Piret's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 06 Apr 2025 00:16:45 -0700 60 Piret's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Simple Wild (Wild, #1) 36373564 City girl Calla Fletcher attempts to reconnect with her estranged father, and unwittingly finds herself torn between her desire to return to the bustle of Toronto and a budding relationship with a rugged Alaskan pilot in this masterful new romance from acclaimed author K.A. Tucker.

Calla Fletcher was two when her mother took her and fled the Alaskan wild, unable to handle the isolation of the extreme, rural lifestyle, leaving behind Calla’s father, Wren Fletcher, in the process. Calla never looked back, and at twenty-six, a busy life in Toronto is all she knows. But when her father reaches out to inform her that his days are numbered, Calla knows that it’s time to make the long trip back to the remote frontier town where she was born.

She braves the roaming wildlife, the odd daylight hours, the exorbitant prices, and even the occasional—dear God—outhouse, all for the chance to connect with her father: a man who, despite his many faults, she can’t help but care for. While she struggles to adjust to this new subarctic environment, Jonah—the quiet, brooding, and proud Alaskan pilot who keeps her father’s charter plane company operational—can’t imagine calling anywhere else home. And he’s clearly waiting with one hand on the throttle to fly this city girl back to where she belongs, convinced that she’s too pampered to handle the wild.

Jonah is probably right, but Calla is determined to prove him wrong. As time passes, she unexpectedly finds herself forming a bond with the burly pilot. As his undercurrent of disapproval dwindles, it’s replaced by friendship—or perhaps something deeper? But Calla is not in Alaska to stay and Jonah will never leave. It would be foolish of her to kindle a romance, to take the same path her parents tried—and failed at—years ago.

It’s a simple truth that turns out to be not so simple after all.]]>
390 K.A. Tucker 1501133438 Piret 0 currently-reading 4.27 2018 The Simple Wild (Wild, #1)
author: K.A. Tucker
name: Piret
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/06
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Anna Karenina 15823480 Anna Karenina provides a vast panorama of contemporary life in Russia and of humanity in general. In it Tolstoy uses his intense imaginative insight to create some of the most memorable characters in all of literature. Anna is a sophisticated woman who abandons her empty existence as the wife of Karenin and turns to Count Vronsky to fulfil her passionate nature - with tragic consequences. Levin is a reflection of Tolstoy himself, often expressing the author's own views and convictions.

Throughout, Tolstoy points no moral, merely inviting us not to judge but to watch. As Rosemary Edmonds comments, 'He leaves the shifting patterns of the kaleidoscope to bring home the meaning of the brooding words following the title, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will repay.]]>
964 Leo Tolstoy 0345803922 Piret 4 4.11 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Piret
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
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The Nightingale 21853621 In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France
but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets GaĂ«tan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can
completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.]]>
564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Piret 2 4.63 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Piret
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
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<![CDATA[The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)]]> 1232 487 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn Piret 0 to-read 4.26 2001 The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Piret
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/25
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<![CDATA[A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)]]> 50659467
At least, he’s not a beast all the time.

As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.

From bestselling author Sarah J. Maas comes a seductive, breathtaking book that blends romance, adventure, and faerie lore into an unforgettable read.]]>
419 Sarah J. Maas 1635575567 Piret 3 4.16 2015 A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Piret
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
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The Dutch House 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]>
337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Piret 4 4.08 2019 The Dutch House
author: Ann Patchett
name: Piret
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
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The Netanyahus 55817233 240 Joshua Cohen 1913097609 Piret 2 3.81 2021 The Netanyahus
author: Joshua Cohen
name: Piret
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
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A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]>
720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Piret 2 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Piret
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
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Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Piret 4 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Piret
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 4
read at: 2021/06/05
date added: 2024/11/27
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Faust 406373 Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.]]> 503 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 0385031149 Piret 2 3.90 1808 Faust
author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
name: Piret
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1808
rating: 2
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Everything I Know About Love 46041465
When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and—above all elseâ€� realizing that you are enough.

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age—making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jonesâ€� Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.]]>
368 Dolly Alderton 0062968785 Piret 3 3.98 2018 Everything I Know About Love
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Piret
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/01
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A Prayer for Owen Meany 4473 637 John Irving 0552135399 Piret 3 4.24 1989 A Prayer for Owen Meany
author: John Irving
name: Piret
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/20
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<![CDATA[Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II]]> 273197 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction, finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Embracing Defeat is John W. Dower's brilliant examination of Japan in the immediate, shattering aftermath of World War II.

Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes and fears of men and women in every walk of life. Already regarded as the benchmark in its field, Embracing Defeat is a work of colossal scholarship and history of the very first order.]]>
676 John W. Dower 0393320278 Piret 0 currently-reading 4.14 1999 Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
author: John W. Dower
name: Piret
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/26
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<![CDATA[My Year of Rest and Relaxation]]> 36552920
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]>
289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522115 Piret 3 3.57 2018 My Year of Rest and Relaxation
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Piret
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/30
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Kafka on the Shore 4929 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 467 Haruki Murakami 1400079276 Piret 3 4.14 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Piret
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2002
rating: 3
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<![CDATA[The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II]]> 95784
This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved many.]]>
290 Iris Chang 0140277447 Piret 0 to-read 4.23 1997 The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
author: Iris Chang
name: Piret
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/19
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<![CDATA[My Hygge Home: How to Make Home Your Happy Place]]> 60013115 The author of the New York Times bestseller The Little Book of Hygge, helps you turn your home into your happy, cozy safe place.

The urge to nest and control our close environments has never been stronger. We spend more time in our homes than anywhere else—but the way in which our homes impact how we feel has remained relatively unexplored until now.

Backed with Danish design principles, years of research, case studies and a sprinkle of hygge, Meik Wiking has created the ultimate guide to turning your home, office, or wherever you may be, into your happy place.

The Hygge Home will teach us all how to create a much-needed cozy safe space in our homes into which we can retreat to escape the tough things going on in the outside world. Meik will explore the size of our spaces, the way we decorate our homes, the amount of natural light coming in, how much access to green space we have and how we can extend these design principles from inside our homes to our neighbourhoods and beyond.

Meik is guaranteed to help you create a home and safe space where you can both live and thrive.]]>
272 Meik Wiking 0735243166 Piret 0 to-read 3.99 2022 My Hygge Home: How to Make Home Your Happy Place
author: Meik Wiking
name: Piret
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/16
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Never Let Me Go 6334
Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.]]>
288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Piret 0 to-read 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Piret
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/05
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War Trash 14729 368 Ha Jin 1400075793 Piret 4 3.81 2004 War Trash
author: Ha Jin
name: Piret
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2024/07/22
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<![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]>
401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Piret 2 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Piret
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/06/23
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The Friend 40164365
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog's care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.]]>
212 Sigrid Nunez 0735219451 Piret 0 to-read 3.73 2018 The Friend
author: Sigrid Nunez
name: Piret
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/31
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The Book of Goose 59808607 A gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End.

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, AgnĂšs, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised--the place that Fabienne helped AgnĂšs escape ten years ago. Now, AgnĂšs is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves--until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching AgnĂšs on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to to the quiet Pennsylvania home where AgnĂšs can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.]]>
348 Yiyun Li 037460634X Piret 0 to-read 3.67 2022 The Book of Goose
author: Yiyun Li
name: Piret
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/31
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Rules of Civility 10054335 335 Amor Towles Piret 3 4.06 2011 Rules of Civility
author: Amor Towles
name: Piret
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/18
date added: 2024/05/18
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Vanaema 201635530
Keset kriminaaluurijate, töökaaslaste ja isegi pereliikmete ohvrit sĂŒĂŒdistavaid hoiakuid kujuneb Tiina tugiisikuks hoopis tema raamatukoguhoidjast vanaema, kes tĂ€nu oma aastakĂŒmneid kestnud abielule teab varjatud vĂ€givallast rohkem kui keegi teine. Nende kahe naise teineteist toetav teekond lĂ€bi traumajĂ€rgsete katsumuste, lagunevate lĂ€hisuhete ning kahtlase vÀÀrtusega psĂŒhhoteraapia viib aga ĂŒhel hetkel ka karistamatustunnet nautivate kurjategijate jaoks pöördumatute tagajĂ€rgedeni.

Andekate illustratsioonidega vĂŒrtsitatud „Vanaemaâ€� on kaasaegse Eesti proosa tĂ€htteos, mis vÀÀrib kohta iga kodu raamaturiiulil. Menukirjanik Sass Henno on mitmeid kĂ”rgeid tunnustusi pĂ€lvinud romaanide „Elu algab tĂ€naâ€� (2002), „Mina olin siin. Esimene arestâ€� (2005) ja „Mina olin siin 2. Tagasitulekâ€� (2022) autor. Ta on ka sotsiaalmeediavĂ”rgustiku „Mehed vĂ€givalla vastuâ€� rajaja, Sensoa lipusĂŒsteemi koolitaja ning seksuaalkuritegude alase teadlikkuse tĂ”stmiseks ellu kutsutud mittetulundusĂŒhingu Julge RÀÀkida asutaja.]]>
265 Sass Henno 9916995702 Piret 2 4.50 Vanaema
author: Sass Henno
name: Piret
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/25
date added: 2024/05/18
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Writers & Lovers 45289222 Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.

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

Writers & Lovers follows Casey--a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist--in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King's trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.]]>
320 Lily King Piret 0 to-read 3.98 2020 Writers & Lovers
author: Lily King
name: Piret
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/07
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The Underground Railroad 30555488
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey--hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.]]>
320 Colson Whitehead 0385542364 Piret 3 4.04 2016 The Underground Railroad
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Piret
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/06
date added: 2024/05/06
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The Glass Castle 7445 THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.]]>
288 Jeannette Walls 074324754X Piret 0 to-read 4.32 2005 The Glass Castle
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Piret
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/04
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<![CDATA[Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family]]> 50088631 The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins—aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.]]>
377 Robert Kolker 038554376X Piret 0 to-read 4.13 2020 Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
author: Robert Kolker
name: Piret
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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Yellowface 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]>
319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Piret 3 3.69 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Piret
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/22
date added: 2024/04/22
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Wrong Place Wrong Time 58504013 New York Times bestselling author Gillian McAllister has created a thriller unlike any other in this endlessly clever, twisty story of a mother who must move backward through time to prevent tragedy from striking at the heart of her family.

Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened?

It is midnight on the morning of Halloween, and Jen anxiously waits up for her 18-year-old son, Todd, to return home. But worries about his broken curfew transform into something much more dangerous when Todd finally emerges from the darkness. As Jen watches through the window, she sees her funny, seemingly happy teenage son stab a total stranger.

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

After her son is taken into custody, Jen falls asleep in despair. But when she wakes up
it is yesterday. The murder has not happened yet—and there may be a chance to stop it. Each morning, when Jen wakes, she is further back in the past, first weeks, then years, before the murder. And Jen realizes that somewhere in the past lies the trigger for Todd’s terrible crime
and it is her mission to find it, and prevent it from taking place.

Both the story of a mother’s love and the sacrifices she will make for her child, and a thriller with a brilliant twist, Wrong Place Wrong Time is a one-of-a-kind novel that begs to be read in one sitting.]]>
374 Gillian McAllister 0241520940 Piret 2 4.19 2022 Wrong Place Wrong Time
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Piret
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/04/12
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A Visit from the Goon Squad 7331435
We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist’s couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Later, we learn the genesis of her turmoil when we see her as the child of a violent marriage, then as a runaway living in Naples, then as a college student trying to avert the suicidal impulses of her best friend. We plunge into the hidden yearnings and disappointments of her uncle, an art historian stuck in a dead marriage, who travels to Naples to extract Sasha from the city’s demimonde and experiences an epiphany of his own while staring at a sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Museo Nazionale. We meet Bennie Salazar at the melancholy nadir of his adult life—divorced, struggling to connect with his nine-year-old son, listening to a washed-up band in the basement of a suburban house—and then revisit him in 1979, at the height of his youth, shy and tender, reveling in San Francisco’s punk scene as he discovers his ardor for rock and roll and his gift for spotting talent. We learn what became of his high school gang—who thrived and who faltered—and we encounter Lou Kline, Bennie’s catastrophically careless mentor, along with the lovers and children left behind in the wake of Lou’s far-flung sexual conquests and meteoric rise and fall.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. In a breathtaking array of styles and tones ranging from tragedy to satire to PowerPoint, Egan captures the undertow of self-destruction that we all must either master or succumb to; the basic human hunger for redemption; and the universal tendency to reach for both—and escape the merciless progress of time—in the transporting realms of art and music. Sly, startling, exhilarating work from one of our boldest writers.]]>
274 Jennifer Egan 0307592839 Piret 3 3.70 2010 A Visit from the Goon Squad
author: Jennifer Egan
name: Piret
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/25
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The Whisper Man 51540935
But the town has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed "The Whisper Man," for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night.

Just as Tom and Jake settle into their new home, a young boy vanishes. His disappearance bears an unnerving resemblance to Frank Carter's crimes, reigniting old rumors that he preyed with an accomplice. Now, detectives Amanda Beck and Pete Willis must find the boy before it is too late, even if that means Pete has to revisit his great foe in prison: The Whisper Man.

And then Jake begins acting strangely. He hears a whispering at his window...]]>
384 Alex North 1250318009 Piret 3 3.98 2019 The Whisper Man
author: Alex North
name: Piret
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/16
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Blindness 40495148 From Nobel Prize–winning author JosĂ© Saramago, a magnificent, mesmerizing parable of loss

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations, and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides her charges—among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, and their procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that's bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength.]]>
349 José Saramago Piret 0 to-read 4.17 1995 Blindness
author: José Saramago
name: Piret
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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Small Mercies 61812308 The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River —an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston’s history.

In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,â€� the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart.

One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business.

Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.]]>
303 Dennis Lehane 0062129481 Piret 0 to-read 4.22 2023 Small Mercies
author: Dennis Lehane
name: Piret
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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Jacob the Liar 3939868 256 Jurek Becker 0452279038 Piret 2 3.79 1969 Jacob the Liar
author: Jurek Becker
name: Piret
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1969
rating: 2
read at: 2024/03/06
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The House of Mirth 17728 The House of Mirth shocked the New York society it so deftly chronicles, portraying the moral, social and economic restraints on a woman who dared to claim the privileges of marriage without assuming the responsibilities.

Lily Bart, beautiful, witty and sophisticated, is accepted by 'old money' and courted by the growing tribe of nouveaux riches. But as she nears thirty, her foothold becomes precarious; a poor girl with expensive tastes, she needs a husband to preserve her social standing, and to maintain her in the luxury she has come to expect. Whilst many have sought her, something—fastidiousness or integrity—prevents her from making a 'suitable' match.]]>
351 Edith Wharton 1844082938 Piret 3 3.97 1905 The House of Mirth
author: Edith Wharton
name: Piret
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1905
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/07
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The Sound and the Fury 10975 366 William Faulkner Piret 0 to-read 3.86 1929 The Sound and the Fury
author: William Faulkner
name: Piret
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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The Red and the Black 14662 The Red and the Black is a lively, satirical portrayal of French society after Waterloo, riddled with corruption, greed, and ennui, and Julien - the cold exploiter whose Machiavellian campaign is undercut by his own emotions - is one of the most intriguing characters in European literature.

Roger Gard's fine translation remains faithful to the natural, conversational tone of the original, while his introduction elucidates the complexities of Julien's character. This edition also contains a chronology, further reading and an appendix on Stendhal's use of epigraphs.]]>
577 Stendhal 0140447644 Piret 0 to-read 3.91 1830 The Red and the Black
author: Stendhal
name: Piret
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1830
rating: 0
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Sentimental Education 2183 460 Gustave Flaubert 0140447970 Piret 0 3.86 1869 Sentimental Education
author: Gustave Flaubert
name: Piret
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1869
rating: 0
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The Age of Innocence 53835 The Age of Innocence is Edith Wharton’s masterful portrait of desire and betrayal during the sumptuous Golden Age of Old New York, a time when society people “dreaded scandal more than disease.â€�

This is Newland Archer’s world as he prepares to marry the beautiful but conventional May Welland. But when the mysterious Countess Ellen Olenska returns to New York after a disastrous marriage, Archer falls deeply in love with her. Torn between duty and passion, Archer struggles to make a decision that will either courageously define his life—or mercilessly destroy it.]]>
293 Edith Wharton 159308143X Piret 0 3.96 1920 The Age of Innocence
author: Edith Wharton
name: Piret
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1920
rating: 0
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The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]>
771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Piret 4 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Piret
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/23
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<![CDATA[Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1)]]> 6294 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl's castle. To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there's far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye.]]>
329 Diana Wynne Jones 006441034X Piret 0 to-read 4.30 1986 Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle, #1)
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Piret
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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Norwegian Wood 11297
A magnificent blending of the music, the mood, and the ethos that was the sixties with the story of one college student's romantic coming of age, Norwegian Wood brilliantly recaptures a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]>
296 Haruki Murakami 0375704027 Piret 0 to-read 4.01 1987 Norwegian Wood
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Piret
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]>
273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Piret 0 to-read 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: Piret
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/12
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The Secret History 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Piret 0 to-read 4.17 1992 The Secret History
author: Donna Tartt
name: Piret
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Tattooist of Auschwitz (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #1)]]> 38359036 °ŐĂ€łÙŽÇ·ÉŸ±±đ°ù±đ°ù (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.

Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.

One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.

A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.]]>
272 Heather Morris 006287067X Piret 0 to-read 4.32 2018 The Tattooist of Auschwitz (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #1)
author: Heather Morris
name: Piret
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/08
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<![CDATA[It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)]]> 55659629
Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face.

Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart. 

Tessa Bailey is back with a Schitt’s Creek-inspired rom-com about a Hollywood “It Girlâ€� who is cut off from her wealthy family and exiled to a small Pacific Northwest beach town... where she butts heads with a surly, sexy local who thinks she doesn’t belong. ]]>
397 Tessa Bailey 0063045656 Piret 1 3.91 2021 It Happened One Summer (Bellinger Sisters, #1)
author: Tessa Bailey
name: Piret
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2021
rating: 1
read at: 2024/01/08
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<![CDATA[The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)]]> 23168277
The Sympathizer is the story of this captain: a man brought up by an absent French father and a poor Vietnamese mother, a man who went to university in America, but returned to Vietnam to fight for the Communist cause. A gripping spy novel, an astute exploration of extreme politics, and a moving love story, The Sympathizer explores a life between two worlds and examines the legacy of the Vietnam War in literature, film, and the wars we fight today.]]>
371 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802123457 Piret 4 4.00 2015 The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer, #1)
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: Piret
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/29
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The Beekeeper of Aleppo 43124137 The unforgettable love story of a mother blinded by loss and her husband who insists on their survival as they undertake the Syrian refugee trail to Europe.

Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. On the way, Nuri is sustained by the knowledge that waiting for them is Mustafa, his cousin and business partner, who has started an apiary and is teaching fellow refugees in Yorkshire to keep bees.

As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss, but dangers that would overwhelm the bravest of souls. Above all, they must journey to find each other again.

Moving, powerful, compassionate, and beautifully written, The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit. It is the kind of book that reminds us of the power of storytelling.]]>
317 Christy Lefteri 1984821210 Piret 0 to-read 4.14 2019 The Beekeeper of Aleppo
author: Christy Lefteri
name: Piret
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/21
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The Silent Patient 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

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

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]>
336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Piret 2 4.18 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Piret
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2023/12/04
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<![CDATA[Metropolis (Bernie Gunther, #14)]]> 39801556 Berlin, 1928, the dying days of the Weimar Republic shortly before Hitler and the Nazis came to power. It was a period of decadence and excess as Berliners - after the terrible slaughter of WWI and the hardships that followed - are enjoying their own version of Babylon. Bernie is a young detective working in Vice when he gets a summons from Bernard Weiss, Chief of Berlin's Criminal Police. He invites Bernie to join KIA - Criminal Inspection A - the supervisory body for all homicide investigation in Kripo. Bernie's first task is to investigate the Silesian Station killings - four prostitutes murdered in as many weeks. All of them have been hit over the head with a hammer and then scalped with a sharp knife.

Bernie hardly has time to acquaint himself with the case files before another prostitute is murdered. Until now, no one has shown much interest in these victims - there are plenty in Berlin who'd like the streets washed clean of such degenerates. But this time the girl's father runs Berlin's foremost criminal ring, and he's prepared to go to extreme lengths to find his daughter's killer.

Then a second series of murders begins - of crippled wartime veterans who beg in the city's streets. It seems that someone is determined to clean up Berlin of anyone less than perfect. The voice of Nazism is becoming a roar that threatens to drown out all others. But not Bernie Gunther's ...

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392 Philip Kerr 1787473201 Piret 2 3.99 2019 Metropolis (Bernie Gunther, #14)
author: Philip Kerr
name: Piret
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2023/11/24
date added: 2023/11/24
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All the King's Men 5527 All the King's Men is a 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty". The novel tells the story of charismatic populist governor Willie Stark and his political machinations in the Depression-era Deep South. It is commonly thought to have been loosely inspired by the real-life story of U.S. Senator Huey P. Long, who was assassinated in 1935. Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men in 1947. The novel has received critical acclaim and remained perennially popular since its first publication. It was rated the 36th greatest novel of the 20th century by Modern Library, and it was chosen as one of Time magazine's 100 best novels since 1923. All the King's Men portrays the dramatic and theatrical political rise and governorship of Willie Stark, a cynical populist in the 1930s American South.]]> 439 Robert Penn Warren Piret 0 to-read 4.08 1946 All the King's Men
author: Robert Penn Warren
name: Piret
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1946
rating: 0
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And the Mountains Echoed 21911811 448 Khaled Hosseini 0606356797 Piret 4 4.17 2012 And the Mountains Echoed
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Piret
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/06
date added: 2023/11/06
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<![CDATA[The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1)]]> 60556912
Every day I clean the Winchesters� beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

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

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

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

They don’t know what I’m capable ofâ€�

An unbelievably twisty read that will have you glued to the pages late into the night. Anyone who loves The Woman in the Window, The Wife Between Us and The Girl on the Train won’t be able to put this down!]]>
329 Freida McFadden 1803144378 Piret 0 to-read 4.31 2022 The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1)
author: Freida McFadden
name: Piret
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/21
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Beach Read 52867387 A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.]]>
400 Emily Henry 1984806734 Piret 2 3.99 2020 Beach Read
author: Emily Henry
name: Piret
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 2
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Lady Chatterley's Lover 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]>
400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X Piret 3 3.48 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Piret
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 3
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 14891 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a poignant and moving tale filled with compassion and cruelty, laughter and heartache, crowded with life and people and incident. The story of young, sensitive, and idealistic Francie Nolan and her bittersweet formative years in the slums of Williamsburg has enchanted and inspired millions of readers for more than sixty years. By turns overwhelming, sublime, heartbreaking, and uplifting, the daily experiences of the unforgettable Nolans are raw with honesty and tenderly threaded with family connectedness -- in a work of literary art that brilliantly captures a unique time and place as well as incredibly rich moments of universal experience.]]> 496 Betty Smith 0061120073 Piret 4 4.29 1943 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
author: Betty Smith
name: Piret
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1943
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/11
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Book Lovers 58690308 One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

Nora Stephensâ€� life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sistersâ€� trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.]]>
377 Emily Henry 0593334833 Piret 3 4.09 2022 Book Lovers
author: Emily Henry
name: Piret
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/06
date added: 2023/10/06
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The Wings of the Dove 124272 The Wings of the Dove is the story of Milly Theale, a naĂŻve, doomed American heiress, and a pair of lovers, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, who conspire to obtain her fortune. In this witty tragedy of treachery, self-deception, and betrayal, Henry James weaves together three ill-fated and wholly human destinies unexpectedly linked by desire, greed, and salvation. As Amy Bloom writes in her Introduction, â€�The Wings of the Dove is a novel of intimacy. . . . [James] gives us passion, he gives us love in its terrible and enchanting forms.”]]> 741 Henry James 0812967194 Piret 0 to-read 3.81 1902 The Wings of the Dove
author: Henry James
name: Piret
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1902
rating: 0
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The Nickel Boys 42270835 Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida.

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.]]>
213 Colson Whitehead Piret 0 to-read 4.25 2019 The Nickel Boys
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Piret
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]>
402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Piret 0 to-read 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Piret
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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The Art of War 10534 170 Sun Tzu Piret 0 to-read 3.98 -400 The Art of War
author: Sun Tzu
name: Piret
average rating: 3.98
book published: -400
rating: 0
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Then She Was Gone 35297426 She was fifteen, her mother's golden girl. She had her whole life ahead of her. And then, in the blink of an eye, Ellie was gone.

NOW
It’s been ten years since Ellie disappeared, but Laurel has never given up hope of finding her daughter.

And then one day a charming and charismatic stranger called Floyd walks into a café and sweeps Laurel off her feet.

Before too long she’s staying the night at this house and being introduced to his nine year old daughter.

Poppy is precocious and pretty - and meeting her completely takes Laurel's breath away.

Because Poppy is the spitting image of Ellie when she was that age. And now all those unanswered questions that have haunted Laurel come flooding back.

What happened to Ellie? Where did she go?

Who still has secrets to hide?]]>
359 Lisa Jewell 1501154648 Piret 3 4.02 2017 Then She Was Gone
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Piret
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/29
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All the Light We Cannot See 21471499
Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is 12, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

©2014 Anthony Doerr (P)2014 Simon & Schuster Audio]]>
16 Anthony Doerr 1442375426 Piret 3 4.21 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Piret
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/20
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Strangers on a Train 25622296
Just in time for the centennial celebration of groundbreaking noir fiction writer Patricia Highsmith comes a reissue of her propulsive, engrossing debut, Strangers on a Train, with a new introduction by best-selling author Paula Hawkins. Guy Haines and Charles Anthony Bruno are passengers on the same train. Haines is a successful architect in the midst of a divorce, Bruno a mysterious smooth-talker with a sadistic proposal: he’ll murder Haines’s wife if Haines will murder Bruno’s father. As Bruno carries out his twisted plan, Guy finds himself trapped in Highsmith’s perilous world, where, under the right circumstances, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary crimes. The inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1951 film, Strangers on a Train launched Highsmith’s prolific career, proving her a master at depicting the unsettling forces that tremble beneath the surface of everyday life.]]>
273 Patricia Highsmith 0393351939 Piret 2 3.67 1950 Strangers on a Train
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Piret
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1950
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/24
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<![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 59792552
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the â€�80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]>
389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1398515698 Piret 3 4.46 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Piret
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/06
date added: 2023/07/06
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The Giver (The Giver, #1) 3636 208 Lois Lowry 0385732554 Piret 3 4.12 1993 The Giver (The Giver, #1)
author: Lois Lowry
name: Piret
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/15
date added: 2023/06/15
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The Thorn Birds 22441206
The central figures in this enthralling story are the indomitable Meggie, the only Cleary daughter, and the one man she truly loves, the stunningly handsome and ambitious priest Ralph de Bricassart. Ralph's course moves him a long way indeed, from a remote Outback parish to the halls of the Vatican; and Meggie's except for a brief and miserable marriage elsewhere, is fixed to the Drogheda that is part of her bones - but distance does not dim their feelings though it shapes their lives.

Wonderful characters people this book; strong and gentle, Paddy, hiding a private memory; dutiful Fiona, holding back love because it once betrayed her, violent, tormented Frank, and the other hardworking Cleary sons who give the boundless lands of Drogheda the energy and devotion most men save for women; Meggie; Ralph; and Meggie's children, Justine and Dane. And the land itself; stark, relentless in its demands, brilliant in its flowering, prey to gigantic cycles of drought and flood, rich when nature is bountiful, surreal like no other place on earth.

(First Edition Jacket)]]>
Colleen McCullough Piret 2 4.30 1977 The Thorn Birds
author: Colleen McCullough
name: Piret
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1977
rating: 2
read at: 2023/06/09
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A Gentleman in Moscow 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]>
462 Amor Towles Piret 3 4.28 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Piret
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/22
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We Need to Talk About Kevin 80660 The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother - and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

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400 Lionel Shriver 006112429X Piret 0 to-read 4.07 2003 We Need to Talk About Kevin
author: Lionel Shriver
name: Piret
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/10
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The Outsiders 231804 The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.

Librarian note: This record is for one of the three editions published with different covers and with ISBN 0-140-38572-X / 978-0-14-038572-4. The records are for the 1988 cover (this record), the 1995 cover, and the 2008 cover which is also the current in-print cover.]]>
208 S.E. Hinton 0670532576 Piret 3 4.13 1967 The Outsiders
author: S.E. Hinton
name: Piret
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/06
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The Salt Path 38085814
They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.

The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.]]>
288 Raynor Winn 0241349648 Piret 0 to-read 3.97 2018 The Salt Path
author: Raynor Winn
name: Piret
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/03
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<![CDATA[The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum]]> 69880 The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum has taken on heightened relevance.

A young woman's association with a hunted man makes her the target of a journalist determined to grab the headlines by portraying her as an evil woman. As the attacks on her escalate and she becomes the victim of anonymous threats, Katharina sees only one way out of her nightmare.

Turning the mystery genre on its head, the novel begins with the confession of a crime, drawing the reader into a web of sensationalism, character assassination, and the unavoidable eruption of violence.]]>
140 Heinrich Böll 0140187286 Piret 0 to-read 3.75 1974 The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum
author: Heinrich Böll
name: Piret
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1974
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/17
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Rebecca 17899948 Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again...

The novel begins in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady's maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realizes how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives--presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave.

First published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century.]]>
449 Daphne du Maurier 0316323705 Piret 3 4.28 1938 Rebecca
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Piret
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1938
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/05
date added: 2023/02/05
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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 337113 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerful depiction of a woman's fight for domestic independence and creative freedom.]]> 576 Anne Brontë 0140434747 Piret 0 to-read 4.00 1848 The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
author: Anne Brontë
name: Piret
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1848
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/28
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And Then There Were None 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]>
264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 Piret 0 to-read 4.28 1939 And Then There Were None
author: Agatha Christie
name: Piret
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 0
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The Princess Bride 21787
As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears.

Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the "Good Parts Version" to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.

What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.

In short, it's about everything.]]>
429 William Goldman 0345418263 Piret 3 4.27 1973 The Princess Bride
author: William Goldman
name: Piret
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1973
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/12
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The Stranger 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Piret 5 4.04 1942 The Stranger
author: Albert Camus
name: Piret
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/11
date added: 2022/12/11
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<![CDATA[The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)]]> 42975172 The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her--freedom, prison or death.

With The Testaments, the wait is over.

Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.

In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades.

"Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in." --Margaret Atwood

An alternate cover edition of ISBN 978-0385543781 can be found here.]]>
422 Margaret Atwood Piret 4 4.16 2019 The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Piret
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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Rich Dad, Poor Dad 69571 195 Robert T. Kiyosaki 0751532711 Piret 2 4.10 1997 Rich Dad, Poor Dad
author: Robert T. Kiyosaki
name: Piret
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1997
rating: 2
read at: 2022/11/16
date added: 2022/11/16
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Where the Crawdads Sing 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]>
384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Piret 2 4.35 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
author: Delia Owens
name: Piret
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/24
date added: 2022/10/24
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The Fall 11991
The Fall (French: La Chute) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. The Fall explores themes of innocence, imprisonment, non-existence, and truth. In a eulogy to Albert Camus, existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described the novel as "perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood" of Camus' books.]]>
147 Albert Camus 0679720227 Piret 2 4.07 1956 The Fall
author: Albert Camus
name: Piret
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1956
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/01
date added: 2022/10/01
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Nana 371456 473 Émile Zola 3746611091 Piret 3 3.87 1880 Nana
author: Émile Zola
name: Piret
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1880
rating: 3
read at: 2022/09/11
date added: 2022/09/11
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<![CDATA[Who Lost Russia?: How the World Entered a New Cold War]]> 30316234
Nothing could be further from the truth. Russia emerged from the 1990s battered and humiliated; the parallels with Weimar Germany are striking. Goaded on by a triumphalist West, a new Russia has emerged, with a large arsenal of upgraded weapons, conventional and nuclear, determined to reassert its national interests in the ‘near abroadâ€� â€� Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine â€� as well as fighting a proxy war in the Middle East. Meanwhile, NATO is executing large-scale maneuvers and stockpiling weaponry close to Russia’s border.

In this provocative new work, Peter Conradi argues that we have consistently failed to understand Russia and its motives and, in doing so, have made a powerful enemy.
]]>
400 Peter Conradi 1786070413 Piret 3 4.22 Who Lost Russia?: How the World Entered a New Cold War
author: Peter Conradi
name: Piret
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/18
date added: 2022/05/18
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<![CDATA[The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story]]> 15654 The Stranger Beside Me defies our expectation that we would surely know if a monster lived among us, worked alongside of us, appeared as one of us. With a slow chill that intensifies with each heart-pounding page, Rule describes her dawning awareness that Ted Bundy, her sensitive coworker on a crisis hotline, was one of the most prolific serial killers in America. He would confess to killing at least thirty-six young women from coast to coast, and was eventually executed for three of those cases. Drawing from their correspondence that endured until shortly before Bundy's death, and striking a seamless balance between her deeply personal perspective and her role as a crime reporter on the hunt for a savage serial killer -- the brilliant and charismatic Bundy, the man she thought she knew -- Rule changed the course of true-crime literature with this unforgettable chronicle.]]> 548 Ann Rule 0451203267 Piret 3 4.13 1980 The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story
author: Ann Rule
name: Piret
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/03
date added: 2022/05/03
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<![CDATA[My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry]]> 23604559 A charming, warmhearted novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller A Man Called Ove.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.]]>
372 Fredrik Backman 1501115065 Piret 3 4.04 2013 My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Piret
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2022/04/02
date added: 2022/04/02
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<![CDATA[Kuidas alustada investeerimisega?]]> 43314771 Sageli ongi investeerimisega alustamisel kĂ”ige suurem probleem hirm teha midagi valesti vĂ”i teadmatus, et kust ĂŒldse alustada â€� seetĂ”ttu kĂ€ibki raamat ĂŒksipulgi lĂ€bi finantsseisu kaardistamise ja korrastamise, hetkel vĂ€ikeinvestoritele kĂ€ttesaadavad investeerimisvĂ”imalused ja olulised punktid oma esimeste investeeringute tegemisel.
Siia raamatusse on autor pannud kirja kÔik selle, mida oleks ise tahtnud investeerimismaailmas esimesi samme astudes teada. Raamatusse jÔudnud harjutused ja nÀpunÀited on lugematu hulga koolituste jooksul ja investorite poolt praktiliselt lÀbi katsetatud ja aitavad ka pÀriselt edukalt esimesi samme investeerimismaailmas astuda.]]>
144 Kristi Saare 9949888778 Piret 2 4.13 Kuidas alustada investeerimisega?
author: Kristi Saare
name: Piret
average rating: 4.13
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2022/02/06
date added: 2022/02/06
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<![CDATA[Alustava investori kÀsiraamat: TÀiesti algusest reaalsete tehinguteni]]> 44793062
Raamatust saad teada:
� Mis on investeerimine ning kas ja miks peaksid seda tegema.
� Millised on sinu finantseesmÀrgid ja -unistused ning mida peaksid nende saavutamiseks tegema.
� Kuidas oma sissetulekust investeerimiseks edukalt raha leida.
� Investeerimise pÔhitÔdede, erinevate varaklasside ja investeerimisvÔimaluste kohta.
� Millised kolm investeerimismeetodi on alustava investori jaoks kÔige lihtsamad ja kuidas neid samm-sammult rakendada.]]>
184 Taavi Pertman 9949889464 Piret 3 4.11 Alustava investori kÀsiraamat: TÀiesti algusest reaalsete tehinguteni
author: Taavi Pertman
name: Piret
average rating: 4.11
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/22
date added: 2022/01/22
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Northanger Abbey 50398 Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austen's "Gothic parody." Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist.

The story's unlikely heroine is Catherine Morland, a remarkably innocent seventeen-year-old woman from a country parsonage. While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henry's mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Catherine finds dreadful portents in the most prosaic events, until Henry persuades her to see the peril in confusing life with art.

Executed with high-spirited gusto, Northanger Abbey is a lighthearted, yet unsentimental commentary on love and marriage.]]>
260 Jane Austen 1593082649 Piret 3 3.85 1817 Northanger Abbey
author: Jane Austen
name: Piret
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1817
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/05
date added: 2022/01/05
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Persuasion 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Piret 0 to-read 4.15 1817 Persuasion
author: Jane Austen
name: Piret
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/12/11
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[KĂŒpsiseparadiis ehk kaksteist kuud]]> 6736310 360 Kerttu Rakke 9985944631 Piret 2 3.11 2007 KĂŒpsiseparadiis ehk kaksteist kuud
author: Kerttu Rakke
name: Piret
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2021/12/01
date added: 2021/12/01
shelves:
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±áĂ€ČúŸ± 41882774
Tema lugu nĂ€itab piltlikult, kuidas hĂ€bi kultiveerimine kasvatusvahendina on lapse suhtes kuritegelik. Loo lĂ”pp on vĂ”etud tĂ”estisĂŒndinud juhtumist, mis oli ka raamatu sĂŒndimise ajendiks.

PsĂŒhhoanalĂŒĂŒtilise alltooniga raamatule annab lisavÀÀrtuse Kerttu Rakke aus, otsekohene ja ladus jutustamisstiil, mis aitab nĂ€ha, kuidas vĂ”etakse iseendas omaks hĂ€bistamise tulemus ning kuidas hĂ€bi nii teadvustamatult kui teadlikult pĂ”lvest pĂ”lve edasi pĂ€randatakse.]]>
184 Kerttu Rakke 9949984068 Piret 4 4.26 2018 ±áĂ€ČúŸ±
author: Kerttu Rakke
name: Piret
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2021/10/02
date added: 2021/10/02
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<![CDATA[10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World]]> 44778171 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019

'Expect vibrant, vivid and eye-opening descriptions of Middle Eastern life propelled by a tender storyline, all in Shafak's haunting, beautiful and considered prose' Vanity Fair

'Incredibly sensuous and poetic and evocative' Pandora Sykes, The High Low

'Richly uplifting... truly beautiful writing' Nicola Sturgeon

'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore...'

For Leila, each minute after her death recalls a sensuous memory: spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for son; bubbling vats of lemon and sugar to wax women's legs while men are at prayer; the cardamom coffee she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each fading memory brings back the friends she made in her bittersweet life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her . . .

'Simply magnificent, a truly captivating work of immense power and beauty, on the essence of life and its end' Philippe Sands

'A vivid carnival of life and death, cruelty and kindness, love, politics and deep humanity. Brilliant!' Helena Kennedy

'Elif Shafak brings into the written realm what so many others want to leave outside. Spend more than ten minutes and 38 seconds in this world of the estranged. Shafak makes a new home for us in words' Colum McCann

' Elif Shafak's extraordinary 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World is a work of brutal beauty and consummate tenderness' Simon Schama

'A rich, sensual novel... This is a novel that gives voice to the invisible, the untouchable, the abused and the damaged, weaving their painful songs into a thing of beauty.' Financial Times

'One of the best writers in the world today' Hanif Kureishi

'Haunting, moving, beautifully written - and based by an extraordinary cast of characters who capture the diversity of modern Turkey. A masterpiece' Peter Frankopan

'Extraordinary' Guardian

'Life-affirming' Stylist]]>
306 Elif Shafak 0241979463 Piret 3 4.13 2019 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World
author: Elif Shafak
name: Piret
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2021/09/30
date added: 2021/09/30
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<![CDATA[Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow]]> 31138556 Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.

Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.

What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.

With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.

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450 Yuval Noah Harari Piret 0 to-read 4.19 2015 Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Piret
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/09/29
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones]]> 42052246
A revolutionary system to get 1 per cent better every day

People think when you want to change your life, you need to think big. But world-renowned habits expert James Clear has discovered another way. He knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions � doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call.

He calls them atomic habits.

In this ground-breaking book, Clear reveals exactly how these minuscule changes can grow into such life-altering outcomes. He uncovers a handful of simple life hacks (the forgotten art of Habit Stacking, the unexpected power of the Two Minute Rule, or the trick to entering the Goldilocks Zone), and delves into cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience to explain why they matter. Along the way, he tells inspiring stories of Olympic gold medalists, leading CEOs, and distinguished scientists who have used the science of tiny habits to stay productive, motivated, and happy.

These small changes will have a revolutionary effect on your career, your relationships, and your life.]]>
6 James Clear 1473565421 Piret 0 to-read 4.07 2018 Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
author: James Clear
name: Piret
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/09/07
shelves: to-read
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Litsid 26036808
Selles suletud mikrokosmoses kajastuvad murrangulised sĂŒndmused sageli vaid kui reaalse tegelikkuse kauge kaja, murdes aga ĂŒksiti valusalt sisse illusoorsesse maailma. Sinna maailma on pagenud mitme noored naised, kellel kĂ”igil on erinevad pĂ”hjused tavaelust ja oma identiteedist loobumiseks. Kuid sĂ”dima peavad nemadki.

RomaanitsĂŒkli esimese osa tegevus toimub aastail 1939-1940, mil Eesti asus eneselegi mĂ€rkamatult oma iseseisvuse hĂ€vingu teele.

Allikas: ]]>
280 Mart Sander 9949390915 Piret 3 4.02 2015 Litsid
author: Mart Sander
name: Piret
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2021/09/05
date added: 2021/09/05
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Germinal 28407
Etienne Lantier, an unemployed railway worker, is a clever but uneducated young man with a dangerous temper. Forced to take a back-breaking job at Le Voreux mine when he cannot get other work, he discovers that his fellow miners are ill, hungry, in debt, and unable to feed and clothe their families. When conditions in the mining community deteriorate even further, Lantier finds himself leading a strike that could mean starvation or salvation for all.

‱New translation
� Includes introduction, suggestions for further reading, filmography, chronology, explanatory notes, and glossary]]>
592 Émile Zola 0140447423 Piret 5 4.17 1885 Germinal
author: Émile Zola
name: Piret
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1885
rating: 5
read at: 2021/09/04
date added: 2021/09/04
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Betty Blue 207402 352 Philippe Djian 0349101108 Piret 0 to-read 4.10 1951 Betty Blue
author: Philippe Djian
name: Piret
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/07/07
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Doctor Zhivago 130440
Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel.]]>
592 Boris Pasternak 0679774386 Piret 0 to-read 4.03 1957 Doctor Zhivago
author: Boris Pasternak
name: Piret
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/06/30
shelves: to-read
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Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

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

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

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

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]>
336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Piret 3 4.17 2019 Anxious People
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Piret
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2021/06/27
date added: 2021/06/27
shelves:
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