Tokoro's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 01 May 2025 15:10:37 -0700 60 Tokoro's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Quid Pro Quo 56655636 "This is business. It's a fuck or get-fucked world out there."

Millionaire investor, Nicholas Beaucroft, is a man used to getting what he wants. But all he wants is the one thing he could never have... the love of his older stepsister, Justine. Once he idolized her; now his obsession has become warped and depraved, and there is nothing he won't do, and no game he won't play, if it means satisfying his dark passions.

Jay Varens was twenty-three when she fled from her screwed up family and their dark web of secrets, lies, and mind games. After eight years, she began to believe she was finally free from their twisted machinations--but Nicholas isn't about to let her go so easily, and when he plunges her back into her own personal gilded hell, Jay's about to learn that all things have a price.

Including her own soul.

Warning: dub-con/non-con, abuse, neglect]]> 454 Nenia Campbell Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.77 2021 Quid Pro Quo
author: Nenia Campbell
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Prisoner of the Devil 2034898 416 Michael Hardwick 1558174478 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.62 1980 Prisoner of the Devil
author: Michael Hardwick
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Child (Johnny Merrimon, #1)]]> 5556466
Determined to find his sister, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown. It is a desperate, terrifying search, but Johnny is not as alone as he might think. Detective Clyde Hunt has never stopped looking for Alyssa either, and he has a soft spot for Johnny. He watches over the boy and tries to keep him safe, but when Johnny uncovers a dangerous lead and vows to follow it, Hunt has no choice but to intervene.

Then a second child goes missing...

Undeterred by Hunt's threats or his mother's pleas, Johnny enlists the help of his last friend, and together they plunge into the wild, to a forgotten place with a history of violence that goes back more than a hundred years. There, they meet a giant of a man, an escaped convict on his own tragic quest. What they learn from him will shatter every notion Johnny had about the fate of his sister; it will lead them to another far place, to a truth that will test both boys to the limit.

Traveling the wilderness between innocence and hard wisdom, between hopelessness and faith, The Last Child leaves all categories behind and establishes John Hart as a writer of unique power.]]> 373 John Hart 0312359322 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 4.11 2009 The Last Child (Johnny Merrimon, #1)
author: John Hart
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Fairy Tale 116994716 Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes deep into the well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for their world or ours.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is impossible to believe, and a responsibility far too massive for a boy to shoulder.

Because within the shed is a portal to another world—one whose denizens are in peril and whose monstrous leaders may destroy their own world, and ours. In this parallel universe, where two moons race across the sky, and the grand towers of a sprawling palace pierce the clouds, there are exiled princesses and princes who suffer horrific punishments; there are dungeons; there are games in which men and women must fight each other to the death for the amusement of the “Fair One.� And there is a magic sundial that can turn back time.

A story as old as myth, and as startling and iconic as the rest of King’s work, Fairy Tale is about an ordinary guy forced into the hero’s role by circumstance, and it is both spectacularly suspenseful and satisfying.]]> 579 Stephen King 1399705458 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.95 2022 Fairy Tale
author: Stephen King
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Terminal Value 16073810 Alternate Cover Edition for B007948PI4.

“Be careful what you wish for.� That’s a warning Dylan Johnson should have listened to. When his mobile tech company is bought out by Mantric Technology, a red-hot firm about to go public, it seems like a dream come true for the young entrepreneur and his partners. But the closer they get to payout, the more uncertain Dylan becomes.

Something doesn’t feel right. When his colleague is found dead on what should have been their night of triumph, Dylan is determined to find out what happened. But asking questions plunges him into a digital web of deceit and betrayal that will shake everything he thought he knew…]]> 234 Thomas Waite Tokoro 0 3.39 2012 Terminal Value
author: Thomas Waite
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: adult-learner, advisory-journalism-ethics, free-little-street-libraries, group-dynamics, hipstericity, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Obstruction of Justice (Nina Reilly, #3)]]> 85338
Two people have died in Lake Tahoe in shocking accidents.In a nearly empty parking lot, a hit-and-run driver kills probation officer Anna Meade Hallowell.High up on a jagged mountain, wife abuser Ray de Beers gets what he he's struck by lightning.Attorney Nina Reilly, hiking on a rare day off from her one-woman law practice, sees him die.So does her date, Tahoe deputy DA Collier Hallowell.Still shaken from his wife's violent death, Hallowell is hit hard by the accident.It's a bad end to a first date...and the start of a case that will test Nina's ethics and her heart.

Nina is certain de Beers's death is an act of God.But his aging father wants to exhume the body to rule out foul play.De Beers's frantic wife and teenage twins hire Nina to stop the disinterment.What gets unearthed are secrets that raise new questions about Anna Hallowell's death, an indictment against one twin for murder, and a damning piece of evidence that can convict the boy ...unless Nina obstructs justice by hiding it.No good lawyer will take that kind of risk.But a brilliant lawyer, one with a passion for truth, just might ....]]> 512 Perri O'Shaughnessy 0440224721 Tokoro 0 3.94 1997 Obstruction of Justice (Nina Reilly, #3)
author: Perri O'Shaughnessy
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: free-little-street-libraries, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Daughter 38743945 Book 1 of 3: Family Secrets Series
Previously published as The Undertaker's Daughter

A thrilling novel from #1 international bestselling author Sara Blaedel, author of The Forgotten Girls

Already widowed by the age of forty, Ilka Nichols Jensen, a school portrait photographer, leads a modest, regimented, and uneventful life in Copenhagen. Until unexpected news rocks her quiet existence: Her father--who walked out suddenly and inexplicably on the family more than three decades ago--has died. And he's left her something in his will: his funeral home. In Racine, Wisconsin.

Clinging to this last shred of communication from the father she hasn't heard from since childhood, Ilka makes an uncharacteristically rash decision and jumps on a plane to Wisconsin. Desperate for a connection to the parent she never really knew, she plans to visit the funeral home and go through her father's things--hoping for some insight into his new life in America--before preparing the business for a quick sale.

But when she stumbles on an unsolved murder, and a killer who seems to still be very much alive, the undertaker's daughter realizes she might be in over her head. . .

"One of the best I've come across." -- Michael Connelly

"Sara Blaedel is a force to be reckoned with. She's a remarkable crime writer who time and again delivers a solid, engaging story that any reader in the world can enjoy." -- Karin Slaughter

"One can count on emotional engagement, spine-tingling suspense, and taut storytelling from Sara Blaedel." -- Sandra Brown
]]> 342 Sara Blaedel 1455541109 Tokoro 0 3.09 2016 The Daughter
author: Sara Blaedel
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: currently-reading, advisory-journalism-ethics
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Vanishing at Smokestack Hollow: A Missing Family, a Desperate Plan, an Unsolved Mystery]]> 194477891
“There’s dark stuff up there, sir. You know that, right? Cults and such.� That’s what Starlet Jamison told the Sheriff after her son and his family went missing.

On October 8th, 2009, Bobby Jamison, his wife Sherilyn, and their six-year-old daughter Madyson, set off for a drive from their home in Eufaula, Oklahoma, to the nearby Sans Bois Mountains. They didn’t return that day, or the next. A week later, their truck was found abandoned on a mountain road. Inside was their dog, malnourished but alive, the family’s cell phones, wallets, and $32,000 in cash.

The ensuing eight-month search was the largest in Oklahoma history, but it yielded little evidence. Online, bloggers and web sleuths put forth dozens of theories, fueled by the Jamisons� strange, trancelike behavior on a CCTV video. Some claimed the family was abducted by white supremacists or a religious cult. In 2013, there was a tragic break in the case, when deer hunters stumbled upon the skeletal remains of two adults and a child in the Smokestack Hollow area of Panola Mountain. Forensic testing confirmed the Jamisons� identities.

But the mystery was only beginning. Had the Jamisons been planning to abandon their lives and raise Madyson alone in the wilderness—and if so, why? What happened to the briefcase and handgun that Sheryilyn was seen putting into the car? And why were no arrests ever made?

Investigative journalist Jake Anderson draws on police notes, interviews, and exclusive evidence to piece together the Jamisons� last days and weeks, weaving together startling material with his own personal insights. The story is one of dark, paranoid obsessions, but also of real malevolent forces residing in those shadowy mountains—and a compulsively readable account of a true murder mystery whose chilling impact continues to be felt.]]> 336 Jake Anderson 0806542470 Tokoro 4 Review to come 3.27 The Vanishing at Smokestack Hollow: A Missing Family, a Desperate Plan, an Unsolved Mystery
author: Jake Anderson
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.27
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla, investigations-hunts
review:
Review to come
]]> <![CDATA[Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch]]> 3788860 330 Alanna Nash 0525246673 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 4.00 1988 Golden Girl: The Story of Jessica Savitch
author: Alanna Nash
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Taste of Treason (Harlequin Intrigue, No 62)]]> 1996360
As long as Alison could remember, there had never been trouble at Holbrook's Hideaway. The family resort on Lake Superior was her pride and joy. But the arrival of Stewart Dalton and his mysterious wife changed all that.

Before Alison knew it, she was knee-deep in danger and espionage. She had no choice but to help the couple, even though she didn't really trust them. And her growing attraction to Stewart made it hard to trust herself.

She felt trapped. But one thing was certain. Whatever happened, she had only herself to blame....]]> 251 Laura Pender 0373220626 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.25 1987 Taste of Treason (Harlequin Intrigue, No 62)
author: Laura Pender
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.25
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hope and Glory 887339 A WORLD AT WAR-
A GENERATION IN LOVE-
A GRORIOUS SAGA CONTINUES!

Germany had dreamed a madman's dream. Storm clouds had gathered over the globe. And two pairs of lovers prayed that their private hopes would not be crushed in the clash of nations at war. JOHN HAYMAN-the spoiled young American struggling to live up to the glory of his aristocratic Borodin blood, at last coming of age with the resistance fighters in the frozen forests of the Pripet. NATASHA BRUSILOVAthe famed dancer who was John's innocent bride-to-be, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with him against the Nazi invaders. SVETLANA NEJthe fragile, golden-haired Borodin beauty who had vowed to love a man fated to be her enemy. PAUL VON HASSELL the dashing S.S. Captain. For Svetlana's sake, he would raise his hand against the Fuhrer himself...]]> 386 Leslie Arlen 0515060410 Tokoro 0 4.09 1982 Hope and Glory
author: Leslie Arlen
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: 80s, currently-reading, parting-series
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries]]> 60310691 A lively tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born ѱ’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead.

ѱ’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States' ambition and reach.

But they are changing and fading. Embalming and burial is incredibly toxic, and while cremations have just recently surpassed burials in popularity, they’re not great for the environment either. Over My Dead Body explores everything—history, sustainability, land use, and more—and what it really means to memorialize.

Locales visited in Over My Dead Body
Shawsheen Cemetery � Bedford, Massachusetts
The 1607 Burial Ground � Historic Jamestowne, Virginia
Burial Hill � Plymouth, Massachusetts
Colonial Jewish Burial Ground � Newport, Rhode Island
Monticello’s African American Graveyard � Charlottesville, Virginia
Mount Auburn Cemetery � Cambridge, Massachusetts
Green-Wood Cemetery � Brooklyn, New York
Laurel Grove Cemetery � Savannah, Georgia
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery � Concord, Massachusetts
Central Park � New York, New York
Gettysburg National Cemetery � Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Arlington National Cemetery � Arlington, Virginia
Woodlawn Cemetery � Bronx, New York
Boothill Graveyard � Tombhill, Arizona
Forest Lawn Memorial-Park � Glenwood, California
The Chapel of the Chimes � Oakland, California
Hollywood Forever Cemetery � Los Angeles, California
Nature's Sanctuary � Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]> 272 Greg Melville 1419754858 Tokoro 4 3.97 2022 Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries
author: Greg Melville
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, amber-waves, hoopla
review:

]]> China 36617542 The internationally bestselling author of Paris and New York takes on an exhilarating new world with his trademark epic style in China: The Novel

Edward Rutherfurd has enthralled millions of readers with his grand, sweeping historical sagas that tell the history of a famous place over multiple generations. Now, in China: The Novel, Rutherfurd takes readers into the rich and fascinating milieu of the Middle Kingdom..

The story begins in 1839, at the dawn of the First Opium War, and follows Chinese history through Mao's Cultural Revolution and up to the present day. Rutherfurd chronicles the rising and falling fortunes of members of Chinese, British, and American families, as they negotiate the tides of history. Along the way, in his signature style, Rutherfurd provides a deeply researched portrait of Chinese history and society, its ancient traditions and great upheavals, and China's emergence as a rising global power. As always, we are treated to romance and adventure, heroines and scoundrels, grinding struggle and incredible fortunes.

China: The Novel brings to life the rich terrain of this vast and constantly evolving country. From Shanghai to Nanking to the Great Wall, Rutherfurd chronicles the turbulent rise and fall of empires as the colonial West meets the opulent and complex East in a dramatic struggle between cultures and people.

Extraordinarily researched and majestically told, Edward Rutherfurd paints a thrilling portrait of one of the most singular and remarkable countries in the world.]]> 764 Edward Rutherfurd 0385538936 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.05 2021 China
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World]]> 203767605 A thrilling tick-tock recounting one of the most harrowing hostage situations and daring rescue attempts of our time—from true-life espionage master and New York Times bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat and The Spy and the Traitor Ben Macintyre.

As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff, one that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath.

Policeman Trevor Lock was supposed to have gone to the theater that night. Instead, he found himself overpowered and whisked into the embassy. The terrorists never noticed the gun hidden in his jacket. The drama that ensued would force him to find reserves of courage he didn’t know he had. The gunmen themselves were hardly one-dimensional—all Arabs, some highly educated, who hoped to force Britain to take their side in their independence battle against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Behind the scenes lurked the brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had bankrolled the whole affair as a salvo against Iran.

As police negotiators pressed the gunmen, rival protestors clashed violently outside the embassy, and as MI6 and the CIA scrambled for intelligence, Britain’s special forces strike team, the SAS, laid plans for a dangerous rescue mission. Inside, Lock and his fellow hostages used all the cunning they possessed to outwit and outflank their captors. Finally, on the sixth day, after the terrorists executed the embassy press attaché and dumped his body on the front doorstep, the SAS raid began, sparking a deadly high-stakes climax.

A story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure, The Siege takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades and provide a direct historical link to the tragedy on 9/11. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Macintyre brilliantly reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.]]> 400 Ben Macintyre 0593728092 Tokoro 0 4.36 2024 The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: advisory-journalism-ethics, library, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Trials of Lila Dalton 200174163
Lila Dalton has no memory of how she came to be in this courtroom; no memory of how she got to the courthouse at all, or why she's facing a jury who seems to be waiting for her. The man on trial is accused of mass murder, and she's his lawyer, but she can't remember any details of the case. She can't remember anything� Stranded on an island in the Atlantic Ocean where the most serious crimes are tried, Lila has to prove her client's innocence if she wants to go home. But how can she solve this case when she's not sure she can trust anything around her, including her own memory?

The Trials of Lila Dalton is a twisty, unexpected locked-room mystery that follows one woman's race against time to find a killer, clear her own name, and escape the island that threatens to keep her trapped forever.]]> 368 L.J. Shepherd 1728298423 Tokoro 0 library, currently-reading 2.86 2024 The Trials of Lila Dalton
author: L.J. Shepherd
name: Tokoro
average rating: 2.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: library, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Ways We Hide 60631344 From the New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday comes a sweeping World War II tale of an illusionist whose recruitment by British Intelligence sets her on a perilous, heartrending path

Raised amid the hardships of Michigan's Copper Country, Fenna Vos has learned to focus on her own survival-even now, with the Second World War raging in faraway countries. Though she performs onstage as the assistant to an unruly escape artist, behind the curtain she's the mastermind of their act. After all, her honed ability to control her surroundings and elude entrapments, physical or otherwise, reliably suppresses the traumas of her youth.

For all her planning, however, Fenna fails to predict being called upon by British Intelligence. Tasked with creating escape tools to thwart the Germans, MI9 seeks those with specialized skills for a war nearing its breaking point. Fenna reluctantly joins the unconventional team as an inventor. But when a test of her loyalty draws her deep into the fray, she discovers no mission is more treacherous than escaping one's past.

Inspired by stunning true accounts, The Ways We Hide is a riveting story of love and loss, the wars we fight—on the battlefields and within ourselves—and the courage found in unexpected places.]]> 536 Kristina McMorris 1728249783 Tokoro 0 library, currently-reading 3.98 2022 The Ways We Hide
author: Kristina McMorris
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: library, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[For the Record: Selected Statements 1977-1980]]> 3367445 332 Henry Kissinger 0316496634 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.43 1981 For the Record: Selected Statements 1977-1980
author: Henry Kissinger
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Shōgun, Volume 2 12319459
Shogun, the classic epic novel of feudal Japan that captured the heart of a culture and the imagination of the world, is now available for the first time in serial format. Part Two contains the second half of the complete novel.

After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen--Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is seventeenth-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom. As internal political strife and a clash of cultures lead to seemingly inevitable conflict, Blackthorne's loyalty and strength of character are tested by both passion and loss, and he is torn between two worlds that will each be forever changed.

Powerful and engrossing, capturing both the rich pageantry and stark realities of life in feudal Japan, Shogun is a critically acclaimed powerhouse of a book. Heart-stopping, edge-of-your-seat action melds seamlessly with intricate historical detail and raw human emotion. Endlessly compelling, this sweeping saga captivated the world to become not only one of the best-selling novels of all time but one of the highest-rated television miniseries, as well as inspiring a nationwide surge of interest in the culture of Japan. Shakespearean in both scope and depth, Shogun is, as the New York Times put it, �'not only something you read--you live it.'‘]]> 567 James Clavell Tokoro 0 to-read 4.58 1975 Shōgun, Volume 2
author: James Clavell
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.58
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Shōgun, Volume 1 12319445 533 James Clavell Tokoro 0 to-read 4.52 1975 Shōgun, Volume 1
author: James Clavell
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.52
book published: 1975
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> So Cold the River 7047432
In Bradford's hometown, Eric discovers an extraordinary history -- a glorious domed hotel where movie stars, presidents, athletes, and mobsters once mingled, and hot springs whose miraculous mineral water cured everything from insomnia to malaria. Neglected for years, the resort has been restored to its former grandeur just in time for Eric's stay.

Just hours after his arrival, Eric experiences a frighteningly vivid vision. As the days pass, the frequency and intensity of his hallucinations increase and draw Eric deeper into the town's dark history. He discovers that something besides the hotel has been restored -- a long-forgotten evil that will stop at nothing to regain its lost glory. Brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, So Cold the River is a tale of irresistible suspense with a racing, unstoppable current.]]> 503 Michael Koryta 0316053635 Tokoro 4 3.53 2010 So Cold the River
author: Michael Koryta
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine]]> 53288445 The story of three Victorian women who broke down barriers in the medical field to become the first women doctors, revolutionizing the way women receive health care.

In the early 1800s, women were dying in large numbers from treatable diseases because they avoided receiving medical care. Examinations performed by male doctors were often demeaning and even painful. In addition, women faced stigma from illness--a diagnosis could greatly limit their ability to find husbands, jobs or be received in polite society.

Motivated by personal loss and frustration over inadequate medical care, Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Sophia Jex-Blake fought for a woman's place in the male-dominated medical field. For the first time ever, Women in White Coats tells the complete history of these three pioneering women who, despite countless obstacles, earned medical degrees and paved the way for other women to do the same. Though very different in personality and circumstance, together these women built women-run hospitals and teaching colleges--creating for the first time medical care for women by women.]]> 368 Olivia Campbell 0778389391 Tokoro 4 3.66 2021 Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine
author: Olivia Campbell
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: advisory-journalism-ethics, along-winding-cali-roads
review:
Definitely recommended reading for history and sociology of the Victorian era and the struggle for hard-won progress.
]]> The Secrets She Keeps 33584818 In the bestselling tradition of The Girl on the Train and In a Dark, Dark Wood, from the internationally bestselling author whom Stephen King called “an absolute master� of the psychological thriller, comes a riveting suspense novel about the unlikely friendship between two pregnant women that asks: how far would you go to create the perfect family?

Agatha is pregnant and works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb, counting down the days until her baby is due. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. Meghan has it all: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a happy marriage, a stylish group of friends, and she writes perfectly droll confessional posts on her popular parenting blog—posts that Agatha reads with devotion each night as she waits for her absent boyfriend, the father of her baby, to maybe return her calls.

When Agatha learns that Meghan is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she finally musters up the courage to speak to her, thrilled that they now have the ordeal of childbearing in common. Little does Meghan know that the mundane exchange she has with a grocery store employee during a hurried afternoon shopping trip is about to change the course of her not-so-perfect life forever�

With its brilliant rendering of the secrets some women hold close and a shocking act that cannot be undone, The Secrets She Keeps delivers a dark and twisted page-turner that is absolutely impossible to put down.]]> 352 Michael Robotham 1501170317 Tokoro 4 4.01 2017 The Secrets She Keeps
author: Michael Robotham
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: adult-learner, issues-of-faith, library
review:

]]> The Fallon Blood (Fallon, #1) 871589 381 Robert Jordan 0312859732 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.51 1980 The Fallon Blood (Fallon, #1)
author: Robert Jordan
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Chasing the Boogeyman 55711747 The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Gwendy’s Button Box brings his signature prose to this story of small-town evil that combines the storytelling of Stephen King with the true-crime suspense of Michelle McNamara.

In the summer of 1988, the mutilated bodies of several missing girls begin to turn up in a small Maryland town. The grisly evidence leads police to the terrifying assumption that a serial killer is on the loose in the quiet suburb. But soon a rumor begins to spread that the evil stalking local teens is not entirely human. Law enforcement, as well as members of the FBI are certain that the killer is a living, breathing madman—and he’s playing games with them. For a once peaceful community trapped in the depths of paranoia and suspicion, it feels like a nightmare that will never end.

Recent college graduate Richard Chizmar returns to his hometown just as a curfew is enacted and a neighborhood watch is formed. In the midst of preparing for his wedding and embarking on a writing career, he soon finds himself thrust into the real-life horror story. Inspired by the terrifying events, Richard writes a personal account of the serial killer’s reign of terror, unaware that these events will continue to haunt him for years to come.

A clever, terrifying, and heartrending work of metafiction, Chasing the Boogeyman is the ultimate marriage between horror fiction and true crime. Chizmar’s writing is on full display in this truly unique novel that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.]]> 322 Richard Chizmar 1982175168 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.91 2021 Chasing the Boogeyman
author: Richard Chizmar
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Scotland Yard: A History of the London Police Force's Most Infamous Murder Cases]]> 199797556
The idea of "Scotland Yard" is steeped in atmospheric stories of foggy London streets, murder by lamplight, and fiendish killers pursued by gentleman detectives. From its establishment in 1829 through the eve of World War II, Scotland Yard—the world’s first modern, professional, and centrally organized police force—set new standards for policing and investigating.

Scotland Yard advanced ground-breaking use of forensics—from fingerprints to ballistics to evidence collection—made the first attempt at criminal profiling, and captivated the public on both sides of the Atlantic with feats of detective work that rivaled any fictional interpretation.

Based on official case files, contemporary newspaper reporting, trial transcripts, and the first-hand accounts of the detectives on the beat, Scotland Yard tells the tales of some of history’s most notorious murders—with cases that proved to be landmarks in the field of criminal inquiry.]]> 480 Simon Read 1639366393 Tokoro 3 3.83 2024 Scotland Yard: A History of the London Police Force's Most Infamous Murder Cases
author: Simon Read
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla
review:

]]> Somebody's Daughter 56749670 A man must save the life of a little girl who may be his own flesh and blood in this pulse-pounding novel of psychological suspense from the USA Today bestselling author of Kill All Your Darlings.

When Michael Frazier's ex-wife, Erica, unexpectedly shows up on his doorstep, she drops a bombshell that threatens to rip his family apart: Her ten-year-old daughter is missing--and Michael is the father. Unsure whether this is the truth but unwilling to leave the girl's fate to chance, Michael has no choice but to follow the elusive trail of the child he has always wanted but never knew he had.

Over the course of one night, lies that span a decade come bubbling to the surface, putting Michael, his wife, and his whole family in jeopardy. And as the window for a little girl's safe return closes, Michael will have to decide who can be trusted and who is hiding the truth....]]> 496 David Bell 0593337476 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.68 2018 Somebody's Daughter
author: David Bell
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs]]> 210963085 The formerheadof the Pentagon program responsible for the investigation of UFOs�now known as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP)�reveals long-hidden truths with profound implications for not only national security but our understanding of the universe.

Luis “Lue� Elizondo is a former senior intelligence official and special agent who was recruited into a strange and highly sensitive US government program to investigate UAP incursions into sensitive military installations and air space. To accomplish his mission, Elizondo had to rely on decades of experience gained working some of America’s most sensitive and classified programs.Even then, he was not prepared for what he would learn, and the truth about the government’s long shadowy involvement in UAP investigations, and the lengths officials would take to keep them a secret.

The stakes could not be higher. Imminent is a first-hand, revelatory account inside the Pentagon’s most closely guarded secret and a call to action to confront humanity’s greatest existential questions.]]> 275 Luis Elizondo 0063235560 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs
author: Luis Elizondo
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Spin (Spin, #1) 910863 Spin is Robert Charles Wilson's Hugo Award-winning masterpiece―a stunning combination of a galactic "what if" and a small-scale, very human story.

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his backyard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk―a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside―more than a hundred million years per year on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans� and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun―and report back on what they find.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.]]> 458 Robert Charles Wilson 076534825X Tokoro 0 currently-reading 4.02 2005 Spin (Spin, #1)
author: Robert Charles Wilson
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Murder of Quality (George Smiley, #2)]]> 622855
George Smiley was simply doing a favor for Miss Ailsa Brimley, and old friend and editor of a small newspaper. Miss Brimley had received a letter from a worried reader: "I'm not mad. And I know my husbad is trying to kill me." But the letter had arrived too late: its scribe, the wife of an assistant master at the distinguished Carne School, was already dead.

So George Smiley went to Carne to listen, ask questions, and think. And to uncover, layer by layer, the complex network of skeletons and hatreds that comprised that little English institution.]]> 146 John Le Carré 0743431685 Tokoro 0 3.57 1962 A Murder of Quality (George Smiley, #2)
author: John Le Carré
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla
review:
Good characters involved and conversational interviews, but I just didn't really get the point of it. I think this is definitely something I should have read as opposed to listen to for greater comprehension.
]]> The Girl in the Smoke 197728226
Josie 's quiet life is dismantled with a knock at the door. When she and her daughter are violently kidnapped, Josie must act fast to survive. Danni has very little memory of the day her mother died, but these people are hell-bent on finding the money her mother stole before her death, and they think Danni knows more than she's letting on.

Grace arrives at her big sister's house to find her partner Pete beaten and tied up and her sister and niece taken. Josie has been her protector her entire life - but now she needs to be the strong one. Enlisting the help of a friend with the combat experience and skills she needs, Grace will stop at nothing to get her family back home . . .]]> 240 Matt Hilton 1448310822 Tokoro 0 3.44 2024 The Girl in the Smoke
author: Matt Hilton
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: library, severn-house, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[O Jerusalem (Mary Russell, #5)]]> 1401351 At the close of the year 1918, forced to flee England's green and pleasant land, Russell and Holmes enter British-occupied Palestine under the auspices of Holmes' enigmatic brother, Mycroft.
"Gentlemen, we are at your service." Thus Holmes greets the two travel-grimed Arab figures who receive them in the orange groves fringing the Holy Land. Whatever role could the volatile Ali and the taciturn Mahmoud play in Mycroft's design for this land the British so recently wrested from the Turks? After passing a series of tests, Holmes and Russell learn their guides are engaged in a mission for His Majesty's Government, and disguise themselves as Bedouins--Russell as the beardless youth "Amir"--to join them in a stealthy reconnaissance through the dusty countryside.
A recent rash of murders seems unrelated to the growing tensions between Jew, Moslem, and Christian, yet Holmes is adamant that he must reconstruct the most recent one in the desert gully where it occurred. His singular findings will lead him and Russell through labyrinthine bazaars, verminous inns, cliff-hung monasteries--and into mortal danger. When her mentor's inquiries jeopardize his life, Russell fearlessly wields a pistol and even assays the arts of seduction to save him. Bruised and bloodied, the pair ascend to the jewel like city of Jerusalem, where they will at last meet their adversary, whose lust for savagery and power could reduce the city's most ancient and sacred place to rubble and ignite this tinderbox of a land....
Classically Holmesian yet enchantingly fresh, sinuously plotted, with colorful characters and a dazzling historic ambience, O Jerusalem sweeps readers ever onward in the thrill of the chase.]]> 384 Laurie R. King 0553110934 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 4.06 1999 O Jerusalem (Mary Russell, #5)
author: Laurie R. King
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Monkey's Raincoat[MONKEYS RAINCOAT (R)][Mass Market Paperback]]]> 124059405 0 RobertCrais Tokoro 3 3.75 The Monkey's Raincoat[MONKEYS RAINCOAT (R)][Mass Market Paperback]
author: RobertCrais
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: friends-of-the-library, pintspages
review:
I liked the description of greater L.A. as the setting, fittingly described, also using the city as a character itself. And I liked some of the side character, such as Mort's contacts in Hollywood.
]]> <![CDATA[Children of Darkness and Light: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell: A Story of Murderous Faith]]> 207595805 In this gripping work of true crime, a criminal lawyer takes readers inside the notorious Lori Vallow case and the devastating "doomsday murders."

A blonde beauty queen, missing children, six suspicious deaths, and the twisted Mormon doomsday writings of her fifth husband are only the beginning of a tragic crime saga that gripped Americans and instigated frantic searches all over the country.

It all started when Lori Vallow met Chad Daybell at a doomsday prepper event. Their story grew like a wildfire that creates its own weather, and what happened next will shock even the most experienced true crime reader.

Clinging to and manipulating one another, Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell believed the return of Jesus Christ was imminent and that God had chosen them to lead the 144,000 and usher in the new millennium. When the people closest to them began dying, it became clear they would stop at nothing to be together and fulfill their mission. When the bodies of Lori’s missing children—J.J. and Tylee—were discovered in Chad’s backyard, the strange and complex story of their fundamentalist Mormon beliefs were revealed in all their true horror.

Author Lori Hellis, a retired criminal lawyer, had just moved to Arizona when news of J.J. and Tylee's disappearance broke, and there were reports about these missing children that linked them to a neighboring community. She began to follow the case closely, trying to understand this perfect storm of people and circumstances that culminated in the death of innocents. In Children of Darkness and Light, Hellis digs deep into the investigation, trial, and verdict to craft a haunting narrative that illuminates one of the most confounding crimes in recent memory.]]> 319 Lori Hellis 163936711X Tokoro 5 3.42 2024 Children of Darkness and Light: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell: A Story of Murderous Faith
author: Lori Hellis
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, cult-edu, dysfunctional-family, gaslit-greenlit, hoopla
review:
Read if you like true crime of a crazy story and crazy relationships, with a lot of thorough religious context to understand the logic of the crimes. Many might be familiar with the recent social media firestorm of the Lori Vallow case, of her missing children, and of her trial. I saw narcissism in her the entire time. Great narrator.
]]> <![CDATA[The Dating Game Killer: The True Story of a TV Dating Show, a Violent Sociopath, and a Series of Brutal Murders]]> 11016787 Ten years before his TV appearance, Rodney was charged with the sexual assault and attempted murder of an eight-year-old girl. In the decades that followed, he would be accused of seven murders—and, as new DNA evidence continues to be uncovered, the list may grow. The case is so disturbing that it's been documented in several news outlets, from People magazine and USA Today to 48 Hours Mystery and Dr. Phil. The Dating Game Killer is the shocking true story about the dark and twisted man.]]> 404 Stella Sands 0312535899 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.60 2011 The Dating Game Killer: The True Story of a TV Dating Show, a Violent Sociopath, and a Series of Brutal Murders
author: Stella Sands
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rose Madder 10619
Rosie Daniels leaves her husband, Norman, after fourteen years in an abusive marriage. She is determined to lose herself in a place where he won’t find her. She’ll worry about all the rest later.

Alone in a strange city, she begins to make a new life, and good things finally start to happen. Meeting Bill is one; and getting an apartment is another. Still, it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder, and with good reason. Norman is a cop, with the instincts of a predator. He’s very good at finding people, even if he is losing his mind.

Fixed on revenge, Norman Daniels becomes a force of relentless terror and savageness, a man almost mythic in his monstrosity. For Rosie to survive, she must enter her own myth and become a woman she never knew she could be: Rose Madder.

“Riveting, engrossing...packed with suspense� (People), Stephen King infuses this novel with an edge-of-your-seat, chilling atmosphere. Rose Madder is “an eerie, remarkably mature and moving novel� (The Washington Post).]]> 595 Stephen King Tokoro 0 to-read 3.75 1995 Rose Madder
author: Stephen King
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blame My Virgo Moon (Never Trust a Gemini, #2)]]> 205438914 Shakespeare’s Juliet has it easy compared to zodiac-obsessed Cat as she balances feuding friend groups, a school play, a fledging romance, and her clumsy self in this delightful follow-up to Never Trust a Gemini.

Life should be Gucci gooseberry gorgeous for Cat Phillips now that she’s got the girl: swoon-worthy, green-haired Morgan Delaney. Except Cat’s friends aren’t too keen on Morgan, and Morgan’s friends aren’t quite rolling out the welcome mat for Cat either. When Morgan takes on queen bee Siobhan for the highly contested spot of Head Girl, Cat would rather pluck out her eyelashes than pick a side, which is how she ends up accidentally auditioning for the school production of Romeo and Juliet . . . and landing the starring role opposite Morgan’s new no-good friend, Brooke the Crook. And as if things couldn’t be more of a Marie Antionette Baking Brownies level disaster, Cat’s Sagittarius bestie, Zanna, isn’t talking to her anymore. Merciful Sappho! As Cat trips over herself to keep her relationships intact (and learn her lines), she begins to realize that maybe not all of her problems can be blamed on her Virgo moon in this hilarious, heartfelt comedy of errors told in an uber-unique voice.]]> 320 Freja Nicole Woolf 153623530X Tokoro 0 to-read 4.00 2024 Blame My Virgo Moon (Never Trust a Gemini, #2)
author: Freja Nicole Woolf
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Trust a Gemini (Never Trust a Gemini #1)]]> 59418733 Cat Phillips has her head in the stars, but her romantic fantasies may ruin her shot at real-life love in this sweet and funny lesbian story.

It’s Libra Season, and Cat Phillips is ready to run headfirst into love. The only problem is that her crush is on her best friend, Alison Bridgewater, who is more interested in chatting with boys. Maybe Cat should take this as a sign to get over Alison, even if that means dating the musically challenged Jamie Owusu. After all, a new boyfriend is the best cleanse, at least according to Cat’s friends. Unfortunately, having a boyfriend is a lot harder than Cat expected. And then Morgan Delaney swoops in with her green glasses, enigmatic smile, and talent for teasing Cat in ways that make her feel üdzܲ. But Morgan is a Gemini, and there’s no way ٳ󲹳’s in Cat’s horoscope. Will Cat finally get the girl of her dreams? Or is there a chance there’s more to life than Alison Bridgewater? The stars align for the cast of this energetic romp full of comedic misunderstandings and sparkling language.]]> 320 Freja Nicole Woolf 1536230545 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.16 2023 Never Trust a Gemini (Never Trust a Gemini #1)
author: Freja Nicole Woolf
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Her Deadly Touch (Detective Josie Quinn, #12)]]> 58177330
On her first day back with the Denton PD after a major trauma, Detective Josie Quinn is on the hunt for a missing woman, Krystal Duncan, the mother of one of five children killed in a devastating school bus crash. Hours later, Josie finds Krystal’s body beside her daughter’s grave, her lips sealed together forever with wax.

Forensics match the wax to one of the candles lit in memory of the sweet little souls who died, giving Josie her first lead to a support group made up of the parents who lost children in the crash. Painstakingly dissecting the lives of these grieving couples, it’s clear to Josie that each of them is hiding something about the day of the accident—but whose secret is worth killing for?

The case takes an agonizing turn when the body of another young mother is found near the site of the bus crash. Someone connected to the accident is out for revenge. As the members of the support group are picked off one by one, every second counts for Josie to save the lives of these loving parents who have already suffered the loss of those they treasured most…]]> 281 Lisa Regan 1800196326 Tokoro 3 4.47 2021 Her Deadly Touch (Detective Josie Quinn, #12)
author: Lisa Regan
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/16
shelves: cult-edu, gaslit-greenlit, library
review:
I like two elements to this. First, how the author exposed the interiority of our Detective Josie in being able to relate to how much grief can effect a person, and relate her to the people involved in this latest investigation---I like seeing the interiority of characters. Second, I like how the detail of ironic advice appeared as a theme in the plot and investigation clues, playing the spiraling game of 'what ifs' and 'if only [insert] didn't happen.' That was fun to discover and follow along the way.
]]> Deadline 23512877 0 Metsy Hingle Tokoro 0 0.0 2004 Deadline
author: Metsy Hingle
name: Tokoro
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: investigations-hunts, currently-reading
review:

]]> Deadbeat 207294198 The author of the “moving head-spinner of a novel� (John Connolly) The Other Side of Night returns with a taut thriller following a desperate single father as he searches for the anonymous employer who hired him as a hitman.

Peyton Collard was a good man once, but his life changed after a horrific car accident. Divorced, drunk, and severely damaged, Peyton is offered a life-changing sum of money to kill an evil man. But as he goes on a vigilante journey that leaves a trail of bodies across California, Peyton wonders about the identity of his anonymous patron.

Soon, his questions become an obsession, and he embarks on a tense and potentially deadly investigation to discover the truth about the murders he’s committed.]]> 368 Adam Hamdy 1668031523 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.55 2024 Deadbeat
author: Adam Hamdy
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dream]]> 7917083 464 Gregg Jones 0451229045 Tokoro 0 2013 3.91 Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America's Imperial Dream
author: Gregg Jones
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2013/08/18
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: 2013
review:

]]> City of Fallen Angels 52140172 But the next day the same woman, Eve, turns up, unbidden, on his doorstep. Eve fears for her safety. She is being watched. Before Keegan knows it, someone has been killed with Keegan s own gun, and he gets sucked into a world of suspicion and betrayal where he s never quite sure where the truth lies. Before long he s the prime suspect in a murder he didn't commit, and all the evidence seems to point in his direction.

It s almost like someone planned it that way.]]> 272 Paul Buchanan 1789559812 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.74 2020 City of Fallen Angels
author: Paul Buchanan
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cold Paradise (Stone Barrington, #7)]]> 156616
He becomes reacquainted with a case he thought was buried years ago. While luxuriating in Florida's winter warmth, he is stunned to recognize someone he thought was dead. Former client Allison Manning, last seen condemned to death in St. Mark's in the Caribbean! She needs Stone's help once again. Should we mention there are also a few other romantic entanglements that haunt him in Florida as well?

Librarian's note: the characters, settings and other information for the first 25 books in the series are complete as best possible (corrections are welcome!) for: #1, New York Dead, 1991; #2, Dirt, 1996; #3, Dead in the Water, 1997; #4, Swimming to Catalina, 1998; #5, Worst Fears Realized, 1999; #6, L.A. Dead, 2000; #7, Cold Paradise, 2001; #8, The Short Forever, 2002; #9, Dirty Work, 2003; #10, Reckless Abandon, 2004; #11, Two Dollar Bill, 2004; #12. Dark Harbor, 2006; #13, Fresh Disasters, 2007; #14, Shoot Him if He Runs, 2007; #15, Hot Mahogany, 2008; #16, Loitering with Intent, 2009; #17, Kisser, 2009; #18, Lucid Intervals, 2010; #19, Strategic Moves, 2010; #20, Bel-Air Dead, 2011; #21, Son of Stone, 2011; #22, D.C. Dead, 2011; #23, Unnatural Acts, 2012; #24, Severe Clear, 2012; and #25, Collateral Damage, 2012.]]> 464 Stuart Woods 0451205626 Tokoro 5 3.87 2001 Cold Paradise (Stone Barrington, #7)
author: Stuart Woods
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/17
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: cityscape-in-character, library, over-suntory
review:
I didn't really get into basic long-running installments when I was younger, besides maybe if Tom Clancy counts, so I'm surprised I liked Stone Barrington's character so much here. Maybe some of it is both life and reader FOMO. I think I picked it out because I often try out more popular authors from the library rather than purchase them, and it was set in Florida. Like with Robert B. Parker, I could read this quickly, which isn't usually the case, even with fast-paced plot-driven books. I've bought more books by both authors now, so I guess that says something. But this does kind of make me think this is a more or less obsolete writing style and tone now, something that doesn't attract contemporary readers anymore. I think the characterization had me liking it so much. And Stone Barrington's adventures attending to his clients reads like private eye/investigator stories, and maybe it really is considered partially in that genre. Stone Barrington is like a fixer, and his character reminded me of Parker's Spenser so much. This is vaguely and broadly my current reading mood and moment.
]]> <![CDATA[Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man]]> 13259251
William Henry Seward was one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century. Progressive governor of New York and outspoken US senator, he was the odds-on favorite to win the 1860 Republican nomination for president. As secretary of state and Lincoln’s closest adviser during the Civil War, Seward not only managed foreign affairs but had a substantial role in military, political, and personnel matters.

Some of Lincoln’s critics even saw Seward, erroneously, as the power behind the throne; this is why John Wilkes Booth and his colleagues attempted to kill Seward as well as Lincoln. Seward survived the assassin’s attack, continued as secretary of state, and emerged as a staunch supporter of President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s controversial successor. Through his purchase of Alaska (“Seward’s Folly�), and his groundwork for the purchase of the Canal Zone and other territory, Seward set America on course to become a world empire.

Seward was not only important, he was fascinating. Most nights this well-known raconteur with unruly hair and untidy clothes would gather diplomats, soldiers, politicians, or actors around his table to enjoy a cigar, a drink, and a good story. Drawing on hundreds of sources not available to or neglected by previous biographers, Walter Stahr’s bestselling biography sheds new light on this complex and central figure, as well as on pivotal events of the Civil War and its aftermath.]]> 720 Walter Stahr 1439121168 Tokoro 0 4.09 2012 Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man
author: Walter Stahr
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves: most-informative, clustering, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Magic All Around: A Novel 123266566 336 Jennifer Moorman 1400240484 Tokoro 0 3.75 The Magic All Around: A Novel
author: Jennifer Moorman
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, dynastic-dynamic, hoopla, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rethinking the Anthropology of Magic and Witchcraft: Inherently Human]]> 165122186 194 Phillips Stevens Jr. 103241426X Tokoro 0 to-read 5.00 2023 Rethinking the Anthropology of Magic and Witchcraft: Inherently Human
author: Phillips Stevens Jr.
name: Tokoro
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Immortals 1263782 527 Michael Korda 0671745263 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.88 1988 The Immortals
author: Michael Korda
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Worldly Goods 575504 0 Michael Korda 0552122548 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.80 1982 Worldly Goods
author: Michael Korda
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sanctuary 195083732 306 Andrew Hunter Murray Tokoro 5 3.47 2022 The Sanctuary
author: Andrew Hunter Murray
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When Death Comes Stealing (Tamara Hayle, #1)]]> 800943 221 Valerie Wilson Wesley 0399139494 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 4.06 1994 When Death Comes Stealing (Tamara Hayle, #1)
author: Valerie Wilson Wesley
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hundred-Dollar Baby (Spenser, #34)]]> 69614
Longtime Spenser fans will remember that once upon a time, though not so long ago, there was a girl named April Kyle-a beautiful teenage runaway who turned to prostitution to escape her terrible family life. The book was 1982's Ceremony, and, thanks to Spenser, April escaped Boston's "Combat Zone" for the relative safety of a high-class New York City bordello. April resurfaced in Taming a Sea-Horse, again in dire need of Spenser's rescue-this time from the clutches of a controlling lover. But April Kyle's return in Hundred-Dollar Baby is nothing short of shocking.

When a mature, beautiful, and composed April strides into Spenser's office, the Boston PI barely hesitates before recognizing his once and future client. Now a well-established madam herself, April oversees an upscale call-girl operation in Boston's Back Bay. Still looking for Spenser's approval, it takes her a moment before she can ask him, again, for his assistance. Her business is a success; what's more, it's an all-female enterprise. Now that some men are trying to take it away from her, she needs Spenser.

April claims to be in the dark about who it is that's trying to shake her down, but with a bit of legwork and a bit more muscle, Spenser and Hawk find ties to organized crime and local kingpin Tony Marcus, as well as a scheme to franchise the operation across the country. As Spenser again plays the gallant knight, it becomes clear that April's not as innocent as she seems. In fact, she may be her own worst enemy.]]> 291 Robert B. Parker 0399153764 Tokoro 5 3.81 2006 Hundred-Dollar Baby (Spenser, #34)
author: Robert B. Parker
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: dialogue, free-little-street-libraries, nightlife, over-suntory
review:

]]> Vanishing Ladies 11903070 A vacationing police detective stumbles upon a human-trafficking ring that threatens his fiancée in this thriller by the author of the 87th Precinct series.

Phil Colby is just cruising into Sullivan's Corners when the motorcycle cop flags him down. Phil isn't worried; he wasn't speeding, and as a city cop on holiday in a neighboring state, he expects a certain amount of understanding. But the local cop is unimpressed by his brother in blue, and he doesn't buy the story that he borrowed the car from a fellow detective. He drags Phil in for questioning, and a relaxing vacation becomes a nightmare.

When Phil and his fiancée, Ann Grafton, finally get free of the local force, the only place they can find to stay is a room in a sleazy motel on the edge of town. When Phil steps out from a shower, there's an underage prostitute in his bed, blood on the walls . . . and no sign of his beloved Ann. To find her, he'll have to tear Sullivan's Corners apart--and destroy the evil that lurks beneath the surface of this peaceful country town.

A grim story of sexual slavery, Vanishing Ladies is a novel ahead of its time. From the legendary Ed McBain, creator of the famous 87th Precinct series and screenwriter of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, this is noir at its rawest.
]]> 0 Richard Marsten 0451114639 Tokoro 2 3.12 Vanishing Ladies
author: Richard Marsten
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.12
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2022/06/29
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: 5670s, book-sales-book-shops, gaslit-greenlit, asking-for-anxiety
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Our Reasonable Faith: A Survey of Christian Doctrine]]> 277746 Book by Herman Bavinck 1592440231 Tokoro 0 4.37 1907 Our Reasonable Faith: A Survey of Christian Doctrine
author: Herman Bavinck
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1907
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read, book-sales-book-shops, dogmatic-collect, interests, land-set-for-mary
review:

]]> Go as a River 63922274 A sweeping, heart-stopping epic of a young woman's journey to becoming, set against the harsh beauty of mid-century Colorado

On a cool autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash delivers late-season peaches from her family's farm set amid the wild beauty of Colorado. As she heads into her village, a disheveled stranger stops to ask her the way. How she chooses to answer will unknowingly alter the course of both their young lives.

So begins the mesmerizing story of split-second choices and courageous acts that propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength.

Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life forever.

Go as a River is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettable characters and a breathtaking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate.]]> 320 Shelley Read 1954118236 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.20 2023 Go as a River
author: Shelley Read
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Forest of Vanishing Stars 55711683 The New York Times bestselling author of the The Book of Lost Names returns with an evocative coming-of-age World War II story about a young woman who uses her knowledge of the wilderness to help Jewish refugees escape the Nazis—until a secret from her past threatens everything.

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

Inspired by incredible true stories of survival against staggering odds, and suffused with the journey-from-the-wilderness elements that made Where the Crawdads Sing a worldwide phenomenon, The Forest of Vanishing Stars is a heart-wrenching and suspenseful novel.]]> 376 Kristin Harmel 198215893X Tokoro 0 to-read 4.22 2021 The Forest of Vanishing Stars
author: Kristin Harmel
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harlem Shuffle (Ray Carney, #1)]]> 54626223 From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s.

“Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked…� To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Harlem Shuffle’s ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It’s a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

But mostly, it’s a joy to read, another dazzling novel from the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning Colson Whitehead.]]> 318 Colson Whitehead 0385545134 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.67 2021 Harlem Shuffle (Ray Carney, #1)
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Take My Hand 55650158 Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a profoundly moving novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench.

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

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

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

Because history repeats what we don’t remember.]]> 359 Dolen Perkins-Valdez 0593337697 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.36 2022 Take My Hand
author: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[TYR Myth-Culture-Tradition Vol. 2]]> 48563352 430 Joshua Buckley 0999724576 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.75 2004 TYR Myth-Culture-Tradition Vol. 2
author: Joshua Buckley
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![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 Tokoro 0 3.23 2022 The Pirate's Wife: The Remarkable True Story of Sarah Kidd
author: Daphne Palmer Geanacopoulos
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World]]> 53968566
From a New York Times best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, a sweeping epic of how the Vikings and their descendants have shaped history and America

Scandinavia has always been a world apart. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when they finally left their homeland in search of opportunity, these wanderers—including the most famous, the Vikings—would reshape Europe and beyond. Their ingenuity, daring, resiliency, and loyalty to family and community would propel them to the gates of Rome, the steppes of Russia, the courts of Constantinople, and the castles of England and Ireland. But nowhere would they leave a deeper mark than across the Atlantic, where the Vikings’legacy would become the American Dream. In The Viking Heart , Arthur Herman melds a compelling historical narrative with cutting-edge archaeological and DNA research to trace the epic story of this remarkable and diverse people. He shows how the Scandinavian experience has universal meaning, and how we can still be inspired by their indomitable spirit.]]> 512 Arthur Herman 1328595900 Tokoro 0 3.61 2021 The Viking Heart: How Scandinavians Conquered the World
author: Arthur Herman
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves: amber-waves, currently-reading
review:

]]> Reckless: Sex, Lies and JFK 203061429
For the Kennedy men, beginning with prolific philanderer Joe Kennedy Senior, risk was a turn-on. As another Kennedy, Bobby Junior � son of a would-be president, nephew of another � runs for the White House, Reckless reveals how a dynasty’s arrogance led to tragedy. With its shocking revelations about how the Kennedy brothers lived and died, Reckless will make headlines around the world

Drawing on new interviews and previously protected police and US government intelligence files � tens of thousands of documents from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Organised Crime Intelligence Division, the CIA and the FBI, Rothmiller and Thompson reveal quite how tarnished America’s Camelot was. The files corroborate how the Kennedys connived with the American Mafia, greedy corporations and Latin American tyrants to gain and hold power. All the usual suspects from FBI titan J. Edgar Hoover and billionaire Howard Hughes to CIA rogue agents and Mob hitmen appear in an narrative which sweeps from the salons of Washington to dictator Rafael Trujillo’s torture chambers in the Dominican Republic (where a dwarf called Snowball specialised in biting off men’s genitals).]]> 256 Mike Rothmiller 1802471839 Tokoro 4 3.74 2024 Reckless: Sex, Lies and JFK
author: Mike Rothmiller
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla
review:

]]> The Way the Crow Flies 7199 848 Ann-Marie MacDonald 0060586370 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.11 2003 The Way the Crow Flies
author: Ann-Marie MacDonald
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The First Victim (Boldt/Matthews, #6)]]> 321229
It meant battle; it meant risk. For Boldt, a vest was a symbol of youth. It had been well over a year since he had worn one. Ironically, as he approached the hangar's north door at a light run behind his own four heavily armored ERT personnel, he caught himself worrying about his hands, not his life. He didn't want to smash up his piano hands in some close quarters skirmish. . . . Boldt plays jazz piano one night a week in a local bar, and despite his concern for his hands, he takes every opportunity he can to get away from his desk and into the streets. But money pressures, caused by his wife's recent illness, also make him think about the possibility of a better-paying job in the private sector.

Meanwhile, some extremely ruthless people are murdering illegal Chinese immigrant women and leaving their bodies buried in newly dug graves. An ambitious local TV journalist named Stevie McNeal and the young Chinese woman she thinks of as her "Little Sister" risk their lives to investigate the killings, while Boldt and his team round up a most unusual array of suspects.

This combination of hard-edged realism and softer sentiment has become Pearson's trademark, and once again it works smoothly. --Dick Adler]]> 443 Ridley Pearson 140130818X Tokoro 0 3.86 1999 The First Victim (Boldt/Matthews, #6)
author: Ridley Pearson
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: cityscape-in-character, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune]]> 112975117
The story of the Astors is a quintessentially American story—of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention.

From 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor first arrived in the United States, until 2009, when Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony Marshall, was convicted of defrauding his elderly mother, the Astor name occupied a unique place in American society.

The family fortune, first made by a beaver trapping business that grew into an empire, was then amplified by holdings in Manhattan real estate. Over the ensuing generations, Astors ruled Gilded Age New York society and inserted themselves into political and cultural life, but also suffered the most famous loss on the Titanic, one of many shocking and unexpected twists in the family’s story.

In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, #1 New York Times bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and explore what the Astor name has come to mean in America—offering a window onto the making of America itself.]]> 322 Anderson Cooper 0062964704 Tokoro 0 3.70 2023 Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune
author: Anderson Cooper
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, angles
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West]]> 150444508
1927. Olivia "Livy" West is a fearless young pilot with a love of adventure. She yearns to cross oceans and travel the skies. When she learns of the Dole Air Race––a high-stakes contest to be the first to make the 2,400 mile Pacific crossing from the West Coast to Hawai'i—she sets her sights on qualifying. But it soon becomes clear that only men will make the cut. In a last-ditch effort to take part, Livy manages to be picked as a navigator for one of the pilots, before setting out on a harrowing journey that some will not survive.

1987. Wren Summers is down to her last dime when she learns she has inherited a remote piece of land on the Big Island with nothing on it but a dilapidated barn and an overgrown mac nut grove. She plans on selling it and using the money to live on, but she is drawn in by the mysterious objects kept in the barn by her late great-aunt––clues to a tragic piece of aviation history lost to time. Determined to find out what really happened all those years ago, Wren enlists the help of residents at a nearby retirement home to uncover Olivia’s story piece by piece. What she discovers is more earth-shattering, and closer to home, than she could have ever imagined.]]> 384 Sara Ackerman 077836951X Tokoro 3 along-winding-cali-roads 4.11 2024 The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West
author: Sara Ackerman
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/16
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War]]> 33413964 Based on unprecedented access to previously classified documents and dozens of interviews with key policymakers, here is the untold story of how George H. W. Bush faced a critical turning point of history—the end of the Cold War.

The end of the Cold War was the greatest shock to international affairs since World War II. In that perilous moment, Saddam Hussein chose to invade Kuwait, China cracked down on its own pro-democracy protesters, and regimes throughout Eastern Europe teetered between democratic change and new authoritarians. Not since FDR in 1945 had a U.S. president faced such opportunities and challenges.

As the presidential historian Jeffrey Engel reveals in this page-turning history, behind closed doors from the Oval Office to the Kremlin, George H. W. Bush rose to the occasion brilliantly. Distrusted by such key allies as Margaret Thatcher and dismissed as too cautious by the press, Bush had the experience and the wisdom to use personal, one-on-one diplomacy with world leaders. Bush knew when it was essential to rally a coalition to push Iraq out of Kuwait. He managed to help unify Germany while strengthening NATO.

Based on unprecedented access to previously classified documents and interviews with all of the principals, When the World Seemed New is a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of a president with his hand on the tiller, guiding the nation through a pivotal time and setting the stage for the twenty-first century.]]> 608 Jeffrey A. Engel 0547423063 Tokoro 0 4.32 When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War
author: Jeffrey A. Engel
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: dynastic-dynamic, economist-international, holly-jolly-ollies, hot-debates-fodder, currently-reading
review:

]]> River's End 10629596 #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents a seductively suspenseful tale of one woman's shattered innocence, the terrifying search for truth and a heart's journey toward healing...

Olivia's parents were among Hollywood's golden couples--until the night a monster came and took her mother away forever. A monster with the face of her father...

Sheltered from the truth, an older Olivia only dimly recalls her night of terror--but her recurring nightmares make her realize she must piece together the real story. Now, assisted by Noah Brady, the son of the police detective who found her cowering in her closet so many years before, she may have her chance. Noah wants to reconstruct the night that has become an infamous part of Hollywood history. He also wants to help Olivia and heal the longing in her lonely heart. But once the door to her past is opened, there's no telling what's waiting on the other side. For somewhere, not too far away, the monster walks again...]]> 332 Nora Roberts 0425242943 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 4.02 1999 River's End
author: Nora Roberts
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Flamingo Coast 43169994 273 Martin Jay Weiss 1947856588 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.33 Flamingo Coast
author: Martin Jay Weiss
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams]]> 60468246
Stacy Schiff returns Adams to his seat of glory, introducing us to the shrewd and eloquent man who supplied the moral backbone of the American Revolution. A singular figure at a singular moment, Adams amplified the Boston Massacre. He helped to mastermind the Boston Tea Party. He employed every tool available to rally a town, a colony, and eventually a band of colonies behind him, creating the cause that created a country. For his efforts he became the most wanted man in America: When Paul Revere rode to Lexington in 1775, it was to warn Samuel Adams that he was about to be arrested for treason.

In The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Schiff brings her masterful skills to Adams’s improbable life, illuminating his transformation from aimless son of a well-off family to tireless, beguiling radical who mobilized the colonies. Arresting, original, and deliriously dramatic, this is a long-overdue chapter in the history of our nation.]]> 422 Stacy Schiff 0316441112 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.64 2022 The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
author: Stacy Schiff
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Guilt: Man and Society 16168158
Tommy is in love with Lani. Lani is going out with Paul. Paul is having an affair with Julia, and Julia has a crush on Chris. Life is intoxicating when you're about to turn eighteen and finish school.

But something goes terribly wrong for this group of friends. One day they have the world at their feet. The next, they are all divided, destined to carry their own versions of guilt into adulthood.

What unfolds is an agonising, incisive novel about loyalty and jealousy, about the possibilities of youth and the weariness of middle age. Guilt is a heartbreaking examination of friendship, luck and the elusive nature of redemption.]]> Roger W. Smith Tokoro 0 4.00 2015 Guilt: Man and Society
author: Roger W. Smith
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read, asking-for-anxiety, book-sales-book-shops
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden: Two Sisters Separated by China's Civil War]]> 58999178
Jun and Hong were scions of a once great southern Chinese family. Each other’s best friend, they grew up in the 1930s during the final days of Old China before the tumult of the twentieth century brought political revolution, violence, and a fractured national identity. By a quirk of timing,at the end of the Chinese Civil War, Jun ended up on an island under Nationalist control, and then settled in Taiwan, married a Nationalist general, and lived among fellow exiles at odds with everything the new Communist regime stood for on the mainland. Hong found herself an ocean away on the mainland, forced to publicly disavow both her own family background and her sister’s decision to abandon the party. A doctor by training, to overcome the suspicion created by her family circumstances, Hong endured two waves of “re-education� and internal exile, forced to work in some of the most desperately poor, remote areas of the country.

Ambitious, determined, and resourceful, both women faced morally fraught decisions as they forged careers and families in the midst of political and social upheaval. Jun established one of U.S.-allied Taiwan’s most important trading companies. Hong became one of the most celebrated doctors in China, appearing on national media and honored for her dedication to medicine. Niece to both sisters,linguist and East Asian scholar ZhuqingLi tells her aunts� story for the first time, honoring her family’s history with sympathy and grace. Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden is a window into the lives of women in twentieth-century China, a time of traumatic change and unparalleled resilience. In this riveting and deeply personal account, Li confronts thebitter political rivals ofmainland China and Taiwan with elegance and unique insight, while celebrating her aunts� remarkable legacies.]]> 368 Zhuqing Li 0393541770 Tokoro 3 along-winding-cali-roads 4.17 2022 Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden: Two Sisters Separated by China's Civil War
author: Zhuqing Li
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/13
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads
review:
I like that I learned a lot about women's health and the healthcare systems under mid century Communist rule, and some of the history of the Nationalists moving over to Taiwan. But I really did hope to hear more about Taiwan and of Jun's story. My favorite narrative sections I think were when Hong was exiled to some rural mountain community for reeducation in assisting with economic production in the state's insane.goals rather than being allowed to continue with her medical practice at the hospital in Fujian; and when Jun began becoming successful with her husband's mercantile business and moved over to the United States.
]]> The Lady Waiting 195888782 The White Lotus meets The Talented Mr. Ripley in this high-spirited novel of a stolen Vermeer, a Polish transplant in LA, and the charismatic couple who seduce her into a misguided international heist

One bright Los Angeles day, a young Polish émigré named Viva is driving along the freeway when she’s flagged down by a dazzling, disheveled woman in green chiffon. The woman is Bobby Sleeper, a fellow Eastern European and an erstwhile art gallerist with a mysterious background and even more mysterious filmmaker husband. Within days the couple hire Viva as their assistant, then enlist her as an accomplice in an improbable scheme involving a long-lost Vermeer masterwork, a multi-million-dollar reward, and several shadowy ex-husbands.

AsBobby and her husband weave her ever more tightly into their web, Viva is swept up in an escapade ٳ󲹳’s one part art heist, one part love triangle, and one part education of a felon. Entranced by their lifestyle, alarmed by their ramshackle scam, Viva realizes she’s out of her depth—and that only luck, cunning, and her own hustler’s instinct can save her from disaster. Careening from the canyons of LA to the canals of Venice, The Lady Waiting is a page-turning caper, a cavalcade of twenty-first-century sins—rapacious capitalism, shameless fraud, and atrocious behavior—and a showcase for three of the biggest and most unforgettable characters in recent fiction.]]> 352 Magdalena Zyzak 0593542940 Tokoro 0 3.08 2024 The Lady Waiting
author: Magdalena Zyzak
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: botm, broadbentian, cityscape-in-character, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island]]> 36220685 A brilliant, soulful, and timely portrait of a two-hundred-year-old crabbing community in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay as it faces extinction from rising sea levels—part natural history of an extraordinary ecosystem, starring the beloved blue crab; part paean to a vanishing way of life; and part meditation on man’s relationship with the environment—from the acclaimed author, who reported this story for more than two years.

Tangier Island, Virginia, is a community unique on the American landscape. Mapped by John Smith in 1608, settled during the American Revolution, the tiny sliver of mud is home to 470 hardy people who live an isolated and challenging existence, with one foot in the 21st century and another in times long passed. They are separated from their countrymen by the nation’s largest estuary, and a twelve-mile boat trip across often tempestuous water—the same water that for generations has made Tangier’s fleet of small fishing boats a chief source for the rightly prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab, and has lent the island its claim to fame as the softshell crab capital of the world.

Yet for all of its long history, and despite its tenacity, Tangier is disappearing. The very water that has long sustained it is erasing the island day by day, wave by wave. It has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850, and still its shoreline retreats by fifteen feet a year—meaning this storied place will likely succumb first among U.S. towns to the effects of climate change. Experts reckon that, barring heroic intervention by the federal government, islanders could be forced to abandon their home within twenty-five years. Meanwhile, the graves of their forebears are being sprung open by encroaching tides, and the conservative and deeply religious Tangiermen ponder the end times.

Chesapeake Requiem is an intimate look at the island’s past, present and tenuous future, by an acclaimed journalist who spent much of the past two years living among Tangier’s people, crabbing and oystering with its watermen, and observing its long traditions and odd ways. What emerges is the poignant tale of a world that has, quite nearly, gone by—and a leading-edge report on the coming fate of countless coastal communities.

]]> 448 Earl Swift 0062661396 Tokoro 3 4.08 2018 Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island
author: Earl Swift
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: advisory-journalism-ethics, along-winding-cali-roads, amber-waves, land-set-for-mary
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal]]> 18773666
Kim Philby was the greatest spy in history, a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain’s counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War—while he was secretly working for the enemy. And nobody thought he knew Philby like Nicholas Elliott, Philby’s best friend and fellow officer in MI6. The two men had gone to the same schools, belonged to the same exclusive clubs, grown close through the crucible of wartime intelligence work and long nights of drink and revelry. It was madness for one to think the other might be a communist spy, bent on subverting Western values and the power of the free world.

But Philby was secretly betraying his friend. Every word Elliott breathed to Philby was transmitted back to Moscow—and not just Elliott’s words, for in America, Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton's and Elliott’s unwitting disclosures helped Philby sink almost everyimportant Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading countless operatives to their doom. Even as the web of suspicion closed around him, and Philby was driven to greater lies to protect his cover, his two friends never abandoned him—until it was too late. The stunning truth of his betrayal would have devastating consequences on the two men who thought they knew him best, and on the intelligence services he left crippled in his wake.

Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, A Spy Among Friends is Ben Macintyre’s best book yet, a high-water mark in Cold War history telling.]]> 368 Ben Macintyre 0804136637 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.14 2014 A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed]]> 154462772
For the acclaimed sociologist Eric Klinenberg, �2020� refers to both a pivotal year in world history and the opportunity it created for seeing ourselves more clearly. The Covid-19 pandemic did not distort reality; instead, it revealed and accentuated dividing lines that have long splintered societies around the world, and proved especially destructive in the United States. Against the backdrop of a high-stakes presidential election, a surge of misinformation, rising distrust, and raging protests, 2020 is a piercing account of how the U.S. and other nations handled the extraordinary challenges of that seminal year.

Klinenberg digs deep into the social life of the pandemic to show how factors beyond the virus and the body determined who lived, who died, who fell behind, and who flourished. At the heart of this book are seven vivid profiles of ordinary people - including an elementary school principal, a bar manager, a subway custodian, and a local political aide � whose stories show how Americans, and communities across the globe, reckoned with 2020, from the tragedies and losses to the mutual aid networks and social movements that hinted at a better world to come. We move from the epicenter in New York City to epidemiological fights in Wuhan and Beijing. We see how leaders in London and Washington D.C. made the crisis so much more lethal than was necessary, and how scientists, citizens, and policy makers in Australia, Japan, and Taiwan worked together to save lives.

According to Klinenberg, what we learn from the crisis of 2020 will help shape our responses to the emerging challenges of the 21st-century -- not only future pandemics but also the escalating climate emergency, the ongoing threats to racial justice, and global economic disparities.This book is both mirror and roadmap—a reflection of who we are at this crucial moment in world history, and a set of principles for how we might approach the next catastrophe differently.]]> 464 Eric Klinenberg 0593319486 Tokoro 0 3.89 2024 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed
author: Eric Klinenberg
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: advisory-journalism-ethics, economist-international, library, currently-reading
review:

]]> The Key to Midnight 32433
Alex Hunter desperately wanted to help this beautiful, fascinating woman. He knew he had seen Joanna before - in news photographs of a senator's daughter who'd disappeared ten years ago. Slowly, tenderly, he helped awaken her to a terrifying fact: that she was not who she thought he was... that her mind, her memories, had been created for her...

And there was only one was to unlock the dark secret of her soul... The Key to Midnight]]> 419 Dean Koontz 0425147517 Tokoro 0 3.97 1979 The Key to Midnight
author: Dean Koontz
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/15
shelves: cityscape-in-character, free-little-street-libraries, parkside, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book at War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict]]> 92009079
Chairman Mao was a librarian. Stalin was a published poet. Evelyn Waugh served as a commando - before leaving to write Brideshead Revisited . Since the advent of modern warfare, books have all too often found themselves on the frontline.

In The Book at War , acclaimed historian Andrew Pettegree traces the surprising ways in which written culture - from travel guides and scientific papers to Biggles and Anne Frank - has shaped, and been shaped, by the conflicts of the modern age.

From the American Civil War to the invasion of Ukraine, books, authors and readers have gone to war - and in the process become both deadly weapons and our most persuasive arguments for peace.]]> 480 Andrew Pettegree 180081495X Tokoro 0 to-read 3.76 2023 The Book at War: Libraries and Readers in an Age of Conflict
author: Andrew Pettegree
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle fora New American Politics]]> 49348735
In his classic book Devil’s Bargain , Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right, led by the likes of Steve Bannon, turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel. In The Rebels , he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left, told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently. Based on remarkable inside sourcing and razor-sharp analysis, The Rebels uses the grand narrative of a political party undergoing tumult and transformation to tell an even larger story about the fate of America.

For many years, as Green recounts, the Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech, relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good, a rising tide lifting all boats. Yes, there were howls of pain, but they were written off by most of the elites as the moaning of sore losers mired in the past. There were always some Democratic politicians representing the old labor base who resisted the new dispensation, but these figures never made it very far on a national level. For one thing, they didn’t have the money. But as income inequality ballooned, widening the gulf between the wealthy elite and everyone else, pressures began to build.

With the 2008 crisis, those forces finally erupted into plain sight, turning this book’s protagonists into national icons. At its heart, The Rebels tells the riveting human story of the rise and fight of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, andAlexandria Ocasio-Cortezfrom the financial crisis on, as outrage over the unfairness of the American system formed a flood tide of political revolution.That same tide that would sweep Trump into office was blunted on the left, as the Democratic party found itself riven by culture war issues between its centrists and its progressives. But the winds behind economic populism still howl at gale force. Whether the Democrats can bridge their divisions and home in on a vision that unites the party, and perhaps even the country, in the face of the most violently deranged political landscape since the Civil War will be the ultimate test of the legacies of all three characters.

A masterful account of one of the defining political stories of our age, The Rebels cements Joshua Green’s stature at the first rank of American writers explaining how we’ve arrived at this pass and what lies ahead.]]> 352 Joshua Green 0525560246 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.12 2024 The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle fora New American Politics
author: Joshua Green
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fatherland 74968579 400 Robert Harris Tokoro 0 4.50 1992 Fatherland
author: Robert Harris
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/09
shelves: investigations-hunts, parkside, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer]]> 146274
The murder of Abraham Lincoln set off the greatest manhunt in American history -- the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth. From April 14 to April 26, 1865, the assassin led Union cavalry and detectives on a wild twelve-day chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., across the swamps of Maryland, and into the forests of Virginia, while the nation, still reeling from the just-ended Civil War, watched in horror and sadness.

At the very center of this story is John Wilkes Booth, America's notorious villain. A Confederate sympathizer and a member of a celebrated acting family, Booth threw away his fame and wealth for a chance to avenge the South's defeat. For almost two weeks, he confounded the manhunters, slipping away from their every move and denying them the justice they sought.

Based on rare archival materials, obscure trial transcripts, and Lincoln's own blood relics, Manhunt is a fully documented work and a fascinating tale of murder, intrigue, and betrayal. A gripping hour-by-hour account told through the eyes of the hunted and the hunters, this is history as you've never read it before.]]> 444 James L. Swanson 0060518502 Tokoro 4 4.16 2006 Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer
author: James L. Swanson
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/08
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President⁠—and Why It Failed]]> 52863345
The conspirators were part of a pro-Southern secret society that didn’t want an anti-slavery President in the White House. They planned an elaborate scheme to assassinate the brand new President in a Baltimore train station as Lincoln’s inauguration train passed through en route to the Capital. The plot was investigated by famed detective Allan Pinkerton, who infiltrated the group with undercover agents, including one of the first female private detectives in America. Had the assassination succeeded, there would have been no Lincoln Presidency, and the course of the Civil War and American history would have forever been altered.

The bestselling team that brought you The First Conspiracy now turns their attention to the story of the secret society that tried to kill Abraham Lincoln and the undercover detectives who foiled their plans.]]> 448 Brad Meltzer 1250317479 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.29 2020 The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President⁠—and Why It Failed
author: Brad Meltzer
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Kennedy's Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby]]> 55504154
New York Times bestselling authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher bring to life the incredible story of one of America’s most publicized—and most surprising—criminal trials in history.

No crime in history had more eyewitnesses. On November 24, 1963, two days after the killing of President Kennedy, a troubled nightclub owner named Jack Ruby quietly slipped into the Dallas police station and assassinated the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Millions of Americans witnessed the killing on live television, and yet the event would lead to questions for years to come.

It also would help to spark the conspiracy theories that have continued to resonate today.

Under the long shadow cast by the assassination of America’s beloved president, few would remember the bizarre trial that followed three months later in Dallas, Texas. How exactly does one defend a man who was seen pulling the trigger in front of millions? And, more important, how did Jack Ruby, who fired point-blank into Oswald live on television, die an innocent man?

Featuring a colorful cast of characters, including the nation’s most flamboyant lawyer pitted against a tough-as-Texas prosecutor, award-winning authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher unveil the astonishing details behind the first major trial of the television century. While it was Jack Ruby who appeared before the jury, it was also the city of Dallas and the American legal system being judged by the world.]]> 400 Dan Abrams 133591403X Tokoro 0 to-read 3.54 2021 Kennedy's Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby
author: Dan Abrams
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Table for Two 195474144 From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories set in New York and Los Angeles. The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood� describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age. Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next. Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting historical fiction.]]> 451 Amor Towles 0593296370 Tokoro 0 4.15 2024 Table for Two
author: Amor Towles
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/07
shelves: botm, broadbentian, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice]]> 62918999
On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emeline Houseman and her infant daughter, Ann Eliza. In a perverse nativity, someone bludgeoned to death a mother and child in their home—and then covered up the crime with hellfire.

When an ambitious district attorney charges Polly Bodine (Emelin’s sister-in-law) with a double homicide, the new “penny press� explodes. Polly is a perfect media villain: she’s a separated wife who drinks gin, commits adultery, and has had multiple abortions. Between June 1844 and April 1846, the nation was enthralled by her three trials—in Staten Island, Manhattan, and Newburgh—for the “Christmas murders.�

After Polly’s legal dream team entered the fray, the press and the public debated not only her guilt, but her character and fate as a fallen woman in society. Public opinion split into different camps over her case. Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman covered her case as young newsmen. P. T. Barnum made a circus out of it. James Fenimore Cooper’s last novel was inspired by her trials.

The Witch of New York is the first narrative history about the dueling trial lawyers, ruthless newsmen, and shameless hucksters who turned the Polly Bodine case into America’s formative tabloid trial. An origin story of how America became addicted to sensationalized reporting of criminal trials, The Witch of New York vividly reconstructs an epic mystery from Old New York—and uses the Bodine case to challenge our system of tabloid justice of today.]]> 336 C. Alexander Hortis 1639363912 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.56 2023 The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice
author: C. Alexander Hortis
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gold of Exodus: The Discovery of the True Mount Sinai]]> 1026166 368 Howard Blum 0684809184 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.87 1998 The Gold of Exodus: The Discovery of the True Mount Sinai
author: Howard Blum
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America]]> 43747492 The true crime story of bootlegger George Remus and the murder that shocked the nation.

In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he's a multimillionaire. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers," writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand new Pontiacs for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.

Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt's bosses at the U.S. Attorney's office hired her right out of law school, assuming she'd pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It's a decision with deadly consequences: With Remus behind bars, Dodge and Imogene begin an affair and plot to ruin him, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government--and that can only end in murder.]]> 432 Karen Abbott 0451498623 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.69 2019 The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America
author: Karen Abbott
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Witches: Salem, 1692 24819449 Cleopatra, provides an electrifying, fresh view of the Salem witch trials.

The panic began early in 1692, over an exceptionally raw Massachusetts winter, when a minister's niece began to writhe and roar. It spread quickly, confounding the most educated men and prominent politicians in the colony. Neighbors accused neighbors, husbands accused wives, parents and children one another. It ended less than a year later, but not before nineteen men and women had been hanged and an elderly man crushed to death.

Speaking loudly and emphatically, adolescent girls stood at the center of the crisis. Along with suffrage and Prohibition, the Salem witch trials represent one of the few moments when women played the central role in American history. Drawing masterfully on the archives, Stacy Schiff introduces us to the strains on a Puritan adolescent's life and to the authorities whose delicate agendas were at risk. She illuminates the demands of a rigorous faith, the vulnerability of settlements adrift from the mother country, perched--at a politically tumultuous time--on the edge of what a visitor termed a "remote, rocky, barren, bushy, wild-woody wilderness." With devastating clarity, the textures and tension of colonial life emerge; hidden patterns subtly, startlingly detach themselves from the darkness. Schiff brings early American anxieties to the fore to align them brilliantly with our own. In an era of religious provocations, crowdsourcing, and invisible enemies, this enthralling story makes more sense than ever.

The Witches is Schiff's riveting account of a seminal episode, a primal American mystery unveiled--in crackling detail and lyrical prose--by one of our most acclaimed historians.]]> 498 Stacy Schiff 0316200603 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.27 2015 The Witches: Salem, 1692
author: Stacy Schiff
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The White Devil's Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown]]> 41181183
From 1874, a house on the edge of San Francisco's Chinatown served as a gateway to freedom for thousands of enslaved and vulnerable young Chinese women and girls. Known as the Occidental Mission Home, it survived earthquakes, fire, bubonic plague, and violence directed against its occupants and supporters--a courageous group of female abolitionists who fought the slave trade in Chinese women. With compassion and an investigative historian's sharp eyes, Siler tells the story of both the abolitionists, who challenged the corrosive, anti-Chinese prejudices of the time, and the young women who dared to flee their fate. She relates how the women who ran the house defied contemporary convention, even occasionally broke the law, by physically rescuing children from the brothels where they worked, or snatching them off the ships smuggling them in, and helped bring the exploiters to justice. She has also uncovered the stories of many of the girls and young women who came to the Mission and the lives they later led, sometimes becoming part of the home's staff themselves. A remarkable story of an overlooked part of our history, told with sympathy and vigor.]]> 352 Julia Flynn Siler 1101875267 Tokoro 0 3.93 2019 The White Devil's Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown
author: Julia Flynn Siler
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves: amber-waves, currently-reading
review:

]]> A Woman of Pleasure 185767238
In 1903, a fifteen-year-old girl named Ichi Aoi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan. Despite her modest beginnings in a southern fishing village, she becomes the protégée of an oiran, the highest-ranking courtesan at the brothel. Through the teachings of her oiran, Shinonome, Ichi begins to understand the intertwined power of sex and money. And in her mandatory school lessons, her writing instructor, Tetsuko, encourages Ichi and the others to think clearly and express themselves.

Based on real-life events in Meiji-era Japan, award-winning and critically acclaimed veteran writer Kiyoko Murata re-creates in stunning detail the brutal yet vibrant lives of women in the red-light district at the turn of the twentieth century—the bond they share, the survival skills they pass down, and the power of owning one's language. By banding together, the women organize a strike and walk away from the brothel and into the possibility of new lives.]]> 320 Kiyoko Murata 1640095799 Tokoro 3 3.81 2013 A Woman of Pleasure
author: Kiyoko Murata
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, hoopla, japan
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Scandalous Women: A Novel of Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann]]> 199531788 384 Gill Paul 0063245159 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.18 2024 Scandalous Women: A Novel of Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann
author: Gill Paul
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Gargoyle 3829057 An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time

The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

Already an international literary sensation, the Gargoyle is an Inferno for our time. It will have you believing in the impossible.]]> 16 Andrew Davidson 0739328956 Tokoro 3 3.47 2008 The Gargoyle
author: Andrew Davidson
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2015/06/24
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: mythology, along-winding-cali-roads, pet-project
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last List of Mabel Beaumont]]> 148516779 The list he left had just one item on it. Or, at least, it did at first�

Mabel Beaumont’s husband Arthur loved lists. He’d leave them for her everywhere. ‘Remember: eggs, butter, sugar�. ‘I love you: today, tomorrow, always�.

But now Arthur is gone. He died: softly, gently, not making a fuss. But he’s still left her a list. This one has just one item on it though: ‘Find D�.

Mabel feels sure she knows what it means. She must track down her best friend Dot, who she hasn’t seen since the fateful day she left more than sixty years ago.

It seems impossible. She doesn’t even know if Dot’s still alive. Also, every person Mabel talks to seems to need help first, with missing husbands, daughters, parents. Mabel finds her list is just getting longer, and she’s still no closer to finding Dot.

What she doesn’t know is that her list isn’t just about finding her old friend. And that if she can admit the secrets of the past, maybe she could even find happiness again�

A completely heartbreaking, beautiful, uplifting story, guaranteed to make you smile but also make you cry. Perfect for fans of My Name is Ove, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and The Keeper of Stories.]]> 314 Laura Pearson 1785136054 Tokoro 4 along-winding-cali-roads
I picked this up for audio from the library Hoopla app as one of the app's recommendations with my listening history, because there wasn't much else exciting that was pulling or interesting me. This was unexpectedly sweet and tender, and I loved the British narration.]]> 4.03 2023 The Last List of Mabel Beaumont
author: Laura Pearson
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/10
date added: 2024/04/10
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads
review:
A surprisingly sweet tale of mystery and strength in seeking out an old friend one hasn't been in touch with for 50+ years, of sweet found family after the death of her husband of 50+ years, and of life lessons along the way, of strength to go on and found in relationships, of finding one's resonance in life. Ultimately a book of character and relationships, of finding joy of life, even in old age, and as a widower. Of loving people, having compassion and empathy for people's situations, decisions, and personal selves they are pressured to keep hidden from the judgment of society, and of self-discovery.

I picked this up for audio from the library Hoopla app as one of the app's recommendations with my listening history, because there wasn't much else exciting that was pulling or interesting me. This was unexpectedly sweet and tender, and I loved the British narration.
]]> <![CDATA[The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton]]> 33574120
A revelatory new biography of the sinister, powerful, and paranoid man at the heart of the CIA for more than three tumultuous decades.

CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton was one of the most powerful unelected officials in the United States government in the mid-20th century, a ghost of American power. From World War II to the Cold War, Angleton operated beyond the view of the public, Congress, and even the president. He unwittingly shared intelligence secrets with Soviet spy Kim Philby, a member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring. He launched mass surveillance by opening the mail of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He abetted a scheme to aid Israel’s own nuclear efforts, disregarding U.S. security. He committed perjury and obstructed the JFK assassination investigation. He oversaw a massive spying operation on the antiwar and black nationalist movements and he initiated an obsessive search for communist moles that nearly destroyed the Agency.

In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton’s dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency’s MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew. Yet during his seemingly lawless reign in the CIA, he also proved himself to be a formidable adversary to our nation’s enemies, acquiring a mythic stature within the CIA that continues to this day.]]> 330 Jefferson Morley 1250080614 Tokoro 4 along-winding-cali-roads
One thing I do regret about listening on audio is the discussion on pop culture legend of Angleton in media and novels that I would like to have a list of for reference for further reading.

He is referred to as poet-philosopher-spy because of his education and pedigree, as well as his close relationship with and great respect for poet Ezra Pound. Counterintelligence is to intelligence as epistemology is to philosophy, as a metaphor.

The narrator fit the narration and subject.

Now to attempt to get back to my physical copy of the biography of DCI director, James R. Clapper, a Maryland guy, even!]]> 3.87 2017 The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton
author: Jefferson Morley
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/31
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads
review:
Audiobook. Glad I got some more contextual information regarding Lee Harvey Oswald and suspicions because of his defection in 1959 and activity in Mexico City. One of the most interesting parts was the section on the change in presidential administration to Nixon's, his Watergate scandal and how that finally changed things for the CIA and was ultimately also the undoing of our subject, though it was also interesting to learn of the Chiefs of Staff and the CIA were also pro-war with Fidel by proxy again the Soviet Union and made plans for it, but were thwarted by JFK's aversion towards confrontation against the Soviet Union and what was considered his appeasement of the bloc. Also the early days of the OSS and Angleton's assignments in protecting fascist leaders from judicial war crime indictments. Also, evidence of Israel's ongoing support from the CIA in developing their own secret service and Angleton was partial to the Israelis.

One thing I do regret about listening on audio is the discussion on pop culture legend of Angleton in media and novels that I would like to have a list of for reference for further reading.

He is referred to as poet-philosopher-spy because of his education and pedigree, as well as his close relationship with and great respect for poet Ezra Pound. Counterintelligence is to intelligence as epistemology is to philosophy, as a metaphor.

The narrator fit the narration and subject.

Now to attempt to get back to my physical copy of the biography of DCI director, James R. Clapper, a Maryland guy, even!
]]> Siracusa 27246115 Siracusa unfolds with the pacing of a psychological thriller and delivers an unexpected final act that none will see coming.]]> 304 Delia Ephron 0399165215 Tokoro 0 3.34 2016 Siracusa
author: Delia Ephron
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: adult-learner, avalonian-carnevale-nights, calamity-convo-dzejn-mikael, dialogue, dysfunctional-family, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald's Assassin]]> 148959712 As we approach the sixtieth anniversaries of the murders of Kennedy and Oswald, Jack Ruby’s motives are as maddeningly ambiguous today as they were the day that he pulled the trigger.
The fascinating yet frustrating thing about Ruby is that there is evidence to paint him as at least two different people. Much of his life story points to him as bumbling, vain, violent, and neurotic; a product of the grinding poverty of Chicago’s Jewish ghetto; a man barely able to make a living or sustain a relationship with anyone besides his dogs.
By the same token, evidence exists of Jack Ruby as cagey and competent, perhaps not a mastermind, but a useful pawn of the Mob and of both the police and the FBI; someone capable of running numerous legal, illegal, and semi-legal enterprises, including smuggling arms and vehicles to both sides in the Cuban revolution; someone capable of acting as middleman in bribery schemes to have imprisoned Mob figures set free.
Cultural historian Danny Fingeroth's research includes a new, in-depth interview with Rabbi Hillel Silverman, the legendary Dallas clergyman who visited Ruby regularly in prison and who was witness to Ruby’s descent into madness. Fingeroth also conducted interviews with Ruby family members and associates. The book’s findings will catapult you into a trip through a house of historical mirrors.
At its end, perhaps Jack Ruby’s assault on history will begin to make sense. And perhaps we will understand how Oswald’s assassin led us to the world we live in today.]]> 352 Danny Fingeroth 1641609125 Tokoro 4 3.86 Jack Ruby: The Many Faces of Oswald's Assassin
author: Danny Fingeroth
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/23
date added: 2024/03/23
shelves: along-winding-cali-roads, amber-waves
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Just One Evil Act (Inspector Lynley, #18)]]> 18693633
Azhar is just beginning to accept his soul-crushing loss when Angelina reappears with shocking news: Hadiyyah is missing, kidnapped from an Italian marketplace. The Italian police are investigating, and the Yard won’t get involved, until Barbara takes matters into her own hands -- at the risk of her own career.

As both Barbara and her partner, Inspector Thomas Lynley, soon discover, the case is far more complex than a typical kidnapping, revealing secrets that could have far-reaching effects outside of the investigation. With both her job and the life of a little girl on the line, Barbara must decide what matters most, and how far she’s willing to go to protect it.]]> 736 Elizabeth George 0451467841 Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.88 2013 Just One Evil Act (Inspector Lynley, #18)
author: Elizabeth George
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/20
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Murder in Georgetown (Capital Crimes, #7)]]> 498694 this book is amazing Margaret Truman 068140194X Tokoro 0 currently-reading 3.54 1986 Murder in Georgetown (Capital Crimes, #7)
author: Margaret Truman
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Laziness Does Not Exist 54304124
Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles.

Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity.

Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,� including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.

Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now� (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet ).]]> 256 Devon Price 1982140100 Tokoro 0 to-read 3.91 2021 Laziness Does Not Exist
author: Devon Price
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity]]> 58537365 Celebrating special interests Cultivating Autistic relationships Reframing Autistic stereotypes And rediscovering your valuesIt’s time to honor the needs, diversity, and unique strengths of Autistic people so that they no longer have to mask—and it’s time for greater public acceptance and accommodation of difference. In embracing neurodiversity, we can all reap the rewards of nonconformity and learn to live authentically, Autistic and neurotypical people alike.]]> 304 Devon Price 0593235231 Tokoro 0 to-read 4.38 2022 Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
author: Devon Price
name: Tokoro
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Zone of Interest 25576181 From one of England's most renowned authors, an unforgettable new novel that provides a searing portrait of life-and, shockingly, love-in a concentration camp.

Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favorite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn't show you your reflection. It showed you your soul-it showed you who you really were.

The wizard couldn't look at it without turning away. The king couldn't look at it. The courtiers couldn't look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.

The Zone of Interest is a love story with a violently unromantic setting. Can love survive the mirror? Can we even meet each other's eye, after we have seen who we really are?

In a novel powered by both wit and pathos, Martin Amis excavates the depths and contradictions of the human soul.]]> Martin Amis Tokoro 0 3.15 2014 The Zone of Interest
author: Martin Amis
name: Tokoro
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/07
date added: 2024/03/07
shelves:
review:

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