the United States today.

Deena Wood’s life has fallen apart in the aftermath of losing her beloved mother, her marriage, and her prestigious job at an Atlanta law firm. She needs what the Geechee people of coastal Georgia call a “dayclean,� a fresh start.

She returns to her childhood home in Brunswick, Georgia, to heal. But her return is anything but the respite she thought it might be. To make peace with all her loss, she often drives through the city. One day, she unwittingly finds herself on the oceanfront property of a loner widower who is fighting to keep land that has been in his family since the end of the Civil War. He threatens her and warns her to never return. But shortly after, he disappears, and his very expensive property is quickly put up for sale. Curious about what has happened to the man, Deena digs into his disappearance and finds a family legacy at risk. What starts out as a bit of curious snooping, turns into a deadly game of illegal land grabs and property redevelopment in poor and rural communities with dark and powerful forces at work.

Without realizing it, Deena finds herself caught up in a nightmarish scheme that threatens her community and her family. She’ll need help and finds it in a close but unlikely source because she knows she must do whatever it takes to stop the sinister forces at play before she becomes their next target.]]> 384 Wanda M. Morris 0063322218 Charlotte 0 3.82 2024 What You Leave Behind
author: Wanda M. Morris
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Spilled Ink 198530931
Suddenly, simmering tensions boil over in their Virginia town, where many Afghan refugees have sought safety. When a video of Yusuf’s performance goes viral online, it seems like everyone in town turns against their family’s restaurant, leaving their livelihood in jeopardy—and then Yusuf is seriously injured in a mysterious fall. Despite her grieving and frightened family, friends she is not sure she can trust, and a town that no longer feels like a safe home, Yalda must try to find her own voice—and do what she can to change her world for the better.]]> 336 Nadia Hashimi 0063060493 Charlotte 0 3.98 2024 Spilled Ink
author: Nadia Hashimi
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, books-i-own, new-books-bought-2025, thriftbook-reads
review:

]]> Writers & Lovers 50395093 New York Times bestselling author of Euphoria.

Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan. Her mail consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she’s been writing for six years. At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey’s fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

Writers & Lovers follows Casey—a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist—in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.]]> 295 Lily King 0802148557 Charlotte 0 to-read, e-books 4.20 2020 Writers & Lovers
author: Lily King
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, e-books
review:

]]> Beyond Ivy Walls 201335459 Reminiscent of Beauty and the Beast, a recluse and a young woman discover that the scars of life are no match against an act of love.

Iowa, 1903. All of Monticello believes Otis Taylor has been away fostering his musical genius. But the truth is that his father exiled him long ago, rejecting Otis's appearance and the scars that came with it. Now that he is the last living Taylor, Otis has covertly returned to settle his family's affairs and rid himself of his past for good. However, he soon discovers that he may not have been the only discarded Taylor and begins a tireless search for his missing niece.

At twenty-three years old, Sadie West left her family farm and found employment at the Hoag feather duster factory. It isn't a romantic job, but she's hardly had a glimmer of romance since her beau went off to college, leaving her with no promise of a future together. Desperate to save money and help her family make ends meet, she trespasses and finds shelter in an abandoned building--and is thrown in the path of the town's mysterious bachelor.

Otis's wounds are deep, but as Sadie's friendship with him grows, she begins to fall for the man beneath the mask. The mystery of his long-lost niece, however, is more complex than either could have imagined, and Sadie may be the key to Otis Taylor finally finding his way home.]]> 336 Rachel Fordham 0840718802 Charlotte 0 to-read, to-read-not-bought 4.11 2024 Beyond Ivy Walls
author: Rachel Fordham
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read, to-read-not-bought
review:

]]> A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 14891 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.]]> 496 Betty Smith 0061120073 Charlotte 0 to-read 4.29 1943 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
author: Betty Smith
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Let's Call Her Barbie 211671383 She was only eleven-and-a-half inches tall, but she would change the world. Barbie is born in this bold new novel by USA Today bestselling author Renée Rosen.

When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll unlike any other, she knows what she’s setting in motion. It might just take the world a moment to catch up.

In 1956, the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. Ruth’s vision for a doll shaped like a grown woman and outfitted in an enviable wardrobe will let them dream they can be anything.

As Ruth assembles her team of creative rebels—head engineer Jack Ryan who hides his deepest secrets behind his genius and designers Charlotte Johnson and Stevie Klein, whose hopes and dreams rest on the success of Barbie’s fashion—she knows they’re working against a ticking clock to get this wild idea off the ground.

In the decades to come—through soaring heights and devastating personal lows, public scandals and private tensions� each of them will have to decide how tightly to hold on to their creation. Because Barbie has never been just a doll—she’s a legacy.]]> 432 Renée Rosen 0593335686 Charlotte 0 to-read, to-read-not-bought 4.03 2025 Let's Call Her Barbie
author: Renée Rosen
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, to-read-not-bought
review:

]]> Michael Without Apology 218136409 A film student struggling with self-acceptance finally stops looking away from his traumatic past in a powerful novel by New York Times bestselling author Catherine Ryan Hyde.

Michael Woodbine was seven years old when a near-fatal fireworks accident scarred him and led to his placement in foster care. Now a college freshman, he is still trying to hide the effects of his trauma from his classmates, his adoptive family, and himself.

When Michael signs up for a film class, he meets Robert Dunning, a teacher who wears his own scars unapologetically. Robert encourages Michael to make a documentary that explores body image and self-perception. Michael places an ad seeking people who feel unattractive and rejected by society—and is surprised to learn that this is essentially everyone. Although some participants are recovering from injuries or surgeries, others are dealing with more everyday factors like aging or the changes to a body from giving birth.

As he collects these stories—and finally tells his own—Michael feels more connected to the world than he ever has before. But he knows his journey of self-acceptance has one more his crushing doubts about why his birth parents wouldn’t fight to keep him.]]> 273 Catherine Ryan Hyde 1662522312 Charlotte 0 to-read 4.60 Michael Without Apology
author: Catherine Ryan Hyde
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.60
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Righteous 222376948 From the New York Times and National Jewish Book Award winning author of Eli’s Promise and A Place to Hide: a gripping novel of bravery, betrayal, exile, and hope set in World War II Budapest

At the end of 1943, nearly all of Europe’s Jewish population had been deported, captured or killed by Hitler, or had fled; only Hungary retained almost 800,000 Jews. They lived under edicts and restrictions, but without fear of being murdered. That changed in March 1944, after the Nazi defeat at Stalingrad, as a desperate Hitler accelerated his plan for mass extermination.

With the notorious Adolf Eichmann supervising the process, Hungary began rounding up its Jewish population. In this dramatic new novel by Ronald H. Balson, US State department diplomat Teddy Hartigan and his wife Julia set out to rescue as many people as they can. Working with the newly-formed War Review Board, diplomats from neutral nations, and underground resistance groups, Teddy and Julia make contact with Swedish businessman Raoul Wallenberg. Wallenberg’s connections and skills make him the perfect candidate to work within the complex networks of public and secret diplomacy, as he, Teddy, Julia, and others take enormous risks to save tens of thousands of lives.

Authentic, suspenseful, and deeply moving, The Righteous continues Ron Balson’s fictional exploration of World War II and the heroic actions of those who resisted Hitler’s Master Plan.]]> 304 Ronald H. Balson 1250373085 Charlotte 0 to-read 0.0 The Righteous
author: Ronald H. Balson
name: Charlotte
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hamnet 43890641 Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.

Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.

Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.

A New York Times Notable Book (2020), Best Book of 2020: Guardian, Financial Times, Literary Hub, and NPR.]]> 372 Maggie O'Farrell 1472223799 Charlotte 0 4.16 2020 Hamnet
author: Maggie O'Farrell
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: books-i-own, new-books-bought-2024, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Promise Me (Myron Bolitar, #8)]]> 43924 504 Harlan Coben 0451219244 Charlotte 0 3.99 2006 Promise Me (Myron Bolitar, #8)
author: Harlan Coben
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: to-read, borrowed-books, my-audible-books
review:

]]> Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl 61827506 It’s 1938, and a young woman selling face cream out of a New York City beauty parlor is determined to prove she can have it all. Her name is Estée Lauder, and she’s about to take the world by storm, in this dazzling new novel from the USA Today bestselling author of The Social Graces and Park Avenue Summer.

In New York City, you can disappear into the crowd. At least that’s what Gloria Downing desperately hopes as she tries to reinvent herself after a devastating family scandal. She’s ready for a total life makeover and a friend she can lean on—and into her path walks a young, idealistic woman named Estée. Their chance encounter will change Gloria’s life forever.

Estée dreams of success and becoming a household name like Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, and Revlon. Before Gloria knows it, she is swept up in her new friend’s mission and while Estée rolls up her sleeves, Gloria begins to discover her own talents. After landing a job at Saks Fifth Avenue, New York’s finest luxury department store, Gloria finds her voice, which proves instrumental in opening doors for Estée’s insatiable ambitions.

But in a world unaccustomed to women with power, they’ll each have to pay the price that comes with daring to live life on their own terms and refusing to back down.]]> 432 Renée Rosen 059333566X Charlotte 0 currently-reading 3.92 2023 Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl
author: Renée Rosen
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue]]> 60795461 447 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387573 Charlotte 5 I loved Addie, Henry and even Luc.
The story is about Addie wanting to have her own life with no one telling her what to do and she gets it when she makes a deal with evil. Then she meets Henry and a possibility of breaking the curse on herself. But she has to deal with Luc (the devil?) she made the deal with and there in lies the meaning of this story. What would you do for love and revenge?
Would love to read other books by this author to see what she does in other stories.
Highly recommended!!!]]> 4.21 2020 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves:
review:
I loved this book. The characters were very real and just sucked me in to the story.
I loved Addie, Henry and even Luc.
The story is about Addie wanting to have her own life with no one telling her what to do and she gets it when she makes a deal with evil. Then she meets Henry and a possibility of breaking the curse on herself. But she has to deal with Luc (the devil?) she made the deal with and there in lies the meaning of this story. What would you do for love and revenge?
Would love to read other books by this author to see what she does in other stories.
Highly recommended!!!
]]> Beneath a Scarlet Sky 35048585 Based on the true story of a forgotten hero, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is the triumphant, epic tale of one young man’s incredible courage and resilience during one of history’s darkest hours.

Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music, food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When his family home in Milan is destroyed by Allied bombs, Pino joins an underground railroad helping Jews escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his senior.

In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy, General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful commanders.

Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share.

Fans of All the Light We Cannot See, The Nightingale, and Unbroken will enjoy this riveting saga of history, suspense, and love.]]> 18 Mark T. Sullivan Charlotte 4 I love historical stories because I learn something from them.
This character went through a lot in this story and it was a real adventure. From saving people like mainly Jewish people to safety across the border to Switzerland, to being a chaueffer to a high ranking officer in the Nazi regime and spying on him for the Italian resistance and more. There was romance and heartbreak. Wow, what a full life he lived.
The end of the story explains and ties a lot of the story up. This book would have been a 5 star but the delivery of the story was a little stiff and didn't flow. Story line gave it a 4 star.
Recommended!]]> 4.14 2017 Beneath a Scarlet Sky
author: Mark T. Sullivan
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves:
review:
I listened to the Audible edition of this book and ended up loving this story that was based on a young man's life during WW II in Italy. From what I understand the main character Pino Lela was a real person making this story even more interesting.
I love historical stories because I learn something from them.
This character went through a lot in this story and it was a real adventure. From saving people like mainly Jewish people to safety across the border to Switzerland, to being a chaueffer to a high ranking officer in the Nazi regime and spying on him for the Italian resistance and more. There was romance and heartbreak. Wow, what a full life he lived.
The end of the story explains and ties a lot of the story up. This book would have been a 5 star but the delivery of the story was a little stiff and didn't flow. Story line gave it a 4 star.
Recommended!
]]> Daughter of Egypt 231127315 From New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Marie Benedict comes an extraordinary story of the woman who helped uncover Tutankhamun's tomb and the mystery behind Egypt’s first woman Pharaoh.

1920’s London was enthralled by the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Filled with priceless statues, jewels, and the gold-encased mummy of the boy Pharaoh himself, the burial site unleashed a fascination with the ancient world and revolutionized the world of archeology.

The discovery was made by Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle and his associate, famed archeologist Howard Carter. What no one knows is that without the pioneering spirit of Lady Evelyn Herbert, Carnarvon’s daughter, the tomb might never have been found. As a young woman, Evelyn was fascinated by the story of Hatshepsut, a woman who had to assume the guise of a man in order to rule Egypt. Although she brought peace and prosperity to Egypt, her male successors ruthlessly and thoroughly erased her name from history.

Lady Evelyn’s ambition to find the tomb of Egypt’s first woman ruler exposes her to life-threatening danger and pits her against archeologists who refuse to believe the tomb can be found―and certainly not by a woman. Refusing to give up, Evelyn is on the verge of success when she is suddenly forced to make an agonizing choice between loyalty to her beloved father and Carter and realizing the dream of a lifetime.]]> 320 Marie Benedict 1250280737 Charlotte 0 to-read 4.00 Daughter of Egypt
author: Marie Benedict
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Piano Maker 28172819 The suspenseful, emotionally resonant, and utterly compelling story of what brings an enigmatic French woman to a small Canadian town in the 1930s, a woman who has found depths of strength in dark times and comes to discover sanctuary at last. For readers of The Imposter Bride, The Cellist of Sarajevo, Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, and The Red Violin.ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýHelene Giroux arrives alone in St. Homais on a winter day. She wears good city clothes and drives an elegant car, and everything she owns is in a small trunk in the back seat. In the local church she finds a fine old piano, a Molnar, and she knows just how fine it is, for her family had manufactured these pianos before the Great War. Then her mother's death and war forces her to abandon her former life. ĚýĚýĚýĚý The story moves back and forth in time as Helene, settling into a simple life, playing the piano for church choir, recalls the extraordinary events that brought her to this place. They include the early loss of her soldier husband and the reappearance of an old suitor who rescues her and her daughter, when she is most desperate; the journeys that very few women of her time could even imagine, into the forests of Indochina in search of ancient treasures and finally, and fatefully, to the Canadian north. When the town policeman confronts her, past and present suddenly converge and she must face an episode that she had thought had been left behind forever.]]> 289 Kurt Palka 0771071418 Charlotte 0 to-read, to-read-not-bought 4.02 2015 The Piano Maker
author: Kurt Palka
name: Charlotte
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read, to-read-not-bought
review:

]]> Malas 198563738 A story full of passion and revenge, following one family living on the Texas Mexico border and a curse that reverberates across generations--"Fuentes has achieved something rare and indelible with this story of complex women.� (Erika L. Sánchez)

In 1951, a mysterious old woman confronts Pilar Aguierre in the small border town of La Cienega, Texas. The old woman is sure Pilar stole her husband and, in a heated outburst, lays a curse on Pilar and her family.

More than forty years later, Lulu Muñoz is dodging chaos at every turn: her troubled father’s moods, his rules, her secret life as singer in a punk band, but most of all her upcoming quinceañera. When her beloved grandmother passes away, Lulu finds herself drawn to the glamorous stranger who crashed the funeral and who lives on the alone and shunned on the edge of town.

Their unexpected kinship picks at the secrets of Lulu’s family’s past. As the quinceañera looms—and we move between these two strong, irascible female voices—one woman must make peace with the past, and one girl pushes to embrace her future.

Rich with cinematic details—from dusty rodeos to the excitement of a Selena concert and the comfort of conjunto ballads played at family gatherings—this memorable debut is a love letter to the Tejano culture and community that sustain both of these women as they discover what family means.]]> 375 Marcela Fuentes 0593655788 Charlotte 0 to-read, to-read-not-bought 3.91 2024 Malas
author: Marcela Fuentes
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read, to-read-not-bought
review:

]]> Iron Lake 16372985
Once a cop on Chicago’s South Side, there’s not much that can shock him. But when the town’s judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on this complicated and perplexing case of conspiracy, corruption, and a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home.]]> 12 William Kent Krueger 1461814812 Charlotte 0 3.65 1998 Iron Lake
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Charlotte
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, borrowed-books, my-audible-books, next-books-to-read
review:

]]>