Lisa's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 05 May 2025 07:37:20 -0700 60 Lisa's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Long Island Compromise 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?�

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives� successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Housemaid's Secret (The Housemaid, #2)]]> 62848145 As he continues showing me their incredible penthouse apartment, I have a terrible feeling about the woman behind closed doors. But I can't risk losing this job � not if I want to keep my darkest secret safe . . .

It's hard to find an employer who doesn't ask too many questions about my past. So I thank my lucky stars that the Garricks miraculously give me a job, cleaning their stunning penthouse with views across the city and preparing fancy meals in their shiny kitchen. I can work here for a while, stay quiet until I get what I want. It's almost perfect. But I still haven't met Mrs Garrick, or seen inside the guest bedroom. I'm sure I hear her crying. I notice spots of blood around the neck of her white nightgowns when I'm doing laundry. And one day I can't help but knock on the door. When it gently swings open, what I see inside changes everything...

That's when I make a promise. After all, I've done this before. I can protect Mrs. Garrick while keeping my own secrets locked up safe. Douglas Garrick has done wrong. He is going to pay. It's simply a question of how far I'm willing to go...]]> 318 Freida McFadden 1837901317 Lisa 0 4.21 2023 The Housemaid's Secret (The Housemaid, #2)
author: Freida McFadden
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1)]]> 60556912
Every day I clean the Winchesters� beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out� and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.

But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.

They don’t know what I’m capable of�

An unbelievably twisty read that will have you glued to the pages late into the night. Anyone who loves The Woman in the Window, The Wife Between Us and The Girl on the Train won’t be able to put this down!]]> 329 Freida McFadden 1803144378 Lisa 0 4.31 2022 The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1)
author: Freida McFadden
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/18
date added: 2025/04/18
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]]> Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2) 90202302 “The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.� —Xaden Riorson

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.

Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders� capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.

But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.

Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.]]> 623 Rebecca Yarros 1649374178 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.33 2023 Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Bye, Baby 127305890
On a brisk fall night in a New York apartment, 35-year-old Billie West hears terrified screams. It's her lifelong best friend Cassie Barnwell, one floor above, and she's just realized her infant daughter has gone missing. Billie is shaken as she looks down into her own arms to see the baby, remembering—with a jolt of fear—that she is responsible for the kidnapping that has instantly shattered Cassie’s world.

So begins the story of Billie and Cassie's friendship--both in recent weeks, and since they met twenty-three years ago, in their small Hudson Valley hometown the summer before seventh grade. Once fiercely bonded by their secrets, including a traumatic, unspeakable incident in high school, Cassie and Billie have drifted apart in adulthood, no longer the inseparable pair they used to be. Cassie is married to a wealthy man, has recently become a mother, and is building a following as a fashion and lifestyle influencer. She is desperate to leave her past behind--including Billie, who is single and childless, and no longer fits into her world. Hurt and rejected by Cassie’s new priorities, Billie will do anything to restore their friendship, even as she hides the truth about what really happened the night the baby was taken.

Told in alternating perspectives in Lovering’s signature suspenseful style, Bye Baby confronts the myriad ways friendships change and evolve over time, the lingering echoes of childhood trauma, and the impact of women’s choices on their lifelong relationships.]]> 352 Carola Lovering 125028936X Lisa 0 3.70 2024 Bye, Baby
author: Carola Lovering
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
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]]> Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3) 209439446
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 527 Rebecca Yarros 1649374186 Lisa 0 to-read 4.17 2025 Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 517 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Lisa 0 4.56 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/21
date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> The Princess of 72nd Street 199454309 The New Yorker) about a smart, sensitive, yet deeply troubled young woman fighting to live on her own terms.

I am glad I have the radiance. This time I am wiser. No one will know� The radiance drifts blue circles around my head. If I wanted to I could float up and through them. I am weightless. My brain is cool like rippling waves. Conflict does not exist. For a moment I cannot see—the lights are large orange flowers.

Ellen has two lives. A single artist living alone on New York’s Upper West Side in the 1970s, she periodically descends into episodes she describes as “radiances.� While under the influence of the radiance, she becomes Princess Esmeralda, and West 72nd Street the kingdom over which she rules. Life as Esmeralda is a colorful, glorious, liberating experience for Ellen, and despite the chaos and stigma these episodes can bring, she relishes the respite from the confines of the everyday. And yet those around her, particularly the men in her life, are threatened by her incarnation as Esmeralda and the freedom it gives her.

In what would turn to be her final published work, originally released in 1979, Elaine Kraf tackles a dark and disturbing subject in an utterly original, witty, and inventive manner. Provocative at the time of its publication and thoroughly iconoclastic, The Princess of 72nd Street is a remarkable portrait of an unforgettable woman.]]> 160 Elaine Kraf 0593731808 Lisa 0 to-read 3.78 1979 The Princess of 72nd Street
author: Elaine Kraf
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> None of This Is True 62334530
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]> 390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Lisa 0 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> The Hotel Nantucket 59227941 Ěý
Filled with the emotional tension and multiple points of view that characterize Elin's books (The Blue Bistro, Golden Girl) as well as an added touch of historical reality, Hotel Nantucket offers something for everyone in this summer drama for the ages.Ěý]]> 416 Elin Hilderbrand 0316258679 Lisa 0 4.01 2022 The Hotel Nantucket
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
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]]> Blue Sisters 195431722
The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery , the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie , a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky , the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.

But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize that the greatest secrets they've been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.Ěý

Imbued with Coco Mellors’s signature combination of humor and heart, Blue Sisters is a story of what it takes to keep living after loss—and, ultimately, to fall in love with life again.]]> 272 Coco Mellors 0593723775 Lisa 0 to-read 4.02 2024 Blue Sisters
author: Coco Mellors
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/04
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]]> <![CDATA[A ​Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4)]]> 53138095 Global phenomenon Sarah J. Maas’s sexy, richly imagined #1 bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series continues with the journey of Feyre’s fiery sister, Nesta.

Nesta Archeron has always been prickly-proud, swift to anger, and slow to forgive. And ever since being forced into the Cauldron and becoming High Fae against her will, she’s struggled to find a place for herself within the strange, deadly world she inhabits. Worse, she can’t seem to move past the horrors of the war with Hybern and all she lost in it.

The one person who ignites her temper more than any other is Cassian, the battle-scarred warrior whose position in Rhysand and Feyre’s Night Court keeps him constantly in Nesta’s orbit. But her temper isn’t the only thing Cassian ignites. The fire between them is undeniable, and only burns hotter as they are forced into close quarters with each other.

Meanwhile, the treacherous human queens who returned to the Continent during the last war have forged a dangerous new alliance, threatening the fragile peace that has settled over the realms. And the key to halting them might very well rely on Cassian and Nesta facing their haunting pasts.

Against the sweeping backdrop of a world seared by war and plagued with uncertainty, Nesta and Cassian battle monsters from within and without as they search for acceptance—and healing—in each other’s arms.]]> 757 Sarah J. Maas 168119628X Lisa 0 4.44 2021 A ​Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #4)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
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]]> Pageboy 60473073 Pageboy is a groundbreaking coming-of-age memoir from the Academy Award-nominated actor Elliot Page. A generation-defining actor and one of the most famous trans advocates of our time, Elliot will now be known as an uncommon literary talent, as he shares never-before-heard details and intimate interrogations on gender, love, mental health, relationships, and Hollywood.]]> 271 Elliot Page Lisa 0 to-read 3.72 2023 Pageboy
author: Elliot Page
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> <![CDATA[A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3.5)]]> 50659471
Yet even the festive atmosphere can't keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, her concern for those dearest to her deepens. They have more wounds than she anticipated-scars that will have a far-reaching impact on the future of their court.

Bridging the events of A Court of Wings and Ruin with the later books in the series, A Court of Frost and Starlight explores the far-reaching effects of a devastating war and the fierce love between friends.]]> 272 Sarah J. Maas 1635575621 Lisa 0 3.69 2019 A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3.5)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
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]]> <![CDATA[A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3)]]> 50659472 The epic third novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas.

Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin's actions and learn what she can about the invading king threatening to bring her land to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit. One slip could bring doom not only for Feyre, but for everything-and everyone-she holds dear.

As war bears down upon them all, Feyre endeavors to take her place amongst the High Fae of the land, balancing her struggle to master her powers-both magical and political-and her love for her court and family. Amidst these struggles, Feyre and Rhysand must decide whom to trust amongst the cunning and lethal High Lords, and hunt for allies in unexpected places.

In this thrilling third book in the #1 New York Times bestselling series from Sarah J. Maas, the fate of Feyre's world is at stake as armies grapple for power over the one thing that could destroy it.]]> 699 Sarah J. Maas 1635575605 Lisa 0 4.47 2017 A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 Lisa 0 to-read 4.21 2023 Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
author: Naomi Klein
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI]]> 29496076 Ěý
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,� roamed � virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. The book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly riveting, but also emotionally devastating.]]> 359 David Grann 0385534256 Lisa 0 to-read 4.12 2017 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
author: David Grann
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
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]]> Martyr! 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Lisa 0 to-read 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
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]]> No Hard Feelings 59233090 Fleabag meets Sorrow and Bliss with a splash of Dolly Alderton.

I exist on validation from emotionally unavailable men, biscuits, and cheap wine, and it's easier to get off with Max than a Tiny Teddy.

Penny can't help but compare herself to her friends. Annie is about to become a senior associate at her law firm, Bec has just got engaged, Leo is dating everyone this side of the Yarra, and Penny is just ... waiting. Waiting for Max, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, to allow her to spend the night, waiting for the promotion she was promised, waiting for her Valium to kick in. Waiting for her real life to start.

Out of excuses and sick of falling behind, Penny is determined to turn things around. She's going to make it work with Max, impress her tyrannical boss, quit seeing her useless therapist, remember to water her plants, and stop having panic attacks in the work toilets.

But soon she's back to doomscrolling on Instagram, necking bottles of Aldi's finest sauvignon blanc, and criticising herself with renewed vigour and loathing. As her goals seem further away than ever, she has to wonder: when bad habits feel so good, how do you trust what's right for you?]]> 320 Genevieve Novak 1460761847 Lisa 0 3.74 No Hard Feelings
author: Genevieve Novak
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.74
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> Good Material 198701985 From the New York Times best-selling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both.

Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped.

Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story�

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 354 Dolly Alderton 0593801318 Lisa 4 3.80 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> The Lies We Told 37905907 Watching Edie returns with a new novel of dark psychological suspense that explores how those closest to us have the most to hide...

When Clara's boyfriend, Luke, disappears, everyone believes that he's left her, but Clara thinks she knows the truth. Recent evidence suggests that Luke had a stalker, and Clara worries that he's been kidnapped. Then Luke's older sister, Emily, who vanished twenty years ago, suddenly reappears.

Emily wants to help Clara with her search for Luke, but she refuses to talk about what happened--even though it nearly destroyed her family when she vanished. And the deeper Clara digs into Luke's mysterious disappearance, the more convinced she is that the two incidents are connected.]]> 336 Camilla Way 1101989548 Lisa 2 3.98 2018 The Lies We Told
author: Camilla Way
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
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]]> Piglet 127282554 An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites—and the truth about having it all

Outside of a childhood nickname she can’t shake, Piglet’s rather pleased with how her life’s turned out. An up-and-coming cookbook editor at a London publishing house, she’s got lovely, loyal friends and a handsome fiancé, Kit, whose rarefied family she actually, most of the time, likes, despite their upper-class eccentricities. One of the many, many things Kit loves about Piglet is the delicious, unfathomably elaborate meals she’s always cooking.

But when Kit confesses a horrible betrayal two weeks before they’re set to be married, Piglet finds herself suddenly…hungry. The couple decides to move forward with the wedding as planned, but as it nears and Piglet balances family expectations, pressure at work, and her quest to make the perfect cake, she finds herself increasingly unsettled, behaving in ways even she can’t explain. Torn between a life she’s always wanted and the ravenousness that comes with not getting what she knows she deserves, Piglet is, by the day of her wedding, undone, but also ready to look beyond the lies we sometimes tell ourselves to get by.

A stylish, uncommonly clever novel about the things we want and the things we think we want, Piglet is both an examination of women’s often complicated relationship with food and a celebration of the messes life sometimes makes for us.]]> 320 Lottie Hazell 125028984X Lisa 0 3.39 2024 Piglet
author: Lottie Hazell
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> <![CDATA[A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2)]]> 50659468
Feyre has undergone more trials than one human woman can carry in her heart. Though she's now been granted the powers and lifespan of the High Fae, she is haunted by her time Under the Mountain and the terrible deeds she performed to save the lives of Tamlin and his people.

As her marriage to Tamlin approaches, Feyre's hollowness and nightmares consume her. She finds herself split into two different one who upholds her bargain with Rhysand, High Lord of the feared Night Court, and one who lives out her life in the Spring Court with Tamlin. While Feyre navigates a dark web of politics, passion, and dazzling power, a greater evil looms. She might just be the key to stopping it, but only if she can harness her harrowing gifts, heal her fractured soul, and decide how she wishes to shape her future-and the future of a world in turmoil.

Bestselling author Sarah J. Maas's masterful storytelling brings this second book in her dazzling, sexy, action-packed series to new heights.]]> 626 Sarah J. Maas 1635575583 Lisa 0 4.65 2016 A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.65
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2024/09/30
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]]> <![CDATA[What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]]> 2195464
Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back.

By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in running.]]> 188 Haruki Murakami Lisa 0 3.87 2007 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/09/19
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]]> Olga Dies Dreaming 57693171
Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1%, but she can't seem to find her own...until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets...

Twenty-seven years ago, their mother, Blanca, a Young Lord-turned-radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.

Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, Olga Dies Dreaming is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife and the very notion of the American dream--all while asking what it really means to weather a storm.]]> 369 Xóchitl González 1250786177 Lisa 4 3.95 2022 Olga Dies Dreaming
author: Xóchitl González
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/13
date added: 2024/09/13
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]]> Honey 195790655 A coming-of-age story that follows the meteoric rise of singer Amber Young as she navigates fame in the late-1990s and early-2000s era of pop music superstardom

It is 1997, and Amber Young has received a life-changing call. It is a chance thousands of girls would die for: the opportunity to join girl group Cloud9 in Los Angeles and escape her small town. She quickly finds herself in the orbits of fellow rising stars Gwen Morris, a driven singer-dancer, and Wes Kingston, a member of the biggest boy band in the world, ETA.

As Amber embarks on her solo career and her fame intensifies, her rich interior life is frequently reduced. Surrounded by people who claim to love her but only wish to exploit her, and driven by a desire for recognition and success, for love and sex, for agency and connection, Amber comes of age at a time when the kaleidoscope of public opinion can distort everything and one mistake can shatter a career.

Isabel Banta’s debut novel redefines the narratives of some of the most famous pop icons of the 1990s and 2000s. It reimagines the superstars we idolized and hated, oversexualized and underestimated, and gives them the fresh, multifaceted story they deserve.]]> 336 Isabel Banta 1250333466 Lisa 3 3.44 2024 Honey
author: Isabel Banta
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/10
date added: 2024/08/10
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]]> Wish You Were Here 57701764 New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things and The Book of Two Ways comes comes a deeply moving novel about the resilience of the human spirit in a moment of crisis.

Jodi Picoult once again proves she is the master of wading through the darkness to find the light. Wish You Were Here is a powerfully evocative story of resilience and the triumph of the human spirit.
--Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Malibu Rising

Synopsis
Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s an associate specialist at Sotheby’s now, but her boss has hinted at a promotion if she can close a deal with a high-profile client. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galapagos—days before her thirtieth birthday. Right on time.

But then a virus that felt worlds away has appeared in the city, and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news: It’s all hands on deck at the hospital. He has to stay behind. You should still go, he assures her, since it would be a shame for all of their nonrefundable trip to go to waste. And so, reluctantly, she goes.

Almost immediately, Diana’s dream vacation goes awry. Her luggage is lost, the Wi-Fi is nearly nonexistent, and the hotel they’d booked is shut down due to the pandemic. In fact, the whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders reopen. Completely isolated, she must venture beyond her comfort zone. Slowly, she carves out a connection with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to Diana, despite her father’s suspicion of outsiders.

In the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin’s theory of natural selection was formed, Diana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself—and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different.]]> 310 Jodi Picoult 1984818414 Lisa 2 3.86 2021 Wish You Were Here
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
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]]> Holly 65916344 Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.

“Sometimes the universe throws you a rope.� � BILL HODGES

Stephen King’s Holly marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr. Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.

When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.

Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harboring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.

Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.]]> 449 Stephen King 1668016133 Lisa 0 4.01 2023 Holly
author: Stephen King
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/18
date added: 2024/07/18
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]]> A Visit from the Goon Squad 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]> 274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 Lisa 0 to-read 3.70 2010 A Visit from the Goon Squad
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
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]]> Never Let Me Go 6334 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Lisa 0 to-read 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/12
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]]> Love, Theoretically 61326735
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?]]> 389 Ali Hazelwood 1408725797 Lisa 0 4.07 2023 Love, Theoretically
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
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]]> Funny Story 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry Lisa 0 4.21 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/29
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]]> Poor Things 72355 Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter - a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.

The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished authors.]]> 318 Alasdair Gray 0747562288 Lisa 0 3.92 1992 Poor Things
author: Alasdair Gray
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> Brat 198563713 From a provocative new literary talent, a hilarious and haunted novel featuring an unlikable protagonist grappling with grief, inheritance, and the ghosts of his past

We meet our ill-tempered protagonist—the story’s titular “brat”—at a low moment, but not yet at rock bottom. The Gabriel of the novel is mourning the death of his father as well as a recent breakup, and struggling to finish writing his second book. Alone and aimless, he agrees to move back into his parents� house to clear it out for sale. Here, the clichés end.

Gabriel has trouble delivering on his promise as the moldy, overgrown house deteriorates around him, so does his own health, and large sheets of his skin begin to peel from his body at a terrifying rate. In fragments and figments, Gabriel takes us on a surreal journey into the mysteries of the family home, where he finds unfinished manuscripts written by his parents which seem to mutate every time he picks them up, and a bizarre home video that hints at long-buried secrets.

Strange people and figures emerge—perhaps directly from the novel’s embedded fictions—and despite his compromised state (and his more successful brother’s growing frustration) Gabriel is determined to try to make sense of these hauntings. Part ghost story, part grief story; flirting with the autofictional mode while sitting squarely in the tradition of the gothic, Brat crackles with deadpan humor and delightfully taut prose.

Smith’s arrival heralds the next generation of fiction writers—formally inventive, influenced by the rhythms of the internet, and infused with a particularly Gen Z sense of alienation. Irreverent and boundary-pushing, but not for its own sake, the novel that follows is muscular yet lyrical, riddled with paradox, and told with a truly rare and compelling clarity of voice. Brat is a serious debut that refuses to take itself too seriously.]]> 320 Gabriel Smith 0593656873 Lisa 0 to-read 3.44 2024 Brat
author: Gabriel Smith
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/24
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]]> Yellowface 59357120
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 329 R.F. Kuang Lisa 3 3.84 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
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]]> The Silent Patient 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]> 336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Lisa 0 4.17 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002]]> 32498038
For forty years, David Sedaris has kept a diary in which he records everything that captures his attention-overheard comments, salacious gossip, soap opera plot twists, secrets confided by total strangers. These observations are the source code for his finest work, and through them he has honed his cunning, surprising sentences.

Now, Sedaris shares his private writings with the world. Theft by Finding, the first of two volumes, is the story of how a drug-abusing dropout with a weakness for the International House of Pancakes and a chronic inability to hold down a real job became one of the funniest people on the planet.

Written with a sharp eye and ear for the bizarre, the beautiful, and the uncomfortable, and with a generosity of spirit that even a misanthropic sense of humor can't fully disguise, Theft By Finding proves that Sedaris is one of our great modern observers. It's a potent reminder that when you're as perceptive and curious as Sedaris, there's no such thing as a boring day.]]> 514 David Sedaris 0316154725 Lisa 0 to-read 3.94 2017 Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002
author: David Sedaris
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up]]> 25614984 Spark Joy is an in-depth, line illustrated, room-by-room guide to decluttering and organising your home. It covers every room in the house from bedrooms and kitchens to bathrooms and living rooms as well as a wide range of items in different categories, including clothes, photographs, paperwork, books, cutlery, cosmetics, shoes, bags, wallets and valuables. Charming line drawings explain how to properly organise drawers, wardrobes, cupboards and cabinets. The illustrations also show Ms Kondo's unique folding method, clearly showing how to fold anything from shirts, trousers and jackets to skirts, socks and bras.

The secret to Marie Kondo's unique and simple KonMari tidying method is to focus on what you want to keep, not what you want to get rid of. Ask yourself if something 'sparks joy' and suddenly it becomes so much easier to understand if you really need it in your home and your life. When you surround yourself with things you love you will find that your whole life begins to change.

Marie Kondo's first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying, presents her unique tidying philosophy and introduces readers to the basics of her KonMari method. It has already transformed the homes and lives of millions of people around the world. Spark Joy is Marie Kondo's in-depth tidying masterclass, focusing on the detail of how to declutter and organise your home.]]> 291 Marie KondĹŤ 1607749726 Lisa 0 to-read 3.87 2012 Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up
author: Marie KondĹŤ
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> Grand Union 43608928 A dazzling collection of short fiction, more than half of which have never been published before, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and Swing Time

Zadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically-respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. With ten extraordinary new stories complemented by a selection of her most lauded pieces for The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Granta, GRAND UNION explores a wide range of subjects, from first loves to cultural despair, as well as the desire to be the subject of your own experience. In captivating prose, she contends with race, class, relationships, and gender roles in a world that feels increasingly divided.

Nothing is off limits, and everything--when captured by Smith's brilliant gaze--feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced, and utterly original, GRAND UNION highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.]]> 246 Zadie Smith 0525558993 Lisa 0 to-read 3.26 2019 Grand Union
author: Zadie Smith
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> The Princess Diarist 26025989 The last book from beloved Hollywood icon Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist is an intimate, hilarious, and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Wars movie.

When Carrie Fisher discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved--plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Before her passing, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon was indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her costar, Harrison Ford.

With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher's intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time--and what developed behind the scenes. Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into one of Hollywood's most beloved stars.]]> 257 Carrie Fisher 0399173595 Lisa 0 to-read 3.70 2016 The Princess Diarist
author: Carrie Fisher
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> An American Marriage 33590210
This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward—with hope and pain—into the future.]]> 308 Tayari Jones 1616201347 Lisa 0 to-read 3.90 2018 An American Marriage
author: Tayari Jones
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix up their own marriage. There's a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can't seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment's only bathroom, and you've got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Lisa 0 to-read 4.17 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> Station Eleven 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 Lisa 0 to-read 4.05 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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]]> Prozac Nation 227603 368 Elizabeth Wurtzel 1573225126 Lisa 0 to-read 3.64 1994 Prozac Nation
author: Elizabeth Wurtzel
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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]]> Sex and Rage 32332902
Sex and Rage delights in its sensuous, dreamlike narrative and spontaneous embrace of fate, work, and of certain meetings and chances. Jacaranda moves beyond the tango of sex and rage into the open challenge of a defined and more fulfilling expressive life. Sex and Rage further solidifies Eve Babitz's place as a singularly important voice in Los Angeles literature―haunting, alluring, and alive.]]> 256 Eve Babitz 1619029359 Lisa 0 to-read 3.56 1979 Sex and Rage
author: Eve Babitz
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> <![CDATA[Naked Lunch: The Restored Text]]> 7437 Naked Lunch is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, a book that redefined not just literature but American culture. An unnerving tale of a narcotics addict unmoored in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as Interzone, its formal innovation, taboo subject matter, and tour de force execution have exerted a significant influence on authors like Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, and William Gibson; on the relationship of art and obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media generally. Naked Lunch: The Restored Text includes many editorial corrections to errors present in previous editions, and incorporates Burroughs’s notes on the text, several essays he wrote over the years about the book, and an appendix of 20 percent new material and alternate drafts from the original manuscript, which predates the first published version. For the Burroughs enthusiast and the neophyte, this volume is a valuable and fresh experience of this classic of our culture.]]> 289 William S. Burroughs 0802140181 Lisa 0 to-read 3.48 1959 Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
author: William S. Burroughs
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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]]> The Lady Waiting 195888782 The White Lotus meets The Talented Mr. Ripley in this high-spirited novel of a stolen Vermeer, a Polish transplant in LA, and the charismatic couple who seduce her into a misguided international heist

One bright Los Angeles day, a young Polish émigré named Viva is driving along the freeway when she’s flagged down by a dazzling, disheveled woman in green chiffon. The woman is Bobby Sleeper, a fellow Eastern European and an erstwhile art gallerist with a mysterious background and even more mysterious filmmaker husband. Within days the couple hire Viva as their assistant, then enlist her as an accomplice in an improbable scheme involving a long-lost Vermeer masterwork, a multi-million-dollar reward, and several shadowy ex-husbands.

AsĚýBobby and her husband weave her ever more tightly into their web, Viva is swept up in an escapade that’s one part art heist, one part love triangle, and one part education of a felon. Entranced by their lifestyle, alarmed by their ramshackle scam, Viva realizes she’s out of her depth—and that only luck, cunning, and her own hustler’s instinct can save her from disaster. Careening from the canyons of LA to the canals of Venice, The Lady Waiting is a page-turning caper, a cavalcade of twenty-first-century sins—rapacious capitalism, shameless fraud, and atrocious behavior—and a showcase for three of the biggest and most unforgettable characters in recent fiction.]]> 352 Magdalena Zyzak 0593542940 Lisa 0 to-read 3.07 2024 The Lady Waiting
author: Magdalena Zyzak
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.07
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Lisa 0 to-read 3.52 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/09
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]]> Cleopatra and Frankenstein 57693262 For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.

Twenty-four-year-old British painter Cleo has escaped from England to New York and is still finding her place in the sleepless city when, a few months before her student visa ends, she meets Frank. Twenty years older and a self-made success, Frank's life is full of all the excesses Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a Green Card. But their impulsive marriage irreversibly changes both their lives, and the lives of those close to them, in ways they never could've predicted.

Each compulsively readable chapter explores the lives of Cleo, Frank, and an unforgettable cast of their closest friends and family as they grow up and grow older. Whether it's Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender queerness in the wake of Cleo's marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates to support herself after being cut off, or Cleo and Frank themselves as they discover the trials of marriage and mental illness, each character is as absorbing, and painfully relatable, as the last.

As hilarious as it is heartbreaking, entertaining as it is deeply moving, Cleopatra and Frankenstein marks the entry of a brilliant and bold new talent.]]> 368 Coco Mellors 1635576814 Lisa 0 to-read 3.70 2022 Cleopatra and Frankenstein
author: Coco Mellors
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> The Woman in Me 63133205 The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]> 288 Britney Spears 1668009048 Lisa 3 3.83 2023 The Woman in Me
author: Britney Spears
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy]]> 42771901 232 Jenny Odell 1612197493 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.68 2019 How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
author: Jenny Odell
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier]]> 62919856
Called “one of the most disruptive brands in beauty� by Forbes , Glossier revolutionized the beauty industry with its sophisticated branding and unique approach to influencer marketing, almost-instantly making the company a juggernaut with rabid fans lining up for a chance to buy its coveted products. It also taught a generation of business leaders how to talk to Millennial and Gen Z customers and build a cult following online.

At the center of the story lies Emily Weiss, the elusive former Teen Vogue “superintern� on the reality show The Hills turned Into the Gloss beauty blogger who had the vision, guts, and searing ambition needed to launch Glossier. She cannily turned every experience, every meeting into an opportunity to fuel her own personal success. Together with her expensive, signature style and singular vision for the future of consumerism, she could not be stopped. Just how did a girl from suburban Connecticut with no real job experience work her way into the bathrooms and boudoirs of the most influential names in the world and build that access into a 1.9-billion-dollar business? Is she solely responsible for its success? And why, eight years later, at the height of Glossier mania, did she step down?

In Glossy , journalist and author Marisa Meltzer combines in-depth interviews with former Glossier employees, investors, and Weiss herself to bring you inside the walls of this fascinating and secretive company. From fundraising to product launches and unconventional hiring practices, Meltzer exposes the inner workings of Glossier’s culture, culminating in the story of Weiss herself. The Devil Wears Prada for the Bad Blood generation, Glossy is a gripping portrait of not just one of the most important business leaders of her generation, but also a chronicle of an era.]]> 304 Marisa Meltzer 1982190604 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.29 2023 Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier
author: Marisa Meltzer
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/25
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]]> Down the Drain 123183412
This commitment to authenticity has never been more on display than in Down the Drain . With writing that is both eloquent and accessible, Fox recounts her turbulent path to cultural her parents� volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; her own near-lethal overdoses and the deaths of still more friends from drugs and suicide; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs “The Artist�; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son. Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Fox doesn’t just capture her improbable evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon, she captures her transition from girlhood to womanhood to motherhood. Family and friendship, sex and death, violence and love, money and power, innocence and experience—it’s all here, in raw, remarkable and riveting detail.

More than a year before the book’s publication, Fox’s description of it as “a masterpiece� in a red carpet interview went viral. As always, she was just being honest. Down the Drain is a true literary achievement, as one-of-a-kind as its author.]]> 318 Julia Fox 1668011506 Lisa 4 4.38 2023 Down the Drain
author: Julia Fox
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/24
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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 Lisa 0 to-read 3.72 2015 Pretend I'm Dead
author: Jen Beagin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/14
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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 Lisa 0 to-read 3.63 2019 Vacuum in the Dark
author: Jen Beagin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/14
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]]> Big Swiss 60701439
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…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 Lisa 4 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/14
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]]> Bright Young Women 101124639
The survivors, including key witness Pamela Schumacher, will be forever changed by this night. They have all become victims. But they tell their perspectives here, they remain masters of their stories. And they hunt the perpetrator on their own - against resistance from the justice system and the police; against public opinion, which idolizes the serial killer.]]> 384 Jessica Knoll 1501153226 Lisa 4 3.99 2023 Bright Young Women
author: Jessica Knoll
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Lisa 0 3.66 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2024/04/28
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]]> Cross Her Heart 37486235 341 Sarah Pinborough 0062856790 Lisa 0 3.62 2018 Cross Her Heart
author: Sarah Pinborough
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/19
date added: 2024/04/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time]]> 1618 226 Mark Haddon 1400032717 Lisa 0 to-read 3.89 2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
author: Mark Haddon
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/11
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]]> The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone 40853191 'We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song and when one came back, she wasn't the one we were trying to recall to begin with.'

So begins Tikka Molloy's recounting of the summer of 1992 - the summer the Van Apfel sisters, Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth - disappear.

Eleven and one-sixth years old, Tikka is the precocious narrator of this fabulously endearing coming-of-age story, set in an eerie Australian river valley suburb with an unexplained stench. The Van Apfel girls vanish from the valley during the school's 'Showstopper' concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river. While the search for the sisters unites the small community on Sydney's urban fringe, the mystery of their disappearance remains unsolved forever.

Brilliantly observed, sharp, lively, funny and entirely endearing, this novel is part mystery, part coming-of-age story - and quintessentially Australian. Think The Virgin Suicides meets Jasper Jones meets Picnic at Hanging Rock.]]> 304 Felicity McLean 1460755065 Lisa 0 3.39 2019 The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone
author: Felicity McLean
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/11
date added: 2024/04/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things]]> 23848559
In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:

"I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that â€normal people' also might never understand. And that's what Furiously Happy is all about."

Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. Furiously Happy appeals to Jenny's core fan base but also transcends it. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family—and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message (via a taxidermied roadkill raccoon). Let's Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it's about joy—and who doesn't want a bit more of that?]]> 329 Jenny Lawson 1250077001 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.88 2015 Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things
author: Jenny Lawson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> Anita de Monte Laughs Last 127306192 New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death

1985. Anita de Monte, a rising star in the art world, is found dead in New York City; her tragic death is the talk of the town. Until it isn’t. By 1998 Anita’s name has been all but forgotten—certainly by the time Raquel, a third-year art history student is preparing her final thesis. On College Hill, surrounded by privileged students whose futures are already paved out for them, Raquel feels like an outsider. Students of color, like her, are the minority there, and the pressure to work twice as hard for the same opportunities is no secret.

But when Raquel becomes romantically involved with a well-connected older art student, she finds herself unexpectedly rising up the social ranks. As she attempts to straddle both worlds, she stumbles upon Anita’s story, raising questions about the dynamics of her own relationship, which eerily mirrors that of the forgotten artist.

Moving back and forth through time and told from the perspectives of both women, Anita de Monte Laughs Last is a propulsive, witty examination of power, love, and art, daring to ask who gets to be remembered and who is left behind in the rarefied world of the elite.]]> 342 Xóchitl González 1250786215 Lisa 0 to-read 3.76 2024 Anita de Monte Laughs Last
author: Xóchitl González
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Death Valley 199798092
In Melissa Broder’s astonishingly profound new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path discovered on a nearby hike.

Out along the sun-scorched trail, the narrator encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious, and poignant.

Death Valley is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest, and is “a journey unlike any you’ve read before� (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black ).]]> 256 Melissa Broder 1668024861 Lisa 0 to-read 3.40 2023 Death Valley
author: Melissa Broder
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/01
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]]> Rouge 157184735 From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother’s unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother’s fate—and find a connection that is more than skin deep?

For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.

Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.]]> 383 Mona Awad Lisa 0 to-read 3.54 2023 Rouge
author: Mona Awad
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/01
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]]> You'd Be Home Now 56621648 From the New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces comes a breathtaking story about a town, its tragedies, and the quiet beauty of everyday life.

For all of Emory's life she's been told who she is. In town she's the rich one--the great-great-granddaughter of the mill's founder. At school she's hot Maddie Ward's younger sister. And at home, she's the good one, her stoner older brother Joey's babysitter. Everything was turned on its head, though, when she and Joey were in the car accident that killed Candy MontClaire. The car accident that revealed just how bad Joey's drug habit was.

Four months later, Emmy's junior year is starting, Joey is home from rehab, and the entire town of Mill Haven is still reeling from the accident. Everyone's telling Emmy who she is, but so much has changed, how can she be the same person? Or was she ever that person at all?

Mill Haven wants everyone to live one story, but Emmy's beginning to see that people are more than they appear. Her brother, who might not be cured, the popular guy who lives next door, and most of all, many ghostie addicts who haunt the edges of the town. People spend so much time telling her who she is--it might be time to decide for herself.

Inspired by the American classic Our Town, You'd Be Home Now is Kathleen Glasgow's glorious modern story of a town and the secret lives people live there. And the story of a girl, figuring out life in all its pain and beauty and struggle and joy.]]> 387 Kathleen Glasgow 0525708049 Lisa 0 4.13 2021 You'd Be Home Now
author: Kathleen Glasgow
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/27
date added: 2024/03/27
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]]> The Big Door Prize 51834227 A mysterious machine upends a small Louisiana town, asking us all to wonder if who we truly are is who we truly could be.

What would you do if you knew your life's potential? That's the question facing the residents of Deerfield, Louisiana, when the DNAMIX machine appears in their local grocery store. It's nothing to look at, really—it resembles a plain photo booth. But its promise is With just a quick swab of your cheek and two dollars, the device claims to use the science of DNA to tell you your life's potential. With enough credibility to make the townspeople curious, soon the former teachers, nurses, and shopkeepers of Deerfield are abruptly changing course to pursue their destinies as magicians, cowboys, and athletes—including the novel's main characters, Douglas Hubbard and his wife, Cherilyn, who both believed they were perfectly happy until they realized they could dream for more....Written with linguistic grace and a sense of wonder, The Big Door Prize sparkles with keen observations about what it might mean to stay true to oneself while honoring the bonds of marriage, friendship, and community, and how the glimmer of possibility can pull these bonds apart, bring them back together, and make second chances possible, even under the strangest of circumstances.]]> 382 M.O. Walsh Lisa 3 3.43 2020 The Big Door Prize
author: M.O. Walsh
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/14
date added: 2024/03/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Lisa 4 3.83 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/25
date added: 2024/02/25
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]]> The Guest 61986136 A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.

A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.

With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline's The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.]]> 304 Emma Cline 0812998626 Lisa 4 3.29 2023 The Guest
author: Emma Cline
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/09
date added: 2024/02/09
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]]> The House Across the Lake 58909880 The New York Times best-selling author of Final Girls and Survive the Night is back with his most unexpected thriller yet.

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple who live in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing—a tech innovator, Tom is rich; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.

One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other—and the longer Casey watches—it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage is not as perfect and placid as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes consumed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she uncovers eerie, darker truths that turn a tale of voyeurism and suspicion into a story of guilt, obsession and how looks can be very deceiving.

With his trademark blend of sharp characters, psychological suspense, and gasp-worthy surprises, Riley Sager’s The House Across the Lake unveils more than one twist that will shock readers until the very last page.]]> 369 Riley Sager Lisa 3 3.57 2022 The House Across the Lake
author: Riley Sager
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/03
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]]> Delicate Condition 62976325 The Push meets The Silent Patient in a gripping thriller that follows a woman convinced a sinister figure is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens—while the men in her life refuse to believe a word she says.

Anna Alcott is desperate to be pregnant. But as she tries to balance her increasingly public life with a grueling IVF journey, she starts to suspect that someone is going to great lengths to make sure her pregnancy never happens. Crucial medicines are lost. Appointments get swapped without her knowledge. And even when she finally manages to get pregnant, not even her husband is willing to believe that someone's playing a twisted game with her.

When the increasingly cryptic threats drive her out of her Brooklyn brownstone and into hiding in the cold, gray ghost town that is the Hamptons in the depths of winter, Anna is almost at the end of her rope.

Then her doctor tells her she's had a miscarriage—except Anna's convinced she's still pregnant, despite everything the grave-faced men around her claim. Could it be that her mind is playing tricks on her? Or is something more sinister at play? As her symptoms become ever more horrifying and the sense of danger ever more present, Anna can't help but wonder what exactly she's carrying inside of her...and why no one will listen when she says something is horribly, painfully wrong.]]> 432 Danielle Valentine 1728276888 Lisa 0 3.61 2023 Delicate Condition
author: Danielle Valentine
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2024/01/27
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]]> <![CDATA[What the River Knows (Secrets of the Nile, #1)]]> 65213381
When she receives word of their tragic deaths, Inez inherits their massive fortune and a mysterious guardian, an archeologist in partnership with his Egyptian brother-in-law. Yearning for answers, Inez sails to Cairo, bringing her sketch pads and an ancient golden ring her father sent to her for safekeeping before he died. But upon her arrival, the old world magic tethered to the ring pulls her down a path where she soon discovers there’s more to her parent’s disappearance than what her guardian led her to believe.

With her guardian’s infuriatingly handsome assistant thwarting her at every turn, Inez must rely on ancient magic to uncover the truth about her parent’s disappearance—or risk becoming a pawn in a larger game that will kill her.

The Mummy meets Death on the Nile in this lush, immersive historical fantasy set in Egypt filled with adventure, a rivals-to-lovers romance, and a dangerous race.]]> 416 Isabel Ibañez 1250803373 Lisa 2 3.82 2023 What the River Knows (Secrets of the Nile, #1)
author: Isabel Ibañez
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/19
date added: 2024/01/19
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]]> Funny You Should Ask 58065414 Then. Twentysomething writer Chani Horowitz is stuck. While her former MFA classmates are nabbing book deals, she's in the trenches writing puff pieces. Then she's hired to write a profile of movie star Gabe Parker. The Gabe Parker--her forever celebrity crush, the object of her fantasies, the background photo on her phone--who's also just been cast as the new James Bond. It's terrifying and thrilling all at once... yet if she can keep her cool and nail the piece, it could be a huge win. Gabe will get good press, and her career will skyrocket. But what comes next proves to be life-changing in ways Chani never saw coming, as the interview turns into a whirlwind weekend that has the tabloids buzzing.

Now. Ten years later, after a brutal divorce and a heavy dose of therapy, Chani is back in Los Angeles, laser-focused on one thing: her work. But she's still spent the better part of the last decade getting asked about her deeply personal Gabe Parker profile at every turn. No matter what new essay collection or viral editorial she's promoting, it always comes back to Gabe. So when his PR team requests that they reunite for a second interview, she wants to say no. She wants to pretend that she's forgotten about the time they spent together, years ago. But the truth is that those seventy-two hours are still crystal clear, etched in her memory. And so... he says yes.

Chani knows that facing Gabe again also means facing feelings she's tried so hard to push away. Alternating between their first meeting and their reunion a decade later, this deliciously irresistible novel will have you hanging on until the last word.

A restless young journalist with big dreams interviews a Hollywood heartthrob--and, ten years later, it's clear that their time together meant more than meets the eye in this sexy, engrossing adult debut novel. ]]> 352 Elissa Sussman 0593357329 Lisa 0 3.55 2022 Funny You Should Ask
author: Elissa Sussman
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/28
date added: 2023/12/28
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]]> Everything I Know About Love 46041465
When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and—above all else� realizing that you are enough.

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age—making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones� Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.]]> 368 Dolly Alderton 0062968785 Lisa 0 3.97 2018 Everything I Know About Love
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/25
date added: 2023/12/25
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]]> The Glow 62802760
“A satire both cutting and careful in its approach, The Glow is a triumph.”� Elle (Best New Books to Read in Summer 2023)

Jane Dorner has two PR Jane, twenty-five, chummy, and eager to sell you a feminist vibrator or a self-care/bereavement subscription box; and Actual Jane, twenty-nine, drifting through mediocre workdays and lackluster dates while paralyzed by her crushing mountain of overdue medical bills. When her job performance is called into question, Jane’s last-ditch effort to preserve her livelihood and pay off her debt is to land a white whale of a client.

Enter the impossibly gorgeous Cass—whom Jane discovers scrolling through Instagram—and her unassuming husband, Tom—proprietors of a “wellness retreat� based out of a ramshackle country house that may or may not be giving off cult vibes. Suddenly Jane realizes she might have found the one ladder she can climb—if she can convince them that transforming Cass herself into a high-end wellness brand is the key to all three of their futures. Magnetic yet mysterious, Cass is primed to be an She speaks in a mix of inspirational quotes and Zen koans, eats only zucchini (the most spiritually nourishing vegetable), and has baby-perfect skin. Despite Tom’s reticence about selling out, Jane sets out to mold Cass into the kind of guru who can offer inner peace and make your skin glow—all at a hefty price, of course. As Jane reckons with her own long-dormant ambitions, she Can a person really “do good� for others while profiting off them? And what parts of our selves do we lose when we trade power, influence, and beauty?

Sparklingly plotted, deliciously deadpan, and irresistibly entertaining, The Glow is a razor-sharp sendup of an industry built on the peculiar intersection of money and wellness, where health is a commodity and self-care a luxury.]]> 320 Jessie Gaynor 0593447875 Lisa 3 3.17 2023 The Glow
author: Jessie Gaynor
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/22
date added: 2023/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion]]> 43126457 Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.]]> 303 Jia Tolentino 0525510540 Lisa 0 4.04 2019 Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
author: Jia Tolentino
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/11
date added: 2023/12/11
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]]> One True Loves 27189194
On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.

Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness.

That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.

Who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?

Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid Lisa 0 4.03 2016 One True Loves
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2023/12/03
date added: 2023/12/03
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]]> The Rabbit Hutch 59576076
São vizinhos, e vivem num complexo habitacional de baixo custo em Vacca Vale, cidade em decadência. É a partir deste lugar inóspito que Tess Gunty conduz o leitor numa invulgar viagem pelo desconcerto do espírito humano, pelas grandes doenças sociais e pelo alcance incomensurável da imaginação. Uma estreia literária arrebatadora, que inscreve Tess Gunty na linhagem do Grande Romance Americano.]]> 399 Tess Gunty Lisa 4 3.50 2022 The Rabbit Hutch
author: Tess Gunty
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/24
date added: 2023/11/24
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]]> Cackle 61058915 The Return.
Ěý
All her life, Annie has played it nice and safe. After being unceremoniously dumped by her longtime boyfriend, Annie seeks a fresh start. She accepts a teaching position that moves her from Manhattan to a small village upstate. She’s stunned by how perfect and picturesque the town is. The people are all friendly and warm. Her new apartment is dreamy too, minus the oddly persistent spider infestation.ĚýĚý
Ěý
Then Annie meets Sophie. Beautiful, charming, magnetic Sophie, who takes a special interest in Annie, who wants to be her friend. More importantly, she wants Annie to stop apologizing and start living for herself. That’s how Sophie lives. Annie can’t help but gravitate toward the self-possessed Sophie, wanting to spend more and more time with her, despite the fact that the rest of the townsfolk seem…a little afraid of her. And like, okay. There are some things. Sophie’s appearance is uncanny and ageless, her mansion in the middle of the woods feels a little unearthly, and she does seem to wield a certain power…but she couldn’t be…could she?]]> 319 Rachel Harrison 0593202031 Lisa 0 3.71 2021 Cackle
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2023/11/10
date added: 2023/11/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood Babylon (Hollywood Babylon, #1)]]> 70875 305 Kenneth Anger 0517344084 Lisa 0 to-read 3.71 1959 Hollywood Babylon (Hollywood Babylon, #1)
author: Kenneth Anger
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1959
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/28
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]]> Wrong Place Wrong Time 59947696
It is midnight on the morning of Halloween, and Jen anxiously waits up for her 18-year-old son, Todd, to return home. But worries about his broken curfew transform into something much more dangerous when Todd finally emerges from the darkness. As Jen watches through the window, she sees her funny, seemingly happy teenage son stab a total stranger.

She doesn’t know who the victim is, or why Todd has committed such a devastating act of violence. All she knows is that her life, and Todd’s, have been shattered.

After her son is taken into custody, Jen falls asleep in despair. But when she wakes up� it is yesterday. The murder has not happened yet—and there may be a chance to stop it. Each morning, when Jen wakes, she is further back in the past, first weeks, then years, before the murder. And Jen realizes that somewhere in the past lies the trigger for Todd’s terrible crime…and it is her mission to find it, and prevent it from taking place.]]> 416 Gillian McAllister 0063252341 Lisa 0 to-read 3.94 2022 Wrong Place Wrong Time
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/15
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]]> A Flicker in the Dark 57693172
Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren't really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?

In a debut novel that has already been optioned for a limited series by actress Emma Stone and sold to a dozen countries around the world, Stacy Willingham has created an unforgettable character in a spellbinding thriller that will appeal equally to fans of Gillian Flynn and Karin Slaughter.]]> 357 Stacy Willingham 1250803829 Lisa 0 3.96 2022 A Flicker in the Dark
author: Stacy Willingham
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/10/04
date added: 2023/10/04
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]]> Rock Paper Scissors 56269064 Think you know the person you married? Think again�

Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.

Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts � paper, cotton, pottery, tin � and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.

Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.

Rock Paper Scissors is the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist, New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney.]]> 294 Alice Feeney 1250266106 Lisa 0 3.88 2021 Rock Paper Scissors
author: Alice Feeney
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2023/09/18
date added: 2023/09/18
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]]> Lessons in Chemistry 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus Lisa 4 4.23 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/03
date added: 2023/09/03
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]]> The Echo Wife 52379735 I’m embarrassed, still, by how long it took me to notice. Everything was right there in the open, right there in front of me, but it still took me so long to see the person I had married.

It took me so long to hate him.

Martine is a genetically cloned replica made from Evelyn Caldwell’s award-winning research. She’s patient and gentle and obedient. She’s everything Evelyn swore she’d never be.

And she’s having an affair with Evelyn’s husband.

Now, the cheating bastard is dead, and both Caldwell wives have a mess to clean up.

Good thing Evelyn Caldwell is used to getting her hands dirty.]]> 256 Sarah Gailey 125017466X Lisa 0 to-read 3.59 2021 The Echo Wife
author: Sarah Gailey
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/28
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]]> The Clasp 23848037
In the midst of all this semi-merriment, Victor passes out in the mother of the groom’s bedroom. He wakes to her jovially slapping him across the face. Instead of a scolding, she offers Victor a story she’s never even told her son, about a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France.

And so a madcap adventure is set into motion, one that leads Victor, Kezia, and Nathaniel from Miami to New York and L.A. to Paris and across France, until they converge at the estate of Guy de Maupassant, author of the classic short story The Necklace.

Heartfelt, suspenseful, and told with Sloane Crosley’s inimitable spark and wit, The Clasp is a story of friends struggling to fit together now that their lives haven’t gone as planned, of how to separate the real from the fake. Such a task might be possible when it comes to precious stones, but is far more difficult to pull off with humans.]]> 384 Sloane Crosley 0374124418 Lisa 0 to-read 3.02 2015 The Clasp
author: Sloane Crosley
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.02
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/27
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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 Lisa 0 3.08 2022 Acts of Service
author: Lillian Fishman
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/24
date added: 2023/08/24
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]]> Nightbitch 55835474
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.

Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...

With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.]]> 256 Rachel Yoder 0385546815 Lisa 0 to-read 3.46 2021 Nightbitch
author: Rachel Yoder
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> Little Rabbit 58532214 Little Rabbit first meets the choreographer at an artists' residency in Maine, it's not a match. She finds him loud, conceited, domineering. He thinks her serious, guarded, always running away to write. But when he reappears in her life in Boston and invites her to his dance company's performance, she's compelled to attend. Their interaction at the show sets off a summer of expanding her own body's boundaries: She follows the choreographer to his home in the Berkshires, to his apartment in New York, and into submission during sex. Her body learns to obediently follow his, and his desires quickly become inextricable from her pleasure. This must be happiness, right?

Back in Boston, her roommate Annie's skepticism amplifies her own doubts about these heady weekend retreats. What does it mean for a queer young woman to partner with an older man, for a fledgling artist to partner with an established one? Is she following her own agency, or is she merely following him? Does falling in love mean eviscerating yourself?

Combining the sticky sexual politics of Luster with the dizzying, perceptive intimacy of Cleanness, Little Rabbit is a wholly new kind of coming-of-age story about lust, punishment, artistic drive, and desires that defy the hard-won boundaries of the self.]]> 256 Alyssa Songsiridej 1635578698 Lisa 0 to-read 3.72 2022 Little Rabbit
author: Alyssa Songsiridej
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> Brutes 61324696
We would not be born out of sweetness, we were born out of rage, we felt it in our bones.

In Falls Landing, Florida—a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers—something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they see will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

Through a darkly beautiful and brutally compelling lens, Dizz Tate captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood. Brutes is a novel about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the "we" of young friendship, and the moment it is broken forever.]]> 304 Dizz Tate 1646221672 Lisa 0 to-read 3.16 2023 Brutes
author: Dizz Tate
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> Someone Who Isn’t Me 91416956 Someone Who Isn’t Me is a feverish journey through the psyche of someone who no longer recognizes himself. When Geoff hears that a drug called ibogaine might be able to save him from his heroin addiction, he goes to a clinic in Mexico to confront the darkest and most destructive versions of himself. In this modern reimagining of the Divine Comedy, survival lurks in the darkest corners of Geoff’s brain, asking, will he make it? Can anyone?]]> 258 Geoff Rickly Lisa 0 to-read 4.56 2023 Someone Who Isn’t Me
author: Geoff Rickly
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> Death Valley 62909823
Out on the sun-scorched trail, the woman encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious and poignant.]]> 205 Melissa Broder 1668024896 Lisa 0 to-read 3.52 2023 Death Valley
author: Melissa Broder
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> Yours for the Taking 65213204
Jacqueline Millender is a reclusive billionaire/women’s rights advocate, and thanks to a generous donation, she’s just become the director of the Inside being built on the bones of Manhattan. Her ideas are unorthodox, yet alluring—she's built a whole brand around rethinking the very concept of empowerment.

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

At once a mesmerizing story of queer love, betrayal, and chosen family, and an unflinching indictment of cis, corporate feminism, Yours for the Taking holds a mirror to our own world, in all its beauty and horror.]]> 336 Gabrielle Korn 1250283361 Lisa 0 to-read 3.63 2023 Yours for the Taking
author: Gabrielle Korn
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> The Marriage Plot 10964693
As Madeleine tries to understand why "it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth century France," real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead - charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy - suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old "friend" Mitchell Grammaticus - who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange - resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.

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

Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives.]]> 406 Jeffrey Eugenides 0374203059 Lisa 0 to-read 3.46 2011 The Marriage Plot
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> Yolk 43562313 From New York Times bestselling author Mary H.K. Choi comes a funny and emotional story about two estranged sisters switching places and committing insurance fraud to save one of their lives.

Jayne Baek is barely getting by. She shuffles through fashion school, saddled with a deadbeat boyfriend, clout-chasing friends, and a wretched eating disorder that she’s not fully ready to confront. But that’s New York City, right? At least she isn’t in Texas anymore, and is finally living in a city that feels right for her.

On the other hand, her sister June is dazzlingly rich with a high-flying finance job and a massive apartment. Unlike Jayne, June has never struggled a day in her life. Until she’s diagnosed with uterine cancer.

Suddenly, these estranged sisters who have nothing in common are living together. Because sisterly obligations are kind of important when one of you is dying.]]> 400 Mary H.K. Choi Lisa 0 to-read 3.95 2021 Yolk
author: Mary H.K. Choi
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> Under the Influence 60290773 The Devil Wears Prada meets The Assistants in this compulsively readable debut following a young woman who takes a job working for an enigmatic influencer and quickly discovers there’s a dark side to being a #girlboss.

After a series of go-nowhere jobs in the New York publishing world, Harper Cruz is broke, lonely, and desperate for a salary that won’t leave her scrambling to make rent each month. So when she stumbles across a job posting from an influencer offering triple her last paycheck, she automatically submits her résumé.

Harper may not be familiar with self-help guru Charlotte Green, but her relentless optimism and charismatic can-do spirit has created a cult-like following of women across the country. When she selects Harper among thousands of other applicants in less than twenty-four hours, it’s obvious she sees something she likes. Despite the pressure to accept the offer just as quickly as she’s been given it, Harper decides to take a leap of faith and become the newest member of The Greenhouse.

Accepting the job means a move to Nashville, and Harper is quickly dazzled by the glamorous world Charlotte has built in Music City. The Greenhouse is more than a workplace—it’s a family—and Harper soon finds herself swept into its inner circle. At first, she loves working in such an inspirational environment, where mandatory dance parties, daily intentions, and group bonding activities make up for long hours and Charlotte’s persistent demands for loyalty. But the deeper Harper is pulled into Charlotte’s world, the more she realizes that having it all and being it all comes with a price.]]> 320 Noelle Crooks Lisa 0 to-read 3.39 2023 Under the Influence
author: Noelle Crooks
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> The Last to Vanish 59345248 New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda returns with a gripping and propulsive thriller that opens with the disappearance of a journalist who is investigating a string of vanishings in the resort town of Cutter’s Pass—will its dark secrets finally be revealed?

Ten years ago, Abigail Lovett fell into a job she loves, managing The Passage Inn, a cozy, upscale resort nestled in the North Carolina mountain town of Cutter’s Pass. Cutter’s Pass is best known for its outdoor offerings—rafting and hiking, with access to the Appalachian trail by way of a gorgeous waterfall—and its mysterious history. As the book begins, the string of unsolved disappearances that has haunted the town is once again thrust into the spotlight when journalist Landon West, who was staying at the inn to investigate the story of the vanishing trail, then disappears himself.

Abby has sometimes felt like an outsider within the community, but she’s come to view Cutter’s Pass as her home. When Landon’s brother Trey shows up looking for answers, Abby can’t help but feel the town closing ranks. And she’s still on the outside. When she finds incriminating evidence that may bring them closer to the truth, Abby soon discovers how little she knows about her coworkers, neighbors, and even those closest to her.

Megan Miranda brings her best writing to The Last to Vanish, a riveting thriller filled with taut suspense and shocking twists that will keep you guessing until the very end.]]> 323 Megan Miranda 1982147318 Lisa 0 to-read 3.52 2022 The Last to Vanish
author: Megan Miranda
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This Time Tomorrow 59089704 What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?]]> 310 Emma Straub 052553900X Lisa 0 to-read 3.78 2022 This Time Tomorrow
author: Emma Straub
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl]]> 25716567
In her brilliant, hilarious, and at times shocking debut, Mona Awad simultaneously skewers the body image-obsessed culture that tells women they have no value outside their physical appearance, and delivers a tender and moving depiction of a lovably difficult young woman whose life is hijacked by her struggle to conform. As caustically funny as it is heartbreaking, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl introduces a vital new voice in fiction.]]> 212 Mona Awad 0143194798 Lisa 0 to-read 3.08 2016 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
author: Mona Awad
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> Boy Parts 49083140
Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention�

Boy Parts is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.]]> 304 Eliza Clark 1910312649 Lisa 0 3.74 2020 Boy Parts
author: Eliza Clark
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2023/08/13
date added: 2023/08/13
shelves:
review:

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