Michelle's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 16 Apr 2025 08:44:28 -0700 60 Michelle's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Secret Lives of Church Ladies]]> 56533096 5 Deesha Philyaw 1705268803 Michelle 0 currently-reading 4.09 2020 The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
author: Deesha Philyaw
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis]]> 214004092 No room better defines American power and its role in the world than the White House Situation Room. And yet, none is more shrouded in secrecy and mystery. Created under President Kennedy, the Sit Room has been the epicenter of crisis management for presidents for more than six decades. Time and again, the decisions made within the Sit Room complex affect the lives of every person on this planet. Detailing close calls made and disasters narrowly averted, THE SITUATION ROOM will take readers through dramatic turning points in a dozen presidential administrations, THE SITUATION ROOM is the definitive, past-the-security-clearance look at the room where it happened, and the people—the famous and those you've never heard of—who have made history within its walls.]]> 11 George Stephanopoulos Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.34 The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis
author: George Stephanopoulos
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Excellent audio production. The history of the Whitehouse Situation Room and some of its most intense moments.
]]> The Quiet Librarian 223346502
After the murder of her best friend, a librarian’s search for answers leads back to her own dark secrets in this sweeping novel about a woman transformed by war, family, vengeance, and love, from award-winning writer Allen Eskens.

Hana Babic is a quiet, middle-aged librarian in Minnesota whoĚýwants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared.

Thirty years before, Hana was someone Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia—until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend—the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.

Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana’s care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora—and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.]]> Allen Eskens Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.90 2025 The Quiet Librarian
author: Allen Eskens
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
The librarian may have been quiet but she was pretty ruthless. Nice Historical Fiction-Mystery/Thriller.
]]> Darius the Great Is Not Okay 43026564
Then Darius goes to Iran for spring break (and despite what the Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy say, it’s not to join ISIS). He’s visiting his mother’s hometown, Yazd, to meet his family—and his ailing grandfather—for the first time. But Darius speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows the Silmarillion better than the Shahnameh. Even surrounded by Persians, he ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t fit in.

Not until he meets Sohrab Rezaei, his grandparents� Bahá’� neighbor. Darius is drawn to the lonely boy who helps water his grandfather’s fig trees, and the two strike up a tentative friendship, filling their days with pick up soccer, trips to the Jameh Mosque, and walks through Dowlatabad Garden.

But things in Iran are far from perfect. Darius’s grandfather’s health is failing. His dad is more distant than ever. And when Sohrab faces family issues of his own, Darius is powerless to help—or to hold their hard-won friendship together.

But he still has to try.]]> 8 Adib Khorram 0525638660 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.16 2018 Darius the Great Is Not Okay
author: Adib Khorram
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Sweet story of a boy discovering who he is during a family trip back to his mother’s homeland.
]]> The Stand 228202 1141 Stephen King 0451169530 Michelle 4 books-read-in-2010 4.32 1978 The Stand
author: Stephen King
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2010/04/02
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: books-read-in-2010
review:
I am not a huge Stephen King fan but after I read The Dome I kept hearing "if you liked The Dome you should read The Stand". The Stand is great and like The Dome there are lots of characters and action. I found The Stand to be a more intriguing plot and on the whole better written than The Dome. However, it did seem to drag in places. Maybe I shouldn't have chosen the "complete and uncut" version.
]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.27 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Dark and gory but really well written. I had to keep reading until the end.
]]> Jamaica Inn 26844936 Daphne du Maurier 1478985046 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.45 1936 Jamaica Inn
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.45
book published: 1936
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Mary arrives at Jamaica Inn to live with her aunt but nothing is what it seems and danger lurks around every corner.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem]]> 103340 The Passion of the Christ, they discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus' crucifixion. Using Mark's gospel as a guide, they present a day-by-day account of Jesus' final week of life. They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The 1st entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength. The 2nd heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey. The Jesus introduced herein is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church's traditional teachings. The Last Week depicts Jesus giving up his life to protest power without justice & to condemn the rich who lack concern for the poor. In this vein, at the end of the week Jesus marches up Calvary, offering himself as a model for others to do the same when confronted by similar issues. Informed, challenged & inspired, we not only meet the historical Jesus, but meet a new Jesus who engages & invites us to follow him.]]> 238 Marcus J. Borg 0060872608 Michelle 0 currently-reading 4.17 2006 The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem
author: Marcus J. Borg
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Wrong Place, Wrong Time 59416036
Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened?

Late October. After midnight. You’re waiting up for your seventeen-year-old son. He’s late. As you watch from the window, he emerges, and you realize he isn’t alone: he’s walking toward a man, and he’s armed.

You ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t believe it when you see him do it: your funny, happy teenage son, he kills a stranger, right there on the street outside your house. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is now in custody. His future shattered.

That night you fall asleep in despair. All is lost. Until you wake . . .

. . . and it is yesterday.

And then you wake again . . .

. . . and it is the day before yesterday.

Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. With another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lies an answer. The trigger for this crime—and you don’t have a choice but to find it . . .]]> Gillian McAllister 0063252384 Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 3.89 2022 Wrong Place, Wrong Time
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A woman caught in a time loop must save her son and his future in order to return to the present.
]]> <![CDATA[Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)]]> 61756727
In a land without magic, an assassin is summoned to the castle. She has no love for the vicious king who rules from his throne of glass, but she has not come to kill him. She has come to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three murderers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she will be released from prison to serve as the King's Champion.

Her name is Celaena Sardothien.

The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. And a princess from a faraway country will befriend her. But something rotten dwells in the castle, and it's there to kill. When her competitors start dying mysteriously, one by one, Celaena's fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival-and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.]]> 432 Sarah J. Maas 1639730958 Michelle 4 2025-books-print 4.19 2012 Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A young woman competes to become the king’s champion but much more is at stake than the new position at court.
]]> The Anthropocene Reviewed 57062743 A deeply moving and insightful collection of personal essays from #1 bestselling author John Green, adapted from his critically acclaimed podcast.


The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his groundbreaking podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet--from the QWERTY keyboard and Staphylococcus aureus to the Taco Bell breakfast menu--on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as "observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy." John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection that includes both beloved essays and all-new pieces exclusive to the book.

Narrated by the author.]]> 10 John Green 0593408535 Michelle 5 2021-books-audio 4.42 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed
author: John Green
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2021/08/18
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: 2021-books-audio
review:
John Green gives 5 star reviews to some of his favorite aspects of our current age. Funny, emotional and thought provoking. I think I enjoyed every essay. I also recommend the audiobook read by the author, hearing him read his work added so much to the experience.
]]> Wild Dark Shore 228638936 This program features multicast narration.

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.

But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.

A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books.]]> Charlotte McConaghy Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.00 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A family of caretakers on a research island rescues a woman from drowning. She is searching for her husband who should have been on the island.
]]> <![CDATA[Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well]]> 150279070 Learn how to reboot your metabolism, build strength, and extend your life with this accessible new guidebook that demonstrates the importance of muscle for health and longevity from the founder of the Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine®.

After years of watching patients cycle through her practice, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon noticed a pattern. While her patients struggled with a wide range of conditions, they all suffered from the same core problem: they had too little muscle rather than too much fat.

When we think about muscle, we tend to think about strength or aesthetics, but in reality, muscle accounts for so much more than that. As the body’s largest endocrine organ, muscle actually determines everything about the trajectory of health and aging. Many of the conditions Dr. Lyon’s patients were experiencing were actually symptoms of underdeveloped or unhealthy muscle.

Now, Dr. Lyon offers an easy-to-follow food, fitness, and self-care program anchored in evidence and pioneering research that teaches you how to optimize muscle—no matter your age or health background. Discover how to overcome everything from obesity to autoimmune disorders and avoid diseases like Alzheimer’s, hypertension, and diabetes by following Dr. Lyon’s powerful new approach to becoming forever strong.]]> Gabrielle Lyon 1797169025 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio Some good information. 3.49 Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well
author: Gabrielle Lyon
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.49
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Some good information.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Ranger: A novel (Vintage Contemporaries)]]> 209499399 🎧9 hours

The best-selling author of The River returns with a lush and vivid mystery set in Yellowstone National Park where a skirmish between a local hunter and a wolf biologist turns violent, and a park ranger, facing his own personal demons, sets out to determine what really happened.


Ren is a park ranger, tasked with duties both mundane and thrilling: breaking up fights at campgrounds, saving tourists from moose attacks, and attempting to broker an uneasy peace between the wealthy vacationers who tromp around with cameras and the locals who want to carve out a meaningful living amid this western landscape.

When Ren discovers his friend Hilly, a biologist and wolf expert, nearly dead in the steel jaws of a wolf trap, he hopes it’s just an accident, but the small red ribbon tied to the stake makes him fairly certain that it wasn’t. What begins as an inquiry into a known poacher soon opens into the discovery of a local group of ranchers who have formed an alliance at odds with both the park and with Ren’s responsibility to protect it.

Rife with surprising humor, populated by a cast of extraordinary characters, each drawn to Yellowstone for their own reasons, Peter Heller once again mines the rich vein where our very human impulses play out against the stunning beauty of the natural world.]]> 304 Peter Heller 0593468511 Michelle 4 2025-books-print 3.59 2023 The Last Ranger: A novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
author: Peter Heller
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A beautiful tale about survival and starting again but also an action filled thriller about a park ranger determined to protect the wildlife under his care.
]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 228410840 🎧Listening Length = 5 hours and 35 minutes

John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest infectious disease.

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

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

In Everything Is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world—and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

©2025 John Green 🅿2025 Listening Library]]> John Green Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.52 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A moving and important book. Also an impressive way for John Green to use his platform to make changes in the world.
]]> <![CDATA[The Minds of Billy Milligan (Gunnie Rose)]]> 60979595
Felicia, Lizbeth Rose's younger half-sister and student at the Grigori school within the capital of the New Holy Russian Empire in San Diego, is caught between secrets and powerful family struggles. As a distant relative to the Tsar, she provides an essential service to him by providing blood transfusions for his hemophilia, and she is thus given rare access and dismissed as if cattle. At the Grigori school she is seen as a charity case, a poor orphan with no prospects and no sign of magical prowess--the latter which Felicia keeps purposefully hidden. And yet, when a kidnapping attempt is made upon Felicia her past and her future crash together in violent ways.

Continuing immediately after The Russian Cage, this fantastical fourth audiobook takes a side step, exploring the Holy Russian Empire while also showcasing the dynamic depths of magic within Harris's alternate North America in curious mysteries. Felicia, it turns out, is far more than the Russian-Mexican waif Lizbeth rescued, and the journey of discovery she is on is filled with magical assassins and desperation, but above it all is her courage to never give in to the limitations imposed upon her.]]> 1 Daniel Keyes Michelle 3 2023-books-audio 4.20 1981 The Minds of Billy Milligan (Gunnie Rose)
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1981
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/09
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: 2023-books-audio
review:
This edition of the gunnie rose series follows rose's sister and her adventures as she attends boarding school.
]]> Lush Life 59084346 Richard Price 1427219257 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.86 2008 Lush Life
author: Richard Price
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Cops and robbers. Police investigation gone wrong. Lots of big city atmosphere lots of inner character motivation.
]]> Selected Poems 22603726 Fatal Interview, the poetic record of a love affair that is presented in its entirety. McClatchy has also chosen works that extend our sense of Millay's translations, her playĚýAria da Capo, and excerpts from her librettoĚýThe King's Henchman. "I have for the most part been guided by my taste for Millay at her tautest and truest," writes McClatchy. "There are precise and resonant images everywhere."]]> 249 Edna St. Vincent Millay 1598533215 Michelle 0 currently-reading 4.03 1991 Selected Poems
author: Edna St. Vincent Millay
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18]]> 28677357
The First World War laid waste to a continent and permanently altered the political and religious landscape of the West. For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence - and the end of faith. Yet for J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbits, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis.

Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis sparked by the conflict.

Publisher's Summary

The First World War laid waste to a continent and permanently altered the political and religious landscape of the West. For a generation of men and women, it brought the end of innocence - and the end of faith. Yet for J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian imagination. Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbits, no Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to Christianity by C. S. Lewis.
Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the God of the Bible, Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis sparked by the conflict.

Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins]]> Joseph Loconte Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.01 2015 A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18
author: Joseph Loconte
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A discussion of the way WWI may have influenced the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.
]]> The Old Man and the Sea 49048169 Ernest Hemingway’s most beloved and popular novel ever, with millions of copies sold—now featuring early drafts and supplementary material as well as a personal foreword by the only living son of the author, Patrick Hemingway, and an introduction by the author’s grandson Seán Hemingway.

The last novel Ernest Hemingway saw published, The Old Man and the Sea has proved itself to be one of the enduring works of American fiction. It is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal: a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

Using the simple, powerful language of a fable, Hemingway takes the timeless themes of courage in the face of defeat and personal triumph won from loss and transforms them into a magnificent twentieth-century classic. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novel confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.]]> 128 Ernest Hemingway 1476787867 Michelle 3 2025-books-print 3.91 1952 The Old Man and the Sea
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1952
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
An old man, the sea, and a really big fish. A classic!
]]> <![CDATA[Daughter of the Morning Star (Walt Longmire, #17)]]> 57663057
A new novel in the beloved New York Times bestselling Longmire series.

When Lolo Long's niece Jaya begins receiving death threats, Tribal Police Chief Long calls on Absaroka County Sheriff Walt Longmire along with Henry Standing Bear as lethal backup. Jaya Longshot Long is the phenom of the Lame Deer Lady Stars High School basketball team and is following in the steps of her older sister, who disappeared a year previously, a victim of the scourge of missing Native Woman in Indian Country. Lolo hopes that having Longmire involved might draw some public attention to the girl's plight, but with this maneuver she also inadvertently places the good sheriff in a one-on-one with the deadliest adversary he has ever faced in both this world and the next.]]> 8 Craig Johnson Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.08 2021 Daughter of the Morning Star (Walt Longmire, #17)
author: Craig Johnson
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Sheriff Longmire protects a young basketball star on the res who has been getting death threats.
]]> The Hate U Give 32497607
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, Angie Thomas’s searing debut about an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances addresses issues of racism and police violence with intelligence, heart, and unflinching honesty. Soon to be a major motion picture from Fox 2000/Temple Hill Productions.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.]]> 12 Angie Thomas Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.48 2017 The Hate U Give
author: Angie Thomas
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A young woman witnesses her friend being shot by a policeman. In the aftermath she must decide what it means to witness and how to use her witness to change her community for the best.
]]> Wife 22 15799358 For fans of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It comes an irresistible novel of a woman losing herself . . . and finding herself again . . . in the middle of her life.

Maybe it was those extra five pounds I’d gained.ĚýMaybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her.ĚýMaybe it was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I seemed to be running out of things to say to each other.
Ěý
But when the anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century� showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn’t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101).
Ěý
And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.
Ěý
7. Sometimes I tell him he’s snoring when he’s not snoring so he’ll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself.
61. Chet Baker on the tape player. He was cutting peppers for the salad. I looked at those hands and thought, I am going to have this man’s children.
67. To not want what you don’t have. What you ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t have. What you ˛őłó´ÇłÜ±ô»ĺ˛Ô’t have.
32. That if we weren’t careful, it was possible to forget one another.
Ěý
Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor’s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions.
Ěý
But these days, I’m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, I’ll have to make a decision—one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I’m too busy answering questions.
Ěý
As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 416 Melanie Gideon 0345527968 Michelle 3 3.48 2008 Wife 22
author: Melanie Gideon
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2013/03/05
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: 2013-books-arc, 2013-books-read
review:
This book was funny and light. The internet format was particularly enjoyable. However, the main character was a little too ridiculous and way too obtuse to be very likable. Good book but maybe could have been a great book.
]]> A Sorceress Comes to Call 216056279 A dark retelling of the Brothers Grimm's Goose Girl, rife with secrets, murder, and forbidden magic

Cordelia knows her mother is unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms, and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend—unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.

After a suspicious death in their small town, Cordelia’s mother insists they leave in the middle of the night, riding away on Falada’s sturdy back, leaving behind all Cordelia has ever known. They arrive at the remote country manor of a wealthy older man, the Squire, and his unwed sister, Hester. Cordelia’s mother intends to lure the Squire into marriage, and Cordelia knows this can only be bad news for the bumbling gentleman and his kind, intelligent sister.

Hester sees the way Cordelia shrinks away from her mother, how the young girl sits eerily still at dinner every night. Hester knows that to save her brother from bewitchment and to rescue the terrified Cordelia, she will have to face down a wicked witch of the worst kind.]]> 11 T. Kingfisher 1250351308 Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.07 2024 A Sorceress Comes to Call
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A young woman finds her voice and her freedom.
]]> <![CDATA[The Unknown (Krewe of Hunters #35)]]> 59627766
Sienna Murray was only fourteen when she pulled her neighbors out of a raging house fire. A decade later, she still ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t explain what happened that night, how she knew to save them at just the right moment—or why she receives the same mysterious warning when it happens againâ€�

New member of the Krewe of Hunters elite paranormal team FBI agent Ryder Stapleton doesn’t believe in coincidences. So when the suspicious fire he’s called to investigate reveals a cryptic link to Sienna, he ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t help but think the unassuming museum curator has something to hide. But he soon discovers they have more in common than he ever thought—and a growing attraction neither can deny.

If they're going to have a future, Sienna and Ryder need to catch a serial arsonist roaming the shadowy streets of New Orleans…before the city burns down around them.]]> Heather Graham Michelle 2 2025-books-audio 3.56 2021 The Unknown (Krewe of Hunters #35)
author: Heather Graham
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Mystery with a paranormal twist.
]]> The Lincoln Highway 57109107 The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.]]> 576 Amor Towles 0735222355 Michelle 5 2025-books-print 4.18 2021 The Lincoln Highway
author: Amor Towles
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A young man left to care for his orphaned younger brother tries to get a fresh start but is held back by the schemes of his friends.
]]> <![CDATA[Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster]]> 40978210 Listening length: 13 hours and 56 minutes

The definitive, dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.

April 25, 1986, in Chernobyl, was a turning point in world history. The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.

Chernobyl was also a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, and, with it, the United States� victory in the Cold War. For Moscow, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With a total cost of 18 billion rubles—at the time equivalent to $18 billion—Chernobyl bankrupted an already teetering economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies.

The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told—until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy.]]> Adam Higginbotham 1508278512 Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.22 2019 Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A very thorough account of the Chernobyl disaster. Well writen
]]> Beowulf 57258552 0 Unknown 1665190183 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.09 1000 Beowulf
author: Unknown
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1000
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
An accessible translation expertly read by the translator.
]]> <![CDATA[First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)]]> 216409411
A hopeless romantic meets a demoralized radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.

Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life-or lack thereof—she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.]]> 12 B.K. Borison Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.05 2025 First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)
author: B.K. Borison
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:

]]> The Wedding People 210135159
A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us 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 dreamt of coming for years―she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe―which makes it that much more surprising when the women ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach's The Wedding People is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> Alison Espach Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.05 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A woman checks in to a posh hotel after her life takes a downward spiral and finds the entire hotel has been booked for a wedding. Can an expensive wedding, an over-the-top bridezilla and the wedding people actually solve all her problems?
]]> <![CDATA[Birds, Beasts and Relatives (Corfu Trilogy #2)]]> 32570472 The follow-up to My Family and Other Animals and the inspiration for The Durrells in Corfu: A naturalist’s memoir of his family’s time on a Greek island.

In the years before World War II, Gerald Durrell’s family left the gloomy shores of England for the sun-drenched island of Corfu. Against this picturesque backdrop, Durrell fondly recalls his family’s disorderly household and outrageous antics, including their interactions with locals of both human and animal varieties.
Ěý
After a boyhood spent studying zoology and acquiring the island’s exotic insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, and sea creatures as pets, Durrell’s budding naturalism would later bloom into a passion for conservation that would last a lifetime.
Ěý
Filled with clever observations, amusing anecdotes, and childlike wonder, Birds, Beasts and Relatives is half nature guide, half coming-of-age tale, and all charmingly funny memoir.
Ěý
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Gerald Durrell including rare photos from the author’s estate.
Ěý]]> 258 Gerald Durrell 1504041666 Michelle 3 2025-books-print 4.39 1969 Birds, Beasts and Relatives (Corfu Trilogy #2)
author: Gerald Durrell
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1969
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
Delightful and beautifully written memoir.
]]> <![CDATA[Winter Lost (Mercy Thompson, #14; Mercy Thompson World, #20)]]> 205753810
Mercy Thompson, car mechanic and shapeshifter, must stop a disaster of world-shattering proportions in this exhilarating entry in the No. 1 New York Times bestselling series.

In the supernatural realms, there are creatures who belong to winter. I am not one of them. But like the coyote I can become at will, I am adaptable.

My name is Mercy Thompson Hauptman, and my mate, Adam, is the werewolf who leads the Columbia Basin Pack, the pack charged with keeping the people who live and work in the Tri-Cities of Washington State safe. It's a hard job, and it doesn't leave much room for side quests. Which is why when I needed to travel to Montana to help my brother, I intended to go by myself.

But I'm not alone anymore.

Together, Adam and I find ourselves trapped with strangers in a lodge in the heart of the wilderness, in the teeth of a storm of legendary power, only to discover my brother's issues are a tiny part of a problem much bigger than we could have imagined. Arcane and ancient magics are at work that could, unless we are very careful, bring about the end of the world . . .]]> 12 Patricia Briggs Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.07 2024 Winter Lost (Mercy Thompson, #14; Mercy Thompson World, #20)
author: Patricia Briggs
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/07
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Coyote intervenes to repair Mercy's injuries.
]]> Nineteen Minutes 53185705 My Sister's Keeper and The Tenth Circle, Jodi Picoult pens her most riveting book yet, with a startling and poignant story about the devastating aftermath of a small-town tragedy.

Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens - until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes - or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.]]> Jodi Picoult Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.16 2007 Nineteen Minutes
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Jodi Picoult's emtionally charged fictional account of a school shooting and its aftermath.
]]> The Sun Is Also a Star 29790356
Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents� high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.

The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?]]> 8 Nicola Yoon 1524721395 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.85 2016 The Sun Is Also a Star
author: Nicola Yoon
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Two young people meet and fall in love on the day one of them is scheduled to be deported.
]]> <![CDATA[Next to Last Stand (Walt Longmire, #16)]]> 56952433 One of the most viewed paintings in American history, Custer's Last Fight, copied and distributed by Anheuser-Busch at a rate of over two million copies a year, was destroyed in a fire at the 7th Cavalry Headquarters in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1946. Or was it? When Charley Lee Stillwater dies of an apparent heart attack at the Wyoming Home for Soldiers & Sailors, Walt Longmire is called in to try and make sense of a piece of a painting and a Florsheim shoebox containing a million dollars, sending the good sheriff on the trail of a dangerous art heist.]]> Craig Johnson 1501998560 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.79 2020 Next to Last Stand (Walt Longmire, #16)
author: Craig Johnson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Another great addition to the Longmire series. The audiobooks for this series are terrific.
]]> Confess 22609310
For once, Auburn takes a chance and puts her heart in control, only to discover that Owen is hiding a huge secret. The magnitude of his past threatens to destroy everything Auburn loves most, and the only way to get her life back on track is to cut Owen out of it—but can she do it?]]> 306 Colleen Hoover 1476791457 Michelle 0 to-read 4.14 2015 Confess
author: Colleen Hoover
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Silent Patient 43210826 Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....]]> 9 Alex Michaelides Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.82 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Fast paced who done it with a satisfying twist.
]]> The Year of Magical Thinking 958489
5 hr 5 min]]> 5 Joan Didion 159887005X Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.72 2005 The Year of Magical Thinking
author: Joan Didion
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
The reader follows the author through a year of the grieving process.
]]> Shotgun Lovesongs 17934521
Now all four are home, in hopes of finding what could be real purchase in the world. The result is a shared memory only half-recreated, riddled with culture clashes between people who desperately wish to see themselves as the unified tribe they remember, but are confronted with how things have, in fact, changed.

There is conflict here between longtime buddies, between husbands and wives � told with writing that is, frankly, gut-wrenching, and even heartbreaking. But there is also hope, healing, and at times, even heroism. It is strong, American stuff, not at all afraid of showing that we can be good, too � not just fallible and compromising. Shotgun Lovesongs is a remarkable and uncompromising saga that explores the age-old question of whether or not you can ever truly come home again � and the kind of steely faith and love returning requires.]]> 307 Nickolas Butler 1250039819 Michelle 5 2025-books-print, favorites 3.77 2014 Shotgun Lovesongs
author: Nickolas Butler
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: 2025-books-print, favorites
review:
The story of four friends who grow up together in a small town. Beautifully written.
]]> <![CDATA[The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore]]> 221644057 An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations

Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop, we see those stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.

Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including The Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who appeared to sign books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.

The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.]]> 10 Evan Friss Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.93 2024 The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
author: Evan Friss
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Very much as advertised an overview of the history of the American Bookstore.
]]> Dark Matter 27833673 A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.]]> 11 Blake Crouch 1101924470 Michelle 4 3.94 2016 Dark Matter
author: Blake Crouch
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: 2016-books-audio, 2025-books-audio
review:
4.5 stars. This book was loads of fun to listen to. I can't reveal much of the story without ruining it for others so I will just say it was unique. There were a lot of twists and some weird (good weird)moments in this one. I enjoyed the main character and his devotion to his family despite all odds. Great audio production. I strongly recommend this one.
]]> <![CDATA[Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space]]> 213363722 Runtime: 16 hours and 55 minutes

The definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster based on new archival research and in-depth reporting.

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

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

Higginbotham reveals the history of the shuttle program, the lives of men and women whose stories have been overshadowed by the disaster as well as the designers, engineers, and test pilots who struggled against the odds to get the first shuttle into space.]]> 17 Adam Higginbotham 1797179497 Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.40 2024 Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
An excellent overview of the Challenger disaster and the NASA space program during the years of the space shuttle missions. A little slow at the start but the background given was necessary to understand all the factors involved.
]]> <![CDATA[Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America]]> 29152593 Between '65 & '72, America experienced a 2nd civil war. From its ashes, today's political world was born. It was the era not only of Nixon, Johnson, Agnew, Humphrey, McGovern, Daley & Geo Wallace but Abbie Hoffman, Ronald Reagan, Angela Davis, Ted Kennedy, Chas Manson, John Lindsay & Jane Fonda. There are glimpses of Jimmy Carter, Geo H.W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry & even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove & Bill Clinton--& an unambitious young man named Geo W. Bush.
Cataclysms tell the story: Blacks trashing their neighborhoods. White suburbanites wielding shotguns. Student insurgency over the Vietnam War. The assassinations of Rbt F. Kennedy & Martin Luther King. The riots at the '68 Democratic Nat'l Convention. The fissuring of the Democrats into warring factions manipulated by the dirty tricks of Nixon & his Committee to ReElect the President. Nixon pledging a dawn of nat'l unity, governing more divisively than any president before him, then directing a criminal conspiracy, the Watergate cover-up, from the Oval Office. Then, in 11/72, Nixon, harvesting the bitterness & resentment born of turmoil, was reelected in a landslide, not only setting the stage for his '74 resignation but defining the terms of the ideological divide characterizing America today.
Filled with prodigious research, driven by a powerful narrative, Perlstein's account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.]]> Rick Perlstein Michelle 5 2025-books-audio 4.44 2008 Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
author: Rick Perlstein
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Great overview of the political life of Nixon and of the events that took place during his political career.
]]> The Thirteenth Tale 410428 Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny.

Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long.

Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret is mesmerized by the author’s tale of gothic strangeness—featuring the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.]]> 424 Diane Setterfield 0743298039 Michelle 3 2025-books-print 4.00 2006 The Thirteenth Tale
author: Diane Setterfield
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A young biographer is summoned to the secluded home of a famous novelist to record her story before she dies. Gothic and twisted.
]]> Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3) 223483360
Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.

Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.

They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.

But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 24 Rebecca Yarros 1705085113 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio Needs more dragons. 3.68 2025 Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Needs more dragons.
]]> Forever . . . 59128335 There’s a first for everything.

When you build up something in your mind—really imagine it, wish for it—sometimes, when it actually happens, it doesn’t live up to your expectations.

True love is nothing like that.

Especially not for Katherine and Michael, who ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t get enough of each other. Their relationship is unique: sincere, intense, and fun all at the same time. Although they haven’t been together all that long, they know it’s serious. A whole world opens up as young passion and sexuality bloom.

But it’s senior year of high school, and there are big changes ahead. Michael and Katherine are destined for another big “first�: a decision. Is this the love of a lifetime, or the very beginning of a lifetime of love?]]> Judy Blume 0593415892 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.62 1975 Forever . . .
author: Judy Blume
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail]]> 64000117
From an award-winning former law enforcement park ranger and investigator, this female-driven true crime adventure follows the author’s quest to find missing hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail by pairing up with an eclectic group of unlikely allies.
Ěý
As a park ranger with the National Park Service's law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, fromĚýYosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service's bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, and left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbles across a mystery that pulls her right back where she left off: three young men have vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile trek made famous by Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and no one has been able to find them. It’s bugging the hell out of her.
Ěý
Andrea’s concern soon leads her to a wild environment unlike any she’s ever encountered: missing person Facebook groups. Andrea launches an investigation, joining forces with an eclectic team of amateurs who are determined to solve the cases by land and by screen: a mother of the missing, a retired pharmacy manager, and a mapmaker who monitors terrorist activity for the government. Together, they track the activities of kidnappers and murderers, investigate a cult, rescue a psychic in peril, cross paths with an unconventional scientist, and reunite an international fugitive with his family. Searching for the missing is a brutal psychological and physical test with the highest stakes, but eventually their hardships begin to bear strange fruits—ones that lead them to places and people they never saw coming.
Ěý
Beautifully written, heartfelt, and at times harrowing,Ěý TRAIL OF THE LOST Ěýpaints a vivid picture of hiker culture and its complicated relationship with the ever-expanding online realm, all while exploring the power and limits of determination, generosity, and hope. It also offers a deep awe of the natural world, even as it unearths just how vast and treacherous it can be.Ěý
Ěý
On theĚý TRAIL OF THE LOST , you may not find what you are looking for, but you will certainly find more than you seek.]]> 11 Andrea Lankford 1668626780 Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 3.64 2023 Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail
author: Andrea Lankford
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Andrea Lankford relates the details of searches that she has been involved in in for 3 men missing from the PCT.
]]> Playing for Pizza 2399214 308 John Grisham 0440244714 Michelle 0 to-read, 2013-books-arc 3.41 2007 Playing for Pizza
author: John Grisham
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read, 2013-books-arc
review:

]]> The Speed of Dark 1140949 With a new introduction by the author

In the near future, disease will be a condition of the past. Most genetic defects will be removed at birth; the remaining during infancy. Lou Arrendale, a high-functioning autistic adult, is a member of the lost generation, born at the wrong time to reap the rewards of medical science. He lives a low-key, independent life. But then he is offered a chance to try a brand-new experimental “cure� for his condition. With this treatment Lou would think and act and be just like everyone else. But if he was suddenly free of autism, would he still be himself? Would he still love the same classical music—with its complications and resolutions? Would he still see the same colors and patterns in the world—shades and hues that others cannot see? Most important, would he still love Marjory, a woman who may never be able to reciprocate his feelings? Now Lou must decide if he should submit to a surgery that might completely change the way he views the world... and the very essence of who he is.

Thoughtful, provocative, poignant, unforgettable, The Speed of Dark is a gripping journey into the mind of an autistic person as he struggles with profound questions of humanity and matters of the heart.]]> 376 Elizabeth Moon 0345447549 Michelle 5 2013-books-read, favorites 3.89 2002 The Speed of Dark
author: Elizabeth Moon
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2013/09/21
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 2013-books-read, favorites
review:
Amazing book! If you are looking for sci-fi don't read this book. It is not that kind of story even though it is written by a noted sci-fi writer and is set slightly in the future. It is, however, a terrifice story about how our society deals with disability, written by an author who is also the parent of an autistic child. It raises a lot of questions about how society should deal with persons with a disability or persons who are just different in some way. It also raises questions about how we as a society will handle the rapid advances in medical science that we will see in the coming years. The main character is completely likable and by the end of the book you feel that you really have come to understand him.
]]> No, David! 120846 32 David Shannon 0439129656 Michelle 3 2025-books-print 4.53 1998 No, David!
author: David Shannon
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A mischievous David is told no until he finally gets a yes.
]]> The Bluest Eye 292330
It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 0 Toni Morrison 0739343734 Michelle 5 2025-books-audio 3.95 1970 The Bluest Eye
author: Toni Morrison
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
The story of one young girl and the heart-breaking wish that she places all her hopes on.
]]> I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons 199897875 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Unicorn comes a new novel with equal amounts of power and whimsy in which a loveable cast of characters trapped within their roles of dragon hunter, princess, and more must come together to take their fates into their own hands.

Dragons are common in the backwater kingdom of Bellemontagne, coming in sizes from mouse-like vermin all the way up to castle-smashing monsters. Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax (who would much rather people call him Robert) has recently inherited his deceased dad’s job as a dragon catcher/exterminator, a career he detests with all his heart in part because he likes dragons, feeling a kinship with them, but mainly because his dream has always been the impossible one of transcending his humble origin to someday become a princess valet. Needless to say, fate has something rather different in mind…]]> 278 Peter S. Beagle 1668025299 Michelle 3 2025-books-print 4.01 2024 I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons
author: Peter S. Beagle
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A prince, a princess and a dragon exterminator go on a quest.
]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 33161050
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 13 Taylor Jenkins Reid Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.26 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
The life story of Evelyn Hugo. Hollywood bad girl who is not afraid to do what it takes to get what she wants. The seven husbands are just incidental.
]]> Pachinko 36691816 Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan.

So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity.

Listening Length: 18 hours and 16 minutes]]> 19 Min Jin Lee Michelle 5 2025-books-audio 3.94 2017 Pachinko
author: Min Jin Lee
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Multi-generational saga of a Korean family that migrates to Japan in the 1920's. Unputdownable.
]]> Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1) 49769884 Neuromancer is a science-fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks as one of the twentieth century's most potent visions of the future.

Case was the sharpest data thief in the matrix—until he crossed the wrong people and they crippled his nervous system, banishing him from cyberspace. Now a mysterious new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run at an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, a mirror-eyed street samurai, to watch his back, Case is ready for the adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.

Neuromancer was the first fully realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.]]> 320 William Gibson 0441007465 Michelle 3 2025-books-print 3.72 1984 Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)
author: William Gibson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A cyberpunk classic. Beautiful expressive writing.
]]> <![CDATA[Blood of Hercules (Villains of Lore, #1)]]> 219150366 Available for the first time in audio, this recording of Blood of Hercules features four narrators! The overnight viral sensation everyone is talking about, Blood of Hercules is a sarcastically funny, dark fantasy romance reimagining of Hercules from bestselling author Jasmine Mas.

I’m just a girl. And it turns out, I’m Hercules.

I’m struggling to survive in a Titan infested world where Spartans, immortals from twelve royal families who have god-like powers and obscene wealth, rule over all. A shy-stammering foster child with nothing, I keep my head down, cover my scars, and focus on excelling in school. At least, I try to. Then it happens.

My blood test reveals I’m part of the powerful elite. I’m one of them. A Spartan.

Forced to attend the Spartan War Academy, I undergo the most harrowing test of all time to see if I have what it takes to be an immortal. There’s just a few problems. Achilles and Patro are my scary mentors. Kharon, the ferryman of death, and Augustus, the son of war, are my terrifying professors. Also, I’m pretty sure either someone’s stalking me everywhere I go, or my sanity’s slipping—I have a bad feeling both are true.

I’m surrounded by Villains and they’re smothering me with their hate, obsession, and dark possessiveness. Too bad for them, they have no clue just who they’re messing with.

Perfect for listeners who love:
� "Who did this to you?"
� Extreme Enemies to Lovers
� Morally Gray Alpha Heros
� Stories where the Villains get the girl
� Greek Myths and War Academies]]> Jasmine Mas 1488235732 Michelle 1 2025-books-audio Not worth it. 3.55 2024 Blood of Hercules (Villains of Lore, #1)
author: Jasmine Mas
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Not worth it.
]]> Out of Darkness 28588518
New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive.

Ashley Hope PĂ©rez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion the worst school disaster in American history as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people.]]> Ashley Hope PĂ©rez 0735289468 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.88 2016 Out of Darkness
author: Ashley Hope PĂ©rez
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Sweethearts try to find a way to make a life together in East Texas during the 1930's. Their struggle against all obstacles culminates in catastrophe when the local school explodes due to a gas leak. Historically based.
]]> A Love Song for Ricki Wilde 212924176
Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.]]> 368 Tia Williams 1538726718 Michelle 0 to-read 3.99 2024 A Love Song for Ricki Wilde
author: Tia Williams
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Atmosphere 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

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

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

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

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

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Michelle 0 to-read 4.44 2025 Atmosphere
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Haters 27796775
From Jesse Andrews, author of the New York Times bestselling Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and screenwriter of the Sundance award-winning motion picture of the same name, comes a groundbreaking young adult novel about music, love, friendship, and freedom as three young musicians follow a quest to escape the law long enough to play the amazing show they hope (but also doubt) they have in them.

Inspired by the years he spent playing bass in a band himself, The Haters is Jesse Andrews's road trip adventure about a trio of jazz-camp escapees who, against every realistic expectation, become a band.

For Wes and his best friend, Corey, jazz camp turns out to be lame. It's pretty much all dudes talking in Jazz Voice. But then they jam with Ash, a charismatic girl with an unusual sound, and the three just click. It's three and a half hours of pure musical magic, and Ash makes a decision: They need to hit the road. Because the road, not summer camp, is where bands get good. Before Wes and Corey know it, they're in Ash's SUV heading south, and The Haters Summer of Hate Tour has begun.

In his second novel, Andrews again brings his brilliant and distinctive voice to YA, in the perfect book for music lovers, fans of The Commitments and High Fidelity, or anyone who has ever loved--and hated--a song or a band. This witty, funny coming-of-age novel is contemporary fiction at its best.]]> 0 Jesse Andrews 0735209464 Michelle 2 2025-books-audio 3.25 2016 The Haters
author: Jesse Andrews
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Three pretentious teens take an ill-advised road trip.
]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Life (All Souls, #3)]]> 16054217 The #1 New York Times bestselling series finale and sequel to A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night

Bringing the magic and suspense of the All Souls Trilogy to a deeply satisfying conclusion, this highly anticipated finale went straight to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In The Book of Life, Diana and Matthew time-travel back from Elizabethan London to make a dramatic return to the present—facing new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home, Sept-Tours, they reunite with the beloved cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency.]]> 561 Deborah Harkness 0670025593 Michelle 0 to-read 4.15 2014 The Book of Life (All Souls, #3)
author: Deborah Harkness
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Berry Pickers 201555799
A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> Amanda Peters Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 3.91 2023 The Berry Pickers
author: Amanda Peters
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A family struggles after their young daughter disappears .
]]> <![CDATA[William Henry Harrison (Young Patriots) (Young Patriots Series)]]> 14446204 0 Howard Henry Peckham 1433201453 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.00 1951 William Henry Harrison (Young Patriots) (Young Patriots Series)
author: Howard Henry Peckham
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1951
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Basic facts for young readers.
]]> The Little Prince 40961473 100 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Michelle 4 2025-books-print A sweet classic. 4.36 1943 The Little Prince
author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1943
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A sweet classic.
]]> The Nickel Boys 45165235 In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad , Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South in the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called The Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men."

In reality, The Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors, where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked and the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.

The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at The Nickel Academy.

Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers.]]> 7 Colson Whitehead 1984891383 Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 4.11 2019 The Nickel Boys
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Powerful story. Wonderful audio production.
]]> The Lost Bookshop 65137920 The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets.

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

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

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

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder� where nothing is as it seems.]]> 432 Evie Woods 0008609209 Michelle 4 2025-books-print 4.04 2023 The Lost Bookshop
author: Evie Woods
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
So much happening in this book. Opaline, Martha, and Henry all searching for a lost bookshop and their best selves.
]]> The Wild Robot 30289203 Soon to be a DreamWorks movie, coming to theaters 9/20/24!Wall-E meets Hatchet in this #1ĚýNew York Times bestselling illustrated middle grade novel from Caldecott Honor winner Peter Brown Can a robot survive in the wilderness? When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is all alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is--but she knows she needs to survive. After battling a violent storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island's unwelcoming animal inhabitants. As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home--until, one day, the robot's mysterious past comes back to haunt her. From bestselling and award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown comes a heartwarming and action-packed novel about what happens when nature and technology collide.]]> 288 Peter Brown Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.15 2016 The Wild Robot
author: Peter Brown
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Nice audio production. A robot stranded on a deserted island learns to survive and thrive from the animals it encounters.
]]> The Lost Story 199927030 The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons� investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.]]> 352 Meg Shaffer 0593598873 Michelle 4 2025-books-print 3.78 2024 The Lost Story
author: Meg Shaffer
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: 2025-books-print
review:
A new twist on children lost in the woods. An adult fairy tale. A fantasy fan’s delight.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 212972620
There is no bigger public health story now than the collapse in youth mental health. The numbers are terrifying and dominate our headlines. There has been much debate over how we got here, and what to do next, and bestselling author and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt is at the white-hot center of that discourse. Haidt has spent his career speaking wisdom and truth into the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the perfect storm contributing to a public health emergency for Gen Z.

For the cohort that hit puberty around 2009, their sense of self developed as the threads of three dramatic technological and social changes smartphones and life with the constant companionship of a screen, front-facing cameras and the bevy of apps that thrived on selfie-culture, and social networks that reduced engagement and affirmation to likes and hearts alone. But phones aren’t the only villain here; the ground for this crisis was seeded by a decades long shift from play-based childhoods to ones defined by over-supervision, structure, and fear.

The Anxious Generation is a penetrating and alarming accounting of how we adults began to overprotect children in the real world while giving essentially no protection in the brutal online world. Haidt documents the four fundamental harms of the phone-based sleep deprivation, social deprivation, cognitive fragmentation, and addiction. He then shows the unique harms affecting boys, and the unique harms affecting girls. In the last section of The Anxious Generation , he offers concrete and scientifically based advice with separate chapters addressed to parents, schools, universities, governments, and to teens themselves. He draws on ancient wisdom and modern psychology to help everyone understand what healthy development would look like in the digital age.

10 hrs. 33 min.]]> 11 Jonathan Haidt 0593829093 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.25 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Interesting evaluation of the changes that smartphones have brought about in our society.
]]> Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Michelle 3 2018-books-read 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2018/02/17
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: 2018-books-read
review:
Interesting dystopian premise. I enjoyed the overall story as well but I thought it seemed disjointed at points. I will probably check out the rest of the series as some point in time.
]]> <![CDATA[The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory]]> 222169608 New York Times reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief, Thomas Fuller.

In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter Thomas Fuller’s inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering wildfires, war, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story about this deaf football team. It was uplifting. During the pandemic’s gloom, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one, built on the chemistry between a group of underestimated boys and their superhero advocate coach, Keith Adams, a deaf former athlete himself. The team, and Adams, tackled the many stereotypes and seemed to be succeeding. Fuller packed his bags and drove seven hours to the Riverside campus just in time to see them trounce their opponent in the second game of the playoffs.

The Boys of Riverside looks back at the historic 2021 and 2022 seasons in which the California School for the Deaf chased history, following the personal journeys of Keith Adams (their dynamic deaf head coach), a student who spent the majority of the season sleeping in his father’s car parked in the Target lot, a fiercely committed player who literally played through a broken leg in order not to miss a crucial game, and myriad heart-wrenching and uplifting stories of the players who had found common purpose. Through their eyes, Fuller reveals a portrait of high school athletics, and deafness in America.]]> 8 Thomas Fuller 0593865421 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 4.12 2024 The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory
author: Thomas Fuller
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
The author follows the journey of an all deaf high school football team to the state championship.
]]> The First Part Last 9809799
With powerful language and keen insight, Johnson tells the story of a young man's struggle to figure out what the "right thing" is and then to do it. The result is a gripping portrayal of single teenage parenthood from the point of view of a youth on the threshold of becoming a man.]]> Angela Johnson 1400090679 Michelle 3 2025-books-audio 3.73 2003 The First Part Last
author: Angela Johnson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
A young man tells of his struggles as a 16 year old father.
]]> The God of the Woods 213939313
When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 15 Liz Moore 0593867793 Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 3.83 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
Siblings go missing from the same summer camp 15 years apart. A younger investigator tries to find what happened to them both.
]]> Mrs. Plansky's Revenge 195155961
One night Mrs. Plansky is startled awake by a phone call from a voice claiming to be her grandson Will, who desperately needs ten thousand dollars to get out of a jam. Of course, Loretta obliges—after all, what are grandmothers for, even grandmothers who still haven’t gotten a simple “thank you� for a gift sent weeks ago. Not that she's counting.

By morning, Mrs. Plansky has lost everything. Law enforcement announces that Loretta's life savings have vanished, and that it’s hopeless to find the scammers behind the heist. First humiliated, then furious, Loretta Plansky refuses to be just another victim.

In a courageous bid for justice, Mrs. Plansky follows her only clue on a whirlwind adventure to a small village in Romania to get her money and her dignity back—and perhaps find a new lease on life, too.
9 hours and 12 minutes]]> Spencer Quinn Michelle 4 2025-books-audio 3.57 2023 Mrs. Plansky's Revenge
author: Spencer Quinn
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/01
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: 2025-books-audio
review:
When Loretta Plansky finds that she had become the victim of a cybercrime that wiped out her entire savings, she is told by all parties that nothing can be done. Mrs. Plansky won't take that. She sets off to Romania on her own seeking justice.
]]> Cutting for Stone 8122546
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles—and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

penguinrandomhouse.com]]> 672 Abraham Verghese 030727134X Michelle 5 2024-books-print, favorites 4.51 2009 Cutting for Stone
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-print, favorites
review:
The fraught birth of twins begins the tale of a lifetime of discovery which takes the twins from Ethiopia to the United States and back.
]]> The Women 193752824 An intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

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

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

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

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 15 Kristin Hannah 1250317959 Michelle 5 2024-books-audio, favorites 4.52 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/20
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio, favorites
review:
A moving story about a young woman who goes to Vietnam as a nurse and how it changes everything that happens to her after that. Wonderfully written
]]> The Frozen River 202294742
From the New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia and Code Name Hélène comes a gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 15 Ariel Lawhon 0593748999 Michelle 5 2024-books-audio, favorites 4.30 2023 The Frozen River
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio, favorites
review:
A midwife is asked to determine cause of death in an accidental death and becomes embroiled in a larger plot involving murder, rape and theft. Great story, great characters, excellent audio production.
]]> Bluebird, Bluebird 34221082 A "heartbreakingly resonant" thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice from a writer and producer of the Emmy-winning Fox TV show Empire (USA Today).

"In Bluebird, Bluebird Attica Locke had both mastered the thriller and exceeded it."-Ann Patchett

When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules -- a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home.

When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders -- a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman -- have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes -- and save himself in the process -- before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt. From a writer and producer of the Emmy winning Fox TV show Empire, Bluebird, Bluebird is a rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas.]]> 10 Attica Locke 1478968249 Michelle 3 2024-books-audio 3.66 2017 Bluebird, Bluebird
author: Attica Locke
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
A Texas Ranger on suspension finds himself in the middle of an a case that will challenge his ability to distinguish truth from lie and right from wrong.
]]> The Ministry of Time 199897956
In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge�: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as �1847� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machine,� “Spotify,� and “the collapse of the British Empire.� But he adjusts quickly; he is, after all, an explorer by trade. Soon, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a seriously uncomfortable housemate dynamic, evolves into something much more. Over the course of an unprecedented year, Gore and the bridge fall haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences they never could have imagined.

Supported by a chaotic and charming cast of characters—including a 17th-century cinephile who ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t get enough of Tinder, a painfully shy World War I captain, and a former spy with an ever-changing series of cosmetic surgery alterations and a belligerent attitude to HR—the bridge will be forced to confront the past that shaped her choices, and the choices that will shape the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks the universal What happens if you put a disaffected millennial and a Victorian polar explorer in a house together?]]> 284 Kaliane Bradley Michelle 4 2024-books-print 3.88 2024 The Ministry of Time
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-print
review:
A young woman assigned to help a recent time traveler from the past adapt to modern life struggles when nefarious characters surface and her assignment seems less and less straight forward.
]]> <![CDATA[Dark Storm Rising (Kate Burkholder, #15.5)]]> 210681290
In this short mystery from bestselling author Linda Castillo, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder must race through a dangerous blizzard to save an elderly Amish woman from a sinister foe.

Newlyweds Chief of Police Kate Burkholder and John Tomasetti are happily spending their honeymoon at a beautiful Lake Erie cabin that was once part of an historic Amish settlement. But when a violent storm suddenly erupts, Lovina Nisley, the Amish owner of the cabin, goes missing. Lovina is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, so it initially appears the elderly woman simply took the wrong path, but her disappearance takes an ominous turn when her husband reveals that a developer has been threatening them if they refuse to sell him their home. With temperatures dropping and local law enforcement unable to reach them, Kate and Tomasetti must brave the perilous weather to find her. But will they reach Lovina in time to save her life?]]> Linda Castillo Michelle 3 2024-books-audio 3.75 2024 Dark Storm Rising (Kate Burkholder, #15.5)
author: Linda Castillo
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
A Kate Burkholder short story. It seems Sheriff Burkholder never takes time off.
]]> <![CDATA[The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty]]> 218198631 Power, privilege, and blood—this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journal reporter who has become an authority on the case.ĚýAlex Murdaugh was a benevolent dictator—the president of the South Carolina trial lawyersâ€� association, a political boss, a part-time prosecutor, and a partner in his family’s law firm. He was always ready with a favor, a drink, and an invitation to Moselle, his family’s 1,700-acre hunting estate. The Murdaugh name ignited respect—and fear—for a hundred miles in any direction. When he murdered his wife, Maggie, and son Paul at Moselle on a dark summer night, the fragile façade of Alex’s world could no longer hold. His forefathers had covered up a midnight suicide at a remote railroad crossing, a bootlegging ring run from a courthouse, and the attempted murder of a pregnant lover. Alex, too, almost walked away from his unspeakable crimes with his reputation intact, but his downfall was secured by a twist of fate, some stray mistakes, and a fateful decision by an old friend who’d finally seen enough. Why would a man who had everything kill his wife and grown son? To unwind the roots of Alex’s ruin, award-winning journalist Valerie Bauerlein reported not just from the courthouse every day but also along the backroads and through the tidal marshes of South Carolina’s Lowcountry.ĚýWhen the jurors made their pilgrimage to the crime scene, trying to envision Maggie and Paul’s last moments, she walked right behind them, sensing the ghosts that haunt the Murdaughsâ€� now-shattered legacy. Through masterful research and cinematic writing, The Devil at His Elbow is a transporting journey through Alex’s life, the night of the murders, and the investigation that culminated in a trial that held tens of millions spellbound. With her stunning insights and fearless instinct for the truth, Bauerlein uncovers layers of the Murdaugh murder case that have not been told.]]> Valerie Bauerlein Michelle 4 2024-books-audio 4.45 2024 The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty
author: Valerie Bauerlein
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
An in-depth account of one of the most notorious murder cases of our time.
]]> Slow Dance 204911494
Back in high school, everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together . . . everybody but Shiloh and Cary.

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

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

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

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

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

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

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.]]> 11 Rainbow Rowell 0063380226 Michelle 5 2024-books-audio 3.63 2024 Slow Dance
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
Whether YA, Adult or Fantasy, nobody does star crossed lovers like Rainbow Rowell.
]]> <![CDATA[The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club]]> 201512931 Listening Length: 15 hours and 20 minutes

A timeless comedy of manners—refreshing as a summer breeze and bracing as the British seaside—about a generation of young women facing the seismic changes brought on by war and dreaming of the boundless possibilities of their future, from the bestselling author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies� motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.]]> 16 Helen Simonson Michelle 4 2024-books-audio 3.85 2024 The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
author: Helen Simonson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
As WWI comes to a close, a young woman tries to find her next step into the future.
]]> <![CDATA[The Secret War of Julia Child: A Novel]]> 219293494
Single, 6 foot 2, and thirty years old, Julia McWilliams took a job working for America's first espionage agency, years before cooking or Paris entered the picture.ĚýThe Secret War of Julia Child traces Julia's transformation from ambitious Pasadena blue blood to Washington, DC file clerk, to head of General "Wild Bill" Donovan's secret File Registry as part of the Office of Strategic Services.Ěý

TheĚýwartime journey takes her to the Far East, to Asia's remote frontlines of then-Ceylon, India, and China, where she finds purpose, adventure, self-knowledge â€� and love with mapmaker Paul Child.ĚýThe spotlight has rarely shone on this fascinating period of time in the life of ("I'm not a spy") Julia Child, and this lyrical story allows us to explore the unlikely world of a woman in World War II spy station who has no idea of the impact she'll eventually impart.]]> 1 Diana R. Chambers Michelle 3 2024-books-audio 3.44 2024 The Secret War of Julia Child: A Novel
author: Diana R. Chambers
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
Julia Childs WWII years imagined.
]]> Of Human Bondage 6680420 534 W. Somerset Maugham 1596741104 Michelle 2 2024-books-print 4.40 1915 Of Human Bondage
author: W. Somerset Maugham
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1915
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-print
review:
The novel follows a young man from childhood to adulthood through a series of fraught love affairs and ill-advised business and life decsions.
]]> <![CDATA[The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern]]> 213910838
It's never too late for new beginnings.

On the cusp of turning eighty, newly retired pharmacist Augusta Stern is adrift. When she relocates to Rallentando Springs—an active senior community in southern Florida—she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin, the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy—and the man who broke her heart sixty years earlier.

As a teenager growing up in 1920’s Brooklyn, Augusta’s role model was her father, Solomon Stern, the trusted owner of the local pharmacy and the neighborhood expert on every ailment. But when Augusta’s mother dies and Great Aunt Esther moves in, Augusta ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t help but be drawn to Esther’s curious methods. As a healer herself, Esther offers Solomon’s customers her own advice—unconventional remedies ranging from homemade chicken soup to a mysterious array of powders and potions.

As Augusta prepares for pharmacy college, she is torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her great aunt, all while navigating a budding but complicated relationship with Irving. Desperate for clarity, she impulsively uses Esther’s most potent elixir with disastrous consequences. Disillusioned and alone, Augusta vows to reject Esther’s enchantments forever.

Sixty years later, confronted with Irving, Augusta is still haunted by the mistakes of her past. What happened all those years ago and how did her plan go so spectacularly wrong? Did Irving ever truly love her or was he simply playing a part? And can Augusta reclaim the magic of her youth before it’s too late?]]> 10 Lynda Cohen Loigman Michelle 3 2024-books-audio 4.04 2024 The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
author: Lynda Cohen Loigman
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
An octogenarian finds her long lost love when she moves into a retirement village.
]]> <![CDATA[Cruel Winter with You (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #1)]]> 220786787
For two former childhood friends, a blustery winter storm stirs some frosty—and scorching—memories in a delightful short story by #1 New York Times bestselling author Ali Hazelwood.

All newly minted pediatrician Jamie Malek wants is to borrow a roasting pan for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, that requires her to interact with Marc—her best friend’s troublemaking brother, who’s now a tech billionaire. He’s the one who got away. She’s the one who broke his heart. Outside, a howling blizzard. Inside, a crackling fire. Suddenly, being snowbound with the man she never expected to see again might not be such a bad way to spend a winter’s night.

Ali Hazelwood’s Cruel Winter with You is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.]]> Ali Hazelwood Michelle 3 2024-books-audio Fun short story romance. 3.53 2024 Cruel Winter with You (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #1)
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
Fun short story romance.
]]> Holiday Hideaway 219754771 From New York Times bestselling author Mary Kay Andrews comes a charming holiday romance about a newly single thirtysomething whose unauthorized vacation rental turns into a hilarious game of hide-and-seek when the new owner unexpectedly shows up.

Tilly Farriday isn’t feeling very jolly this season. Recently divorced and broke, she’s squatting in one of her rental agency’s properties until her new home is ready. The sprinkles on top of the burnt Christmas cookie that is her life? The new owner shows up early, forcing Tilly to hide in the attic to save her job…and what remains of her dignity.

George Holloway is here to sell his granduncle’s house—and to reconsider whether he and his fiancée are right for each other. Amid home repairs, George notices strange noises and missing food, but as much as he gets his rental agent on the phone, Tilly dodges every invitation to meet. He’s sure that someone’s here with him, and it’s certainly not the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, or Future.

As Tilly and George circle each other, they both wonder where their lives are headed and if, maybe, meeting each other is just the Christmas miracle they need.]]> 72 Mary Kay Andrews 1662527004 Michelle 4 2024-books-print Nice Christmas meet cute. 3.62 2024 Holiday Hideaway
author: Mary Kay Andrews
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-print
review:
Nice Christmas meet cute.
]]> A Christmas Carol 760627 3 Charles Dickens 1400086035 Michelle 4 4.37 1843 A Christmas Carol
author: Charles Dickens
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1843
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2011-books-audio, 2024-books-audio
review:
Audio. Jim Dale narrator. Always a pleasure to listen to.
]]> The Stranger 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Michelle 3 2024-books-print Albert Camus highlighting the futility of life.]]> 4.04 1942 The Stranger
author: Albert Camus
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-books-print
review:
Classic story by Albert Camus highlighting the futility of life.
]]> The Stars Are Fire 35400109
In October 1947, after a summer long drought, fires break out all along the Maine coast from Bar Harbor to Kittery and are soon racing out of control from town to village. Five months pregnant, Grace Holland is left alone to protect her two toddlers when her husband, Gene, joins the volunteer firefighters. Along with her best friend, Rosie, and Rosie's two young children, Grace watches helplessly as their houses burn to the ground, the flames finally forcing them all into the ocean as a last resort.

The women spend the night frantically protecting their children, and in the morning find their lives forever changed: homeless, penniless, awaiting news of their husbands' fate, and left to face an uncertain future in a town that no longer exists. In the midst of this devastating loss, Grace discovers glorious new freedoms—joys and triumphs she could never have expected her narrow life with Gene could contain—and her spirit soars. And then the unthinkable happens—and Grace's bravery is tested as never before.]]> Anita Shreve 0804147698 Michelle 4 2024-books-audio 3.62 2017 The Stars Are Fire
author: Anita Shreve
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
A young mother struggles to survive after a fire burns her home and her husband does not return from volunteering to fight the fire.
]]> 41: A Portrait of My Father 28366809 George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States, has authored a personal biography of his father, George H. W. Bush, the 41st President.
Ěý
Forty-three men have served as President of the United States.ĚýCountless books have been written about them.ĚýBut never before has a President told the story of his father, another President, through his own eyes and in his own words.ĚýA unique and intimate biography, the book covers the entire scope of the elder President Bush’s life and career, including his service in the Pacific during World War II, his pioneering work in the Texas oil business, and his political rise as a Congressman, U.S. Representative to China and the United Nations, CIA Director, Vice President, and President.Ěý The book shines new light on both the accomplished statesman and the warm, decent man known best by his family.ĚýIn addition, George W. Bush discusses his father’s influence on him throughout his own life, from his childhood in West Texas to his early campaign trips with his father, and from his decision to go into politics to his own two-term Presidency.]]> 8 George W. Bush Michelle 4 2024-books-audio 4.19 2014 41: A Portrait of My Father
author: George W. Bush
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
A unique biography of an American president, written by another American president who also happened to be his son.
]]> <![CDATA[Visions of Sugar Plums (A Stephanie Plum Between the Numbers/Holiday Novel, #1)]]> 527789
And there's a strange man in her kitchen.

Sure, this has happened to Stephanie Plum before. Strangers, weirdos, felons, creeps, and lunatics are always finding their way to her front door. But this guy is different. This guy is mysterious, sexy-and he has his own agenda. His name is Diesel and he is a man on a mission. And Diesel is unlike anyone Stephanie has ever met before in her life. The question is, what does he want with her? Can he help her find a little old toy maker who has skipped out on his bail right before Christmas? Can he survive the Plum family holiday dinner? Can he get Stephanie a tree that doesn't look like it was grown next to a nuclear power plant? These questions and more are keeping Stephanie awake at night. Not to mention the fact that she needs to find a bunch of nasty elves, her sister Valerie has a Christmas "surprise" for the Plums, her niece Mary Alice doesn't believe in Santa anymore, and Grandma Mazur has a new stud muffin. So bring out the plastic reindeer, strap on your jingle bells, and get ready to celebrate the holidays-Jersey style. In Janet Evanovich's Visions of Sugar Plums, the world of Plum has never been merrier!]]> 3 Janet Evanovich 1559277726 Michelle 3 2024-books-audio 3.28 2002 Visions of Sugar Plums (A Stephanie Plum Between the Numbers/Holiday Novel, #1)
author: Janet Evanovich
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2002
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
Fun Christmas short. Stephanie is visited by a Christmas spirit.
]]> The Homesman: A Novel 205146550 IN PIONEER NEBRASKA, A WOMAN LEADS WHERE NO MAN WILL GO

Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Tommy Lee Jones, The Homesman is a devastating story of early pioneers in 1850s American West. It celebrates the ones we hear nothing of: the brave women whose hearts and minds were broken by a life of bitter hardship. A &#8220;homesman&#8221; must be found to escort a handful of them back East to a sanitarium. When none of the county&#8217;s men steps up, the job falls to Mary Bee Cuddy&#8212;ex-teacher, spinster, indomitable and resourceful. Brave as she is, Mary Bee knows she cannot succeed alone. The only companion she can find is the low-life claim jumper George Briggs. Thus begins a trek east, against the tide of colonization, against hardship, Indian attacks, ice storms, and loneliness&#8212;a timeless classic told in a series of tough, fast-paced adventures.

In an unprecedented sweep, Glendon Swarthout&#8217;s novel won both the Western Writers of America&#8217;s Spur Award and the Western Heritage Wrangler Award. A new afterword by the author&#8217;s son Miles Swarthout tells of his parents Glendon and Kathryn&#8217;s discovery of and research into the lives of the oft-forgotten frontier women who make The Homesman as moving and believable as it is unforgettable.]]> 256 Glendon Swarthout Michelle 3 2024-books-print 3.89 1988 The Homesman: A Novel
author: Glendon Swarthout
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: 2024-books-print
review:
A harsh winter and life on the prairie take their toll on four women from a small western community. It is determined that they need to be returned to their families in the east but there are no volunteers to escort them back. Mary Bee Cuddy volunteers to make the trip and coerces a local claim jumper to help her.
]]> <![CDATA[The Guncle Abroad (The Guncle, #2)]]> 213810204
Patrick O'Hara is called back to his guncle duties . . . This time for a big family wedding in Italy.

Patrick O’Hara is back. It’s been five years since his summer as his niece Maisie and nephew Grant’s caretaker after their mother’s passing. The kids are back in Connecticut with their dad, and Patrick has relocated to New York to remain close by and relaunch his dormant acting career. After the run of his second successful sit-com comes to a close, Patrick feels on top of the world . . . professionally. But some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single again after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has a family to lean on. Until that family needs to again lean on him.

When Patrick's brother, Greg, announces he’s getting remarried in Italy, Maisie and Grant are not thrilled. Patrick feels drawn to take the two back under his wing. As they travel through Europe on their way to the wedding, Patrick tries his best to help them understand love, much as he once helped them comprehend grief. But when they arrive in Italy, Patrick is overextended managing a groom with cold feet; his sister, Clara, flirting with guests left and right; a growing rivalry with the kids� charming soon-to-be-launt (lesbian aunt), and two moody young teens trying to adjust to a new normal, all culminating in a disastrous rehearsal dinner.

Can Patrick save the day? Will teaching the kids about love help him repair his own love life? Can the change of scenery help Patrick come to terms with finally growing up?

Gracing the work with his signature blend of humor and heart, Steven Rowley charms with a beloved story about the complicated bonds of family, love, and what it takes to rediscover yourself, even at the ripe age of fifty.]]> Steven Rowley Michelle 4 2024-books-audio 3.87 2024 The Guncle Abroad (The Guncle, #2)
author: Steven Rowley
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
Touching story of an uncle helping his niece and nephew to accept their new stepmother. This second in the series is possibly better than the first one.
]]> Mexican Gothic 53819302
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And NoemĂ­, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> Silvia Moreno-Garcia Michelle 4 2020-books-audio Daphne du Maurier novel or even in some ways Bram Stoker. A perfect October read.]]> 3.53 2020 Mexican Gothic
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2020/10/16
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: 2020-books-audio
review:
A great eerie gothic feel to this novel. This one really has the feel of a Daphne du Maurier novel or even in some ways Bram Stoker. A perfect October read.
]]> <![CDATA[Spirit of Steamboat (Walt Longmire, #9.1)]]> 20942654 With his daughter, Cady, and his undersheriff Vic Moretti in Philadelphia for the holidays, Walt is at loose ends, and despite the woman' s reticence to reveal her identity, he agrees to help her. At the Durant Home for Assisted Living Lucian Connally is several tumblers into his Pappy Van Winkle' s and swears he's never clapped eyes on the woman before. Disappointed, she whispers " Steamboat" and begins a story that takes them all back to Christmas Eve 1988, when three people died in a terrible crash and a young girl had the slimmest chance of survival...back to a record-breaking blizzard, to Walt' s first year as sheriff, with a young daughter at home and a wife praying for his safety...back to a whiskey-soaked World War II vet ready to fly a decommissioned plane and risk it all to save a life.]]> Craig Johnson Michelle 4 2024-books-audio 4.14 2013 Spirit of Steamboat (Walt Longmire, #9.1)
author: Craig Johnson
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
Nice short story addition to the Longmire series.
]]> An Academy for Liars 219324996 A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger.

Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.

Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.

After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.

As Lennon continues in her studies her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton college, and the way her mentor’s tragic and violent past intertwines with it. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns. For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption . . . and it's a test she's terrified she is going to fail.]]> 13 Alexis Henderson 0593911318 Michelle 3 2024-books-audio 3.21 2024 An Academy for Liars
author: Alexis Henderson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
Magic university sends an invitation but what will Linen be signing up for if she accepts?
]]> Between the Sound and Sea 199454331
As the work begins, "Joey" discovers strange notes tucked deep in the crevices of the old stone walls--pages torn from a lighthouse keeper's log signed by someone named Mae who recounts harrowing rescues at sea. Fascinated by a woman lighthouse keeper, Joey digs into the past only to discover there's never been a record of a lighthouse keeper by that name.

When things start to go amiss on the island, locals are convinced that it is the ghost of the lighthouse keeper and his daughter who were lost at sea during World War II. As Joey sifts through decades of rumors and legends and puts together the pieces of the past, what emerges is a love story--one that's not over yet.

Multiple Christy Award winner Amanda Cox is your guide upon the raging seas of young love, heartbreaking loss, and learning to risk it all for a chance at happiness in this timeless novel.]]> 336 Amanda Cox 0800742745 Michelle 4 2024-books-audio 4.01 2024 Between the Sound and Sea
author: Amanda Cox
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
A young woman struggling to find her place in the world is aided by a widower trying to renovate a lighthouse and correct the wrongs of the past.
]]> <![CDATA[Wrath of the Triple Goddess (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #7)]]> 220833827
Percy, Annabeth, and Grover settle into Hecate’s seemingly endless mansion and start getting acquainted with the fussy, terrifying animals. The trio has been warned not to touch anything, but while Percy and Annabeth are out at school, Grover ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t resist drinking a strawberry-flavored potion in the laboratory. It turns him into a giant frenzied goat, and after he rampages through the house, damaging everything in sight, and passes out, Hecuba and Gale escape. Now the friends have to find Hecate’s pets and somehow restore the house, all before Hecate gets back on Saturday. It’s going to take luck, demigod wiles, and some old and new friends to hunt down the animals and set things right again.]]> Rick Riordan Michelle 4 2024-books-audio 3.93 2024 Wrath of the Triple Goddess (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #7)
author: Rick Riordan
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: 2024-books-audio
review:
Percy, Anabeth, and Grover together they can do anything, even survive Percy's latest quest.
]]>