Irene's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 18 Dec 2024 06:31:27 -0800 60 Irene's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Mexican Gothic 57800389
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

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

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 301 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 052562080X Irene 0 to-read 3.71 2020 Mexican Gothic
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Irene
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Olof the Eskimo Lady: A Biography of an Icelandic Dwarf in America]]> 7996680 248 Inga Dora Bjornsdottir 0472117262 Irene 0 to-read, to-purchase 3.20 2004 Olof the Eskimo Lady: A Biography of an Icelandic Dwarf in America
author: Inga Dora Bjornsdottir
name: Irene
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read, to-purchase
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]]> <![CDATA[The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories]]> 1576188 The collected fiction of "one of the most original imaginations in modern Europe" (Cynthia Ozick)

Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership. This volume brings together his complete fiction, including three short stories and his final surviving work, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Illustrated with Schulz's original drawings, this edition beautifully showcases the distinctive surrealist vision of one of the twentieth century's most gifted and influential writers.]]> 368 Bruno Schulz 0143105140 Irene 0 4.16 The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
author: Bruno Schulz
name: Irene
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/15
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]]> <![CDATA[City of Dark Magic (City of Dark Magic #1)]]> 17167104
Soon after Sarah arrives, strange things begin to happen. She learns that her mentor, who was working at the castle, may not have committed suicide after all. Could his cryptic notes be warnings? As Sarah parses his clues about Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved,� she manages to get arrested, to have tantric sex in a public fountain, and to discover a time-warping drug. She also catches the attention of a four-hundred-year-old dwarf, the handsome Prince Max, and a powerful U.S. senator with secrets she will do anything to hide.]]> 464 Magnus Flyte 1101603062 Irene 4 arc, have-a-copy 3.66 2012 City of Dark Magic (City of Dark Magic #1)
author: Magnus Flyte
name: Irene
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2012/10/01
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: arc, have-a-copy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[To Capture What We Cannot Keep]]> 28819291 Set against the construction of the Eiffel Tower, this novel charts the relationship between a young widow and an engineer who, despite constraints of class and wealth, fall in love.

In February 1887, Caitriona Wallace and Émile Nouguier meet in a hot air balloon, floating high above Paris--a moment of pure possibility. But back on firm ground, their vastly different social strata become clear. Cait is a widow who because of her precarious financial situation is forced to chaperone two wealthy Scottish charges. Émile is expected to take on the bourgeois stability of his family's business and choose a suitable wife. As the Eiffel Tower rises, a marvel of steel and air and light, the subject of extreme controversy and a symbol of the future, Cait and Émile must decide what their love is worth.

Seamlessly weaving historical detail and vivid invention, Beatrice Colin evokes the revolutionary time in which Cait and Émile live--one of corsets and secret trysts, duels and Bohemian independence, strict tradition and Impressionist experimentation. To Capture What We Cannot Keep, stylish, provocative, and shimmering, raises probing questions about a woman's place in that world, the overarching reach of class distinctions, and the sacrifices love requires of us all.]]> 304 Beatrice Colin 1250071461 Irene 0 to-read 3.81 2016 To Capture What We Cannot Keep
author: Beatrice Colin
name: Irene
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Josephine's Daughter (The Golden City #5)]]> 44111781 Winner of the 2020 Independent Press Award - Women's fictionWhat's worse than a mother like Josephine? Turning out to be just like her.Late Nineteenth Century: Wealthy and headstrong Kit Firestone chafes under the rules of the Golden City’s high society, especially the interference of her charming but overbearing mother, Josephine. Kit’s secret rebellion leads to potentially catastrophic results and keeps her from finding true happiness.When her brother nearly dies from a dangerous infection, Kit defies convention and becomes a working nurse. Through her troubled romance with a young doctor and a series of dramatic events, including a natural disaster and her mother’s own critical illness, Kit begins to understand who her mother truly is and what their relationship is all about. She may not get the chance to appreciate their bond, however, because, through no fault of her own, a madman has Kit in his crosshairs.Editorial "...the novel's fast-paced narrative and engaging dialogue will draw readers in from the start. It's full of intriguing details about San Francisco near the turn of the last century, and it also provides engaging information about the evolution of medicine-and women's health care, in particular... A solidly entertaining, feminist tale that's also well-suited for medical-history buffs." Kirkus Reviews"Michaels's...offers a vivid portrait of San Francisco's Gilded Age through the eyes of Kit Firestone, an impassioned nurse who was born into high society ... [the author] is adept at handling medical practices of the time and women's health topics, such as sexually transmitted diseases and birth control, with sensitivity and intelligence. Part family drama, part romance, Michaels's tale will satisfy both fans of the series and newcomers alike." Publishers WeeklyJosephine's Daughter is Book Five in A.B. Michaels� historical fiction series “The Golden City.� Other titles in the series include The Art of Love, The Depth of Beauty, The Promise, The Price of Compassion and The Madness of Mrs. Whittaker.All titles in this series are stand-alone reads.For more information, please visit the author's website.]]> 622 A.B. Michaels 0997520132 Irene 0 delete, remove 4.37 Josephine's Daughter (The Golden City #5)
author: A.B. Michaels
name: Irene
average rating: 4.37
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TܰԱ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Irene 5 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Irene
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/06
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]]> Unseen (Anders Knutas, #1) 2245948 368 Mari Jungstedt 0552155098 Irene 4 library-book 3.48 2003 Unseen (Anders Knutas, #1)
author: Mari Jungstedt
name: Irene
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: library-book
review:

]]> <![CDATA[206 Bones (Temperance Brennan, #12)]]> 5957702 The #1 New York Times bestselling author and producer of the Fox television hit, Bones, returns with a spectacular new Tempe Brennan novel.

There are 206 bones in the human body. Forensic anthropologists know them intimately, can read in them stories of brief or long lives and use them to reconstruct every kind of violent end. 206 Bones opens with Tempe regaining consciousness and discovering that she is in some kind of very small, very dark, very cold enclosed space. She is bound, hands to feet. Who wants Tempe dead, or at least out of the way, and why? Tempe begins slowly to reconstruct...

Tempe and Lieutenant Ryan had accompanied the recently discovered remains of a missing heiress from Montreal to the Chicago morgue. Suddenly, Tempe was accused of mishandling the autopsy -- and the case. Someone made an incriminating phone call. Within hours, the one man with information about the call was dead. Back in Montreal, the corpse of a second elderly woman was found in the woods, and then a third.

Seamlessly weaving between Tempe's present-tense terror as she's held captive and her memory of the cases of these murdered women, Reichs conveys the incredible devastation that would occur if a forensic colleague sabotaged work in the lab. The chemistry between Tempe and Ryan intensifies as this complex, riveting tale unfolds. Reichs is writing at the top of her game.]]> 308 Kathy Reichs 0743294394 Irene 4 library-book 3.94 2009 206 Bones (Temperance Brennan, #12)
author: Kathy Reichs
name: Irene
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: library-book
review:

]]> The Firm (The Firm, #1) 1001556
Soon, though, Mitch senses trouble: two of the partners die in a suspicious diving accident off Grand Cayman; the firm's management is overly proud of the fact that no one has ever resigned, and security measures at the firm are-even for a company with billionaire clients—more than a little stringent. Then, suddenly, Mitch's vague suspicions come to life. While eating alone at a nearby diner, he is approached by a man named Tarrance who claims to be with the FBI. Tarrance tells Mitch that the firm's "security" people have bugged his phone, his house, and probably his can that he is in great danger and should......
--front flap]]> 432 John Grisham Irene 3 3.89 1991 The Firm (The Firm, #1)
author: John Grisham
name: Irene
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/04/25
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]]> <![CDATA[To Touch the Sky and Never Know the Ground Again: Poems]]> 204782901 144 Edward Lee Irene 0 4.00 To Touch the Sky and Never Know the Ground Again: Poems
author: Edward Lee
name: Irene
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/21
shelves: currently-reading, have-a-copy
review:

]]> Lone Women 200285620
Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.

The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women� taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.

Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.]]> 304 Victor LaValle 0525512101 Irene 0 to-read 3.80 2023 Lone Women
author: Victor LaValle
name: Irene
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Paris 15786792 809 Edward Rutherfurd 0385535309 Irene 0 to-read 3.98 2013 Paris
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Irene
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> True North: A Memoir 107426 250 Jill Ker Conway 0679744614 Irene 4 3.88 1994 True North: A Memoir
author: Jill Ker Conway
name: Irene
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 1995/01/01
date added: 2023/11/20
shelves:
review:

]]> The Shipping News 77470
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
--back cover

Cover illustration by David Blackwood

]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0671510053 Irene 3 3.76 1993 The Shipping News
author: Annie Proulx
name: Irene
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/11/16
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]]> The Princess of Las Vegas 90587135
Crissy Dowling has created a world that suits her perfectly. She passes her days by the pool in a private cabana, she splurges on ice cream but never gains an ounce, and each evening she transforms into a Princess, performing her musical cabaret inspired by the life of the late Diana Spencer. Some might find her strange or even delusional, an American speaking with a British accent, hair feathered into a style thirty years old, living and working in a casino that has become a dated trash heap. On top of that, Crissy’s daily diet of Adderall and Valium leaves her more than a little tipsy, her Senator boyfriend has gone back to his wife, and her entire career rests on resembling a dead woman. And yet, fans see her for the gifted chameleon she is, showering her with gifts, letters, and standing ovations night after night. But when Crissy’s sister, Betsy, arrives in town with a new boyfriend and a teenage daughter, and when Richie Morley, the owner of the Buckingham Palace Casino, is savagely murdered, Crissy’s carefully constructed kingdom comes crashing down all around her. A riveting tale of identity, obsession, fintech, and high-tech mobsters, The Princess of Las Vegas is an addictive, wildly original thriller from one of our most extraordinary storytellers.]]> 400 Chris Bohjalian 0385547587 Irene 0 to-read 3.39 2024 The Princess of Las Vegas
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Irene
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Memoir of a Gulag Actress (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)]]> 9668788 495 Tamara Petkevich 0875804284 Irene 0 to-read, wishlist 4.58 2001 Memoir of a Gulag Actress (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
author: Tamara Petkevich
name: Irene
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/27
shelves: to-read, wishlist
review:

]]> The Golden Gate 65214343
The many threads of the case keep leading Sullivan back to the three remaining Bainbridge heiresses, now Iris’s sister, Isabella, and her cousins Cassie and Nicole. Determined not to let anything distract him from the truth―not the powerful influence of Bainbridges� grandmother, or the political aspirations of Berkeley’s district attorney, or the interest of China's First Lady Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in his findings―Sullivan follows his investigation to its devastating conclusion.]]> 384 Amy Chua 1250903602 Irene 0 to-read 3.79 2023 The Golden Gate
author: Amy Chua
name: Irene
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> When the Jessamine Grows 138378707 From one of the most powerful and authentic voices in Southern fiction comes a historical novel with an unforgettable heroine—the extraordinary Joetta McBride, who defiantly opens her North Carolina home and farm to soldiers from both sides during the Civil War.

Talk of impending war is a steady drumbeat throughout North Carolina, though Joetta McBride pays it little heed. The small farm she tends with her husband, Ennis, and their two sons provides all they need. Those who want to fight can fight, but Joetta considers her family to be neutral.

That opinion isn’t shared by Joetta’s father-in-law, Rudean. A staunch Confederate supporter, he fills his grandsons� heads with stories about the glories of soldiering, and insists that owning land and slaves is the only measure of success. When fifteen-year-old Henry, impressed by his grandfather’s stories, runs off to volunteer, Joetta insists Ennis go and search for him.

Weeks pass without word from either father or son, though other soldiers pass the farm, growing ever gaunter and hungrier. Joetta offers food and shelter to all, regardless of which uniform they wear. Her actions are deemed treasonous by townsfolk and the Home Guard, but Joetta won’t be swayed. After all, the wealthy find ways to stay away from battle. Why should poor men suffer and die on their behalf?

Though shunned and struggling, Joetta remains committed to her principles, and to her belief that her family will survive. But the greatest tests are still to come, for a fractured nation and for Joetta and those she loves . . .]]> 400 Donna Everhart 149674070X Irene 0 to-read 4.02 2024 When the Jessamine Grows
author: Donna Everhart
name: Irene
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> After Annie 177185880
Yet over the course of the next year, while Annie looms large in their memories, all three are able to grow, to change, even to become stronger and more sure of themselves. The enduring power Annie gave to those who loved her is the power to love, and to go on without her.

Written in Quindlen’s emotionally resonant voice, and with her deep and generous understanding of people, After Annie is a story that ends with hope, a beautiful novel about how adversity can change us in profound ways.]]> 283 Anna Quindlen 0593229800 Irene 0 to-read 3.89 2024 After Annie
author: Anna Quindlen
name: Irene
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Trouble with You 127281194 In an exuberant post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each...

Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II, when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble with You is the story of Fanny Fabricant, whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. Educated for a career as a wife and mother, she is torn between her cousin Mimi, who is determined to keep her a “nice girl,� and her aunt Rose, who has a rebellious past of her own.

Forging a new life, she gets a job in radio serials. Then through her friendship with an actress who stars in and a man who writes the series, she comes face-to-face with the blacklist, which is wrecking lives.

Ultimately, Fanny must decide between playing it safe or doing what is right in this vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light-years away and strangely immediate.]]> 368 Ellen Feldman 1250879469 Irene 0 to-read 3.85 2024 The Trouble with You
author: Ellen Feldman
name: Irene
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> The German Wife 58939848
Berlin, 1930 —When a wave of change sweeps a radical political party to power, Sofie von Meyer Rhodes’s academic husband benefits from the ambitions of its newly elected chancellor. Although Sofie and Jürgen do not share the social views growing popular in Hitler’s Germany, Jürgen’s position with its burgeoning rocket program changes their diminishing fortunes for the better. But as Sofie watches helplessly, her beloved Berlin begins to transform, forcing her to consider what they must sacrifice morally for their young family’s security, and what the price for their neutrality will be.

Twenty years later, Jürgen is one of the many German scientists offered pardons for their part in the war, and taken to America to work for its fledgling space program. For Sofie, this is the chance to exorcise the ghosts that have followed her across the ocean, and make a fresh start in her adopted country. But her neighbors aren’t as welcoming or as understanding as she had hoped. When scandalous rumors about the Rhodes family’s affiliation with Hitler’s regime spreads, idle gossip turns to bitter rage, and the act of violence that results will tear apart Sofie’s community and her family before the truth is finally revealed.]]> 464 Kelly Rimmer 1525811436 Irene 0 to-read 4.35 2022 The German Wife
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Irene
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska―Including Extensive Hitherto Unpublished Passages from the Original Journal]]> 296694
In August 1918 Rockwell Kent and his 9-year-old son settled into a primitive cabin on an island near Seward, Alaska. Kent, who during the next three decades became America's premier graphic artist, printmaker, and illustrator, was seeking time, peace, and solitude to work on his art and strengthen ties with his son. This reissue of the journal chronicling their 7-month odyssey describes what Kent called "an adventure of the spirit." He soon discovers how deeply he is "stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world" as man and boy face both the mundane and the satisfaction in simple chores like woodchopping or baking; the appalling gloom of long and lonely winter nights; hours of silence while each works at his drawings; crystalline moonlight glancing off a frozen lake; killer whales cavorting in their bay. Richly illustrated by Kent's drawings, the journal vividly re-creates that sense of great height and space � both external and internal � at the same time that it celebrates a wilderness now nearly lost to us.]]> 237 Rockwell Kent 0819552933 Irene 0 to-read 3.91 1937 Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska―Including Extensive Hitherto Unpublished Passages from the Original Journal
author: Rockwell Kent
name: Irene
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1937
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Philomena: The poignant true story of a mother and the son she had to give away]]> 19660158
Philomena's son, renamed Michael Hess, grew up to be a top Washington lawyer and a leading Republican official in the Reagan and Bush administrations. But he was a gay man in a homophobic party where he had to conceal not only his sexuality but, eventually, the fact that he had AIDS. With little time left, he returned to Ireland and the convent where he was his desperate quest to find his mother before he died left a legacy that was to unfold with unexpected consequences for all involved.

The Lost Child of Philomena Lee is the tale of a mother and a son whose lives were scarred by the forces of hypocrisy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the secrets they were forced to keep. A compelling narrative of human love and loss, Martin Sixsmith's moving account is heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive.]]> 452 Martin Sixsmith 1447245229 Irene 4 3.55 2009 Philomena: The poignant true story of a mother and the son she had to give away
author: Martin Sixsmith
name: Irene
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Night Rounds (Inspector Huss #2)]]> 11505253 Detective Inspector Huss.

One nurse lies dead and another vanishes after their hospital is hit by a blackout. The only witness claims to have seen Nurse Tekla doing her rounds, but Nurse Tekla died sixty years ago. Detective Inspector Irene Huss of the Violent Crimes Unit has the challenge of disentangling wandering ghosts and complex human relationships to get to the bottom of this intriguing case.

A cult hit in its first three installments, the Irene Huss series is available once again for English-language fans.]]> 336 Helene Tursten 1616950064 Irene 4 library-book 3.76 1999 Night Rounds (Inspector Huss #2)
author: Helene Tursten
name: Irene
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2012/03/15
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves: library-book
review:

]]> Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 Irene 5 4.00 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Irene
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/30
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]]> Caribou Island 8584946 On a small island in a glacier-fed lake on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a marriage is unraveling. Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, and Irene, haunted by a tragedy in her past, are trying to rebuild their life together. Following the outline of Gary's old dream, they're hauling logs to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in health, to build the kind of cabin that drew them to Alaska in the first place.

But this island is not right for Irene. They are building without plans or advice, and when winter comes early, the overwhelming isolation of the prehistoric wilderness threatens their bond to the core. Caught in the emotional maelstrom is their adult daughter, Rhoda, who is wrestling with the hopes and disappointments of her own life. Devoted to her parents, she watches helplessly as they drift further apart.

Brilliantly drawn and fiercely honest, Caribou Island captures the drama and pathos of a husband and wife whose bitter love, failed dreams, and tragic past push them to the edge of destruction. A portrait of desolation, violence, and the darkness of the soul, it is an explosive and unforgettable novel from a writer of limitless possibility.

]]> 293 David Vann 0061875724 Irene 4 library-book 3.45 2010 Caribou Island
author: David Vann
name: Irene
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/02/05
date added: 2023/07/28
shelves: library-book
review:

]]> The Night House 106291410 From the internationally best-selling author, a twisted, multi-layered spin on the classic horror novel

In the wake of his parents' tragic deaths in a house fire, fourteen-year-old Richard Elauved has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle in the remote, insular town of Ballantyne. Richard quickly earns a reputation as an outcast, and when a classmate named Tom goes missing, everyone suspects the new, angry boy is responsible for his disappearance. No one believes him when he says the telephone booth out by the edge of the woods sucked Tom into the receiver like something out of a horror movie. No one, that is, except Karen, a beguiling fellow outsider who encourages Richard to pursue clues the police refuse to investigate. He traces the number that Tom prank called from the phone booth to an abandoned house in the Black Mirror Wood. There he catches a glimpse of a terrifying face in the window. And then the voices begin to whisper in his ear . . .

You know who I am. She's going to burn. The one you love is going to burn. There's not a thing you can do about it.

When another classmate disappears, Richard must find a way to prove his innocence--and preserve his sanity--as he grapples with the dark magic that is possessing Ballantyne and pursuing his destruction.

Then again, Richard may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story . . .]]> 245 Jo Nesbø 0593537165 Irene 0 to-read 3.23 2023 The Night House
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Irene
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Manor House 62949018
Be careful what you wish for...

Childhood sweethearts Nicole and Tom are a normal, loving couple—until a massive lottery win changes their lives overnight.

Soon they’ve moved into a custom-built state-of-the-art Glass Barn on the stunning grounds of Lancaut Manor in Gloucestershire. They have fancy cars, expensive hobbies, and an exclusive lifestyle they never could have imagined.

But this dream world quickly turns into a nightmare when Tom is found dead in the swimming pool.

Nicole is devastated. Tom is her rock. And their beautiful barn —with all its smart features that never seem to work for her—is beginning to feel very lonely. But she’s not entirely by herself out there in the country. There’s a nice young couple who live in the Manor itself along with their middle-aged housekeeper who has the Coach House. And an old friend of Tom’s from school has turned up to help her get through her grief.

But big money can bring big problems and big threats. Was Tom’s death a tragic accident or was it something worse? And is her life in danger as well?

Nicole’s beginning to feel like a little fish in a big glass fishbowl.

Surrounded by piranhas.]]> 327 Gilly Macmillan 0063074389 Irene 0 to-read 3.65 2023 The Manor House
author: Gilly Macmillan
name: Irene
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Save the Tomatoes for Packy 51516402
On his way to Cattaraugus, New York, the hometown of his late ex-girlfriend, to tie up some loose ends, Paul encounters the memories that he couldn't suppress, no matter how much booze he had back in the day. Along the way, Paul remembers his best friends in the Army--Bobby Ray, a southern enlistee with a profane vernacular and Posie, a quiet, devout Christian from Northern Michigan--and Kathy, the intellectual English teacher he was too afraid to love.

Will these memories influence his present course?]]> 200 Daniel A. Doherty Jr. Irene 5 5.00 Save the Tomatoes for Packy
author: Daniel A. Doherty Jr.
name: Irene
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/06/29
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves:
review:

]]> The Enemy at Home 64632368 As World War II rages overseas, a serial killer preys on women working in Seattle’s factories in this provocative blend of vivid, richly detailed historical fiction and taut suspense.

1943, Seattle. While raging war reshapes the landscape of Europe, its impact is felt thousands of miles away too. Before the war, Nora Kinney was one of countless housewives and mothers in her comfortable Capitol Hill neighborhood. Now, with her doctor husband stationed in North Africa, Nora feels compelled to do more than tend her victory garden or help with scrap metal drives.

At the Boeing B-17 plant, Nora learns to wield a heavy riveting gun amid the deafening noise of the assembly line—a real-life counterpart to “Rosie the Riveter� in the recruitment posters. Yet while the country desperately needs their help, not everyone is happy about “all these women� taking over men’s jobs. Nora worries that she is neglecting her children, especially her withdrawn teenage son. But amid this turmoil comes a sinister tragedy: One of Nora’s coworkers is found strangled in her apartment, dressed in an apron, with a lipstick smile smeared on her face.

It’s the beginning of a terrifying pattern, as female war-plant workers like Nora are targeted throughout Seattle and murdered in the same ritualistic manner. And eclipsing Nora’s fear for her safety is her secret, growing conviction that she and the killer are connected—and that the haven that was her home has become her own personal battlefield.]]> 416 Kevin O'Brien 1496738519 Irene 0 to-read 4.10 2023 The Enemy at Home
author: Kevin O'Brien
name: Irene
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Chenneville 112975135 Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post–Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the World.

Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John’s beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered.

Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John knows as A. J. Dodd is little more than a rabid animal, slaughtering without reason or remorse, needing to be put down.

Traveling through the unforgiving landscape of a shattered nation in the midst of Reconstruction, John braves winter storms and confronts desperate people in pursuit of his quarry. Untethered, single-minded in purpose, he will not be deterred. Not by the U.S. Marshal who threatens to arrest him for murder should he succeed. And not by Victoria Reavis, the telegraphist aiding him in his death-driven quest, yet hoping he’ll choose to embrace a life with her instead.

And as he trails Dodd deep into Texas, John accepts that this final reckoning between them may cost him more than all he’s already lost…]]> 307 Paulette Jiles 0063252686 Irene 0 to-read 3.97 2023 Chenneville
author: Paulette Jiles
name: Irene
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Crow Mary 62918680
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in a Métis named Jeannie; makes a lifelong enemy in a wolfer named Stiller; and despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband.

The winter trading season passes peacefully. Then, on the eve of their return to Montana, a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters forty Nakota—despite Farwell’s efforts to stop them. Mary, hiding from the hail of bullets, sees the murderers, including Stiller, take five Nakota women back to their fort. She begs Farwell to save them, and when he refuses, Mary takes two guns, creeps into the fort, and saves the women from certain death. Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that brings out the worst and best in the cast of unforgettable characters and pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.

Crow Mary sweeps across decades and the landscape of the upper West and Canada, showcasing the beauty of the natural world, while at the same time probing the intimacies of a marriage and one woman’s heart.]]> 348 Kathleen Grissom 1476748470 Irene 0 to-read 4.28 2023 Crow Mary
author: Kathleen Grissom
name: Irene
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Crow Mary 74891539
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in a Métis named Jeannie; makes a lifelong enemy in a wolfer named Stiller; and despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband.

The winter trading season passes peacefully. Then, on the eve of their return to Montana, a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters forty Nakota—despite Farwell’s efforts to stop them. Mary, hiding from the hail of bullets, sees the murderers, including Stiller, take five Nakota women back to their fort. She begs Farwell to save them, and when he refuses, Mary takes two guns, creeps into the fort, and saves the women from certain death. Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that brings out the worst and best in the cast of unforgettable characters and pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.

Crow Mary sweeps across decades and the landscape of the upper West and Canada, showcasing the beauty of the natural world, while at the same time probing the intimacies of a marriage and one woman’s heart.]]> 364 Kathleen Grissom Irene 0 to-read 4.49 2023 Crow Mary
author: Kathleen Grissom
name: Irene
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 84 Charing Cross Road. 1074386 220 Helene Hanff 0380503778 Irene 5 4.13 1970 84 Charing Cross Road.
author: Helene Hanff
name: Irene
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/06/05
shelves:
review:

]]> Killingly 62363042 Based on the unsolved real-life disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student in 1897, Killingly weaves a haunting spell of intrigue, longing, and terror, perfect for fans of Donna Tartt and Sarah Waters.

Bertha Mellish, “the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl� at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. One cold November morning the junior is spotted walking through the Massachusetts woods; then, she vanishes. As a search team dredges the pond where she might have drowned, Bertha’s panicked father and sister arrive at the campus desperate to find some clue as to her fate or state of mind. Bertha’s best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine, might know the truth, but she is being unhelpfully tight-lipped, inciting the suspicions of Bertha’s family, her classmates, and the private investigator hired by the Mellish family doctor. As secrets from Agnes and Bertha’s lives come to light, so do the competing agendas driving each person who is searching for Bertha.

Where did Bertha go? Who would want to hurt her? And could she still be alive?

Edmund White Award–winning author Katharine Beutner crafts a real-life unsolved mystery into an immersive, unforgettable work of literary crime fiction--a beautifully drawn historical portrait of queerness, family trauma, and the risks faced by women who dared to pursue unconventional paths at the end of the 19th century.]]> 360 Katharine Beutner 164129437X Irene 0 to-read 3.30 2023 Killingly
author: Katharine Beutner
name: Irene
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A History of Burning 62315839 An epic, sweeping historical debut novel spanning continents and a century, and how one act of survival can reverberate through generations.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his village in India to labor on the East African Railway for the British. One day Pirbhai commits an act to ensure his survival that will haunt him forever and reverberate across his family's future for years to come.

Pirbhai's children are born and raised under the jacaranda trees and searing sun of Kampala during the waning days of British colonial rule. As Uganda moves towards independence and military dictatorship, Pirbhai's granddaughters, Latika, Mayuri, and Kiya, are three sisters coming of age in a divided nation. As they each forge their own path for a future, they must carry the silence of the history they've inherited. In 1972, under Idi Amin's brutal regime and the South Asian expulsion, the family has no choice but to flee, and in the chaos, they leave something devastating behind.

As Pirbhai's grandchildren, scattered across the world, find their way back to each other in exile in Toronto, a letter arrives that stokes the flames of the fire that haunts the family. It makes each generation question how far they are willing to go, and who they are willing to defy to secure their own place in the world.

A History of Burning is an unforgettable tour de force, an intimate family saga of complicity and resistance, about the stories we share, the ones that remain unspoken, and the eternal search for home.]]> 400 Janika Oza 1538724243 Irene 0 to-read 4.12 2023 A History of Burning
author: Janika Oza
name: Irene
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class]]> 62585957
There have been countless books, articles, and televised reports in recent years about the almost mythic “white working class,� a tide of commentary that has obscured the labor, and even the very existence, of entire groups of working people, including everyday Black workers. In this brilliant corrective, Black Folk , acclaimed historian Blair LM Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story.

Spanning 200 years―from one of Kelley’s earliest known ancestors, an enslaved blacksmith, to the essential workers of the Covid-19 pandemic� Black Folk highlights the lives of the laundresses, Pullman porters, domestic maids, and postal workers who established the Black working class as a force in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Taking jobs white people didn’t want and confined to segregated neighborhoods, Black workers found community in intimate spaces, from stoops on city streets to the backyards of washerwomen, where multiple generations labored from dawn to dusk, talking and laughing in a space free of white supervision and largely beyond white knowledge.

As millions of Black people left the violence of the American South for the promise of a better life in the North and West, these networks of resistance and joy sustained early arrivals and newcomers alike and laid the groundwork for organizing for better jobs, better pay, and equal rights. As her narrative moves from Georgia to Philadelphia, Florida to Chicago, Texas to Oakland, Kelley treats Black workers not just as laborers, or members of a class, or activists, but as people whose daily experiences mattered―to themselves, to their communities, and to a nation that denied that basic fact.

Through affecting portraits of her great-grandfather, a sharecropper named Solicitor, and her grandmother, Brunell, who worked for more than a decade as a domestic maid, Kelley captures, in intimate detail, how generation after generation of labor was required to improve, and at times maintain, her family’s status. Yet her family, like so many others, was always animated by a vision of a better future. The church yards, factory floors, railcars, and postal sorting facilities where Black people worked were sites of possibility, and, as Kelley suggests, Amazon package processing centers, supermarkets, and nursing homes. can be the same today. With the resurgence of labor activism in our own time, Black Folk presents a stirring history of our possible future. 30 illustrations]]> 352 Blair L.M. Kelley 1631496557 Irene 0 to-read 4.48 2023 Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class
author: Blair L.M. Kelley
name: Irene
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Little Monsters 62919906
Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated—and as adults their relationship is strained. Now, years later, the siblings� lives are still deeply entwined. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.

As the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he’s determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family—Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit.

Set in the fraught summer of 2016, and drawing on the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, Little Monsters is an absorbing, sharply observed family story by a writer who knows Cape Cod inside and out—its Edenic lushness and its snakes.]]> 320 Adrienne Brodeur 1982198109 Irene 0 to-read 3.63 2023 Little Monsters
author: Adrienne Brodeur
name: Irene
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> What Remains 63221678 She saved his life. Now he‘ll never let her go.

Detective Elise Sutton is drawn to cold cases. Each crime is a puzzle to solve, pulled from the past. Elise looks for cracks in the surface and has become an expert on how murderers slip up and give themselves away. She has dedicated her life to creating a sense of order, at work with her ex-marine partner; at home with her husband and two young daughters; and within, battling her own demons. Elise has everything under control, until one afternoon, when she walks into a department store and is forced to make a terrible choice: to save one life, she will have to take another.

Elise is hailed as a hero, but she doesn’t feel like one. Steeped in guilt, and on a leave of absence from work, she’s numb, even to her husband and daughters, until she connects with Wade Austin, the tall man whose life she saved. But Elise soon realizes that he isn’t who he says he is. In fact, Wade Austin isn’t even his real name. The tall man is a ghost, one who will set off a terrifying game of cat and mouse, threatening Elise and the people she loves most.]]> 247 Wendy Walker Irene 0 to-read 3.52 2023 What Remains
author: Wendy Walker
name: Irene
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Above the Bay of Angels 52484387 A single twist of fate puts a servant girl to work in Queen Victoria’s royal kitchen, setting off a suspenseful, historical mystery by the New York Times bestselling author of The Tuscan Child and The Victory Garden.

Isabella Waverly only means to comfort the woman felled on a London street. In her final dying moments, she thrusts a letter into Bella’s hand. It’s an offer of employment in the kitchens of Buckingham Palace, and everything the budding young chef desperately wants: an escape from the constrictions of her life as a lowly servant. In the stranger’s stead, Bella can spread her wings.

Arriving as Helen Barton from Yorkshire, she pursues her passion for creating culinary delights, served to the delighted Queen Victoria herself. Best of all, she’s been chosen to accompany the queen to Nice. What fortune! Until the threat of blackmail shadows Bella to the Riviera, and a member of the queen’s retinue falls ill and dies.

Having prepared the royal guest’s last meal, Bella is suspected of the poisonous crime. An investigation is sure to follow. Her charade will be over. And her new life will come crashing down—if it doesn’t send her to the gallows.]]> 348 Rhys Bowen 1542008263 Irene 4 remove 3.78 2020 Above the Bay of Angels
author: Rhys Bowen
name: Irene
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/24
date added: 2023/05/09
shelves: remove
review:
My first Rhys Bowen experience; delightful. A quick read, but in this day and age, rather improbable. I gave it four stars for lifting my spirit when I needed it.
]]> The Lie Maker 62047988 In this twisty, fast-paced thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Find You First and Take Your Breath Away, a man desperately tries to track down his father--who was taken into witness protection years ago--before his enemies can get to him.

Your dad's not a good person. Your dad killed people, son.

These are some of the last words Jack Givins' father spoke to him before he was whisked away by witness protection, leaving Jack and his mother to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives as best they could.

Years later, Jack is a grown man with problems of his own. He's a talented but struggling author, barely scraping by on the royalties from his moderately successful first book. So when the U.S. Marshals approach him with a lucrative opportunity, he's in no position to turn them down. They're recruiting writers like Jack to create false histories for people in witness protection--people like Jack's father.

The coincidence is astonishing to Jack at first, but he soon realizes this may be a chance to find his dad. Only there's one problem--Jack's father hasn't made contact with his handlers recently, and they have no idea where he is. He could be in serious danger, and Jack may be the only one who can find him.

But how will he find a man he's never truly known? A man who has done terrible things in his lifetime and made some deadly enemies in the process--enemies who wouldn't think twice about using his own son against him.]]> 337 Linwood Barclay 0063276240 Irene 0 to-read 3.95 2023 The Lie Maker
author: Linwood Barclay
name: Irene
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dry Grass of August: A Moving Southern Coming of Age Novel]]> 67757023
Set in 1950s North Carolina, Anna Jean Mayhew’s instant classic coming of age novel, which evokes the writing of Sue Monk Kidd, is a heartwarming, vividly transporting depiction of Southern life in the throes of segregation, what it will mean for a young girl on her way to adulthood—and for the woman who means the world to her�

**Includes an updated discussion guide and new letter to readers from Anna Jean Mayhew!

On a scorching day in August 1954, thirteen-year-old Jubie Watts leaves Charlotte, North Carolina, with her family for a Florida vacation. Crammed into the Packard along with Jubie are her three siblings, her mother, and the family’s black maid, Mary Luther. For as long as Jubie can remember, Mary has been there—cooking, cleaning, compensating for her father’s rages and her mother’s benign neglect, and loving Jubie unconditionally.

Bright and curious, Jubie takes note of the anti-integration signs they pass, and of the racial tension that builds as they journey further south. But she could never have predicted the shocking turn their trip will take. Now, in the wake of tragedy, Jubie must confront her parents� failings and limitations, decide where her own convictions lie, and make the tumultuous leap to independence . . .

Infused with the intensity of a changing time, here is a story of hope, heartbreak, and the love and courage that can transform us—from child to adult, from wounded to indomitable.]]> 308 Anna Jean Mayhew 1496742729 Irene 0 to-read 4.00 2011 The Dry Grass of August: A Moving Southern Coming of Age Novel
author: Anna Jean Mayhew
name: Irene
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I Must Betray You 61230312
A gut-wrenching, startling historical thriller about communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray .

Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force.

Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.

Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?

Master storyteller Ruta Sepetys is back with a historical thriller that examines the little-known history of a nation defined by silence, pain, and the unwavering conviction of the human spirit.

Praise for I Must Betray You :

“As educational as it is thrilling...[T]he power of I Must Betray You [is] it doesn’t just describe the destabilizing effects of being spied on; it will make you experience them too.� � New York Times Book Review

“A historical heart-pounder…Ms. Sepetys, across her body of work, has become a tribune of the unsung historical moment and a humane voice of moral clarity.� � The Wall Street Journal

* "Sepetys brilliantly blends a staggering amount of research with heart, craft, and insight in a way very few writers can. Compulsively readable and brilliant." � Kirkus Reviews , starred review

* "Sepetys once again masterfully portrays a dark, forgotten corner of history." � Booklist , starred review

* "Sepetys’s latest book maintains the caliber readers have come to expect from an author whose focus on hidden histories has made her a YA powerhouse of historical ­fiction…Sepetys is a formidable writer, and her stories declare the need to write about global issues of social injustice. For that reason and her attention to detail, this is a must-read." � School Library Journal , starred review

* "Cristian’s tense first-person narrative foregrounds stark historical realities, unflinchingly confronting deprivations and cruelty while balancing them with perseverance and hope as Romania hurtles toward political change." � Publishers Weekly , starred review

“Sepetys keeps readers riveted to this vivid, heartbreaking and compelling novel, locked into every meticulously researched detail. I Must Betray You demands a full investment from its audience--through poetic writing, sympathetic characters, revolutionary plot and pacing, it grips the heart and soul and leaves one breathless.� � Shelf Awareness, starred review

"A master class in pacing and atmosphere." � BookPage]]> 336 Ruta Sepetys 1984836048 Irene 0 to-read 4.38 2022 I Must Betray You
author: Ruta Sepetys
name: Irene
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Truly Madly Guilty 27831371 The electrifying new novel from the international bestselling author, Liane Moriarty

Despite their differences, Erika and Clementine have been best friends since they were children. So when Erika needs help, Clementine should be the obvious person to turn to. Or so you'd think.

For Clementine, as a mother of a two desperately trying to practise for the audition of a lifetime, the last thing she needs is Erika asking for something, again.

But the barbecue should be the perfect way to forget their problems for a while. Especially when their hosts, Vid and Tiffany, are only too happy to distract them.

Which is how it all spirals out of control...

]]> 517 Liane Moriarty 1250069815 Irene 4 3.59 2016 Truly Madly Guilty
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Irene
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/03/21
shelves:
review:

]]> Kennedy's Goodbye 58673861
Is hope a myth? Is love a lie? Is God dead?

Kennedy needs to know. But she’s left feeling alone, grappling to make sense of the world around her. The youngest member of a devout Catholic family, her preordained pathway of perfection into heaven becomes more like a highway to hell. With so many roadblocks—sin, sex, losses, lies—will Kennedy find a place to belong? A place where it’s OK to be OK? A place where hope is real and love is true?

In this coming-of-age novel set in upstate New York in the seventies and eighties, told in a freshly candid voice that evolves as she grows and matures, Kennedy says goodbye to many things—but to what? Hope? Love? God? Or her own self?

Find out in Kennedy’s Goodbye .]]> 304 Kati Rose 1637582374 Irene 0 to-read 4.52 Kennedy's Goodbye
author: Kati Rose
name: Irene
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Code Name éèԱ 55421259 BASED ON THE THRILLING REAL-LIFE STORY OF SOCIALITE SPY NANCY WAKE, comes the newest feat of historical fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of I Was Anastasia, featuring the astonishing woman who killed a Nazi with her bare hands and went on to become one of the most decorated women in WWII.

Told in interweaving timelines organized around the four code names Nancy used during the war, Code Name éèԱ is a spellbinding and moving story of enduring love, remarkable sacrifice and unfaltering resolve that chronicles the true exploits of a woman who deserves to be a household name.

It is 1936 and Nancy Wake is an intrepid New Zealand expat living in Paris who has bluffed her way into a reporting job for Hearst newspaper. She is fighting to cover the disturbing reports of violence coming out of Vienna and Berlin when she meets the wealthy French industrialist Henri Fiocca. No sooner does Henri sweep Nancy off her feet and convince her to become Mrs. Fiocca than the Germans invade France and she takes yet another name: a code name.

As LUCIENNE CARLIER she smuggles people and documents across borders under the guise of an oblivious mistress. Soon enough the Gestapo hears of a female operative with a remarkable ability to evade capture, and Nancy earns a new nickname: THE WHITE MOUSE. But this one carries with it a five million franc bounty on her head. Forced to escape France and leave Henri behind for the safety of both of them, Nancy enters training with the Special Operations Executives, who transform her into éèԱ. Finally, with mission in hand, Nancy is airdropped back into France as the deadly MADAM ANDRÉ. She soon becomes one of the most powerful leaders in the French Resistance, known for her ferocious wit, her signature red lipstick, and her ability to summon weapons straight from the Allied Forces. But no one can protect Nancy if the enemy finds out these four women are one and the same, and the closer to liberation France gets, the more exposed she--and the people she loves--will become.]]> 496 Ariel Lawhon 0525565493 Irene 0 to-read 4.37 2020 Code Name éèԱ
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Irene
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Whispers 63222079
The Loverlys sit by the hospital bed of their young son who is in a coma after falling from his bedroom window in the middle of the night; his mother, Whitney, will not speak to anyone. Back home, their friends and neighbors are left in shock, each confronting their own role in the events that led up to what happened that terrible night: the warm, altruistic Parks who are the Loverlys' best friends; the young, ambitious Goldsmiths who are struggling to start a family of their own; and the quiet, elderly Portuguese couple who care for their adult son with a developmental disability, and who pass the long days on the front porch, watching their neighbors go about their busy lives.

The story spins out over the course of one week, in the alternating voices of the women in each family as they are forced to face the secrets within the walls of their own homes, and the uncomfortable truths that connect them all to one another. Set against the heartwrenching drama of what will happen to Xavier, who hangs between death and life, or a life changed forever, THE WHISPERS is a novel about what happens when we put our needs ahead of our children's. Exploring the quiet sacrifices of motherhood, the intuitions that we silence, the complexities of our closest friendships, and the danger of envy, this is a novel about the reverberations of life's most difficult decisions.]]> 336 Ashley Audrain 1984881698 Irene 0 to-read 3.78 2023 The Whispers
author: Ashley Audrain
name: Irene
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Island of Lost Girls 62645212 Sun-drenched glamour and obscene wealth hide evil secrets in this ripped-from-the-headlines thriller about money, corruption, power and lost innocence from “one of crime fiction's brightest stars� (Megan Abbott), the Edgar and Macavity Award-winning author of The Wicked Girls and The Killer Next Door.

It's paradise for the super-rich, but hell for the girls whose lives they've stolen.

1985

To twelve-year-old Mercedes, La Kastellana is home, an island with deep-rooted traditions untouched by the modern world. But this secluded paradise is upended with the arrival of multimillionaire Matthew Meade and his pampered young daughter, Tatiana. While the Meades lavishly spread unimaginable wealth around La Kastellana, the price Mercedes and the rest of the islanders will pay is more than they could ever have imagined.

2016

Robin has been desperately searching for her seventeen-year-old daughter Gemma, who’s been missing for more than a year. Finding herself on La Kastellana, an island playground for the international jet set, Robin quickly realizes she’s out of her depth. No one is willing to help and Robin fears she’s running out of time to find her child.

But someone has been watching, silently waiting for the moment to expose the dark truth of what really happens on the island of lost girls.]]> 480 Alex Marwood 0063282232 Irene 0 to-read 3.37 2022 The Island of Lost Girls
author: Alex Marwood
name: Irene
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/21
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]]> The Last Flight 54717147 Two women. Two flights. One last chance to disappear.

Claire Cook has a perfect life. Married to the scion of a political dynasty, with a Manhattan townhouse and a staff of ten, her surroundings are elegant, her days flawlessly choreographed, and her future auspicious. But behind closed doors, nothing is quite as it seems. That perfect husband has a temper that burns as bright as his promising political career, and he's not above using his staff to track Claire's every move, making sure she's living up to his impossible standards. But what he doesn't know is that Claire has worked for months on a plan to vanish.

A chance meeting in an airport bar brings her together with a woman whose circumstances seem equally dire. Together they make a last-minute decision to switch tickets--Claire taking Eva's flight to Oakland, and Eva traveling to Puerto Rico as Claire. They believe the swap will give each of them the head start they need to begin again somewhere far away. But when the flight to Puerto Rico goes down, Claire realizes it's no longer a head start but a new life. Cut off, out of options, with the news of her death about to explode in the media, Claire will assume Eva's identity, and along with it, the secrets Eva fought so hard to keep hidden.

For fans of Lisa Jewell and Liv Constantine, The Last Flight is the story of two women--both alone, both scared--and one agonizing decision that will change the trajectory of both of their lives.]]> 288 Julie Clark 1728234220 Irene 0 to-read 4.04 2020 The Last Flight
author: Julie Clark
name: Irene
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/21
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]]> The Good Daughter 40222479
Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father � Pikeville's notorious defense attorney � devastated. And it left the family fractured beyond repair, consumed by secrets from that terrible night.

Twenty-eight years later, and Charlie has followed in her father's footsteps to become a lawyer herself � the ideal good daughter. But when violence comes to Pikeville again � and a shocking tragedy leaves the whole town traumatized � Charlie is plunged into a nightmare. Not only is she the first witness on the scene, but it's a casethat unleashesthe terrible memories she's spent so long trying to suppress. Because the shocking truth about the crime that destroyed her family nearly thirty years ago won't stay buried forever�

Packed with twists and turns, brimming with emotion and heart,The Good Daughteris fiction at its most thrilling.]]> 515 Karin Slaughter 0062696297 Irene 0 to-read 4.12 2017 The Good Daughter
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Irene
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/21
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]]> Community Board 61193944
Where does one go, you might ask, when the world falls apart? When the immutable facts of your life—the mundane, the trivial, the take-for-granted minutiae that once filled every second of every day—suddenly disappear? Where does one go in such dire and unexpected circumstances?

I went home, of course.

MURBRIDGE COMMUNITY MESSAGE BOARD

FREE: 500 cans of corn. Accidentally ordered them online. I really hate corn. Happy to help load.

REMINDER: use your own goddamn garbage can for your own goddamn pet waste. I’m looking at you Peter Luflin.

REMINDER: monthly Select Board meeting this Friday. Agenda items: 1) sludge removal; 2) upkeep of chime tower; 3) ice rink monitor thank you gift. Questions? Contact Hildegard Hyman.

Darcy Clipper, prodigal daughter, nearly thirty, has returned home to Murbridge, Massachusetts, after her life takes an unwelcome left turn. Murbridge, Darcy is convinced, will welcome her home and provide a safe space in which she can nurse her wounds and harbor grudges, both real and imagined.

But Murbridge, like so much else Darcy thought to be fixed and immutable, has changed. And while Darcy’s first instinct might be to hole herself up in her childhood bedroom, subsisting on Chef Boy-R-Dee and canned chickpeas, it is human nature to do two things: seek out meaningful human connection and respond to anonymous internet postings. As Murbridge begins to take shape around Darcy, both online and in person, Darcy will consider the most fundamental of American questions: What can she ask of her community? And what does she owe it in return?]]> 272 Tara Conklin 0062959379 Irene 0 to-read 3.31 2023 Community Board
author: Tara Conklin
name: Irene
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/21
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]]> Lone Women 60460704
Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.

The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women� taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.

Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.]]> 275 Victor LaValle 052551208X Irene 0 to-read 3.68 2023 Lone Women
author: Victor LaValle
name: Irene
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/21
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]]> Just the Nicest Couple 60623823 “Mary Kubica’s Just the Nicest Couple is a masterfully written thriller about deception where we least expect it and the danger of a lie tumbling out of control. Taut and incredibly suspenseful, every moment is perfectly crafted to keep us wanting more. An engrossing, spine-tingling read! —Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push

A husband’s disappearance inextricably links two couples in this twisty thriller from New York Times bestselling author Mary Kubica

Two couples, two close friends, one missing husband�

Jake Hayes is missing. This much is certain. At first, his wife, Nina, thinks he is blowing off steam at a friend’s house after their heated fight the night before. But then a day goes by. Two days. Five. And Jake is still nowhere to be found.

Lily Scott, Nina’s friend and coworker, thinks she may have been the last to see Jake before he went missing. After Lily confesses everything to her husband, Christian, the two decide that nobody can find out what happened leading up to Jake’s disappearance, especially not Nina. But Nina is out there looking for her husband, and she won’t stop until the truth is discovered.

Queen of suspense Mary Kubica delivers a high-octane, edge-of-your-seat thriller filled with delicious lies and shocking betrayals, and shows how even the deepest secrets will always find a way to the surface.]]> 374 Mary Kubica 0369718275 Irene 0 to-read 3.47 2023 Just the Nicest Couple
author: Mary Kubica
name: Irene
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[All That Is Mine I Carry With Me]]> 61058004 A mother vanished. A father presumed guilty. There is no proof. There are no witnesses. For the children, there is only doubt. From the New York Times bestselling author of Defending Jacob. . . .

One afternoon in November 1975, ten-year-old Miranda Larkin comes home from school to find her house eerily quiet. Her mother is missing. Nothing else is out of place. There is no sign of struggle. Her mom's pocketbook remains in the front hall, in its usual spot.

So begins a mystery that will span a lifetime. What happened to Jane Larkin?

Investigators suspect Jane's husband. A criminal defense attorney, Dan Larkin would surely be an expert in outfoxing the police.

But no evidence is found linking him to a crime, and the case fades from the public's memory, a simmering, unresolved riddle. Jane's three children--Alex, Jeff, and Miranda--are left to be raised by the man who may have murdered their mother.

Two decades later, the remains of Jane Larkin are found. The investigation is awakened. The children, now grown, are forced to choose sides. With their father or against him? Guilty or innocent? And what happens if they are wrong?

A tale about family--family secrets and vengeance, but also family love--All That Is Mine I Carry With Me masterfully grapples with a primal question: When does loyalty reach its limit?]]> 320 William Landay 0345531841 Irene 0 to-read 3.75 2023 All That Is Mine I Carry With Me
author: William Landay
name: Irene
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/21
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]]> Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano Irene 0 to-read 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Irene
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/21
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]]> Looking for Jane 61273371 A debut about three women whose lives are bound together by a long-lost letter, a mother’s love, and a secret network of women fighting for the right to choose—inspired by true stories.

2017: When Angela Creighton discovers a mysterious letter containing a life-shattering confession, she is determined to find the intended recipient. Her search takes her back to the 1970s when a group of daring women operated an illegal underground abortion network in Toronto known only by its whispered code name: Jane.

1971: As a teenager, Dr. Evelyn Taylor was sent to a home for “fallen� women where she was forced to give up her baby for adoption—a trauma she has never recovered from. Despite harrowing police raids and the constant threat of arrest, she joins the Jane Network as an abortion provider, determined to give other women the choice she never had.

1980: After discovering a shocking secret about her family, twenty-year-old Nancy Mitchell begins to question everything she has ever known. When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she feels like she has no one to turn to for help. Grappling with her decision, she locates “Jane� and finds a place of her own alongside Dr. Taylor within the network’s ranks, but she can never escape the lies that haunt her.]]> 400 Heather Marshall 1668013681 Irene 0 to-read 4.33 2022 Looking for Jane
author: Heather Marshall
name: Irene
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/21
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]]> Good Night, Irene 63023640 In the tradition of The Nightingale and Transcription, an exhilarating World War II epic that chronicles an extraordinary young woman's heroic frontline service in the Red Cross

In 1943, Irene Woodward abandons an abusive fiancé in New York to enlist with the Red Cross and head to Europe. She makes fast friends in training with Dorothy Dunford, a towering Midwesterner with a ferocious wit. Together they are part of an elite group of women, nicknamed Donut Dollies, who command military buses called Clubmobiles at the front line, providing camaraderie and a taste of home that may be the only solace before troops head into battle.

After D-Day, these two intrepid friends join the Allied soldiers streaming into France. Their time in Europe will see them embroiled in danger, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Buchenwald. Through her friendship with Dorothy, and a love affair with a gallant American fighter pilot named Hans, Irene learns to trust again. Her most fervent hope, which becomes more precarious by the day, is for all three of them to survive the war intact.

Taking as inspiration his mother's own Red Cross service, Luis Alberto Urrea has delivered an overlooked story of women's heroism in World War II. With its affecting and uplifting portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, Good Night, Irene powerfully demonstrates yet again that Urrea's "gifts as a storyteller are prodigious" (NPR).]]> 407 Luis Alberto Urrea 0316265853 Irene 0 to-read 4.04 2023 Good Night, Irene
author: Luis Alberto Urrea
name: Irene
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/21
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]]> Homecoming 61683285
Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.

Nora has always been a vibrant and strong presence: decisive, encouraging, young despite her years. When Jess visits her in the hospital, she is alarmed to find her grandmother frail and confused. It’s even more alarming to hear from Nora's housekeeper that Nora had been distracted in the weeks before her accident and had fallen on the steps to the attic—the one place Jess was forbidden from playing in when she was small.

At loose ends in Nora's house, Jess does some digging of her own. In Nora's bedroom, she discovers a true crime book, chronicling the police investigation into a long-buried tragedy: the Turner Family Tragedy of Christmas Eve, 1959. It is only when Jess skims through the book that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this once-infamous crime—a crime that has never been resolved satisfactorily. And for a journalist without a story, a cold case might be the best distraction she can find�

An epic novel that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, and how we protect the lies we tell. It explores the power of motherhood, the corrosive effects of tightly held secrets, and the healing nature of truth. Above all, it is a beguiling and immensely satisfying novel from one of the finest writers working today.]]> 547 Kate Morton 0063020890 Irene 0 to-read 4.00 2023 Homecoming
author: Kate Morton
name: Irene
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/20
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]]> Canary Girls 61896638
Early in the Great War, men left Britain’s factories in droves to enlist. Struggling to keep up production, arsenals hired women to build the weapons the military urgently needed. “Be the Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun,� the recruitment posters beckoned.

Thousands of women—cooks, maids, shopgirls, and housewives—answered their nation’s call. These “munitionettes� worked grueling shifts often seven days a week, handling TNT and other explosives with little protective gear.

Among them is nineteen-year-old former housemaid April Tipton. Impressed by her friend Marjorie’s descriptions of higher wages, plentiful meals, and comfortable lodgings, she takes a job at Thornshire Arsenal near London, filling shells in the Danger Building—difficult, dangerous, and absolutely essential work.

Joining them is Lucy Dempsey, wife of Daniel Dempsey, Olympic gold medalist and star forward of Tottenham Hotspur. With Daniel away serving in the Footballers� Battalion, Lucy resolves to do her bit to hasten the end of the war. When her coworkers learn she is a footballer’s wife, they invite her to join the arsenal ladies� football club, the Thornshire Canaries.

The Canaries soon acquire an unexpected fan in the boss’s wife, Helen Purcell, who is deeply troubled by reports that Danger Building workers suffer from serious, unexplained illnesses. One common symptom, the lurid yellow hue of their skin, earns them the nickname “canary girls.� Suspecting a connection between the canary girls� maladies and the chemicals they handle, Helen joins the arsenal administration as their staunchest, though often unappreciated, advocate.

The football pitch is the one place where class distinctions and fears for their men fall away. As the war grinds on and tragedy takes its toll, the Canary Girls persist despite the dangers, proud to serve, determined to outlive the war and rejoice in victory and peace.]]> 417 Jennifer Chiaverini 0063080745 Irene 0 to-read 3.99 2023 Canary Girls
author: Jennifer Chiaverini
name: Irene
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/20
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]]> The Last Beekeeper 60784449
"Fans of Delia Owens will swoon to find their new favorite author.� (Hank Phillippi Ryan)

It’s been more than a decade since the world has come undone, and Sasha Severn has returned to her childhood home with one goal in mind―find the mythic research her father, the infamous Last Beekeeper, hid before he was incarcerated. There, Sasha is confronted with a group of squatters who have claimed the quiet, idyllic farm as their own. While she initially feels threatened, the group soon becomes her newfound family, offering what she hasn't felt since her father was security and hope. Maybe it's time to forget the family secrets buried on the farm and focus on her future.

But just as she settles into her new life, Sasha witnesses the impossible. She sees a honey bee, presumed extinct. People who claim to see bees are ridiculed and silenced for reasons Sasha doesn't understand, but she can't shake the feeling that this impossible bee is connected to her father's missing research. Fighting to uncover the truth could shatter Sasha's fragile security and threaten the lives of her newfound family―or it could save them all.

Julie Carrick Dalton's The Last Beekeeper is a celebration of found family, an exploration of truth versus power, and the triumph of hope in the face of despair. It is a meditation on forgiveness and redemption and a reminder to cherish the beauty that still exists in this fragile world.

Also by Julie Carrick
Waiting for the Night Song]]> 384 Julie Carrick Dalton 1250269210 Irene 0 to-read 3.90 2023 The Last Beekeeper
author: Julie Carrick Dalton
name: Irene
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/09
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]]> Half Broke Horses 6366437
"Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did." So begins the story of Lily Casey Smith, Jeannette Walls's no nonsense, resourceful, and spectacularly compelling grandmother. By age six, Lily was helping her father break horses. At fifteen, she left home to teach in a frontier town -- riding five hundred miles on her pony, alone, to get to her job. She learned to drive a car ("I loved cars even more than I loved horses. They didn't need to be fed if they weren't working, and they didn't leave big piles of manure all over the place") and fly a plane. And, with her husband Jim, she ran a vast ranch in Arizona. She raised two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls, unforgettably portrayed in The Glass Castle.

Lily survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy. She bristled at prejudice of all kinds -- against women, Native Americans, and anyone else who didn't fit the mold. Rosemary Smith Walls always told Jeannette that she was like her grandmother, and in this true-life novel, Jeannette Walls channels that kindred spirit. Half Broke Horses is Laura Ingalls Wilder for adults, as riveting and dramatic as Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa or Beryl Markham's West with the Night. Destined to become a classic, it will transfix audiences everywhere.]]> 272 Jeannette Walls 1416586288 Irene 5 have-a-copy 4.07 2009 Half Broke Horses
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Irene
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/01/03
shelves: have-a-copy
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]]> Hang the Moon 61272702
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who’d amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans.

Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her father’s daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his mother’s son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out.

Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That’s a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.

You will fall in love with Sallie Kincaid, a feisty and fearless, terrified and damaged young woman who refuses to be corralled.]]> 368 Jeannette Walls 1501117297 Irene 0 to-read 3.67 2023 Hang the Moon
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Irene
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/03
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]]> <![CDATA[All the Broken Places (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, #2)]]> 61111301
Then, a new family moves into the apartment below her. In spite of herself, Gretel can't help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget. One night, she witnesses a disturbing, violent argument between Henry's beautiful mother and his arrogant father, one that threatens Gretel's hard-won, self-contained existence.

All The Broken Places moves back and forth in time between Gretel's girlhood in Germany to present-day London as a woman whose life has been haunted by the past. Now, Gretel faces a similar crossroads to one she encountered long ago. Back then, she denied her own complicity, but now, faced with a chance to interrogate her guilt, grief and remorse, she can choose to save a young boy. If she does, she will be forced to reveal the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting. This time, she can make a different choice than before -- whatever the cost to herself....

From the New York Times bestselling author John Boyne, a devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for bravery. ]]> 400 John Boyne 0593653068 Irene 0 to-read 4.43 2022 All the Broken Places (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, #2)
author: John Boyne
name: Irene
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shadow Murders (Department Q, #9)]]> 60181723 In the penultimate thriller of the 'New York Times' and number one internationally best-selling Department Q series, the team must hunt for a nefarious serial killer who has slipped under the radar for decades.

On her 60th birthday, a woman commits suicide. When the case lands on Detective Carl Mørck's desk, he can't imagine what this has to do with Department Q, Copenhagen's cold cases division. It's a tragedy to be sure, but the cause of death seems to be clear. But his superior, Marcus Jacobsen, is convinced that this is not in fact a suicide, but a murder related to an unsolved case that has been plaguing him since 1988.

At Marcus's behest, Carl and the Department Q gang—Rose, Assad, and Gordon—reluctantly begin to investigate. However, they quickly discover that Marcus is on to something: Every two years for the past three decades, there have been unusual, impeccably timed deaths with connections between them that cannot be ignored. As they dig deeper, it becomes clear that these "accidents" are in fact murders by a very cunning and violent serial killer.

Faced with their toughest case yet, made only more difficult by COVID-19 restrictions and the challenges of their own personal lives, the Department Q team must race to find the culprit before the next murder is committed, as it is becoming increasingly clear that the killer is far from finished.]]> 464 Jussi Adler-Olsen 1524742589 Irene 0 to-read 3.98 2021 The Shadow Murders (Department Q, #9)
author: Jussi Adler-Olsen
name: Irene
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/30
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]]> Her Hidden Genius 60562643 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie and The Only Woman in the Room.

Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider―brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets.

Rosalind knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture―one more after thousands―she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who'd rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her.

Then it finally happens―the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what unfolds next, Rosalind could have never predicted.

Marie Benedict's powerful new novel shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA, a woman whose world-changing contributions were hidden by the men around her but whose relentless drive advanced our understanding of humankind.]]> 352 Marie Benedict 1728260108 Irene 0 to-read 3.95 2022 Her Hidden Genius
author: Marie Benedict
name: Irene
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Jealousy Man and Other Stories]]> 57001544 A veritable crime lover’s delight from a true master of mystery and suspense. Experience the #1 New York Times best-selling author as never before in this dark and thrilling short story collection that takes us on a journey of twisted minds and vengeful hearts.

Jo Nesbø is known the world over as a consummate mystery/thriller writer. Famed for his deft characterization, hair-raising suspense and shocking twists, Nesbø’s dexterity with the dark corners of the human heart is on full display in these inventive and enthralling stories.

A detective with a nose for jealousy is on the trail of a man suspected of murdering his twin; a bereaved father must decide whether vengeance has a place in the new world order after a pandemic brings about the collapse of society; a garbage man fresh off a bender tries to piece together what happened the night before; a hired assassin matches wits against his greatest adversary in a dangerous game for survival; and an instantly electric connection between passengers on a flight to London may spell romance, or something more sinister.

With Nesbø’s characteristic gift for outstanding atmosphere and gut-wrenching revelations, The Jealousy Man confirms that he is at the peak of his abilities.]]> 528 Jo Nesbø 0593321006 Irene 0 to-read 3.61 2021 The Jealousy Man and Other Stories
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Irene
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/09/01
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review:

]]> Portion of the Sea 1998111 386 Christine Lemmon 0971287457 Irene 0 to-read, to-purchase 3.65 Portion of the Sea
author: Christine Lemmon
name: Irene
average rating: 3.65
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/28
shelves: to-read, to-purchase
review:

]]> The American Adventuress 58803123 352 C.W. Gortner 0063035804 Irene 0 to-read 3.93 2022 The American Adventuress
author: C.W. Gortner
name: Irene
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> An Affair of Spies 59808336
Nathan Silverman grew up in Berlin in the 1920s, the son of a homemaker and a theoretical physicist. His idyllic childhood was soon marred by increasing levels of bigotry against his family and the rest of the Jewish community, and after his uncle is arrested on Kristallnacht, he leaves Germany for New York City with only his mother's wedding ring to sell for survival.

While attending an evening course at Columbia in 1941, Nathan notices a recruitment poster on a university wall and decides to enlist in the military and help fight the Nazi regime. To his surprise, he is quickly selected for a special assignment; he is trained as a spy, and ordered to report to the Manhattan Project. There he learns that the Allies are racing to develop a nuclear weapon before the Nazis, and a German theoretical physicist is hoping to defect. The physicist was a friend of his father's, and Nathan's mission is to return to Berlin via France and smuggle him out of Europe.

Nathan will be accompanied by Dr. Allison Fisher, a brilliant young scientist who can speak French; he travels to her lab at the University of Chicago for a crash course in nuclear physics, then they embark on their adventure. Nathan and Allison soon develop feelings for one another, but as their relationship deepens they move ever closer to their dangerous goal. Will they be able to escape Europe with the defector and start a new life together, or will they fail their mission and become two more casualties of war?

An Affair of Spies is an action-packed tale of heroism and love in the face of unspeakable evil. Author Ronald H. Balson has applied his unmatched talent for evocative and painstakingly authentic storytelling to the high-stakes world of espionage and created his most thrilling novel yet.]]> 336 Ronald H. Balson 1250282462 Irene 0 to-read 3.78 2022 An Affair of Spies
author: Ronald H. Balson
name: Irene
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Underground Railroad 57070659
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

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.]]> 336 Colson Whitehead 059331476X Irene 0 to-read 3.98 2016 The Underground Railroad
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Irene
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
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]]> Jacqueline in Paris 59949718 From the bestselling author of The Lost Vintage, a rare and dazzling portrait of Jacqueline Bouvier's college year abroad in postwar Paris, an intimate and electrifying story of love and betrayal, and the coming-of-age of an American icon - before the world knew her as Jackie.

In August 1949 Jacqueline Bouvier arrives in postwar Paris to begin her junior year abroad. She’s twenty years old, socially poised but financially precarious, and all too aware of her mother’s expectations that she make a brilliant match. Before relenting to family pressure, she has one year to herself far away from sleepy Vassar College and the rigid social circles of New York, a year to explore and absorb the luminous beauty of the City of Light. Jacqueline is immediately catapulted into an intoxicating new world of champagne and châteaux, art and avant-garde theater, cafés and jazz clubs. She strikes up a romance with a talented young writer who shares her love of literature and passion for culture � even though her mother would think him most unsuitable.

But beneath the glitter and rush, France is a fragile place still haunted by the Occupation. Jacqueline lives in a rambling apartment with a widowed countess and her daughters, all of whom suffered as part of the French Resistance just a few years before. In the aftermath of World War II, Paris has become a nest of spies, and suspicion, deception, and betrayal lurk around every corner. Jacqueline is stunned to watch the rise of communism � anathema in America, but an active movement in France � never guessing she is witnessing the beginning of the political environment that will shape the rest of her life—and that of her future husband.

Evocative, sensitive, and rich in historic detail, Jacqueline in Paris portrays the origin story of an American icon. Ann Mah brilliantly imagines the intellectual and aesthetic awakening of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, and illuminates how France would prove to be her one true love, and one of the greatest influences on her life.]]> 352 Ann Mah 0062997017 Irene 0 to-read 3.62 2022 Jacqueline in Paris
author: Ann Mah
name: Irene
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/08
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]]> <![CDATA[His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice]]> 58890953 A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing--telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.

The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off a series of protests in the United States and around the world, awakening millions to the dire need for reimagining this country's broken systems of policing. But behind a face that would be graffitied onto countless murals, and a name that has become synonymous with civil rights, there is the reality of one man's stolen life: a life beset by suffocating systemic pressures that ultimately proved inescapable.

This biography of George Floyd shows the athletic young boy raised in the projects of Houston's Third Ward who would become a father, a partner, a friend, and a man constantly in search of a better life. In retracing Floyd's story, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa bring to light the determination Floyd carried as he faced the relentless struggle to survive as a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the larger context of America's deeply troubled history of institutional racism, His Name Is George Floyd examines the Floyd family's roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his Houston schools, the overpolicing of his communities, the devastating snares of the prison system, and his attempts to break free from drug dependence--putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews and extensive original reporting, Samuels and Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd's America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world.]]> 432 Robert Samuels 0593490614 Irene 5 4.50 2022 His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
author: Robert Samuels
name: Irene
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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date added: 2022/06/13
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]]> The Forest of Vanishing Stars 58581837 The New York Times bestselling author of the The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis—until a secret from her past threatens everything.

After being stolen from her wealthy German parents and raised in the unforgiving wilderness of eastern Europe, a young woman finds herself alone in 1941 after her kidnapper dies. Her solitary existence is interrupted, however, when she happens upon a group of Jews fleeing the Nazi terror. Stunned to learn what’s happening in the outside world, she vows to teach the group all she can about surviving in the forest—and in turn, they teach her some surprising lessons about opening her heart after years of isolation. But when she is betrayed and escapes into a German-occupied village, her past and present come together in a shocking collision that could change everything.

Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel.]]> 416 Kristin Harmel 1982158948 Irene 0 to-read 4.23 2021 The Forest of Vanishing Stars
author: Kristin Harmel
name: Irene
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/13
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]]> Touch 59681625 A mesmerizing, panoramic story of one man's search to find a lover who suddenly disappeared decades before

When the pandemic hits, Kristofer is forced to shutter his successful restaurant in Reykjavik, sending him into a spiral of uncertainty, even as his memory seems to be failing. But an uncanny bolt from the blue--a message from Miko Nakamura, a woman whom he'd known in the sixties when they were students in London--both inspires and rattles him, as he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life. Even as the pandemic upends his world, Kristofer finds himself pulled toward an answer to the mystery of Miko's sudden departure decades before, compelling him to travel to London and Japan as the virus threatens to shut everything down.

A heart-wrenching love story and an absorbing mystery, Touch delves into the secrets of the past to explore the hidden lives that we all possess, the pain and beauty of our past loves and friendships that continue to leave their mark on us. Searching and lyrically rendered by acclaimed author Olaf Olafsson, Touch is a stunning tribute to the weight of history and the complexities of the human heart.]]> 272 Olaf Olafsson 0063226987 Irene 0 to-read 3.89 2020 Touch
author: Olaf Olafsson
name: Irene
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/02
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]]> Take My Hand 55650158 Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a profoundly moving novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench.

Montgomery, Alabama 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.

But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn down one-room cabin, she’s shocked to learn that her new patients are children—just 11 and 13 years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica and their family into her heart. Until one day, she arrives at the door to learn the unthinkable has happened and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.

Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten.That must not be forgotten.

Because history repeats what we don’t remember.]]> 359 Dolen Perkins-Valdez 0593337697 Irene 5 4.36 2022 Take My Hand
author: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
name: Irene
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/22
date added: 2022/05/16
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]]> The Girls with No Names 45697521 The Girls with No Names pulls readers into the gilded age of New York City in the 1910s, when suffragettes marched in the street, unions fought for better work conditions—and girls were confined to the House of Mercy for daring to break the rules.

Not far from Luella and Effie Tildon’s large family mansion in Inwood looms the House of Mercy, a work house for wayward girls. The sisters grow up under its shadow with the understanding that even as wealthy young women, their freedoms come with limits. But when the sisters accidentally discover a shocking secret about their father, Luella, the brazen older sister, becomes emboldened to do as she pleases.

But her rebellion comes with consequences, and one morning Luella is mysteriously gone. Effie suspects her father has made good on his threat to send Luella to the House of Mercy and hatches a plan to get herself committed to save her sister. But she made a miscalculation, and with no one to believe her story, Effie’s escape from the House of Mercy seems impossible—unless she can trust an enigmatic girl named Mable. As their fates entwine, Mable and Effie must rely on each other and their tenuous friendship to survive.

The Home for Unwanted Girls meets The Dollhouse in this atmospheric, heartwarming story that explores not only the historical House of Mercy, but the lives—and secrets—of the girls who stayed there.]]> 336 Serena Burdick 0778309991 Irene 5 4.00 2020 The Girls with No Names
author: Serena Burdick
name: Irene
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2020/02/13
date added: 2022/05/02
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]]> The Ways We Hide 60119146 A sweeping World War II tale of an illusionist whose recruitment by British intelligence sets her on a perilous, heartrending path.

As a little girl raised amid the hardships of Michigan’s Copper Country, Fenna Vos learned to focus on her own survival. That ability sustains her even now as the Second World War rages in faraway countries. Though she performs onstage as the assistant to an unruly escape artist, behind the curtain she’s the mastermind of their act. Ultimately, controlling her surroundings and eluding traps of every kind helps her keep a lingering trauma at bay.

Yet for all her planning, Fenna doesn’t foresee being called upon by British military intelligence. Tasked with designing escape aids to thwart the Germans, MI9 seeks those with specialized skills for a war nearing its breaking point. Fenna reluctantly joins the unconventional team as an inventor. But when a test of her loyalty draws her deep into the fray, she discovers no mission is more treacherous than escaping one’s past.

Inspired by stunning true accounts, The Ways We Hide is a gripping story of love and loss, the wars we fight—on the battlefields and within ourselves—and the courage found in unexpected places.]]> 496 Kristina McMorris 1728249767 Irene 0 to-read 3.98 2022 The Ways We Hide
author: Kristina McMorris
name: Irene
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/04/26
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]]> Shadows of Berlin 59063246
1955 in New York City: the city of instant coffee, bagels at Katz’s Deli, new-fangled TVs. But in the Perlman’s walk-up in Chelsea, the past is as close as the present. Rachel came to Manhattan in a wave of displaced Jews who managed to survive the horrors of war.Her Uncle Fritz fleeing with her, Rachel hoped to find freedom from her pain in New York and in the arms of her new American husband, Aaron.

But this child of Berlin and daughter of an artist cannot seem to outrun her guilt in the role of American housewife, not until she can shed the ghosts of her past. And when Uncle Fritz discovers, in a dreary midtown pawn shop, the most shocking portrait that her mother had ever painted, Rachel’s memories begin to terrorize her, forcing her to face the choices she made to stay alive—choices that might be her undoing.

From the cafes of war-torn Germany to the frantic drumbeat of 1950's Manhattan,SHADOWS OF BERLIN dramatically explores survival, redemption and the way we learn to love and forgive across impossible divides.]]> 416 David R. Gillham 1728250447 Irene 0 to-read 3.66 2022 Shadows of Berlin
author: David R. Gillham
name: Irene
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/04/17
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]]> Letters from Home 54330927 Inspired by her grandparents' WWII courtship letters, New York Times bestselling author Kristina McMorris delivers a moving tale of friendship, family, and the twists of fate that change us forever...

It's 1944, and although foreign battles are escalating, the war seems distant in every way to sensible college student Liz Stephens. That is, until her chance encounter with charming infantryman Morgan McClain at a USO dance in Chicago. Their deep connection feels mutual to Liz, but to her dismay, her bombshell roommate, Betty, is the one who promises to write the deploying soldier.

Singer Betty Cordell delights in the prospect of a dashing serviceman filling her life with adventure, marital bliss, and societal circles outranking her modest roots. It only makes sense for her to beg Liz for help penning an eloquent letter to Morgan, now bound for a dangerous front. After all, she's certain the beauty of Liz's ghostwritten prose would ensure a courtship as enviable as their roommate Julia's relationship with her beloved sailor-and Betty is right, though not how she foresees.

Likewise, Julia Renard's betrothal is more complicated than it appears. When tempting opportunities arise, the future she always envisioned as a devoted wife and mother risks derailment. And yet, as the Allies edge toward victory, every person-through heart-wrenching choices and life-altering letters-will discover within themselves profound courage, bittersweet hope, and the true meaning of home . . .

"A gripping and memorable story, Letters from Home is a timeless lesson in love and loss and the moments that shape our lives."
-Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris ]]> 384 Kristina McMorris 1496733886 Irene 0 to-read 3.96 2011 Letters from Home
author: Kristina McMorris
name: Irene
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/04/12
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]]> The Saints of Swallow Hill 57973844 It takes courage to save yourself...

In the dense pine forests of North Carolina, turpentiners labor, hacking into tree trunks to draw out the sticky sap that gives the Tar Heel State its nickname, and hauling the resin to stills to be refined. Among them is Rae Lynn Cobb and her husband, Warren, who run a small turpentine farm together.

Though the work is hard and often dangerous, Rae Lynn, who spent her childhood in an orphanage, is thankful for it—and for her kind if careless husband. When Warren falls victim to his own negligence, Rae Lynn undertakes a desperate act of mercy. To keep herself from jail, she disguises herself as a man named "Ray" and heads to the only place she can think of that might offer anonymity—a turpentine camp in Georgia named Swallow Hill.

Swallow Hill is no easy haven. The camp is isolated and squalid, and commissary owner Otis Riddle takes out his frustrations on his browbeaten wife, Cornelia. Although Rae Lynn works tirelessly, she becomes a target for Crow, the ever-watchful woods rider who checks each laborer’s tally. Delwood Reese, who’s come to Swallow Hill hoping for his own redemption, offers “Ray� a small measure of protection, and is determined to improve their conditions. As Rae Lynn forges a deeper friendship with both Del and Cornelia, she begins to envision a path out of the camp. But she will have to come to terms with her past, with all its pain and beauty, before she can open herself to a new life and seize the chance to begin again.]]> 372 Donna Everhart 1496733320 Irene 5 3.88 2022 The Saints of Swallow Hill
author: Donna Everhart
name: Irene
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/26
date added: 2022/04/08
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review:
Reading this book brought me back to my years in Wilmington, NC. I never knew about the turpentine camps nor the origin of "tar heels," but I was reminded about the books I read relating to the Appalachian coal mining camps. Shacks of poor desperate people who worked from daybreak until sunset with armed overseers watching their every move. One of the best books I read this year...
]]> Ruby Falls 58624622 Like the chilling psychological thriller The Silent Patient, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Ruby Falls is a nail-biting tale of a fragile young actress, the new husband she barely knows, and her growing suspicion that the secrets he harbors may eclipse her own.

On a brilliantly sunny July day, six-year-old Ruby is abandoned by her father in the suffocating dark of a Tennessee cave. Twenty years later, transformed into soap opera star Eleanor Russell, she is fired under dubious circumstances. Fleeing to Europe, she marries a glamorous stranger named Orlando Montague and keeps her past closely hidden.

Together, Eleanor and Orlando start afresh in LA. Setting up house in a storybook cottage in the Hollywood Hills, Eleanor is cast in a dream role—the lead in a remake of Rebecca. As she immerses herself in that eerie gothic tale, Orlando’s personality changes, ghosts of her past re-emerge, and Eleanor fears she is not the only person in her marriage with a secret.

In this thrilling and twisty homage to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, the story ricochets through the streets of Los Angeles, a dangerous marriage to an exotic stranger, and the mind of a young woman whose past may not release her.]]> 320 Deborah Goodrich Royce 1637583346 Irene 0 to-read 3.19 2021 Ruby Falls
author: Deborah Goodrich Royce
name: Irene
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/03/13
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]]> The Redeemer (Harry Hole, #6) 5973826 The Snowman.

Christmas shoppers stop to hear a Salvation Army concert on a crowded Oslo street. A gunshot cuts through the music and the bitter cold: one of the singers falls dead, shot in the head at point-blank range. Harry Hole—the Oslo Police Department’s best investigator and worst civil servant—has little to work with: no suspect, no weapon, and no motive. But Harry’s troubles will multiply. As the search closes in, the killer becomes increasingly desperate, and Harry’s chase takes him to the most forbidden corners of the former Yugoslavia.

Yet it’s when he returns to Oslo that he encounters true darkness: among the homeless junkies and Salvationists, eagerly awaiting a savior to deliver them from misery—whether he brings new life or immediate death.

With its shrewdly vertiginous narrative, acid-etched characters, and white-hot pace, The Redeemer is resounding proof of Jo Nesbø’s standing as one of the best crime writers of our time.]]> 562 Jo Nesbø 0099505967 Irene 0 to-read, have-a-copy 4.00 2005 The Redeemer (Harry Hole, #6)
author: Jo Nesbø
name: Irene
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/02/14
shelves: to-read, have-a-copy
review:

]]> The Lioness 58537058 A luxurious African safari turns deadly for a Hollywood starlet and her entourage in this riveting historical thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant

Tanzania, 1964. When Katie Barstow, A-list actress, and her new husband, David Hill, decide to bring their Hollywood friends to the Serengeti for their honeymoon, they envision giraffes gently eating leaves from the tall acacia trees, great swarms of wildebeests crossing the Mara River, and herds of zebra storming the sandy plains. Their glamorous guests—including Katie’s best friend, Carmen Tedesco, and Terrance Dutton, the celebrated Black actor who stars alongside Katie in the highly controversial film “Tender Madness”—will spend their days taking photos, and their evenings drinking chilled gin and tonics back at camp, as the local Tanzanian guides warm water for their baths. The wealthy Americans expect civilized adventure: Fresh ice from the kerosene-powered ice maker, dinners of cooked gazelle meat, and plenty of stories to tell over lunch back on Rodeo Drive.

What Katie and her glittering entourage do not expect is this: A kidnapping gone wrong, their guides bleeding out in the dirt, and a team of Russian mercenaries herding them into Land Rovers, guns to their heads. As the powerful sun gives way to night, the gunmen shove them into abandoned huts and Katie Barstow, Hollywood royalty, prays for a simple thing: To see the sun rise one more time. A blistering story of fame, race, love, and death set in a world on the cusp of great change, The Safari is a vibrant masterpiece from one of our finest storytellers.]]> 313 Chris Bohjalian 0385544820 Irene 0 to-read 3.61 2022 The Lioness
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Irene
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/31
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]]> Grief Cottage 33509072 Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2017 (Top 10)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books 2017
Indie Next Summer 2018 Pick For Reading Groups

The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from bestselling National Book Award finalist Gail Godwin.

After his mother's death, eleven-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there thirty years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life. Eventually she was inspired to take up painting so she could capture its utter desolation.

The islanders call it "Grief Cottage," because a boy and his parents disappeared from it during a hurricane fifty years before. Their bodies were never found and the cottage has stood empty ever since. During his lonely hours while Aunt Charlotte is in her studio painting and keeping her demons at bay, Marcus visits the cottage daily, building up his courage by coming ever closer, even after the ghost of the boy who died seems to reveal himself. Full of curiosity and open to the unfamiliar and uncanny given the recent upending of his life, he courts the ghost boy, never certain whether the ghost is friendly or follows some sinister agenda.

Grief Cottage is the best sort of ghost story, but it is far more than that--an investigation of grief, remorse, and the memories that haunt us. The power and beauty of this artful novel wash over the reader like the waves on a South Carolina beach.]]> 336 Gail Godwin 1632867052 Irene 0 to-read 3.53 2017 Grief Cottage
author: Gail Godwin
name: Irene
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/29
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]]> I Must Betray You 56970272 Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force.

Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.

Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?

A gut-wrenching, startling window into communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the number one New York Times best-selling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray.]]> 321 Ruta Sepetys 198483603X Irene 0 to-read 4.38 2022 I Must Betray You
author: Ruta Sepetys
name: Irene
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/25
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]]> The Foundling 59366094
It’s 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age . She’s immediately in awe of her employer—brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel.

Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist she was an outspoken crusader for women’s suffrage. Now, at age forty, Dr. Vogel runs one of the largest and most self-sufficient public asylums for women in the country. Mary deeply admires how dedicated the doctor is to the poor and vulnerable women under her care.

Soon after she’s hired, Mary learns that a girl from her childhood orphanage is one of the inmates. Mary remembers Lillian as a beautiful free spirit with a sometimes-tempestuous side. Could she be mentally disabled? When Lillian begs Mary to help her escape, alleging the asylum is not what it seems, Mary is faced with a terrible choice. Should she trust her troubled friend with whom she shares a dark childhood secret? Mary’s decision triggers a hair-raising sequence of events with life-altering consequences for all.

Inspired by a true story about the author’s grandmother, The Foundling offers a rare look at a shocking chapter of American history. This gripping page-turner will have readers on the edge of their seats right up to the stunning last page…asking themselves, “Did this really happen here ?”]]> 336 Ann Leary 198212038X Irene 0 to-read 3.81 2022 The Foundling
author: Ann Leary
name: Irene
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/14
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]]> Sisters of Night and Fog 58265205
Nineteen-year-old Violette is a crack shot with an unquenchable spirit of adventure, and she's desperate to fight the Nazis however she can. When her mother sends her to find an exiled soldier, Violette meets the man who will change her life. Then tragedy strikes, and Britain’s clandestine war organization—the Special Operations Executive—learns of Violette’s dual citizenship and adept firearm handling and starts to recruit her. But Violette is no stranger to loss and must decide whether the cost of defiance is too great a price to pay.

Set across the European theater of WWII, Sisters of Night and Fog tells the story of two women whose clandestine deeds come to a staggering halt when they are brought together at Ravensbrück concentration camp.]]> 480 Erika Robuck 0593102169 Irene 0 to-read 4.20 2022 Sisters of Night and Fog
author: Erika Robuck
name: Irene
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Final Case 57800385 A provocative new novel from the best-selling author ofSnow Falling on Cedars--a moving father-son story that is also a taut courtroom drama and a bold examination of privilege, power, and how to live a meaningful life.

A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey--conservative, white fundamentalist Christians--are charged with her murder.

Royal, a Seattle criminal attorney in the last days of his long career, takes Betsy Harvey’s case. An octogenarian without a driver’s license, he leans on his son--the novel’s narrator--as he prepares for trial.

So beginsThe Final Case,a bracing, astute, and deeply affecting examination of justice and injustice--and familial love. David Guterson’s first courtroom drama sinceSnow Falling on Cedars,it is his most compelling and heartfelt novel to date.

]]> 246 David Guterson 0525521321 Irene 0 to-read 3.05 2022 The Final Case
author: David Guterson
name: Irene
average rating: 3.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Many Daughters of Afong Moy]]> 59348307
As Washington’s former poet laureate, that’s how she describes channeling her dissociative episodes and mental health struggles into her art. But when her five-year-old daughter exhibits similar behavior and begins remembering things from the lives of their ancestors, Dorothy believes the past has truly come to haunt her. Fearing that her child is predestined to endure the same debilitating depression that has marked her own life, Dorothy seeks radical help.

Through an experimental treatment designed to mitigate inherited trauma, Dorothy intimately connects with past generations of women in her family: Faye Moy, a nurse in China serving with the Flying Tigers; Zoe Moy, a student in England at a famous school with no rules; Lai King Moy, a girl quarantined in San Francisco during a plague epidemic; Greta Moy, a tech executive with a unique dating app; and Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman to set foot in America.

As painful recollections affect her present life, Dorothy discovers that trauma isn’t the only thing she’s inherited. A stranger is searching for her in each time period. A stranger who’s loved her through all of her genetic memories. Dorothy endeavors to break the cycle of pain and abandonment, to finally find peace for her daughter, and gain the love that has long been waiting, knowing she may pay the ultimate price.]]> 362 Jamie Ford 1982158212 Irene 0 to-read 3.84 2022 The Many Daughters of Afong Moy
author: Jamie Ford
name: Irene
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/24
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]]> The Drowning Kind 58438553 A woman returns to the old family home after her sister mysteriously drowns in its swimming ​pool…but she’s not the pool’s only victim.

Be careful what you wish for.

When social worker Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister, Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax arrives at the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property. And as she dives deeper into the research herself, she discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she could have ever imagined.

In 1929, thirty-seven-year-old newlywed Ethel Monroe hopes desperately for a baby. In an effort to distract her, her husband whisks her away on a trip to Vermont, where a natural spring is showcased by the newest and most modern hotel in the Northeast. Once there, Ethel learns that the water is rumored to grant wishes, never suspecting that the spring takes in equal measure to what it gives.

A modern-day ghost story that illuminates how the past, though sometimes forgotten, is never really far behind us.]]> 319 Jennifer McMahon 1982153938 Irene 0 to-read 3.77 2021 The Drowning Kind
author: Jennifer McMahon
name: Irene
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/24
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]]> Malibu Rising 58745185 An alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come rising to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.]]> 369 Taylor Jenkins Reid Irene 0 to-read 3.98 2021 Malibu Rising
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Irene
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/15
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]]> The Next Ship Home 55813959 Ellis Island, 1902: Two women band together to hold America to its promise: "Give me your tired, your poor..."

Ellis Island, 1902. Francesca arrives on the shores of America, her sights set on a better life than the one she left in Italy. That same day, aspiring linguist Alma reports to her first day of work at the immigrant processing center. Ellis, though, is not the refuge it first appears thanks to President Roosevelt's attempts to deter crime. Francesca and Alma will have to rely on each other to escape its corruption and claim the American dreams they were promised.

A thoughtful historical inspired by true events, this novel probes America's history of prejudice and exclusion—when entry at Ellis Island promised a better life but often delivered something drastically different, immigrants needed strength, resilience, and friendship to fight for their futures.]]> 421 Heather Webb 1728243149 Irene 0 to-read 4.10 2022 The Next Ship Home
author: Heather Webb
name: Irene
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/15
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]]> The Diamond Eye 58490567 The New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history's deadliest female sniper. Based on a true story.

In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kyiv, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son--but Hitler's invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper--a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour.

Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC--until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness. But when an old enemy from Mila's past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.

Based on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.]]> 435 Kate Quinn 0062943510 Irene 0 to-read 4.26 2022 The Diamond Eye
author: Kate Quinn
name: Irene
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/15
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]]> The Spanish Daughter 57645352 The Washington Post Books to Read Now | Ms. Magazine Reads for the Rest of Us | Bustle Most Anticipated Books | PopSugar Best Books | BiblioLifestyle Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Books | Book Riot Book Recommendations | Finer Things Book Lover Gifts They’ll Actually Love

As a child in Spain, Puri always knew her passion for chocolate was inherited from her father. But it’s not until his death that she learns of something else she’s inherited—a cocoa estate in Vinces, Ecuador, a town nicknamed “París Chiquito.� Eager to claim her birthright and filled with hope for a new life after the devastation of World War I, she and her husband Cristóbal set out across the Atlantic Ocean. But it soon becomes clear someone is angered by Puri’s claim to the estate�

When a mercenary sent to murder her aboard the ship accidentally kills Cristóbal instead, Puri dons her husband’s clothes and assumes his identity, hoping to stay safe while she searches for the truth of her father’s legacy in Ecuador. Though freed from the rules that women are expected to follow, Puri confronts other challenges at the estate—newfound siblings, hidden affairs, and her father’s dark secrets. Then there are the dangers awakened by her attraction to an enigmatic man as she tries to learn the identity of an enemy who is still at large, threatening the future she is determined to claim�

Perfect for fans of Julia Alvarez and Silvia Moreno-Garcia, this exhilarating novel transports you to the lush tropical landscape of 1920s Ecuador, blending family drama, dangerous mystery, and the real-life history of the coastal town known as the “birthplace of cacao.�]]> 352 Lorena Hughes 1496736249 Irene 0 to-read 3.62 2021 The Spanish Daughter
author: Lorena Hughes
name: Irene
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/15
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]]> All the Light We Cannot See 19398490 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list


A blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). Open your eyes, and see what you can with them before they close forever. Marie-Laure has been blind since the age of six. Her father builds a perfect miniature of their Paris neighbourhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When she is twelve, the German Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure’s agoraphobic 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 Pfennig grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an master at building and fixing these crucial new radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure. The story Illuminates the ways, against all odds, that people try to be good to one another.

At the same time, far away in a walled city by the sea, an old man discovers new worlds without ever setting foot outside his home. But all around him, impending danger closes in.

Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill� (Los Angeles Times).]]> 552 Anthony Doerr Irene 5 4.38 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Irene
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/12/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Silent Parade (Detective Galileo, #4)]]> 56269004 Detective Galileo, Keigo Higashino’s best loved character from The Devotion of Suspect X, returns in a complex and challenging mystery—several murders, decades apart, with no solid evidence.

A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned out house. There’s a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn’t indicted, he returns to mock the girl’s family. And this isn’t the first time he’s been suspected of the murder of a young girl, nearly twenty years ago he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Police worked both cases.

The neighborhood in which the murdered girl lived is famous for an annual street festival, featuring a parade with entries from around Tokyo and Japan. During the parade, the suspected killer dies unexpectedly. His death is suspiciously convenient but the people with all the best motives have rock solid alibis. CI Kusanagi turns once again to his college friend, Physics professor and occasional police consultant Manabu Yukawa, known as Detective Galileo, to help solve the string of impossible to prove murders.]]> 344 Keigo Higashino 1250624819 Irene 0 to-read 3.82 2018 Silent Parade (Detective Galileo, #4)
author: Keigo Higashino
name: Irene
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/12/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty]]> 56382342
When eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father’s small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of the nineteenth century, no one could have imagined that one day he would, through ruthlessness, cunning, and a pathological desire for money, build two empires—one in shipping and another in railroads—that would make him the richest man in America. His staggering fortune was fought over by his heirs after his death in 1877, sowing familial discord that would never fully heal. Though his son Billy doubled the money left by “the Commodore,� subsequent generations competed to find new and ever more extraordinary ways of spending it. By 2018, when the last Vanderbilt was forced out of The Breakers—the seventy-room summer estate in Newport, Rhode Island, that Cornelius’s grandson and namesake had built—the family would have been unrecognizable to the tycoon who started it all.

Now, the Commodore’s great-great-great-grandson Anderson Cooper, joins with historian Katherine Howe to explore the story of his legendary family and their outsized influence. Cooper and Howe breathe life into the ancestors who built the family’s empire, basked in the Commodore’s wealth, hosted lavish galas, and became synonymous with unfettered American capitalism and high society. Moving from the hardscrabble wharves of old Manhattan to the lavish drawing rooms of Gilded Age Fifth Avenue, from the ornate summer palaces of Newport to the courts of Europe, and all the way to modern-day New York, Cooper and Howe wryly recount the triumphs and tragedies of an American dynasty unlike any other.

Written with a unique insider’s viewpoint, this is a rollicking, quintessentially American history as remarkable as the family it so vividly captures.]]> 317 Anderson Cooper 0062964615 Irene 0 to-read 3.75 2021 Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
author: Anderson Cooper
name: Irene
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/10/03
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]]> What We Become 25814542
En route from Lisbon to Buenos Aires in 1928, Max and Mecha meet aboard a luxurious transatlantic cruise ship. There Max teaches the stunning stranger and her erudite husband to dance the tango. A steamy affair ignites at sea and continues as the seedy decadence of Buenos Aires envelops the secret lovers.

Nice, 1937. Still drawn to one another a decade later, Max and Mecha rekindle their dalliance. In the wake of a perilous mission gone awry, Mecha looks after her charming paramour until a deadly encounter with a Spanish spy forces him to flee.

Sorrento, 1966. Max once again runs into trouble—and Mecha. She offers him temporary shelter from the KGB agents on his trail, but their undeniable attraction offers only a small glimmer of hope that their paths will ever cross again.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte is at his finest here, offering readers a bittersweet, richly rendered portrait of a powerful, forbidden love story that burns brightly over forty years, from the fervor of youth to the dawn of old age.]]> 464 Arturo Pérez-Reverte 1476751986 Irene 5 library-book 3.63 What We Become
author: Arturo Pérez-Reverte
name: Irene
average rating: 3.63
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2016/06/23
date added: 2021/09/17
shelves: library-book
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Judge's List (The Whistler, #2)]]> 57865158
Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims.

The man Jeri holds responsible for all these deaths is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement. He is the most cunning of all serial killers. He knows forensics, police procedure, and most important: he knows the law.

He is a judge, in Florida—under Lacy’s jurisdiction.

But the man keeps a record of all his victims and targets, people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. Lacy must work to take him down, while somehow keeping her name off his list.]]> 357 John Grisham 0385546025 Irene 0 to-read 3.95 2021 The Judge's List (The Whistler, #2)
author: John Grisham
name: Irene
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/09/01
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]]>