Stephanie's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 26 Mar 2025 15:07:37 -0700 60 Stephanie's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]>
208 John Green 0525556575 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.52 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
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I Who Have Never Known Men 60811826 Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]>
184 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492600 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.11 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

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

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

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

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]>
213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.66 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/22
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<![CDATA[The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert, #1; Detective Max Rupert, #1)]]> 20758175
As Joe writes about Carl's life, especially Carl's valor in Vietnam, he cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict. Joe, along with his skeptical female neighbor, throws himself into uncovering the truth, but he is hamstrung in his efforts by having to deal with his dangerously dysfunctional mother, the guilt of leaving his autistic brother vulnerable, and a haunting childhood memory. Thread by thread, Joe unravels the tapestry of Carl’s conviction. But as he and Lila dig deeper into the circumstances of the crime, the stakes grow higher. Will Joe discover the truth before it’s too late to escape the fallout?]]>
304 Allen Eskens 1616149981 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.06 2014 The Life We Bury (Joe Talbert, #1; Detective Max Rupert, #1)
author: Allen Eskens
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/10
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<![CDATA[The Twelfth Child (Serendipity, #1)]]> 16101711
The Twelfth Child , a novel rich with emotion, humor and tenderness, explores the splintered relationships of a Shenandoah Valley family and their willful daughter’s struggle to survive America’s Great Depression and overcome the past.]]>
259 Bette Lee Crosby 0983887969 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.18 2007 The Twelfth Child (Serendipity, #1)
author: Bette Lee Crosby
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/22
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Daodejing 61089552 Daodejing will forever change how the text is read and understood in the West.]]> 192 Lao Tzu 1324092475 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.06 -350 Daodejing
author: Lao Tzu
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.06
book published: -350
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/21
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Night Watch (Watch, #1) 6650931
Set in contemporary Moscow, where shape shifters, vampires, and street-sorcerers linger in the shadows, Night Watch is the first book of the hyper-imaginative fantasy pentalogy from best-selling Russian author Sergei Lukyanenko.

This epic saga chronicles the eternal war of the “Others,� an ancient race of humans with supernatural powers who must swear allegiance to either the Dark or the Light. The agents of the Dark � the Night Watch � oversee nocturnal activity, while the agents of the Light keep watch over the day. For a thousand years both sides have maintained a precarious balance of power, but an ancient prophecy has decreed that a supreme Other will one day emerge, threatening to tip the scales. Now, that day has arrived. When a mid-level Night Watch agent named Anton stumbles upon a cursed young woman � an uninitiated Other with magnificent potential � both sides prepare for a battle that could lay waste to the entire city, possible the world. With language that throbs like darkly humorous hard-rock lyrics about blood and power, freedom and responsibility, Night Watch is a chilling, cutting-edge thriller, a pulse-pounding ride of fusion fiction that will leave you breathless for the next instalment.]]>
364 Sergei Lukyanenko 1401394604 Stephanie 4 3.89 1998 Night Watch (Watch, #1)
author: Sergei Lukyanenko
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1998
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/09/12
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<![CDATA[Five Dances with Death � Dance One: A Historical Adventure Novel]]> 12251599
Slavers have kidnapped his daughter. His wife has turned to powerful sorcery. His people have challenged Montezuma's dominance and now face extinction. And the Spaniards have begun their march inland.

Now Wasp must rely on his military prowess, wit and even dark magic to regain his family and protect the independence of his nation, as he begins a desperate journey that will forever change the fate of the Aztec people.]]>
239 Austin Briggs 2970074710 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.72 2011 Five Dances with Death — Dance One: A Historical Adventure Novel
author: Austin Briggs
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.ĚýYet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]>
720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/10
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<![CDATA[The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration]]> 8171378
Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration� within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.]]>
622 Isabel Wilkerson 0679444327 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.45 2010 The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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The Lion Women of Tehran 199798217 A heartfelt novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.�

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls� high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.]]>
327 Marjan Kamali 1668036584 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.47 2024 The Lion Women of Tehran
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.47
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The Four Winds 53138081 Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.

In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras—the Great Depression.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250178602]]>
464 Kristin Hannah 1250178606 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.27 2021 The Four Winds
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2021
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<![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

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

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]>
401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
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The Women 127305853 From the celebrated author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds comes Kristin Hannah's The Women—at once an intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided.

Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie� McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]>
471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.58 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2024
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Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]>
368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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A Gentleman in Moscow 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

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

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

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]>
462 Amor Towles Stephanie 0 to-read 4.28 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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Lessons in Chemistry 206305528
But like science, life is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth Zott finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show Supper at Six. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking (“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride�) proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy. Because as it turns out, Elizabeth Zott isn’t just teaching women to cook. She’s daring them to change the status quo.

Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.]]>
404 Bonnie Garmus Stephanie 0 to-read 4.24 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2022
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<![CDATA[Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition]]> 765418
A Penguin Classic
Ěý
When Walt Whitman self-published his Leaves of Grass in July 1855, he altered the course of literary history. One of the greatest masterpieces of American literature, it redefined the rules of poetry while describing the soul of the American character.ĚýThroughout his great career, Whitman continuously revised, expanded, and republished Leaves of Grass , but many critics believe that the book that matters most is the 1855 original. Penguin Classics proudly presents that text in its original and complete form, with an introductory essay by the writer and poet Malcolm Cowley.

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.�

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]>
145 Walt Whitman 0140421998 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.09 1855 Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition
author: Walt Whitman
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1855
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/01
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<![CDATA[One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]]> 852542 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, the novel that first brought Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to public attention. His story of one typical day in a labour camp as experienced by prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is sufficient to describe the entire world of the Soviet camps.

Translated from the Russian by H. T. Willetts]]>
150 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 0099449277 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.99 1962 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/11
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<![CDATA[The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)]]> 18148202
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free.

Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.]]>
486 Helene Wecker 0062110845 Stephanie 0 4.19 2013 The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)
author: Helene Wecker
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/02
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<![CDATA[Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories (Arab Authors, 11)]]> 1507354
Born in Acre (northern Palestine) in 1936, Ghassan Kanafani was a major spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and founding editor of its weekly magazin Al-Hadaf. His novels, short stories, and plays have been published in sixteen languages. He was killed in a car-bomb explosion in Beirut in 1972.]]>
90 Ghassan Kanafani 089410392X Stephanie 0 to-read 4.30 1999 Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories (Arab Authors, 11)
author: Ghassan Kanafani
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/29
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Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

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

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

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]>
304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 Stephanie 4 4.00 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2011/08/30
date added: 2023/11/11
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<![CDATA[The Killing Dance (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #6)]]> 30244 368 Laurell K. Hamilton 0425209067 Stephanie 3 4.14 1997 The Killing Dance (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #6)
author: Laurell K. Hamilton
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/10/21
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Lady Chatterley's Lover 49583709
With her soft brown hair, lithe figure and big, wondering eyes, Constance Chatterley is possessed of a certain vitality. Yet she is deeply unhappy; married to an invalid, she is almost as inwardly paralyzed as her husband Clifford is paralyzed below the waist. It is not until she finds refuge in the arms of Mellors the game-keeper, a solitary man of a class apart, that she feels regenerated. Together they move from an outer world of chaos towards an inner world of fulfillment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]>
400 D.H. Lawrence 014303961X Stephanie 4 3.48 1928 Lady Chatterley's Lover
author: D.H. Lawrence
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1928
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[Uhtred's Feast: Inside the World of The Last Kingdom]]> 134238276 288 Bernard Cornwell 0063219360 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.82 2023 Uhtred's Feast: Inside the World of The Last Kingdom
author: Bernard Cornwell
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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The Haunting of Maddy Clare 43620021 318 Simone St. James 0451235681 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.88 2012 The Haunting of Maddy Clare
author: Simone St. James
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/02
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Norwegian Wood 9651654
This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.]]>
389 Haruki Murakami 0307744663 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.85 1987 Norwegian Wood
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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Half of a Yellow Sun 58456361 --back cover]]> 543 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Stephanie 0 to-read 4.37 2006 Half of a Yellow Sun
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/02
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Persian Letters 509686
C. J. Betts’s translation conveys the color of the original, and his introduction examines the inner meanings of Montesquieu’s satire. This edition also includes explanatory notes, appendices, and suggestions for further reading.]]>
352 Montesquieu 0140442812 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.76 1721 Persian Letters
author: Montesquieu
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1721
rating: 0
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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle 284066
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.]]>
607 Haruki Murakami Stephanie 0 to-read 4.14 1994 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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Canned Coffee and Kimonos 58567202 313 Tom Fitzmaurice Stephanie 0 to-read 4.13 Canned Coffee and Kimonos
author: Tom Fitzmaurice
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.13
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date added: 2022/07/27
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London 12407442 1332 Edward Rutherfurd Stephanie 0 to-read 4.20 1997 London
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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The Forgiven 17182119 In this haunting novel, journalist and novelist Lawrence Osborne explores the reverberations of an accident on the lives of Moroccan Muslims and Western visitors who converge on a luxurious desert villa for a decadent weekend-long party.ĚýĚýĚý

David and Jo Henniger, a doctor and a children's book author, in search of an escape from their less-than-happy lives in London, accept an invitation to attend a bacchanal at their old friends' home, deep in the Moroccan desert. But as a groggy David navigates the dark desert roads, two young men spring from the roadside, the car swerves...and one boy is left dead.

When David and Jo arrive at the party, the Moroccan staff, already disgustedĚýby the rich, hedonistic foreigners in their midst, soon learn of David's unforgivable act. Then the boy's irate Berber father appears, and events begin to spin beyond anyone's control.

With spare, evocative prose, searing eroticism, and a gift for the unexpected, Osborne memorably portrays the privileged guests wrestling with their secrets amid the remoteness and beauty of the desert landscape. He gradually reveals the jolting backstory of the murdered boy, and leaves David’s fate in the balance as the novel builds to a shattering conclusion.]]>
304 Lawrence Osborne 0307889041 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.75 2012 The Forgiven
author: Lawrence Osborne
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Edgar Allan Poe Annotated and Illustrated Entire Stories and Poems]]> 3369565 828 Edgar Allan Poe 1933747102 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.47 Edgar Allan Poe Annotated and Illustrated Entire Stories and Poems
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.47
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<![CDATA[On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born � a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam � and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]>
246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.05 2019 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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When the Stars Go Dark 60149537
The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna's childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment. The most difficult lessons of her life have given her insight into how victims come into contact with violent predators. As Anna becomes obsessed with saving the missing girl, she must accept that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in.

Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives--and our faith in one another.]]>
400 Paula McLain 0593237919 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.76 2021 When the Stars Go Dark
author: Paula McLain
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting, Seeing, Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books (50 Classics)]]> 17087629
From Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus, Confucius, Cicero and Heraclitus in ancient times to 17th century rationalists Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, from 20th-century greats Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Baudrillard and Simone de Beauvoir to contemporary thinkers Michael Sandel, Peter Singer and Slavoj Zizek, 50 Philosophy Classics explores key writings that have shaped the discipline and had an impact on the real world.

Philosophy can no longer be confined to academia, and 50 Philosophy Classics shows how powerful it can be as a tool for opening our minds and helping us think. Whether you are fascinated or daunted by the big questions of how to think, how to be, how to act and how to see, this is the perfect introduction to some of humanity's greatest minds and their landmark books.]]>
325 Tom Butler-Bowdon 1857885961 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.11 2013 50 Philosophy Classics: Thinking, Being, Acting, Seeing, Profound Insights and Powerful Thinking from Fifty Key Books (50 Classics)
author: Tom Butler-Bowdon
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/02/04
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Klara and the Sun 59999991 Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.

Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: What does it mean to love?]]>
303 Kazuo Ishiguro 0593311299 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/15
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A History of Wild Places 56898223
Called "Pastoral," this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it� he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.

Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease�rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.

Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind.]]>
354 Shea Ernshaw 1982164808 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.92 2021 A History of Wild Places
author: Shea Ernshaw
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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A Hundred Sweet Promises 57350326 300 Sepehr Haddad 1732594309 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.69 2021 A Hundred Sweet Promises
author: Sepehr Haddad
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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A Girl Called Rumi 56188231
Kimia, a successful spiritual advisor whose Iranian childhood continues to haunt her, collides with a mysterious giant bird in her mother's California garage. She begins reliving her experience as a nine-year-old girl in war-torn Iran, including her friendship with a mystical storyteller who led her through the mythic Seven Valleys of Love.

Grappling with her unresolved past, Kimia agrees to accompany her ailing mother back to Iran, only to arrive in the midst of the Green Uprising in the streets. Against the backdrop of the election protests, Kimia begins to unravel the secrets of the night that broke her mother and produced a dangerous enemy. As past and present collide, she must choose between running away again or completing her unfinished journey through the Valley of Death to save her brother.]]>
350 Ari Honarvar 1942436467 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.32 A Girl Called Rumi
author: Ari Honarvar
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.32
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<![CDATA[The City of Mist (Cemetery of Forgotten Books)]]> 57190576 Return to the mythical Barcelona library known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in this posthumous collection of stories from the New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind and The Labyrinth of the Spirits.

Bestselling author Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn conceived of this collection of stories as an appreciation to the countless readers who joined him on the extraordinary journey that began with The Shadow of the Wind. Comprising eleven stories, most of them never before published in English, The City of Mist offers the reader compelling characters, unique situations, and a gothic atmosphere reminiscent of his beloved Cemetery of Forgotten Books quartet.

The stories are mysterious, imbued with a sense of menace, and told with the warmth, wit, and humor of ZafĂłn's inimitable voice. A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart. A labyrinth maker flees Constantinople to a plague-ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves. And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni GaudĂ­ reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece.

Imaginative and beguiling, these and other stories in The City of Mist summon up the mesmerizing magic of their brilliant creator and invite us to come dream along with him.

Blanca and the departure
Nameless
A young lady from Barcelona
Rose of fire
The prince of Parnassus
a Christmas tale
Alicia, at dawn
Men in grey
Kiss
GaudĂ­ in Manhattan
Two-minute apocalypse]]>
162 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn 0063118092 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.95 2020 The City of Mist (Cemetery of Forgotten Books)
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights (The Annotated Books)]]> 56769521 The Annotated Arabian Nights, the acclaimed literary historian Paulo Lemos Horta and the brilliant poet and translator Yasmine Seale present a splendid new selection of tales from the Nights, featuring treasured original stories as well as later additions including “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp� and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,� and definitively bringing the Nights out of Victorian antiquarianism and into the twenty-first century.


For centuries, readers have been haunted by the homicidal King Shahriyar, thrilled by gripping tales of Sinbad’s seafaring adventures, and held utterly, exquisitely captive by Shahrazad’s stories of passionate romances and otherworldly escapades. Yet for too long, the English-speaking world has relied on dated translations by Richard Burton, Edward Lane, and other nineteenth-century adventurers. Seale’s distinctly contemporary and lyrical translations break decisively with this masculine dynasty, finally stripping away the deliberate exoticism of Orientalist renderings while reclaiming the vitality and delight of the stories, as she works with equal skill in both Arabic and French.


Included within are famous tales, from “The Story of Sinbad the Sailor� to “The Story of the Fisherman and the Jinni,� as well as lesser-known stories such as “The Story of Dalila the Crafty,� in which the cunning heroine takes readers into the everyday life of merchants and shopkeepers in a crowded metropolis, and “The Story of the Merchant and the Jinni,� an example of a ransom frame tale in which stories are exchanged to save a life. Grounded in the latest scholarship, The Annotated Arabian Nights also incorporates the Hanna Diyab stories, for centuries seen as French forgeries but now acknowledged, largely as a result of Horta’s pathbreaking research, as being firmly rooted in the Arabic narrative tradition. Horta not only takes us into the astonishing twists and turns of the stories� evolution. He also offers comprehensive notes on just about everything readers need to know to appreciate the tales in context, and guides us through the origins of ghouls, jinn, and other supernatural elements that have always drawn in and delighted readers.


Beautifully illustrated throughout with art from Europe and the Arab and Persian world, the latter often ignored in English-language editions, The Annotated Arabian Nights expands the visual dimensions of the stories, revealing how the Nights have always been—and still are—in dialogue with fine artists. With a poignant autobiographical foreword from best-selling novelist Omar El Akkad and an illuminating afterword on the Middle Eastern roots of Hanna Diyab’s tales from noted scholar Robert Irwin, Horta and Seale have created a stunning edition of the Arabian Nights that will enchant and inform both devoted and novice readers alike.]]>
816 Yasmine Seale 1631493639 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.50 The Annotated Arabian Nights: Tales from 1001 Nights (The Annotated Books)
author: Yasmine Seale
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.50
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We 56304450 The chilling dystopian novel that influenced George Orwell while he was writingĚý1984, with a new introduction by Margaret Atwood and an essay by Ursula Le Guin

In a glass-enclosed city of perfectly straight lines, ruled over by an all-powerful “Benefactor,� the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState are regulated by spies and secret police; wear identical clothing; and are distinguished only by a number assigned to them at birth. That is, until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. He can feel things. He can fall in love. And, in doing so, he begins to dangerously veer from the norms of his society, becoming embroiled in a plot to destroy OneState and liberate the city.

Set in the twenty-sixth century AD,ĚýWeĚýwas the forerunner of canonical works from George Orwell and Alduous Huxley, among others. It was suppressed for more than sixty years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, as well as a powerful, exciting, and vivid work of science fiction that still feels relevant today. Bela Shayevich’s bold new translation breathes new life into Yevgeny Zamyatin’s seminal work and refreshes it for our current era.Ěý]]>
304 Yevgeny Zamyatin 0063068443 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.70 1924 We
author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1924
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1)]]> 56347445 Enter the Grishaverse with book one of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, coming soon to Netflix as an original series. This edition features exclusive cover art from the show!

Soldier.
Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold--a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed.

Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue as she trains with the Grisha, her country's magical military elite--and falls under the spell of their notorious leader, the Darkling. He believes Alina can summon a force capable of destroying the Shadow Fold and reuniting their war-ravaged country, but only if she can master her untamed gift.

As the threat to the kingdom mounts and Alina unlocks the secrets of her past, she will make a dangerous discovery that could threaten all she loves and the very future of a nation.

Welcome to Ravka . . . a world of science and superstition where nothing is what it seems.

A New York Times Bestseller
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller
An Indie Next List Book
This title has Common Core connections.

An Imprint Book.

Read all the books in the Grishaverse!

The Shadow and Bone Trilogy
(previously published as The Grisha Trilogy)
Shadow and Bone
Siege and Storm
Ruin and Rising

The Six of Crows Duology
Six of Crows
Crooked Kingdom

The King of Scars Duology
King of Scars
Rule of Wolves

The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic
The Severed Moon: A Year-Long Journal of Magic

Praise for the Grishaverse

"A master of fantasy." --The Huffington Post
"Utterly, extremely bewitching." --The Guardian
"The best magic universe since Harry Potter." --Bustle
"This is what fantasy is for." --The New York Times Book Review
"[A] world that feels real enough to have its own passport stamp." --NPR
"The darker it gets for the good guys, the better." --Entertainment Weekly
"Sultry, sweeping and picturesque. . . . Impossible to put down." --USA Today
"There's a level of emotional and historical sophistication within Bardugo's original epic fantasy that sets it apart." --Vanity Fair
"Unlike anything I've ever read." --Veronica Roth, bestselling author of Divergent
"Bardugo crafts a first-rate adventure, a poignant romance, and an intriguing mystery!" --Rick Riordan, bestselling author of the Percy Jackson series]]>
416 Leigh Bardugo 1250777887 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.95 2012 Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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The Essential Paulo Coelho 37969137 The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage,Ěý Warrior of the Light,Ěý The Valkyries,Veronika Decides to Die, and Eleven Minutes.]]> 1448 Paulo Coelho 0062845063 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.44 The Essential Paulo Coelho
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.44
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The Midnight Library 56241022
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of exchanging her life for a different one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist, she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.]]>
304 Matt Haig Stephanie 0 to-read 4.04 2020 The Midnight Library
author: Matt Haig
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/08/24
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A Hundred Sweet Promises 57355494 WINNER - 2023 AMERICAN FICTION AWARDS - Historical Fiction & Historical RomanceFINALIST- 2022 INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS - Historical Fiction & Literary FictionSHORTLIST- 2022 HAWTHORNE PRIZE - Historical Fiction2022 GOLD CATEGORY WINNER - Historical AudiobookAS FEATURED ON NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO (NPR) A family secret revealed 40 years ago by a grandmother to her grandson is now an acclaimed Russian historical fiction novel. "A Hundred Sweet Promises" is the tale of the author’s grandfather, Nasrosoltan, a famed composer, who on the eve of World War I travels from Persia to Russia to study classical music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with such masters as Rimsky-Korsakov. While there, Nasrosoltan falls in love with a Romanov princess, but the royalty surrounding him considers this a forbidden love. Unexpectedly, the Tsar gets involved, and Nasrosoltan suddenly finds himself in a battle between head and heart while being carried forward on a wave of destiny toward an uncertain future. A novel based on a true story set against the backdrop of the final days of Imperial Russia.KIRKUS REVIEWS"...An exceedingly intelligent tale that thoughtfully juxtaposes the maddening effects of romantic love with the violent paroxysms of political insurrection. Furthermore, the reader is given a rare literary a peek into distinct revolutionary periods—Russia and Iran in the early years of the 20th century and Iran in the century’s last quarter. A dramatically affecting novel that is also politically astute." - "Kirkus Reviews"PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BOOK LIFE REVIEW "....one of the peculiar pleasures of this novel is that its author seems deeply familiar with & fond of 19th century Russian literature; there are hints of Chekhov, Tolstoy’s “Kreutzer Sonata� and Pushkin’s “The Queen of Spades.� The narrative style evokes the writers of that period, and their influence is felt throughout the text. The novel is well-researched and convincingly recreates the pomp and glitter of St. Petersburg in the twilight of the Romanov empire. The story brings back how honor was an achievable ideal and nobility of character and behavior were the qualities sought after in a romantic hero and heroine. Nasrosoltan Minbashian is an appealing and vividly drawn romantic hero in his grandson's retelling of the ill-fated love between the Persian composer and the Russian princess who ultimately wound up wed to Rasputin's assassin, Prince Felix Yusupov. Nasrosoltan's complex inner life and character are depicted with a sure hand."-"Publishers Weekly""Already this novel is being compared to Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Pushkin, but I would venture to add another famous Russian novelist into the mix � Boris Pasternak � for in the story I saw the reflection of the rich and meaty tale of Doctor Zhivago, which blends the turbulence of the political arena at the precipice of the Great War and the Russian Revolution with the lovely refrains of young love and the dreamy world of an artist in search of escape where love reigns supreme. Zhivago’s love of poetry and his homeland is overshadowed by reality, just as Nasrosoltan’s love of music along with his love of both Russia and Iran is brought face to face with the harsh reality of his station in life � face to face with Tsar Nicholas, himself, in a confrontation and pronouncement of love as to place this book firmly alongside those classic Russian novels as a contender for pure, exquisite literature.]]> 302 Sepehr Haddad Stephanie 0 to-read 3.95 2021 A Hundred Sweet Promises
author: Sepehr Haddad
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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Billy Summers 56852407
How about everything...]]>
517 Stephen King 1982173610 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.11 2021 Billy Summers
author: Stephen King
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster]]> 40538681
Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. It is a story that has long remained in dispute, clouded from the beginning in secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation.

Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of history's worst nuclear disaster, of human resilience and ingenuity and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will - lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats - remain not just vital but necessary.

Now, Higginbotham brings us closer to the truth behind this colossal tragedy.]]>
538 Adam Higginbotham 1501134612 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.35 2019 Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/06/16
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A Tale for the Time Being 18079728 Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.

On a remote island in the Pacific Northwest, a Hello Kitty lunchbox washes up on the beach. Tucked inside is the diary of a sixteen-year-old Japanese girl named Nao Yasutani. Ruth--a writer who finds the lunchbox--suspects that it is debris from Japan's 2011 tsunami. Once she beings to read the diary, Ruth quickly finds herself drawn into the mystery of Nao's fate. Meanwhile in Tokyo, Nao, uprooted from her home in the U.S., bullied at school, and watching her parents spiral deeper into disaster, has decided to end her life. But first, she wants to recount the story of her great-grandmother, a 104-year-old Zen Buddhist nun, in the pages of her secret diary...]]>
422 Ruth Ozeki 0143124870 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.16 2013 A Tale for the Time Being
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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When the Stars Go Dark 54895727
As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment. The most difficult lessons of her life have given her insight into how victims come into contact with violent predators. As Anna becomes obsessed with the missing girl, she must accept that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in.

Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives--and our faith in one another.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife comes a novel of intertwined destinies and heart-wrenching suspense: A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal?]]>
370 Paula McLain 0593237897 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.81 2021 When the Stars Go Dark
author: Paula McLain
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/25
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<![CDATA[Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow]]> 31138556 Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.

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

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

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

]]>
450 Yuval Noah Harari Stephanie 0 to-read 4.19 2015 Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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Lily and the Octopus 27276262 The Art of Racing in the Rain with the magical spirit of The Life of Pi, Lily and the Octopus is an epic adventure of the heart.

When you sit down with Lily and the Octopus, you will be taken on an unforgettable ride.

The magic of this novel is in the read, and we don’t want to spoil it by giving away too many details. We can tell you that this is a story about that special someone: the one you trust, the one you can’t live without.

For Ted Flask, that someone special is his aging companion Lily, who happens to be a dog. Lily and the Octopus reminds us how it feels to love fiercely, how difficult it can be to let go, and how the fight for those we love is the greatest fight of all.

Remember the last book you told someone they had to read? Lily and the Octopus is the next one.]]>
307 Steven Rowley 1501126229 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.71 2016 Lily and the Octopus
author: Steven Rowley
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Astrophysics for People in a Hurry]]> 32191710
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.]]>
223 Neil deGrasse Tyson 0393609391 Stephanie 4 4.07 2017 Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/03
date added: 2021/04/01
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Midnight's Children 605573
Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India's independence. Greeted by fireworks displays, cheering crowds, and Prime Minister Nehru himself, Saleem grows up to learn the ominous consequences of this coincidence. His every act is mirrored and magnified in events that sway the course of national affairs; his health and well-being are inextricably bound to those of his nation; his life is inseparable, at times indistinguishable, from the history of his country. Perhaps most remarkable are the telepathic powers linking him with India's 1,000 other "midnight's children," all born in that initial hour and endowed with magical gifts. This novel is at once a fascinating family saga and an astonishing evocation of a vast land and its people, a brilliant incarnation of the universal human comedy. Twenty-five years after its publication, Midnight's Children stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.]]>
533 Salman Rushdie Stephanie 0 to-read 3.94 1981 Midnight's Children
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1981
rating: 0
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The Things We Cannot Say 40899464
Since she was nine years old, Alina Dziak knew she would marry her best friend, Tomasz. Now fifteen and engaged, Alina is unconcerned by reports of Nazi soldiers at the Polish border, believing her neighbors that they pose no real threat, and dreams instead of the day Tomasz returns from college in Warsaw so they can be married. But little by little, injustice by brutal injustice, the Nazi occupation takes hold, and Alina’s tiny rural village, its families, are divided by fear and hate. Then, as the fabric of their lives is slowly picked apart, Tomasz disappears. Where Alina used to measure time between visits from her beloved, now she measures the spaces between hope and despair, waiting for word from Tomasz and avoiding the attentions of the soldiers who patrol her parents� farm. But for now, even deafening silence is preferable to grief.

Slipping between Nazi-occupied Poland and the frenetic pace of modern life, Kelly Rimmer creates an emotional and finely wrought narrative that weaves together two women’s stories into a tapestry of perseverance, loyalty, love and honor. The Things We Cannot Say is an unshakable reminder of the devastation when truth is silenced…and how it can take a lifetime to find our voice before we learn to trust it.]]>
448 Kelly Rimmer 1525831518 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.51 2019 The Things We Cannot Say
author: Kelly Rimmer
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/03/31
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<![CDATA[The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals―and Other Forgotten Skills (Natural Navigation)]]> 22580996 Turn Every Walk into a Game of Detection

When writer and navigator Tristan Gooley journeys outside, he sees a natural world filled with clues. The roots of a tree indicate the sun’s direction; the Big Dipper tells the time; a passing butterfly hints at the weather; a sand dune reveals prevailing wind; the scent of cinnamon suggests altitude; a budding flower points south. To help you understand nature as he does, Gooley shares more than 850 tips for forecasting, tracking, and more, gathered from decades spent walking the landscape around his home and around the world. Whether you’re walking in the country or city, along a coastline, or by night, this is the ultimate resource on what the land, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and clouds can reveal—if you only know how to look!]]>
416 Tristan Gooley 1615192417 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.76 2014 The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals―and Other Forgotten Skills (Natural Navigation)
author: Tristan Gooley
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/03/30
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Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]>
340 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Stephanie 0 to-read 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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And Then There Were None 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]>
264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 Stephanie 3 4.28 1939 And Then There Were None
author: Agatha Christie
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 3
read at: 2021/03/29
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The Pull of the Stars 52722079
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.]]>
295 Emma Donoghue 0316499013 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.91 2020 The Pull of the Stars
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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Letters to a Young Poet 46199 Listy do mlodego poety 80 Rainer Maria Rilke 0486422453 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.32 1929 Letters to a Young Poet
author: Rainer Maria Rilke
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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A Pale View of Hills 28920 Librarian note: This a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780571225378.

In his highly acclaimed debut, A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro tells the story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But then as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko - a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy - the memories take on a disturbing cast.]]>
183 Kazuo Ishiguro Stephanie 0 to-read 3.81 1982 A Pale View of Hills
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 54968296 WINNER OF THE 2009 MAN BOOKER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER


England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall is "a darkly brilliant reimagining of life under Henry VIII. . . . Magnificent." (The Boston Globe).]]>
604 Hilary Mantel 1250806712 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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Untitled 16051765 Katlyn Charlesworth Stephanie 0 to-read 4.50 Untitled
author: Katlyn Charlesworth
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.50
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rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?]]> 36402034 258 Philip K. Dick Stephanie 3 4.16 1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1968
rating: 3
read at: 2021/01/10
date added: 2021/01/10
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Room 7937843
Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough ... not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.]]>
321 Emma Donoghue Stephanie 4 own 4.04 2010 Room
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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<![CDATA[The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark]]> 17349
Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies of the past as witchcraft, faith healing, demons, and UFOs. And yet, disturbingly, in today's so-called information age, pseudoscience is burgeoning with stories of alien abduction, channeling past lives, and communal hallucinations commanding growing attention and respect. As Sagan demonstrates with lucid eloquence, the siren song of unreason is not just a cultural wrong turn but a dangerous plunge into darkness that threatens our most basic freedoms.]]>
459 Carl Sagan 0345409469 Stephanie 0 currently-reading 4.28 1995 The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
author: Carl Sagan
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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The Price of Blood 24611991 “A splendid fusion of historical research and imagination.� —Adrienne McDonnell, author of The Doctor and the Diva
Ěý
Readers first met Emma of Normandy in Patricia Bracewell’s gripping debut novel,ĚýShadow on the Crown. Unwillingly thrust into marriage to England’s King Æthelred, Emma has given the king a son and heir, but theirs has never been a happy marriage. In The Price of Blood, Bracewell returns to 1006, when a beleaguered Æthelred—still haunted by his brother’s ghost—governs with an iron fist and a royal policy that embraces murder.

As tensions escalate and enmities solidify, Emma forges alliances to protect her young son from ambitious men—even from the man she loves. In the north there is treachery brewing, and when Viking armies ravage England, loyalties are shattered and no one is safe from the sword. Rich with intrigue, compelling personalities, and fascinating detail about a little-known period in history,ĚýThe Price of BloodĚýwill captivate fans of both historical fiction and fantasy novels such as George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.
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448 Patricia Bracewell 0143128434 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.24 2015 The Price of Blood
author: Patricia Bracewell
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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Anna Karenina 155
Set against this tragic affair is the story of Konstantin Levin, a melancholy landowner whom Tolstoy based largely on himself. While Anna looks for happiness through love, Levin embarks on his own search for spiritual fulfillment through marriage, family, and hard work. Surrounding these two central plot threads are dozens of characters whom Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together, creating a breathtaking tapestry of nineteenth-century Russian society.

From its famous opening sentence � "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”—to its stunningly tragic conclusion, this enduring tale of marriage and adultery plumbs the very depths of the human soul.]]>
803 Leo Tolstoy 1593080271 Stephanie 3 4.00 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1878
rating: 3
read at: 2012/11/11
date added: 2020/11/29
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<![CDATA[Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst]]> 31170723 Why do we do the things we do?

More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs—whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.

Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.

The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do ... for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.]]>
790 Robert M. Sapolsky 1594205078 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.39 2017 Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
author: Robert M. Sapolsky
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)]]> 12600138 374 Ernest Cline 0307887448 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.22 2011 Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
author: Ernest Cline
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/04
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<![CDATA[The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare]]> 184419
As Jonathan Lethem remarks in his Introduction, The real characters are the ideas. Chesterton's nutty agenda is really quite simple: to expose moral relativism and parlor nihilism for the devils he believes them to be. This wouldn't be interesting at all, though, if he didn't also show such passion for giving the devil his due. He animates the forces of chaos and anarchy with every ounce of imaginative verve and rhetorical force in his body.]]>
182 G.K. Chesterton 0375757910 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.85 1908 The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
author: G.K. Chesterton
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1908
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/07/02
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<![CDATA[Edgar Allan Poe's Annotated Short Stories]]> 6998854 The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, an unearthly sea adventure replete with shipwrecks, ghastly specters and the eternal lure of the unknown.]]> 648 Edgar Allan Poe 1933747196 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.22 1845 Edgar Allan Poe's Annotated Short Stories
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1845
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/23
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<![CDATA[The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, #2)]]> 5094
Here he links forces with the defiant young Eddie Dean and the beautiful, brilliant, and brave Odetta Holmes, in a savage struggle against underworld evil and otherworldly enemies.

Once again, Stephen King has masterfully interwoven dark, evocative fantasy and icy realism.]]>
463 Stephen King 0451210859 Stephanie 3 4.23 1987 The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, #2)
author: Stephen King
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2020/05/15
date added: 2020/05/15
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<![CDATA[The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)]]> 43615
He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues The Man in Black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter.]]>
231 Stephen King 1501143514 Stephanie 3 3.95 1982 The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1)
author: Stephen King
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1982
rating: 3
read at: 2020/05/15
date added: 2020/05/15
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If It Bleeds 46015758 If it Bleeds is a collection of four new novellas �Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the title story If It Bleeds� each pulling readers into intriguing and frightening places.

A collection of four uniquely wonderful long stories, including a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider.

News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin.

Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog - and on her own need to be more assertive - when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realizes there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. So begins 'If It Bleeds' , a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider featuring the incomparable Holly on her first solo case.

Dancing alongside are three more long stories - 'Mr Harrigan's Phone', 'The Life of Chuck' and 'Rat' .

The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films, If It Bleeds is a uniquely satisfying collection of longer short fiction by an incomparably gifted writer.]]>
438 Stephen King Stephanie 0 to-read 3.99 2020 If It Bleeds
author: Stephen King
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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A Man 49882394
Akira Kido is a divorce attorney whose own marriage is in danger of being destroyed by emotional disconnect. With a midlife crisis looming, Kido’s life is upended by the reemergence of a former client, Rié Takemoto. She wants Kido to investigate a dead man—her recently deceased husband, Daisuké. Upon his death she discovered that he’d been living a lie. His name, his past, his entire identity belonged to someone else, a total stranger. The investigation draws Kido into two intriguing mysteries: finding out who Rié’s husband really was and discovering more about the man he pretended to be. Soon, with each new revelation, Kido will come to share the obsession with—and the lure of—erasing one life to create a new one.

In A Man, winner of Japan’s prestigious Yomiuri Prize for Literature, Keiichiro Hirano explores the search for identity, the ambiguity of memory, the legacies with which we live and die, and the reconciliation of who you hoped to be with who you’ve actually become.]]>
303 KeiichirĹŤ Hirano 1542006864 Stephanie 0 to-read 3.94 2018 A Man
author: KeiichirĹŤ Hirano
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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The Beekeeper of Aleppo 53004688 This unforgettable novel puts human faces on the Syrian war with the immigrant story of a beekeeper, his wife, and the triumph of spirit when the world becomes unrecognizable.

Nuri is a beekeeper and Afra, his wife, is an artist. Mornings, Nuri rises early to hear the call to prayer before driving to his hives in the countryside. On weekends, Afra sells her colorful landscape paintings at the open-air market. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the hills of the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo--until the unthinkable happens. When all they love is destroyed by war, Nuri knows they have no choice except to leave their home. But escaping Syria will be no easy task: Afra has lost her sight, leaving Nuri to navigate her grief as well as a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece toward an uncertain future in Britain.

Nuri is sustained only by the knowledge that waiting for them is his cousin Mustafa, who has started an apiary in Yorkshire and is teaching fellow refugees beekeeping. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken world, they must confront not only the pain of their own unspeakable loss but dangers that would overwhelm even the bravest souls. Above all, they must make the difficult journey back to each other, a path once so familiar yet rendered foreign by the heartache of displacement.]]>
384 Christy Lefteri 0593128176 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.08 2019 The Beekeeper of Aleppo
author: Christy Lefteri
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[Three Kingdoms (4-Volume Boxed Set)]]> 158770 Complete and unabridged, Moss Roberts's translation provides an authoritative, annotated English-language version of one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.

"The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been." With this characterization of the inevitable cycle of Chinese history, the monumental tale Three Kingdoms begins. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming Dynasty masterpiece continues to be read and loved throughout China as well as in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The novel offers a startling and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought; it has influenced the ways that Chinese think about power, diplomacy, and war even to this day.

Three Kingdoms portrays a fateful moment at the end of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) when the future of the Chinese empire lay in the balance. Writing more than a millennium later, Luo Guanzhong drew on often told tales of this turbulent period to fashion a sophisticated compelling narrative, whose characters display vivid individuality and epic grandeur.

The story begins when the emperor, fearing uprisings by peasant rebels known as the Yellow Scarves, sends an urgent appeal to the provinces for popular support. In response, three young men - the aristocratic Liu Xuande, the fugitive Lord Guan, and the pig-butcher Zhang Fei - meet to pledge eternal brotherhood and fealty to their beleaguered government. From these events comes a chain of cause and consequence that leads ultimately to the collapse of the Han.]]>
2339 Luo Guanzhong 7119005901 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.40 1522 Three Kingdoms (4-Volume Boxed Set)
author: Luo Guanzhong
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1522
rating: 0
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<![CDATA[The Plum Tree: An Emotional and Heartbreaking Novel of WW2 Germany and the Holocaust]]> 45689288 A deeply moving and masterfully written story of human resilience and enduring love, The Plum Tree follows a young German woman through the chaos of World War II and its aftermath.

"Bloom where you're planted," is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It's a world she's begun to glimpse through music, books--and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for.

Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler's regime. Anti-Jewish posters are everywhere, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job--and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo's wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to be with the man she loves, to survive--and finally, to speak out.

"Wiseman eschews the genre's usual military conflicts of daily life during wartime, lending an intimate and compelling poignancy to this intriguing debut."
--Publishers Weekly

"Ellen Marie Wiseman weaves a story of intrigue, terror, and love from a perspective not often seen in Holocaust novels."
--Jewish Book World ]]>
400 Ellen Marie Wiseman 149673002X Stephanie 0 to-read 4.02 2012 The Plum Tree: An Emotional and Heartbreaking Novel of WW2 Germany and the Holocaust
author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/02/04
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Waiting 235773 Waiting, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author Ha Jin draws on his intimate knowledge of contemporary China to create a novel of unexpected richness and feeling. This is the story of Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the conflicting claims of two utterly different women as he moves through the political minefields of a society designed to regulate his every move and stifle the promptings of his innermost heart.

For more than seventeen years, this devoted and ambitious doctor has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in the traditional world of his home village lives the wife his family chose for him when he was young—a humble and touchingly loyal woman, whom he visits in order to ask, again and again, for a divorce. In a culture in which the ancient ties of tradition and family still hold sway and where adultery discovered by the Party can ruin lives forever, Lin's passionate love is stretched ever more taut by the passing years. Every summer, his compliant wife agrees to a divorce but then backs out. This time, Lin promises, will be different.

Tracing these lives through their summer of decision and beyond, Ha Jin vividly conjures the texture of daily life in a place where the demands of human longing must contend with the weight of centuries of custom. Waiting charms and startles us with its depiction of a China that remains hidden to Western eyes even as it moves us with its piercing vision of the universal complications of love.]]>
310 Ha Jin 0375706410 Stephanie 3 3.54 1999 Waiting
author: Ha Jin
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2020/02/01
date added: 2020/02/01
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The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]>
241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Stephanie 3 3.99 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2020/02/01
date added: 2020/02/01
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Yellow Crocus 21888221 248 Laila Ibrahim 1477824758 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.28 2010 Yellow Crocus
author: Laila Ibrahim
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/02/01
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<![CDATA[The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)]]> 1232 487 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn Stephanie 4 4.26 2001 The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/27
date added: 2019/12/27
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The Institute 43798285
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King's gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good versus evil in a world where the good guys don't always win.
--front flap]]>
561 Stephen King Stephanie 0 to-read 4.17 2019 The Institute
author: Stephen King
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/12/14
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[The Keeper of Lost Causes (Department Q, #1)]]> 10822858
But she isn’t dead � yet.

Darkly humorous, propulsive, and atmospheric, The Keeper of Lost Causes introduces American readers to the mega-bestselling series fast becoming an international sensation.]]>
400 Jussi Adler-Olsen 0525952489 Stephanie 3 3.98 2007 The Keeper of Lost Causes (Department Q, #1)
author: Jussi Adler-Olsen
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2019/12/14
date added: 2019/12/14
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First Snow on Fuji 14033 227 Yasunari Kawabata 1582431051 Stephanie 4 3.91 1958 First Snow on Fuji
author: Yasunari Kawabata
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2019/11/09
date added: 2019/11/09
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The War of the Worlds 8909
Inspiring films, radio dramas, comic-book adaptations, television series and sequels,The War of the Worlds is a prototypical work of science fiction which has influenced every alien story that has come since, and is unsurpassed in its ability to thrill, well over a century since it was first published.]]>
192 H.G. Wells 0375759239 Stephanie 3 3.84 1898 The War of the Worlds
author: H.G. Wells
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1898
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2019/11/09
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<![CDATA[Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)]]> 43909484
From master storyteller Stephen King, his unforgettable and terrifying sequel to The Shining —an instant #1 New York Times bestseller that is “[a] vivid frightscape� ( The New York Times ).

Years ago, the haunting of the Overlook Hotel nearly broke young Dan Torrance’s sanity, as his paranormal gift known as “the shining� opened a door straight into hell. And even though Dan is all grown up, the ghosts of the Overlook—and his father’s legacy of alcoholism and violence—kept him drifting aimlessly for most of his life. Now, Dan has finally found some order in the chaos by working in a local hospice, earning the nickname “Doctor Sleep� by secretly using his special abilities to comfort the dying and prepare them for the afterlife. But when he unexpectedly meets twelve-year-old Abra Stone—who possesses an even more powerful manifestation of the shining—the two find their lives in sudden jeopardy at the hands of the ageless and murderous nomadic tribe known as the True Knot, reigniting Dan’s own demons and summoning him to battle for this young girl’s soul and survival...]]>
544 Stephen King 1982131802 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.25 2013 Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)
author: Stephen King
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[In the Time of the Butterflies]]> 11206
From the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents comes this tale of courage and sisterhood set in the Dominican Republic during the rise of the Trujillo dictatorship. A skillful blend of fact and fiction, In the Time of the Butterflies is inspired by the true story of the three Mirabal sisters who, in 1960, were murdered for their part in an underground plot to overthrow the government. Alvarez breathes life into these historical figures--known as "las mariposas," or "the butterflies," in the underground--as she imagines their teenage years, their gradual involvement with the revolution, and their terror as their dissentience is uncovered.

Alvarez's controlled writing perfectly captures the mounting tension as "the butterflies" near their horrific end. The novel begins with the recollections of Dede, the fourth and surviving sister, who fears abandoning her routines and her husband to join the movement. Alvarez also offers the perspectives of the other sisters: brave and outspoken Minerva, the family's political ringleader; pious Patria, who forsakes her faith to join her sisters after witnessing the atrocities of the tyranny; and the baby sister, sensitive Maria Teresa, who, in a series of diaries, chronicles her allegiance to Minerva and the physical and spiritual anguish of prison life.

In the Time of the Butterflies is an American Library Association Notable Book and a 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award nominee.]]>
324 Julia Alvarez 0452274427 Stephanie 4 4.15 1994 In the Time of the Butterflies
author: Julia Alvarez
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2019/07/06
date added: 2019/07/06
shelves:
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Divergent (Divergent, #1) 8306857 In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are--and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

]]>
487 Veronica Roth 0062024027 Stephanie 0 4.28 2011 Divergent (Divergent, #1)
author: Veronica Roth
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/06/10
shelves:
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<![CDATA[The Ocean at the End of the Lane]]> 16248319
THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac - as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly's wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark, from storytelling genius Neil Gaiman.

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it.

His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.]]>
6 Neil Gaiman 006226303X Stephanie 0 3.95 2013 The Ocean at the End of the Lane
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/06/09
shelves:
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<![CDATA[The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)]]> 17212239 384 Rachel Joyce Stephanie 0 3.98 2012 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Harold Fry, #1)
author: Rachel Joyce
name: Stephanie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/06/09
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<![CDATA[Warriors of the Storm (The Saxon Stories, #9)]]> 25394440
A fragile peace governs the kingdoms of Wessex, East Anglia, under the rule of the late King Alfred’s son, King Edward, and Mercia, under his daughter Aethelflaed.

Uhtred, her formidable champion and greatest warrior, controls the northern parts from the strongly fortified city of Chester. But no one can prepare them for the storm that is about to descend�

The Northmen, allied to the Irish, come in force under the cover of night, up the Mersey, perhaps to attack Chester, perhaps to rage and pillage through Mercia, perhaps to take the troubled kingdom of Northumbria. They are led by the terrifying Viking warrior, Ragnall Iverson, a fierce fighter and ruthless leader.

He and his army are formidable enough but worse still, his brother is married to Uhtred’s daughter. With his passionate determination, Uhtred will stop at nothing to take back his corner of Northumbria and secure the future of Bebbanburg. But for Aethelflaed and the Mercians, doubt must arise to where his loyalty lies.

In the struggle between family and loyalty, between oaths given and political demands, there is no easy solution. And the clash between the Vikings and the Saxons will resound across the land.]]>
298 Bernard Cornwell 0007504071 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.37 2015 Warriors of the Storm (The Saxon Stories, #9)
author: Bernard Cornwell
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/05/29
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes]]> 6240926 Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. He clarifies why our civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe—a place it long perceived as primitive and disorganized—had somehow hijacked destiny.]]> Tamim Ansary 1433272261 Stephanie 4 4.36 2009 Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes
author: Tamim Ansary
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/29
date added: 2019/05/29
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<![CDATA[In the Time of the Butterflies]]> 45013993 Librarian's Note: an alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here.

Set during the waning days of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960, this extraordinary novel tells the story the Mirabal sisters, three young wives and mothers who are assassinated after visiting their jailed husbands.

From the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents comes this tale of courage and sisterhood set in the Dominican Republic during the rise of the Trujillo dictatorship. A skillful blend of fact and fiction, In the Time of the Butterflies is inspired by the true story of the three Mirabal sisters who, in 1960, were murdered for their part in an underground plot to overthrow the government. Alvarez breathes life into these historical figures--known as "las mariposas," or "the butterflies," in the underground--as she imagines their teenage years, their gradual involvement with the revolution, and their terror as their dissentience is uncovered.

Alvarez's controlled writing perfectly captures the mounting tension as "the butterflies" near their horrific end. The novel begins with the recollections of Dede, the fourth and surviving sister, who fears abandoning her routines and her husband to join the movement. Alvarez also offers the perspectives of the other sisters: brave and outspoken Minerva, the family's political ringleader; pious Patria, who forsakes her faith to join her sisters after witnessing the atrocities of the tyranny; and the baby sister, sensitive Maria Teresa, who, in a series of diaries, chronicles her allegiance to Minerva and the physical and spiritual anguish of prison life.

In the Time of the Butterflies is an American Library Association Notable Book and a 1995 National Book Critics Circle Award nominee.]]>
337 Julia Alvarez 1565129768 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.14 1994 In the Time of the Butterflies
author: Julia Alvarez
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/05/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Outsider 42201321 Evil has many faces…maybe even yours in this #1 New York Times bestseller from master storyteller Stephen King!

An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is discovered in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens—Terry Maitland, Little League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. Maitland has an alibi, but Anderson and the district attorney soon have DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. Their case seems ironclad.

As the investigation expands and horrifying details begin to emerge, King’s story kicks into high gear, generating strong tension and almost unbearable suspense. Terry Maitland seems like a nice guy, but is he wearing another face? When the answer comes, it will shock you as only Stephen King can.]]>
561 Stephen King 1501181009 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.05 2018 The Outsider
author: Stephen King
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/05/02
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<![CDATA[The Harp of Kings (Warrior Bards #1)]]> 43289136 A young woman is both a bard--and a warrior--in this thrilling historical fantasy from the author of the Sevenwaters novels.

Eighteen-year-old Liobhan is a powerful singer and an expert whistle player. Her brother has a voice to melt the hardest heart, and a rare talent on the harp. But Liobhan's burning ambition is to join the elite warrior band on Swan Island. She and her brother train there to compete for places, and find themselves joining a mission while still candidates. Their unusual blend of skills makes them ideal for this particular job, which requires going undercover as traveling minstrels. For Swan Island trains both warriors and spies.

Their mission: to find and retrieve a precious harp, an ancient symbol of kingship, which has gone mysteriously missing. If the instrument is not played at the upcoming coronation, the candidate will not be accepted and the people could revolt. Faced with plotting courtiers and tight-lipped druids, an insightful storyteller, and a boorish Crown Prince, Liobhan soon realizes an Otherworld power may be meddling in the affairs of the kingdom. When ambition clashes with conscience, Liobhan must make a bold decision and is faced with a heartbreaking choice. . .]]>
448 Juliet Marillier 0451492781 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.03 2019 The Harp of Kings (Warrior Bards #1)
author: Juliet Marillier
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/05/02
shelves: to-read
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The Beekeeper of Aleppo 43124137 The unforgettable love story of a mother blinded by loss and her husband who insists on their survival as they undertake the Syrian refugee trail to Europe.

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

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

Moving, powerful, compassionate, and beautifully written, The Beekeeper of Aleppo is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit. It is the kind of book that reminds us of the power of storytelling.]]>
317 Christy Lefteri 1984821210 Stephanie 0 to-read 4.14 2019 The Beekeeper of Aleppo
author: Christy Lefteri
name: Stephanie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/04/22
shelves: to-read
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