Sarah's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 06 Mar 2025 20:16:12 -0800 60 Sarah's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Autocorrect: Stories 219301780 From one of the most acclaimed masters of the short story form whom the New York Times calls “Genius,� a darkly funny collection of stories explores themes of identity, reality, and meaning.

Etgar Keret is the world’s most famous living Israeli writer, known for writing short stories that are lean and accessible in style, and whimsical, surrealist, and darkly funny in subject. His work explores life’s smallest, most unremarkable interactions in ways that are profound and unusual. The characters populating his fiction have relatable work and relationship problems. They live in a world of ever-advancing technology, but it is always degraded by the baseness of human passions and a character’s partner is a reality show contestant from a parallel dimension; another finds the asteroid they paid to have named after their wife is scheduled to collide with earth; and an elderly widow convinces a popular AI program to commit suicide.

These stories speak to our current moment in the uncertainty and fragility—full of misunderstandings and miscommunications—while looking for reasons and the strength to find hope. His stories reveal the fault lines and uncomfortable truths in our society in a style that is memorably his own.]]> 208 Etgar Keret 0593717236 Sarah 0 to-read 4.40 Autocorrect: Stories
author: Etgar Keret
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Gone Girl 19288043 What have we done to each other?

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

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 415 Gillian Flynn 0307588378 Sarah 1 4.22 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 1
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves:
review:
Fuck this book. Don't bother reading this.
]]> <![CDATA[Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories]]> 2282 162 Truman Capote 067960085X Sarah 5 The day I finished reading "Breakfast at Tiffany's" I watched the movie & was disappointed how they changed the point of it the point of it so that there would be a happy ending.]]> 3.87 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories
author: Truman Capote
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at: 2010/12/26
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:
I read "Breakfast at Tiffany's" & all of the short stories except for the Christmas one. All that I read was remarkable. I would love to read more short stories by Truman Capote if he has written any. I absolutely love his writing style. He makes a lot of true remarks. For example, I love his passage in "The House of Flowers" where he basically describes a funeral as a spectacle of grief.
The day I finished reading "Breakfast at Tiffany's" I watched the movie & was disappointed how they changed the point of it the point of it so that there would be a happy ending.
]]> <![CDATA[Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)]]> 824444 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch?

Long before Dorothy drops in, a girl is born in Oz with emerald-green skin. Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous witch, is a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived ideas about the nature of good and evil.

Taking readers past the yellow brick road and into a phantasmagoric world, Gregory Maguire's novel is a rich and triumphant feat of imagination and allegory.]]> 512 Gregory Maguire 0755331605 Sarah 0 currently-reading 3.32 1995 Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> A Slow Fire Burning 56213354
Look what you started.]]> 307 Paula Hawkins 073521123X Sarah 4 3.45 2021 A Slow Fire Burning
author: Paula Hawkins
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/30
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]]> Mexican Gothic 57800389
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.]]> 301 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 052562080X Sarah 0 to-read 3.71 2020 Mexican Gothic
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories]]> 836957
Brief, intense, painfully funny, and shockingly honest, Keret's stories are snapshots that illuminate with intelligence and wit the hidden truths of life. As with the best comic authors, hilarity and anguish are the twin pillars of his work. Keret covers a remarkable emotional and narrative terrain-from a father's first lesson to his boy to a standoff between soldiers caught in the Middle East conflict to a slice of life where nothing much happens.

Bus Driver includes stories from Keret's bestselling collections in Israel, Pipelines and Missing Kissinger, as well as Keret's major new novella, "Kneller's Happy Campers," a bitingly satirical yet wistful road trip set in the afterlife for suicides.]]> 130 Etgar Keret 1592641059 Sarah 5 4.07 2001 The Bus Driver Who Wanted to be God and Other Stories
author: Etgar Keret
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/05
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales]]> 13334616 277 Ali Wentworth 0062098098 Sarah 0 to-read 3.92 2012 Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales
author: Ali Wentworth
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Twenty Years After (The d'Artagnan Romances, #2)]]> 7184
Twenty Years After (1845), the sequel to The Three Musketeers, is a supreme creation of suspense and heroic adventure.

Two decades have passed since the musketeers triumphed over Cardinal Richelieu and Milady. Time has weakened their resolve, and dispersed their loyalties. But treasons and stratagems still cry out for justice: civil war endangers the throne of France, while in England Cromwell threatens to send Charles I to the scaffold. Dumas brings his immortal quartet out of retirement to cross swords with time, the malevolence of men, and the forces of history. But their greatest test is a titanic struggle with the son of Milady, who wears the face of Evil.]]> 845 Alexandre Dumas 0192838431 Sarah 0 to-read 4.06 1845 Twenty Years After (The d'Artagnan Romances, #2)
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1845
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream]]> 7745 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is the best chronicle of drug-soaked, addle-brained, rollicking good times ever committed to the printed page. It is also the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest journeys ever undertaken.]]> 204 Hunter S. Thompson 0679785892 Sarah 5 4.08 1971 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
author: Hunter S. Thompson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1971
rating: 5
read at: 2013/10/21
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Money Hackers: How a Group of Misfits Took on Wall Street and Changed Finance Forever]]> 48549790 Every day, businesses, investors, and consumers are grappling with the seismic changes technology has brought to the banking and finance industry.ĚýThe Money HackersĚýis the dramatic story of fintech’s major players and explores how these disruptions are transforming even money itself.

Whether you’ve heard of fintech or not, it’s already changing your life. Have you ever “Venmoed� someone? Do you think of investing in Bitcoin--even though you can’t quite explain what it is? If you’ve deposited a check using your iPhone, that’s fintech. And if you’ve gone to a bank branch and discovered it has been closed and shuttered for good, odds are that’s because of fintech too.

The Money HackersĚýfocuses on some of fintech’s most powerful disruptors--a ragtag collection of financial outsiders and savants--and uses their incredible stories to explain not just how the technology works, but how the Silicon Valley thinking behind the technology, ideas likeĚýfriction,Ěýhedonic adaptation,Ěýdemocratization, andĚýdisintermediation, is having a drastic effect on the entire banking and finance industry. Turn to this remarkable new guide to:

Feel empowered with the knowledge needed to spot the opportunities the next wave of fintech disruptions will bring. Understand the critical pain points that fintech is resolving, through a profile of the major finsurgents behind the disruption. Topic areas include Friction (featuring founders of Venmo), Aggregate and Automate (featuring Adam Dell, founder of Open Table and brother of Michael Dell), and Rise of the Machines (featuring Jon Stein, founder of robo-advisor Betterment). Learn about some of the larger-than-life characters behind the fintech movement.

The Money HackersĚýtells the fascinating story of fintech--how it began, and where it is likely taking us.

]]> 256 Dan P. Simon 1400216613 Sarah 0 currently-reading 4.06 The Money Hackers: How a Group of Misfits Took on Wall Street and Changed Finance Forever
author: Dan P. Simon
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/20
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (Tucker Max, #1)]]> 9010 The Book That Inspired The Movie

My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging dickhead. But, I do contribute to humanity in one very important way: I share my adventures with the world. —from the Introduction

Actual reader feedback:

"I find it truly appalling that there are people in the world like you. You are a disgusting, vile, repulsive, repugnant, foul creature. Because of you, I don't believe in God anymore. No just God would allow someone like you to exist."

"I'll stay with God as my lord, but you are my savior. I just finished reading your brilliant stories, and I laughed so hard I almost vomited. I want to bring that kind of joy to people. You're an artist of the highest order and a true humanitarian to boot. I'm in both shock and awe at how much I want to be you."

Now with 16 Pages of Photos and a New Introduction

]]> 277 Tucker Max 0806527285 Sarah 4 3.49 2006 I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (Tucker Max, #1)
author: Tucker Max
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2024/07/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour through America’s Food]]> 25622247 432 Matthew Gavin Frank 1631490737 Sarah 0 to-read 2.85 2015 The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour through America’s Food
author: Matthew Gavin Frank
name: Sarah
average rating: 2.85
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> Alexander Hamilton 16130 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.

In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is “a robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all.�

Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. “To repudiate his legacy,� Chernow writes, “is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.� Chernow here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.Historians have long told the story of America’s birth as the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we’ve encountered before—from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamilton’s famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804.

Chernow’s biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America’s birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans.]]> 818 Ron Chernow Sarah 0 currently-reading 4.19 2004 Alexander Hamilton
author: Ron Chernow
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Le bon usage 1342401 1760 Maurice Grevisse 2801110450 Sarah 0 to-read 4.37 1936 Le bon usage
author: Maurice Grevisse
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Half Moon 176443955
From the bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes , a masterful and “absorbing� ( The New York Times ) novel about a couple in a small town navigating the complexities of marriage, family, and longing.

Malcolm Gephardt, handsome and gregarious longtime bartender at the Half Moon, has always dreamed of owning a bar. When his boss finally retires, Malcolm stretches to buy the place. He sees unquantifiable magic and potential in the Half Moon and hopes to transform it into a bigger success, but struggles to stay afloat.

His smart and confident wife, Jess, has devoted herself to her law career. After years of trying for a baby, she is facing the idea that motherhood may not be in the cards for her. Like Malcolm, she feels her youth beginning to slip away and wonders how to reshape her future.

“A quick and impactful read that will stay with you long after you finish it� ( theSkimm ), The Half Moon takes place over the course of one week when Malcolm learns shocking news about Jess, a patron of the bar goes missing, and a blizzard hits the town of Gillam, trapping everyone in place. With a deft eye and generous spirit, Mary Beth Keane explores the disappointments and unexpected consolations of midlife, the many forms forgiveness can take, the complicated intimacy of small-town living, and what it means to be a family.]]> 320 Mary Beth Keane 1982172614 Sarah 0 to-read 3.39 2023 The Half Moon
author: Mary Beth Keane
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Divorcées 127306119
At the Golden Yarrow, the most respectable of Reno’s famous “divorce ranches,� Lois finds herself living with half a dozen other would-be divorcées, all in Reno for the six weeks� residency that is the state’s only divorce requirement. They spend their days riding horses and their nights flirting with cowboys, and it’s as wild and fun as Lake Forest, Illinois, is prim and stifling. But it isn’t until Greer Lang arrives that Lois’s world truly cracks open. Gorgeous, beguiling, and completely indifferent to societal convention, Greer is unlike anyone Lois has ever met―and she sees something in Lois that no one else ever has. Under her influence, Lois begins to push against the limits that have always restrained her. But how much can she really trust her mysterious new friend? And how far will she go to forge her independence, on her own terms?]]> 272 Rowan Beaird Sarah 0 to-read 3.07 2024 The Divorcées
author: Rowan Beaird
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> Such a Bad Influence 198509143
Hazel Davis is drifting: she’s stalled in her career, living in a city she hates, and less successful than her younger sister @evelyn, a lifestyle influencer. Evie came of age on the family YouTube channel after a viral video when she was five. Ten years older and spotlight-averse, Hazel managed to dodge the family business—so although she can barely afford her apartment, at least she made her own way.

Evie is eighteen now, with a multimillion-dollar career, but Hazel is still protective of her little sister and skeptical of the way everyone seems to want a piece of her: Evie’s followers, her YouTuber boyfriend and influencer frenemies, and their opportunistic mother. So when Evie disappears one day during an unsettling live stream that cuts out midsentence, Hazel is horrified to have her worst instincts proven right.

As theories about Evie’s disappearance tear through the internet, inspiring hashtags, Reddit threads, and podcast episodes, Hazel throws herself into the darkest parts of her sister’s world to untangle the truth. After all, Hazel knows Evie better than anyone else . . . doesn’t she?]]> 336 Olivia Muenter 1683694015 Sarah 0 to-read 3.39 2024 Such a Bad Influence
author: Olivia Muenter
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)]]> 204811915 People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?�

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,� Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.

Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”]]> 326 Elizabeth Strout 0593446097 Sarah 0 to-read 4.00 2024 Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/28
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]]> The Most Fun We Ever Had 51540478
By 2016, their four radically different daughters are in a state of unrest. Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects.

With the arrival of Jonah Bendt--a child placed for adoption by one of the daughters fifteen years before--the Sorensons will be forced to reckon with the rich and varied tapestry of their past: years marred by adolescent angst, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile.]]> 640 Claire Lombardo Sarah 0 to-read 3.82 2019 The Most Fun We Ever Had
author: Claire Lombardo
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Lightning Bottles 207294976 He was the troubled face of rock â€nâ€� roll…until he suddenly disappeared without a trace.

Jane Pyre was once half of the famous rock â€nâ€� roll duo, the Lightning Bottles. Years later, she’s perhaps the most hated—and least understood—woman in music. She was never as popular with fans as her bandmate (and soulmate), Elijah Hart—even if Jane was the one who wrote the songs that catapulted the Lightning Bottles to instant, dizzying fame, first in the Seattle grunge scene, then around the world.

But ever since Elijah disappeared five years earlier and the band’s meteoric rise to fame came crashing down, the public hatred of Jane has taken on new levels, and all she wants to do is retreat. What she doesn’t anticipate is the bombshell that awaits her at her new home in the German countryside: the sullen teenaged girl next door—a Lightning Bottles superfan—who claims to have proof that not only is Elijah alive, he’s also been leaving secret messages for Jane. And they need to find him right away.

A cross-continent road trip about two misunderstood outsiders brought together by their shared love of music, The Lightning Bottles is “both a page-turning mystery and a love letter to the grunge era� (LitHub) that captures a searing portrait of the cost of fame.]]> 304 Marissa Stapley 1668015765 Sarah 0 to-read 3.95 2024 The Lightning Bottles
author: Marissa Stapley
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Daydreams 205900220
Back in 2004, The Daydreams had it all: a cast of innocent-seeming teenagers acting and singing their hearts out, amazing ratings, and a will-they-or-won't-they romance that steamed up fan fiction forums. Then, during the live season two finale, it all imploded, leaving everyone scrambling to understand why.

Afterward, the four stars went down very different paths. Kat is now a lawyer in DC. Liana is the bored wife of a famous athlete. Noah, the show's golden boy, emerged unscathed and is poised to become a household name. And Summer, the object of Noah's fictional (and maybe real-life) affections, is the cautionary tale. But then the fans demand a reunion special. The stars all have private reasons to come back: forgiveness, revenge, a second chance with a first love. But as they tentatively rediscover the magic of the original show, old secrets threaten to resurface-including the real reason behind their downfall.

Will this reunion be a chance to make things right? Or will it be the biggest mess the world has ever seen? No matter what, the ratings will be wild.]]> 368 Laura Hankin 0593438191 Sarah 0 to-read 3.56 2023 The Daydreams
author: Laura Hankin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Dirty Suburbia 198606374 Her characters are smart, funny, bold and wonderfully flawed.� Joel Mowdy, author of Floyd Harbor

The stories in Sara Hosey’s stunning collection, Dirty Suburbia, trace the lives of girls and women struggling to live with dignity in a world that often hates them.

Dirty suburbias are working-class neighborhoods in which girls who are left to fend for themselves sometimes become predators, as well as affluent communities in which women discover that money is no protection against sexism, both their own and others�.

One young woman sets up her abusive, cheating boyfriend, hoping he’ll get arrested so that she can rescue him and win him back. A teenager arranges to meet up with an older man she’s met online playing video games; she brings a knife with her, just in case. A middle-aged divorcee attempts to rekindle a romantic relationship with her high school English teacher, who happens to be a former nun. A struggling academic falls in love with a Henry David Thoreau impersonator, and a well-adjusted grad student goes home for Christmas only to be repulsed by her family’s casual cruelty.

Despite the ugliness and injustice, they face, as well as the failures of their families and communities, these characters often find relief in friendship and connection, and sometimes, even discover meaning and cause for hope.]]> 290 Sara Hosey 3988320404 Sarah 0 to-read 4.68 Dirty Suburbia
author: Sara Hosey
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.68
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Art of Pretend: A Novel 198385443
Ren loves and hates Etta, her best friend since they met at NYU nearly a decade ago. Etta defines Ren's New York. She lavishes her with designer hand-me-downs and takes her along to parties at trust fund lofts and Hamptons estates. But when Etta moves to Barcelona with no warning, Ren is left to face who she is without her, her unremarkable life of shoebox apartment, thankless job, and estranged family.

Enter Archer, Etta’s older brother, whom Ren’s always been infatuated with. In his sister’s absence, suddenly he’s inviting Ren to visit his art gallery, to prestigious galas, on weekend trips with his friends to Amagansett. Archer’s interest makes Ren feel alive in whole new ways, but she knows Etta can't find out. As their relationship intensifies, so does her unease. If it all blows up, who will she be on the other side?

Set over a heady New York summer, The Art of Pretend is an alluring novel about wealth, power, art, ambition—and the stories and lies we tell others and ourselves.]]> 368 Lauren Kuhl 1525831534 Sarah 0 to-read 3.31 2024 The Art of Pretend: A Novel
author: Lauren Kuhl
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> When I Was Alice 199598307 320 Jennifer Murgia 0744310679 Sarah 0 to-read 3.93 2024 When I Was Alice
author: Jennifer Murgia
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Vacancy in Room 10 150444427
Desperate for answers to the millions of questions his untimely death has raised, Anna checks in to The Sycamores, the run-down motel turned apartment Henry rented as an art studio. As she absorbs every bit of gossip the eclectic mix of residents are willing to share about her husband and each other, she begins to piece together a picture of a very different man than the one she married, and the life he led behind her back. The more she learns, and the less sense things seem to make, she finds herself wondering: Did she ever really know Henry at all?

But Henry’s secrets aren’t the only ones; as Anna’s search for clues expands, Cass, the mysterious, jaded motel manager, seems more and more determined to keep Anna in the dark. And when threatening letters start appearing at her door, Anna has to decide what’s more important—the truth, or her own safety.]]> 298 Seraphina Nova Glass 1525809806 Sarah 0 to-read 3.69 2024 The Vacancy in Room 10
author: Seraphina Nova Glass
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Look in the Mirror 202514059
Maria, once an ambitious medical student, is a nanny for the super-rich. The money’s better, and so are the destinations where her work takes her. Just one more gig, and she’ll be set. Finally, she’ll be secure. But when her wards never show, Maria begins to make herself at home, spending her days luxuriating by the pool and in the sauna.

There’s just one rule: Don’t go in the basement. That room is off-limits. But her curiosity might just get the better of her.

And soon, she’ll wish her only worry was not getting paid.]]> 320 Catherine Steadman 059372576X Sarah 0 to-read 3.57 2024 Look in the Mirror
author: Catherine Steadman
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/28
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]]> The History of Sound 199373354
In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.

The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky, dim bar, only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the First World War, forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later, in another story, a woman discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in Maine. Shattuck’s inventive, exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond—into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably modern. Memories, artifacts, paintings, and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways among evocative beaches, forests, and orchards, revealing the secrets, misunderstandings, and love that linger across centuries.

Written with breathtaking humanity and humor, The History of Sound is a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home.]]> 320 Ben Shattuck 059349038X Sarah 0 to-read 4.37 2024 The History of Sound
author: Ben Shattuck
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Swans of Fifth Avenue 30267871
People’s Book of the Week •� USA Today’s #1 “New and Noteworthy� Book •� Entertainment Weekly ’s Must List � LibraryReads Top Ten Pick

Of all the glamorous stars of New York high society, none blazes brighter than Babe Paley. Her flawless face regularly graces the pages of Vogue, and she is celebrated and adored for her ineffable style and exquisite taste, especially among her friends—the alluring socialite Swans Slim Keith, C. Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, and Pamela Churchill. By all appearances, Babe has it all: money, beauty, glamour, jewels, influential friends, a prestigious husband, and gorgeous homes. But beneath this elegantly composed exterior dwells a passionate woman—a woman desperately longing for true love and connection.

Enter Truman Capote. This diminutive golden-haired genius with a larger-than-life personality explodes onto the scene, setting Babe and her circle of Swans aflutter. Through Babe, Truman gains an unlikely entrée into the enviable lives of Manhattan’s elite, along with unparalleled access to the scandal and gossip of Babe’s powerful circle. Sure of the loyalty of the man she calls “True Heart,� Babe never imagines the destruction Truman will leave in his wake. But once a storyteller, always a storyteller—even when the stories aren’t his to tell.

Truman’s fame is at its peak when such notable celebrities as Frank and Mia Sinatra, Lauren Bacall, and Rose Kennedy converge on his glittering Black and White Ball. But all too soon, he’ll ignite a literary scandal whose repercussions echo through the years. The Swans of Fifth Avenue will seduce and startle readers as it opens the door onto one of America’s most sumptuous eras.

Praise for The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Exceptional storytelling . . . teeming with scandal, gossip and excitement.� —Harper’s Bazaar

“This moving fictionalization brings the whole cast of characters back to vivid life. Gossipy and fun, it’s also a nuanced look at the beauty and cruelty of a rarefied, bygone world.� � People

“The era and the sordid details come back to life in this jewel of a novel.� � O: The Oprah Magazine]]> 400 Melanie Benjamin 0345528700 Sarah 0 to-read 3.69 2016 The Swans of Fifth Avenue
author: Melanie Benjamin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> What You Made Me Do 201632544 An expectant mother gets more than she bargained for when she marries into a seemingly perfect family in this gripping debut novel–a must read for fans of A. J. Finn and B. A. Paris. After surviving a nightmarish childhood, Anneliese Bakker is on the mend and searching for her birth mother. But when she meets Willem, she falls madly in love and finally finds a safe place to land. Engaged and expecting her first child, she moves into the Veldkamp mansion on a stately, tree-lined avenue in Amsterdam. And yet, nothing about Willem’s family is as it seems. Instead of the loving home she has longed for her entire life, she’s confronted with a cold and hostile household.Increasingly isolated, Anneliese is drawn to a creepy basement shrine to Louisa, Willem’s mother. Louisa Veldkamp was a legendary Dutch pianist who presumably drowned–but whose body has never been found. Though still revered by her fans, Louisa is a taboo subject in the family home. Haunted by her own demons, Anneliese must dig into the family’s past to untangle a dark web of secrets, inadvertently putting herself and her unborn child in grave danger.Not knowing who to trust, Anneliese has to decide just how far she is willing to go to safeguard the family life she so desperately seeks. ]]> 352 Barbara Gayle Austin 1639108394 Sarah 0 to-read 3.38 2024 What You Made Me Do
author: Barbara Gayle Austin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Mania 181109972 What if calling someone stupid was illegal? In a reality not too distant from our own, where the so-called Mental Parity Movement has taken hold, the worst thing you can call someone is 'stupid'.

Everyone is equally clever, and discrimination based on intelligence is 'the last great civil rights fight'.

Exams and grades are all discarded, and smart phones are rebranded. Children are expelled for saying the S-word and encouraged to report parents for using it. You don't need a qualification to be a doctor.

Best friends since adolescence, Pearson and Emory find themselves on opposing sides of this new culture war. Radio personality Emory � who has built her career riding the tide of popular thought � makes increasingly hard-line statements while, for her part, Pearson believes the whole thing is ludicrous.

As their friendship fractures, Pearson's determination to cling onto the 'old, bigoted way of thinking' begins to endanger her job, her safety and even her family.

Lionel Shriver turns her piercing gaze on the policing of opinion and intellect, and imagines a world in which intellectual meritocracy is heresy. Hilarious, deadpan, scathing and at times frighteningly plausible, MANIA will delight the many fans of her fiction and journalism alike.]]> 288 Lionel Shriver 0063345390 Sarah 0 to-read 3.58 2024 Mania
author: Lionel Shriver
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Villain Edit 199570076
Good villains make good TV.

Romance novelist Jacqueline Matthis’s big career has gone bust and she’s ditched the bright lights of New York City for her more affordable South Carolina hometown. Desperate, Jac dreams up a comeback plan—she is going to be a contestant on the 1, the most obsessively watched reality dating show in the world.

After all Jac is a romance writer—she knows how to pull off a meet-cute and create a spicy plotline.

On set, Jac quickly establishes herself as a front-runner for bachelor Marcus’s heart, but she’s shocked to discover who’s actually pulling the strings. How was she to know that Henry Foster, her last one-night stand before the show, was actually a longtime producer on the 1? Henry is just as horrified…but they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other.

As Jac plays the game and the show unfurls, she slowly discovers that she’s getting the villain edit. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but as Jac’s secret plan begins crumbling around her, she’s not so sure. What happens if Marcus chooses her? Worse, what happens if her affair with Henry comes to light? What if, in trying to save her career, Jac has ruined her life?

Heartbreaking, smart, and sexy, this novel is for anyone who has ever secretly rooted for—or felt like—the villain.]]> 336 Laurie Devore 0063337606 Sarah 0 to-read 3.60 2024 The Villain Edit
author: Laurie Devore
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer]]> 202220516 A stirring, unsparing debut novel about black life in Philadelphia and the struggle to build intimate connections through the eyes of a struggling ex-Army grad student, from the "extraordinary [and] insightful" author of Sink (New York Times Book Review). After a deployment in the Iraq War, Joseph Thomas is fighting to find his footing. Now a MD/PhD student at The University of Pennsylvania, and an emergency department tech at a hospital in North Philly, he becomes interested in the Holmesburg Prison Experiments, in which the prison conducted scientific trials on their inmates. Through this curiosity he comes to know his estranged father, who is serving time for the statutory rape of his then-teenage mother. Meanwhile, his best friend Murray, a fellow vet, judges the journey he sets out upon, while simultaneously pushing him towards a ruinous self-discovery. Balancing single fatherhood, his studies, and long shifts at the hospital as he becomes closer than he ever imagined to his father, Joseph tries to articulate vernacular understandings of the sociopolitical struggles he recounts as participant-observer at home, against the assumptions of his more storied friends and colleagues. ĚýGOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER is a powerful examination of every day black life—of health and sex, race and punishment, and the gaps between our desires and our politics.]]> 240 Joseph Earl Thomas 1538740982 Sarah 0 to-read 3.69 2024 God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer
author: Joseph Earl Thomas
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The House Is on Fire 176443448
Richmond, Virginia 1811 . It’s the height of the winter social season, the General Assembly is in session, and many of Virginia’s gentleman planters, along with their wives and children, have made the long and arduous journey to the capital in hopes of whiling away the darkest days of the year. At the city’s only theater, the Charleston-based Placide & Green Company puts on two plays a night to meet the demand of a populace that’s done looking for enlightenment at the front of a church.

On the night after Christmas, the theater is packed with more than six hundred holiday revelers. In the third-floor boxes sits newly widowed Sally Henry Campbell, who is glad for any opportunity to relive the happy times she shared with her husband. One floor away, in the colored gallery, Cecily Patterson doesn’t give a whit about the play but is grateful for a four-hour reprieve from a life that has recently gone from bad to worse. Backstage, young stagehand Jack Gibson hopes that, if he can impress the theater’s managers, he’ll be offered a permanent job with the company. And on the other side of town, blacksmith Gilbert Hunt dreams of one day being able to bring his wife to the theater, but he’ll have to buy her freedom first.

When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert make a series of split-second decisions that will not only affect their own lives but those of countless others. And in the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the United States, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.

Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House Is on Fire is a “stunning� (Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle ), “all-consuming exploration� ( E! News ) that offers proof that sometimes, in the midst of great tragedy, we are offered our most precious—and fleeting—chances at redemption.]]> 384 Rachel Beanland 1982186151 Sarah 0 to-read 3.89 2023 The House Is on Fire
author: Rachel Beanland
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Pink Slime 199797823
In a city ravaged by a mysterious plague, a woman tries to understand why her world is falling apart. An algae bloom has poisoned the previously pristine air that blows in from the sea. Inland, a secretive corporation churns out the only food anyone can afford—a revolting pink paste, made of an unknown substance. In the short, desperate breaks between deadly windstorms, our narrator stubbornly tends to her few remaining with her difficult but vulnerable mother; with the ex-husband for whom she still harbors feelings; with the boy she nannies, whose parents sent him away even as terrible threats loomed. Yet as conditions outside deteriorate further, her commitment to remaining in place only grows—even if staying means being left behind.

An evocative elegy for a safe, clean world, Pink Slime is buoyed by humor and its narrator’s resiliency. This unforgettable novel explores the place where love, responsibility, and self-preservation converge, and the beauty and fragility of our most intimate relationships.]]> 240 Fernanda Trías 1668049775 Sarah 0 to-read 3.37 2020 Pink Slime
author: Fernanda TrĂ­as
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Pink Glass Houses 61467820
There’s a reason people call Miami Beach “a sunny place for shady people.�

Welcome to Sunset Academy, the most coveted elementary school in Miami Beach, where there are three categories of families: rich, wealthy, and ultra-wealthy.

Perfectly tanned and smiling Charlotte Giordani is Sunset Academy’s alpha mom. With a sleek blowout and relentless charm, Charlotte’s brashness serves her well. She’s up for election as the PTA president and is riding high, having just secured a massive donation from billionaire Don Walker and his socialite wife Patricia. Don and Patricia are philanthropists, media darlings, and the owners of Villa Rosé, a newly built modern glass house that everyone is talking about. (It’s either spectacular or a tacky eyesore, depending on how you feel about billionaires.)

Enter Melody Howard, a wide-eyed transplant from Wichita, Kansas. At first a skeptic about Miami Beach and its endlessly hashtaggable social scene, Melody finds herself sucked into the glossy, frenetic world of Sunset Academy moms. Melody’s easygoing manner and background in nonprofit management make her an asset to the PTA. But when she emerges as a rival for the PTA presidency, Charlotte begins to unravel. Even the most powerful players on the social scene prove to be vulnerable when an investigation into white-collar crime—triggered by another school mom, the formidable Jamaican-American Judge Carol Lawson—threatens to take down the whole institution. No amount of rosé can soothe tensions as the drama builds to a shocking crisis point.

Told in rotating first person voices, Pink Glass Houses is an irresistibly voyeuristic peek into the lives of the rich and infamous, where cocaine playdates, $100,000 kiddie birthday parties, and relentless social climbing are a way of life.]]> 272 Asha Elias 0063312794 Sarah 0 to-read 3.41 2024 Pink Glass Houses
author: Asha Elias
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Quickly, While They Still Have Horses: Stories]]> 199797939 Quickly, While They Still Have Horses offer a fresh, irreverent look at life in post-conflict Northern Ireland. From first loves to strained relationships to the thrills and terrors of growing up to the dangers and challenges of parenthood, Carson infuses her stories with empathy, dark wit, and a surreal edge.

In “A Certain Degree of Ownership,� a distracted couple on a beach fail to notice their baby crawl perilously toward the sea. In “Grand So,� the ghost of a car’s previous owner haunts the backseat. In “Troubling the Water,� a rumor of miraculous healing creates chaos at a public swimming pool.

Carson never fails to shock and delight as kids go missing in jungle gyms, a baby washes up on a riverbank in a biscuit tin, and a bloody hand appears (and reappears) in a refrigerator. Every so often, these stories travel into alternative versions of our world, where pillars of fire are a new treatment for mental illness and animals deemed nonessential are going extinct by legislative orders. While the legacy of the Troubles is never far from Carson’s mind, it is only a backdrop to the worlds she’s woven in these stories, driven by characters who feel real enough to touch.]]> 288 Jan Carson 1668056615 Sarah 0 to-read 4.10 2024 Quickly, While They Still Have Horses: Stories
author: Jan Carson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend 200174139 White Lotus meets Kevin Wilson in this whip-smart social satire about a man who finds himself trapped on an island resort after the sun literally explodes, and suddenly must choose whether to save himself from the chaos, or help fellow guests make it off the island alive�

Vacation Checklist: Ěý
Pack swim trunks.Ěý
Apply sunscreen.Ěý
Survive the apocalypse?

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he’s never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up.

Then the sun explodes.

With the island resort suddenly plunged into darkness (he really should’ve sprung for the travel insurance), Dan’s holiday goes from bad to worse when elite guests stage a coup and commandeer supplies. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, revolution begins to brew on the island, and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But when one six-person plane is discovered that could get them back to the mainland, Dan realizes he has a choice to make.

Does he escape the island with Mara? Or does he stay and fight to become the most unlikely hero of the end of the world?

]]> 384 M.J. Wassmer 1464218021 Sarah 0 to-read 3.70 2024 Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend
author: M.J. Wassmer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Five-Star Stranger 199797861 In Kat Tang’s exciting and resonant debut, a “Rental Stranger”—a companion hired under various guises—walks the line between personal and professional in surprising new ways.

Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? Your husband?

In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, Five-Star Stranger follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app—a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman, or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients.

But, when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother, and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life.

Five-Star Stranger is a strikingly vivid novel about the commodification of relationships in a gig economy, isolation in a hyperconnected world, and the risk of asking for what we want from those who cannot give. This is the story of a man who finds out who he is by being anyone but himself.]]> 240 Kat Tang 1668050145 Sarah 0 to-read 3.19 2024 Five-Star Stranger
author: Kat Tang
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Only Survivors 176443930
A decade ago, two vans filled with high school seniors on a school service trip crashed into a Tennessee ravine—a tragedy that claimed the lives of multiple classmates and teachers. The nine students who managed to escape the river that night were irrevocably changed. A year later, after one of the survivors dies by suicide on the anniversary of the crash, the rest of them make a to come together each year to commemorate that terrible night.

To keep one another safe.
To hold one another accountable.
Or both.

Their annual meeting place, a house on the Outer Banks, has long been a refuge. But by the tenth anniversary, Cassidy Bent has worked to distance herself from the tragedy and from the other survivors. She’s changed her mobile number. She’s blocked the others� email addresses. This year, she is determined to finally break ties once and for all. But on the day of the reunion, she receives a text with an obituary another survivor is gone. Now they are seven—and Cassidy finds herself hurling back toward the group, wild with grief—and suspicion.

Almost immediately, something feels off this year. Cassidy is the first to notice when Amaya, the annual organizer, slips away, overwhelmed. This wouldn’t raise alarm except for the impending storm. Suddenly, they’re facing the threat of closed roads and surging waters…again. Then Amaya stops responding to her phone. After all they’ve been through, she wouldn’t willfully make them worry. Would she?

And—as they promised long ago—each survivor will do whatever he or she can do to save one another. Won’t they?

A propulsive and chilling locked-box mystery filled with the dazzling hairpin twists that are the author’s signature, The Only Survivors is New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda’s best novel yet.]]> 352 Megan Miranda 1668010429 Sarah 0 to-read 3.59 2023 The Only Survivors
author: Megan Miranda
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> The Library Thief 200153487 A strikingly original and absorbing mystery about a white-passing bookbinder in Victorian England and the secrets lurking on the estate where we she works, for fans of Fingersmith and The Confessions of Frannie Langton

The library is under lock and key. But its secrets can't be contained.

1896. After he brought her home from Jamaica as a baby, Florence's father had her hair hot-combed to make her look like the other girls. But as a young woman, Florence is not so easy to tame—and when she brings scandal to his door, the bookbinder throws her onto the streets of Manchester.

Intercepting her father's latest commission, Florence talks her way into the remote, forbidding Rose Hall to restore its collection of rare books. Lord Francis Belfield's library is old and full of secrets—but none so intriguing as the whispers about his late wife.

Then one night, the library is broken into. Strangely, all the priceless tomes remain untouched. Florence is puzzled, until she discovers a half-burned book in the fireplace. She realizes with horror that someone has found and set fire to the secret diary of Lord Belfield's wife–which may hold the clue to her fate�

Evocative, arresting and tightly plotted, The Library Thief is at once a propulsive Gothic mystery and a striking exploration of race, gender and self-discovery in Victorian England.]]> 368 Kuchenga Shenjé 1335909699 Sarah 0 to-read 3.26 2024 The Library Thief
author: Kuchenga Shenjé
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Night We Lost Him 207299448
Though the authorities rule Liam's death accidental, Nora and her estranged brother, Sam, believe otherwise. As they form an uneasy alliance to unpack the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father’s past and uncover a family secret that changes everything.

With Laura Dave’s “signature blend of pulse-pounding suspense� (PEOPLE) and “trademark emotional heft� (The New York Post), The Night We Lost Him is a “propulsive� (Oprah Daily) must-read, with a heartbreaking final twist you’ll never see coming.]]> 298 Laura Dave 1668002930 Sarah 0 to-read 3.56 2024 The Night We Lost Him
author: Laura Dave
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories]]> 200351611 304 Brad Watson 1324076429 Sarah 0 to-read 4.06 2024 There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories
author: Brad Watson
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Eurotrash 205478791
From “the great German-language writer of his generation� (Joshua Cohen) comes the second novel of Kracht’s career narrated by an eponymous “Christian� (the first was his best-selling 1995 debut, Faserland). Eurotrash begins in Zurich, where Christian has arrived to care for his eighty-year-old mother after her discharge from a mental institution. Reckoning with his family’s dark history—his long-dead grandfather was intimately associated with and unapologetically supportive of the Nazis—and struggling to navigate the emotionally wrenching terrain of his relationship with his mother, Christian sets off on a road-trip with her. As they traverse Switzerland in a hired cab, mother and son attempt to give away her vast fortune, which they’re carrying in a large plastic bag, to random strangers. By turns disturbing, disorienting, hilarious, and poignant, Eurotrash tells an intensely personal and unsparingly critical story of contemporary culture; a story that shows us a writer at the pinnacle of his powers of insight and observation.]]> 192 Christian Kracht 1324094567 Sarah 0 to-read 3.61 2021 Eurotrash
author: Christian Kracht
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Paris Gown 199635060
1957: Three friends—Margot, Gina, and Charlotte—share an apartment above a bookstore in Paris.

Margot is a twenty-two-year-old Australian having the time of her life. Having been sent to the City of Light to be “finished� before her debut, Margot falls in love with Paris all over again. In her mind, all she needs to complete her transformation into “Une Parisienne� is a gown from the spectacular designer Monsieur Dior, particularly if she wants to catch the eye of Peter Mountbatten, a distant cousin of the Queen.

Gina is an American blueblood whose family has fallen on hard times. She’s run away to Paris and is now working in a bookstore while writing a novel at night. But then she receives an invitation to a high society ball at the American Embassy where the man who once jilted her will also attend...with his new wife. Gina must have a knockout gown to wear.

French chef Charlotte is the lone girl in a family of boys and one of the very few women working in the stubbornly sexist restaurant business. She’s always thought herself homely compared with her conventionally pretty mother and is more interested in her work than fashion. But that is about to change�

One night, Margot proposes to share the cost and the gown with her two best friends and roommates. Each will put in some of her savings, and they’ll each get to wear the gown in turn.

Gorgeous, perfectly tailored, lustrous and luxurious, the Dior gown has the power to change lives—as these three remarkable women are about to discover…]]> 336 Christine Wells Sarah 0 to-read 3.73 2024 The Paris Gown
author: Christine Wells
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Everything: A Unified Model for the Creation of Everything in Our Universe]]> 208840126 everything. The moment you started reading this was something real, it caused memories to be stored in your brain. So, if everything real was created in the big bang 13.8 billion years ago, where has it been? The answer to that question leads to a new theory; time-dilated spacetime energy release or TDSER. It has a perfect fit with how we experience time and with general and special relativity. Our spatial dimensions are released in a continuous time-dilated manner from the massive energy density of the big bang. The opposite of anything drawn into a black hole still making its way, billions of years later, to its core. Each moment of spacetime released, expands relative to the density of the local universe. We experience this dynamic release of spacetime, as the passage of time, allowing cause in one moment, to lead to effect in any plane in the next. Once expanded that moment has passed and our universe has expanded, without resorting to unexplained dark energy. Unreleased spacetime, being highly compressed energy stored along the temporal dimension is then an excellent candidate for dark matter.
There is a problem though, elegant as this theory is, it needs a one-off hot big bang and one which is consistent with general relativity. The current theory starts with an unexplained infinite energy imbalance and disregards general relativity completely, expanding the early universe exponentially in exactly the way that black holes don't!
So this revised big bang starts with nothing. Nothing is unstable, I know, we exist. Whatever comes next, must also sum to zero. The only solution, leads to a universe with energy that also sums to zero and a single balanced pair of forces that do likewise. Logically step-by-step, using only established physics and common sense, this book leads us to a simple structure. A quantum pole; the fundamental building block of our universe, a blueprint for everything, with an endless yet balanced power supply for propagation, a copy of the first quantum fluctuation; splitting 0 into +1 and -1 at its core. Its structure and properties reveal how every force, dimension and particle in our universe will come to be. This is represented by the TARDIS+ shown on the cover, dimensions on the left, forces to the right and particles with strong nuclear forces and graduated internal tensions, we call charge, up the middle. This book is a logical, step-by-step laypersons' guide to creation, no new physics, only accepted and basic scientific principles. It is not an easy read, it is challenging and contains many paradigm shifts, but with an open mind, you will never see the universe around us in the same way again. It actually makes sense. Best of all... no maths!]]> 216 Malcolm McCoard Sarah 0 to-read 4.67 Everything: A Unified Model for the Creation of Everything in Our Universe
author: Malcolm McCoard
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.67
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]]> <![CDATA[The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power]]> 198902257 13 TIMES WE SURVIVED THE FIRST KILL.

The White Guy Dies First is a powerful and entertaining collection for YA readers featuring thirteen scary stories in which the white guy dies first.

Edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker, including stories from bestselling and critically acclaimed Adiba Jaigirdar, Alexis Henderson, Chloe Gong, Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, H. E. Edgmon, Kalynn Bayron, Karen Strong, Kendare Blake, Lamar Giles, Mark Oshiro, Naseem Jamnia, Tiffany D. Jackson, and Terry J. Benton-Walker.]]> 306 Terry J. Benton-Walker 1250861268 Sarah 0 to-read 3.80 2024 The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power
author: Terry J. Benton-Walker
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Vacuum in the Dark 40538557
Mona is twenty-six and cleans houses for a living in Taos, New Mexico. She moved there mostly because of a bad boyfriend—a junkie named Mr. Disgusting, long story—and her efforts to restart her life since haven’t exactly gone as planned. For one thing, she’s got another bad boyfriend. This one she calls Dark, and he happens to be married to one of Mona’s clients. He also might be a little unstable.

Dark and his wife aren’t the only complicated clients on Mona’s roster, either. There’s also the Hungarian artist couple who—with her addiction to painkillers and his lingering stares—reminds Mona of troubling aspects of her childhood, and some of the underlying reasons her life had to be restarted in the first place. As she tries to get over the heartache of her affair and the older pains of her youth, Mona winds up on an eccentric, moving journey of self-discovery that takes her back to her beginnings where she attempts to unlock the key to having a sense of home in the future.

The only problems are Dark and her past. Neither is so easy to get rid of.

A constantly surprising, laugh-out-loud funny novel about an utterly unique woman dealing with some of the most universal issues in America today, Vacuum in the Dark is an unforgettable, astonishing read from one of the freshest voices in fiction today.]]> 240 Jen Beagin 1501182145 Sarah 5 3.63 2019 Vacuum in the Dark
author: Jen Beagin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves:
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Bit of a weird ending, but otherwise another enjoyable installment of the misadventures of Mona the maid...I mean, cleaning lady.
]]> The Yellow Wall-Paper 50536101
Now, more than a hundred years later, this image-rich work has been interpreted by artist Sara Barkat—in a manner that combines both philosophical thought and visual intrigue.

Sometimes understood as feminist literature, sometimes understood as exploring mental illness, and sometimes understood as both at the same time, this story is oddly poetic even when it is chilling and challenging.

The tale contains subtexts that touch upon the nature of Imagination, as well as the act of Writing, and the artist has enhanced these subtexts with the inclusion of Victorian flower symbols, such as thistle for independence and lupine for imagination.

Watch, too, for the appearance of some of history’s most imaginative art, refashioned and in dialog with the story at hand, which gives a sense of timelessness and broader societal import to the tale.]]> 114 Charlotte Perkins Gilman Sarah 0 to-read 4.12 1892 The Yellow Wall-Paper
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1892
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> Pretend I'm Dead 36373223 The Middlesteins), about a cleaning lady on a quest for self-acceptance after her relationship with a loveable junkie goes awry.

Jen Beagin’s quirky, moving, “frank and unflinching� (Josh Ferris) debut novel introduces an unforgettable character, Mona—almost twenty-four, emotionally adrift, and cleaning houses to get by. Handing out clean needles to drug addicts, she falls for a recipient she calls Mr. Disgusting, who proceeds to break her heart in unimaginable ways.

In search of healing, Mona decamps to Taos, New Mexico, for a fresh start, where she finds a community of seekers and cast-offs, all of whom have one or two things to teach her—the pajama-wearing, blissed-out New Agers, the slightly creepy client with peculiar tastes in controlled substances, the psychic who might really be psychic. But always lurking just beneath the surface are her memories of growing up in a chaotic, destructive family from which she’s trying to disentangle herself, and the larger legacy of the past she left behind.

The story of Mona’s journey to find her place in this working-class American world is at once hilarious and wonderfully strange, true to life and boldly human, and introduces a stunningly one-of-a-kind new voice in American fiction.]]> 240 Jen Beagin 1501183931 Sarah 4 3.72 2015 Pretend I'm Dead
author: Jen Beagin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves:
review:

]]> The Orphan Collector 49244342
Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision. It becomes her sinister mission to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable, planning to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.�

Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. Instead, she is taken to St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum � the first step in a long and arduous journey. As Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost in the months and years that follow, Pia must confront her own shame and fear, risking everything to see justice � and love � triumph at last. Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most.]]> 390 Ellen Marie Wiseman 1496715861 Sarah 0 to-read 4.14 2020 The Orphan Collector
author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Midnight Library 102189586 The #1 New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon

Winner of the Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ Choice Award for Fiction A Good Morning America Book Club Pick Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year

The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.]]> 304 Matt Haig 0525559493 Sarah 0 to-read 4.01 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Good Lie 55596836 Six teens murdered. A suspect behind bars. A desperate father. In a case this shadowy, the truth is easy to hide.

Psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Moore is an expert on killers. She’s spent a decade treating California’s most depraved predators and unlocking their motives—predators much like the notorious Bloody Heart serial killer, whose latest teenage victim escaped and then identified local high school teacher Randall Thompson as his captor. The case against Thompson as the Bloody Heart Killer is damning—and closed, as far as Gwen and the media are concerned. If not for one new development�

Defense attorney Robert Kavin is a still-traumatized father whose own son fell prey to the BH Killer. Convinced of Thompson’s innocence, he steps in to represent him. Now Robert wants Gwen to interview the accused, create a psych profile of the killer and his victims, and help clear his client’s name.

As Gwen and Robert grow closer and she dives deeper into the investigation, grave questions arise. So does Gwen’s suspicion that Robert is hiding something—and that he might not be the only one with a secret.

Six teenagers dead. Finally, the killer behind bars. But are the games just beginning?]]> 256 A.R. Torre 1542020166 Sarah 0 to-read 4.01 2021 The Good Lie
author: A.R. Torre
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Stories]]> 58085210 432 H.P. Lovecraft 1631498398 Sarah 0 to-read 3.61 The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Stories
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.61
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Hypnotist's Love Story 23751850
Braced for the worst, Ellen is pleasantly surprised. It turns out that Patrick's ex-girlfriend is stalking him. Ellen thinks, "Actually, that's kind of interesting." She's dating someone worth stalking. She's intrigued by the woman's motives. In fact, she'd even love to meet her.

Ellen doesn't know it, but she already has.]]> 446 Liane Moriarty 0425260933 Sarah 4 3.66 2011 The Hypnotist's Love Story
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2024/01/27
shelves:
review:

]]> A Simple Favor 29938376 She knows all your secrets.
That’s why she’s so dangerous.
A single mother's life is turned upside down when her best friend vanishes in this chilling debut thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.

It starts with a simple favor—an ordinary kindness mothers do for one another. When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son Nicky after school, she happily says yes. Nicky and her son, Miles, are classmates and best friends, and the five-year-olds love being together—just like she and Emily. A widow and stay-at-home mommy blogger living in woodsy suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a sophisticated PR executive whose job in Manhattan demands so much of her time.

But Emily doesn’t come back. She doesn’t answer calls or return texts. Stephanie knows something is terribly wrong—Emily would never leave Nicky, no matter what the police say. Terrified, she reaches out to her blog readers for help. She also reaches out to Emily’s husband, the handsome, reticent Sean, offering emotional support. It’s the least she can do for her best friend. Then, she and Sean receive shocking news. Emily is dead. The nightmare of her disappearance is over.

Or is it? Because soon, Stephanie will begin to see that nothing—not friendship, love, or even an ordinary favor—is as simple as it seems.

A Simple Favor is a remarkable tale of psychological suspense—a clever and twisting free-fall of a ride filled with betrayals and reversals, twists and turns, secrets and revelations, love and loyalty, murder and revenge. Darcey Bell masterfully ratchets up the tension in a taut, unsettling, and completely absorbing story that holds you in its grip until the final page.]]> 304 Darcey Bell 0062497774 Sarah 0 to-read 3.28 2017 A Simple Favor
author: Darcey Bell
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine]]> 26889576 The #1 New York Times bestseller: "It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it's essential reading."—Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair

The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.




Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.]]> 291 Michael Lewis 039335315X Sarah 5 4.34 2010 The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
author: Michael Lewis
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/04
date added: 2024/01/06
shelves:
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]]> Acts of Service 58678518
If sex is a truth-teller, Eve--a young, queer woman in Brooklyn--is looking for answers. On an evening when she is feeling particularly impulsive, she posts some nude photos of herself online. This is how Eve meets Olivia, and through Olivia, the charismatic Nathan--and soon the three begin a relationship that disturbs Eve as much as it delights her. As each act of the affair unfolds, Eve is left to ask: to whom is she responsible? And to what extent do our desires determine who we are?

In the way that only great fiction can, Acts of Service takes between its teeth the contradictions written all over our ideas of sex and sexuality. As incisive as it is exhilarating, this novel asks us to face our ideas about desire and power: what sex means to us, the forces that shape it, and how we find--or lose--ourselves in intimacy. At once juicy and intellectually challenging, sacred and profane, it might be the most thought-provoking book you read all year.]]> 240 Lillian Fishman 0593243765 Sarah 0 to-read 3.08 2022 Acts of Service
author: Lillian Fishman
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Luster 51541496
Razor-sharp, provocatively page-turning and surprisingly tender, Luster by Raven Leilani is a painfully funny debut about what it means to be young now.]]> 227 Raven Leilani 0374194327 Sarah 0 to-read 3.51 2020 Luster
author: Raven Leilani
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Adults 9061509
An irresistible chronicle of a modern young woman’s struggle to grow up, The Adults lays bare—in perfect pitch—a world where an adult and a child can so dangerously be mistaken for the same exact thing.]]> 307 Alison Espach 1439191859 Sarah 4 3.46 2011 The Adults
author: Alison Espach
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/20
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself]]> 55782639
Healthy boundaries. We all know we should have them–in order to achieve work/life balance, cope with toxic people, and enjoy rewarding relationships with partners, friends, and family. But what do “healthy boundaries� really mean–and how can we successfully express our needs, say “no,� and be assertive without offending others?

Licensed counselor, sought-after relationship expert, and one of the most influential therapists on Instagram Nedra Glover Tawwab demystifies this complex topic for today’s world. In a relatable and inclusive tone, Set Boundaries, Find Peace presents simple-yet-powerful ways to establish healthy boundaries in all aspects of life. Rooted in the latest research and best practices used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), these techniques help us identify and express our needs clearly and without apology–and unravel a root problem behind codependency, power struggles, anxiety, depression, burnout, and more.]]> 282 Nedra Glover Tawwab 0593192109 Sarah 0 to-read 4.26 2021 Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself
author: Nedra Glover Tawwab
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations that Matter]]> 33385019 “WE NEED TO TALK.�

In this urgent and insightful book, public radio journalist Celeste Headlee shows us how to bridge what divides us--by having real conversations

BASED ON THE TED TALK WITH OVER 10 MILLION VIEWS
NPR's Best Books of 2017

Winner of the 2017 Silver Nautilus Award in Relationships & Communication

“We Need to TalkĚýis an important read for a conversationally-challenged, disconnected age. Headlee is a talented, honest storyteller, and her advice has helped me become a better spouse, friend, and mother.”Ě� (Jessica Lahey, author ofĚýNew York TimesĚý˛ú±đ˛őłŮ˛ő±đ±ô±ô±đ°ůĚýThe Gift of Failure)

Today most of us communicate from behind electronic screens, and studies show that Americans feel less connected and more divided than ever before. The blame for some of this disconnect can be attributed to our political landscape, but the erosion of our conversational skills as a society lies with us as individuals.

And the only way forward, says Headlee, is to start talking to each other. In We Need to Talk, she outlines the strategies that have made her a better conversationalist—and offers simple tools that can improve anyone’s communication. For example:Ěý


BE THERE OR GO ELSEWHERE. Human beings are incapable of multitasking, and this is especially true of tasks that involve language. Think you can type up a few emails while on a business call, or hold a conversation with your child while texting your spouse? Think again.
CHECK YOUR BIAS. The belief that your intelligence protects you from erroneous assumptions can end up making you more vulnerable to them. We all have blind spots that affect the way we view others. Check your bias before you judge someone else.
HIDE YOUR PHONE. Don’t just put down your phone, put it away. New research suggests that the mere presence of a cell phone can negatively impact the quality of a conversation.
Whether you’re struggling to communicate with your kid’s teacher at school, an employee at work, or the people you love the most—Headlee offers smart strategies that can help us all have conversations that matter.

Ěý±Ő±Ő> 272 Celeste Headlee 0062669028 Sarah 0 to-read 3.93 2017 We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations that Matter
author: Celeste Headlee
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> Gentlemen Prefer Blondes 512704 165 Anita Loos 0871401703 Sarah 0 currently-reading 3.57 1925 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
author: Anita Loos
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/04
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Everything I Never Told You 18693763
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.

Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.

Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.]]> 297 Celeste Ng 159420571X Sarah 5 3.81 2014 Everything I Never Told You
author: Celeste Ng
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/02
date added: 2023/11/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon]]> 149105520 The Big Short and Flash Boys, the story of FTX’s spectacular collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center.

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side?

In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own―until it all came undone.]]> 272 Michael Lewis 1324074337 Sarah 0 to-read 3.72 2023 Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
author: Michael Lewis
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Big Fish 129984 "On one of our last car trips, near the end of my father's life as a man, we stopped by a river, and we took a walk to its banks, where we sat in the shade of an old oak tree ... Suddenly he took a deep breath and said, 'This reminds me...' "

In his prime, Edward Bloom was an extraordinary man. He could outrun anybody. He never missed a day of school. He saved lives and tamed giants. Animals loved him, people loved him, women loved him. He knew more jokes than any man alive.

At least that’s what he told his son, William. But now Edward Bloom is dying, and William wants desperately to know the truth about his elusive father � this indefatigable teller of tall tales � before it’s too late. So, using the few facts he knows, William re-creates Edward’s life in a series of legends and myths, through which he begins to understand his father’s great feats, and his great failings. The result is hilarious and wrenching, tender and outrageous.

Big Fish is the story of this man's life, told from father to son, some fact, some fiction. But the result is a powerful and transformative act of storytelling, and one way to make amends with the bridge between life and death.]]> 192 Daniel Wallace 0743484258 Sarah 4 3.67 1998 Big Fish
author: Daniel Wallace
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/19
date added: 2023/10/20
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How Much of These Hills Is Gold]]> 45895362
Ba dies in the night; Ma is already gone. Newly orphaned children of immigrants, Lucy and Sam are suddenly alone in a land that refutes their existence. Fleeing the threats of their western mining town, they set off to bury their father in the only way that will set them free from their past. Along the way, they encounter giant buffalo bones, tiger paw prints, and the specters of a ravaged landscape as well as family secrets, sibling rivalry, and glimpses of a different kind of future.

Both epic and intimate, blending Chinese symbolism and re-imagined history with fiercely original language and storytelling, How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a haunting adventure story, an unforgettable sibling story, and the announcement of a stunning new voice in literature. On a broad level, it explores race in an expanding country and the question of where immigrants are allowed to belong. But page by page, it's about the memories that bind and divide families, and the yearning for home.]]> 288 C Pam Zhang 0525537201 Sarah 0 currently-reading 3.77 2020 How Much of These Hills Is Gold
author: C Pam Zhang
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Position 534821
Crackling with intelligence and humor, The Position is the masterful story of one extraordinary family at the hilarious height of the sexual revolution—and through the thirty-year hangover that followed.

In 1975, Paul and Roz Mellow write a bestselling Joy of Sex -type book that mortifies their four school-aged children and ultimately changes the shape of the family forever. Thirty years later, as the now dispersed family members argue over whether to reissue the book, we follow the complicated lives of each of the grown children and their conflicts in love, work, marriage, parenting, and, of course, sex—all shadowed by the indelible specter of their highly sexualized parents. Insightful, panoramic, and compulsively readable, The Position is an American original.]]> 307 Meg Wolitzer 0743261801 Sarah 2 3.31 2005 The Position
author: Meg Wolitzer
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at: 2023/09/09
date added: 2023/09/10
shelves:
review:
The punchline is: They're a joke.
]]> Confessions on the 7:45 61199290 From master of suspense Lisa Unger comes a riveting thriller about a chance encounter that unravels a stunning web of lies.

Selena Murphy is commuting home on the train when she strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat. The woman introduces herself as Martha and soon confesses that she’s been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena’s station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again.

Then the nanny disappears.

As Selena is pulled into the mystery of what happened, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, she begins to wonder, who was Martha really ? But she is hardly prepared for what she’ll discover�

Don't miss The New Couple in 5B , Lisa Unger's newest psychological thriller about a couple that inherits an apartment with a truly chilling past.]]> 448 Lisa Unger 0778333892 Sarah 0 to-read 3.81 2019 Confessions on the 7:45
author: Lisa Unger
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> Dragon Teeth 31287693
The year is 1876. Warring Indian tribes still populate America's western territories, even as lawless gold-rush towns begin to mark the landscape. Against this backdrop two palaeontologists pillage the Wild West for dinosaur fossils while deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars.

Into this treacherous territory plunges William Johnson, a Yale student with more privilege than sense. Determined to win a bet against his archrival, William has joined world-renowned palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh on his latest expedition. But Marsh becomes convinced that William is spying for his nemesis, Edwin Drinker Cope, and abandons him in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a locus of crime and vice.

Soon William joins forces with Cope and stumbles upon a discovery of historic proportions. The struggle to protect this extraordinary treasure, however, will test William's newfound resilience and pit him against some of the West's most dangerous and notorious characters....

©2017 Michael Crichton (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers Limited]]> 295 Michael Crichton 0008173060 Sarah 5 3.79 2017 Dragon Teeth
author: Michael Crichton
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/13
date added: 2023/08/15
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell, #1)]]> 1024275 An Agatha Award Best Novel Nominee
Named One of the Century's Best 100 Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association

From New York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King comes the book that introduced us to the ingenious Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes mysteries

In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees in Sussex when a young woman literally stumbles into his lap on the Sussex downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern twentieth-century woman proves a deft protégée, and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. This first book of the Mary Russell–Sherlock Holmes mysteries is full of brilliant deduction, disguises, and danger.]]> 346 Laurie R. King 0312427360 Sarah 0 to-read 3.92 1994 The Beekeeper's Apprentice (Mary Russell, #1)
author: Laurie R. King
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Congratulations, the Best is Over!]]> 71872896 The beloved bestselling author of Here for It presents a collection of heartening, thoughtful, and laugh-out-loud essays about the lifelong search for community and returning home.

After going viral "reading" the chaotic political news, having one-too-many awkward social encounters, and coming to terms with his intersecting identities, R. Eric Thomas is ready to live his best life--or, if not, at least his best-ish life.

Now, in this collection of insightful and hilarious essays, Thomas finds himself doing things completely out of character, starting with moving back to his perpetually misunderstood hometown of Baltimore. They say you can't go home again, but what if you and home have changed beyond recognition? From attending his twenty-year high school reunion and discovering another person's face on his name badge, to splattering an urgent care room with blood Ă  la The Shining, to being terrorized by a plague of gay frogs who've overtaken his backyard, Thomas shares the nitty, and sometimes gritty, details of wrestling with your past life while in the middle of a new one. With wit, heart, and hope for the future, Congratulations, The Best Is Over! is the not-so-gentle reminder we all need that even when life doesn't go according to plan, we can still find our way back home.]]> 240 R. Eric Thomas 0593496264 Sarah 0 to-read 4.04 2023 Congratulations, the Best is Over!
author: R. Eric Thomas
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Trap 75634216 From award-winning, internationally bestselling crime writer Catherine Ryan Howard comes The Trap: an unsettling mystery inspired by a series of still-unsolved disappearances in Ireland in the 90s, wherein one young woman risks everything to catch a faceless killer.

One year ago, Lucy’s sister, Nicki, left to meet friends at a pub in Dublin and never came home. The third Irish woman to vanish inexplicably in as many years, the agony of not knowing what happened that night has turned Lucy’s life into a waking nightmare. So, she’s going to take matters into her own hands.

Angela works as a civilian paper-pusher in the Missing Persons Unit, but wants nothing more than to be a fully-fledged member of An Garda Síochána, the Irish police force. With the official investigation into the missing women stalled, she begins pulling on a thread that could break the case wide open—and destroy her chances of ever joining the force.

A nameless man drives through the night, his latest victim in the back seat. He’s going to tell her everything, from the beginning. And soon, she’ll realize: what you don’t know can hurt you …]]> 263 Catherine Ryan Howard 1982694718 Sarah 0 to-read 3.53 2023 The Trap
author: Catherine Ryan Howard
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Savages (Savages #2) 8008928
When they refuse to back down, the cartel escalates its threat, kidnapping Ophelia, the boys' playmate and confidante. O's abduction sets off a dizzying array of ingenious negotiations and gripping plot twists that will captivate readers eager to learn the costs of freedom and the price of one amazing high.]]> 302 Don Winslow 1439183368 Sarah 4 3.84 2010 Savages (Savages #2)
author: Don Winslow
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2012/09/09
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves:
review:
Disturbing, shocking, yet funny as well. Didn't much care for the ending though.
]]> The Orphan Collector 48685996 Instant New York Times Bestseller

From the internationally bestselling author of What She Left Behind comes a gripping and powerful tale of upheaval—a heartbreaking saga of resilience and hope perfect for fans of Beatriz Williams and Kristin Hannah—set in Philadelphia during the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak—the deadly pandemic that went on to infect one-third of the world’s population�

“Readers will not be able to help making comparisons to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how little has changed since 1918. Wiseman has written a touching tale of loss, survival, and perseverance with some light fantastical elements. Highly recommended.�
�Booklist

“An immersive historical tale with chilling twists and turns. Beautifully told and richly imagined.�
—Stephanie Dray, New York Times bestselling author of America’s First Daughter

In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded slums and the anti-immigrant sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army. But as her city celebrates the end of war, an even more urgent threat arrives: the Spanish flu. Funeral crepe and quarantine signs appear on doors as victims drop dead in the streets and desperate survivors wear white masks to ward off illness. When food runs out in the cramped tenement she calls home, Pia must venture alone into the quarantined city in search of supplies, leaving her baby brothers behind.

Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision. It becomes her sinister mission to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable, planning to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.�

Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. Instead, she is taken to St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum � the first step in a long and arduous journey. As Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost in the months and years that follow, Pia must confront her own shame and fear, risking everything to see justice � and love � triumph at last. Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most.

“Wiseman’s writing is superb, and her descriptions of life during the Spanish Flu epidemic are chilling. Well-researched and impossible to put down, this is an emotional tug-of-war played out brilliantly on the pages and in readers� hearts.�
�The Historical Novels Review, EDITOR’S CHOICE

“Wiseman’s depiction of the horrifying spread of the Spanish flu is eerily reminiscent of the present day and resonates with realistic depictions of suffering, particularly among the poorer immigrant population.�
�Publishers Weekly (Boxed Review)

“Reading the novel in the time of COVID-19 adds an even greater resonance, and horror, to the description of the fatal spread of that 1918 flu.�
�Kirkus Review

“An emotional roller coaster…I felt Pia’s strength, courage, guilt, and grief come through the pages clear as day.�
—The Seattle Book Review]]> 402 Ellen Marie Wiseman 149671587X Sarah 0 to-read 4.38 2020 The Orphan Collector
author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Three Wishes 1466455 Alternative cover edition of ISBN 9780060586133

Lyn, Cat, and Gemma Kettle, beautiful thirty-three-year-old triplets, seem to attract attention everywhere they go. Whenever they're together, laughter, drama, and mayhem seem to follow. But apart, each is very much her own woman, dealing with her own share of ups and downs. Lyn has organized her life into one big checklist, juggling the many balls of work, marriage, and motherhood with expert precision, but is she as together as her datebook would have her seem? Cat has just learned a startling secret about her marriage -- can she bring another life into her very precarious world? And can free-spirited Gemma, who bolts every time a relationship hits the six-month mark, ever hope to find lasting love? In this wise, witty, hilarious new novel, we follow the Kettle sisters through their thirty-third-year, as they struggle to survive their divorced parents' dating each other, their technologically savvy grandmother, a cheating husband, champagne hangovers, and the fabulous, frustrating life of forever being part of a trio.]]> 384 Liane Moriarty Sarah 0 to-read 3.70 2003 Three Wishes
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nine Perfect Strangers 39280445 Could ten days at a health resort really change you forever?

These nine perfect strangers are about to find out...

Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.

Frances Welty, the formerly best-selling romantic novelist, arrives at Tranquillum House nursing a bad back, a broken heart, and an exquisitely painful paper cut. She’s immediately intrigued by her fellow guests. Most of them don’t look to be in need of a health resort at all. But the person that intrigues her most is the strange and charismatic owner/director of Tranquillum House. Could this person really have the answers Frances didn’t even know she was seeking? Should Frances put aside her doubts and immerse herself in everything Tranquillum House has to offer—or should she run while she still can?

It’s not long before every guest at Tranquillum House is asking exactly the same question.

Combining all of the hallmarks that have made Liane Moriarty's writing a go-to for anyone looking for wickedly smart, page-turning fiction that will make you laugh and gasp, Nine Perfect Strangers once again shows why she is a master of her craft.]]> 453 Liane Moriarty 1250069823 Sarah 0 to-read 3.53 2018 Nine Perfect Strangers
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Husband's Secret 17802724 At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read

My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died...

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .

Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses—and, ultimately, ourselves.]]> 396 Liane Moriarty 0399159347 Sarah 0 to-read 3.94 2013 The Husband's Secret
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Micro 11660590 Jurassic Park, this high-concept thriller follows a group of graduate students lured to Hawaii to work for a mysterious biotech company—only to find themselves cast out into the rain forest, with nothing but their scientific expertise and wits to protect them.

In the lush forests of Oahu, groundbreaking technology has ushered in a revolutionary era of biological prospecting, feeding a search for priceless drugs and applications on a scale beyond anything previously imagined. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, seven graduate students at the forefront of their fields are recruited by a pioneering microbiology start-up, Nanigen MicroTechnologies, which dispatches the group to a mysterious lab in Hawaii. But once in the rainforest, the scientists are thrust into a hostile wilderness that reveals surprising dangers at every turn. Armed only with their knowledge of the natural world, they find themselves prey to a technology of radical and unbridled power

An instant classic, Micro pits nature against technology in vintage Michael Crichton fashion. Completed by visionary science writer Richard Preston, this boundary-pushing thriller melds scientific fact with pulse-pounding fiction to create yet another masterpiece of sophisticated, cutting-edge entertainment.]]> 424 Michael Crichton 0062094734 Sarah 0 to-read 3.49 2011 Micro
author: Michael Crichton
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Andromeda Strain (Andromeda, #1)]]> 7670
Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to collect organisms and dust for study. One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona.

Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town's inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks.
--back cover]]> 327 Michael Crichton 0060541814 Sarah 0 to-read 3.92 1969 The Andromeda Strain (Andromeda, #1)
author: Michael Crichton
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Last Thing He Told Me 56169546
As Hannah’s increasingly desperate calls to Owen go unanswered, as the FBI arrests Owen’s boss, as a U.S. marshal and federal agents arrive at her Sausalito home unannounced, Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.]]> 316 Laura Dave 1501171364 Sarah 0 to-read 4.08 2021 The Last Thing He Told Me
author: Laura Dave
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2)]]> 8650
There are rumors that something has survived....]]> 448 Michael Crichton 0752224417 Sarah 5 3.85 1995 The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2)
author: Michael Crichton
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/03
date added: 2023/07/04
shelves:
review:

]]> Big Swiss 138539153
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship�

A fantastic, weird-as-hell, funny novel, Big Swiss is both a love story and a deft examination of infidelity, mental health, sexual stereotypes, and more—from an amazingly talented, singular voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 352 Jen Beagin 1982153091 Sarah 0 to-read 3.70 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Tipping the Velvet 25104465 472 Sarah Waters Sarah 0 to-read 4.12 1998 Tipping the Velvet
author: Sarah Waters
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories]]> 62854781 288 Jess Walter 0062868128 Sarah 0 to-read 4.33 2022 The Angel of Rome: And Other Stories
author: Jess Walter
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Crying in H Mart 75668238
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humour and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian-American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the east coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, performing gigs with her fledgling band � and meeting the man who would become her husband � her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live.

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

Vivacious, lyrical and honest, Michelle Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.]]> 239 Michelle Zauner 1984898957 Sarah 0 to-read 4.20 2021 Crying in H Mart
author: Michelle Zauner
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sirens & Muses 124962424 Ěý
It’sĚý2011:ĚýAmerica is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarefied bubble. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa’s unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can’t shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur, who is publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Berger—a once-controversial figureheadĚýseekingĚýto regain relevance.Ěý Ěý
ĚýĚý
When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world. Now all must struggle to find new identities in art, in society, and among each other. In the process, they must find either their most authentic terms of life—of success, failure, and joy—or risk losing themselves altogether.Ěý

WithĚýa canny, critical eye, Sirens & Muses overturns notions of class, money, art, youth, and a generation’s fight to own theirĚýfuture.]]> 384 Antonia Angress 0593496450 Sarah 0 to-read 3.95 2022 Sirens & Muses
author: Antonia Angress
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[His Other Wife (Stella Fall #1)]]> 58684975
Stella seems to have her whole life ahead of her: she has just graduated with a dual masters in Psychology and Criminal Justice, she is engaged to the man of her dreams after a whirlwind romance, and she is moving to the East Coast with him as she prepares for the wedding and searches for a dream job, hoping to be a criminal profiler. She is unbelievably excited for her life together with Chris—until she meets his family.

Stella, from a humble Midwestern upbringing, never felt comfortable around money, and she hates the world Chris comes from. She is in shock at the culture clash as she gets to know his elitist family and friends, all of whom look down on her. Isolated and demeaned, Stella wonders if she can live a life in such hostile surroundings.

They move into the guest house on his estate, and things only get worse. As Stella meets his ex and his friends at his club, all of whom seem to know something she doesn’t, she wonders if Chris is really the man she thought he was. As she learns more about his past and discovers his dark side, she wonders if she has made a big mistake. Beneath its trimmed hedgerows and gleaming storefronts, Stella soon realizes that this wealthy town hides terrible secrets.

But before she can decide what to do, a murder leaves her blindsided.

Stella, implicated, her future on the line, has no choice but to investigate. As her dreams devolves into hell, Stella, still struggling to overcome her own traumatic past, questions everything around her—including her own sanity.

Can she find the killer, and clear her name, before it’s too late?

A fast-paced psychological suspense thriller with unforgettable characters and heart-pounding suspense, HIS OTHER WIFE is book #1 in a riveting new series that will leave you turning pages late into the night.]]> 210 Ava Strong Sarah 3 3.76 2021 His Other Wife (Stella Fall #1)
author: Ava Strong
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/06
date added: 2023/06/07
shelves:
review:
The Marshalls are the cringiest family ever, such a pack of degenerates.
]]> <![CDATA[Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)]]> 40604658
Until something goes wrong. . . .

In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller.]]> 450 Michael Crichton 0307763056 Sarah 5 4.38 1990 Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1)
author: Michael Crichton
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/24
date added: 2023/05/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Summer Crossing: A Novel 19210293
Set in New York during the summer of 1945, this is the story of a young carefree socialite, Grady, who must make serious decisions about the romance she is dangerously pursuing and the effect it will have on everyone involved.

Fans of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Capote’s short stories will be thrilled to read Summer Crossing.]]> 157 Truman Capote Sarah 4 3.51 2005 Summer Crossing: A Novel
author: Truman Capote
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/05
date added: 2023/05/05
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates]]> 38212132 With surprising tales of vicious mutineers, imperial riches, and high-seas intrigue, Black Flags, Blue Waters vividly reanimates the “Golden Age� of piracy in the Americas.

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age”―spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s―when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them. Through engrossing episodes of roguish glamour and extreme brutality, Dolin depicts the star pirates of this period, among them towering Blackbeard, ill-fated Captain Kidd, and sadistic Edward Low, who delighted in torturing his prey. Also brilliantly detailed are the pirates� manifold enemies, including colonial governor John Winthrop, evangelist Cotton Mather, and young Benjamin Franklin. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes, Dolin provides this wholly original account of the seafaring outlaws whose raids reflect the precarious nature of American colonial life.]]> 380 Eric Jay Dolin 1631492101 Sarah 0 to-read 3.72 2018 Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates
author: Eric Jay Dolin
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Carrie Soto Is Back 123645534 Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular.

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

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

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

In spite of it all: Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells a story about the cost of greatness and a legendary athlete attempting a comeback.]]> 416 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158709 Sarah 0 to-read 4.25 2022 Carrie Soto Is Back
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> Truly Madly Guilty 26247008
Sam and Clementine have a wonderful, albeit, busy life: they have two little girls, Sam has just started a new dream job, and Clementine, a cellist, is busy preparing for the audition of a lifetime. If there’s anything they can count on, it’s each other.

Clementine and Erika are each other’s oldest friends. A single look between them can convey an entire conversation. But theirs is a complicated relationship, so when Erika mentions a last minute invitation to a barbecue with her neighbors, Tiffany and Vid, Clementine and Sam don’t hesitate. Having Tiffany and Vid’s larger than life personalities there will be a welcome respite.

Two months later, it won’t stop raining, and Clementine and Sam can’t stop asking themselves the question: What if we hadn’t gone?

In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations of our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don’t say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm.]]> 432 Liane Moriarty 1250125561 Sarah 0 3.49 2016 Truly Madly Guilty
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/28
date added: 2023/04/29
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I'd Really Prefer Not to Be Here with You, and Other Stories]]> 72258694 298 Julianna Baggott Sarah 0 to-read 3.72 2023 I'd Really Prefer Not to Be Here with You, and Other Stories
author: Julianna Baggott
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The House on Mango Street 139253 The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero.

Told in a series of vignettes � sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous–it is the story of a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.]]> 110 Sandra Cisneros 0679734775 Sarah 5 3.69 1984 The House on Mango Street
author: Sandra Cisneros
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/04/20
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress]]> 533465 184 Dai Sijie 0385722206 Sarah 0 to-read 3.64 2000 Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
author: Dai Sijie
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Animal Farm 170448 Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned –a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.
When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell’s masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.]]> 141 George Orwell 0451526341 Sarah 0 to-read 4.07 1945 Animal Farm
author: George Orwell
name: Sarah
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1945
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> ł˘´ÇłŮ±đ°ůĂ­˛ą 16248339
With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, the young girl retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of ł˘´ÇłŮ±đ°ůĂ­˛ą cards-a Mexican version of bingo featuring bright, colorful images.

Neither the social worker assigned to her case nor her Aunt Tencha, who desperately pleads for her niece's release, can cajole Luz to speak. The young girl's only confidant is her journal. Within its pages, Luz addresses an invisible higher power, sharing her secrets.

Using the ł˘´ÇłŮ±đ°ůĂ­˛ą cards as her muse, Luz picks one card from the deck with each shuffle. Each of the cards' colorful images- mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars-sparks a random memory. Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl's life, and the events that led to her present situation. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.

A surprising, spellbinding tale richly imaginative and atmospheric, ł˘´ÇłŮ±đ°ůĂ­˛ą is an exquisite debut novel from an outstanding new voice in fiction.]]> 288 Mario Alberto Zambrano 0062268546 Sarah 0 to-read 3.48 2013 ł˘´ÇłŮ±đ°ůĂ­˛ą
author: Mario Alberto Zambrano
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster]]> 62949047 Pachinko and A Woman is No Man, a riveting and genre-bending debut of love and survival, set in the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. Life near the North Korean border is a zero-sum game, an ongoing battle in which you either win or you lose. This dangerous, shadowed netherworld is home to an unforgettable woman known only as the “trickster.� Inspired by the story of Lee’s great aunt, one of the oldest women to escape alone from North Korea, 8 Lives of a Century Old Trickster consists of eight dark and spellbinding chapters that follow this remarkable character and her family as they struggle to survive during the most turbulent times of modern Korean history. Mirinae Lee’s trickster is a shapeshifter—throughout the course of these interconnected chapters she is a slave, an escape artist, a murderer, a terrorist, a spy, a lover, and a mother—a woman who must often choose the unthinkable to survive war and conquest in Korea. Her story is a beguiling, complex tale of love and survival that will keep you riveted—and speculating—until the very end thanks to Lee’s brilliant talent for sleight of hand. A fascinating look at survival, trauma, and family, 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster is an incredible literary debut from a bright new talent.]]> 304 Mirinae Lee 0063240424 Sarah 0 to-read 3.96 2023 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster
author: Mirinae Lee
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[This Isn't Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew]]> 60831912
“Daniel Wallace has, once again, shown himself to be an exquisite storyteller. ĚýLike bourbon, this book goes down hot and strong but finishes with a salving sweetness which can only be called a blessing. ĚýA love story and a ghost story a once,Ěý This Isn’t Going to End Well Ěýstraddles the line between present and past, truth and beauty.”―Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

A profoundly moving, large-hearted, genre-bending memoir from the bestselling author of Big Fish .

If we’re lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own. For Daniel Wallace, that was his longtime friend and brother-in-law, William Nealy. Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into an acclaimed outdoorsman, a famous cartoonist, an accomplished author, a master of all he undertook. William was the ideal that Daniel sought to emulate, and the person who gave him the courage to become a writer.

But when William took his own life at age forty eight, Daniel’s heartbreak led him to commit a grievous act of his own, a betrayal that took him down a path into the tortured recesses of William’s past. Eventually a new picture emerged of a man with too many secrets and too much shame to bear.

With his first memoir, acclaimed writer Daniel Wallace delivers a stunning book that is as innovative and emotionally resonant as his novels. Part love story, part true crime, part a desperate search for the self, This Isn’t Going to End Well tells an intimate and moving story of what happens when we realize our heroes are human.

Ěý±Ő±Ő> 272 Daniel Wallace 1643752103 Sarah 0 to-read 3.73 2023 This Isn't Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew
author: Daniel Wallace
name: Sarah
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

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