en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 04:37:18 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 169756 Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains.

For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon—a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world—and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.]]> 308 M.T. Anderson 0763622591 Amy H. 0 3.55 2002
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: 20th-century, postapocalyptic-dystopia, science-fiction-contemporary, ya-dystopia
review:
Another reread in preparation for class. This one always hits hard.
]]> 207571151 Told in alternating timelines, The Lake of Lost Girls is a haunting novel that will thrill fans of All Good People Here and We Are All the Same in the Dark.

Using suspenseful podcast clips to weave a twisty tale of a missing student and her sister who is desperate for answers, The Lake of Lost Girls is perfect for fans of I Have Some Questions for You.

It's 1998, and female students are going missing at Southern State University in North Carolina. But freshman Jessica Fadley, once a bright and responsible student, is going through her own struggles. Just as her life seems to be careening dangerously out of control, she suddenly disappears.

Twenty-four years later, Jessica's sister Lindsey is desperately searching for answers and uses the momentum of a new chart-topping true crime podcast, Ten Seconds to Vanish, that focuses on the cold cases, to guide her own investigation. Soon, interest reaches fever pitch when the bodies of the long-missing women begin turning up at a local lake, which leads Lindsey down a disturbing road of discovery.

In the present, one sister seeks to untangle a complicated web of lies.
In the past, the other descends ever deeper into a darkness that will lead to her ultimate fate.

This propulsive and chilling suspense is a sharp examination of sisterhood and the culture of true crime.]]> 320 Katherine Greene 1639109080 Amy H. 0 3.83 2024
author: Katherine Greene
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: 21st-century, dark-academia, mystery, gothic, currently-reading
review:

]]> 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine�� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Amy H. 5 Brave New World stands with Zamyatin's We, Rand's Anthem, Boye's Kallocain, and Orwell's 1984 as one of the great dystopian novels of the early twentieth century. This satirical answer to the utopian works of H.G. Wells and others rewards multiple readings and continues to have much to say to the contemporary reader.

Set in London in 2540 C.E. (or 632 A.F. �� that is, "After Ford," after the enshrinement of mass production), the novel draws a portrait of a society in which people are created, engineered, conditioned, and perpetually drugged to serve the goals of "Community, Identity, Stability." John the Savage, who has lived beyond the bounds of civilization, and the Resident World Controller of Western Europe, His Fordship Mustapha Mond, know the forbidden pleasures of Shakespeare and science, respectively; they are the symbols of what must be sacrificed - individualism, beauty, curiousity, even conscience - for this "perfect" world to survive.

Not only is Brave New World a brutally thoughtful answer to the naivete of the "Age of Utopias," but with Huxley's clever use of names and references (from Marx to Lenin, Freud to Ford, Malthus to Newman), the novel also serves as a cultural literacy test and survey of Western thought.

I highly recommend rereading this (and its contemporaries) every few years. Its message grows more relevant with time.]]> 3.99 1932
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: 20th-century, science-fiction-vintage, postapocalyptic-dystopia
review:
Huxley's Brave New World stands with Zamyatin's We, Rand's Anthem, Boye's Kallocain, and Orwell's 1984 as one of the great dystopian novels of the early twentieth century. This satirical answer to the utopian works of H.G. Wells and others rewards multiple readings and continues to have much to say to the contemporary reader.

Set in London in 2540 C.E. (or 632 A.F. �� that is, "After Ford," after the enshrinement of mass production), the novel draws a portrait of a society in which people are created, engineered, conditioned, and perpetually drugged to serve the goals of "Community, Identity, Stability." John the Savage, who has lived beyond the bounds of civilization, and the Resident World Controller of Western Europe, His Fordship Mustapha Mond, know the forbidden pleasures of Shakespeare and science, respectively; they are the symbols of what must be sacrificed - individualism, beauty, curiousity, even conscience - for this "perfect" world to survive.

Not only is Brave New World a brutally thoughtful answer to the naivete of the "Age of Utopias," but with Huxley's clever use of names and references (from Marx to Lenin, Freud to Ford, Malthus to Newman), the novel also serves as a cultural literacy test and survey of Western thought.

I highly recommend rereading this (and its contemporaries) every few years. Its message grows more relevant with time.
]]> 221228045
All stories come to an end.

Effy learned that when she defeated the Fairy King. Even though she may never know exactly what happened at Hiraeth, she is free of her nightmares and is able to pen a thesis with Preston on the beloved national fairy tale Angharad. She has finally earned a spot at the literature college, making her the first woman in history to enroll.

But some dreams are dangerous, especially when they come true. The entire university—and soon the entire nation—is waiting for her to fail. With the Fairy King defeated and Myrddin’s legacy exposed, Effy can no longer escape into fantasy. Who is she without her stories?

With Effy under threat, Preston is surprised to discover a rage simmering inside him, ringing in his ears like bells. He begins to dream of a palace under the sea, a world where he is king—visions that start to follow him even in waking.

As the war between Llyr and Argant explodes, Effy and Preston find themselves caught in the crossfire: Effy losing her dreams and Preston losing himself in his.

Are dreams ever truly just dreams?]]> 416 Ava Reid 0063421674 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.93 2025
author: Ava Reid
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223854632 A simmering psychological thriller about a dead teacher at an elite boarding school, the students who had every reason to want her gone, and the tangled web of rivalry and romance concealing the truth—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of All the Bright Places.

At an elite boarding school, 8 students are selected for an exclusive program, but only one will walk away with a lifechanging opportunity to realize their creative dreams.��

Effy is piecing together a story about the tragic betrayal that led to her mother's death. Arlo hopes to publish a novel—but he's also trying to start a new chapter with Effy after he broke her heart and ghosted 3 years earlier. Everyone has a compelling reason to be there—they all want a big break—but only the most ambitious will prevail as the students are eliminated one by one.

Their mentor is the one and only Meredith Graffam, an enigmatic writer, director and actress, whose unorthodox teaching methods push them past the breaking point. Under Graffam's tutelage, the students reveal their darkest secrets, take unthinkable risks, and slowly start to turn on one another. But Graffam never expected they would turn on her . . .

"A standout dark academia thriller.�� �� E. Lockhart, #1 New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud ]]> 400 Jennifer Niven 1524713023 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.25
author: Jennifer Niven
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222376804 A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder meets Ace of Spades in this YA thriller where a girl has to navigate the cutthroat world of academia to uncover the truth behind her best friend's death.

Love, Lies, Legacy...High-achieving state-school pupil Eva has one dream �� reading English at Oxford. If she gets in, not only will she receive a world-class education at an elite university, but she will be fulfilling the dreams of her mother and gain some independence from her father, the overprotective Inspector Dawkins.

At the same school, Eva's best-friend George is also hoping to go to Oxford. The attraction between him and Eva is undeniable, but they’ve agreed to put any romance on hold until their places at Oxford are secured. Eva cannot be distracted from her goal �� although when they are both invited for interview week, their future together feels oh-so close.

Until George shows up dead.

The police rule his death an accident, but the behaviour of some of the other interview candidates has Eva suspecting foul play. When a shocking secret about George is revealed, Eva finds suspicion falling on her. What was meant to be one of the most important weeks of her life is fast turning into a nightmare.

All eyes are now on Eva, including the anonymous posters behind OxSlay, a gossipy social media forum exclusively for Oxford students. But amongst the conspiracy theories, lurk hidden clues. Could they help Eva clear her name - and catch the killer?]]> 320 Rachael Davis-Featherstone 1250342309 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.71
author: Rachael Davis-Featherstone
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.71
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222377143 The incredible untold story of how the world's greatest magician, Harry Houdini, waged war upon Spiritualism, uncovering unknown magic, political conspiracies, and surprising secrets along the way.

You won’t live forever, Houdini. You’ve got to DIE. I put a curse on you . . .

During a séance in 1924, Houdini—the greatest entertainer in the world—was cursed by a vengeful spirit, who said his days were numbered. Houdini laughed. He believed talking to the dead was impossible.

By 1926, Houdini was dead.

This is the untold story of the last performance of Harry Houdini, who after becoming inspired by his hero Abraham Lincoln, devotes himself full-time to a personal crusade against Spiritualism, the practice of speaking to the dead. In a spellbinding journey across Jazz Age America, haunted by the aftermath of the Great War and a deadly pandemic, Houdini encounters all the modern forms of haunted houses, warlocks, and monsters, and uncovers a shocking conspiracy that stretches all the way back to Lincoln himself.

In a compelling dual-timeline narrative alternating between Houdini’s 1926 dramatic courtroom testimony before Congress and the last otherworldly cases he takes on that lead him there, Lincoln's Ghost is a powerful examination of deception, love, politics, the afterlife, and the very nature of magic itself.]]> 320 Brad Ricca 1250338905 Amy H. 0 to-read 0.0
author: Brad Ricca
name: Amy H.
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217432776
Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered.

Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation. And all of them—Mara, Loren, Brody, and Eli—have a complicated history with Samantha.

Despite deep mistrust, the four must now take matters into their own hands and clear their names. Even though one of them may be the murderer.]]> 416 K.A. Cobell 0063318687 Amy H. 0 to-read 5.00 2024
author: K.A. Cobell
name: Amy H.
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 2121340 20 Edward Gorey 0764942247 Amy H. 5 20th-century, gothic 4.57 1969
author: Edward Gorey
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: 20th-century, gothic
review:

]]> 392566 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

It is the 22nd Century, an advertisement-drenched world in which the big ad agencies dominate governments and everything else. Now Schoken Associates, one of the big players, has a new challenge for star copywriter Mitch Courtenay. Volunteers are needed to colonise Venus. It's a hellhole, and nobody who knew anything about it would dream of signing up. But by the time Mitch has finished, they will be queuing to get on board the spaceships.

Biographical Notes

Pohl and Kornbluth started writing together as early as 1940, although both authors produced a wide variety of stories separately, under their own names and pseudonyms.

Each wrote sections, starting where the other left off, and through long experience they developed an almost telepathic awareness of each other's intentions.]]> 186 Frederik Pohl Amy H. 0 3.86 1952
author: Frederik Pohl
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/16
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: 20th-century, science-fiction-vintage
review:

]]> 228708554
In the six lectures of Teenage A Guide to Dystopian Young Adult Fiction, award-winning YA author Sherri L. Smith will show you why dystopian stories have become so successful and why they continue to inspire. As you trace the history of dystopian stories and dive into some of YA’s most influential tales of the future, you’ll see why these often dark and challenging works have such a hold on the imagination. From The Giver to The Hunger Games to Orleans, dystopian tales allow us to grapple with hard questions and consider how we want to live—both now and in the future.

While adult dystopian stories are often pessimistic, YA fiction offers something a little hope. Speculative fiction—of which dystopia is just one of many subgenres—allows readers to explore all sorts of “what if?�� questions. For younger readers, there is perhaps no greater “what if�� than the future itself and its many possibilities. While new genres and stories are always on the rise, competing with dystopia’s hold on the young adult imagination, you’ll find that the complex mixture of darkness and optimism that defines these tales continues to thrive as we seek answers to life’s great “what ifs.”]]> 3 Sherri L Smith Amy H. 5 3.96
author: Sherri L Smith
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: 21st-century, history-of-science-fiction, postapocalyptic-dystopia, ya-dystopia, young-adult, literary-criticism, media-studies
review:

]]> 231294041
If you seek wisdom from strong, creative women, this oracle deck will add spiritual insight and feminist guidance to your personal divination practice. The female visionaries in this deck will inform answers to questions about your creative life and spiritual journey. In addition to the portraits of literary heroes, such as Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison, and lesser-known trailblazers, such as Yumiko Kurahashi and Mirabai, the deck features 40 symbol cards bearing Katy Horan’s illustrations of potent spiritual icons to enhance your reading. Taisia Kitaiskaia’s guidebook acts as an interpreter, helping you find meaning in the cards based on your specific intentions, the writers�� dominant traits, and the spiritual symbols at play.]]> 70 Taisia Kitaiskaia Amy H. 5 5.00
author: Taisia Kitaiskaia
name: Amy H.
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: 21st-century, biography, gothic
review:
The artwork in this project is absolutely stunning. What a wonderful choice of authors, too!
]]> 131175 304 Judy Oppenheimer 0449904059 Amy H. 4 20th-century, biography 4.00 1988
author: Judy Oppenheimer
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1988
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: 20th-century, biography
review:

]]> 222725801 A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world with no place for the undocumented. Her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties, and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: She is both fascinated and repulsed.

Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?]]> 224 Karla Cornejo Villavicencio 0593449118 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.64 2024
author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36461782
In her debut collection, Alice Bolin turns a critical eye to literature and pop culture, the way media consumption reflects American society, and her own place within it. From essays on Joan Didion and James Baldwin to Twin Peaks, Britney Spears, and Serial, Bolin illuminates our widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster a man’s story.

From chronicling life in Los Angeles to dissecting the “Dead Girl Show�� to analyzing literary witches and werewolves, this collection challenges the narratives we create and tell ourselves, delving into the hazards of toxic masculinity and those of white womanhood. Beginning with the problem of dead women in fiction, it expands to the larger problems of living women—both the persistent injustices they suffer and the oppression that white women help perpetrate.

Sharp, incisive, and revelatory, Dead Girls is a much-needed dialogue on women’s role in the media and in our culture.

Toward a theory of a dead girl show --
Black hole --
The husband did it --
The daughter as detective --
There there --
Los Angeles diary --
Lonely heart --
This place makes everyone a gambler --
The dream --
A teen witch's guide to staying alive --
And so it is --
My hypochondria --
Just us girls --
Accomplices]]> 288 Alice Bolin 0062657143 Amy H. 0 to-read 2.99 2018
author: Alice Bolin
name: Amy H.
average rating: 2.99
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 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 Amy H. 4
Another novel inspired by the same case, The Button Field by Gail Husch, was published in 2014. I read these two in the order of their publication, and I found that they complement each other extremely well. I highly recommend both.]]> 3.30 2023
author: Katharine Beutner
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 21st-century, dark-academia, historical-fiction, mystery, gothic
review:
4.5 stars. This is a powerful Dark Academia work inspired by the real-life disappearance of student Bertha Mellish from Mount Holyoke College in 1897. Katharine Beutner explores this case in a way that highlights its resonances with current events and issues, and the perspective here is very effective.

Another novel inspired by the same case, The Button Field by Gail Husch, was published in 2014. I read these two in the order of their publication, and I found that they complement each other extremely well. I highly recommend both.
]]> 222376503 “An absolute astonishment.�� -Vauhini Vara, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of The Immortal King Rao

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Outlawed, the gripping story of an anthropologist's monumental discovery and the clash of civilizations it sets off over the fate of the land that holds us.

When a body is found in a bog in northwest England, Agnes, an American forensic anthropologist, is called to investigate. But this body is not like any she's ever seen. Though its bones prove it was buried more than two thousand years ago, it is almost completely preserved.

The mystery of the Iron Age body draws the attention of numerous groups with competing the archaeologists who want to study the surrounding bog, the peat-cutters who want to profit from the land's resources, and a group of environmental activists and neo-pagans who demand the body be returned to its resting place and that the moss-layered bog-a marvel of carbon capture on a warming planet-be left undisturbed. Then there's the moss a complex repository of artifacts and remains, with its own dark stories to tell.

As Agnes is drawn into the controversy stirred by the body and its habitat, she must face not only the deep history of what she has unearthed, but also the relationships she has forsworn in her bid for independence. Flashing between the uncertainty of post-Brexit England and Europe at the dawn of the Roman era, Bog Queen brims with climate urgency and ancient wisdom as it connects across time two gifted, farsighted young women learning to harness their strange strengths in a landscape more mysterious and complex than either can imagine.]]> 288 Anna North 163557966X Amy H. 0 to-read 4.67
author: Anna North
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223641038 How far would you go to belong?

Maya has returned to Princeton for her college reunion - it's been a decade since she graduated, and this visit is special because she will also be attending the graduation of her little sister, Naomi.

But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya's worst nightmare when she receives the news that Naomi is dead. The police are calling it an accident, but Maya suspects that there is more to the story than they are letting on.

As Maya pieces together what happened in the months leading up to her sister's death, she begins to realise how much Naomi hid from her. Despite Maya's warnings, Naomi had joined Sterling Club, the most exclusive social club on campus - the same one Maya belonged to. And if she had to guess, Naomi was likely tapped for the secret society within it.

Maya knows that her sister isn't the first person in the society to turn up dead. Now every clue is leading Maya back to the past . . . and to the secret she's been keeping all these years.]]> 400 Lauren Ling Brown 0593723376 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.55 2024
author: Lauren Ling Brown
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004045 The next high concept horror novel from NYT bestselling author Christopher Golden.

Across Italy, there are many half-empty towns, nearly abandoned by those who migrate to the coast or to cities. The beautiful, crumbling hilltop town of Becchina is among them, but its mayor has taken drastic measures to rebuild—selling abandoned homes to anyone in the world for a single Euro, as long as the buyer promises to live there for at least five years. It’s a no-brainer for American couple Tommy and Kate Puglisi. Both work remotely, and Becchina is the home of Tommy’s grandparents, his closest living relatives.

It feels like a romantic adventure, an opportunity the young couple would be crazy not to seize. But from the moment they move in, they both feel a shadow has fallen on them. Tommy’s grandmother is furious, even a little frightened, when she realizes which house they’ve bought.

There are rooms in an annex at the back of the house that they didn’t know were there. The place makes strange noises at night, locked doors are suddenly open, and when they go to a family gathering, they’re certain people are whispering about them, and about their house, which one neighbor refers to as The House of Last Resort. Soon, they learn that the home was owned for generations by the Church, but the real secret, and the true dread, is unlocked when they finally learn what the priests were doing in this house for all those long years…and how many people died in the strange chapel inside.

While down in the catacombs beneath Becchina…something stirs.]]> 320 Christopher Golden 1250879418 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.30 2024
author: Christopher Golden
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220481291 368 Deborah O'Connor 146423468X Amy H. 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Deborah O'Connor
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220843708 In these highly-candid radio interviews, more than fifty legendary, larger-than-life personalities trade anecdotes about the Golden Age of science fiction. Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Fritz Leiber, Frank Herbert, Frank Kelly Freas, and many more, depict the wild personalities, sparks of contention, and vivid imagination that made science fiction thrive.

Today, depictions of aliens, rocket ships, and awe-inspiring, futuristic space operas are everywhere. Why is there so much science fiction, and where did it come from anyway? Radio producer and author Richard Wolinsky has found answers in the Golden Age of science fiction, between 1920 and 1960.

Wolinsky and his fellow writers and co-hosts Richard A. Lupoff and Lawrence Davidson, interviewed a veritable who’s who of famous (and infamous) science-fiction publishers, pulp magazines, editors, cover artists, and fans. The interviews themselves, which aired on the public radio, Probabilities, span over twenty years, from just before the release of Star Wars through the dawn of Y2K.

Probabilities was the home of a vivid cross-section of the early science fiction world, with radio guests offering a wide range of tales, opinions, theory, and gossip. It speaks to how, in the early days, they were free to define science fiction for themselves and push the genre to explore new ideas and new tropes in creative (and sometimes questionable) ways.

Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopods! is ultimately a love letter to fandom. Science fiction wouldn’t have survived as a genre if there weren’t devoted fanatics who wrote fanzines, organized conventions, and built relationships for fandom to flourish.]]> 264 Richard Wolinsky 1616964421 Amy H. 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: Richard Wolinsky
name: Amy H.
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217387935 Naomi Novik's Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

"Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us."

Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job―no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from―is herself.]]> 432 Emily Tesh 1250835011 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.25 2025
author: Emily Tesh
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Amy H. 5 4.62 2025
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: 21st-century, science-fiction-contemporary, ya-dystopia, young-adult
review:

]]> 217476745
Estella Ecker has returned to Rockfall House, the last place on earth she wants to be. Years after she ran away from her overbearing father, she has been forced back home to walk in his footsteps, teaching at the college he dominated and living in the fabulous home where he entertained artists and scholars for decades―and perhaps she owns it now, because her mercurial mother has disappeared. At the center of everything―the whispers, the rumors, the secrets―is her father's library of rare books, which she had been forbidden to touch while he was alive to stop her.

Everyone in town is watching Estella, with her dead father's name on their lips, and no one seems to care about her missing mother. Who were her parents, really, and is the answer hidden somewhere in the depths of Rockfall House? And who will Estella be, if she gathers enough courage to find that answer? What she will discover is that no one can escape the secrets hidden in this dark library.

Suspenseful and unsettling but ultimately triumphant, The Dark Library by acclaimed author Mary Anna Evans is a compelling tale of mystery, family secrets, and the quest for truth.]]> 384 Mary Anna Evans 1728293677 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.73 2025
author: Mary Anna Evans
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219324818 Xan van Rooyen Amy H. 0 to-read 0.0
author: Xan van Rooyen
name: Amy H.
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 225164508 A NEW SEMESTER BEGINS

A beguiling, sinister collection of 12 more dark academia short stories from masters of the genre, including Olivie Blake, Genevieve Cogman, MK Lobb and more!

Twelve original dark academia stories from bestselling thriller writers �� imagine darkened libraries, exclusive elite schools, looming Gothic towers, charismatic professors, illicit affairs, the tang of autumn in the air�� and the rivalries and obsessions that lead to murder.

Featuring stories
Olivie Blake
Genevieve Cogman
Ariel Djanikian
Elspeth Wilson
MK Lobb
Jamison Shea
Kate Alice Marshall
Erica Waters
De Elizabeth
Taylor Grothe
Kit Mayquist
Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé]]> 368 Marie O'Regan 1835410197 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.67
author: Marie O'Regan
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223524394
When We Love You, Bunny opens, Sam has just published her first novel to critical acclaim. But at a New England stop on her book tour, her one-time frenemies, furious at the way they’ve been portrayed, kidnap her. Now a captive audience, it’s her (and our) turn to hear the Bunnies�� side of the story. One by one, they take turns holding the axe, and recount the birth throes of their unholy alliance, their discovery of their unusual creative powers—and the phantasmagoric adventure of conjuring their first creation. With a bound and gagged Sam, we embark on a wickedly intoxicating journey into the heart of dark academia: a fairy tale slasher that explores the wonder and horror of creation itself. Not to mention the transformative powers of love and friendship, Bunny.

Frankenstein by way of Heathers, We Love You, Bunny is both a prequel and a sequel, and an unabashedly wild and totally complete stand-alone novel. Open your hearts, Bunny, to another dazzlingly original and darkly hilarious romp in the Bunny-verse from the queen of the fever-dream, Mona Awad.]]> 496 Mona Awad 1668098482 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.19 2025
author: Mona Awad
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 223420465
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for comfort and help. Together they dream up a wild, fantastical scheme to free Arthur from the cruel trap in which he finds himself. Wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren suggests using the unnerving Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. The others—brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen—don’t hesitate to join Colin in an effort to smash reality and bring a creature of the impossible into our world.

But there’s nothing simple about dealing with dragons, and their pact to save Arthur becomes a terrifying bargain in which the six must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow every year—or become his next meal.]]> 896 Joe Hill 0062200607 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.50 2025
author: Joe Hill
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58994136 36 Jody Boginski Barbessi 1646710681 Amy H. 0 21st-century 4.50
author: Jody Boginski Barbessi
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: 21st-century
review:

]]> 221473207 From Dead Eleven author Jimmy Juliano, a twisty, edge-of-your-seat novel about a unique haunting in the early 2000s

Piper Lowery, a public library clerk in charge of liaising with the local middle school, can tell right away there’s something strange about the new girl in eighth grade. Avery Wallace won’t touch any kind of technology, not even the computers at the library, and her mother comes to school with her every day, refusing to leave her side—not even when Avery uses the restroom.

And then there are the rumors, the whispers Piper hears from kids in the hallway and parents around Avery’s mother is a witch. Her sister and father were killed by something supernatural. A strange virus killed them.

Seeing how isolated and lonely Avery is, Piper befriends her but quickly realizes it might just be the worst decision she’s ever made. Because there’s something dark inside Avery Wallace, and it’s spreading . . .]]> 384 Jimmy Juliano 0593475895 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.21 2025
author: Jimmy Juliano
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 42614095
Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like 'guilt, and guilt, and guilt': these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom.

'But what is the ninth kingdom?' she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. 'It is the kingdom of the frozen will,' comes the reply. 'There is no going back.'

Sylvia Plath's strange, dark tale of independence over infanticide, written not long after she herself left home, grapples with mortality in motion.

Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.]]> 40 Sylvia Plath 0571351735 Amy H. 4 3.97 2019
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: 20th-century, fantasy, gothic, mystery
review:

]]> 219334880 The young adult debut from the award-winning author of Arsenic and Adobo! When a high school tarot reader’s latest client goes missing after a troubling reading, she must apply everything she’s learned from her private investigator mother to solve a case of her own.B

Danika Dizon is a natural problem-solver. Thanks to her private investigator mom and mystery author dad, she's equipped with the skills to offer guidance to anxious classmates who come to her for a tarot reading between classes. For a price, of course.

But when one of her clients vanishes shortly after they're dealt a death card, the girl’s younger sister Gaby begs Danika to figure out what went wrong. Danika takes on the case, thinking it's the perfect way to prove to her parents that she should be an official investigator in the family’s detective agency.

What starts off as a compelling challenge quickly devolves into something darker as Danika and Gaby peel back layer after layer of the secret life the missing girl has been living. A life that those involved would do anything to keep from being revealed…]]> 336 Mia Manansala 0593897927 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.20
author: Mia Manansala
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210213729 Before the Rebellion, the Empire reigns, in book one of a trilogy told through the eyes of Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and Saw Gerrera.

“In order to ensure the security and continuing stability, the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire! For a safe and secure society!��

With one speech and thunderous applause, Chancellor Palpatine brought the era of the Republic crashing down. In its place rose the Galactic Empire. Across the galaxy, people rejoiced and celebrated the end of war—and the promises of tomorrow. But that tomorrow was a lie. Instead, the galaxy became twisted by the cruelty and fear of the Emperor’s rule.

During that terrifying first year of tyranny, Mon Mothma, Saw Gerrera, and Bail Organa face the encroaching darkness. One day, they will be three architects of the Rebel Alliance. But first, each must find purpose and direction in a changing galaxy, while harboring their own secrets, fears, and hopes for a future that may never come unless they act.]]> 496 Alexander Freed 0593723465 Amy H. 5 read Dominic's brilliant review of this book. Yes, yes, yes. I agree.

Second, Alexander Freed has delivered all I was hoping for in this novel and more. Freed’s portrayal of Bail Organa both evolves him from and anchors him in the character as we left him at the end of the prequel trilogy, and Freed’s depiction of Mon Mothma sets the stage for the character we see in Andor and Rogue One. We also get compelling glimpses into Saw Gerrera and his rebel cohort. We also see how these three figures come together in an uneasy partnership. Best of all, this first book of a trilogy �� I’m really looking forward to the next volume by Rebecca Roanhorse! �� provides the same kind of insightful political commentary that has made Andor such a powerful and timely addition to the Star Wars universe. What is the nature of democracy, and how might we save it from its own self-destructive tendencies? How and why do republics become empires, and how does power feed on and consolidate itself? What role does propaganda play in the shaping of political perceptions? How do authoritarians play those who would resist against each other? The issues wrestled with here are uncomfortably and vitally relevant today, and I’m glad Freed tackles them so ably in his thoughtful novel. Highly recommended! I will be pre-ordering the next book in this trilogy as soon as it's available.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Worlds for providing this copy in return for an honest review.]]> 4.13 2025
author: Alexander Freed
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves: 21st-century, media-related, science-fiction-contemporary, star-wars
review:
First, please read Dominic's brilliant review of this book. Yes, yes, yes. I agree.

Second, Alexander Freed has delivered all I was hoping for in this novel and more. Freed’s portrayal of Bail Organa both evolves him from and anchors him in the character as we left him at the end of the prequel trilogy, and Freed’s depiction of Mon Mothma sets the stage for the character we see in Andor and Rogue One. We also get compelling glimpses into Saw Gerrera and his rebel cohort. We also see how these three figures come together in an uneasy partnership. Best of all, this first book of a trilogy �� I’m really looking forward to the next volume by Rebecca Roanhorse! �� provides the same kind of insightful political commentary that has made Andor such a powerful and timely addition to the Star Wars universe. What is the nature of democracy, and how might we save it from its own self-destructive tendencies? How and why do republics become empires, and how does power feed on and consolidate itself? What role does propaganda play in the shaping of political perceptions? How do authoritarians play those who would resist against each other? The issues wrestled with here are uncomfortably and vitally relevant today, and I’m glad Freed tackles them so ably in his thoughtful novel. Highly recommended! I will be pre-ordering the next book in this trilogy as soon as it's available.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Worlds for providing this copy in return for an honest review.
]]> 220160462 Ninth House meets Legendborn in this thrilling first book in a dark academia fantasy series about a teen who’s willing to do anything to find her brother—even infiltrate a secret society full of monsters.

When August’s brother disappears before his sophomore semester, everyone thinks the stress of college got to him. But August knows her brother would never have left her voluntarily, especially not after their mother so recently went missing.

The only clue he left behind was a note telling her to stay safe and protect their remaining family. And after August is attacked by a ten-foot-tall creature with fur and claws, she realizes that her brother might be in more danger than she could have imagined.

Unfortunately for her, the only person with a connection to the mysterious creature is the bookish Virgil Hawthorne…and he knows about them because he is one. If he doesn’t find a partner to help control his true nature, he’ll lose his humanity and become a mindless beast—exactly what the secret society he’s grown up in would love to put down.

Virgil makes a proposition: August will join his society and partner with him, and in return, he’ll help her find her brother. And so August is plunged into a deadly competition to win one of the few coveted candidate spots, all while trying to accept a frightening reality: that monsters are real, and she has to learn to master them if she’s to have any hope of saving her brother.]]> 592 Liselle Sambury 1665957360 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.29 2025
author: Liselle Sambury
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218569867 Humanity’s earliest efforts at recording and drawing meaning from history reveal how lives millennia ago were not so different from our own.

Mesopotamia saw the first cities, devised the original writing system, sowed the early seeds of agriculture, and developed myths, medicine, and astronomy that all went on to influence societies around the world. However, the significance of this ancient civilization goes far beyond its technological inventions: These were the people who began the human tradition of recording their own histories.

With each chapter focusing on a new artifact, historian Moudhy Al-Rashid takes us on a personal tour of ancient life: the brick that was the basis of Mesopotamian architecture; the classroom tablets that shed light on the timeless anxieties of student life; the stone obelisk that spoke to the vast socioeconomic gulfs. Ancient Mesopotamians wanted a witness to their lives, and thousands of years later, Al-Rashid shares their stories.]]> 336 Moudhy Al-Rashid 1324036427 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Moudhy Al-Rashid
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222683984 November 1933. London. Seven people receive mysterious letters. Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to a posh townhouse where one is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing. Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery?

An interactive murder mystery from the bestselling author and illustrator of Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village

Dear Detective,

Surely you have seen the papers and read about the murder of the American novelist Roy Peterson—stabbed while in a room with six other people, and yet no one went near him or saw the murder occur. The crime is so devious, so logistically impossible, that it seems to have been committed not by a person but by a disembodied hand.

I must confess that we are at a loss. Who wrote the poison pen letters that lured these seven people to this deadly gathering? What do a poet, an Earl, an actress, a cook, a telephone operator, and a lothario have in common? And how can a man be stabbed in a room full of suspects when none of them could have done it?

We have had our best people on the case, Detective, and we still can’t make heads or tails of it. We are giving this case file to you. Can you decipher the clues, decode the witness statements, and identify the murderer? You are our last hope. Can you help us crack the Case of the Creeping Hand?

Yours truly,

Detective Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police]]> 128 Maureen Johnson 0593836014 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.67 2025
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220273416 From the Grammy-nominated and multiplatinum singer-songwriter and New York Times bestselling author Tori Amos comes Tori and the Muses, a thoughtful and sprightly tale of young Tori navigating the magical world of inspiration in all its forms.

Tori is no ordinary child—her musical inspirations and talents are clear from a young age. But when her dad forces her to rehearse for her recital, Tori is unhappy. She wants to play what she wants to play! And though they don’t see eye to eye, Tori has a eleven Muses who have visited her since she was a baby and inspire her to write and make her own beautiful music. These fairy godmother–like Muses remind Tori that inspiration is everywhere, and perhaps in helping others find their own Muses—including Dad—she may better understand her own inspirations.

So, Tori takes her brand-new floating pink piano—a gift from the Muses—to see what might inspire others, in hopes of understanding what her dad’s Muses might be.�� And she is surprised at what she finds.��

Filled with joy, curiosity, and imagination, this debut picture book written by Tori Amos with otherworldly illustrations by Demelsa Haughton will inspire, encourage, and most importantly, remind young readers to find inspiration in the things they love, and to listen to their own Muses.]]> 40 Tori Amos 0593750349 Amy H. 4 4.26
author: Tori Amos
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: 21st-century, childrens, fantasy
review:

]]> 222860677 The fascinating story of how two brothers—one an English professor, the other a cop, and as different as night and day—tag team as authors to solve North Carolina’s most notorious cold case ��A MURDER ON The Professor, The Cop, And North Carolina’s Most Notorious Cold Case by Brian and Cameron Santana is a true crime investigation that unveils the shocking story behind the brutal 1973 murder on campus of 19-year-old Virginia Marie Olson.

On April 15, 1973, two high school students discovered Olson’s body near the campus of the University of North Carolina-Asheville. The cold case that followed would span over 50 years, involving three generations of detectives and the Asheville Police Department and North Carolina SBI as they worked tirelessly to uncover the truth. Olson’s murder was horrifically violent—she had been bound, raped, and stabbed to death, leaving the Asheville community in shock.

The true crime book takes readers through law enforcement’s dramatic efforts to find Olson’s killer, facing numerous obstacles along the way, from the abduction of another UNCA student in 1974 to a rape and murder victim's body discovered near Olson’s crime scene in 1978. Whispers about the killer's identity have circulated for decades, with theories ranging from an escaped mental health patient to one of North Carolina’s most notorious serial killers—until now.

A MURDER ON CAMPUS is the first to tell the gripping story of this unsolved crime and the surprising twists that led to the authors' revelation of the killer’s identity in North Carolina's most notorious cold cases. Written by two brothers, one a cop and the other an English professor, this book offers a unique and fascinating perspective on a case that has haunted Buncombe County for generations.]]> 281 Brian Santana 1964730279 Amy H. 4
While I appreciate this book as a work of history and true crime, I found the most interesting aspect of the book to be the authors' consideration of memory, both personal and institutional. How much can we know about the victim of a crime so many decades after the fact? And how has the university emphasized and/or erased her story? In what ways does campus lore make a ghost of Virginia Olson? I recommend this to anyone interested in a thoughtful look at a frustratingly cold case.

I thank the ŷ������ Giveaways program for the opportunity to read and review this book.]]> 3.92
author: Brian Santana
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: 21st-century, dark-academia-and-true-crime, giveaways, true-crime
review:
This book delivers exactly what the title promises: two brothers, a professor and a police officer, using their respective investigatory skills to revisit an unsolved case that deserves more public attention, the 1973 murder of student Virginia Marie Olson at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The authors are thorough in their unpacking of the evidence and their tracing of the waxing and waning of official investigations over time. It is a troubling story, and I appreciate the sensitivity and conscientiousness the authors showed in their analysis.

While I appreciate this book as a work of history and true crime, I found the most interesting aspect of the book to be the authors' consideration of memory, both personal and institutional. How much can we know about the victim of a crime so many decades after the fact? And how has the university emphasized and/or erased her story? In what ways does campus lore make a ghost of Virginia Olson? I recommend this to anyone interested in a thoughtful look at a frustratingly cold case.

I thank the ŷ������ Giveaways program for the opportunity to read and review this book.
]]> 220160921 A decades-old secret that drove a mother from her hometown now threatens her college-bound daughter in this twisty new thriller from New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda.

Beckett Bowery never thought she’d return to Wyatt Valley, a picturesque college town in the Virginia mountains steeped in tradition. Her roots there were strong: Beckett’s parents taught at the college, and she never even imagined studying anywhere else—until a tragedy her senior year ended with two local men dead, and her roommate on the run, never to be seen again��

For the last two decades, Beckett has done her best to keep her distance. Then her daughter, Delilah, secretly applies to Wyatt College and earns a full scholarship, and Beckett can only hope that her lingering fears are unfounded. But deep down she knows that Wyatt Valley has a long memory, and that the past isn’t the only dangerous thing in town…]]> 352 Megan Miranda 1668080974 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.79 2025
author: Megan Miranda
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220161384 An English professor’s deadly past comes back to haunt her in this chilling and sexy thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Vi Keeland.

As a college English professor, Elizabeth looks forward to the start of each new semester teaching her creative writing seminar. At least until she reads chapter one of The Reckoning, a tale about a high school senior who has an affair with her teacher. To anyone else it would be the beginning of a great page-turner, but to Elizabeth it is the beginning of the end.

She knows this story. It’s all familiar because she lived it. The girl in the story was her best friend Jocelyn, and Elizabeth knows exactly how the story will end—with the professor dead. Because she was the one who killed him.

Someone knows what Elizabeth did twenty years ago and her secret is about to be exposed, but who is the mystery student submitting the chapters? In an effort to find out, Elizabeth returns to her Louisiana hometown where it soon becomes clear that no matter how many years have gone by, she can’t escape her past.]]> 288 Vi Keeland 1668047497 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.25 2025
author: Vi Keeland
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220481312 The Virgin Suicides meets I Have Some Questions For You in a dual timeline suspense following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring sad girls they attended college with decades ago, all while holding a secret that will slowly unravel her new, suburban dream life.

Some stories refuse to stay buried.

For best friends Nikki and Sadie, college was supposed to be a fresh start, a way to blast Courtney Love from car speakers and leave their youth behind. But along with sadness-obsessed girls and intrusive professors, a dark story plagues their small all-women’s school: the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the deaths of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring students, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the tragic tales, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. As she digs deeper, Nikki soon suspects there's much more to the story - a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.

It’s been nearly twenty years since Sadie last saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead, and when Sadie ends up pregnant by Nikki’s grieving husband not long after the funeral, she finds herself stepping into her ex-best friend’s seemingly perfect life. But the longer Sadie lives in Nikki’s eerily preserved home, the more she sees her appear and soon, she’s convinced that Nikki is sending her clues from beyond the grave. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim.

Told in a dual timeline, Doll Parts is an evocative and irresistible debut, at once an exploration of the dark chasms that break apart friendships, an ode to the aching beauty of girlhood, and a sharp portrayal of grief that can physically haunt you.]]> 400 Penny Zang 1464228140 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.38 2025
author: Penny Zang
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214175256 A chilling analysis of how Western indecision and apathy made possible the return of brutal Russian expansionism with catastrophic consequences �� “A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what went wrong and how it can be fixed�� (Serhii Plokhy, Harvard University)

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six US presidential administrations of both parties pursued policies for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia that emboldened Russia, playing into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony. The military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable.
��
In The Folly of Realism, leading national security expert and bestselling author Alexander Vindman argues that America’s mistakes in Eastern Europe result from policymakers�� fixation on immediate, short-term problem-solving and misplaced hopes and fears. He proposes a new long-term, values-based approach that insists on the fundamentals of liberal democracy and a rules-based world order.
��
Enlivened by firsthand accounts and behind-the-scenes interviews with leading Washington and international policymakers and culminating in the shocking brutality of Putin’s invasions of Ukraine, the book exposes the follies of western foreign policymaking, sources of the dangerous return of Russian imperialism, and proscribes how it can be contained.


��]]> 304 Alexander Vindman 1541705041 Amy H. 4
Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for an opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for an opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.]]> 4.07
author: Alexander Vindman
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: 21st-century, political-thought, russian-history, us-history
review:
4.5 stars. The Folly of Realism delivers a brief, too-the-point, and clear-eyed expert investigation of United States-Ukrainian relations, and it is a "must read" at this tragic and pivotal moment in history. Vindman's accessible and informed analysis points out the missed opportunities of the last six U.S. administrations -- in short, where the Republicans, the Democrats, and even the author himself got it wrong -- and makes a compelling case for a consistent policy informed by neo-idealism. Most importantly, Vindman makes the crucial argument that appeasing and enabling Russia continues a failed pattern of policy that promises disaster. Highly recommended for anyone who wants an accessible and educated view from a specialist on the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for an opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Audio for an opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
]]> 220604291 The Virgin Suicides meets I Have Some Questions For You in a dual timeline suspense following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring sad girls they attended college with decades ago, all while holding a secret that will slowly unravel her new, suburban dream life.

Some stories refuse to stay buried.

For best friends Nikki and Sadie, college was supposed to be a fresh start, a way to blast Courtney Love from car speakers and leave their youth behind. But along with sadness-obsessed girls and intrusive professors, a dark story plagues their small all-women’s school: the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the deaths of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring students, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the tragic tales, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. As she digs deeper, Nikki soon suspects there's much more to the story - a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.

It’s been nearly twenty years since Sadie last saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead, and when Sadie ends up pregnant by Nikki’s grieving husband not long after the funeral, she finds herself stepping into her ex-best friend’s seemingly perfect life. But the longer Sadie lives in Nikki’s eerily preserved home, the more she sees her appear and soon, she’s convinced that Nikki is sending her clues from beyond the grave. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim.

Told in a dual timeline, Doll Parts is an evocative and irresistible debut, at once an exploration of the dark chasms that break apart friendships, an ode to the aching beauty of girlhood, and a sharp portrayal of grief that can physically haunt you.]]> Penny Zang 1464228159 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.43 2025
author: Penny Zang
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213201037 On Edge presents a new picture of postwar American literature, arguing that biases against genre fiction have unfairly disadvantaged the legacies of authors like Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Leigh Brackett. Each of these women navigated a male-dominated postwar publishing world without compromising their values. Their category-defying treatment of gender roles and genre classifications created suspense in their work that spoke to the tensions of the “Age of Anxiety.�� Lawson engages with foundational voices in American literature, genre theory, and feminism to argue that, by merging the dominant mode of literary realism with fantastical or heightened elements, Brackett, Jackson, and Highsmith responded to the big questions of their era with startling and unnerving answers. By elevating genre play to a marker of literary skill, Lawson contends, we can secure these writers a more prominent place within the canon of midcentury American literature and open the door for the recovery of their similarly innovative peers.]]> 210 Ashley Lawson 0814215742 Amy H. 0 to-read 0.0
author: Ashley Lawson
name: Amy H.
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210191773 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang 0063021471 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.26 2025
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004203 The Girl in the Creek by Hugo Award winner Wendy N. Wagner is an atmospheric and eerie story about a Pacific Northwest forest that seems to be devouring all who enter. A perfect read for fans of T. Kingfisher and Jeff VanderMeer’s cli-fi cosmic horror.

The Clackamas National Forest has always been a sanctuary for evil—human and alien. The shadows of looming trees and long-abandoned mines shelter poachers and serial killers alike. Then there’s the ruined hotel on the outskirts of picturesque small town Faraday, Oregon, nestled in the foothills of Mt. Hood. The one drowning in mushrooms and fungus not even the local expert can identify. Not to mention the stacks of missing persons cases. Freelance writer Erin Harper arrives in Faraday to find out what happened to her brother, whose disappearance in the forest has haunted her for years. But someone else has gone missing. And when Erin finds her in the creek, the girl vanishes again �� this time from the morgue, and days later her fingerprints show up at a murder scene. Maybe it’s a serial killer, or maybe it’s the spores infecting the forest and those lost inside. Erin must find answers quickly, before anyone else goes missing. But she might be next��

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 272 Wendy N. Wagner 1250908647 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.54 2025
author: Wendy N. Wagner
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004876 The Murder Show is a pulse-racing novel about secrets, old friends, and how the past never leaves us by New York Times bestselling and Emmy Award winning author Matt Goldman!

Showrunner Ethan Harris had a hit with The Murder Show, a television crime drama that features a private detective who solves cases the police can’t. But after his pitch for the fourth season is rejected by the network, he returns home to Minnesota looking for inspiration.

His timing is fortunate �� his former classmate Ro Greeman is now a local police officer, and she's uncovered new information about the devastating hit and run that killed their mutual friend Ricky the summer after high school. She asks Ethan to help her investigate and thinks that if he portrays the killing on The Murder Show, the publicity may bring Ricky's killer to justice.

Ethan is skeptical that Ricky's death was anything but a horrible accident, but with the clock running out on his career, he's willing to try anything. It doesn't take long for them to realize they've dug up more than they bargained for. Someone is dead set on stopping Ethan and Ro from looking too closely into Ricky’s death �� even if keeping them quiet means killing again...

The Murder Show is a pulse-racing novel about secrets, old friends, and how the past never leaves us by New York Times bestselling and Emmy Award winning author Matt Goldman!]]> 304 Matt Goldman 1250325722 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.86 2025
author: Matt Goldman
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220239095 Cold cases are a lot easier to solve when you can travel back in time to find new evidence—unless, that is, you get stuck in the nineteenth century.

Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old they’re frozen—or so their inside joke goes. Ali’s work seems like a safe desk job, but what her friends—and even her beloved son—don’t know is that her team has a secret: They can travel back in time to look for evidence.

So far Ali has made trips only to the recent past, so she’s surprised when she’s asked to investigate a murder that took place in 1850. The killing has been pinned on an aristocratic patron of the arts and antiquities, a member of a sinister group called "The Collectors." She arrives in the Victorian era during a mini ice age to find another dead woman at her feet and far too many unanswered questions. But when her son is arrested, Ali attempts to return home only to find herself trapped in 1850.]]> 304 Elly Griffiths 0593834372 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.90 2025
author: Elly Griffiths
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211494311
Then Mark enters the picture. A philosophy student a few years older than them, he has strange and compelling ideas about self-discovery. When Linda and Mark start dating, Jessica is disturbed by the change in her friend—and how quickly she seems to have fallen under the charismatic man’s control.

But Mark’s influence is not limited to Linda. Soon Jessica's group of friends are keeping secrets for him, and it will culminate in ways that change their lives forever.]]> 368 Lisa Harding 0063375656 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.55 2025
author: Lisa Harding
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222733476 The murders of four��innocent��college students��attending��the University of Idaho��left us with so many questions. Now, after over 300 interviews,��James Patterson and prize-winning journalist Vicky Ward��finally have��some��answers.
��������������������������������
We know what it was like to live in Moscow,��Idaho, on November 13, 2022, the day of the cold-blooded killings.��
��
We know what the local police and FBI did right. And what they did wrong.��
��
We’ve learned so much about the four heartbroken families—the Mogens, Goncalves, Kernodles, and Chapins.
��
And we have the��backstory for Bryan Kohberger, brilliant grad student, loner, apparent incel—now��indicted and facing trial.
��
Now you are the jury.
��
The evidence is in.]]> 448 James Patterson 0316572853 Amy H. 0 to-read 0.0
author: James Patterson
name: Amy H.
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50246
Alternate cover is available here.]]> 329 Daphne du Maurier Amy H. 5
As Young doses himself, he finds his present-day reality (in which no one really seems to reach him) fading to the background and the fourteenth-century reality he witnesses (in which he cannot touch anyone) gaining in importance. Du Maurier effectively traces Young's psychological descent as he takes ever greater risks to escape from his time into the past that has become his obsession. The sense of horror and dread grows as Young muddles and confuses the two worlds.

The ending -- for Young, for Lane, and for the experiment -- is perfection.

Du Maurier's work is elegant and streamlined. Every word has a role, and every description speaks volumes. This bleak and unflinching study of the human condition rewards every rereading I give it. It remains a devastatingly powerful story and a favorite of mine.
]]> 3.85 1969
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2013/10/28
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: 20th-century, gothic, science-fiction-vintage
review:
Du Maurier is a master of the Gothic, and this work of time-travel science fiction is one of her finest. Dick Young epitomizes modern man: disaffected and aimless, he is disillusioned with his chosen career and increasingly distanced from his wife and stepsons. His one real (and multi-layered) connection is with his former college mate Magnus Lane, now a dedicated biophysicist. Lane offers Young the use of his family home on the Cornish coast while Young works through his period of personal malaise; in return, Young agrees to serve as a guinea pig for the new drug Lane has been developing (and testing on himself). Lane believes this breakthrough drug has the potential to change the way humanity understands and experiences time.

As Young doses himself, he finds his present-day reality (in which no one really seems to reach him) fading to the background and the fourteenth-century reality he witnesses (in which he cannot touch anyone) gaining in importance. Du Maurier effectively traces Young's psychological descent as he takes ever greater risks to escape from his time into the past that has become his obsession. The sense of horror and dread grows as Young muddles and confuses the two worlds.

The ending -- for Young, for Lane, and for the experiment -- is perfection.

Du Maurier's work is elegant and streamlined. Every word has a role, and every description speaks volumes. This bleak and unflinching study of the human condition rewards every rereading I give it. It remains a devastatingly powerful story and a favorite of mine.

]]> 221179247 When a high-school senior investigates the death of a star hockey player at her elite Jesuit school, she discovers the rot at the heart of the institution—and the truth about her own past along the way.

Frankie is a good daughter, a loyal best friend, and a model student, coasting through her final semester at an elite Catholic prep school in a wealthy Pittsburgh enclave. But acceptance to her dream college leaves her unmoored. When a classmate takes his life after posting a cryptic message about Woolf Whiting—a former student hockey player who died in a presumed suicide years earlier—Frankie and her best friend, Shiv, decide to investigate Woolf’s death as part of their journalism class project.

As the community mourns, a muffled conversation between Frankie's mom, who teaches history at the school, and the priest who teaches her philosophy class draws the girls further into unraveling the mysterious life and death of Woolf. Frankie speaks to his sister, now a high-powered lawyer in New York; his former girlfriend, who Woolf's mother is convinced knows more about his death than she has revealed; and his best friend. As she does, she discovers much more than she expected about the history of her supposed elite education.

With a wry, up-the-patriarchy, wise-beyond-her-years narrator in Frankie and a page-turning plot, Fine Young People��is a cold-case mystery with a Hitchcockian twist and a portrait of a��young��woman searching for meaning in a world that values achievement above all else—perfect for anyone who loves a campus novel with a decidedly contemporary voice.]]> 304 Anna Bruno 1643757008 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.33
author: Anna Bruno
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219542907 You can never escape a summer abroad��

Ten years ago, six college students meet in an Australian summer study abroad, ready to enjoy the break from their studies and travel the country. Their program is meant to introduce them to the beauty of Australia and immerse them in an unforgettable cultural experience. In reality, it's a thrill-fueled summer of outdoor excursions, adrenaline rushes, alcohol, lust, and friendship turned wrong. When Phoebe, a troubled girl with jealousies and fractures spreading like wildfire between them all, suddenly disappears, presumed to have run away in a small outback town, the group decides to pack up and leave the past behind. All their secrets hidden for good. Or at least, that's what they tell themselves��

Ten years later, they each receive a call. They've found Phoebe's body. And now it's time to return.

Each of the friends is summoned back to Australia, confronted with their past selves and the brutal heat and sting of that summer. The police have questions, and the secrets they've been keeping buried deep in the outback start to slowly unearth. It soon becomes clear that everyone knows something about Phoebe's murder, and once again one of them might not make it out alive.


]]> 416 Sara Ochs 1728279593 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.71 2025
author: Sara Ochs
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30268362
For years, Melissa Cynova has been sitting down with friends and neighbors who are curious about the tarot. She's heard all the questions and misconceptions that can confuse newcomers (and sometimes more experienced readers, too). Kitchen Table Tarot was written as a guide for anyone looking for no-nonsense lessons with a warm, friendly, and knowledgeable teacher.

Join Melissa as she shares straightforward guidance on decks, spreads, card meanings, and symbols. Filled with real-life examples and personal explanations of what it's like to read the cards, this book tells it like it is and provides the information you need to read with confidence.]]> 271 Melissa Cynova 0738750778 Amy H. 0 21st-century 4.29 2017
author: Melissa Cynova
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: 21st-century
review:

]]> 219850879
In between grading papers and��navigating her disastrous love life, Professor Ouverture embarks on a deadly investigation to find out what connects her to Sam’s murder—with the help of local detective Asma Ahmed and alluring former-detective-turned-bookseller, Rowan Peterson. As Professor Ouverture gets closer to the truth��she begins to��uncover a secret history of injustice on campus and off.]]> 384 Zoe B. Wallbrook 164129552X Amy H. 0 to-read 4.56
author: Zoe B. Wallbrook
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.56
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217927444 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest - a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and 80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem - the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson - Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was only one among many that dotted the area.

As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of western smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives, but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers.

A propulsive non-fiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.]]> 480 Caroline Fraser 0593657225 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.17 2025
author: Caroline Fraser
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 16255694 32 Natalie Lunis 1617727504 Amy H. 4 3.63 2013
author: Natalie Lunis
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: 21st-century, childrens, dark-academia, dark-academia-and-true-crime, gothic
review:

]]> 131683386 0 Lee Bursten Amy H. 4 21st-century 4.00 2007
author: Lee Bursten
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: 21st-century
review:

]]> 54977143
Each of us holds gifts deep within and, with tarot, we have the power to unlock those gifts and make transformative discoveries. For beginner tarot readers, learning the cards--all 78 of them--and understanding how to use spreads may seem daunting. Tarot expert Stefanie Caponi explains that interpreting the cards is a blend of knowing the card meanings, listening to your heart, and trusting your intuition. In her fully-illustrated book, Guided Tarot, she offers easy exercises to nurture and grow your intuition, not only to understand the cards' universal meanings, but to channel your own meanings. This comprehensive guide also shows you how to attune your energy to the deck for more accurate readings. Soon you'll be confident in doing read¬ings for yourself and even your friends.

Guided Tarot


With Guided Tarot as the companion to your deck, you'll learn more about yourself, get divine guidance with life decisions, and overcome obstacles in your relationships--all while celebrating your unique gifts and honoring your higher self.]]> 240 Stefanie Caponi 0593196996 Amy H. 0 21st-century 4.53
author: Stefanie Caponi
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: 21st-century
review:

]]> 214274586 A scientifically-precipitated, out-of-control tale of evolution set in Antarctica—it predates Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness—by a mathematician of note who also wrote science fiction.


In The Greatest Adventure, an expedition to Antarctica discovers remnants of an elder race with advanced technology. These ancients had discovered the secret of developing new life-forms�� but when the mutations threatened to run amok, their creators entombed their entire civilization in ice. Intrepid aviatrix Edith Lane and her comrades must flee through caverns inhabited by the mutated monsters�� and when frozen spores begin to thaw out, the planet is threatened by malign plant life! A tale of horror by John��Taine—the pseudonym of mathematician Eric Temple Bell—that is not without moments of humor.

Eric Temple Bell (1883��1960) was a mathematician who taught at the California Institute of Technology. The eponym of Bell polynomials and Bell numbers of combinatorics, his 1937 book Men of Mathematics would help to inspire Julia Robinson, John Forbes Nash, Jr., Andrew Wiles, and other future mathematicians. Writing as “John Taine,�� he published many proto-sf novels.]]> 286 John Taine 026255142X Amy H. 0 to-read 3.67 1928
author: John Taine
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1928
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 221473141 From Dead Eleven author Jimmy Juliano, a twisty, edge-of-your-seat novel about a unique haunting in the early 2000s

Piper Lowery, a public library clerk in charge of liaising with the local middle school, can tell right away there’s something strange about the new girl in eighth grade. Avery Wallace won’t touch any kind of technology, not even the computers at the library, and her mother comes to school with her every day, refusing to leave her side—not even when Avery uses the restroom.

And then there are the rumors, the whispers Piper hears from kids in the hallway and parents around Avery’s mother is a witch. Her sister and father were killed by something supernatural. A strange virus killed them.

Seeing how isolated and lonely Avery is, Piper befriends her but quickly realizes it might just be the worst decision she’s ever made. Because there’s something dark inside Avery Wallace, and it’s spreading . . .]]> 384 Jimmy Juliano 0593475909 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.11 2025
author: Jimmy Juliano
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56916903 260 Patrick Maille 1496833007 Amy H. 4 3.80
author: Patrick Maille
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: 21st-century, arthuriana, british-history, media-studies, literary-criticism, us-history
review:
This useful academic study considers the history of Tarot, its place in U.S. culture in particular, and the role it has played in art, television, film, and comics.
]]> 220160556 America’s most beloved wiseass finally tells his life story with all the humor you’d expect from a man who made a career out of making fun of pretty much everything.

How does the son of a Presbyterian minister wind up winning a Pulitzer Prize for writing a wildly inaccurate newspaper column read by millions of people?

In Class Clown, Dave Barry takes us on a hilarious ride, starting with a childhood largely spent throwing rocks for entertainment—there was no internet—and preparing for nuclear war by hiding under a classroom desk. After literally getting elected class clown in high school, he went to college, where, as an English major, he read snippets of great literature when he was not busy playing in a rock band (it was the sixties).

He began his journalism career at a small-town Pennsylvania newspaper where he learned the most important rule of local never confuse a goose with a duck. His journey then took a detour into the business world, where as a writing consultant he spent years trying, with limited success, to get corporate folks to, for God’s sake, get the point. Somehow from there he wound up as a humor columnist for The Miami Herald, where his boss was a wild man who encouraged him to write about anything that struck him as amusing and to never worry about alienating anyone.

His columns were not popular with He managed to alienate a vast army of Neil Diamond fans, and the entire state of Indiana. But he also developed a loyal following of readers who alerted him to the threat of exploding toilets, not to mention the fire hazards posed by strawberry pop-tarts and Rollerblade Barbie, which he demonstrated to the nation on the David Letterman show. He led his readers on a crusade against telemarketers that ultimately caused the national telemarketers association to stop answering its own phones because it was getting—irony alert—too many unwanted calls. He has also run for president multiple times, although so far without success.

He became a book author and joined a literary rock band, which was not good at playing music but did once perform with Bruce Springsteen, who sang backup to Dave. As for his literary merits, Dave “I’ll never have the critical acclaim of, say, Marcel Proust. But was Marcel Proust ever on Carson? Did he ever steal a hotel sign for Oprah?��

Class Clown isn’t just a memoir; it’s a vibrant celebration of a life rich with humor, absurdity, joy, and sadness. Dave says the most important wisdom imparted by his Midwestern parents was never to take anything too seriously. This laughter-filled book is proof that he learned that lesson well.]]> 256 Dave Barry 1668021781 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.42
author: Dave Barry
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222377146 Horror Movie meets the scope and emotion of Stephen King in this heart-pounding, magnetic tour de force about a woman pulled into a cult horror film that is determined to have a sequel, by critically acclaimed author Michael Wehunt.

Ten years ago, Jorie Stroud was the rising star of the October Film Haunt �� a trio of horror enthusiasts who camped out at the filming locations of their favorite scary movies, sharing their love through their popular blog. But after a night in the graveyard from Proof of Demons �� perhaps the most chilling cult film ever made, directed by the enigmatic Hélène Enriquez �� everything unraveled.

Now, Jorie has built an isolated life with her young son in Vermont. In the devastating wake of her viral, truth-stretching Proof of Demons blog entry �� hysteria, internet backlash, and the death of a young woman �� Jorie has put it all, along with her intense love for the horror genre, behind her.

Until a videotape arrives in the mail. Jorie fears someone might be filming her. And the “Rickies�� �� Enriquez obsessives who would do anything for the reclusive director �� begin to cross lines in shocking ways. It seems Hélène Enriquez is making a new kind of sequel…and Jorie is her final girl.

As the dangers grow even more unexpected and strange, Jorie must search for answers before the Proof of the movie’s title finds her and takes everything she loves.

This riveting and layered horror novel unleashes supernatural terror in a world where truth can be manipulated, and nothing is as it seems. Beautiful and horrifying, with an unforgettable cast of characters, The October Film Haunt will shock and delight readers all the way to its breathless final page.

"So unique and steeped in 21st century paranoia and dread you won't be able to read this alone at night." - Paul Tremblay

"The horror in here is palpable, but the writing itself is just as How can one pen have this many good lines in it?" - Stephen Graham Jones]]> 336 Michael Wehunt 1250333695 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.46 2025
author: Michael Wehunt
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216488999 A Deadly Education meets Rivers of London in this captivating contemporary fantasy from Sunday Times bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

Dr. Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings and securing the school’s boundaries from demonic incursions.

Walden is good at her job �� no, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. It’s her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. But it’s possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe from, is herself . . .]]> 368 Emily Tesh 0356525643 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.22 2025
author: Emily Tesh
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219293846 The author of Psycho takes on the famous unsolved slayings of Jack the Ripper!

Robert Bloch gave us fiction’s most famous knife-wielding maniac in Psycho’s Norman Bates, and in The Night of the Ripper (1984), this master of horror fiction offers his own unique take on history’s most infamous unsolved murder case.

Whitechapel, 1888. A madman stalks the foggy streets, murdering prostitutes in acts of unimaginable horror and brutality. Two men—Frederick Abberline of the Metropolitan Police and Mark Robinson, a young American doctor—are determined to find the killer, but the list of suspects is a long one. With the help of a supporting cast of characters that includes Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Elephant Man, the two sleuths must solve the puzzle before it’s too late and the Ripper strikes again!]]> 208 Robert Bloch 1960241370 Amy H. 5 3.50 1984
author: Robert Bloch
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.50
book published: 1984
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: 20th-century, gothic, mystery, whitechapel
review:
“Why do human beings behave with such inhumanity; why do they enjoy inflicting pain, delight in death?�� Valancourt Books has brought back another classic of the genre. Well done.
]]> 208893688 From author Elisa A. Bonnin comes Lovely Dark and Deep, a YA dark academia novel exploring magic, loneliness, and the power of found family.

Hidden off the coast of Washington, veiled in mist, there is an island that does not appear on any map. And on that island is Ellery West.

Ellery West has always been home for Faith. After an international move and a childhood spent adjusting to a new culture and a new language, the acclaimed school for magic feels like the only place she can be herself. That is, until Faith and another student walk into the forest, and only Faith walks out.

Marked with the red stripe across her uniform that designates all students deemed too dangerous to attend regular classes, Faith becomes a social pariah, an exile of Ellery West. But all she has to do is keep her head down for one more year to graduate, and she gets to keep her magic. Because when students fail out of Ellery West, they have their magic taken away. Forever. And Faith can't let that happen.

Except terrifying things are still happening to students, and the dark magic that was unleashed in the forest still seems to be at work. To stop it, Faith and the other Red Stripes will have to work together, risking expulsion from the magical world altogether.]]> 400 Elisa A. Bonnin 1250888573 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.91 2025
author: Elisa A. Bonnin
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217387802 Either you're in or you're out.

Welcome to the Thrashers, the elite friend group at New Helvetia High.

They’re everything everyone wants to be.

Jodi Dillon was never meant to be one of them. Julian, Lucy, Paige, and the infamous Zack Thrasher are rich, sophisticated, and love attention. Jodi feels out of place, but Zack’s her childhood best friend, so she’s in.

Then Emily Mills, who desperately wanted to be a Thrasher, dies—and the whispers about the Thrashers begin. As Emily’s journal surfaces, detectives close in, and Jodi faces an impossible choice: betray her friends or protect herself.

But as eerie messages and strange occurrences escalate, it becomes clear—Emily isn’t done with them yet.

A twisty thrill-ride of unforgettable drama and suspense that "encapsulates the vulnerability of adolescents playing adult games" (Ali Hazelwood) from USA Today bestselling author Julie Soto, The Thrashers will keep you up at night desperate to read just one more page.

"A tour-de-force YA debut from Julie Soto." - Alexa Donne

"For fans of Karen McManus and Kara Thomas, The Thrashers had me holding my breath, sweaty-palming my e-reader, and dying to flip each page to see what would happen next." - Susan Lee

"Expertly plotted and full of flawed, morally gray characters you still can't help rooting for, The Thrashers is one of the best books I've read this year." - Evelyn Skye]]> 352 Julie Soto 125037717X Amy H. 0 to-read 4.35 2025
author: Julie Soto
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 55205169 573 Lise Pearlman 1587904969 Amy H. 0 4.13 2020
author: Lise Pearlman
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 21st-century, biography, true-crime, us-history
review:

]]> 214152054 Golden Hill.

In a city that never was, in an America that never was, on a snowy night at the end of winter, two detectives find a body on the roof of a skyscraper.

It's 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times. Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on—a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But that body on the roof is about to spark off a week that will spill the city's secrets, and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets and gunfire, either to destruction or rebirth.

The multiple-award-winning Francis Spufford returns, with a lovingly created, richly pleasure-giving, epically scaled tale set in the golden age of wicked entertainments.]]> 464 Francis Spufford 1668025469 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.92 2023
author: Francis Spufford
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213245129 Explores the architecture of haunted houses, uncanny domestic spaces, and how the horror genre subverts and corrupts the sanctity of home.

The history of horror begins with a house. From Otranto to Amityville, the haunted house story endures because it perverts what is equally the most universal and the most personal of the home. Our home is an extension of our self, a manifestation of our identity, and a repository of our memories. It is a micro-universe of our own creation that we control. It is also where we are the most vulnerable because we are supposed to be the most safe.

Whether it is a decrepit Victorian mansion, a modernist luxury high-rise, a little cottage in the woods, or a starter house in the suburbs, Sick Houses explores how the horror genre in film, television, and literature uses architecture and the ideology of the home against us. It looks at the mythology of the American Dream and how the lure of homeownership becomes a trap. It celebrates the witch house, the power of the crone, and the fear of aging women who live alone. It explores how concrete utopias became ready-made mise en scene for urban terror.

From the betrayal of sentient shape-shifting houses to shadow-self dollhouse doppelgangers, Sick Houses examines how the horror genre subverts and corrupts that which is the most sacrosanct.]]> 240 Leila Taylor 1915672635 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.77 2025
author: Leila Taylor
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> 214488980 Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published when he completed it in 1914, would probably end his career. Thus, Maurice languished in a drawer for fifty-seven years, the author requesting it be published only after his death (along with his stories about homosexuality later collected in The Life to Come).
Since its release in 1971, Maurice has been widely read and praised. It has been, and continues to be, adapted for major stage productions, including the 1987 Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Hugh Grant and James Wilby.]]> 272 E.M. Forster 0571388183 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.20 1971
author: E.M. Forster
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59227746
Author Martin Edwards is a multi-award-winning crime novelist, the President of the Detection Club, archivist of the Crime Writers�� Association and series consultant to the British Library’s highly successful series of crime classics, and therefore uniquely qualified to write this book. He has been a widely respected genre commentator for more than thirty years, winning the CWA Diamond Dagger for making a significant contribution to crime writing in 2020, when he also compiled and published Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club and the novel Mortmain Hall. His critically acclaimed The Golden Age of Murder (Collins Crime Club, 2015) was a landmark study of Detective Fiction between the wars.


The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative �� and readable �� study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely read than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors �� from the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell �� into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading.]]> 724 Martin Edwards 0008192421 Amy H. 4 4.12 2022
author: Martin Edwards
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: 21st-century, biography, british-history, history-of-detectives, literary-criticism, sherlockiana, us-history, true-crime
review:

]]> 214565614 A chilling historical horror novel set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.]]> 448 Stephen Graham Jones 1668075083 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.23 2025
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216865335 The author of Black Chalk, "the smart summer thriller you've been waiting for" (NPR), returns with a mesmerizing new novel of dark academia about a dangerous secret society at Oxford University and the first-year literature student whose life begins to unravel in its shadow

When Ali McCain, an eighteen-year-old from Los Angeles, is accepted at Oxford, it’s a chance to fulfill his dreams. To study English literature in England; to meet true intellectuals; and to glimpse the life he might have lived had his father—British rock star Gel McCain, legendary frontman of the Pale Fires—not abandoned him and his mother when he was a toddler.

But not long after he arrives at the storied campus, Ali is drawn into a dark, disorienting world where events grow more and more curious by the day. Trading on his father’s name, he gains entry into one of Oxford’s oldest and most selective secret societies, the Saracens. As he immerses himself in this rarefied world, he inadvertently sets in motion a series of events that might culminate in disaster.

A mind-bending literary house of mirrors, replete with bookish allusions and Easter eggs ranging from Brideshead Revisited to King Lear,��The Rabbit Club��is an arresting work of dark academia by the category’s finest writer.]]> 352 Christopher J. Yates 1335550976 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.54
author: Christopher J. Yates
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.54
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211049697 Some secrets we keep even from ourselves

Philosophy professor Neil Weber can' t think of one good reason to get up in the morning. His wife has left him, his academic research has sputtered, and the prospect of tenure is more remote than ever.

Until Lucia Vanotti disappears.

A college student at the Southern university where Neil teaches, Lucia has a secret of her own�� one that haunts her relationships and leads to destructive, reckless behavior. When Neil is drawn into the mystery of her disappearance, he finds himself suddenly relevant again. But at what cost? Each clue pulls him deeper into Lucia' s dark past, but also into the hidden lives of his closest friends and colleagues.

What drove Lucia to risk everything? And why does Neil, a professor who hardly knew her, care to find her? From campus classrooms to sex dens to backwoods hideaways, The Department shows the world through the eyes of Lucia and Neil as they descend into obsession, delusion, and the dangerous terrain of memory�� uncovering the trauma that drives them to behave in ways even they themselves could never have predicted.

Perfect for fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn]]> 412 Jacqueline Faber 1608096351 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.91
author: Jacqueline Faber
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211025429 Queer horror at a boarding school with a Lovecraftian twist��in this new YA novel from E. Latimer, author of the acclaimed The Strange and Deadly Portraits of Bryony Gray.

Northcroft is an elite boarding school with a deadly secret. Each night as the bell tolls and the shutters slam down, cutting off the outside world, the Afterdark descends, turning the surrounding old growth forest into a macabre copy of itself. A negative photograph crawling with horrors.

Evie Laurent is certain of one thing from the moment she sees Holland Morgan on the front steps of Northcroft: she wants to know everything there is to know about her. But there are some things about Evie herself that are better kept secret. Especially the fact that she let her sister drown. And that it's getting harder to ignore her dark impulses . . .��

Holland Morgan knows falling for Evie is just one more terrible choice in her long history of terrible choices. The problem is, she's not sure she cares.

As attraction turns slowly to obsession, they find themselves playing a dangerous game. Something out there is calling to each of them. Beckoning to the shadows within.

Do they fight the call and protect one another, or answer, and embrace the darkness?]]> 400 E. Latimer 1774882248 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.61 2025
author: E. Latimer
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222572877
Zane Sampson is one of these students who has learnt to live with Reviews; however, after discovering that the school is secretly using these sessions to mark its students either as Eligible or Ineligible, Zane begins to question whether Stoneyridge is being entirely honest with its pupils.

Zane gradually comes to realise that he can only be sure of two all of his peers are being lied to, and until he unearths the actual purpose of their Reviews, he and his friends could be living in more danger than they know.]]> 304 Mark Alexander 1836281544 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.29
author: Mark Alexander
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.29
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211003781
Emma has never told anyone what she saw the night her parents died, even when she became the prime suspect. But her presence in the house threatens to uncover secrets that have stayed hidden for years, and the sisters are drawn together once again. As they face their memories of the past, rivalries restart, connections are forged, and, for the first time, Emma starts to ask questions about what really happened that night.

The more Emma learns, the more riddles emerge. And Emma begins to wonder just what her siblings will do to keep the past buried, and whether she did the right thing staying quiet about what was whispered that night: “No one can know.”]]> 336 Kate Alice Marshall 1250859921 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.57 2024
author: Kate Alice Marshall
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004796
Only an elite few are legally permitted to study the science of magic―so when Ash is rejected by the Lancaster Mage’s College, he takes a job as the school’s groundskeeper instead, forced to learn alchemy in secret.

When he’s discovered by the condescending and brilliant apprentice Ramsay Thorne, Ash is sure he's about to be arrested―but instead of calling the reds, Ramsay surprises Ash by making him an offer: Ramsay will keep Ash's secret if he helps her find the legendary Book of Source, a sacred text that gives its reader extraordinary power.

As Ash and Ramsay work together and their feelings for each other grow, Ash discovers their mission is more dangerous than he imagined, pitting them against influential and powerful alchemists―Ash’s estranged father included. Ash’s journey takes him through the cities and wilds across New Anglia, forcing him to discover his own definition of true power and how far he and other alchemists will go to seize it.

Featuring trans, queer, and polyamorous characters of color, Infinity Alchemist is the hugely anticipated young adult fantasy debut from the extraordinary author of Felix Ever After, King and the Dragonflies, Queen of the Conquered and more.]]> 400 Kacen Callender 1250890276 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.69 2024
author: Kacen Callender
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214986234 A thrilling historical mystery about a young woman searching for her father, a young man trying to solve an impossible problem, and the quest for the power to transcend time.

In Half Moon Bay, California, 2016, a young woman waits for her father's sailboat to arrive at port. They have agreed to meet on this day and time. Yet he never shows.

He has told her this event might come. And if it did, she was ready. Go to the library in Berkeley, find a certain book, follow the instructions. But what if the instructions lead to more questions than answers?

In 1933, a young man arrives in Vienna to begin a new post as a professor of mathematics at the university. There he finds himself part of the Engelhardt Circle, a group of intellectuals that have recently been targeted by a growing, anti-academic mob. The circle includes the preeminent minds of their time and a cast of characters desperate to get invited into their midst, many of whom will stop at nothing to get there. As fascism rises, and polarization increases, moderate voices are drowned out.

There are whispers of a machine, a music box, which can transport someone through time. But no one can confirm if it's a rumor or true. And the only people who know firsthand are not talking.

Between the young woman, who lives off the grid and spends her free time editing Wikipedia entries and picking fights with people online, and the circle of intellectuals debating space and time in Vienna on the eve of World War II, lie years of history that might easily be erased—unless old secrets are unraveled. Kirsten Menger-Anderson's beautiful meditation on time, love, and obsession shows us how we never truly know what happened in the past, and often how the past eerily mirrors the future.]]> 256 Kirsten Menger-Anderson 0593798309 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Kirsten Menger-Anderson
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220999768 The Gothic. Brooding, atmospheric, chilling, and not always the outpouring of a feverish imagination. Reality can be even stranger as borne out in this lush and ghostly look at real people who lived—and died—amidst the trappings of the Gothic.

Fog clinging to an isolated mansion. A dangerous patriarch or an overbearing matron. Locked doors and forbidden rooms. Whispers of murder and madness. And a woman shadowed by omnipresent threats. You’ve guessed it. You’ve stumbled into a Gothic tale, and it will haunt you like a ghost.

����������We often think of the enduring tropes of the Gothic in terms of fiction and film—breath-catching escapes that tap into our fears, anxieties, forbidden desires, and unsettling dreams. But what if some of these chilly vibes are rooted in the experiences of real and tragic people who danced a macabre waltz with love and death? That’s why we’re here. Take the case of teenage Mercy Brown, victim—or was it predator?—of Rhode Island’s vampire hysteria of the 1890s. Marguerite de la Roque, a French noblewoman condemned for “sexual crimes�� to Canada’s long-lost Isle of Demons. What happened to her and the barren landscape itself is the stuff of legend. And “Mad Lucy�� Ludwell, the decidedly peculiar eighteenth-century high-society hauteur driven mad in the Virginia estate she prowls to this day. President Helen Peabody’s spirit still stringently watches over her Women’s College, now part of Ohio’s Miami University. Ghosts of workers lost in horrific conditions while building the Hoosac Tunnel warn of imminent danger. Settle in. There are more.

����������Welcome to the phantom ships, haunted academic halls, menacing landscapes, and family curses of America’s Most Gothic—a tour of true spectral sightings and disordered minds. But it’s sure to get under your skin. The haunted—and haunting—figures herein want it that way.]]> 416 Leanna Renee Hieber 0806543744 Amy H. 0 to-read 0.0
author: Leanna Renee Hieber
name: Amy H.
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220160216 When a body is found the day after Halloween, a small British community must reckon with its past and the dangers lurking in its present in this spine-tingling novel from “not to be missed�� (Hayley Scrivener, author of Dirt Creek) author Hannah Richell.

On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods near Sally in the Wood, a road steeped in local lore and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one student will be dead.

Rachel, the school guidance counselor, is trying to keep a handle on her increasingly distant teenaged daughter, Ellie, while students and parents panic and mourn. Her ex-husband and detective Ben, dealing with a personal crisis of his own, has concerns about his daughter’s safety as he investigates the death of one of her classmates. Meanwhile, Ellie is keeping secrets from both her parents, including one about where she was that night.

Told from multiple perspectives and with Hannah Richell’s distinct “atmospheric and ever-twisting�� (Emylia Hall, author of the Shell House Detective Mysteries) prose, One Dark Night is a white-knuckled and suspenseful thriller about urban legends, privilege, and how the past continues to haunt us.]]> 384 Hannah Richell 1668081334 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.99
author: Hannah Richell
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.99
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211025497
On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Cornell was found hanging in a barn, four months pregnant, after a disgraceful liaison with a charismatic Methodist minister, Reverend Ephraim Avery. Some (Avery’s lawyers) claimed her death was suicide…but others weren’t so sure. Determined to uncover the real story, intrepid Victorian writer Catharine Williams threw herself into the investigation and wrote what many claim is the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The case and Williams�� book became a sensation—one that divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. But the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to Sarah Cornell’s death. Until now.

In The Sinners All Bow, acclaimed true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson travels back in time to 19th century small town America, emboldened to finish the work Williams started nearly two centuries before. Using modern investigative advancements—such as “forensic knot analysis�� to determine cause of death, the prosecutor’s notes from 1833, and criminal profiling which was invented 55 years later with Jack the Ripper—Dawson fills in the gaps of Williams�� research to find the truth. Along the way she also examines how society decides who is the “right kind�� of crime victim and how America’s long history of religious evangelism may have clouded the facts both in the 1830s and today. Ultimately, The Sinners All Bow brings justice to an unsettling mystery that speaks to our past as well as our present, anchored by three women who subverted the script they were given.]]> 336 Kate Winkler Dawson 0593713621 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.60 2025
author: Kate Winkler Dawson
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13593960 256 Susan Jacoby 0300137257 Amy H. 4 3.98 2013
author: Susan Jacoby
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: 21st-century, biography, us-history
review:

]]> 212025852
Chloe Gatti will do whatever it takes to win her elite boarding school’s annual competition, the Wilde Trials. In the two weeks leading up to graduation from Wilde Academy, a dozen seniors are chosen to compete in a series of seven ultimate physical and mental tests, and the winner will take home over half a million dollars—money that Chloe needs to help her sick sister.

But the competition is fierce, and includes her brooding ex-boyfriend, Hayes Stratford, whose brother was the only student to die during the Trials a few years ago. When someone starts blackmailing Chloe during the competition, she’s forced to strike a deal with Hayes—if he helps her discover who is sabotaging her, she’ll help him solve the mystery his brother left behind.

Following clues from Hayes’s brother, the unlikely allies discover that something isn’t right about the Wilde Trials. With a lifechanging prize looming over her head and her buried feelings for Hayes rising to the surface, Chloe will have to decide what’s really worth fighting for, and if the cost of competing outweighs the potential consequences, even if that includes ending up like Hayes’s brother—dead.

Fans of Jessica Goodman and Maureen Johnson will love this dark academia thriller with a romantic twist!]]> 384 Mackenzie Reed 0063287641 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.96 2025
author: Mackenzie Reed
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217112034 From bestselling and award-winning author Kacen Callendar comes a thrilling, dark academia YA about murder, blackmail, and the one person determined to discover the truth, no matter the cost

What happened to Arianna Reynolds?��
��
Ari’s death was ruled an accident, but for her best friend Milo, it’s shrouded in mystery. Why was she in the woods on the night of the fire? Had she been alone? Figuring out what happened the night Ari died is the only reason Milo returns to Yates Academy, even knowing he’ll be in constant danger. . .
��
Liam is the King of Yates, a role he keeps hold of through his family’s old money—and the threat of violence. So when he begins receiving ominous letters from another student accusing him of murdering Ari, the suspect list is long. Desperate to prove his innocence before the accusation ruins his reign, Liam enlists Milo’s help to find the blackmailer. But the more Milo helps Liam, the more he becomes certain that Liam has something to hide.
��
As Milo comes closer to the truth, he uncovers secrets that��everyone��wants to keep buried . . . Featuring a cast of queer characters of color, We Are Villains��is an electrifying mystery that will keep readers guessing.]]> 288 Kacen Callender 1419756893 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.36
author: Kacen Callender
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.36
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222869100 Award­ winning author Ken Liu returns with his first sci-fi thriller in a brand-new series following former “orphan hacker�� Julia Z as she is thrust into a high-stakes adventure where she must use her cybersecurity and hacking skills to unravel a virtual reality mystery, rescue a kidnapped dream artist, and confront the blurred lines between technology, identity, and the power of shared dreams.

Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at fourteen as the “orphan hacker,�� is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a Boston suburb.

But when a lawyer named Piers—whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped by dangerous criminals—barges into her life, Julia decides to put the solitary life she has painstakingly created at risk as she can’t walk away from helping Piers and Elli, nor step away from the challenge of this digital puzzle. Elli is an onierofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together through a shared virtual landscape, live, in a concert-like experience by tapping into each attendee’s waking dream and providing an emotionally resonant and narrative experience. While attendees�� dreams are anonymous, Julia discovers that Elli was also providing a one-on-one dream experience for the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he’s demanding his dreams in return for Elli.

Unraveling the real and unreal leads Julia on an adventure that takes her across the country and deep into the shadows of her psyche.]]> Ken Liu Amy H. 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Ken Liu
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 209784215 From a mesmerizing new literary voice comes a story of obsessive friendship, chilling powers, and untimely death for readers of dark academia classics like If We Were Villains and The Secret History.

An unnamed narrator arrives at Cambridge University in the early aughts determined to reinvent himself. His northern accent marks him as an outsider, but thanks to his musical gifts, he manages to fall in with his wealthy classmate, Bryn Cavendish.

A charismatic party host and talented magician, Bryn enthralls the narrator. But something seems to happen to those who challenge or simply irk Bryn—and they aren’t ever the same again.

The narrator begins to suspect that Bryn may be concealing terrifying gifts under the guise of magic tricks. As the tension between them grows, a harrowing encounter is followed by Bryn’s death.

Alternating between their time as students and the narrator’s return to Cambridge years later, where he fears the ghosts of his past are waiting for him, And He Shall Appear performs an astounding slight-of-hand that throws every version of the story into question.

This propulsive novel about the dark power of privilege will haunt readers like a familiar piece of music with endless iterations.]]> 336 Kate van der Borgh 145495261X Amy H. 0 to-read 3.42 2024
author: Kate van der Borgh
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 195531096
More than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States finds itself in a volatile rivalry against the world’s other two great nuclear powers. Yet this era bears very little resemblance to the old Cold War. As Putin and Xi increasingly threaten to team up, this moment grows far more complex—and undeniably more dangerous—than the world of a half century ago.

New Cold Wars —the latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of The Perfect Weapon, David E. Sanger—tells the riveting story of America at a crossroads. At the turn of the millennium, the United States was confident that a democratic Russia and a newly wealthy China could gradually be pulled into the Western-led order. That proved a fantasy. By the time Washington emerged from the age of terrorism, the three nuclear powers were engaged in a new, high-stakes struggle for military, economic, and technological supremacy—with nations around the world forced to take sides.

Based on a remarkable array of interviews with top officials in the United States, foreign leaders, andtech companies thrust onto the front lines, Sanger unfolds a riveting narrative spun around the era’s critical Will the mistakes Putin made in his ill-considered invasion of Ukraine prove his undoing, and will he reach for his nuclear arsenal? Will China strike back at the U.S. chip embargo, or seize Taiwan, the world’s semiconductor capital?

Taking readers from the battlefields of Ukraine—where trench warfare and cyberwarfare are fought side by side—to the back rooms and boardrooms where diplomats, spies, and tech executives jockey for geopolitical advantage, New Cold Wars is a remarkable first draft history chronicling America’s return to superpower conflict, the choices that lie ahead, and what is at stake for the United States and the world.]]> 528 David E. Sanger 0593443594 Amy H. 4 4.27 2024
author: David E. Sanger
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: 21st-century, chinese-history, russian-history, us-history, political-thought
review:

]]> 203767300 The Vampyre (1819) is perhaps ‘the most influential horror story of all time�� (Frayling). Polidori’s story transformed the shambling, mindless monster of folklore into a sophisticated, seductive aristocrat that stalked London society rather than being confined to the hinterlands of Eastern Europe. Polidori’s Lord Ruthven was thus the ancestor of the vampire as we know it. This collection explores the genesis of Polidori’s vampire. It then tracks his bloodsucking progeny across the centuries and maps his disquieting legacy. Texts discussed range from the Romantic period, including the fascinating and little-known The Black Vampyre (1819), through the melodramatic vampire theatricals in the 1820s, to contemporary vampire film, paranormal romance, and science fiction. The essays emphasise the background of colonial revolution and racial oppression in the early nineteenth century and the cultural shifts of postmodernity.]]> 336 Sam George 1526166380 Amy H. 0 to-read 0.0
author: Sam George
name: Amy H.
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216594961
Ten years have passed, and Ren Taylor is back at square one, having accepted a job at her old high school. She'd hoped to make peace with the past but now she's thrust back into it: her murdered teenage sister is still immortalized in town, and Ren can't stop seeing her wherever she goes. She's dogged by the scandal that ruined her childhood and killed her sister.

Then Ren meets physics teacher Bryson Lewis. Handsome and charismatic, all the other teachers and students seem to fall at his feet. But Ren knows men like him �� she knows they can't be trusted.

The more Ren watches him, the more suspicious she becomes. And when she notices his close relationship with a girl in one of his classes �� a girl just like her sister �� she worries history is about to repeat itself. This time, she won't sit back and watch another girl be taken before her time.

This time, Ren will do what she must to save her, even if it means revealing her own darkest secrets.]]> 368 Marlee Bush 1728289564 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.90
author: Marlee Bush
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213691721
All stories come to an end.

Effy learned that when she defeated the Fairy King. Even though she may never know exactly what happened at Hiraeth, she is free of her nightmares and is able to pen a thesis with Preston on the beloved national fairy tale Angharad. She has finally earned a spot at the literature college, making her the first woman in history to enroll.

But some dreams are dangerous, especially when they come true. The entire university—and soon the entire nation—is waiting for her to fail. With the Fairy King defeated and Myrddin’s legacy exposed, Effy can no longer escape into fantasy. Who is she without her stories?

With Effy under threat, Preston is surprised to discover a rage simmering inside him, ringing in his ears like bells. He begins to dream of a palace under the sea, a world where he is king—visions that start to follow him even in waking.

As the war between Llyr and Argant explodes, Effy and Preston find themselves caught in the crossfire: Effy losing her dreams and Preston losing himself in his.

Are dreams ever truly just dreams?]]> 384 Ava Reid 1804953814 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.26 2025
author: Ava Reid
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203578720 Taiwan expert Kerry Brown sums up the history of Taiwan and the danger of a Chinese takeover in this succinct and authoritative book.

When the bloody Chinese Civil War concluded in 1949, two Chinas were born. Mao’s Communists won and took China’s mainland; Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists fled to Taiwan island. Since then, China and Taiwan have drifted into being separate political and cultural entities.

Taiwan is now a flourishing democracy and an economic success just one of its companies produces over 90 per cent of the semiconductors that power the world’s economy. It is a free and vibrant society. For the United States and the West, the island is a bastion of freedom against China’s assertive presence in the region. And yet China, increasingly bellicose under Xi Jinping, insists Taiwan is part of its territory and must be returned to it. Should China blockade the island and mount an invasion, it would set off a chain reaction that would pitch it against the US �� escalating a regional war into a global one. Taiwan is thus a geopolitical powder keg.

Why Taiwan Matters helps us understand how and why we’ve arrived at this dangerous moment in history. With unparalleled access to Taiwan’s political leaders and a deep understanding of the island’s history and culture, Professor Kerry Brown provides a new reading of Taiwan, its twenty-three million people, and how they navigate being caught in this frightening geopolitical standoff. Why Taiwan Matters is the essential book for understanding Taiwan’s unique story told in an accessible, expert and urgent way.]]> 272 Kerry Brown 1250362091 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.85
author: Kerry Brown
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 19161835 Her pupils killed her daughter.
Now, she will have her revenge.

After calling off her engagement in wake of a tragic revelation, Yuko Moriguchi had nothing to live for except her only child, four-year-old Manami. Now, following an accident on the grounds of the middle school where she teaches, Yuko has given up and tendered her resignation.

But first she has one last lecture to deliver. She tells a story that upends everything her students ever thought they knew about two of their peers, and sets in motion a maniacal plot for revenge.

Narrated in alternating voices, with twists you'll never see coming, Confessions explores the limits of punishment, despair, and tragic love, culminating in a harrowing confrontation between teacher and student that will place the occupants of an entire school in danger. You'll never look at a classroom the same way again.]]> 240 Kanae Minato 0316200921 Amy H. 4 3.91 2008
author: Kanae Minato
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: 21st-century, dark-academia, gothic, mystery, translated-works
review:
I definitely see why this was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist.
]]> 123161631 The Last Contract of Isako is a searing space opera like no other that takes aim squarely at late-stage capitalism. Get ready to meet an aging contractor, Ithmus Isako, whose final mission thrusts her deep into a world of espionage and sword fights on an isolated colony planet.]]> Fonda Lee 0356526712 Amy H. 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: Fonda Lee
name: Amy H.
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216971148 The award-winning environmental journalist’s extraordinary, long-awaited portrait of hope and resilience as we face a fractured and uncertain future

In this profoundly human and moving narrative, the bestselling author of The World Without Us returns with a book ten years in the a study of what it means to be a human on the front lines of our planet’s existential crisis. His new book, Hope Dies Last, is a literary evocation of our current predicament and the core resolve of our species against the most precarious odds we have ever faced.

To write this book, Weisman traveled the globe, witnessing climate upheaval and other devastations, and meeting the people striving to mitigate and undo our past transgressions. From the flooding Marshall Islands to revived wetlands in Iraq, from the Netherlands and Bangladesh to the Korean DMZ and to cities and coastlines in the U.S. and around the world, he has encountered the best of humanity battling heat, hunger, rising tides, and imperiled nature. He profiles the innovations of big thinkers—engineers, scientists, conservationists, economists, architects, and artists—as they conjure wildly creative, imaginative responses to an uncertain, ominous future. At this unprecedented point in history, as our collective exploits on this planet may lead to our own undoing and we could be among the species marching toward extinction, they refuse to accept defeat.

A remedy to climate anxiety by one of the most important voices on humanity’s relationship with the Earth, Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global Having reached a point of no return in our climate confrontation, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected?]]> 512 Alan Weisman 152474669X Amy H. 0 to-read 4.50
author: Alan Weisman
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213870075 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Liliana's Invincible Summer, a��dreamlike, genre-defying novel��about a professor and��detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence.

A city is always a cemetery.

When a professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning scrawled on the brick wall beside the body, written in coral nail “Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.��

After reporting the crime to the police, the professor becomes the lead informant of the case, led by a detective with a newfound obsession with poetry and a long list of failures on her back. But what has the professor really seen? As more bodies of men are found across the city, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems, and if they are facing a darker stream of violence spreading throughout the city.

Death Takes Me is a thrilling masterpiece of literary fiction that flips the traditional crime narrative on its head, in a world where death is rampant and violence is gendered. Written in sentences as sharp as the cuts��on the bodies of the victims—a word which, in Spanish, is always feminine��Death Takes Me unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the professor’s classroom into the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art, as it explores with masterful imagination the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.]]> 320 Cristina Rivera Garza 0593737008 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.00 2007
author: Cristina Rivera Garza
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217379416 At the elite Catenan Academy, where students are prepared as the future leaders of the Hierarchy empire, the curriculum reveals a layered set of mysteries which turn murderous in this new fantasy by bestselling author of The Licanius Trilogy, James Islington.

Vis, the adopted son of Magnus Quintus Ulcisor, a prominent senator within the Hierarchy, is trained to enter the famed Catenan Academy to help Ulciscor learn what the hidden agenda is of the remote island academy. Secretly, he also wants Vis to discover what happed to his brother who died at the academy, further, he’s sure the current Principalis of the academy, Quintus Veridius Julii, a political rival, knows much more than he’s revealing.

The Academy’s vigorous syllabus is a challenge Vis is ably suited to meet, but it is the training in the use of Will, a practice that Vis finds abhorrent, that he must learn in order to excel at the Academy. Will—a concept that encompasses their energy, drive, focus, initiative, ambition, and vitality—can be voluntarily “ceded�� to someone else. A single recipient can accept ceded Will from multiple people, growing in power towards superhuman levels. Within the hierarchy your level of Will, or legal rank, determines how you live or die. And there are those who are determined to destroy this hierarchal system, as well as those in the Academy who use it to gain dominance in international bestselling author James Islington’s wonderfully crafted new epic fantasy series.]]> 720 James Islington 1668093294 Amy H. 0 to-read 4.70 2023
author: James Islington
name: Amy H.
average rating: 4.70
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217387739 From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers.

In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.

Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?

Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.]]> 320 Alex Finlay 1250360722 Amy H. 0 to-read 3.66 2025
author: Alex Finlay
name: Amy H.
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

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