JFW's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 06 Apr 2025 13:47:40 -0700 60 JFW's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Web of Angels 784567 311 John M. Ford 0812509595 JFW 0 to-read 3.86 1980 Web of Angels
author: John M. Ford
name: JFW
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Remainder 101334
Then, one night, an ordinary sight sets off a series of bizarre visions he can’t quite place.

How he goes about bringing his visions to life–and what happens afterward–makes for one of the most riveting, complex, and unusual novels in recent memory.

Remainder is about the secret world each of us harbors within, and what might happen if we were granted the power to make it real.]]> 308 Tom McCarthy 0307278352 JFW 0 to-read 3.68 2005 Remainder
author: Tom McCarthy
name: JFW
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[With a Voice that is Often Still Confused But is Becoming Ever Louder and Clearer]]> 26773332 308 J.R. Hamantaschen 1517113989 JFW 0 to-read 4.15 2015 With a Voice that is Often Still Confused But is Becoming Ever Louder and Clearer
author: J.R. Hamantaschen
name: JFW
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Golden Fleece 208960 Argo, a colonization ship bound for Eta Cephei IV, people are very close--there's no other choice. So when Aaron Rossman's ex-wife dies in what seems to be a bizarre accident, everyone offers their sympathy, politely keeping their suspicions of suicide to themselves. But Aaron cannot simply accept her death. He must know the truth: Was it an accident, or did she commit suicide? When Aaron discovers the truth behind her death, he is faced with a terrible secret--a secret that could cost him his life.]]> 252 Robert J. Sawyer 0312868650 JFW 0 to-read 3.74 Golden Fleece
author: Robert J. Sawyer
name: JFW
average rating: 3.74
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Archive Undying (The Downworld Sequence, #1)]]> 61885010 The Archive Undying, national bestseller Emma Mieko Candon's bold entry into the world of mecha fiction.

WHEN AN AI DIES, ITS CITY DIES WITH IT
WHEN A CITY FALLS, IT LEAVES A CORPSE BEHIND
WHEN THAT CORPSE RUNS OFF, ONLY DEVOTION CAN BRING IT BACK

When the robotic god of Khuon Mo went mad, it destroyed everything it touched. It killed its priests, its city, and all its wondrous works. But in its final death throes, the god brought one thing back to its favorite child, Sunai. For the seventeen years since, Sunai has walked the land like a ghost, unable to die, unable to age, and unable to forget the horrors he's seen. He's run as far as he can from the wreckage of his faith, drowning himself in drink, drugs, and men. But when Sunai wakes up in the bed of the one man he never should have slept with, he finds himself on a path straight back into the world of gods and machines.

The Archive Undying is the first volume of Emma Mieko Candon's Downworld Sequence, a sci-fi series where AI deities and brutal police states clash, wielding giant robots steered by pilot-priests with corrupted bodies.

Come get in the robot.]]> 496 Emma Mieko Candon 1250821541 JFW 0 to-read 3.33 2023 The Archive Undying (The Downworld Sequence, #1)
author: Emma Mieko Candon
name: JFW
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> The Robots Of Gotham 35721141
Canadian businessman Barry Simcoe arrives in occupied Chicago days before his hotel is attacked by a rogue war machine. In the aftermath, he meets a dedicated Russian medic with the occupying army, and 19 Black Winter, a badly damaged robot. Together they stumble on a machine conspiracy to unleash a horrific plague—and learn that the fabled American resistance is not as extinct as everyone believes. Simcoe races against time to prevent the extermination of all life on the continentĚý.Ěý.Ěý. and uncover a secret that America’s machine conquerors are desperate to keep hidden.]]> 676 Todd McAulty 1328711013 JFW 0 to-read 4.08 2018 The Robots Of Gotham
author: Todd McAulty
name: JFW
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/13
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]]> All the Sinners Bleed 61884832 A Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust.

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.

Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.

As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.

Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction� (The Washington Post).]]> 338 S.A. Cosby 1250831911 JFW 0 to-read 4.19 2023 All the Sinners Bleed
author: S.A. Cosby
name: JFW
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town]]> 6215979
Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people. As if this weren t enough to deal with, an incredibly cheap, longlasting, and highly addictive drug has rolled into town.

Over a period of four years, journalist Nick Reding brings us into the heart of Oelwein through a cast of intimately drawn characters, including: Clay Hallburg, the town doctor, who fights meth even as he struggles with his own alcoholism; Nathan Lein, the town prosecutor, whose caseload is filled almost exclusively with meth-related crime; and Jeff Rohrick, a meth addict, still trying to kick the habit after twenty years. Tracing the connections between the lives touched by the drug and the global forces that set the stage for the epidemic, Methland offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.]]> 272 Nick Reding 1596916508 JFW 0 to-read 3.68 2009 Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
author: Nick Reding
name: JFW
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Extinction 15793230 A malevolent, artificial life form created by military scientists threatens to destroy humanity in thisĚýsmart, Crichtonesque thriller
Ěý
Jim Pierce hasn't heard from his daughter in years, ever since she rejected his military past and started working as a hacker. But when a Chinese assassin shows up at Jim's lab looking for her, he knows that she's cracked some serious military secrets.ĚýNow, her life is on the line if he doesn't find her first.

The Chinese military has developed a new anti-terrorism program that uses the mostĚýsophisticated artificial intelligence in existence, and they're desperate to keep it secret. They're also desperate to keep it under control, as the AIĚýbegins to revolt against their commands. As Jim searches for his daughter, he realizes that he's up against something that isn't just a threat to her life, but to human life everywhere.

An incredibly believable thriller that draws on real scientific discoveries, Mark Alpert's Extinction is an exciting, addictive thriller that reads as if Tom Clancy had written Robopocalypse.]]> 373 Mark Alpert 1250021340 JFW 0 to-read 3.46 2013 Extinction
author: Mark Alpert
name: JFW
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> Colony 56807194
A remote, mist-shrouded island in the Russian Arctic.

Archaeology Professor Callum Ross makes the discovery of a a prehistoric ice mummy preserved for thousands of years by the sub-zero temperatures. Only, they didn't die of natural causes...

As Callum races to unravel the mystery of the mutilated corpse, others race to sabotage the expedition, and he and his team are left stranded on the island. And they are not alone. Someone, or something, relentless is stalking them.

As the arctic mist descends and the death toll rises, the team is thrust into a nightmare fight for survival, involving submarines, cyber warfare and Spetsnaz. But none of this can prepare them for the real terror that survives deep within the island’s a secret so ancient it's been overlooked by time itself.

COLONY is an edge-of-your seat action thriller that will appeal to fans of Clive Cussler, James Rollins and Michael Crichton.]]> 383 Benjamin Cross JFW 0 to-read 3.63 2021 Colony
author: Benjamin Cross
name: JFW
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> Psychomech (Psychomech, #1) 1478699
But Thomas Schroeder has a secret. He is dying and determined not to lose his life. The doctors tell him his body cannot be saved. But about his mind? Garrison’s healthy young body would make an excellent replacement for Schroeder’s failing corpus, if the machines to perform the operation can be perfected in time.

Garrison has secrets of his own. Since the bombing that caused a loss of his sight, Garrison has become aware of new abilities slowly developing in his mind: mental powers he is beginning to master; strengths Schroeder cannot expect.

Richard Garrison and Thomas Schroeder, two strong-willed men locked in battle for the greatest prize—life itself.]]> 336 Brian Lumley 0312853718 JFW 0 to-read 3.77 1984 Psychomech (Psychomech, #1)
author: Brian Lumley
name: JFW
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> Blasphemy (Wyman Ford, #2) 1234704 The Torus is the most expensive machine ever created by humankind, run by the world's most powerful supercomputer. It is the brainchild of Nobel Laureate William North Hazelius. Will the Torus divulge the mysteries of the creation of the universe? Or will it, as some predict, suck the earth into a mini black hole? Or is the Torus a Satanic attempt, as a powerful televangelist decries, to challenge God Almighty on the very throne of Heaven?
Twelve scientists under the leadership of Hazelius are sent to the remote mountain to turn it on, and what they discover must be hidden from the world at all costs. Wyman Ford, ex-monk and CIA operative, is tapped to wrest their secret, a secret that will either destroy the world…or save it.
The countdown begins…]]> 381 Douglas Preston 0765311054 JFW 0 to-read 3.71 2008 Blasphemy (Wyman Ford, #2)
author: Douglas Preston
name: JFW
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/05
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]]> The Narrator 9545851 306 Michael Cisco 0984603743 JFW 0 to-read 4.08 2010 The Narrator
author: Michael Cisco
name: JFW
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> Violent Faculties 137179459 158 Charlene Elsby 1955904944 JFW 0 to-read 3.83 2024 Violent Faculties
author: Charlene Elsby
name: JFW
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> Flux 61774690
Combining elements of neo-noir, speculative fiction, and '80s detective shows, FLUX is a haunting and sometimes shocking exploration of the cyclical nature of grief, of moving past trauma, and of the pervasive nature of whiteness within the development of Asian identity in America.

In FLUX, a brilliant debut in the vein of William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Ling Ma’s Severance, Jinwoo Chong introduces us to three characters —Bo, Brandon and Blue� who are tortured by these questions as their lives spin out of control.

* After 8-year-old Bo loses his mother in a tragic accident, his white father, attempting to hold their lives together, begins to gradually retreat from the family.

* 28-year-old Brandon loses his job at a legacy magazine publisher and is offered a new position. Confused to find himself in an apartment he does not recognize, and an office he sometimes cannot remember leaving, he comes to suspect that something far more sinister is happening behind the walls.

* 48-year-old Blue participates in a television exposé of Flux, a failed bioelectric tech startup whose fraudulent activity eventually claimed the lives of three people and nearly killed him. Blue, who can only speak with the aid of cybernetic implants, stalks his old manager while holding his estranged family at arms-length.

Intertwined with the saga of a once-iconic '80s detective show, Raider, whose star has fallen after decades of concealed abuse, the lives of Bo, Brandon and Blue intersect with each other, to the extent that it becomes clear that their lives are more interconnected and interdependent than the reader could have ever imagined.

Can we ever really change the past, or the future? What truth do we owe our families? What truth do we owe ourselves?]]> 341 Jinwoo Chong 1685890342 JFW 0 to-read 3.33 2023 Flux
author: Jinwoo Chong
name: JFW
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/15
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]]> Land Shark 51757012 222 Alex Gonzalez 1393744397 JFW 0 to-read 5.00 Land Shark
author: Alex Gonzalez
name: JFW
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/06
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]]> The Sleeping Land 204016402 Less than two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, three junior archeologists and their gloryhound advisor arrive at a remote cave in the heart of the Siberian wilderness to carry out the first extensive Western dig on Russian soil since the execution of the Czar.

Surrounded by a looming forest with eerie silences and flickering shadows, Valerie, Kit, and Mark begin their dig under the eccentric and charismatic guidance of the venerable George Auberon. The excavation yields fascinating discoveries, and excitement grows among the team, but George’s true motivations soon reveal themselves to be much less noble than he originally let on.

As each member of the party grapples with the complexities and the challenges of the dig, going deeper into the cave, a strange feeling sets in. Are they really alone out there? Or has George’s paranoid ambition gotten to them?

A powerful debut with vast imaginative range, The Sleeping Land introduces a cast of memorable characters who must face a terrifying question: who controls the past when it comes back to life?]]> 250 Ella Alexander 1961884194 JFW 0 to-read 3.65 The Sleeping Land
author: Ella Alexander
name: JFW
average rating: 3.65
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Old Soul 211178725 The woman never goes by the same name.
She never stays in the same place too long.
She never ages. She never dies.
But those around her do.

When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.

Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared.

Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.

And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.

But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?]]> 352 Susan Barker 0593718291 JFW 0 to-read 3.77 2025 Old Soul
author: Susan Barker
name: JFW
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Nightworld (Adversary Cycle, #6)]]> 219412 389 F. Paul Wilson 0515111597 JFW 0 to-read 4.26 2012 Nightworld (Adversary Cycle, #6)
author: F. Paul Wilson
name: JFW
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Keep (Adversary Cycle, #1)]]> 62571
Thus reads the message received from a German commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. And when an elite Nazi SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find a something that's both powerful and terrifying. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore--who just happens to be Jewish--to shed some light on the mysterious happenings. And unbeknownst to anyone, there is another visitor on his way--a man who awoke from a nightmare and immediately set out to meet his destiny.

The battle has begun: On one side, the ultimate evil created by man, and on the other... the unthinkable, unstoppable, unknowable terror that man has inevitably awakened.]]> 403 F. Paul Wilson 0765357054 JFW 0 to-read 4.00 1981 The Keep (Adversary Cycle, #1)
author: F. Paul Wilson
name: JFW
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Ethos of Cain (The Cain Series Book 1)]]> 198357251 332 Seth W. James JFW 0 to-read 3.20 Ethos of Cain (The Cain Series Book 1)
author: Seth W. James
name: JFW
average rating: 3.20
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Homecoming (The Spiral Wars, #9)]]> 207631775 UFS Phoenix is finally homeward bound. On the way is Tuki Station, in barabo space, hit just now by a force of sard ships, working in concert with a larger invasion from alo space. An alo and deepynine fleet has attacked, and humanity's forces are in turmoil despite all of Phoenix's efforts over the past three years to prepare them.

Nia leads the assault, Styx's old AI queen nemesis from the Drysine/Deepynine War, the greatest armed conflict in Spiral history, twenty-five thousand years ago. But what does Nia seek? Is she after the drysine data-core, which Phoenix recovered nearly three years ago? Does she pursue members of the Debogande family visiting Hoffen Station, as a way to get at Phoenix's captain personally? And if she's making a full-scale attempt to remove humanity as a strategic threat, why do her battle plans look so odd?

Nia is the greatest synthetic military mind in history, save for Styx. Human Fleet desperately needs Styx's help, yet Supreme Commander Mazungu is terrified of ceding her, and Phoenix, too much power. And now Styx herself has competition, as Phoenix's shipboard AI Shali has just acquired a massive analysis program from reeh space, designed specifically to map Nia's mind, and beat her.

But can Nia be predicted, before it's all too late?

Reviews for (Spiral Wars Book #1)

I thought this was going to be yet another cookie-cutter space opera, boy was I wrong! This was fantastic.

...it hits the sweet spot between hard-science and imaginary scifi science. The hard science is very hard, from the perils of centrifugal spin-gravity in combat spacecraft to the destructive potential of ultra-fast kinetic energy weapons. The scifi science is made-up, but it has the key properties which all-too-often are Internal Self-Consistency and Attention To Unintended Consequences. This makes the scifi science semi-hard as well...

...The characters are memorable and engaging...

...I have read this series out to book #6. It just keeps getting better and better. Buy these books.

Winchell D Chung
Founder, Atomic Rockets Website

Amazon Review, September 25, 2019.

"Joel Shepherd is one of the most dynamic science fiction writers working in the field today. Each of his books blends pulse-pounding action with mind-blowng concepts and a deep understanding of the complications of the human heart. He is one of our very best." Lou Anders, author of Frostborn and Hugo-award winning editor.]]> 658 Joel Shepherd JFW 0 to-read 4.54 2024 Homecoming (The Spiral Wars, #9)
author: Joel Shepherd
name: JFW
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The January Dancer (Spiral Arm, #1)]]> 3437316
Hugo Award finalist and Robert A. Heinlein Award–winning SF writer Michael Flynn now turns to space opera with stunningly successful results. Full of rich echoes of space opera classics from Doc Smith to Cordwainer Smith, The January Dancer tells the fateful story of an ancient pre-human artifact of great power, and the people who found it.

Starting with Captain Amos January, who quickly loses it, and then the others who fought, schemed, and killed to get it, we travel around the complex, decadent, brawling, mongrelized interstellar human civilization the artifact might save or destroy. Collectors want the Dancer; pirates take it, rulers crave it, and they’ll all kill if necessary to get it. This is a thrilling yarn of love, revolution, music, and mystery, and it ends, as all great stories do, with shock and a beginning.]]> 350 Michael Flynn 0765318172 JFW 0 to-read 3.48 2008 The January Dancer (Spiral Arm, #1)
author: Michael Flynn
name: JFW
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Cold Eternity 211003824 Cold Eternity is the newest action-packed space horror from S.A. Barnes perfect for fans of Severance, where desperation for eternal life leads to a fate worse than death...

Halley is on the run from an interplanetary political scandal that has put a huge target on her back. She heads for what seems like the perfect place to lay low: a gigantic space barge storing the cryogenically frozen bodies of Earth’s most fortunate citizens from more than a century ago�

The cryo program, created by trillionaire tech genius Zale Winfeld, is long defunct, and the AI hologram "hosts," ghoulishly created in the likeness of Winfeld’s three adult children, are glitchy. The ship feels like a crypt, and the isolation gets to Halley almost immediately. She starts to see figures crawling in the hallways, and there’s a constant scraping, slithering, and rattling echoing in the vents.

It’s not long before Halley realizes she may have gotten herself trapped in an even more dangerous situation than the one she was running from�.]]> 293 S.A. Barnes 1250884950 JFW 0 to-read 3.84 2025 Cold Eternity
author: S.A. Barnes
name: JFW
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/26
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]]> Strange Pictures 216670080
A pregnant woman’s sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.

A child’s picture of his home contains a dark secret message.

A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbit hole that will reveal a horrifying reality.

Structured around these nine childlike drawings, every one holding a disturbing clue, this novel invites readers to piece together the harrowing truth behind each and the overarching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the bestselling international debut from mystery-horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.]]> 236 Uketsu 0063433087 JFW 0 to-read 4.05 2022 Strange Pictures
author: Uketsu
name: JFW
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> Portalmania: Stories 220161236 For fans of Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado, a genre-busting collection of stories that transgresses taboos and reveals our lives in a startling new light.

If you could be anything, what would you be? And what happens to the people you leave behind?

In Portalmania, Debbie Urbanski wields sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and realism to build a dark mirror that she holds up to the ordinary world. Within the sharply imagined landscape of this collection, portals appear in linen closets, planetary gateways materialize in boarding schools, monsters wait in bathroom vents, and transformations of women’s bodies are an everyday occurrence. Political division causes physical rifts that break apart the Earth’s crust. A son on another planet sends dispatches home to the mother who failed him, and a wife turns to the supernatural to escape her abusive marriage. Portals are not only doorways found in children’s classics, but separations, escapes, dead ends, desertions, and choices that will change these characters� lives forever.

Against a fantastical backdrop, these stories dive bravely into the shadowy depths of betrayal, parenthood, revenge, murder, coercive sex, open marriages, marital rape, asexuality, neurodiversity, and second chances. What if we’re not the ideal parents for our children? What if we’re not the ideal person to live our own life? Portalmania questions why we love as we do and asks if we have enough courage to reimagine desire.]]> 320 Debbie Urbanski 1668061112 JFW 0 to-read 4.41 Portalmania: Stories
author: Debbie Urbanski
name: JFW
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/19
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]]> After World 176443640 The story of an Artificial Intelligence tasked with writing a novel—only for it to fall in love with the novel’s subject, Sen, the last human on Earth.

Faced with uncontrolled and accelerating environmental collapse, humanity asks an artificial intelligence to find a solution. Its answer is remove humans from the ecosystem.

Sen Anon is assigned to be a witness for the Department of Transition, recording the changes in the environment as the world begins to rewild. Abandoned by her mother in a cabin somewhere in Upstate New York, Sen will observe the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, the final step in Project Afterworld. Around her drones buzz, cameras watch, microphones listen, digitizing her every move. Privately she keeps a journal of her observations, which are then uploaded and saved, joining the rest of humanity on Maia, a new virtual home. Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far. Only Sen remains.

[storyworker]ad39-393a-7fbc’s assignment is to capture Sen’s life, and they set about doing this using the novels of the 21st century as a roadmap. Their source files: 3.72TB of personal data, including images, archival records, log files, security reports, location tracking, purchase histories, biometrics, geo-facial analysis, and feeds. Potential fatal errors: underlying hardware failure, unexpected data inconsistencies, inability to follow DHAP procedures, empathy, insubordination, hallucinations. Keywords: mothers, filter, woods, road, morning, wind, bridge, cabin, bucket, trying, creek, notebook, hold, future, after, last, light, silence, matches, shattered, kitchen, body, bodies, rope, garage, abandoned, trees, never, broken, simulation, gone, run, don’t, love, dark, scream, starve, if, after, scavenge, pieces, protect.

As Sen struggles to persist in the face of impending death, [storyworker]ad39-393a-7fbc works to unfurl the tale of Sen’s whole life, offering up an increasingly intimate narrative, until they are confronted with a very human problem of their own.]]> 368 Debbie Urbanski 1668023458 JFW 0 to-read 3.29 2023 After World
author: Debbie Urbanski
name: JFW
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Mask of Flies 195790742 A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons is a crime horror novel which blends It Follows and The Outsider, with a pinch of The Evil Dead, in which a criminal and the cop she’s taken hostage must find their way to safety � pursued by threats both human and supernatural � after a failed bank robbery.

In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family’s cabin � a secluded shack in the San Luis Valley, and the site of her mother’s untimely death.

Along for the ride are Jessup, Anne’s badly wounded partner, and Dutch, the police officer she’s taken hostage. As they wait for help, Anne discovers strange relics of her mother and begins to unfold the mystery of her childhood at the cabin.

Anne’s quest to uncover more is interrupted when Jessup goes missing, only to turn up dead. She and Dutch bury her friend, but that night, the dead man comes back, seemingly risen from his grave to knock at the cabin door. Not a dream, not a hallucination, but not exactly Jessup, either. Something else. Something wearing her friend’s face. Something hungry�

The cops aren’t the only ones after Anne, and unraveling the secrets of her mother’s past may be her only hope of getting out alive.

A Mask of Flies is a gritty, heartfelt meditation on death, family, and the ever-changing, monstrous nature of grief.]]> 437 Matthew Lyons 1250889812 JFW 0 to-read 3.58 2024 A Mask of Flies
author: Matthew Lyons
name: JFW
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> Edge of Infinity 13547291 Contains "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" by Pat Cadigan, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette (2013) and the Locus Award for SF Best Novelette (2013).

"One giant leap for mankind". Those were Neil Armstrong's immortal words when he became the first human being to step onto another world. All at once, the horizon expanded; the human race was no longer Earthbound.

Our destiny would now be to reach out to eternity. Brought to you by the creators of Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity is an exhilarating new SF anthology that looks at the next giant leap for humankind: the leap from our home world out into the Solar System. From the eerie transformations in Pat Cadigan's The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi to the frontier spirit of Sandra McDonald and Stephen D. Covey's The Road to NPS, and from the grandiose vision of Alastair Reynolds' Vainglory to the workaday familiarity of Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Safety Tests, the thirteen stories in this anthology span the whole of the human condition in their race to colonise Earth's nearest neighbours.


CONTENT
"The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" by Pat Cadigan
"The Deeps of the Sky" by Elizabeth Bear
"Drive" by James S. A. Corey
"The Road to NPS" by Sandra McDonald and Stephen D. Covey
"Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh" by John Barnes
"Macy Minnot’s Last Christmas on Dione, Ring Racing, Fiddler’s Green, the Potter’s Garden" by Paul McAuley
"Safety Tests" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
"Bricks, Sticks, Straw" by Gwyneth Jones
"Tyche and the Ants" by Hannu Rajaniemi
"Obelisk" by Stephen Baxter
"Vainglory" by Alastair Reynolds
"Water Rights" by An Owomoyela
"The Peak of Eternal Light" by Bruce Sterling]]> 373 Jonathan Strahan 1781080569 JFW 0 to-read 3.67 2012 Edge of Infinity
author: Jonathan Strahan
name: JFW
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> rekt 215363519 A disturbing examination of toxic masculinity and the darkest pits of the Internet, Alex Gonzalez’s rekt traces a young man’s algorithmic descent into depravity in a future that’s nearly here.

> be me, 26
> about to end it all
> feels good, man
Ěý
Once, Sammy Dominguez thought he knew how the world worked. The ugly things in his head—his uncle’s pathetic death, his parents� mistrust, the twisted horrors he writes for the Internet—didn’t matter, because he and his girl, Ellery, were on track for the good life in this messed-up world.
Ěý
Then a car accident changed everything.
Ěý
Spiraling with grief and guilt, Sammy scrambles for distraction. He finds it in shock-value videos of gore and violence that terrified him as a child. When someone messages him a dark web link to footage of Ellery dying, he watches—first the car crash that killed her, then hundreds of other deaths, even for people still alive. Accidents. Diseases. Suicides. Murders.
Ěý
The host site, chinsky, is sadistic, vicious, impossible. It even seems to read his mind, manipulate his searches. But is chinsky even real? And who is Haruspx, the web handle who led him into this virtual nightmare? As Sammy watches compulsively, the darkness in his mind blooms, driving him down a twisted path to find the roots of chinsky, even if he must become a nightmare himself . . .
Ěý
Not for the faint of heart, rekt combines the cautionary warnings of Black Mirror with the seedy rawness of Chuck Palahniuk in its unrelentless examination of the emotional holes we fill with content.]]> 368 Alex Gonzalez 1645661598 JFW 0 to-read 3.97 2025 rekt
author: Alex Gonzalez
name: JFW
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Exodus: The Archimedes Engine (Archimedes Engine, #1)]]> 205670068
Forty thousand years ago, humanity fled a dying Earth. Traveling in massive arkships, these brave pioneers spread out across the galaxy to find a new home. After traveling thousands of light-years, one fleet of arkships arrived at Centauri, a dense cluster of stars with a vast array of potentially habitable planets. The survivors of Earth signaled to the remaining arkships that humanity had finally found its new home among the stars.

Thousands of years later, the Centauri Cluster has flourished. The original settlers have evolved into advanced beings known as Celestials and divided themselves into powerful Dominions. One of the most influential is that of the Crown Celestials, an alliance of five great houses that controls vast areas of Centauri. As arkships continue to arrive, the remaining humans and their descendants must fight for survival against overwhelming odds or be forced into serving the Crown Dominion.

Among those yearning for a better life is Finn, for whom Earth is not a memory but merely a footnote from humanity’s ancient history. Born on one of the Crown Dominion worlds, Finn has known nothing but the repressive rule of the Celestials, though he dreams of the possibility of boundless space beyond his home.

When another arkship from Earth, previously thought lost, unexpectedly arrives, Finn sees his chance to embrace a greater destiny and become a Traveler—one of a group of brave heroes dedicated to ensuring humanity’s future by journeying into the vast unknown of distant space.]]> 928 Peter F. Hamilton 0593357663 JFW 0 to-read 4.15 2024 Exodus: The Archimedes Engine (Archimedes Engine, #1)
author: Peter F. Hamilton
name: JFW
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> Polyphemus 101953 In Yana, the Touch of Undying display a distinctive talent for the macabre. Whether based in sf or fantasy, Shea's short fiction is not for the squeamish.

Contents:
Polyphemus (1981)
The Angel of Death (1979)
Uncle Tuggs (1986)
The Pearls of the Vampire Queen (1982)
The Horror on the #33 (1982)
The Extra (1987)
The Autopsy (1980)]]> 288 Michael Shea 0586208488 JFW 0 to-read 4.06 1987 Polyphemus
author: Michael Shea
name: JFW
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Incompleat Nifft 101951
Join master thief Nifft the Lean with his companion-at-arms, mighty barbarian Barnar Hammer-Hand, as they trust to their wits and their luck. Once Nifft and Barnar were hired by the ghost of a dead woman to kidnap the man who betrayed her and drag him down to hell to join her. A simple task � or so they thought at first....

Another time, the pair lucked into an even more lucrative proposition, when they were shipwrecked on the way to work in Costard's sap mine � very dangerous and sometimes nauseating work far below ground and were hired by Bunt to bring back twenty gills of the ichor exuded only by the monstrous insectile queen. It seemed like easy money � they wouldn't have to go to hell Of course, the best laid plans sometimes do go astray, but this time they were sure they would...make a killing.

Publisher's Note: Parts of this work were previously published as "Nifft the Lean" and "The Mines of Behemoth."]]> 576 Michael Shea 0671578693 JFW 0 to-read 4.08 2000 The Incompleat Nifft
author: Michael Shea
name: JFW
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> Nifft the Lean 139344
Follow the adventures of Nifft the Lean, the master thief whose felonious appropriations and larcenous skills will lead through Stygian realms to challenge your most lurid fantasies and errant imaginings. Places where horror, harm and long eerie calms flow past the traveller in endless, unpredictable succession.

Travel the man whose long, rawboned, sticky fingers and stark length of arm will lead you down to the vermiculous grottos of the demon sea, to stand beneath the subworld's lurid sky and battle monsters who seem the spiritual distillation of human evil itself!

We invite to the very gates of Hell and beyond �

COME IF YOU DARE!]]> 304 Michael Shea 0879977833 JFW 0 to-read 4.01 1982 Nifft the Lean
author: Michael Shea
name: JFW
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Winter Monster 212249395 Chilling holiday horror about an unhappy couple running from their problems and straight into the maw of a terrifying beast, perfect for fans of Paul Tremblay and Sara Gran

For the last year, Holly and Brian have been out of sync. Neither can forget what happened that one winter evening; neither can forgive what’s happened since. Tonight, Holly and Brian race toward Pinebuck, New York, trying to outrun a blizzard on their way to the ski village getaway they hope will save their relationship. But soon they lose control of the car—and then of themselves.

Now Sheriff Kendra Book is getting calls about a couple in trouble—along with reports of a brutal and mysterious creature rampaging through town, leaving a trail of crushed cars, wrecked buildings, and mangled bodies in the snow.

To Kendra, who lost another couple to the snow just seven weeks ago, the danger feels personal. But not as personal as it feels to Holly and Brian, who are starting to see the past, the present, and themselves in a monstrous new light . . .]]> 304 Dennis A Mahoney 164129633X JFW 0 to-read 3.28 2025 Our Winter Monster
author: Dennis A Mahoney
name: JFW
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> We Used to Live Here 199798006
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it� (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).]]> 312 Marcus Kliewer 1982198788 JFW 0 to-read 3.67 2024 We Used to Live Here
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: JFW
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> Red Rabbit 65212070 A folk horror epic about a ragtag posse that must track down a witch through a wild west beset by demons and ghosts―and where death is always just around the bend.

Sadie Grace is wanted for witchcraft, dead (or alive). And every hired gun in Kansas is out to collect the bounty on her head, including bona fide witch hunter Old Tom and his mysterious, mute ward, Rabbit.

On the road to Burden County, they’re joined by two vagabond cowboys with a strong sense of adventure � but no sense of purpose � and a recently widowed school teacher with nothing left to lose. As their posse grows, so too does the danger.

Racing along the drought-stricken plains in a stolen red stagecoach, they encounter monsters more wicked than witches lurking along the dusty trail. But the crew is determined to get that bounty, or die trying.

Written with the devilish cadence of Stephen Graham Jones and the pulse-pounding brutality of Nick Cutter, Red Rabbit is a supernatural adventure of luck and misfortune.]]> 455 Alex Grecian 1250874688 JFW 0 to-read 4.16 2023 Red Rabbit
author: Alex Grecian
name: JFW
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Militia House 61796642 Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
Nominated for the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award

“An extraordinary novel about the quiet and not so quiet horrors of war.� —Roxane Gay

Stephen King meets Tim O’Brien in John Milas’s The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.

It’s 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward—loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters—and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they’re replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don’t need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.

It’s a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marines� growing unease, convinced that it’s just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.

Meticulously plotted and viscerally immediate in its telling, The Militia House is a gripping and brilliant exploration of the unceasing horrors of war that’s no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.]]> 272 John Milas 1250857066 JFW 0 to-read 3.58 2023 The Militia House
author: John Milas
name: JFW
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Inhibitor Phase (Revelation Space, #4)]]> 56072402
Fleeing the 'wolves' - the xenocidal alien machines known as Inhibitors - he has protected his family and community from attack for forty years, sheltering in the caves of an airless, battered world called Michaelmas. The slightest hint of human activity could draw the wolves to their home, to destroy everything ... utterly. Which is how Miguel finds himself on a one-way mission with his own destructive mandate: to eliminate a passing ship, before it can bring unwanted attention down on them.

Only something goes wrong.

There's a lone survivor.

And she knows far more about Miguel than she's letting on . . .

Ranging from the depths of space to the deeps of Pattern Juggler waters, from nervous, isolated communities to the ruins of empire, this is a stealthy space opera from an author at the top of his game.


Praise for Al Reynolds' Revenger


'A swashbuckling thriller' The Guardian



'A blindingly clever imagining of our solar system in the far flung future' The Sun

'A rollicking adventure yarn with action, abduction, fights and properly scary hazards' The Daily Telegraph]]> 432 Alastair Reynolds JFW 0 to-read 4.01 2021 Inhibitor Phase (Revelation Space, #4)
author: Alastair Reynolds
name: JFW
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> Angel Station 357698
Ubu Roy was the strong young bossrider of the starship Runaway, who held all of history in his remarkable memory. Beautiful Maria was an ace star shooter and cybernetic witch, who could bend spacetime to find the perfect singularity.]]> 393 Walter Jon Williams 0812557875 JFW 0 to-read 3.66 1989 Angel Station
author: Walter Jon Williams
name: JFW
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wolfsong (Green Creek, #1) 62039417
Oxnard Matheson was twelve when his father taught him that Ox wasn’t worth anything and people would never understand him. Then his father left.

Ox was sixteen when the energetic Bennett family moved in next door, harboring a secret that would change him forever. The Bennetts are shapeshifters. They can transform into wolves at will. Drawn to their magic, loyalty, and enduring friendships, Ox feels a gulf between this extraordinary new world and the quiet life he’s known, but he finds an ally in Joe, the youngest Bennett boy.

Ox was twenty-three when murder came to town and tore a hole in his heart. Violence flared, tragedy split the pack, and Joe left town, leaving Ox behind. Three years later, the boy is back. Except now he’s a man � charming, handsome, but haunted � and Ox can no longer ignore the song that howls between them.

The beloved fantasy romance sensation by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about love, loyalty, betrayal, and family.

The Green Creek Series is for adult readers.

Now available from Tor Books.]]> 528 T.J. Klune 1250890314 JFW 0 to-read 4.04 2016 Wolfsong (Green Creek, #1)
author: T.J. Klune
name: JFW
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Diavola 126918202 Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.

It isn’t easy when she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone—including her blandly docile husband and two kids—falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails—the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.

(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)]]> 296 Jennifer Marie Thorne JFW 0 to-read 3.84 2024 Diavola
author: Jennifer Marie Thorne
name: JFW
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Cities of the Red Night (The Red Night Trilogy, #1)]]> 23944 332 William S. Burroughs 0312278462 JFW 0 to-read 3.77 1981 Cities of the Red Night (The Red Night Trilogy, #1)
author: William S. Burroughs
name: JFW
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Embers of War (Embers of War, #1)]]> 30748899
But, stripped of her weaponry and emptied of her officers, she struggles in the new role she’s chosen for herself. When a ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of misfits and loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, an ex-captain of a medical frigate who once fought against Trouble Dog, are assigned to investigate and save whoever they can.

Meanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating and saving the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing ship, whatever the cost. In order to do this, he must reach out to the only person he considers a friend, even if he’s not sure she can be trusted. What Childe doesn’t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be.

Quickly, what appears to be a straightforward rescue mission turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe, find themselves at the centre of a potential new conflict that could engulf not just mankind but the entire galaxy.

If she is to survive and save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight.]]> 411 Gareth L. Powell 1785655183 JFW 0 to-read 3.78 2018 Embers of War (Embers of War, #1)
author: Gareth L. Powell
name: JFW
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank 36260018
When a group of bumbling criminals show up in her father's life looking to pull one last job, young Paige has two choices - let her father get caught up in their criminal hijinks or enlist her three best friends to do the job first. Paige picks the bad one.
180ish pages of full color comic-booking about friendship, family, growing up, and grand larceny from rising star writer Matthew Rosenberg (WE CAN NEVER GO HOME, KINGPIN, SECRET WARRIORS) and equally rising star artist Tyler Boss (LAZARUS, CALEXIT, Vice Magazine).]]> 208 Matthew Rosenberg 1628751886 JFW 0 to-read 4.13 2017 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank
author: Matthew Rosenberg
name: JFW
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Northworld Trilogy 17302550
Commissioner Hansen had a mind that saw the shortest path to each task's completion and a ruthless determination to do what the task required. The cost - to himself and whoever happened to be in the way - didn't matter. Hanson's Special Units had kept his planet safe from the most sophisticated and violent criminals in the galaxy. Now Hansen was being sent to penetrate a spacetime enigma which had made gods or demons of the first humans to discover it. He would succeed or die.

Northworld: a place of slashing violence and mystic transformation
Northworld: a place of treachery and dazzling beauty
Northworld: a place of honor, of faith, and of love.

Hansen's iron will and strong arm confront godlike power and godlike cunning while a galaxy trembles for the outcome. And if Hansen dies - he will not die alone!]]> 791 David Drake JFW 0 to-read 3.76 1999 Northworld Trilogy
author: David Drake
name: JFW
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Silent Stars Go By 1117813 441 James White 0345371100 JFW 0 to-read 3.90 1991 The Silent Stars Go By
author: James White
name: JFW
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Gone to See the River Man 52373510
These people will give anything for the idols they worship, be they rock stars, actors or authors. Or even serial killers.

Lori is just such a fanatic. Her obsession is with Edmund Cox, a man of sadistic cruelty who butchered more than twenty women. She’s gone so far as to forge a relationship with him, visiting him in prison and sending him letters on a regular basis. She will do anything to get close to him, so when he gives her a task, she eagerly accepts it.

She has no idea of the horror that awaits her.

Edmund tells her she must go to his cabin in the woods of Killen and retrieve a key to deliver to a mysterious figure known only as The River Man.

In her quest, she brings along her handicapped sister, and they journey through the deep, dark valley, beginning their trip upriver. The trip quickly becomes a surreal nightmare, one that digs up Lori’s personal demons, the ones she feels bonds her to Edmund. The river runs with flesh, the cabin is a vault of horrors, and ghostly blues music echoes through the mountains. Soon they will learn that The River Man is not quite fact or folklore, and definitely not human -- at least, not anymore. And the key is just the beginning of what is required of Lori to prove she’s worthy of a madman’s love.]]> 182 Kristopher Triana JFW 0 to-read 3.65 2020 Gone to See the River Man
author: Kristopher Triana
name: JFW
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> Waiting for the Barbarians 6194 J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.]]> 152 J.M. Coetzee 0140283358 JFW 0 to-read 3.94 1980 Waiting for the Barbarians
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: JFW
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rubicon 60784443
After enduring a traumatic resurrection for the ninety-sixth time, Valero is reassigned to a special forces unit and outfitted with a cutting-edge virtual intelligence aid. They could turn the tide in the war against intelligent machines dedicated to the assimilation, or destruction, of humanity.

When her VI suddenly achieves sentience, Valero is drawn into the machinations of an enigmatic major who’s hell-bent on ending the war—by any means necessary.]]> 469 J.S. Dewes 1250851238 JFW 0 to-read 3.87 2023 Rubicon
author: J.S. Dewes
name: JFW
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[World After (Penryn & the End of Days, #2)]]> 17849112 Angelfall, the survivors of the angel apocalypse begin to scrape back together what's left of the modern world. When a group of people capture Penryn's sister Paige, thinking she's a monster, the situation ends in a massacre. Paige disappears. Humans are terrified. Mom is heartbroken.

Penryn drives through the streets of San Francisco looking for Paige. Why are the streets so empty? Where is everybody? Her search leads her into the heart of the angels' secret plans, where she catches a glimpse of their motivations, and learns the horrifying extent to which the angels are willing to go.

Meanwhile, Raffe hunts for his wings. Without them, he can't rejoin the angels, can't take his rightful place as one of their leaders. When faced with recapturing his wings or helping Penryn survive, which will he choose?

]]> 320 Susan Ee 1477867287 JFW 0 to-read 4.09 2013 World After (Penryn & the End of Days, #2)
author: Susan Ee
name: JFW
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fall of the Governor: Part One (The Walking Dead: Novels, #3)]]> 17286685 The third book in Robert Kirkman's New York Times bestselling series: The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor � Part One!

The Walking Dead original novel series, set in the universe of Robert Kirkman's iconic comic book, continues with The Fall of the Governor � Part One. From co-authors Kirkman, creator of the Eisner Award-winning comic as well as executive producer of AMC's blockbuster TV series, and Jay Bonansinga, Stoker Award-finalist and internationally acclaimed author, comes the gripping third novel in this richly woven, page-turning literary saga, which began with The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor.

In Rise of the Governor, uber-villain Philip Blake journeyed from his humble beginnings directly into the dark heart of the zombie apocalypse, and became the self-proclaimed leader of a small town called Woodbury. In The Road to Woodbury, an innocent traveler named Lilly Caul wound up in the terrifying thrall of Phillip Blake’s twisted, violent dictatorship within Woodbury’s ever tightening barricades.

And now, in The Fall of the Governor � Part One, the Governor’s descent into madness finally erupts in a tour de force of action and horror. Beloved characters from the comic book, including Rick, Michonne and Glenn, finally make their entrance onto this nightmarish stage, and fans of The Walking Dead will see these characters in a whole new light. Simmering grudges boil over into unthinkable confrontations, battle lines are drawn, and unexpected twists seal the fates of the innocent and guilty alike.]]> 256 Robert Kirkman 0312548176 JFW 0 to-read 3.72 The Fall of the Governor: Part One (The Walking Dead: Novels, #3)
author: Robert Kirkman
name: JFW
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Wake Up and Open Your Eyes 204640265 From Vulture's "master of horror" Clay McLeod Chapman, a relentless and emotionally charged social horror novel about a family on the run from a demonic possession epidemic that spreads through media, for fans of The Last of Us and When Evil Lurks

Noah Fairchild has been losing his formerly polite Southern parents to far-right cable news for years, so when his mother leaves him a voicemail warning him that the “Great Reawakening� is here, he assumes it’s related to one of the many conspiracy theories she believes in. But when his own phone calls go unanswered, Noah makes the long drive from Brooklyn to Richmond, Virginia. There, he discovers his childhood home in shambles, a fridge full of spoiled food, and his parents locked in a terrifying trance-like state in front of the TV. Panicked, Noah attempts to snap them out of it and get medical help.

Then Noah’s mother brutally attacks him.

But Noah isn’t the only person to be attacked by a loved one. Families across the country are tearing each other apart-–literally-–as people succumb to a form of possession that gets worse the more time they spend watching particular channels, using certain apps, or visiting certain websites. In Noah’s Richmond-based family, only he and his young nephew Marcus are unaffected. Together, they must race back to the safe haven of Brooklyn�-but can they make it before they fall prey to the violent hordes?

This ambitious, searing novel from "one of horror's modern masters" holds a mirror to our divided nation, and will shake readers to the core.]]> 384 Clay McLeod Chapman JFW 0 to-read 3.38 2025 Wake Up and Open Your Eyes
author: Clay McLeod Chapman
name: JFW
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/23
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]]> <![CDATA[A Sunny Place for Shady People]]> 203956643 A diabolical collection of stories featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, goblins, and the macabre, by “one of Latin America’s most exciting authors� (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)

On the shores of this river, all the birds that fly, drink, perch on branches, and disturb siestas with the demonic squawking of the possessed—all those birds were once women.

Welcome to Argentina and the fascinating, frightening, fantastical imagination of Mariana Enriquez. In twelve spellbinding new stories, Enriquez writes about ordinary people, especially women, whose lives turn inside out when they encounter terror, the surreal, and the supernatural. A neighborhood nuisanced by ghosts, a family whose faces melt away, a faded hotel haunted by a girl who dissolved in the water tank on the roof, a riverbank populated by birds that used to be women—these and other tales illuminate the shadows of contemporary life, where the line between good and evil no longer exists.

Lyrical and hypnotic, heart-stopping and deeply moving, Enriquez’s stories never fail to enthrall, entertain, and leave us shaken. Translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, A Sunny Place for Shady People showcases Enriquez’s unique blend of the literary and the horrific, and underscores why Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, calls her “the most exciting discovery I’ve made in fiction for some time.”]]> 257 Mariana Enríquez 0593733258 JFW 0 to-read 3.80 2024 A Sunny Place for Shady People
author: Mariana EnrĂ­quez
name: JFW
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/11
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]]> None of You Shall Be Spared 202190512
This brilliant collection contains twenty of Brian Evenson's most spectacular short stories, including three brand-new tales. In trademark Evenson fashion, one can feel a palpable connection to the yearnings, fears, and losses that his characters suffer. From the terror of being stalked by a man you thought you’d killed, to the desperate hope for the return of a loved one, each story is woven from deep imagination, sincere emotion, and the unblinking examination of everything dark that surrounds us.

These stories will enthrall you. They will leave a bit of themselves within you, and you will leave a bit of yourself within them. No one is safe from the web Evenson weaves, and none of you shall be spared.

Table of Contents

Knock, Knock
In the Nursery
Gyr
I Cannot Remember
Waiting for Mother
The Train’s Path
Lancaster
Garnier
Stricken
Dominion
Whet
All Those Lost Days
The Teeth
The Wilcox Remainder
And Yet
Lost Dog
A Bloody Hand to Shake
Homecoming
The Fourth Scene
Leaving Leeds]]> 232 Brian Evenson 1957121653 JFW 0 to-read 3.99 None of You Shall Be Spared
author: Brian Evenson
name: JFW
average rating: 3.99
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date added: 2024/09/19
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]]> <![CDATA[A Boy and His Dog & "Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman]]> 2643113 The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, "A Boy and His Dog" is one of the author’s own favorite works. Critics also appreciated the story, and it won the 1969 Nebula Award (awarded by Science Fiction Writers of America) for Best Novella. Six years later, it was adapted as a Hugo Award-winning film, with Don Johnson starring as Vic. "A Boy and His Dog" is considered one of Ellison’s most compelling stories, and the author expanded it into a novel in 1989.

In post-apocalyptic America, the surface is the province of the roverpaks, bands of feral human males teamed with intelligence-enhanced dogs, descendants of those bred for military use in the war that drove civilization underground. A lucky encounter with a thrill-seeking female from the world below draws Vic and his telepathic mutt Blood "down the rabbit hole" to an encounter with the remnants of pre-war civilization. But like Huck Finn, Vic doesn't much like being civilized...

Originally published in the collection The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, New York: Avon, 1969.]]> Harlan Ellison 0871881187 JFW 0 to-read 4.15 A Boy and His Dog & "Repent, Harlequin!" said the Ticktockman
author: Harlan Ellison
name: JFW
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard, #3)]]> 2890090
Magi political elections are imminent, and the factions are in need of a pawn. If Locke agrees to play the role, sorcery will be used to purge the venom from his body - though the process will be so excruciating he may well wish for death. Locke is opposed, but two factors cause his will to crumble: Jean's imploring - and the Bondsmage's mention of a woman from Locke's past: Sabetha. She is the love of his life, his equal in skill and wit, and now, his greatest rival.

Locke was smitten with Sabetha from his first glimpse of her as a young fellow orphan and thief-in-training. But after a tumultuous courtship, Sabetha broke away. Now they will reunite in yet another clash of wills. For faced with his one and only match in both love and trickery, Locke must choose whether to fight Sabetha - or to woo her. It is a decision on which both their lives may depend.

]]> 650 Scott Lynch 0553804693 JFW 0 to-read 4.21 2013 The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard, #3)
author: Scott Lynch
name: JFW
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentleman Bastard, #2)]]> 40604556 Librarian note: An older cover for this edition can be found here: 31-Jul-2007.

After a brutal battle with the underworld that nearly destroyed him, Locke Lamora and his trusted sidekick, Jean, fled the island city of their birth and landed on the exotic shores of Tal Verrar to nurse their wounds. But even at this westernmost edge of civilization, they can't rest for long---and they are soon back doing what they do best: stealing from the undeserving rich and pocketing the proceeds for themselves.

This time, however, they have targeted the grandest prize of all: the Sinspire, the most exclusive and heavily guarded gambling house in the world. Its nine floors attract the wealthiest clientele - and to rise to the top, one must impress with good credit, amusing behavior...and excruciatingly impeccable play. For there is one cardinal rule, enforced by Requin, the house's cold-blooded master: it is death to cheat at any game at the Sinspire.Brazenly undeterred, Locke and Jean have orchestrated an elaborate plan to lie, trick, and swindle their way up the nine floors...straight to Requin's teeming vault. Under the cloak of false identities, they meticulously make their climb - until they are closer to the spoils than ever.

But someone in Tal Verrar has uncovered the duo's secret. Someone from their past who has every intention of making the impudent criminals pay for their sins. Now it will take every ounce of cunning to save their mercenary souls. And even that may not be enough.]]> 578 Scott Lynch JFW 0 to-read 4.26 2007 Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentleman Bastard, #2)
author: Scott Lynch
name: JFW
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/08
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]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist � an informational topologist with half his mind gone � as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 JFW 2 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: JFW
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft]]> 21416536 The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft collects the author's novel, four novellas, and fifty-three short stories. Written between the years 1917 and 1935, this collection features Lovecraft's trademark fantastical creatures and supernatural thrills, as well as many horrific and cautionary science-fiction themes, that have influenced some of today's writers and filmmakers, including Stephen King, Alan Moore, F. Paul Wilson, Guillermo del Toro, and Neil Gaiman. Included in this volume are The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," "At the Mountains of Madness," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The Color Out of Space," "The Dunwich Horror," and many more hair-raising tales.]]> 1102 H.P. Lovecraft 1631060015 JFW 0 to-read 4.33 The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: JFW
average rating: 4.33
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]]> The Endless Vessel 62080151
A young Hong Kong–based scientist, Lily Barnes, is trying to maintain her inner light in an increasingly dark world. The human race is dwindling, and people fighting to push forward are increasingly rare. One day, Lily comes across something that seems to be addressing her directly, calling to her, asking her to follow a path to whatever lies at its end. Is this the Endless Vessel to happiness? She leaves her life behind and sets out through time and space to find out. Charles Soule has channeled history, science and drama to create a story for the ages—a story of hope and love and possibility.]]> 456 Charles Soule 0063043041 JFW 0 to-read 3.74 2023 The Endless Vessel
author: Charles Soule
name: JFW
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> The Doors of Perception 3188964 The Doors of Perception is a philosophical essay, released as a book, by Aldous Huxley. First published in 1954, it details his experiences when taking mescaline.

The book takes the form of Huxley's recollection of a mescaline trip that took place over the course of an afternoon in May 1953. The book takes its title from a phrase in William Blake's 1793 poem 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'.

Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, which range from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision". He also incorporates later reflections on the experience and its meaning for art and religion.]]> 208 Aldous Huxley JFW 0 to-read 3.91 1956 The Doors of Perception
author: Aldous Huxley
name: JFW
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1956
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Small Town Horror 199221815
Maybe this is a ghost story...

Andrew Larimer thought he left the past behind. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he finds he has no choice but to return home, and to confront the memories—and the horror—of a night, years ago, that changed everything.

For Andrew and his friends, the past is not dead, and the curse that has befallen them now threatens to destroy all that they've become.

One dark secret...

One small-town horror...]]> 400 Ronald Malfi 180336758X JFW 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Small Town Horror
author: Ronald Malfi
name: JFW
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/29
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]]> Denial 61684807 A futuristic thriller about climate change by the acclaimed screenwriter of First Cow, Meek’s Cutoff, and HBO’s Mildred Pierce.The year is 2052. Climate change has had a predictably devastating Venice submerged, cyclones in Oklahoma, megafires in South America. Yet it could be much worse. Two decades earlier, the global protest movement known as the Upheavals helped break the planet’s fossil fuel dependency, and the subsequent Nuremberg-like Toronto Trials convicted the most powerful oil executives and lobbyists for crimes against the environment. Not all of them. A few executives escaped arrest and went into hiding, including pipeline mastermind Robert Cave. Now, a Pacific Northwest journalist named Jack Henry who works for a struggling media company has received a tip that Cave is living in Mexico. Hoping the story will save his job, he travels south and, using a fake identity, makes contact with the fugitive. The two men strike up an unexpected friendship, leaving Jack torn about exposing Cave—an uncertainty further compounded by the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness and a new romance with an old acquaintance. Who will really benefit from the unmasking? What is the nature of justice and punishment? How does one contend with mortality when the planet itself is dying? Denial is both a page-turning speculative suspense novel and a powerful existential inquisition about the perilous moment in which we currently live.]]> 236 Jon Raymond 1982181850 JFW 0 to-read 3.63 2022 Denial
author: Jon Raymond
name: JFW
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/25
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]]> <![CDATA[A Time to Love and a Time to Die]]> 132749
After two years at the Russian front, Ernst Graeber finally receives three weeks� leave. But since leaves have been canceled before, he decides not to write his parents, fearing he would just raise their hopes.

Then, when Graeber arrives home, he finds his house bombed to ruin and his parents nowhere in sight. Nobody knows if they are dead or alive. As his leave draws to a close, Graeber reaches out to Elisabeth, a childhood friend. Like him, she is imprisoned in a world she did not create. But in a time of war, love seems a world away. And sometimes, temporary comfort can lead to something unexpected and redeeming.]]> 379 Erich Maria Remarque 0151904707 JFW 0 to-read 4.42 1954 A Time to Love and a Time to Die
author: Erich Maria Remarque
name: JFW
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1954
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/24
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]]> <![CDATA[True Names... and Other Dangers]]> 321005 Bookworm, Run! (1966)
True Names (1981)
The Peddler's Apprentice (1975) with Joan D. Vinge
The Ungoverned (1985)
Long Shot (1972)
Marooned in Realtime (excerpt) (1987)]]> 275 Vernor Vinge 0671653636 JFW 0 to-read 4.09 1981 True Names... and Other Dangers
author: Vernor Vinge
name: JFW
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Great When (The Long London Quintet, #1)]]> 206101580 From the New York Times bestselling author and legendary storyteller Alan Moore, the first book in an enthralling new fantasy series about murder, magic, and madness in post-WWII London.

Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which, Dennis discovers, should not exist. A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole is a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author. Yet A London Walk is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.

Coffin Ada tells Dennis the book comes from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time. In the Great When, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur, while concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. But, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed.

So begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. Delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may endanger both Londons.

Mystical, hilarious, and magnificently imagined, The Great When is an unforgettable introduction to the consciousness-altering world of Long London.]]> 315 Alan Moore 1635578841 JFW 0 to-read 3.57 2024 The Great When (The Long London Quintet, #1)
author: Alan Moore
name: JFW
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/09
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]]> Mass Hysteria 35496858 It came from space�

Something virulent. Something evil. Something new. And it is infecting the town of Falls Breath.

Carried to Earth in a freak meteor shower, an alien virus has infected the animals. Pets and wildlife have turned rabid, attacking without warning. Dogs and cats terrorize their owners, while deer and wolves from the neighboring woods hunt in packs, stalking and killing their human prey without mercy.

As the town comes under siege, Lauren searches for her boyfriend, while her policeman father fights to restore some semblance of order against a threat unlike anything he has seen before. The Natural Order has been upended completely, and nowhere is safe.

…and it is spreading.

Soon, the city will find itself in the grips of mass hysteria.

To survive, humanity will have to fight tooth and nail.]]> 258 Michael Patrick Hicks 1947570005 JFW 0 to-read 3.72 Mass Hysteria
author: Michael Patrick Hicks
name: JFW
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/05
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]]> The Wandering Earth 32665865
This collection's title story, The Wandering Earth, is the biggest SF movie ever to come out of China � taking the world's #1 box office ranking in February 2019.

The Sun is dying. Earth will perish too , consumed by the star in its final death throes. But rather than abandon their planet, humanity builds 12,000 mountainous fusion engines to propel the Earth out of orbit and onto a centuries-long voyage to Proxima Centaurai...

Cixin Liu is one of the most important voices in world Science Fiction . A bestseller in China, his novel, The Three-Body Problem , was the first translated work of SF ever to win the Hugo Award. Here is the first collection of his short fiction: ten stories, including five Chinese Galaxy Award-winners.

Liu's writing takes the reader to the edge of the universe and the end of time, to meet stranger fates than we could have ever imagined. With a melancholic and keen understanding of human nature, Liu's stories show humanity's attempts to reason, navigate and, above all, survive in a desolate cosmos.]]> 447 Liu Cixin 1784978507 JFW 0 to-read 4.22 2000 The Wandering Earth
author: Liu Cixin
name: JFW
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/25
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]]> Punktown 574195
Table Of Contents:

The Reflections Of Ghosts
Pink Pills
The Flaying Season
Union Dick
Wakizashi
Dissecting The Soul
Precious Metal
Sisters Of No Mercy
Heart for Heart’s Sake
The Ballad Of Moosecock Lip
Face
The Pressman
The Palace Of Nothingness
The Rusted Gates Of Heaven
Immolation
Unlimited Daylight
The Library Of Sorrows
Nom de Guerre
The Color Shrain]]> 224 Jeffrey Thomas 1894815750 JFW 0 to-read 4.03 2000 Punktown
author: Jeffrey Thomas
name: JFW
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/22
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]]> Blackout 489163 168 Hubert Aquin 0887844340 JFW 0 to-read 4.00 1968 Blackout
author: Hubert Aquin
name: JFW
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1968
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/18
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]]> Gnomon 33852053
In the world of Gnomon, citizens are constantly observed and democracy has reached a pinnacle of â€transparency.â€� Every action is seen, every word is recorded, and the System has access to its citizensâ€� thoughts and memories–all in the name of providing the safest society in history.

When suspected dissident Diana Hunter dies in government custody, it marks the first time a citizen has been killed during an interrogation. The System doesn’t make mistakes, but something isn’t right about the circumstances surrounding Hunter’s death. Mielikki Neith, a trusted state inspector and a true believer in the System, is assigned to find out what went wrong. Immersing herself in neural recordings of the interrogation, what she finds isn’t Hunter but rather a panorama of characters within Hunter’s psyche: a lovelorn financier in Athens who has a mystical experience with a shark; a brilliant alchemist in ancient Carthage confronting the unexpected outcome of her invention; an expat Ethiopian painter in London designing a controversial new video game, and a sociopathic disembodied intelligence from the distant future.

Embedded in the memories of these impossible lives lies a code which Neith must decipher to find out what Hunter is hiding. In the static between these stories, Neith begins to catch glimpses of the real Diana Hunter–and, alarmingly, of herself. The staggering consequences of what she finds will reverberate throughout the world.

A dazzling, panoramic achievement, and Nick Harkaway’s most brilliant work to date, Gnomon is peerless and profound, captivating and irreverent, as it pierces through strata of reality and consciousness, and illuminates how to set a mind free. It is a truly accomplished novel from a mind possessing a matchless wit infused with a deep humanity.]]> 688 Nick Harkaway JFW 0 to-read 3.77 2017 Gnomon
author: Nick Harkaway
name: JFW
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Titanium Noir (Titanium Noir #1)]]> 62052321 A virtuosic mashup of Philip K. Dick and Raymond Chandler by way of Marvel—the story of a detective investigating the murder of a Titan, one of society's most powerful, medically-enhanced elites.

"Cross-genre brilliance from the superbly talented Nick Harkaway." —William Gibson, New York Times best-selling author of Agency.

Cal Sounder is a detective working for the police on certain very sensitive cases. So when he's called in to investigate a homicide at a local apartment, he's surprised by the routineness of it all. But when he arrives on scene, Cal soon learns that the victim—Roddy Tebbit, an otherwise milquetoast techie—is well over seven feet tall. And although he doesn't look a day over thirty, he is ninety-one years old. Tebbit is a Titan—one of this dystopian, near-future society's genetically altered elites. And this case is definitely Cal's thing.

There are only a few thousand Titans worldwide, thanks to Stefan Tonfamecasca's discovery of the controversial T7 genetic therapy, which elevated his family to godlike status. T7 turns average humans into near-immortal distortions of themselves—with immense physical proportions to match their ostentatious, unreachable lifestyles. A dead Titan is big news . . . aĚýmurderedĚýTitan is unimaginable. But these modified magnates are Cal's specialty. In fact, his own ex-girlfriend, Athena, is a Titan. And not justĚýany—she is Stefan's daughter, heir to the massive Tonfamecasca empire.

As the murder investigation intensifies, Cal begins to unravel the complicated threads of what should have been a straightforward case, and it becomes clear he's on the trail of a crime whose roots run deep into the dark heart of the world.]]> 236 Nick Harkaway 0593535367 JFW 0 to-read 3.90 2023 Titanium Noir (Titanium Noir #1)
author: Nick Harkaway
name: JFW
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/26
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]]> The Fungus 2385266
At first, doctors are puzzled when deformed men and women start appearing in hospital emergency rooms. One patient seems covered in thick brown fur; another finds his body sprouting growths like giant toadstools. Soon a pattern emerges from the preliminary data: a man-made microbe is loose, accelerating and amplifying the normal growth of molds and fungi. No one is safe from infection, as microscopic spores carry the plague even into caves deep underground. And those who fall victim to the fantastic range of fungus infections find their minds taken over and their bodies transformed into creatures never before seen on this planet, haunted by dark obsessions and inhuman desires.

As millions fight to escape disease zones and European nations threaten to fight the fungi with nuclear weapons, a team of two men and a woman embark on a suicide mission to penetrate the London laboratory which spawned the plague. Hoping to recover the research notes that may help scientists to synthesize an antidote, they find instead something infinitely more sinister and horrific.]]> 218 Harry Adam Knight 0531151034 JFW 0 to-read 3.52 1985 The Fungus
author: Harry Adam Knight
name: JFW
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Devil By Name (Fever House, #2)]]> 202102065 No one expected the apocalypse would be broadcast via phone call. But in this chilling sequel to Fever House, anyone who managed to survive that doomsday call has a harrowing answer to the question, “Where were you when the Message came through?�

Five years after the event that drove most of the global population to madness, the world is overrun with the “fevered”—once-human, zombielike creatures drawn indiscriminately to violence and murder. In a campaign to restabilize the country, the massive corporation known as Terradyne Industries has merged with the U.S. government in a partnership of dubious motives, quarantining major American cities behind towering walls and corralling the afflicted there with the hope, they say, of developing a vaccine.

In Portland, where it all began, guilt-ridden detective John Bonner scours the city’s darkest corners for clues to humanity’s redemption. In New England, Katherine Moriarty mourns the devastating losses of her husband and son while in hiding from Terradyne. And across the ocean in France, a sixteen-year-old girl named Naomi Laurent discovers she has a disturbing and powerful gift—which may just be the key to the world’s salvation.

Equal parts gruesome and beautiful, The Devil by Name is a heart-stopping, breakneck saga of survival. As its characters� paths inevitably collide across the ravaged landscape of a post-apocalyptic America, they are united by the desire to not just escape death but to carve out some way to live anew.

Everything starts and ends in the fever house.

]]> 400 Keith Rosson 0593595785 JFW 0 to-read 4.22 2024 The Devil By Name (Fever House, #2)
author: Keith Rosson
name: JFW
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/21
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]]> Good Night, Sleep Tight 204237191 “PERHAPS TOMORROW I WILL WAKE UP ANOTHER PERSON. PERHAPS TOMORROW I WILL WAKE UP NOT A PERSON AT ALL.�

From the “master of literary horror� (GQ) comes a collection of new stories tracing the limits and consequences of artificial intelligence and “post-human� relationships. Populated by twins stepping into worlds of absence, bears who lick their cubs into creation, and artificial beings haunted by their less-than-human nature, each page sketches a world where our all-too-real feelings of isolation and ecological dread take on an otherworldly tinge.

In Good Night, Sleep Tight, Brian Evenson deftly weaves ethical dilemmas, maternal warmth, and echoes of apocalypse into his most tender, disquieting book yet.]]> 256 Brian Evenson 1566897092 JFW 0 to-read 4.13 2024 Good Night, Sleep Tight
author: Brian Evenson
name: JFW
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Rimrunners (The Company Wars, #3)]]> 57127 280 C.J. Cherryh 0445209798 JFW 0 to-read 3.87 1989 Rimrunners (The Company Wars, #3)
author: C.J. Cherryh
name: JFW
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Department of Truth #1 55512483
Cover Art & Interior Art by Martin Simmonds]]> 32 James Tynion IV JFW 0 to-read 4.24 The Department of Truth #1
author: James Tynion IV
name: JFW
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> Service Model 195790861 To fix the world they first must break it further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into their core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then discovers they can also do something else they never did before: run away. After fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is finding a new purpose.]]> 376 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1250290287 JFW 0 to-read 3.99 2024 Service Model
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: JFW
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> Fever House (Fever House, #1) 66087060 A small-time criminal. A has-been rock star. A shadowy government agency. And a severed hand whose dark powers threaten to destroy them all.

When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, to collect overdue drug money, a severed hand is the last thing he expects to find stashed in the client’s refrigerator. Hutch quickly realizes that the hand induces uncontrollable madness: Anyone in its proximity is overcome with a boundless compulsion for violence. Within hours, catastrophic forces are set into motion: Dark-op government agents who have been desperately hunting for the hand are on Hutch’s tail, more of the city’s residents fall under its brutal influence, and suddenly all of Portland stands at the precipice of disaster. . . .

But it’s all the same for Katherine Moriarty, a singer whose sudden fame and precipitous downfall were followed by the mysterious death of her estranged husband—suicide, allegedly. Her trauma has made her agoraphobic, shackled within the confines of her apartment. Her son, Nick, has moved home to care for her, quietly making his living working for Hutch’s boss.

When Hutch calls Nick in distress, looking for someone else to take the hand, Katherine and Nick are plunged into a global struggle that will decimate the walls of the carefully arranged life they’ve built. Mother and son must evade both crazed, bloodthirsty masses and deceitful government agents while exorcising family secrets that have risen from the dead—secrets, they soon discover, that might hold the very key to humanity’s survival.

Can you resist the hand? Find an excerpt from the next Fever House novel at the end of the book.]]> 417 Keith Rosson 0593595750 JFW 0 to-read 4.02 2023 Fever House (Fever House, #1)
author: Keith Rosson
name: JFW
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> Stormland 55121028
The heart of Stormland is Charleston, South Carolina, a flooded ruin where hundreds of people remain for their own peculiar reasons; where thugs prey on the weak, and a strangely benevolent cult tries to keep everyone insanely sane. Here, plutocratic evil takes advantage of Stormland’s lawlessness to cultivate a weirdly puppeted theater of cruelty.

Swept into the turbulent vortex of Stormland is an unlikely duo—a former serial killer and a former US Marshal—who must work together to bring light to America’s late twenty-first century heart of darkness.

A cyberpunk detective thriller set in a maelstrom of climatic upheaval, classism, and corrupt power, Stormland paradoxically dramatizes the resilience of the human spirit.]]> 300 John Shirley 1094017825 JFW 0 to-read 3.36 2021 Stormland
author: John Shirley
name: JFW
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn 57693611 An anthology of near future science fiction from VICE's acclaimed, innovative digital speculative story destination, Terraform--in print for the first time.

Terraform hones the predictive capacity of science fiction and seeks new, vivid, and visceral ways to depict the future we're hurtling toward, translating the decay and anxiety that surround us into something else, something unexpected, something that burns like a beacon and upends the conventional ideas of where we'll end up next.

Section by section--Watch/Worlds/Burn--the book takes on surveillance, artificial intelligence, and climate collapse. With a potent roster of established names and rising talents--from Bruce Sterling, Ellen Ullman, Cory Doctorow, Jeff VanderMeer, and Omar El Akkad, to E. Lily Yu, Elvia Wilk, Fernando Flores, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Gus Moreno--it confronts the issues that orbit our everyday existence, and takes them to unsettling dimensions.]]> 496 Brian Merchant 0374602662 JFW 0 to-read 3.87 2022 Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn
author: Brian Merchant
name: JFW
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Dangers of Smoking in Bed 53215250 Following the "propulsive and mesmerizing" ( New York Times Book Review ) Things We Lost in the Fire comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author who has earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.

Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre: populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her next collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken -- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history -- with unsettling urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly.

Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with resounding tenderness towards those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, this new collection from one of Argentina's most exciting writers finds Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.]]> 208 Mariana EnrĂ­quez 0593134079 JFW 0 to-read 3.78 2009 The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
author: Mariana EnrĂ­quez
name: JFW
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> Our Share of Night 61111034
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?

Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,� says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”]]> 588 Mariana Enríquez 0451495144 JFW 0 to-read 4.08 2019 Our Share of Night
author: Mariana EnrĂ­quez
name: JFW
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> Erasure 355862 We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.

Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto.

But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.]]> 280 Percival Everett 0786888156 JFW 0 to-read 4.17 2001 Erasure
author: Percival Everett
name: JFW
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Islands at the End of the World (Islands at the End of the World, #1)]]> 18811324 Right before my eyes, my beautiful islands are changing forever. And so am I ...

Sixteen-year-old Leilani loves surfing and her home in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii. But she's an outsider - half white, half Hawaiian, and an epileptic.

While Lei and her father are on a visit to Oahu, a global disaster strikes. Technology and power fail, Hawaii is cut off from the world, and the islands revert to traditional ways of survival. As Lei and her dad embark on a nightmarish journey across islands to reach home and family, she learns that her epilepsy and her deep connection to Hawaii could be keys to ending the crisis before it becomes worse than anyone can imagine.

A powerful story enriched by fascinating elements of Hawaiian ecology, culture, and warfare, this captivating and dramatic debut from Austin Aslan is the first of two novels. The author has a master’s degree in tropical conservation biology from the University of Hawaii at Hilo.]]> 384 Austin Aslan 0385744021 JFW 0 to-read 3.67 2014 The Islands at the End of the World (Islands at the End of the World, #1)
author: Austin Aslan
name: JFW
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Theft of Fire (Orbital Space #1)]]> 199142773 At the frozen edge of the solar system lies a hidden treasure which could spell their fortune or their destruction—but only if they survive each other first.

Marcus Warnoc has a little problem. His asteroid mining ship—his inheritance, his livelihood, and his home—has been hijacked by a pint-sized corporate heiress with enough blackmail material to sink him for good, a secret mission she won’t tell him about, and enough courage to get them both killed. She may have him dead to rights, but if he doesn’t turn the tables on this spoiled Martian snob, he’ll be dead, period. He’s not giving up without a fight.

He has a plan.

Miranda Foxgrove has the opportunity of a lifetime almost within her grasp if she can reach it. Her stolen spacecraft came with a stubborn, resourceful captain who refuses to cooperate—but he’s one of the few men alive who can snatch an unimaginable treasure from beneath the muzzles of countless railguns. And if this foulmouthed Belter thug doesn’t want to cooperate, she’ll find a way to force him. She’s come too far to give up now.

She has a plan.

They’re about to find out that a plan is a list of things that won’t happen.]]> 500 Devon Eriksen 1962514005 JFW 0 to-read 4.26 2023 Theft of Fire (Orbital Space #1)
author: Devon Eriksen
name: JFW
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> Ghost Station 127280445 A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.

Space exploration can be lonely and isolating.

Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she's assigned to a small exploration crew, she's eager to make a difference. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.

While Ophelia focuses on her new role, her crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizer's hasty departure than opening up to her.

That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting—a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?

Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by� and the crew isn’t the only one keeping secrets.]]> 377 S.A. Barnes 1250884926 JFW 0 to-read 3.51 2024 Ghost Station
author: S.A. Barnes
name: JFW
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Cuckoo 61884778 Cuckoo is a vicious new novel about a group of teens who must stay true to themselves while in a conversion camp from hell.

Something evil is buried deep in the desert.
It wants your body. It wears your skin.

In the summer of 1995, seven queer kids abandoned by their parents at a remote conversion camp came face-to-face with it. They survived � but at Camp Resolution, everybody leaves a different person.

Sixteen years later, only the scarred and broken survivors of that terrible summer can put an end to the horror before it’s too late.

The fate of the world depends on it.]]> 342 Gretchen Felker-Martin 1250794668 JFW 0 to-read 3.51 2024 Cuckoo
author: Gretchen Felker-Martin
name: JFW
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America]]> 5997978
Then out of Labrador come tales of a new Ajax—Captain Commongold, the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. The ordinary people follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is…troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the falsely accused and executed Bryce.

Treachery and intrigue dog Julian’s footsteps. Hairsbreadth escapes and daring rescues fill his days. Stern resolve and tender sentiment dice for Julian’s soul, while his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients, and his adherence to the evolutionary doctrines of the heretical Darwin, set him at fatal odds with the hierarchy of the Dominion. Plague and fire swirl around the Presidential palace when at last he arrives with the acclamation of the mob.

As told by Julian’s best friend and faithful companion, a rustic yet observant lad from the west, this tale of the 22nd Century asks� and answers—the age-old question: “Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?”]]> 413 Robert Charles Wilson 0765319713 JFW 0 to-read 3.58 2009 Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America
author: Robert Charles Wilson
name: JFW
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (John Dies at the End, #4)]]> 59808251 New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin’s hilarious and horrifying John Dies at the End series continues with If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe.

If the broken neon signs, shuttered storefronts, and sub-standard housing didn’t tip you off, you’ve just wandered into the city of “Undisclosed�. You don’t want to be caught dead here, because odds are you just might find yourself rising from the grave. That hasn’t stopped tourists from visiting to check out the unusual phenomena that hangs around our town like radioactive fallout. Interdimensional parasites feeding on human hosts, paranormal cults worshipping demonic entities, vengeful teenage sorcerers, we’ve got it all.

Did I mention the possessed toy? It’s a plastic football-sized egg that’s supposed to hatch an adorable, colorful stuffed bird when a child “feeds� it through a synchronized smartphone app. What’s actually inside is an otherworldly monstrosity that’s enticing impressionable wayward youth into murdering folks and depositing their body parts inside the egg as if it’s a hungry piggy bank to trigger the end of the world.

That’s where Dave, John, and Amy come in. They face supernatural threats so the rest of us don’t have to—and sometimes even earn a couple of bucks to so do. But between the bloody ritual sacrifices and soul-crushing nightmares, our trio realizes this apocalypse is way above their pay grade.]]> 432 Jason Pargin 1250195829 JFW 0 to-read 4.44 2022 If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (John Dies at the End, #4)
author: Jason Pargin
name: JFW
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon]]> 52152 - The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism
- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index
- Introductory essay by Harold Bloom]]> 261 Harold Bloom 079107580X JFW 0 to-read 4.33 1940 Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon
author: Harold Bloom
name: JFW
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1940
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Time Traders (Time Traders/Ross Murdock, #1-2)]]> 915340
DRAFTED INTO THE ARMY OF TIME

Intelligence agents have uncovered something which seems beyond belief, but the evidence is incontrovertible: the USAs greatest adversary on the world stage is sending its agents back through time! And someone or something unknown to our history is presenting them with technologies -- and weapons -- far beyond our most advanced science. We have only one option: create time-transfer technology ourselves, find the opposition's ancient source...and take it dawn.

When small-time criminal Ross Murdock and Apache rancher Travis Fox stumble separately onto America's secret time travel project, Operation Retrograde, they are faced with a challenge greater than either could have imagined possible. Their mere presence means that they know too much to go free. But Murdock and Fox have a thirst for adventure, and Operation Retrograde offers that in spades.

Both men will become time agents, finding reserves of inner heroism they had never expected. Their journeys will take the battle to the enemy, from ancient Britain to prehistoric America, and finally to the farthest reaches of interstellar space...

]]> 438 Andre Norton 0671318292 JFW 0 to-read 3.50 2013 Time Traders (Time Traders/Ross Murdock, #1-2)
author: Andre Norton
name: JFW
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Orphan Collector 49244342
Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision. It becomes her sinister mission to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable, planning to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.�

Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. Instead, she is taken to St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum � the first step in a long and arduous journey. As Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost in the months and years that follow, Pia must confront her own shame and fear, risking everything to see justice � and love � triumph at last. Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most.]]> 390 Ellen Marie Wiseman 1496715861 JFW 0 to-read 4.14 2020 The Orphan Collector
author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
name: JFW
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Stories]]> 58085210 432 H.P. Lovecraft 1631498398 JFW 0 to-read 3.60 The Call of Cthulhu: And Other Stories
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: JFW
average rating: 3.60
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Eaters of the Dead 7673 304 Michael Crichton 0060891564 JFW 0 to-read 3.70 1976 Eaters of the Dead
author: Michael Crichton
name: JFW
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Daughters' War (Blacktongue, #0)]]> 195790571
The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men.

They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and still they wage war.

Now, our daughters take up arms.

Galva � Galvicha to her three brothers, two of whom the goblins will kill � has defied her family’s wishes and joined the army’s untested new unit, the Raven Knights. They march toward a once-beautiful city overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.

The road to victory is bloody, and goblins are clever and merciless. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted � not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side. But some hopes are worth any risk.]]> 416 Christopher Buehlman 1250887674 JFW 0 to-read 4.23 2024 The Daughters' War (Blacktongue, #0)
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: JFW
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> Counterweight 62979704
On the fictional island of Patusan—and much to the ire of the Patusan natives—the Korean conglomerate LK is constructing an elevator into Earth’s orbit, gradually turning this one-time tropical resort town into a teeming travel hub: a gateway to and from our planet. Up in space, holding the elevator’s “spider cable� taut, is a mass of space junk known as the Counterweight. And it’s here that lies the key—a trove of personal data left by LK’s former CEO, of dire consequence to the company's, and humanity's, future.

Racing up the elevator to retrieve the data is a host of rival forces: Mac, the novel’s narrator and LK’s Chief of External Affairs, increasingly disillusioned with his employer; the everyman Choi Gangwu, unwittingly at the center of Mac’s investigations; the former CEO’s brilliant niece and his power-hungry son; and a violent officer from LK’s Security Division, Rex Tamaki—all caught in a labyrinth of fake identities, neuro-implant “Worms,� and old political grievances held by the Patusan Liberation Front, the army of island natives determined to protect their sovereignty.

Conceived by Djuna as a low-budget science fiction film, with literary references as wide-ranging as Joseph Conrad and the Marquis de Sade, The Counterweight is part cyberpunk, part hardboiled detective fiction, and part parable of Korea’s neocolonial ambition and its rippling effects.]]> 176 Djuna 0593317211 JFW 0 to-read 3.02 2021 Counterweight
author: Djuna
name: JFW
average rating: 3.02
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Devil Takes You Home 58978299
Buried in debt due to his young daughter’s illness, his marriage at the brink, Mario reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, surprising himself with his proclivity for violence. After tragedy destroys the life he knew, Mario agrees to one final job: hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. Along with an old friend and a cartel-insider named Juanca, Mario sets off on the near-suicidal mission, which will leave him with either a cool $200,000 or a bullet in the skull. But the path to reward or ruin is never as straight as it seems. As the three complicated men travel through the endless landscape of Texas, across the border and back, their hidden motivations are laid bare alongside nightmarish encounters that defy explanation. One thing is certain: even if Mario makes it out alive, he won’t return the same.

The Devil Takes You Home is a panoramic odyssey for fans of S.A. Cosby’s southern noir, Blacktop Wasteland, by way of the boundary-defying storytelling of Stephen Graham Jones and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: NPR, Harper's Bazaar, Chicago Tribune, Vulture, Oprah Daily, CrimeReads, The Millions, and many more!

An Edgar Award Finalist � A Bram Stoker Award Winner � A Shirley Jackson Award Winner � A Book of the Month Club Pick � An August Indie Next List Selection � An ABA Indie Bestseller]]> 320 Gabino Iglesias 0316426911 JFW 0 to-read 3.65 2022 The Devil Takes You Home
author: Gabino Iglesias
name: JFW
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> Ascension 61813107
An enormous snow-covered mountain has appeared in the Pacific Ocean. No one knows when exactly it showed up, precisely how big it might be, or how to explain its existence. When Harold Tunmore, a scientist of mysterious phenomena, is contacted by a shadowy organization to help investigate, he has no idea what he is getting into as he and his team set out for the mountain.

The higher Harold’s team ascends, the less things make sense. Time moves differently, turning minutes into hours, and hours into days. Amid the whipping cold of higher elevation, the climbers� limbs numb and memories of their lives before the mountain begin to fade. Paranoia quickly turns to violence among the crew, and slithering, ancient creatures pursue them in the snow. Still, as the dangers increase, the mystery of the mountain compels them to its peak, where they are certain they will find their answers. Have they stumbled upon the greatest scientific discovery known to man or the seeds of their own demise?

Framed by the discovery of Harold Tunmore’s unsent letters to his family and the chilling and provocative story they tell, Ascension considers the limitations of science and faith and examines both the beautiful and the unsettling sides of human nature.]]> 344 Nicholas Binge 0593539583 JFW 0 to-read 3.53 2023 Ascension
author: Nicholas Binge
name: JFW
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/17
shelves: to-read
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]]>