Carol's bookshelf: to-read en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 04:18:11 -0700 60 Carol's bookshelf: to-read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Keeper of Lost Art 199532069
As Allied bombs rain down on Torino in the autumn of 1942, Stella Costa’s mother sends her to safety with distant relatives in a Tuscan villa. There, Stella finds her family tasked with a great responsibility: hiding nearly 300 priceless masterpieces from Florence, including Botticelli’s famous Primavera.

With the arrival of German troops imminent, Stella finds herself a stranger in her family’s villa and she struggles to understand why her aunt doesn’t like her. She knows it has something to do with her parents—and the fact that her father, who is currently fighting at the front, has been largely absent from her life.

When a wave of refugees seeks shelter in the villa, Stella befriends Sandro, an orphaned boy with remarkable artistic talent. Amid the growing threats, Sandro and Stella take refuge in the villa’s “treasure room,� where the paintings are hidden. There, Botticelli’s masterpiece and other works of art become a solace, an inspiration, and the glue that bonds Stella and Sandro as the dangers grow.

A troop of German soldiers requisitions the villa and puts everyone to forced labor. Now, with the villa full of German soldiers, refugees, a secret guest, and hundreds of priceless treasures, no one knows who will emerge unscathed, and whether the paintings will be taken as spoils or become unintended casualties.

Inspired by the incredible true story of a single Tuscan villa used as a hiding place for the treasures of Florentine art during World War II, The Keeper of Lost Art takes readers on a breathtaking journey into one of the darkest chapters of Italy’s history, highlighting the incredible courage of everyday people to protect some of the most important works of art in western civilization.]]> 352 Laura Morelli 0063206013 Carol 0 to-read 4.17 The Keeper of Lost Art
author: Laura Morelli
name: Carol
average rating: 4.17
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date added: 2025/04/30
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]]> The Queens of Crime 211003830 The Mystery of Mrs. Christie returns with a thrilling story of Christie’s legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second-class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers� own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.]]> 310 Marie Benedict 1250280753 Carol 0 to-read 3.81 2025 The Queens of Crime
author: Marie Benedict
name: Carol
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> The Busybody Book Club 218153882 A dysfunctional book club must pull together when one of their members goes missing in this bighearted new mystery from the USA Today bestselling author of Nosy Neighbors.

The five members of the St. Tredock Book Club disagree on everything, from the books they read to the biscuits they eat. But when one of the group suddenly disappears and a dead body is discovered at his house, these bibliophiles must put their differences aside to solve the mystery.

Having recently moved to Cornwall, Nova Davies started the book club to impress her new colleagues at the community center, but so far it’s a disaster. To make matters worse, six thousand pounds is stolen from the community center during one of her meetings, putting both her job and the whole center at risk.

Suspicion for the theft falls on book club member Michael, especially when a dead body is discovered at his house and Michael disappears. The police think he’s simply run away, but the other members have their own theories. Agatha Christie superfan Phyllis is determined to prove he’s a murderer as well as a thief, while secret romance reader Arthur believes Michael’s eloped with his mistress, and teenage sci-fi fan Ash thinks dark forces are at play.

While trying to find Michael and recover the money, each book club member has their own secrets to protect. With inspiration from their favorite fictional sleuths, they won’t rest until they’ve cracked the case and everyone is safe at home where they belong.]]> 336 Freya Sampson 0593550552 Carol 0 to-read 3.81 2025 The Busybody Book Club
author: Freya Sampson
name: Carol
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> Awake in the Floating City 217453585 An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

“An astonishing work of art…This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake.� —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.]]> 320 Susanna Kwan 0593701402 Carol 0 to-read 3.91 2025 Awake in the Floating City
author: Susanna Kwan
name: Carol
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> The Lamplighter’s Bookshop 216922102 Every book tells a story. Every heart hides a secret.

The Lost Bookshop meets The Lost Apothecary in a beguiling novel full of secrets�In the shadowy aisles of The Lamplighter's Bookshop, secrets lie as thick as the dust �

When Evelyn Seaton answers an advertisement for an assistant at a forgotten bookshop in York, she is not the only one with something to hide.

There she meets the enigmatic and prickly William Morton, an aspiring writer keeping secrets of his own. But when the walls of Evelyn’s carefully built defences start to crumble, there is only one person she can turn to.

As the layers are brushed away, Can Evelyn and William find the courage to write the next chapter of their story?]]> 368 Sophie Austin 0008664102 Carol 0 to-read 4.03 2025 The Lamplighter’s Bookshop
author: Sophie Austin
name: Carol
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Library of Lost Dollhouses]]> 216269038 When a young librarian discovers historic dollhouses in a hidden room, she embarks on an unexpected journey that reveals surprising secrets about the lost miniatures.

Tildy Barrows, Head Curator of a beautiful archival library in San Francisco, is meticulously dedicated to the century’s worth of inventory housed in her beloved Beaux Art building. She loves the calm and order in the shelves of books and walls of art. But Tildy’s uneventful life takes an unexpected turn when she, first, learns the library is on the verge of bankruptcy and, second, discovers two exquisite never-before-seen dollhouses. After finding clues hidden within these remarkable miniatures, Tildy starts to believe that Belva Curtis LeFarge, the influential heiress who established the library a century ago, is conveying a significant final message.

With a newfound sense of spontaneity, Tildy sets out to decipher the secret history of the dollhouses, aiming to salvage her cherished library in the process. Her journey to understand introduces her to a world of ambitious and gifted women in Belle ÉpoqueĚýParis, a group of scarred World War I veterans in the English countryside, and Walt Disney’s bustling Burbank studio in the 1950s. As Tildy unravels the mystery, she finds not only inspiring, overlooked history, but also a future for herself, filled with exciting possibilities—and an astonishing familial revelation.

Spanning the course of a century, The Library of Lost Dollhouses is a warm, bright, and captivating story of secrets and love that embraces the importance of illuminating overlooked women of the past.]]> 320 Elise Hooper 0063382148 Carol 0 to-read 3.98 2025 The Library of Lost Dollhouses
author: Elise Hooper
name: Carol
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> When Breath Becomes Air 25899336
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naĂŻve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'" When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.]]> 208 Paul Kalanithi 0812988418 Carol 0 to-read 4.41 2016 When Breath Becomes Air
author: Paul Kalanithi
name: Carol
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love]]> 203680931 A “wonderfully joyful read� (Good Housekeeping) a funny, uplifting story about the power of friendship and finding love in unexpected places from the author of The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot: When twentysomething Bella learns that 90-year-old Eddie has never been kissed, she makes it her mission to help him find love.
Eddie Winston is 90 years old. He has lived and loved, but he has never been kissed.

A true gentleman and incurable romantic, Eddie spends his days volunteering at a charity shop, where he sorts through the donations of the living and the dead, preserving letters and tokens of love. It is here that he meets Bella, a troubled young woman who, at 24 years old, has just lost the love of her life.

When Bella learns that Eddie is yet to have his first kiss, she resolves to help Eddie Winston finally find love, sparking an adventure that will take them to unexpected places and, they hope, bring Eddie Winston to the moment he has waited for all his life.

A tale of friendship and kindness that reminds us that those we love are never forgotten and it is never too late to try again.]]> 304 Marianne Cronin 0063383519 Carol 0 to-read 4.31 2024 Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love
author: Marianne Cronin
name: Carol
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> Salt to the Sea 25614492
Sepetys (writer of 'Between Shades of Gray') crafts four fictionalized but historically accurate voices to convey the real-life tragedy. Joana, a Lithuanian with nursing experience; Florian, a Prussian soldier fleeing the Nazis with stolen treasure; and Emilia, a Polish girl close to the end of her pregnancy, converge on their escape journeys as Russian troops advance; each will eventually meet Albert, a Nazi peon with delusions of grandeur, assigned to the Gustloff decks.]]> 391 Ruta Sepetys Carol 0 to-read 4.35 2016 Salt to the Sea
author: Ruta Sepetys
name: Carol
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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]]> Eleanore of Avignon 203956661 Eleanore of Avignon is the story of a woman who is unwilling to bend to the limitations her society places upon her when she becomes the unlikely apprentice to the pope’s physician at the most challenging and dangerous moment in medieval European history.

Provence, 1347. Eleanore (Elea) Blanchet is a midwife and budding herbalist with remarkable skills. But as she knows all too well from her late mother’s fate, she must be careful to stay within her station. So, she quietly accepts her role tending to the pregnant women in her home city of Avignon; spending time with her father and beloved twin sister, Margot; and escaping to the surrounding woods to forage for herbs when she can. At the very least, she is determined to preserve the little freedom she does have by staying unwed—unlike Margot, who is about to marry a man with painful connections to their mother’s death.

Then, in a chance encounter, Elea meets Guy de Chauliac, “Guigo,� the enigmatic personal physician to the powerful Pope Clement, who, against all odds, agrees to take her on as his apprentice. Under his tutelage, a whole new world opens to Elea—a world of status, wealth, and fascinating medical cases—but just as she starts to settle into her new position, the much-feared plague hits Europe, making Elea and Guigo's work more urgent than ever. And as if that weren’t enough, the disgraced Queen Joanna of Naples arrives in Avignon to stand trial for her husband’s murder—and she is pregnant and in need of a midwife, a role only Elea can fill.

As the Black Death spreads like wildfire, leaving half the city dead in its wake—and as the queen's childbirth approaches—Elea finds herself battling what seems to be an unwinnable war. All the while, the people of Avignon are becoming more and more desperate for a scapegoat, and a group of religious heretics launch a witch hunt, one that could cost her everything.]]> 320 Elizabeth DeLozier 0593475038 Carol 0 to-read 4.28 2024 Eleanore of Avignon
author: Elizabeth DeLozier
name: Carol
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/02
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]]> The Travelling Cat Chronicles 40961230
An instant international bestseller and indie bestseller, The Travelling Cat Chronicles has charmed readers around the world. With simple yet descriptive prose, this novel gives voice to Nana the cat and his owner, Satoru, as they take to the road on a journey with no other purpose than to visit three of Satoru's longtime friends. Or so Nana is led to believe...

With his crooked tail—a sign of good fortune—and adventurous spirit, Nana is the perfect companion for the man who took him in as a stray. And as they travel in a silver van across Japan, with its ever-changing scenery and seasons, they will learn the true meaning of courage and gratitude, of loyalty and love.]]> 281 Hiro Arikawa 0735235244 Carol 0 to-read 4.35 2012 The Travelling Cat Chronicles
author: Hiro Arikawa
name: Carol
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/27
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]]> When the World Fell Silent 204208184
Nora Crowell wants more than her sister’s life as a wife and mother. As WWI rages across the Atlantic, she becomes a lieutenant in the Canadian Army Nursing Corp. But trouble is looming and it won’t be long before the truth comes to light.

Having lost her beloved husband in the trenches and with no-one else to turn to, Charlotte Campbell now lives with his haughty relations who treat her like the help. It is baby Aileen, the joy and light of her life, who spurs her to dream of a better life.

When tragedy strikes in Halifax Harbour, nothing for these two women will ever be the same again. Their paths will cross in the most unexpected way, trailing both heartbreak and joy its wake…]]> 376 Donna Jones Alward 0008647046 Carol 0 to-read 4.32 2024 When the World Fell Silent
author: Donna Jones Alward
name: Carol
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue]]> 203956642 From the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, a re-examination of one of the 20th century’s greatest unsung power players When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, obituaries that followed were predictably sexist. Written off as a party girl, courtesan and social climber, her real legacy was overshadowed by a glamorous social life spent in glittering, elite circles of power. That is, until with a wealth of new research, interviews and newly discovered sources, Sonia Purnell is reclaiming her larger-than-life story of influence and power in full, spectacular depth for the first time. At age 20 Churchill’s beloved daughter-in-law became a “secret weaponâ€� during World War II, wining, dining, and seducing diplomats and envoys to help win over American sentiment (and secrets) for the cause. She transformed Gianni Agnelli into a savvy businessman and heir to the Fiat empire, and after moving to the US brought a struggling Democratic party back to life, hand-picking Bill Clinton from obscurity and vaulting him to the presidency. Picked as Ambassador to France, she deployed her legendary quiet, subtle power to charm world leaders and broker an end to the conflict in Bosnia, in effect rehabilitating the reputation of the US on the world stage. There are few people in history with a greater scope of impact over as many decades and across continents, and there is no one in 20th Century politics, culture, and fashion whom she did not know, including Aly Khan, Kay Graham, Jackie Onassis, Truman Capote, Gloria Steinem, Ed Murrow, and Frank Sinatra among her friends and lovers.ĚýWritten with the novelistic richness and investigative rigor that only Sonia Purnell could bring to this story full of sex, politics, yachts, and fabulous clothes, KINGMAKER re-asserts Harriman’s rightful place in history.]]> 528 Sonia Purnell 0593297806 Carol 0 to-read 4.09 Kingmaker: Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue
author: Sonia Purnell
name: Carol
average rating: 4.09
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]]> <![CDATA[A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson]]> 202102004 A portrait of the fascinating, unusual and fruitful creative partnership between Fanny and Robert Louis StevensonThe romance between Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson was an unlikely Victorian love he was an ambitious but drifting college-educated writer from a prominent family in Scotland; she was a forceful and determined farm girl from Indiana with a high school education. She was married, with children, and 10 years his senior when they met in France in 1876. How could a union between them work?A Wilder Shore is a portrait of these two extraordinary people and a nuanced examination of the improbable union that stimulated, frustrated and ultimately sustained them. The book travels the world with the couple as they seek better health for him, a looser lifestyle and more creative freedom, beginning in an art colony outside Paris and ending in Samoa, where they lived and joined the native islanders� fight for independence from imperialist powers. Along the way, the ferment of the Stevensons� deeply loving but stormy marriage produced literary masterpieces by Robert such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.This sweeping love story of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson and their search for freedom and self-discovery opens up new perspectives on both writers, as well as showing how astonishingly modern they were for their times.]]> 480 Camille Peri 0670786195 Carol 0 to-read 3.87 A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
author: Camille Peri
name: Carol
average rating: 3.87
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date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope]]> 53431510 An intimate and inspiring portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present--from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America

John Lewis, who at age twenty-five marched in Selma, Alabama, and was beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, is a visionary and a man of faith. Drawing on decades of wide-ranging interviews with Lewis and deep research into the history of the civil rights movement, Jon Meacham writes of how this great-grandson of a slave and a son of an Alabama tenant farmer was inspired by the Bible and his teachers in nonviolence, Reverend James Lawson and Martin Luther King, Jr., to put his life on the line in the service of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." A believer in hope above all else, Lewis learned from a young age that nonviolence was not only a tactic but a philosophy, a biblical imperative, and a transforming reality. At the age of four, Lewis, ambitious to become a minister, practiced by preaching to his family's chickens. When his mother cooked one of the chickens, the boy refused to eat it--his first act, he wryly recalled, of nonviolent protest. Integral to Lewis's commitment to bettering the nation was his faith in humanity and in God--and an unshakable belief in the power of hope.

Meacham calls Lewis "as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first-century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the initial creation of the nation-state in the eighteenth century. He did what he did--risking limb and life to bear witness for the powerless in the face of the powerful--not in spite of America, but because of America, and not in spite of religion, but because of religion." In many ways Lewis made his vision a reality, and his example offers Americans today a map for social and political change.]]> 354 Jon Meacham 1984855026 Carol 0 to-read 4.49 2020 His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope
author: Jon Meacham
name: Carol
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> My Friends 217163697 #1ĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an artist herself, knows otherwise and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their difficult home lives by spending their days laughing and telling stories out on a pier. There’s Joar, who never backs down from a fight; quiet and bookish Ted who is mourning his father; Ali, the daughter of a man who never stays in one place for long; and finally, there’s the artist, a boy who hoards sleeping pills and shuns attention, but who possesses an extraordinary gift that might be his ticket to a better life. These four lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Carol 0 to-read 4.58 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Carol
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> The Jackal's Mistress 214537772 In this Civil War love story, inspired by a real-life friendship across enemy lines, the wife of a missing Confederate soldier discovers a wounded Yankee officer and must decide what she’s willing to risk for the life of a stranger, from the New York Times bestselling author of such acclaimed historical fiction as Hour of the Witch and The Sandcastle Girls.

ĚýĚýĚýĚýVirginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.Ěý
ĚýĚýĚýĚýAnd then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy â€� but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible decision: Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband?Ěý
ĚýĚýĚýĚýA vivid and sweeping story of two people navigating the boundaries of love and humanity in a landscape of brutal violence, The Jackal’s Mistress is a heart-stopping new novel, based on a largely unknown piece of American history, from one of our greatest storytellers.]]> 336 Chris Bohjalian 0385547641 Carol 0 to-read 4.11 2025 The Jackal's Mistress
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Carol
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation]]> 10340846
November 1958: the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Into the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition comes the most unlikely of horses—a drab white former plow horse named Snowman—and his rider, Harry de Leyer. They were the longest of all longshots—and their win was the stuff of legend.
Ěý
Harry de Leyer first saw the horse he would name Snowman on a bleak winter afternoon between the slats of a rickety truck bound for the slaughterhouse. He recognized the spark in the eye of the beaten-up horse and bought him for eighty dollars. On Harry’s modest farm on Long Island, the horse thrived. But the recent Dutch immigrant and his growing family needed money, and Harry was always on the lookout for the perfect thoroughbred to train for the show-jumping circuit—so he reluctantly sold Snowman to a farm a few miles down the road.
Ěý
But Snowman had other ideas about what Harry needed. When he turned up back at Harry’s barn, dragging an old tire and a broken fence board, Harry knew that he had misjudged the horse. And so he set about teaching this shaggy, easygoing horse how to fly. One show at a time, against extraordinary odds and some of the most expensive thoroughbreds alive, the pair climbed to the very top of the sport of show jumping.
Ěý
Here is the dramatic and inspiring rise to stardom of an unlikely duo, based on the insight and recollections of “the Flying Dutchman� himself. Their story captured the heart of Cold War–era America—a story of unstoppable hope, inconceivable dreams, and the chance to have it all. Elizabeth Letts’s message is Never give up, even when the obstacles seem sky-high. There is something extraordinary in all of us.]]> 329 Elizabeth Letts 0345521080 Carol 0 to-read 4.21 2011 The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse That Inspired a Nation
author: Elizabeth Letts
name: Carol
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis]]> 28007894
As the Russians closed in on Hitler from the east and the Allies attacked from the west, American soldiers discovered a secret Nazi effort to engineer a master race of the finest purebred horses. With the support of U.S. general George S. Patton, a passionate equestrian, the Americans planned an audacious mission to kidnap these beautiful animals and smuggle them into safe territory—assisted by a daring Austrian colonel who was both a former Olympian and a trainer of the famous Lipizzaner stallions.]]> 400 Elizabeth Letts 0345544803 Carol 0 to-read 4.03 2016 The Perfect Horse: the Daring U.S. Mission to Rescue the Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis
author: Elizabeth Letts
name: Carol
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/16
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]]> Go Tell It on the Mountain 17143 Go Tell It On The Mountain, first published in 1953, is Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves.]]> 256 James Baldwin 0141185910 Carol 0 to-read 4.06 1953 Go Tell It on the Mountain
author: James Baldwin
name: Carol
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1953
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Book of Queens: The True Story of the Middle Eastern Horsewomen Who Fought the War on Terror]]> 64000417
Pardis Mahdavi chases the legacy of Caspian horses and the women whose lives are saved by them, drawing on decades of research, newly-discovered diaries, and exclusive military sources. Among those intersecting stories is that of American Louise Firouz, who helped bring the breed back from the brink of extinction, connecting Virginia traders to British royals to the son of the Shah. Firouz’s life is forever changed when she meets Mahdavi’s own family, who run an unusual smuggling operation in addition to raising horses in a wild bid for freedom.

Book of Queens is an epic tale of hidden women whose communal knowledge was instrumental in saving an animal as ancient as civilization, and who were the genesis of their own liberation.]]> 304 Pardis Mahdavi 0306832135 Carol 0 to-read 4.37 2023 Book of Queens: The True Story of the Middle Eastern Horsewomen Who Fought the War on Terror
author: Pardis Mahdavi
name: Carol
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> The Colony Club 199531901
As “the best dressed actress on the Rialto� Elsie de Wolfe has an eye for décor, but her career is stagnating. So when White asks her to design the clubhouse interiors, she jumps at the chance and the opportunity to add a woman’s touch. He promises to send her an assistant, a young woman he’s hired as a draftsman.

Raised in the Lower East Side tenements, Nora Bromely is determined to become an architect in spite of hostility and sabotage from her male colleagues. She is disappointed and angry when White “foists� her off on this new women’s club project.

But when White is murdered and the ensuing Trial of the Century discloses the architect’s scandalous personal life, fearful backers begin to withdraw their support. It’s questionable whether the club will survive long enough to open.

Daisy, Elsie, and Nora have nothing in common but their determination to carry on. But to do so, they must overcome not only society’s mores but their own prejudices about women, wealth, and each other. Together they strive to transform Daisy’s dream of the Colony Club into a reality, a place that will nurture social justice and ensure the work of the women who earned the nickname “Mink Brigade� far into the future.]]> 384 Shelley Noble 0063252481 Carol 0 to-read 4.00 2024 The Colony Club
author: Shelley Noble
name: Carol
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony]]> 195820710 Rows of orange people sit handcuffed in a beige room. One of them is my mother.

When journalist Annabelle Tometich picks up the phone one June morning, she isn’t expecting a collect call from an inmate at the Lee County Jail. And when she accepts, she certainly isn’t prepared to hear her mother’s voice on the other end of the line. However, explaining the situation to her younger siblings afterwards was easy; all she had to say was, “Mom shot at some guy. He was messing with her mangoes.� They immediately understood. Answering the questions of the breaking-news reporter—at the same newspaper where Annabelle worked as a restaurant critic––proved more difficult. Annabelle decided to go with a variation of the truth: it was complicated.

So beginsĚýThe Mango Tree, a poignant and deceptively entertaining memoir of growing up as a mixed-race Filipina “nobodyâ€� in suburban Florida as Annabelle traces the roots of her upbringing—all the while reckoning with her erratic father’s untimely death in a Fort Myers motel, her fiery mother’s bitter yearning for the country she left behind, and her own journey in the pursuit of belonging.

With clear-eyed compassion and piercing honesty,ĚýThe Mango Tree is a family saga that navigates the tangled branches of Annabelle’s life, from her childhood days in an overflowing house flooded by balikbayan boxes, vegetation, and juicy mangoes, to her winding path from medical school hopeful to restaurant critic. It is a love letter to her fellow Filipino Americans, her lost younger self, and the beloved fruit tree at the heart of her family. But above all, it is an ode to Annabelle’s hot-blooded, whip-smart mother Josefina, a woman who made a life and a home of her own, and without whom Annabelle would not have herself.]]> 320 Annabelle Tometich 0316540323 Carol 0 to-read 4.16 2024 The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony
author: Annabelle Tometich
name: Carol
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> <![CDATA[We Must Not Think of Ourselves]]> 64005941
On a November day in 1940, Adam Paskow becomes a prisoner in the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Jews of the city are cut off from their former lives and held captive by Nazi guards, and await an uncertain fate. Weeks later, he is approached by a mysterious figure with a surprising request: Will he join a secret group of archivists working to preserve the truth of what is happening inside these walls? Adam agrees and begins taking testimonies from his students, friends, and neighbors. He learns about their childhoods and their daydreams, their passions and their fears, their desperate strategies for safety and survival. The stories form a portrait of endurance in a world where no choices are good ones.

One of the people Adam interviews is his flatmate Sala Wiskoff, who is stoic, determined, and funny—and married with two children. Over the months of their confinement, in the presence of her family, Adam and Sala fall in love. As they desperately carve out intimacy, their relationship feels both impossible and vital, their connection keeping them alive. But when Adam discovers a possible escape from the Ghetto, he is faced with an unbearable choice: Whom can he save, and at what cost?

Inspired by the testimony-gathering project with the code name Oneg Shabbat, New York Times bestselling author Lauren Grodstein draws readers into the lives of people living on the edge. Told with immediacy and heart, We Must Not Think of Ourselves is a piercing story of love, determination, and sacrifice for the many fans of literary World War II fiction such as Kristin Harmel’s The Book of Lost NamesĚýand Lauren Fox’s Send for Me.]]> 304 Lauren Grodstein 1643752340 Carol 0 to-read 3.98 2023 We Must Not Think of Ourselves
author: Lauren Grodstein
name: Carol
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/26
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]]> Kindred 60931 The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.]]> 288 Octavia E. Butler 0807083690 Carol 0 to-read 4.30 1979 Kindred
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Carol
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Carol 0 to-read 4.36 2024 The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Carol
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> The Book of Doors 156480764
In New York City, bookseller Cassie Andrews is living an unassuming life when she is given a gift by a favourite customer. It's a book - an unusual book, full of strange writing and mysterious drawings. And at the very front there is a handwritten message to Cassie, telling her that this is the Book of Doors, and that any door is every door .

What Cassie is about to discover is that the Book of Doors is a special book that bestows an extraordinary powers on whoever possesses it, and soon she and her best friend Izzy are exploring all that the Book of Doors can do, swept away from their quiet lives by the possibilities of travelling to anywhere they want.

But the Book of Doors is not the only magical book in the world. There are other books that can do wondrous and dreadful things when wielded by dangerous and ruthless individuals - individuals who crave what Cassie now possesses.

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is, it seems, Drummond Fox. He is a man fleeing his own demons - a man with his own secret library of magical books that he has hidden away in the shadows for safekeeping. Because there is a nameless evil out there that is hunting them all . . .

Because some doors should never be opened.]]> 408 Gareth Brown 1787637247 Carol 0 to-read 4.03 2024 The Book of Doors
author: Gareth Brown
name: Carol
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis]]> 52198084 An intimate portrait of the life of Jackie O�

Few of us can claim to be the authors of our fate. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy knows no other choice. With the eyes of the world watching, Jackie uses her effortless charm and keen intelligence to carve a place for herself among the men of history and weave a fairy tale for the American people, embodying a senator’s wife, a devoted mother, a First Lady—a queen in her own right.

But all reigns must come to an end. Once JFK travels to Dallas and the clock ticks down those thousand days of magic in Camelot, Jackie is forced to pick up the ruined fragments of her life and forge herself into a new identity that is all her own, that of an American legend.]]> 448 Stephanie Marie Thornton 0451490924 Carol 0 to-read 4.15 2020 And They Called It Camelot: A Novel of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
author: Stephanie Marie Thornton
name: Carol
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/04
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]]> Let's Call Her Barbie 214045369 She was only eleven-and-a-half inches tall, but she would change the world. Barbie is born in this bold new novel by USA Today bestselling author Renée Rosen.

When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll unlike any other, she knows what she’s setting in motion. It might just take the world a moment to catch up.

In 1956, the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. Ruth’s vision for a doll shaped like a grown woman and outfitted in an enviable wardrobe will let them dream they can be anything.

As Ruth assembles her team of creative rebels—head engineer Jack Ryan who hides his deepest secrets behind his genius and designers Charlotte Johnson and Stevie Klein, whose hopes and dreams rest on the success of Barbie’s fashion—she knows they’re working against a ticking clock to get this wild idea off the ground.

In the decades to come—through soaring heights and devastating personal lows, public scandals and private tensions� each of them will have to decide how tightly to hold on to their creation. Because Barbie has never been just a doll—she’s a legacy.]]> 432 Renée Rosen 0593953630 Carol 0 to-read 4.06 2025 Let's Call Her Barbie
author: Renée Rosen
name: Carol
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/02
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]]> The Shell Seekers 23014724 "A huge warm saga . . . A deeply satisfying story written with love and confidence." --Maeve Binchy in The New York Times Book Review

For the first time ever in trade paperback, Rosamunde Pilcher's beloved, #1 New York Times bestselling novel—a captivating story of life and love.

An instant bestseller when it was first published, The Shell Seekers is an enduring classic which has touched the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. A novel of connection, it is the story of one family—mothers and daughters, husbands and lovers--and of the passions and heartbreak that have held them together for three generations. This magical novel—the kind of reading experience that comes along only once in a long while—is the perfect read, whether you are returning to it again, or opening the cover for the first time.

At the end of a long and useful life, Penelope Keeling's prized possession is The Shell Seekers, painted by her father, and symbolizing her unconventional life, from bohemian childhood to wartime romance. When her grown children learn their grandfather's work is now worth a fortune, each has an idea as to what Penelope should do. But as she recalls the passions, tragedies, and secrets of her life, she knows there is only one answer...and it lies in her heart.]]> 632 Rosamunde Pilcher 1250063787 Carol 0 to-read 4.30 1987 The Shell Seekers
author: Rosamunde Pilcher
name: Carol
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (The Herdmans, #1)]]> 239810 The Best Christmas Pageant Ever follows the outrageous shenanigans of the Herdman siblings, or “the worst kids in the history of the world.� The siblings take over the annual Christmas pageant in a hilarious yet heartwarming tale involving the Three Wise Men, a ham, scared shepherds, and six rowdy kids.

Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys Herdman are an awful bunch. They set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s toolshed, blackmailed Wanda Pierce to get her charm bracelet, and smacked Alice Wendelken across the head. And that’s just the start! When the Herdmans show up at church for the free snacks and suddenly take over the Christmas pageant, the other kids are shocked. It’s obvious that they’re up to no good. But Christmas magic is all around and the Herdmans, who have never heard the Christmas story before, start to reimagine it in their own way.

This year’s pageant is definitely like no other, but maybe that’s exactly what makes it so special.]]> 128 Barbara Robinson 0064402754 Carol 0 to-read 4.24 1972 The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (The Herdmans, #1)
author: Barbara Robinson
name: Carol
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> <![CDATA[My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1)]]> 61447882
September 1943: German forces occupy Rome. Gestapo boss Obersturmbannführer Paul Hauptmann rules with terror. Hunger is widespread. Rumors fester. The war’s outcome is far from certain.

Diplomats, refugees, and escaped Allied prisoners flee for protection into Vatican City, at one fifth of a square mile the world’s smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome. A small band of unlikely friends led by a courageous Irish priest is drawn into deadly danger as they seek to help those seeking refuge.

Book 1 in the Rome Escape Line Trilogy, My Father’s House is a powerful, heartbreaking literary thriller based on the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who risked his life to smuggle thousands of Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy under the nose of his Nazi nemesis. A deadly high-stakes battle of wits ensues in this astonishing, unforgettable story of love, faith and sacrifice, exploring what it means to be truly human in the most extreme circumstances.]]> 276 Joseph O'Connor Carol 0 to-read 3.98 2023 My Father's House (Rome Escape Line Trilogy, #1)
author: Joseph O'Connor
name: Carol
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
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]]> Night Watch 62951865
The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.]]> 276 Jayne Anne Phillips 0451493338 Carol 0 to-read 3.55 2023 Night Watch
author: Jayne Anne Phillips
name: Carol
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/24
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]]> The Tour 58048259 The locals they meet on their journey, eccentric West Brits, passionate musicians, Ukranian waitresses and Garda high flyers all help to make this a tour that nobody will ever forget. And of course, there's Conor, stuck in the thick of it all, solving problems and mending hearts, but what about his own?]]> 462 Jean Grainger Carol 0 to-read 4.27 2013 The Tour
author: Jean Grainger
name: Carol
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The American Queen: A Novel Based on the True Story of Appalachia’s Kingdom of the Happy Land]]> 180871112 368 Vanessa Miller 0840708874 Carol 0 to-read 4.10 The American Queen: A Novel Based on the True Story of Appalachia’s Kingdom of the Happy Land
author: Vanessa Miller
name: Carol
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing]]> 64631561 New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot-caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter in this harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir.

No one expects the police to knock on the million-dollar, two-story home of the perfect cul-de-sac housewife. But soccer mom Lara Love Hardin has been hiding a shady she is funding her heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors� credit cards.

Lara is convicted of thirty-two felonies and becomes inmate S32179. She learns that jail is a class system with a power structure that is somewhere between an adolescent sleepover party and Lord of the Flies. Furniture is made from tampon boxes and Snickers bars are currency. But Lara quickly finds the rules and brings love and healing to her fellow inmates as she climbs the social ladder to become the “shot caller,� showing that jailhouse politics aren’t that different from the PTA meetings she used to attend.

When she’s released, she reinvents herself as a ghostwriter. Now, she’s legally co-opting other people’s identities and getting to meet Oprah, meditate with The Dalai Lama, and have dinner with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. But the shadow of her past follows her. Shame is a poison worse than heroin—there is no way to detox. Lara must learn how to forgive herself and others, navigate life as a felon on probation, prove to herself that she is more good than bad, and much more.

The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.]]> 319 Lara Love Hardin 1982197668 Carol 0 to-read 4.45 2023 The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
author: Lara Love Hardin
name: Carol
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> Looking for Jane 61273371
1971: As a teenager, Dr. Evelyn Taylor was sent to a home for “fallen� women where she was forced to give up her baby for adoption—a trauma she has never recovered from. Despite the constant threat of arrest, she joins the Jane Network as an abortion provider, determined to give other women the choice she never had.

1980: After discovering a shocking secret about her family, twenty-year-old Nancy Mitchell begins to question everything she has ever known. When she unexpectedly becomes pregnant, she feels like she has no one to turn to for help. Grappling with her decision, she locates “Jane� and finds a place of her own alongside Dr. Taylor within the network’s ranks, but she can never escape the lies that haunt her.]]> 400 Heather Marshall 1668013681 Carol 0 to-read 4.34 2022 Looking for Jane
author: Heather Marshall
name: Carol
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> Count the Ways 55825214
Eleanor and Cam meet at a crafts fair in Vermont in the early 1970s. She’s an artist and writer, he makes wooden bowls. Within four years they are parents to three children, two daughters and a red-headed son who fills his pockets with rocks, plays the violin and talks to God. To Eleanor, their New Hampshire farm provides everything she always wanted—summer nights watching Cam’s softball games, snow days by the fire and the annual tradition of making paper boats and cork people to launch in the brook every spring. If Eleanor and Cam don’t make love as often as they used to, they have something that matters more. Their family.

Then comes a terrible accident, caused by Cam’s negligence. Unable to forgive him, Eleanor is consumed by bitterness, losing herself in her life as a mother, while Cam finds solace with a new young partner.

Over the decades that follow, the five members of this fractured family make surprising discoveries and decisions that occasionally bring them together, and often tear them apart. Tracing the course of their lives—through the gender transition of one child and another’s choice to completely break with her mother—Joyce Maynard captures a family forced to confront essential, painful truths of its past, and find redemption in its darkest hours.

A story of holding on and learning to let go, Count the Ways is an achingly beautiful, poignant, and deeply compassionate novel of home, parenthood, love, and forgiveness.]]> 480 Joyce Maynard 0062398288 Carol 0 to-read 4.11 2021 Count the Ways
author: Joyce Maynard
name: Carol
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> The Bird Hotel 62357986 Enter the magical world of La Llorona withĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author Joyce Maynard.
Ěý
After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist,Ěýfinds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano.Ěý
Ěý
The Bird HotelĚýtells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runsĚýLa Llorona. Along the way we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. With a mystery at its center and filled with warmth, drama, romance, humor, pop culture, and a little magic realism,ĚýThe Bird HotelĚýhas all the hallmarks of a Joyce Maynard novel that have made her a a leading voice of her generationĚý
Ěý
The Bird HotelĚýis a big, sweeping story spanning four decades, offering lyricism as well as whimsy. While the worldĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling authorĚýJoyce Maynard brings to life on the page is rendered from her imagination, it’s one informed by the more than twenty years of which she has spent a significant amount of her time in a small Mayan indigenous village in Guatemala.Ěý]]> 457 Joyce Maynard 1956763740 Carol 0 to-read 4.30 2023 The Bird Hotel
author: Joyce Maynard
name: Carol
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> West 35297141
West is the story of Bellman's journey and of Bess, waiting at home for her father to return.]]> 160 Carys Davies 1501179349 Carol 0 to-read 3.67 2018 West
author: Carys Davies
name: Carol
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> Clear 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 196 Carys Davies 1668030667 Carol 0 to-read 3.85 Clear
author: Carys Davies
name: Carol
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> Burma Sahib 176822902 400 Paul Theroux 006329754X Carol 0 to-read 3.80 2024 Burma Sahib
author: Paul Theroux
name: Carol
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> Paris 18730321 The Song of Roland; a humble family that embodies the ideals of the French Revolution; a pair of brothers from the slums behind Montmartre, one of whom works on the Eiffel Tower as the other joins the underworld near the Moulin Rouge; and merchants who lose everything during the reign of Louis XV, rise again in the age of Napoleon, and help establish Paris as the great center of art and culture that it is today. With Rutherfurd’s unrivaled blend of impeccable research and narrative verve, this bold novel brings the sights, scents, and tastes of the City of Light to brilliant life.]]> 809 Edward Rutherfurd 0345530764 Carol 0 to-read 4.07 2013 Paris
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Carol
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1)]]> 32075854
When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pünd investigates a murder at Pye Hall, an English manor house, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others. There will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, and plenty of red herrings and clues. But the more Susan reads, the more she realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript—one of ambition, jealousy, and greed—and that soon it will lead to murder.

Masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage crime fiction.]]> 477 Anthony Horowitz 0062645226 Carol 0 to-read 3.93 2016 Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland, #1)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Carol
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Murder at Gulls Nest (Nora Breen Investigates #1)]]> 216647714 A cozy mystery series about a former nun who searches for answers in a small seaside town after her pen pal mysteriously disappears

1954: When her former novice’s dependable letters stop, Nora Breen asks to be released from her vows. Haunted by a line in Frieda’s letter, Nora arrives at Gulls Nest, a charming hotel in Gore-on-Sea in Kent. A seaside town, a place of fresh air and relaxed constraints, is the perfect place for a new start. Nora hides her identity and pries into the lives of her fellow guests—but when a series of bizarre murders rattles the occupants of Gulls Nest it’s time to ask if a dark past can ever really be left behind.]]> 336 Jess Kidd 0571378943 Carol 0 to-read 4.34 2025 Murder at Gulls Nest (Nora Breen Investigates #1)
author: Jess Kidd
name: Carol
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Marmee 62327644 From the author of Caroline, a revealing retelling of Louisa May Alcott's beloved Little Women, from the perspective of Margaret "Marmee" March, about the larger real-world challenges behind the cozy domestic concerns cherished by generations of readers.

In 1861, war is raging in the South, but in Concord, Massachusetts, Margaret March has her own battles to fight. With her husband serving as an army chaplain, the comfort and security of Margaret's four daughters-- Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy--now rest on her shoulders alone. Money is tight and every month, her husband sends less and less of his salary with no explanation. Worst of all, Margaret harbors the secret that these financial hardships are largely her fault, thanks to a disastrous mistake made over a decade ago which wiped out her family's fortune and snatched away her daughters' chances for the education they deserve.

Yet even with all that weighs upon her, Margaret longs to do more--for the war effort, for the poor, for the cause of abolition, and most of all, for her daughters. Living by her watchwords, "Hope and keep busy," she fills her days with humdrum charity work to keep her worries at bay. All of that is interrupted when Margaret receives a telegram from the War Department, summoning her to her husband's bedside in Washington, D.C. While she is away, her daughter Beth falls dangerously ill, forcing Margaret to confront the possibility that the price of her own generosity toward others may be her daughter's life.

A stunning portrait of the paragon of virtue known as Marmee, a wife left behind, a mother pushed to the brink, a woman with secrets.


]]> Sarah Miller Carol 0 to-read 4.02 2022 Marmee
author: Sarah Miller
name: Carol
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/11
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]]> Jacob T. Marley 11451071 These chillingly familiar words begin the classic Christmas tale of remorse and redemption in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Now R. William Bennett rewinds the story and focuses the spotlight on Scrooge's miserly business partner, Jacob T. Marley, who was allowed to return as a ghost to warn Scrooge away from his ill-fated path. Why was Marley allowed to return? And why hadn't he been given the same chance as Ebenezer Scrooge?

Or had he?

Written with a voice reminiscent of Dickens, Jacob T. Marley is a masterfully crafted story sure to become a Christmas favorite.]]> 202 R. William Bennett Carol 0 to-read 4.15 2011 Jacob T. Marley
author: R. William Bennett
name: Carol
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/09
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]]> <![CDATA[The Pirate's Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd]]> 60023170
Captain Kidd was one of the most notorious pirates to ever prowl the seas. But few know that Kidd had an accomplice, a behind-the-scenes player who enabled his plundering and helped him outpace his enemies.

That accomplice was his wife, Sarah Kidd, a well-to-do woman whose extraordinary life is a lesson in reinvention and resourcefulness. Twice widowed by twenty-one and operating within the strictures of polite society in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New York, Sarah secretly aided and abetted her husband, fighting alongside him against his accusers. More remarkable still was that Sarah not only survived the tragedy wrought by her infamous husband’s deeds, but went on to live a successful and productive life as one of New York’s most prominent citizens.

Marshaling in newly discovered primary-source documents from archives in London, New York and Boston, historian and journalist Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos reconstructs the extraordinary life of Sarah Kidd, uncovering a rare example of the kind of life that pirate wives lived during the Golden Age of Piracy. A compelling tale of love, treasure, motherhood and survival, this landmark work of narrative nonfiction weaves together the personal and the epic in a sweeping historical story of romance and adventure.]]> 288 Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos 1335429840 Carol 0 to-read 3.23 2022 The Pirate's Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd
author: Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos
name: Carol
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast]]> 58684544 448 Joan DeJean 1541600584 Carol 0 to-read 3.63 2022 Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast
author: Joan DeJean
name: Carol
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/01
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]]> Code Name Butterfly 127422280
Paris, 1941. Journalist Elodie Mitchell has found bohemian Paris a huge culture shock compared to her hometown of Chicago � but she loves the new-found freedom she's felt walking its streets. That is until the threat of Nazi occupation starts to loom larger by the day.

After a mysterious man invites her to a Josephine Baker show, Elodie is perplexed but dazzled by the decadence of the performance. But when Elodie is mistaken for Josephine and whisked backstage, she realises that the star's glamorous shows have been hiding a darker, far more important movement than anyone could have possibly imagined.

As Elodie gets embroiled in a whisper network of spies working to resist the occupation of France, she is given an assignment to go undercover as Josephine's cousin. Her mission? To gather crucial information that will protect not only the country she now calls home, but all the people within it who she has grown to love so dearly � and getting caught is not an option.

A heart-breaking wartime epic of love, bravery, survival and one woman’s stand against prejudice in all its forms.]]> 432 Embassie Susberry 0008591520 Carol 0 to-read 4.08 2024 Code Name Butterfly
author: Embassie Susberry
name: Carol
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village]]> 57405598 Thinking of a foray to a quaint English village? You'll think twice after reading this tongue-in-cheek illustrated guide to the countless murderous possibilities lurking behind these villages' bucolic façades—from bestselling author Maureen Johnson and illustrator Jay Cooper.

A weekend roaming narrow old lanes, touring the faded glories of a country manor, and quaffing pints in the pub. How charming. That is, unless you have the misfortune of finding yourself in an English Murder Village, where danger lurks around each picturesque cobblestone corner and every sip of tea may be your last. If you insist on your travels, do yourself a favor and bring a copy of this little book. It may just keep you alive.

Brought to life with dozens of Gorey-esque drawings by illustrator Jay Cooper and peppered with allusions to classic crime series and unmistakably British murder lore, Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village gives you the tools you need to avoid the same fate, should you find yourself in a suspiciously cozy English village (or simply dream of going). Good luck, and whatever you do, avoid the vicar.]]> 128 Maureen Johnson 1984859625 Carol 0 to-read 4.02 2021 Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Carol
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Small Mercies 61812308 The acclaimed New York Times bestselling writer returns with a masterpiece to rival Mystic River —an all-consuming tale of revenge, family love, festering hate, and insidious power, set against one of the most tumultuous episodes in Boston’s history.

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

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

Set against the hot, tumultuous months when the city’s desegregation of its public schools exploded in violence, Small Mercies is a superb thriller, a brutal depiction of criminality and power, and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. It is a mesmerizing and wrenching work that only Dennis Lehane could write.]]> 303 Dennis Lehane 0062129481 Carol 0 to-read 4.22 2023 Small Mercies
author: Dennis Lehane
name: Carol
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/26
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]]> Brightly Shining 208580627 192 Ingvild H. Rishøi 0802163491 Carol 0 to-read 3.67 2021 Brightly Shining
author: Ingvild H. Rishøi
name: Carol
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/22
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]]> Time of the Child 201608156
Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love � and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.

But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.

Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams' beloved This Is Happiness, Time of the Child is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.]]> 304 Niall Williams 1639734201 Carol 0 to-read 4.16 2024 Time of the Child
author: Niall Williams
name: Carol
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/22
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]]> When Crickets Cry 241387 A man with a painful past. A child with a doubtful future. And a shared journey toward healing for both their hearts.

It begins on the shaded town square in a sleepy Southern town. A spirited seven-year-old has a brisk business at her lemonade stand. But the little girl's pretty yellow dress can't quite hide the ugly scar on her chest.

Her latest customer, a bearded stranger, drains his cup and heads to his car, his mind on a boat he's restoring at a nearby lake. The stranger understands more about the scar than he wants to admit. And the beat-up bread truck careening around the corner with its radio blaring is about to change the trajectory of both their lives.

Before it's over, they'll both know there are painful reasons why crickets cry . . . and that miracles lurk around unexpected corners.]]> 352 Charles Martin 1595540547 Carol 0 to-read 4.25 2006 When Crickets Cry
author: Charles Martin
name: Carol
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> Lunch Ladies 220738193
For lovers of women’s fiction with characters who linger long after the close of a book, Lunch Ladies immerses readers in lives and relationships that are joyful, troubled, and emotionally charged. Characters� intertwined lives, their dreams and heartbreaks, their histories, and their secrets, emerge as this story develops with startling honesty and depth.

Lunch Ladies offers a spot-on depiction of the 1970’s in small-town America. As the book opens, it's 1976 and there's a bicentennial parade in the works. Is this a task for the school district's lunch ladies? Their answer would be "no." And yet Crystal, Coralene, and Sheila find themselves crafting food stands to feed parade goers, come the Fourth of July.

Crystal has other things to do: matching lonely travelers from the newspaper obituaries with kind souls still living. Coralene doesn't need this nonsense. She has a home and family, and a nephew she must save before it's too late. Is it already too late for Sheila? Her safe harbor is a booth at Denny's on Friday nights, with the only person who might help her move beyond her past.

Lunch Ladies serves up a poignant, tender, and humorous view of the flawed and fascinating citizens of Hanley. Peppered with wit and insight, the book captures the absurdities of family and community life, while revealing the humanity of those who've been lost, or left behind.]]> 282 Jodi Thompson Carr Carol 0 to-read 3.71 2024 Lunch Ladies
author: Jodi Thompson Carr
name: Carol
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> White Bird 61021934
Sara Blum lives an idyllic life with her adoring parents in Vichy France. But her world comes crashing down when the Nazi occupation separates the family and forces the young Jewish girl into hiding. Her classmate Julien and his family will risk everything to ensure her survival, and, together, Sara and Julien manage to find beauty in a secret world of their creation.

Originally published as a graphic novel, and featuring characters from the multi-million-copy-bestselling phenomenon Wonder, Sara and Julien's powerful, heartbreaking and timeless story is told here for the first time as a novel, and shows the power of kindness to change hearts, build bridges, and even save lives in the darkest of times.]]> 272 R.J. Palacio 0593566939 Carol 0 to-read 4.45 White Bird
author: R.J. Palacio
name: Carol
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> White Bird 42898923 Wonder story

In R. J. Palacio's bestselling collection of stories, Auggie & Me, which expands on characters in Wonder, readers were introduced to Julian's grandmother, Grandmère. Here, Palacio makes her graphic novel debut with Grandmère's heartrending how she, a young Jewish girl, was hidden by a family in a Nazi-occupied French village during World War II; how the boy she and her classmates once shunned became her savior and best friend.

Grandmère's harrowing experience movingly demonstrates the power of kindness to change hearts, build bridges, and even save lives. As Grandmère tells Julian, "It always takes courage to be kind, but in those days, such kindness could cost you everything." With poignant symbolism and gorgeous artwork that brings Grandmère's story out of the past and cements it firmly in this moment in history, White Bird is sure to captivate anyone who was moved by Wonder.]]> 220 R.J. Palacio 0525645551 Carol 0 to-read 4.50 2019 White Bird
author: R.J. Palacio
name: Carol
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> November Road 35430011 The Long and Faraway Gone.

Frank Guidry’s luck has finally run out.

A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it’s his turn—he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Within hours of JFK’s murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is turning up dead, and Guidry suspects he’s next: he was in Dallas on an errand for the boss less than two weeks before the president was shot. With few good options, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas, to see an old associate—a dangerous man who hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish.

Guidry knows that the first rule of running is "don’t stop," but when he sees a beautiful housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car, two little daughters and a dog in the back seat, he sees the perfect disguise to cover his tracks from the hit men on his tail. Posing as an insurance man, Guidry offers to help Charlotte reach her destination, California. If she accompanies him to Vegas, he can help her get a new car.

For her, it’s more than a car� it’s an escape. She’s on the run too, from a stifling existence in small-town Oklahoma and a kindly husband who’s a hopeless drunk.

It’s an American story: two strangers meet to share the open road west, a dream, a hope—and find each other on the way.

Charlotte sees that he’s strong and kind; Guidry discovers that she’s smart and funny. He learns that’s she determined to give herself and her kids a new life; she can’t know that he’s desperate to leave his old one behind.

Another rule—fugitives shouldn’t fall in love, especially with each other. A road isn’t just a road, it’s a trail, and Guidry’s ruthless and relentless hunters are closing in on him. But now Guidry doesn’t want to just survive, he wants to really live, maybe for the first time.

Everyone’s expendable, or they should be, but now Guidry just can’t throw away the woman he’s come to love.

And it might get them both killed.]]> 320 Lou Berney 0062663879 Carol 0 to-read 3.79 2018 November Road
author: Lou Berney
name: Carol
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/04
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]]> Capote 99170 636 Gerald Clarke 0786716614 Carol 0 to-read 4.13 1988 Capote
author: Gerald Clarke
name: Carol
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/29
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]]> Winter Solstice 116054 Winter Solstice Rosamunde Pilcher brings her readers into the lives of five very different people....

Elfrida Phipps, once of London's stage, moved to the English village of Dibton in hopes of making a new life for herself. Gradually she settled into the comfortable familiarity of village life -- shopkeepers knowing her tastes, neighbors calling her by name -- still she finds herself lonely.

Oscar Blundell gave up his life as a musician in order to marry Gloria. They have a beautiful daughter, Francesca, and it is only because of their little girl that Oscar views his sacrificed career as worthwhile.

Carrie returns from Australia at the end of an ill-fated affair with a married man to find her mother and aunt sharing a home and squabbling endlessly. With Christmas approaching, Carrie agrees to look after her aunt's awkward and quiet teenage daughter, Lucy, so that her mother might enjoy a romantic fling in America.

Sam Howard is trying to pull his life back together after his wife has left him for another. He is without home and without roots, all he has is his job. Business takes him to northern Scotland, where he falls in love with the lush, craggy landscape and set his sights on a house.

It is the strange rippling effects of a tragedy that will bring these five characters together in a large, neglected estate house near the Scottish fishing town of Creagan.

It is in this house, on the shortest day of the year, that the lives of five people will come together and be forever changed. Rosamunde Pilcher's long-awaited return to the page will warm the hearts of readers both old and new. Winter Solstice is a novel of love, loyalty and rebirth.]]> 720 Rosamunde Pilcher 0340752483 Carol 0 to-read 4.16 2000 Winter Solstice
author: Rosamunde Pilcher
name: Carol
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/29
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]]> <![CDATA[The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts]]> 101160753
When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots—a group then made up exclusively of men—had the right stuff. It was an era in which women were steered away from jobs in science and deemed unqualified for space flight. Eventually, though, NASA recognized its blunder and opened the application process to a wider array of hopefuls, regardless of race or gender. From a candidate pool of 8,000 six elite women were selected in 1978—Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon.

In The Six , acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows these brilliant and courageous women enduring claustrophobic—and sometimes deeply sexist—media attention, undergoing rigorous survival training, and preparing for years to take multi-million-dollar payloads into orbit. Together, the Six helped build the tools that made the space program run. One of the group, Judy Resnik, sacrificed her life when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded at 46,000 feet. Everyone knows of Sally Ride’s history-making first space ride, but each of the Six would make their mark.]]> 432 Loren Grush 1982172800 Carol 0 to-read 4.32 2023 The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts
author: Loren Grush
name: Carol
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/29
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]]> Lovely One: A Memoir 203164398 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � In her inspiring, intimate memoir, the first Black woman to ever be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States chronicles her extraordinary life story.

With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.

Named “Ketanji Onyika,� meaning “Lovely One,� based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams: from hearing stories of her grandparents and parents breaking barriers in the segregated South, to honing her voice in high school as an oratory champion and student body president, to graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, where she performed in musical theater and improv and participated in pivotal student organizations.

Here, Justice Jackson pulls back the curtain, marrying the public record of her life with what is less known. She reveals what it takes to advance in the legal profession when most people in power don’t look like you, and to reconcile a demanding career with the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.

Through trials and triumphs, Justice Jackson’s journey will resonate with dreamers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and refuse to be turned aside. This moving, open-hearted tale will spread hope for a more just world, for generations to come.]]> 432 Ketanji Brown Jackson 0593729900 Carol 0 to-read 4.45 2024 Lovely One: A Memoir
author: Ketanji Brown Jackson
name: Carol
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries #1)]]> 23451464
Together with his roguish friend, inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewelry theft at a New Year's Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a jazz promoter's daughter, and a shocking art forgery that puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty, but he nonetheless manages to find time for a keen interest in cricket, warm beer, and hot jazz - as well as a curious fondness for a German widow three years his junior.

With a whiff of Agatha Christie and a touch of G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, The Grantchester Mysteries introduces a wonderful new hero into the world of detective fiction.]]> 400 James Runcie 1632862891 Carol 0 to-read 3.63 2012 Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries #1)
author: James Runcie
name: Carol
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/28
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]]> Charlotte’s Web 24178 Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan, is a classic of children's literature that is "just about perfect." This high-quality paperback features vibrant illustrations colorized by Rosemary Wells!

Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte's Web, high up in Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur's life when he was born the runt of his litter.

E. B. White's Newbery Honor Book is a tender novel of friendship, love, life, and death that will continue to be enjoyed by generations to come. This edition contains newly color illustrations by Garth Williams, the acclaimed illustrator of E. B. White's Stuart Little and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, among many other books.]]> 184 E.B. White 0064410935 Carol 0 to-read 4.20 1952 Charlotte’s Web
author: E.B. White
name: Carol
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1952
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/26
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]]> The Air Raid Book Club 63017306
In Germany, Hitler is on the rise, and Jewish families are making the heart-wrenching decision to send their children away from the growing turmoil. After a nudge from her dear friend Charles, Gertie decides to take in one of these refugees, a headstrong teenage girl named Hedy. Willful and fearless, Hedy reminds Gertie of herself at the same age, and shows her that she can’t give up just yet. With the terrible threat of war on the horizon, the world needs people like Gertie Bingham and her bookshop.

When the Blitz begins and bombs whistle overhead, Gertie and Hedy come up with the idea to start an air raid book club. Together with neighbors and bookstore customers, they hold lively discussions of everything fromĚý Winnie the Pooh ĚýtoĚý Wuthering Heights.Ěý After all, a good book can do wonders to bolster people’s spirits, even in the most trying times. But even the best book can only provide a temporary escape, and as the tragic reality of the war hits home, the book club faces unimaginable losses. They will need all the strength of their stories and the bonds they’ve formed to see them through to brighter days.]]> 336 Annie Lyons 0063296195 Carol 0 to-read 4.01 2023 The Air Raid Book Club
author: Annie Lyons
name: Carol
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/26
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]]> <![CDATA[An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s]]> 196786045 An Unfinished Love A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.

Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.

Over the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, a growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued over the achievements and failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.

The Goodwins� last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.

Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.]]> 466 Doris Kearns Goodwin 1982108681 Carol 0 to-read 4.79 2024 An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s
author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
name: Carol
average rating: 4.79
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/24
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]]> The Ghost and Mrs. Muir 22015627 The basis for Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s cinematic romance starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison.
Ěý
Burdened by debt after her husband's death, Lucy Muir insists on moving into the very cheap Gull Cottage in the quaint seaside village of Whitecliff, despite multiple warnings that the house is haunted. Upon discovering the rumors to be true, the young widow ends up forming a special companionship with the ghost of handsome former sea captain Daniel Gregg. Through the struggles of supporting her children, seeking out romance from the wrong places, and working to publish the captain's story as a book, Blood and Swash, Lucy finds in her secret relationship with Captain Gregg a comfort and blossoming love she never could have predicted.
Ěý
Originally published in 1945, made into a movie in 1947, and later adapted into a television sitcom in 1968, this romantic tale explores how love can develop without boundaries, both in this life and beyond.Ěý

With a new foreword by Adriana Trigiani.

Vintage Movie Classics spotlights classic films that have stood the test of time, now rediscovered through the publication of the novels on which they were based.Ěý]]> 194 R.A. Dick 0804173494 Carol 0 to-read 4.42 1945 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
author: R.A. Dick
name: Carol
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1945
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/23
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]]> October in the Earth 122758699 310 Olivia Hawker 1662511108 Carol 0 to-read 4.20 2023 October in the Earth
author: Olivia Hawker
name: Carol
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/23
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]]> <![CDATA[Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony]]> 36315924 To Pocahontas and her people, the 'TIDEWATER' is the rightful home of the Powhatan tribe. To England, it is Virginia Territory, fertile with promise, rich with silver and gold. As Jamestown struggles to take root, John Smith knows that the only hope for survival lies with the Powhatan people. He knows, too, that they would rather see the English starve than yield their homeland to invaders. In the midst of this conflict, Pocahontas, the daughter of the great chief, forges an unlikely friendship with Smith. Their bond preserves a wary peace—but control can rest only in one nation’s hands. When that peace is broken, Pocahontas must choose between power and servitude—between self and sacrifice—for the sake of her people and her land.

RUNNING TIME � 17hrs. and 55mins.

©2015 Libbie Hawker (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.]]> 539 Libbie Hawker 1477879927 Carol 0 to-read 4.30 2015 Tidewater: A Novel of Pocahontas and the Jamestown Colony
author: Libbie Hawker
name: Carol
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/23
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival]]> 18085481 In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeleton in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing.

Six years after Lewis and Clark began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition.

Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast—one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn—nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.

]]> 366 Peter Stark 0062218298 Carol 0 to-read 4.07 2014 Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival
author: Peter Stark
name: Carol
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/18
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]]> <![CDATA[And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer]]> 31373633 A little book with a big heart!

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here comes an exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man’s struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family’s efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.

With all the same charm of his bestselling full-length novels, here Fredrik Backman once again reveals his unrivaled understanding of human nature and deep compassion for people in difficult circumstances. This is a tiny gem with a message you’ll treasure for a lifetime.]]> 97 Fredrik Backman 1501160575 Carol 0 to-read 4.34 2015 And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Carol
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Oil and Marble 25898723
Michelangelo is a virtual unknown when he returns to Florence and wins the commission to carve what will become one of the most famous sculptures of all time: David. Even though his impoverished family shuns him for being an artist, he is desperate to support them. Living at the foot of his misshapen block of marble, Michelangelo struggles until the stone finally begins to speak. Working against an impossible deadline, he begins his feverish carving.

Meanwhile, Leonardo’s life is falling apart: he loses the hoped-for David commission; he can’t seem to finish any project; he is obsessed with his ungainly flying machine; he almost dies in war; his engineering designs disastrously fail; and he is haunted by a woman he has seen in the market—a merchant’s wife, whom he is finally commissioned to paint. Her name is Lisa, and she becomes his muse.

Leonardo despises Michelangelo for his youth and lack of sophistication. Michelangelo both loathes and worships Leonardo’s genius.

Oil and Marble is the story of their nearly forgotten rivalry. Storey brings early 16th-century Florence alive, and has entered with extraordinary empathy into the minds and souls of two Renaissance masters. The book is an art history thriller.
]]> 362 Stephanie Storey 1628726393 Carol 0 to-read 3.95 2016 Oil and Marble
author: Stephanie Storey
name: Carol
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Vera Wong, #1)]]> 67353882
Put the kettle on, there’s a mystery brewing�
Tea-shop owner. Matchmaker. Detective?

Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy â€detectiveâ€� work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).

But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could � because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands � Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.

Nobody spills the tea like this amateur sleuth.

Knives Out meets Kim’s Convenience for anyone who loves solving mysteries by Richard Osman and Janice Hallett, and watching Death in Paradise and Midsomer Murders.]]> 338 Jesse Q. Sutanto 0008603960 Carol 0 to-read 3.71 2023 Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers (Vera Wong, #1)
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Carol
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/17
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]]> Katharine, the Wright Sister 202204706
ĚýIt all started with two boys and a bicycle shop. Wilbur and Orville Wright, both unsuited to college and disinclined to leave home, jumped on the popular new fad of bicycle riding and opened a shop in Dayton, Ohio. Repairing and selling soon led to tinkering and building as the brothers offered improved models to their eager customers. Amid their success, a new dream began to take shape. Engineers across the world were puzzling over how to build a powered flying machine—and Wilbur and Orville wanted in on the challenge. But their younger sister, Katharine, knew they couldn't do it without her. The three siblings made a the three of them would solve the problem of human flight.

ĚýAs her brothers obsessed over blueprints and risked life and limb testing new models on the sand beaches of North Carolina, Katharine became the mastermind behind the scenes of their inventions. She sourced materials, managed communications, and kept Wilbur and Orville focused on their goal—even when it seemed hopeless. And in 1903, the Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight of humankind.

What followed was the kind of fame and fortune the Wrights had never imagined. The siblings traveled the world to demonstrate their invention, trained other pilots, and built new machines that could fly higher and farther. But at the height of their success, tragedy wrenched the Wright family apart� and forced Katharine to make an impossible choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

ĚýFrom internationally bestselling author Tracey Enerson Wood, Katharine, the Wright Sister is an unforgettable novel that shines a spotlight on one of the most important and overlooked women in history, and the sacrifices she made so that others might fly.]]> 448 Tracey Enerson Wood 1728257875 Carol 0 to-read 3.78 2024 Katharine, the Wright Sister
author: Tracey Enerson Wood
name: Carol
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/16
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]]> I Always Loved You 18114101 A novel of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas’s great romance from the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter

The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary’s fierce determination wavers. Her father is begging her to return to Philadelphia to find a husband before it is too late, her sister Lydia is falling mysteriously ill, and worse, Mary is beginning to doubt herself. Then one evening a friend introduces her to Edgar Degas and her life changes forever. Years later she will learn that he had begged for the introduction, but in that moment their meeting seems a miracle. So begins the defining period of her life and the most tempestuous of relationships.

In I Always Loved You, Robin Oliveira brilliantly re-creates the irresistible world of Belle Époque Paris, writing with grace and uncommon insight into the passion and foibles of the human heart.]]> 343 Robin Oliveira 0670785792 Carol 0 to-read 3.62 2014 I Always Loved You
author: Robin Oliveira
name: Carol
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/14
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]]> A Wild and Heavenly Place 150246127
“A story of love, despair, jealousy, revenge, and hope…Beautiful.”—Elizabeth George, New York Times bestselling author

How far would you go? How much would you risk?

Hailey MacIntyre seems conjured from the depths of Samuel Fiddes’s loneliness. Caring for his young sister in the tenements of Glasgow, Scotland, Samuel has known only hunger, while Hailey has never known want. Yet, when Samuel saves Hailey’s brother from a runaway carriage, their connection is undeniable.

Through secret meetings and stolen moments, their improbable love grows. But then the City of Glasgow Bank fails, and Hailey’s bankrupt father impulsively moves their family across the globe to Seattle, a city rumored to have coal in its hills and easy money for anyone willing to work for it.

Samuel is haunted by Hailey’s parting Remember, Washington Territory. Armed only with his wits, he determines to follow her, leaving behind everything he has ever known in search of Hailey and the chance of a better life for his sister. But the fledgling town barely cut out of the wilderness holds its own secrets and will test them all in ways unimaginable.

Poignant and lyrical, A Wild and Heavenly Place is an ode to the Pacific Northwest, to those courageous enough to chase the American Dream, and to a love so powerful it endures beyond distance, beyond hope.]]> 416 Robin Oliveira 0593543858 Carol 0 to-read 3.87 2024 A Wild and Heavenly Place
author: Robin Oliveira
name: Carol
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/14
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]]> Born to Run 33825885 Born to Run

In 2009, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show. The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s how this extraordinary autobiography began.

Over the past seven years, Bruce Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life, bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his songs.

He describes growing up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey, amid the poetry, danger, and darkness that fueled his imagination, leading up to the moment he refers to as “The Big Bang�: seeing Elvis Presley’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. He vividly recounts his relentless drive to become a musician, his early days as a bar band king in Asbury Park, and the rise of the E Street Band. With disarming candor, he also tells for the first time the story of the personal struggles that inspired his best work, and shows us why the song “Born to Run� reveals more than we previously realized.

Born to Run will be revelatory for anyone who has ever enjoyed Bruce Springsteen, but this book is much more than a legendary rock star’s memoir. This is a book for workers and dreamers, parents and children, lovers and loners, artists, freaks, or anyone who has ever wanted to be baptized in the holy river of rock and roll.

Rarely has a performer told his own story with such force and sweep. Like many of his songs (“Thunder Road,� “Badlands,� “Darkness on the Edge of Town,� “The River,� “Born in the U.S.A.,� “The Rising,� and “The Ghost of Tom Joad,� to name just a few), Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography is written with the lyricism of a singular songwriter and the wisdom of a man who has thought deeply about his experiences.]]> Bruce Springsteen Carol 0 to-read 4.30 2016 Born to Run
author: Bruce Springsteen
name: Carol
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/10
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]]> Joe Nuthin's Guide to Life 115933418 Joe loves predictability. But his life is a surprising adventure.

Joe-Nathan likes the two parts of his name separate, just like his dinner and dessert. Mean Charlie at work sometimes calls him Joe-Nuthin. But Joe is far from nothing. Joe is a good friend, he’s good at his job, good at making things and good at following the rules, and he’s learning how to do lots of things by himself.Ěý
Joe’s mother knows there are a million things in life he isn’t prepared for. While she helps guide him every day, she’s also writing notebooks full of advice about the things she hasn’t told Joe yet, things he might forget and answers to questions he hasn’t yet asked.Ěý

Following her wisdom � applying it in his own unique way � this next part of Joe’s life is more of a surprise than he expects. Because he’s about to learn that remarkable things can happen when you leave your comfort zone, and that you can do even the hardest things with a little help from your friends.]]> 429 Helen Fisher 1471188701 Carol 0 to-read 4.52 Joe Nuthin's Guide to Life
author: Helen Fisher
name: Carol
average rating: 4.52
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/08
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]]> Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
“[An] enormously entertaining and lovable book.� —Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.

“A wholly original novel. . . . Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.� —The Associated Press]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 Carol 0 to-read 3.86 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Carol
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/23
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]]> <![CDATA[My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me]]> 155685403
Caleb Carr has had special relationships with cats since he was a young boy in a turbulent household, famously peopled by the founding members of the Beat Generation, where his steadiest companions were the adopted cats that lived with him both in the city and the country. As an adult, he has had many close feline companions, with relationships that have outlasted most of his human ones. But only after building a three-story home in rural, upstate New York did he enter into the most extraordinary of all of his cat Masha, a Siberian Forest cat who had been abandoned as a kitten, and was languishing in a shelter when Caleb met her. She had hissed and fought off all previous carers and potential adopters, but somehow, she chose Caleb as her savior.
Ěý
For the seventeen years that followed, Caleb and Masha were inseparable. Masha ruled the house and the extensive, dangerous surrounding fields and forests. When she was hurt, only Caleb could help her. When he suffered long-standing physical ailments, Masha knew what to do. Caleb’s life-long study of the literature of cat behavior, and his years of experience with previous cats, helped him decode much of Masha’s inner life. But their bond went far beyond academic studies and experience. The story of Caleb and Masha is an inspiring and life-affirming relationship for readers of all backgrounds and interests—a love story like no other.
Ěý]]> 344 Caleb Carr 0316503606 Carol 0 to-read 4.11 2024 My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me
author: Caleb Carr
name: Carol
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> Courting Mr. Lincoln 40591951 From the prizewinning author of Mr. Timothy and The Pale Blue Eye comes Courting Mr. Lincoln, the page-turning and surprising story of a young Abraham Lincoln and the two people who loved him best: a sparky, marriageable Mary Todd and Lincoln’s best friend, Joshua Speed.

When Mary Todd meets Abraham Lincoln in Springfield in the winter of 1840, he is on no one's shortlist to be president. Rough and reticent, he’s a country lawyer lacking money and manners, living above a dry goods shop, but with a gift for oratory. Mary, a quick, self-possessed debutante with a tireless interest in debates and elections, at first finds him an enigma. “I can only hope,� she tells his roommate, the handsome, charming Joshua Speed, “that his waters being so very still, they also run deep.�

It's not long, though, before she sees the Lincoln that Speed knows: a man who, despite his awkwardness, is amiable and profound, with a gentle wit to match his genius and a respect for her keen political mind. But as her relationship with Lincoln deepens, she must confront his inseparable friendship with Speed, who has taught his roommate how to dance, dress, and navigate the polite society of Springfield.

Told in the alternating voices of Mary Todd and Joshua Speed, and rich with historical detail, Courting Mr. Lincoln creates a sympathetic and complex portrait of Mary unlike any that has come before; a moving portrayal of the deep and very real connection between the two men; and most of all, an evocation of the unformed man who would grow into one of the nation’s most beloved presidents.]]> 381 Louis Bayard 1616208473 Carol 0 to-read 3.67 2019 Courting Mr. Lincoln
author: Louis Bayard
name: Carol
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/19
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]]> The Last Twelve Miles 197036048
1926. Washington, D.C.

The Coast Guard is losing the Prohibition Rum War, but they have a new, secret weapon to crack smuggler codes, intercept traffic, and destroy the rum trade one skiff at a time. That secret weapon is a 5'2" mastermind in heels, who also happens to be a wife and mother: Mrs. Elizebeth Smith Friedman, one half of the husband-and-wife pair who invented cryptanalysis.

Bahamas

Cleo Lythogoe, The Bahama Queen, announces her retirement while regaling the thugs at the bar with tales of murder and mayhem on the high seas. Marie Waite, listening in, knows an opportunity when she hears it, and she wants the crown for herself so badly she can taste it. So begins Marie's plan to rise as rumrunner royalty long enough to get her family in the black. But the more sophisticated her operation grows, the more she appears on the radar of the feds.

Meanwhile, Elizebeth is the only codebreaker battling scores of smugglers. Despite the strain of solving thousands of intercepted messages, traveling the country, and testifying in court, Elizabeth’s work becomes personal—especially when she discovers the identity of her premier adversary is the notorious Marie Waite.

From the glamorous world of D.C. Intelligence to the sultry shores of the Straits of Florida, The Last Twelve Miles is based on the true story of two women masterminds trying to outwit each other in a dangerous and fascinating high stakes game.]]> 368 Erika Robuck 1728299837 Carol 0 to-read 3.71 2024 The Last Twelve Miles
author: Erika Robuck
name: Carol
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Music of Bees 55198935 Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, following three lonely strangers in a rural Oregon town, each working through grief and life's curveballs, who are brought together by happenstance on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing--and maybe even a second chance--just when they least expect it.

Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days.

In the grip of a panic attack, she nearly collides with Jake--a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County--while carrying 120,000 honeybees in the back of her pickup truck. Charmed by Jake's sincere interest in her bees and seeking to rescue him from his toxic home life, Alice surprises herself by inviting Jake to her farm.

And then there's Harry, a twenty-four-year-old with debilitating social anxiety who is desperate for work. When he applies to Alice's ad for part-time farm help, he's shocked to find himself hired. As an unexpected friendship blossoms among Alice, Jake, and Harry, a nefarious pesticide company moves to town, threatening the local honeybee population and illuminating deep-seated corruption in the community. The unlikely trio must unite for the sake of the bees--and in the process, they just might forge a new future for themselves.

Beautifully moving, warm, and uplifting, The Music of Bees is about the power of friendship, compassion in the face of loss, and finding the courage to start over (at any age) when things don't turn out the way you expect.]]> 322 Eileen Garvin 0593183924 Carol 0 to-read 4.01 2021 The Music of Bees
author: Eileen Garvin
name: Carol
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War]]> 195608683 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston: Fort Sumter.
Ěý
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.�
Ěý
At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous Secretary of State, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.
Ěý
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.]]> 565 Erik Larson 0385348746 Carol 0 to-read 4.13 2024 The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
author: Erik Larson
name: Carol
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/12
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review:

]]> A Moveable Feast 4631 192 Ernest Hemingway Carol 0 to-read 4.04 1964 A Moveable Feast
author: Ernest Hemingway
name: Carol
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1964
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work]]> 13593558
Hidden America intends to fix that. Like John McPhee and Susan Orlean, Laskas dives deep into her subjects and emerges with character-driven narratives that are gripping, funny, and revelatory. In Hidden America, the stories are about the people who make our lives run every day—and yet we barely think of them.

Laskas spent weeks in an Ohio coal mine and on an Alaskan oil rig; in a Maine migrant labor camp, a Texas beef ranch, the air traffic control tower at New York’s LaGuardia Airport,
a California landfill, an Arizona gun shop, the cab of a long-haul truck in Iowa, and the stadium of the Cincinnati Ben-Gals cheerleaders. Cheerleaders? Yes. They, too, are hidden America, and you will be amazed by what Laskas tells you about them: hidden no longer.
]]> 336 Jeanne Marie Laskas 0399159002 Carol 0 to-read 3.81 2012 Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work
author: Jeanne Marie Laskas
name: Carol
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Last Witch in Edinburgh 202470530 This lush, atmospheric novel blends witchcraft, queer love, a vibrant Edinburgh setting, and Scottish folklore for a propulsive and emotional story exploring what it means to resist the patriarchy and find your voice.

In an alternate Edinburgh of 1824, every woman lives in fear that she will be the next one hanged for witchcraft. All it takes is invoking the anger, or the desire, of the wrong person. Nellie Duncan, beautiful and unwed, keeps to herself until she encounters the Rae Women’s Apothecary. There, fiery Jean Rae and the other women provide cures and teach others that they too can aid the winter deity, the Cailleach, embracing her characteristic independence, agency, and craft, in turn becoming witches themselves.

Nellie finds a place and a purpose at the shop, and a blossoming romance with Jean, as she learns about nature-based craft and a witch’s ability to return to life after death. But the Cailleach has an ancient enemy intent on stripping the power of the deity and all her witches, leaving a wake of patriarchal violence and destruction.

When heart-breaking disaster strikes, Nellie flees and spends the next two centuries hiding from the world—until love gives her the courage and the motivation to come back. Nellie’s past is waiting for her there, and hanging witches is no longer the only means of oppression. But this time, Nellie refuses to run—either from her foes, or from her resolve to awaken others to the unimaginable power that can come with fighting the patriarchy in its many forms—and finding one’s own magical inner-strength.]]> 370 Marielle Thompson 1496742648 Carol 0 to-read 3.51 2024 The Last Witch in Edinburgh
author: Marielle Thompson
name: Carol
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shadow of War: A Novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis]]> 195790805 368 Jeff Shaara 1250279968 Carol 0 to-read 4.20 2024 The Shadow of War: A Novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis
author: Jeff Shaara
name: Carol
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Miss Morgan's Book Brigade 199798905 The New York Times and internationally bestselling author of the “captivating, richly drawn� (Woman’s World) The Paris Library returns with a brilliant new novel based on the true story of Jessie Carson—the American librarian who changed the literary landscape of France.

1918: As the Great War rages, Jessie Carson takes a leave of absence from the New York Public Library to work for the American Committee for Devastated France. Founded by millionaire Anne Morgan, this group of international women help rebuild devastated French communities just miles from the front. Upon arrival, Jessie strives to establish something that the French have never seen—children’s libraries. She turns ambulances into bookmobiles and trains the first French female librarians. Then she disappears.

1987: When NYPL librarian and aspiring writer Wendy Peterson stumbles across a passing reference to Jessie Carson in the archives, she becomes consumed with learning her fate. In her obsessive research, she discovers that she and the elusive librarian have more in common than their work at New York’s famed library, but she has no idea their paths will converge in surprising ways across time.]]> 318 Janet Skeslien Charles 166800898X Carol 0 to-read 3.91 2024 Miss Morgan's Book Brigade
author: Janet Skeslien Charles
name: Carol
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[An Irish Country Doctor (Irish Country #1)]]> 173233 An Irish Country Doctor from bestselling author Patick Taylor is a charming and engrossing tale that will captivate readers from the very first page--and leave them yearning to visit the Irish countryside of days gone by.



Barry Laverty, M.B., can barely find the Northern Ireland village of Ballybucklebo on a map when he first sets out to seek gainful employment there. But Barry jumps at the chance to secure a position as an assistant in a small rural practice.

At least until he meets Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.

The older physician has his own way of doing things. At first, Barry can't decide if the pugnacious O'Reilly is the biggest charlatan he has ever met or the best teacher he could ever hope for. Through O'Reilly, Barry soon gets to know all of the village's colourful and endearing residents and a host of other eccentric characters who make every day an education for the inexperienced young doctor.

Ballybucklebo is a long way from Belfast, and Barry is quick to discover that he still has a lot to learn about country life. But with pluck and compassion, and only the slightest touch of blarney, he will find out more about life--and love--than he ever imagined back in medical school.]]> 352 Patrick Taylor 0765316234 Carol 0 to-read 3.88 2004 An Irish Country Doctor (Irish Country #1)
author: Patrick Taylor
name: Carol
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Black Diamond (Bruno, Chief of Police, #3)]]> 8544591 320 Martin Walker 1849161216 Carol 0 to-read 3.95 2010 Black Diamond (Bruno, Chief of Police, #3)
author: Martin Walker
name: Carol
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Dear Hamilton 41014257 New York Times bestselling authors of America’s First Daughter comes the epic story of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton—a revolutionary woman who, like her new nation, struggled to define herself in the wake of war, betrayal, and tragedy. Haunting, moving, and beautifully written, Dray and Kamoie used thousands of letters and original sources to tell Eliza’s story as it’s never been told before—not just as the wronged wife at the center of a political sex scandal—but also as a founding mother who shaped an American legacy in her own right.

A general’s daughter�

Coming of age on the perilous frontier of revolutionary New York, Elizabeth Schuyler champions the fight for independence. And when she meets Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s penniless but passionate aide-de-camp, she’s captivated by the young officer’s charisma and brilliance. They fall in love, despite Hamilton’s bastard birth and the uncertainties of war.

A founding father’s wife...

But the union they create—in their marriage and the new nation—is far from perfect. From glittering inaugural balls to bloody street riots, the Hamiltons are at the center of it all—including the political treachery of America’s first sex scandal, which forces Eliza to struggle through heartbreak and betrayal to find forgiveness.

The last surviving light of the Revolution�

When a duel destroys Eliza’s hard-won peace, the grieving widow fights her husband’s enemies to preserve Alexander’s legacy. But long-buried secrets threaten everything Eliza believes about her marriage and her own legacy. Questioning her tireless devotion to the man and country that have broken her heart, she’s left with one last battle—to understand the flawed man she married and the imperfect union he could never have created without her…]]> 652 Stephanie Dray Carol 0 to-read 4.32 2018 My Dear Hamilton
author: Stephanie Dray
name: Carol
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/21
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]]> North Woods 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire.ĚýA crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 Carol 0 to-read 4.11 2023 North Woods
author: Daniel Mason
name: Carol
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club]]> 196845474 Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies� motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.]]> 432 Helen Simonson 1984801317 Carol 0 to-read 3.84 2024 The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club
author: Helen Simonson
name: Carol
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Second Life of Mirielle West]]> 57641054 In an intoxicating story of resilience, repulsion, and the Roaring 20’s, the glamorous world of a silent film star’s wife abruptly crumbles when she’s forcibly quarantined at America’s only leper colony in Carville, Louisiana�

Based on the little-known true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West by RUSA Award-winning author Amanda Skenandore brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century.

* A 2023 Silicon Valley Reads Selection *
* Reader's Digest Editor's Choice *

Based on the true story of America’s only leper colony, The Second Life of Mirielle West brings vividly to life the Louisiana institution known as Carville, where thousands of people were stripped of their civil rights, branded as lepers, and forcibly quarantined throughout the entire 20th century.

For Mirielle West, a 1920’s socialite married to a silent film star, the isolation and powerlessness of the Louisiana Leper Home is an unimaginable fall from her intoxicatingly chic life of bootlegged champagne and the star-studded parties of Hollywood’s Golden Age. When a doctor notices a pale patch of skin on her hand, she’s immediately branded a leper and carted hundreds of miles from home to Carville, taking a new name to spare her family and famous husband the shame that accompanies the disease.

At first she hopes her exile will be brief, but those sent to Carville are more prisoners than patients and their disease has no cure. Instead she must find community and purpose within its walls, struggling to redefine her self-worth while fighting an unchosen fate.

As a registered nurse, Amanda Skenandore’s medical background adds layers of detail and authenticity to the experiences of patients and medical professionals at Carville � the isolation, stigma, experimental treatments, and disparate community. A tale of repulsion, resilience, and the Roaring �20s, The Second Life of Mirielle West is also the story of a health crisis in America’s past, made all the more poignant by the author’s experiences during another, all-too-recent crisis.]]> 394 Amanda Skenandore 1496726529 Carol 0 to-read 4.39 2021 The Second Life of Mirielle West
author: Amanda Skenandore
name: Carol
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Yellow House 6521868 337 Patricia Falvey 1599952017 Carol 0 to-read 3.81 2010 The Yellow House
author: Patricia Falvey
name: Carol
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> John Adams 2203
In this powerful, epic biography, David McCullough unfolds the adventurous life-journey of John Adams, the brilliant, fiercely independent, often irascible, always honest Yankee patriot -- "the colossus of independence," as Thomas Jefferson called him -- who spared nothing in his zeal for the American Revolution; who rose to become the second President of the United States and saved the country from blundering into an unnecessary war; who was learned beyond all but a few and regarded by some as "out of his senses"; and whose marriage to the wise and valiant Abigail Adams is one of the moving love stories in American history.

Like his masterly, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Truman, David McCullough's John Adams has the sweep and vitality of a great novel. It is both a riveting portrait of an abundantly human man and a vivid evocation of his time, much of it drawn from an outstanding collection of Adams family letters and diaries. In particular, the more than one thousand surviving letters between John and Abigail Adams, nearly half of which have never been published, provide extraordinary access to their private lives and make it possible to know John Adams as no other major American of his founding era.

As he has with stunning effect in his previous books, McCullough tells the story from within -- from the point of view of the amazing eighteenth century and of those who, caught up in events, had no sure way of knowing how things would turn out. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, the British spy Edward Bancroft, Madame Lafayette and Jefferson's Paris "interest" Maria Cosway, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the scandalmonger James Callender, Sally Hemings, John Marshall, Talleyrand, and Aaron Burr all figure in this panoramic chronicle, as does, importantly, John Quincy Adams, the adored son whom Adams would live to see become President.

Crucial to the story, as it was to history, is the relationship between Adams and Jefferson, born opposites -- one a Massachusetts farmer's son, the other a Virginia aristocrat and slaveholder, one short and stout, the other tall and spare. Adams embraced conflict; Jefferson avoided it. Adams had great humor; Jefferson, very little. But they were alike in their devotion to their country.

At first they were ardent co-revolutionaries, then fellow diplomats and close friends. With the advent of the two political parties, they became archrivals, even enemies, in the intense struggle for the presidency in 1800, perhaps the most vicious election in history. Then, amazingly, they became friends again, and ultimately, incredibly, they died on the same day -- their day of days -- July 4, in the year 1826.

Much about John Adams's life will come as a surprise to many readers. His courageous voyage on the frigate Boston in the winter of 1778 and his later trek over the Pyrenees are exploits that few would have dared and that few readers will ever forget.

It is a life encompassing a huge arc -- Adams lived longer than any president. The story ranges from the Boston Massacre to Philadelphia in 1776 to the Versailles of Louis XVI, from Spain to Amsterdam, from the Court of St. James's, where Adams was the first American to stand before King George III as a representative of the new nation, to the raw, half-finished Capital by the Potomac, where Adams was the first President to occupy the White House.

This is history on a grand scale -- a book about politics and war and social issues, but also about human nature, love, religious faith, virtue, ambition, friendship and betrayal, and the far-reaching consequences of noble ideas. Above all, John Adams is an enthralling, often surprising story of one of the most important and fascinating Americans who ever lived.]]> 751 David McCullough 0743223136 Carol 0 to-read 4.07 2001 John Adams
author: David McCullough
name: Carol
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari Carol 0 to-read 4.33 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Carol
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Girl Called Samson 58769584 From New York Times bestselling author Amy Harmon comes the saga of a young woman who dares to chart her own destiny in life and love during the American Revolutionary War.

In 1760, Deborah Samson is born to Puritan parents in Plympton, Massachusetts. When her father abandons the family and her mother is unable to support them, Deborah is bound out as an indentured servant. From that moment on, she yearns for a life of liberation and adventure.

Twenty years later, as the American colonies begin to buckle in their battle for independence, Deborah, impassioned by the cause, disguises herself as a soldier and enlists in the Continental Army. Her impressive height and lanky build make her transformation a convincing one, and it isn’t long before she finds herself confronting the horrors of war head-on.

But as Deborah fights for her country’s freedom, she must contend with the secret of who she is—and, ultimately, a surprising love she can’t deny.]]> 405 Amy Harmon 1542039738 Carol 0 to-read 4.48 2023 A Girl Called Samson
author: Amy Harmon
name: Carol
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>