Michelle's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 09 Apr 2025 14:05:31 -0700 60 Michelle's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg In Five Years 50093704 Where do you see yourself in five years?

When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Kohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend's marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.

After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.

That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.

Brimming with joy and heartbreak, In Five Years is an unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny.]]> 272 Rebecca Serle 1982137444 Michelle 4 3.74 2020 In Five Years
author: Rebecca Serle
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
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]]> <![CDATA[The Beach Hut Murders (The Charity Shop Detective Agency, #2)]]> 181440983
Amongst the rows of charming brightly painted cabins, an elderly man’s beach hut is set on fire in the middle of the night � while he slept inside.

By day, Fiona, Sue and Daisy volunteer at the Dogs Need Nice Homes charity shop. But, by night, they investigate crimes. And they’re determined to get to the bottom of this murder.

Malcolm Crainey was a bit of an eccentric, but he was harmless really. Who would want to kill him?

The ladies soon uncover a long list of possible suspects. Neighbours who hated Malcolm for refusing to swap huts. Members of the snobby beach hut association who took umbrage with Malcom’s quirky beachcombed cabin decorations.

Then another hut is burned down in the dead of night. Thankfully there was no one asleep inside this time. But the pressure is on � can Fiona, Sue and Daisy find the culprit before the beach hut murderer strikes again?]]> 394 Peter Boland 183526025X Michelle 4 4.16 2023 The Beach Hut Murders (The Charity Shop Detective Agency, #2)
author: Peter Boland
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Killers of a Certain Age (Killers of a Certain Age, #1)]]> 60149532 Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that's their secret weapon.

They've spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can't just retire - it's kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller.

Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they've been marked for death.

Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They're about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman--and a killer--of a certain age.]]> 368 Deanna Raybourn 0593200683 Michelle 4 3.82 2022 Killers of a Certain Age (Killers of a Certain Age, #1)
author: Deanna Raybourn
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
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]]> If You Only Knew 23280208 Sisterhood in all its drama, hilarity and tears is at the heart of New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins's thoroughly captivating new novel, featuring the wit and romance that readers have come to expect from the much-loved creator of the Blue Heron series...

Wedding-dress designer Jenny Tate understands the happily-ever-after business, yet somehow she's still involved in her ex-husband's life. In fact, Owen's new wife may—inexplicably—be Jenny's new best friend. Sensing this, well, relationship isn't helping her move on, Jenny trades the Manhattan skyline for her hometown up the Hudson, where she'll be able to bask in her sister Rachel's picture-perfect family life…and hopefully make one of her own.

Her timing couldn't be more perfect, since Rachel will need her younger sister. Her idyllic marriage has just fallen to pieces in spectacular fashion after she discovers her husband sexting with one of his colleagues. Second chances aren't in Rachel's nature, but the desire for an intact family has her rethinking her stance on adultery, much to Jenny's surprise. Rachel points to their parents' "perfect" marriage as a shining example, but to protect her sister Jenny may have to tarnish that memory—and their relationship­—and reveal a secret about their family she's been keeping since childhood.

During this summer of secrets and lies, temptation and revelation, Jenny and Rachel will rely on each other to find the humor in their personal catastrophes, the joy in their triumphs…and the strength to keep hanging on.]]> 416 Kristan Higgins 037378497X Michelle 4 4.00 2015 If You Only Knew
author: Kristan Higgins
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Trace Elements (Commissario Brunetti 29)]]> 220600196
Distracted briefly by Vice Questore Patta’s obsession with youth crime in Venice, Brunetti turns to the remarkable research skills of Patta’s secretary, Signora Elettra Zorzi. With her help, Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the dying woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region.

‘Atmospheric, clever, witty and amusing. If I were only allowed to read one crime series again it would be that of Donna Leon.� ­ The Times]]> 288 Donna Leon 1787465128 Michelle 4 3.73 2020 Trace Elements (Commissario Brunetti 29)
author: Donna Leon
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/04/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Charity Shop Detective Agency (The Charity Shop Detective Agency #1)]]> 63886687
Eighty-six-year-old Sarah Brown was found murdered in her hallway by her delivery man, a domino clutched in her hand � with a name scratched on it.

When another person is found dead with a domino in their hand, and with the police making no progress, the ladies will need to help unmask a serial killer. But at least they have Fiona’s scruffy-haired terrier cross to assist them.

With plenty of tea and cake along the way, and despite squabbles with their rivals, the Cats Alliance across the street, the Charity Shop Detective Agency is born.]]> 371 Peter Boland 1804056618 Michelle 4 3.88 2022 The Charity Shop Detective Agency (The Charity Shop Detective Agency #1)
author: Peter Boland
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> The Trust (Astrid Swift #1) 59486134
Her new job at a nearby National Trust stately home brings a few surprises, too. Rather than a genteel charity, the Trust is a hotbed of politics and intrigue. As her new friend Kath from the village says, 'It's like the mafia, but with scones.' So when a local man is found murdered there, there are more than a few suspects. Astrid thinks she's perfectly placed to solve the case: it's like restoring a painting, slowly peeling back the layers to reveal the clear, true picture beneath.

But as the suspicious deaths mount up and the threat draws closer, Astrid has to use every gadget in her restorer's toolkit to solve the mystery, save her reputation - and maybe even her life.]]> 336 M.H. Eccleston 1803280360 Michelle 4 3.55 2022 The Trust (Astrid Swift #1)
author: M.H. Eccleston
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Henna Artist (The Jaipur Trilogy, #1)]]> 50607466 Vivid and compelling in its portrait of one woman’s struggle for fulfillment in a society pivoting between the traditional and the modern, The Henna Artist opens a door into a world that is at once lush and fascinating, stark and cruel.

Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist—and confidante—to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the secrets of the wealthy, she can never reveal her own�

Known for her original designs and sage advice, Lakshmi must tread carefully to avoid the jealous gossips who could ruin her reputation and her livelihood. As she pursues her dream of an independent life, she is startled one day when she is confronted by her husband, who has tracked her down these many years later with a high-spirited young girl in tow—a sister Lakshmi never knew she had. Suddenly the caution that she has carefully cultivated as protection is threatened. Still she perseveres, applying her talents and lifting up those that surround her as she does.]]> 384 Alka Joshi 0778310205 Michelle 4 4.14 2020 The Henna Artist (The Jaipur Trilogy, #1)
author: Alka Joshi
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/31
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]]> Measuring Up 50997628
Since she can’t go to A-má, Cici cooks up a plan to bring A-má to her by winning the grand prize in a kidsâ€� cooking contest to pay for A-má’s plane ticket!ÌýThere’s just one problem: Cici only knows how to cook Taiwanese food.

And after her pickled cucumber debacle at lunch, she’s determined to channel her inner Julia Child. Can Cici find a winning recipe to reunite with A-má, a way to fit in with her new friends, and somehow find herself too?]]> 208 Lily LaMotte 006297386X Michelle 0 to-read 4.24 2020 Measuring Up
author: Lily LaMotte
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America]]> 55959466 From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans.

America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin. It is the fantastic tale of slaves that spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and negro spirituals. It is a sugarcoated legend based on an almost true story.

It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie.

±õ²ÔÌýBlack AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history. Combining unapologetically provocative storytelling with meticulous research based on primary sources as well as the work of pioneering Black historians, scholars, and journalists, Harriot removes the white sugarcoating from the American story, placing Black people squarely at the center. With incisive wit, Harriot speaks hilarious truth to oppressive power, subverting conventional historical narratives with little-known stories about the experiences of Black Americans. From the African Americans who arrived before 1619 to the unenslavable bandit who inspired America’s first police force, this long overdue corrective provides a revealing look into our past that is as urgent as it is necessary. For too long, we have refused to acknowledge that American history is white history. Not this one. This history is Black AF.Ìý±Õ±Õ> 432 Michael Harriot 0358439167 Michelle 5 4.59 2023 Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
author: Michael Harriot
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
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Everyone� everyone should read this incredible book. So much clarity about history has shaped our nation in ways that many people are unaware of. Must-read
]]> <![CDATA[Come Fly The World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am]]> 53968539 Mad Men–era of commercial flight, Pan Am World Airways attracted the kind of young woman who wanted out, and wanted up

Required to have a college degree, speak two languages, and possess the political savvy of a Foreign Service officer, a jet-age stewardess serving on iconic Pan Am between 1966 and 1975 also had to be between 5�3" and 5�9", between 105 and 140 pounds, and under 26 years of age at the time of hire. Julia Cooke’s intimate storytelling weaves together the real-life stories of a memorable cast of characters, from Lynne Totten, a science major who decided life in a lab was not for her, to Hazel Bowie, one of the relatively few black stewardesses of the era, as they embraced the liberation of their new jet-set life.

Cooke brings to life the story of Pan Am stewardesses� role in the Vietnam War, as the airline added runs from Saigon to Hong Kong for planeloads of weary young soldiers straight from the battlefields, who were off for five days of R&R, and then flown back to war. Finally, with Operation Babylift—the dramatic evacuation of 2,000 children during the fall of Saigon—the book’s special cast of stewardesses unites to play an extraordinary role on the world stage.]]> 288 Julia Cooke 0358251400 Michelle 0 to-read 3.63 2021 Come Fly The World: The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am
author: Julia Cooke
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics]]> 63971279
Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life. In so doing, Curwood suggests new truths for understanding the social movements of Chisholm's time and the opportunities she forged for herself through multicultural, multigenerational, and cross-gender coalition building.]]> 472 Anastasia C. Curwood 1469671174 Michelle 0 to-read 4.15 Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics
author: Anastasia C. Curwood
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Hitchcock's Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director's Dark Obsession]]> 78299256
Alfred Hitchcock was fixated—not just on the dark, twisty stories that became his hallmark, but also by the blond actresses who starred in many of his iconic movies. The director of North by Northwest , Rear Window , and other classic films didn’t much care if they wore wigs, got their hair coloring out of a bottle, or were the rarest human specimen—a natural blonde—as long as they shone with a golden veneer on camera. The lengths he went to in order to showcase (and often manipulate) these women would become the stuff of movie legend. But the women themselves have rarely been at the center of the story, until now.

In Hitchcock’s Blondes, bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer offers an intimate journey into the lives of eight legendary actresses whose stories helped chart the course of the troubled, talented director’s career—from his early days in the British film industry, to his triumphant American debut, to his Hollywood heyday and beyond. Through the stories of June Howard-Tripp, Madeleine Carroll, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and Tippi Hedren—who starred in fourteen of Hitchcock’s most notable films and who bore the brunt of his fondness and sometimes fixation—we can finally start to see the enigmatic man himself. After all, “his� blondes (as he thought of them) knew the truths of his art, his obsessions and desires, as well as anyone.

From the acclaimed author of Capote’s Women comes an intimate, revealing, and thoroughly modern look at both the enduring art created by a man obsessed…and the private toll that fixation took on the women in his orbit.]]> 336 Laurence Leamer 0593542975 Michelle 0 to-read 3.38 2023 Hitchcock's Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director's Dark Obsession
author: Laurence Leamer
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age]]> 195791072 The never-before-told story of the women Egyptologists who paved the way of exploration in Egypt and created the basis for Egyptology.

The history of Egyptology is often told as yet one more grand narrative of powerful men striving to seize the day and the precious artifacts for their competing homelands. But that is only half of the story. During the so-called Golden Age of Exploration, there were women working and exploring before Howard Carter discovered the tomb of King Tut. Before men even conceived of claiming the story for themselves, women were working in Egypt to lay the groundwork for all future exploration.

In Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age, Kathleen Sheppard brings the untold stories of these women back into this narrative. Sheppard begins with some of the earliest European women who ventured to Egypt as travelers: Amelia Edwards, Jenny Lane, and Marianne Brocklehurst. Their travelogues, diaries and maps chronicled a new world for the curious. In the vast desert, Maggie Benson, the first woman granted permission to excavate in Egypt, met Nettie Gourlay, the woman who became her lifelong companion. They battled issues of oppression and exclusion and, ultimately, are credited with excavating the Temple of Mut.

As each woman scored a success in the desert, she set up the women who came later for their own struggles and successes. Emma Andrews� success as a patron and archaeologist helped to pave the way for Margaret Murray to teach. Margaret’s work in the university led to the artists Amice Calverley’s and Myrtle Broome’s ability to work on site at Abydos, creating brilliant reproductions of tomb art, and to Kate Bradbury’s and Caroline Ransom’s leadership in critical Egyptological institutions. Women in the Valley of the Kings upends the grand male narrative of Egyptian exploration and shows how a group of courageous women charted unknown territory and changed the field of Egyptology forever.]]> 320 Kathleen Sheppard 125028435X Michelle 0 to-read 3.52 2024 Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age
author: Kathleen Sheppard
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women]]> 215749015 A fun and fascinating social history of the famed Katharine Gibbs School, which from the 1910s to the 1960s, trained women for executive secretary positions but surreptitiously was instilling the self-confidence and strategic know-how necessary for them to claim equality, power, and authority in the wider world.Ìý
Ìý
It’s a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV seriesÌýMad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday synonymous with supplying secretaries—always properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white gloves—to male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a “Gibbs girlâ€� on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 120 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool to assume positions of power on the other side of the desk. And Gibbs graduates did just that, paving the way for 21st-century women to succeed in anyÌýprofession they choose.

Katharine Gibbs was one her own success stories. She started her school when, as a 46-year-old widow, she was left near-broke with two young sons. The school taught typing and stenography but Gibbs also hired accomplished professors from elite colleges to teach academic subjects—it was a well-rounded education that produced early feminists ready to tackle the sexism of their era. "Expect great things!" was her motto and her philosophy.ÌýWithin a decade she’d opened schools in three elegant locations. With nostalgic period photographs throughout, Expect Great Things!Ìýtakes us back to Katie Gibbs’s life and tells the stories of the women she influenced. We meet Gibbs graduates who worked for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Howard Hughes, Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe. Others forged pathfinding roles as an Emmy-winning television star, a women’s rights advisor to four U.S. presidents, a writer of Wonder Woman comic books, the head of the Women’s Marines, a best-selling young adult author, and a U.S. Ambassador.

For readers of The Barbizon and Come Fly the World, Expect Great Things! reveals the seismic impact the Katharine Gibbs school had on the American workplace—and on women’s opportunities today.


Ìý
Ìý]]> 320 Vanda Krefft 1643753177 Michelle 0 to-read 4.16 Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women
author: Vanda Krefft
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective]]> 210129411 A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account—and how they became a cultural sensation
Ìý
From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realise that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves.
Ìý
Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten women’s lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine who got the better of love rats, burglars, and murderers alike.
Ìý
How did the morally ambiguous work of real women detectives, sometimes paid to betray their fellow women, compare with the exploits of their fictional counterparts, who always save the day? Lodge’s book takes us into the murky underworld of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the female detective as both an unacknowledged labourer and a feminist icon.]]> 384 Sara Lodge 0300277881 Michelle 0 to-read 3.77 2024 The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective
author: Sara Lodge
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> Didion and Babitz 207293782 Joan Didion is revealed at last in this outrageously provocative and profoundly moving new work on the mutual attractions—and mutual antipathies—of Didion and Didion’s fellow literary titan, Eve Babitz. “Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan?� —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972 Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in a closet in the back of an apartment full of wrack, ruin, and filth was a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. These boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. journals, photos, scrapbooks, manuscripts, letters. inside a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and was centered on a two-story house rented by Joan Didion and her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood. 7406 Franklin Avenue, a combination salon-hotbed-living end where writers and artists mixed with movie stars, rock n� rollers, drug trash. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American Joan Didion, cool and reserved behind her oversized sunglasses and storied marriage, a union as tortured as it was enduring. 7406 Franklin Avenue was the breaking and then the remaking—and thus the true making—of another great American Eve Babitz, goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, nude of Marcel Duchamp, consort of Jim Morrison (among many, many others), who burned so hot she finally almost burned herself alive. The two formed a complicated a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity; a friendship that was as rare as true love, as rare as true hate. Didion, in spite of her confessional style, her widespread fame, is so little known or understood. She’s remained opaque, elusive. Until now. With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz—Babitz’s brilliance of observation, Babitz’s incisive intelligence, and, most of all, Babitz’s diary-like letters—as the key to unlocking the mighty and mysterious Didion.]]> 352 Lili Anolik 1668065487 Michelle 0 to-read 3.21 2024 Didion and Babitz
author: Lili Anolik
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language]]> 41716694
Amanda Montell, feminist linguist and staff features editor at online beauty and health magazine Byrdie.com, deconstructs language—from insults and cursing to grammar and pronunciation patterns—to reveal the ways it has been used for centuries to keep women form gaining equality. Ever wonder why so many people are annoyed when women use the word “like� as a filler? Or why certain gender neutral terms stick and others don’t? Or even how linguists have historically discussed women’s speech patterns? Wordslut is no stuffy academic study; Montell’s irresistible humor shines through, making linguistics not only approachable but both downright hilarious and profound.]]> 304 Amanda Montell 006286887X Michelle 0 to-read 4.26 2019 Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language
author: Amanda Montell
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman]]> 33257571 From celebrity gossip expert and BuzzFeed culture writer Anne Helen Petersen comes an accessible, analytical look at how female celebrities are pushing boundaries of what it means to be an "acceptable" woman.

You know the type: the woman who won't shut up, who's too brazen, too opinionated--too much. It's not that she's an outcast (she might even be your friend or your wife, or your mother) so much as she's a social variable. Sometimes, she's the life of the party; others, she's the center of gossip. She's the unruly woman, and she's one of the most provocative, powerful forms of womanhood today.

There have been unruly women for as long as there have been boundaries of what constitutes acceptable "feminine" behavior, but there's evidence that she's on the rise--more visible and less easily dismissed--than ever before. In Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud, Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of "unruliness" to explore the ascension of eleven contemporary powerhouses: Serena Williams, Melissa McCarthy, Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer, Nicki Minaj, Kim Kardashian, Hillary Clinton, Caitlyn Jenner, Jennifer Weiner, and Lena Dunham.

Petersen explores why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures, each of whom has been conceived as "too" something: too queer, too strong, too honest, too old, too pregnant, too shrill, too much. With its brisk, incisive analysis, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.]]> 234 Anne Helen Petersen 0399576851 Michelle 0 to-read 3.76 2017 Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman
author: Anne Helen Petersen
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger]]> 38532207 A transformative book urging twenty-first century-women to embrace their anger and harness it as a tool for lasting personal and societal change.

Women are angry, and it isn’t hard to figure out why.

We are underpaid and overworked. Too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. Too dowdy or too made-up. Too big or too thin. Sluts or prudes. We are harassed, told we are asking for it, and asked if it would kill us to smile. Yes, yes it would.

Contrary to the rhetoric of popular “self-help� and an entire lifetime of being told otherwise, our rage is one of the most important resources we have, our sharpest tool against both personal and political oppression. We’ve been told for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet our anger is a vital instrument, our radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power.

We are so often told to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements in this world would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Rage Becomes Her makes the case that anger is not what gets in our way, it is our way, sparking a new understanding of one of our core emotions that will give women a liberating sense of why their anger matters and connect them to an entire universe of women no longer interested in making nice at all costs.

Following in the footsteps of classic feminist manifestos like The Feminine Mystique and Our Bodies, Ourselves, Rage Becomes Her is an eye-opening book for the twenty-first century woman: an engaging, accessible credo offering us the tools to re-understand our anger and harness its power to create lasting positive change.]]> 364 Soraya Chemaly 1501189557 Michelle 0 to-read 4.36 2018 Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger
author: Soraya Chemaly
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told)]]> 195790756 An inclusive and essential guide to reproductive health—including period problems, pelvic pain, menopause, fertility, sexual health, vaginal and urinary conditions, and overall wellbeing―from leading expert Dr. Karen Tang

Reproductive healthcare, from abortion to gender-affirming care, is under siege. The onus continues to fall on patients to find and advocate for the care they need. Dr. Karen Tang is on a mission to transform how women engage with their bodies and their healthcare.

Did you know that one in three women experiences menstrual abnormalities or pelvic issues, yet these conditions are overwhelmingly misunderstood, misdiagnosed, or dismissed? The root causes for these issues, such as polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis, fibroids, ovarian cysts, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and pelvic-floor muscle dysfunction, don’t receive the stream of funding for research and new treatments that other conditions do, despite the potential to affect up to half the population.

It’s Not Hysteria is a comprehensive guide to common conditions and potential treatment options, with practical tools such as symptom prompts and sample questions to ask one's provider. In the face of uncertainty and misinformation, It’s Not Hysteria is destined to become a new classic that educates and empowers.]]> 384 Karen Tang 1250894158 Michelle 0 to-read 4.21 2024 It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (But Were Never Told)
author: Karen Tang
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom]]> 211003829 Timely and thought-provoking, Nancy Reddy unpacks and debunks the bad ideas that have for too long defined what it means to be a "good" mom.

When Nancy Reddy had her first child she found herself suddenly confronted with the ideal of a perfect mother—a woman who was constantly available, endlessly patient, and immediately invested in her child to the exclusion of all else. Reddy had been raised by a single working mother, considered herself a feminist, and was well on her way to a PhD. Why did doing motherhood "right" feel so wrong?

For answers Reddy turned to the mid-20th century social scientists and psychologists whose work still forms the basis of so much of what we believe about parenting. It seems ludicrous to imagine modern moms taking advice from mid-century researchers, yet their bad ideas about so-called “good� motherhood have seeped pervasively into our cultural norms. In The Good Mother Myth, Reddy debunks the flawed lab studies, sloppy research, and straightforward misogyny of researchers from Harry Harlow, who claimed to have discovered love by observing monkeys in his lab, to the famous Dr. Spock, whose bestselling parenting guide included just one illustration of a father interacting with his child. Blending history of science, cultural criticism, and memoir, The Good Mother Myth pulls back the curtain on the flawed social science behind our contemporary understanding of what makes a good mom.]]> 256 Nancy Reddy 1250336643 Michelle 0 to-read 3.72 2025 The Good Mother Myth: Unlearning Our Bad Ideas About How to Be a Good Mom
author: Nancy Reddy
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Black Girls Breathing: Heal from Trauma, Combat Chronic Stress, and Find Your Freedom]]> 210594656 From breathwork practitioner and the founder of black girls breathing®, a practical path for Black women to heal trauma, combat chronic stress, and find freedom in their own bodies and minds—think What Happened to You? meets Breath for readers of Rest is Resistance.Ìý It's no secret that Black women have been oppressed for centuries and, as a Black woman herself, Jasmine Marie knows the impact that intergenerational trauma and systemic racism have had—and continue to have—on her community. Those experiences are why she founded a breathwork company dedicated to helping Black women access somatic practices and understand the power of the mind‑body connection to undo the trauma the carry. In Black Girls Breathing, Jasmine Marie shares the science-backed tools and wisdom of her program to help Connect more fully to their bodies. Give themselves permission to rest. Heal the chronic stress they carry in their bodies and nervous systems. Address their emotional pain. Rebuild themselves and their communities. Ultimately, this book is a long-overdue resource for every Strong Black The woman ready to break cycles of trauma, heal the internalized beliefs of perfectionism and conditional self‑worth, and listen to the wisdom of her inner voice.]]> 240 Jasmine Marie 1538756625 Michelle 0 to-read 4.19 Black Girls Breathing: Heal from Trauma, Combat Chronic Stress, and Find Your Freedom
author: Jasmine Marie
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.19
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]]> <![CDATA[Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known About Menopause]]> 216351864
At thirty-six, Naomi Watts had just completed filming King Kong and was trying to start a family when she was told that she was on the brink of menopause. It is estimated that seventy-five million women in the United States are currently dealing with menopause symptoms (dry itchy skin, raging hormones, night sweats), and yet the very word “menopause� continues to be associated with stigma and confusion. With so little information, many women feel unprepared, ashamed, and deeply alone when the time comes.

This is the book Naomi Watts wishes she had when she first started experiencing symptoms. Like sitting down over coffee and having an intimate chat with your girlfriend, Dare I Say It blends funny and poignant stories from Naomi and her friends with advice from doctors, hormone experts, and nutritionists to take the secrecy and shame out of menopause and aging. Answering questions such as: What’s hormone therapy and should I be on it? Will I ever sleep again? Will I get myself back? What happened to my libido? Do I need eighteen serums for my aging skin? Whose body is this anyway? Who am I now? Naomi Watts shares the most up-to-date research on how to manage menopause symptoms and tackle the physical and emotional challenges we encounter as we age.

Irreverent, bold, and reassuring, Dare I Say It is the companion every woman needs to embrace the best version of herself as she moves into what can be the most powerful and satisfying period of her life.]]> 256 Naomi Watts 059372903X Michelle 0 to-read 3.99 2025 Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I'd Known About Menopause
author: Naomi Watts
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 665 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Michelle 3 4.56 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
]]> 318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X Michelle 4 4.05 2022 The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> Famous Last Words 212421066
From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes an addictive thriller about a new mother’s world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie?

It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.

Then it starts. Breaking news: there's a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn't a hostage. Her husband—doting father, eternal optimist—is the gunman.

What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says...

Famous Last Words is the story of a crime, a marriage, and more secrets than Camilla ever could have imagined. This novel cements Gillian McAllister’s reputation as “the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.� (Emily Henry)]]> 336 Gillian McAllister 0063338424 Michelle 4 3.73 2025 Famous Last Words
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> <![CDATA[All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells Michelle 0 to-read 4.11 2017 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
author: Martha Wells
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> Under the Whispering Door 53205888 Welcome to Charon's Crossing.
The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through.

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead.

And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.

But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.]]> 376 T.J. Klune 1250217342 Michelle 5 4.11 2021 Under the Whispering Door
author: T.J. Klune
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2020/03/14
date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Unto Us a Son Is Given (Commissario Brunetti, #28)]]> 40642338 Unto Us A Son Is Given. "The world we live in makes that necessary," Brunetti presciently replies. Count Falier was urging his Venetian son-in-law to investigate, and preferably intervene in, the seemingly innocent plan of the Count's best friend, the elderly Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejada, to adopt a much younger man as his son. Under Italian inheritance laws this man would then be heir to Gonzalo's entire fortune, a prospect Gonzalo's friends find appalling. For his part, Brunetti wonders why the old man, a close family friend, can't be allowed his pleasure in peace. And yet, what seems innocent on the Venetian surface can cause tsunamis beneath. Gonzalo unexpectedly, and literally, drops dead on the street, and one of his friends just arrived in Venice for the memorial service, is strangled in her hotel room--having earlier sent Gonzalo an email saying "We are the only ones who know you cannot do this," referring to the adoption. Now with an urgent case to solve, Brunetti reluctantly untangles the long-hidden mystery in Gonzalo's life that ultimately led to murder--a resolution that brings him way more pain than satisfaction.

Once again, Donna Leon brilliantly plumbs the twists and turns of the human condition, reuniting us with some of crime fiction's most memorable and enduring characters.]]> 259 Donna Leon 0802129110 Michelle 4 3.93 2019 Unto Us a Son Is Given (Commissario Brunetti, #28)
author: Donna Leon
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> The Old Girls' Chateau Escape 212346644
When, at the age of 71, Gina Knight's husband of four decades left her unexpectedly, she thought her life over. Until she met Dorothy Reed � a woman so full of the joie de vivre you'd think she was 21, not nearly 90. Gina would do anything for Dorothy. So when Dorothy suggests she take on the role of companion for one of Dorothy's old friends, Gina sees no reason to say no.

Meredith Harper is a successful writer, living in Provence, and needs help looking after her husband, whose health is deteriorating. But when Gina arrives at the grand chateau, it becomes clear that Dorothy has not given Gina the full story. Because Meredith is also writing her memoirs, and Dorothy wants to know the contents before anyone else. So much so, she's sent Gina to spy.

But what secrets is Meredith keeping? And will Gina be able to find out the truth before her cover's blown?]]> Kate Galley 1835338763 Michelle 4 4.14 The Old Girls' Chateau Escape
author: Kate Galley
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/07
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]]> The Lost Story 199927030 The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons� investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.]]> 352 Meg Shaffer 0593598873 Michelle 0 to-read 3.78 2024 The Lost Story
author: Meg Shaffer
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> The Appeal (The Appeal, #1) 58070070 448 Janice Hallett 1982187468 Michelle 0 to-read 3.81 2021 The Appeal (The Appeal, #1)
author: Janice Hallett
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> <![CDATA[Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop]]> 133938826 should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighborhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop.

The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings.

Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that bind them, Yeongju begins to write a new chapter in her life. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop evolves into a warm, welcoming haven for lost souls—a place to rest, heal, and remember that it’s never too late to scrap the plot and start over.]]> 307 Hwang Bo-Reum Michelle 0 to-read 3.94 2022 Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop
author: Hwang Bo-Reum
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> The Lions of Fifth Avenue 56219106 Ìý
“A page-turner for booklovers everywhere! . . . A story of family ties, their lost dreams, and the redemption that comes fromÌýdiscovering truth.â€â€”Adriana Trigiani,Ìýbestselling author ofÌý The Shoemaker's WifeÌý

In New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis's latest historical novel, a series of book thefts roils the iconic New York Public Library, leaving two generations of strong-willed women to pick up the pieces.

It's 1913, and on the surface, Laura Lyons couldn't ask for more out of life—her husband is the superintendent of the New York Public Library, allowing their family to live in an apartment within the grand building, and they are blessed with two children. But headstrong, passionate Laura wants more, and when she takes a leap of faith and applies to the Columbia Journalism School, her world is cracked wide open. As her studies take her all over the city, she is drawn to Greenwich Village's new bohemia, where she discovers the Heterodoxy Club—a radical, all-female group in which women are encouraged to loudly share their opinions on suffrage, birth control, and women's rights. Soon, Laura finds herself questioning her traditional role as wife and mother. And when valuable books are stolen back at the library, threatening the home and institution she loves, she's forced to confront her shifting priorities head on . . . and may just lose everything in the process.

Eighty years later, in 1993, Sadie Donovan struggles with the legacy of her grandmother, the famous essayist Laura Lyons, especially after she's wrangled her dream job as a curator at the New York Public Library. But the job quickly becomes a nightmare when rare manuscripts, notes, and books for the exhibit Sadie's running begin disappearing from the library's famous Berg Collection. Determined to save both the exhibit and her career, the typically risk-averse Sadie teams up with a private security expert to uncover the culprit. However, things unexpectedly become personal when the investigation leads Sadie to some unwelcome truths about her own family heritage—truths that shed new light on the biggest tragedy in the library's history.]]> 384 Fiona Davis 1524744638 Michelle 0 to-read 3.94 2020 The Lions of Fifth Avenue
author: Fiona Davis
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> No Two Persons 63226821
That was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go�

Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.

Together, their stories reveal how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways―and how we are all more closely connected to one another than we might think.]]> 301 Erica Bauermeister 1250284384 Michelle 0 to-read 4.25 2023 No Two Persons
author: Erica Bauermeister
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> The Lost Bookshop 123167182
‘The thing about books,� she said ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.�

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found�

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder� where nothing is as it seems.]]> 435 Evie Woods 0008609217 Michelle 0 to-read 3.92 2023 The Lost Bookshop
author: Evie Woods
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> Homecoming 61683285
Sixty years later, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for almost twenty years, she now finds herself laid off from her full-time job and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother, Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and been raced to the hospital.

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

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

An epic novel that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, and how we protect the lies we tell. It explores the power of motherhood, the corrosive effects of tightly held secrets, and the healing nature of truth. Above all, it is a beguiling and immensely satisfying novel from one of the finest writers working today.]]> 547 Kate Morton 0063020890 Michelle 5 4.00 2023 Homecoming
author: Kate Morton
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/03/06
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]]> Conclave 29397486
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and eighteen cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world’s most secretive election.

They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals.

Over the next seventy-two hours one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.]]> 288 Robert Harris Michelle 0 4.01 2016 Conclave
author: Robert Harris
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/02
date added: 2025/03/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun (Finlay Donovan, #3)]]> 60784612
Mob boss Feliks is still running the show from behind bars, and he has a task for Finlay: find and identify a contract killer before the cops do. The problem is, the killer might be an officer themself.

Luckily, hot cop Nick has just been tasked with starting up a citizen's police academy, and combined pressure from Finlay's looming book deadline and Feliks is enough to convince Finlay and Vero to get involved. Through firearm training and forensic classes (and some hands-on research with a tempting detective), Finlay and Vero use their time in police academy to sleuth out the real contract killer to free themselves from the mob's clutches―all the while dodging spies, confronting Vero's past, and juggling the daily trials of parenthood.

From USA Today bestseller and Edgar-Award nominee Elle Cosimano, comes Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun—the highly anticipated, hilarious, and heart-pounding next installment in the beloved Finlay Donovan ²õ±ð°ù¾±±ð²õâ€�]]> 304 Elle Cosimano 125084603X Michelle 4 3.80 2023 Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun (Finlay Donovan, #3)
author: Elle Cosimano
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
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]]> Sky Full of Elephants 207293815 In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial� America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.]]> 304 Cebo Campbell 1668034921 Michelle 0 to-read 3.82 2024 Sky Full of Elephants
author: Cebo Campbell
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)]]> 55077538
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu uses the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

Mulan meets The Song of Achilles; an accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China.]]> 414 Shelley Parker-Chan 1250621801 Michelle 0 to-read 3.81 2021 She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)
author: Shelley Parker-Chan
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead (Finlay Donovan, #2)]]> 57693474
On the not-so-bright side, someone out there wants her ex-husband, Steven, out of the picture. Permanently. Whatever else Steven may be, he's a good father, but saving him will send her down a rabbit hole of hit-women disguised as soccer moms, and a little bit more involvement with the Russian mob than she'd like.

Meanwhile, Vero's keeping secrets, and Detective Nick Anthony seems determined to get back into her life. He may be a hot cop, but Finlay's first priority is preventing her family from sleeping with the fishes... and if that means bending a few laws then so be it.

With her next book's deadline looming and an ex-husband to keep alive, Finlay is quickly coming to the end of her rope. She can only hope there isn't a noose at the end of it...

From Edgar-Award nominee Elle Cosimano, comes Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead―the hilarious and heart-pounding follow-up to Finlay Donovan is Killing It.]]> 357 Elle Cosimano 1250242185 Michelle 4 3.95 2022 Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead (Finlay Donovan, #2)
author: Elle Cosimano
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Finlay Donovan Is Killing It (Finlay Donovan, #1)]]> 53138099 Finlay Donovan is Killing It.

Finlay Donovan is killing it . . . except, she’s really not. She’s a stressed-out single-mom of two and struggling novelist, Finlay’s life is in chaos: the new book she promised her literary agent isn’t written, her ex-husband fired the nanny without telling her, and this morning she had to send her four-year-old to school with hair duct-taped to her head after an incident with scissors.

When Finlay is overheard discussing the plot of her new suspense novel with her agent over lunch, she’s mistaken for a contract killer, and inadvertently accepts an offer to dispose of a problem husband in order to make ends meet . . . Soon, Finlay discovers that crime in real life is a lot more difficult than its fictional counterpart, as she becomes tangled in a real-life murder investigation.

Fast-paced, deliciously witty, and wholeheartedly authentic in depicting the frustrations and triumphs of motherhood in all its messiness, hilarity, and heartfelt moment, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It is the first in a brilliant new series from YA Edgar Award nominee Elle Cosimano.]]> 355 Elle Cosimano 1250241707 Michelle 4 3.99 2021 Finlay Donovan Is Killing It (Finlay Donovan, #1)
author: Elle Cosimano
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[One Good Turn (Jackson Brodie, #2)]]> 501124
The event thrusts Jackson into the orbit of the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a washed-up comedian, a successful crime novelist, a mysterious Russian woman, and a female police detective. Each of them hiding a secret, each looking for love or money or redemption or escape, they all play a role in driving Jackson out of retirement and into the middle of several mysteries that intersect in one sinister scheme.

Kate Atkinson "writes such fluid, sparkling prose that an ingenious plot almost seems too much to ask, but we get it anyway," writes Laura Miller for Salon. With a keen eye for the excesses of modern life, a warm understanding of the frailties of the human heart, and a genius for plots that turn and twist, Atkinson has written a novel that delights and surprises from the first page to the last.]]> 418 Kate Atkinson 0316012823 Michelle 0 3.78 2006 One Good Turn (Jackson Brodie, #2)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Black Cake 57926137 We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right�? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.]]> 385 Charmaine Wilkerson Michelle 4 4.06 2022 Black Cake
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)]]> 54675424 The first book in Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie Mysteries series, called "The best mystery of the decade" by Stephen King, finds private investigator Jackson Brodie following three seemingly unconnected family mysteries in Edinburg.

Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night.

Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack.

Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.

Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge . . .]]> 328 Kate Atkinson Michelle 4 3.80 2004 Case Histories (Jackson Brodie, #1)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/15
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]]> Trust 58210933 An unparalleled novel about money, power, intimacy, and perception

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly boundless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Hernan Diaz's TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation.

At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.]]> 402 Hernan Diaz 0593420314 Michelle 4 3.77 2022 Trust
author: Hernan Diaz
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
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]]> The Once and Future King 43545 639 T.H. White 0441627404 Michelle 0 to-read 4.07 1958 The Once and Future King
author: T.H. White
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Scarlet Pimpernel 136116 182 Emmuska Orczy 1576469239 Michelle 0 to-read 4.07 1905 The Scarlet Pimpernel
author: Emmuska Orczy
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1905
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
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]]> Crime and Punishment 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Michelle 0 4.26 1866 Crime and Punishment
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
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]]> The Last Anniversary 123280121 Sophie Honeywell always wondered if Thomas Gordon was the one she let get away. He was the perfect boyfriend, but on the day he was to propose, she broke his heart. A year later he married his travel agent, while Sophie has been mortifyingly single ever since. Now Thomas is back in her life because Sophie has unexpectedly inherited his aunt Connie's house on Scribbly Gum Island -- home of the famously unsolved MunroBabymystery.

Sophie moves onto the island and begins a new life as part of an unconventional family where it seems everyone has a secret. Grace, a beautiful young mother, is feverishly planning a shocking escape from her perfect life. Margie, a frumpy housewife, has made a pact with a stranger, while dreamy Aunt Rose wonders if maybe it's about time she started making her own decisions.

As Sophie's life becomes increasingly complicated, she discovers that sometimes you have to stop waiting around -- and come up with your own fairy-tale ending.

As she so adroitly did in her smashing debut novel, Three Wishes, the incomparable Liane Moriarty once again combines sharp wit, lovable and eccentric characters, and a page-turning story for an unforgettable Last Anniversary.

]]> 483 Liane Moriarty Michelle 3 4.03 2006 The Last Anniversary
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[A Swarm of Butterflies (Nell Ward, #6)]]> 110776549
When Finchmere's first summer fete turns fatal, Nell has more than just a killer to net...

Since their YouTube channel, Following Finchmere, has taken flight, showcasing Dr Nell Ward's sustainability transformation at her family's Finchmere estate, it's her partner and colleague, Rav, who's become the star.

Amongst Rav's fan mail and gifts, Nell makes the chilling discovery that one person's obsession with him has metamorphosed into a deadly threat.

Just as Finchmere flings open its gates to welcome swarms of visitors to their idyllic summer fete - celebrating rewilding, artisan produce and local crafts - Nell realises the disguised peril has already wormed its way into the heart of Finchmere itself, and the path of destruction soon leads to murder.

DI James Clark's and Nell's powers of observation are put to the test to detect the camouflaged predator. With everyone as a suspect, who can Nell really trust when those she loves are in danger?

A Swarm of Butterflies is the sixth book in the Dr Nell Ward series. Perfect for fans of Richard Osman, Robert Thorogood and Janice Hallett!]]> 275 Sarah Yarwood-Lovett 1471414523 Michelle 4 3.98 2024 A Swarm of Butterflies (Nell Ward, #6)
author: Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/30
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]]> Weyward 127280850
2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.]]> 392 Emilia Hart 1250842727 Michelle 0 to-read 4.02 2023 Weyward
author: Emilia Hart
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Woman in Coach D 217587790 “Let the fear set you free, Jenny.�

It’s been sixteen years since Susie Patterson last told me those words. Sixteen years since our ever-escalating dares and challenges finally went too far, and my best friend plunged into the icy waters of Hangman’s Cave never to be seen again.

I’ve spent every moment since trying to come to terms with what happened - and recover the memories I lost the night my best friend died. I’ve been a wreck - tormented by panic attacks, treated like a pariah, and never quite certain that all the terrible things people whisper about me behind my back aren’t true.

All I know for certain is that the night Susie died, the person I used to be died as well.

Except suddenly, I’ve discovered that Susie’s not dead. I saw her again just now, getting off the same train as me at Manchester Piccadilly station. I looked into her eyes, and they were exactly the same as the eyes I used to stare into back when we were teenagers.

It shouldn’t be possible. I thought my fractured mind was playing tricks on me. There’s no way Susie could still be alive all these years later�

Then, the letter arrives. An envelope containing pages from the diary I wrote back when I was just seven years old, accompanied by a handwritten note.

Susie is alive, and she's asking me a

“Are you ready to play our game again?�

The Woman in Coach D is an intense and addictive psychological suspense by bestselling author Sarah A. Denzil, the “mistress of twists.� It’s a must-read for fans of Gillian Flynn, Frieda McFadden, and Paula Hawkins.

"Sarah Denzil writes clever and original plots, and The Woman in Coach D is one of her finest yet." -- Miranda Rijks, bestselling author of The Visitors and Make Her Pay

"It will haunt you for a long while after you close the book." -- Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ reviewer]]> 406 Sarah A. Denzil Michelle 4 3.43 The Woman in Coach D
author: Sarah A. Denzil
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.43
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Queen of Poisons (The Marlow Murder Club, #3)]]> 197036052
The police bring Judith, Suzie, and Becks in to investigate the murder as civilian advisors right from the start, so they have free rein to interview suspects and follow the evidence to their heart's content� which is perfect because Judith has no time for rules and standard procedure. But this case has the Marlow Murder Club stumped. Who would want to kill the affable mayor of Marlow? How did they even get the poison into his coffee? And is anyone else in danger? The Marlow Murder Club is about to face their most difficult case yet...]]> 272 Robert Thorogood 1728284473 Michelle 4 3.78 2024 The Queen of Poisons (The Marlow Murder Club, #3)
author: Robert Thorogood
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[A Trace of Hares (Nell Ward, #5)]]> 110775455
Dr Nell Ward is in the lush, emerald-green hills of Ireland to attend the wedding of two dear friends at a picture-perfect farmhouse.

But family tensions are running high in the days before the happy couple tie the knot. And when Nell hears a fox kill a hare in the early morning, the bad omen sends shivers down her spine. Almost like it is a sign of something to come...

Then one of the locals makes a gruesome discovery in a nearby peat bog. The habitats are famous for the ancient bodies they can preserve for thousands of years. This woman, however, died much more recently and was clearly a victim of foul play.

Nell and her friends are suddenly in the middle of another murder case. Can they trace the truth to unmask a long-hidden killer and save the wedding, before it's too late?]]> 265 Sarah Yarwood-Lovett 1471414531 Michelle 4 3.99 2024 A Trace of Hares (Nell Ward, #5)
author: Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
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]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Michelle 4 4.16 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
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]]> Colored Television 201102398 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593544372

A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,� she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse content� for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.� She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.]]> 277 Danzy Senna Michelle 3 3.54 2024 Colored Television
author: Danzy Senna
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Life (All Souls, #3)]]> 16054217 The #1 New York Times bestselling series finale and sequel to A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night

Bringing the magic and suspense of the All Souls Trilogy to a deeply satisfying conclusion, this highly anticipated finale went straight to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In The Book of Life, Diana and Matthew time-travel back from Elizabethan London to make a dramatic return to the present—facing new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home, Sept-Tours, they reunite with the beloved cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency.]]> 561 Deborah Harkness 0670025593 Michelle 0 to-read 4.15 2014 The Book of Life (All Souls, #3)
author: Deborah Harkness
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Letter to the Luminous Deep (The Sunken Archive, #1)]]> 63879533
A charming fantasy set in an underwater world with magical academia and a heartwarming penpal romance, perfect for fans of A Marvellous Light and Emily Wilde's Encylopaedia of Faeries.

A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other.

Together, they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.'s home, and she and Henerey vanish.

A year later, E.'s sister Sophy, and Henerey's brother Vyerin, are left to solve the mystery of their siblings' disappearances with the letters, sketches and field notes left behind. As they uncover the wondrous love their siblings shared, Sophy and Vyerin learn the key to their disappearance - and what it could mean for life as they know it.]]> 432 Sylvie Cathrall 0356521095 Michelle 5 3.65 2024 A Letter to the Luminous Deep (The Sunken Archive, #1)
author: Sylvie Cathrall
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Marlow Murder Club (Marlow Murder Club, #1)]]> 50576230
Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.

One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself, and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local Vicar.

Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

When another body turns up, they realise they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape…]]> 340 Robert Thorogood 0008238243 Michelle 4 3.73 2021 The Marlow Murder Club (Marlow Murder Club, #1)
author: Robert Thorogood
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2025/01/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Death Comes to Marlow (Marlow Murder Club, #2)]]> 57366942
But during the soiree, there’s a crash from inside the house, and when the Marlow Murder Club rush to investigate, they are shocked to find the groom-to-be crushed to death in his study.

The study was locked from the inside, so the police don’t consider the death suspicious. But Judith disagrees. As far as she's concerned, Peter was murdered! And it’s up to the Marlow Murder Club to find the killer before he or she strikes again…]]> 366 Robert Thorogood 0008238316 Michelle 4 3.88 2023 Death Comes to Marlow (Marlow Murder Club, #2)
author: Robert Thorogood
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1)]]> 60556912
Every day I clean the Winchesters� beautiful house top to bottom. I collect their daughter from school. And I cook a delicious meal for the whole family before heading up to eat alone in my tiny room on the top floor.

I try to ignore how Nina makes a mess just to watch me clean it up. How she tells strange lies about her own daughter. And how her husband Andrew seems more broken every day. But as I look into Andrew’s handsome brown eyes, so full of pain, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to live Nina’s life. The walk-in closet, the fancy car, the perfect husband.

I only try on one of Nina’s pristine white dresses once. Just to see what it’s like. But she soon finds out� and by the time I realize my attic bedroom door only locks from the outside, it’s far too late.

But I reassure myself: the Winchesters don’t know who I really am.

They don’t know what I’m capable of�

An unbelievably twisty read that will have you glued to the pages late into the night. Anyone who loves The Woman in the Window, The Wife Between Us and The Girl on the Train won’t be able to put this down!]]> 329 Freida McFadden 1803144378 Michelle 4 4.31 2022 The Housemaid (The Housemaid, #1)
author: Freida McFadden
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cornish Campsite Murder (The Nosey Parker Mysteries, #7)]]> 179193845
‘Love the characters and the plots. Such an easy cosy read.�

‘Fiona is a great writer. No cheese, realistic dialogue, and great character development.�

‘Another brilliant Cornwall visit.�

‘Law-enforcement, verbal-humor, situational-humor, Cornwall, cozy-mystery, series, foodie, punny, relationships, relatives, murder, murder-investigation, small-business, small-town, caterer, family…’]]> 267 Fiona Leitch 0008647259 Michelle 4 4.21 The Cornish Campsite Murder (The Nosey Parker Mysteries, #7)
author: Fiona Leitch
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/06
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]]> <![CDATA[A Cornish Recipe for Murder (The Nosey Parker Mysteries #5)]]> 59523664 Jodie ‘Nosey� Parker is back!

When popular TV baking contest and national institution ‘The Best of British Baking Roadshow� rolls into town and sets up camp in the grounds of Boskern House, a historic stately home near Penstowan, former police officer Jodie ‘Nosey� Parker finds herself competing to represent Cornwall in the grand final.

But with a fellow contestant who will stop at nothing to win and a drag queen host with secrets of their own, Jodie discovers that the roadshow doesn’t just have the ingredients for the perfect showstopper cake, but also for the perfect murder�

And when a body is found in the grounds of the house, Jodie is drawn into another high-stakes case along with local DCI Nathan Withers.

Can Jodie expose the culprit? Or will the murderer become the real showstopper?]]> 263 Fiona Leitch 0008525366 Michelle 4 4.20 A Cornish Recipe for Murder (The Nosey Parker Mysteries #5)
author: Fiona Leitch
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
This cozy mystery series is great. Sometimes too much repetition, sometimes too much complaining, but funny and thoughtful and overall caring and good people as characters. I use these types of series as brain breaks in between the harder books to read, especially because the real world is hard enough to swallow some days and reading these books bring a smile to my face and help me remember that there is still beauty, humor and love all around us. Also - Zara Ramm, the narrator of these books in Audible is WONDERFUL!
]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride.ÌýYet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Michelle 0 to-read 4.28 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano Michelle 0 to-read 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Clytemnestra 61361681 For fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, a stunning debut following Clytemnestra, the most notorious villainess of the ancient world and the events that forged her into the legendary queen.

As for queens, they are either hated or forgotten. She already knows which option suits her best...

You were born to a king, but you marry a tyrant. You stand by helplessly as he sacrifices your child to placate the gods. You watch him wage war on a foreign shore, and you comfort yourself with violent thoughts of your own. Because this was not the first offence against you. This was not the life you ever deserved. And this will not be your undoing. Slowly, you plot.

But when your husband returns in triumph, you become a woman with a choice.

Acceptance or vengeance, infamy follows both. So, you bide your time and force the gods' hands in the game of retribution. For you understood something long ago that the others never did.

If power isn't given to you, you have to take it for yourself.

A blazing novel set in the world of Ancient Greece for fans of Jennifer Saint and Natalie Haynes, this is a thrilling tale of power and prophecies, of hatred, love, and of an unforgettable Queen who fiercely dealt out death to those who wronged her.]]> 435 Costanza Casati 1728268230 Michelle 0 to-read 4.23 2023 Clytemnestra
author: Costanza Casati
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Michelle 0 to-read 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> <![CDATA[A Cornish Christmas Murder (The Nosey Parker Mysteries #4)]]> 59523658 A PINCH OF PARANOIA

It’s three days before Christmas, and detective-turned-chef Jodie ‘Nosey� Parker is drafted in to cater a charity event run by a notorious millionaire at a 13th-century abbey on Bodmin Moor.

A DASH OF DECEPTION

Things get more complicated when a snowstorm descends, stranding them all, and the next morning they find one of the guests has been gruesomely murdered in their bed�

A MURDER UNDER THE MISTLETOE

Secrets mull in every corner � can Jodie solve the crime before the killer strikes again?

A Cornish Christmas Murder is a must-read mystery full of heart and humour � perfect for fans of Richard Osman and The Appeal.

This title was previously published in the US as A Murder Under the Mistletoe.]]> 252 Fiona Leitch 000852534X Michelle 4 3.92 A Cornish Christmas Murder (The Nosey Parker Mysteries #4)
author: Fiona Leitch
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Raven Thief (Secret Staircase Mystery, #2)]]> 60784555
One murder. Four impossibilities. A fake séance hides a very real crime.

Secret Staircase Construction just finished their first project with Tempest Raj officially a part of the team―a classic mystery novel-themed home interior. Their client is now ready to celebrate her new life without her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a party, and Tempest and Grandpa Ash are invited to the exclusive mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property―for good. It's all lighthearted fun until Corbin's dead body crashes the party.

The only possible suspects are the eight people around the séance table―a circle of clasped hands that wasn't broken. Suspicion quickly falls on Grandpa Ash, the only one with actual blood on him. To prove her beloved grandfather’s innocence, Tempest must figure out what really happened―and how ―or Ash will be cooking his delectable Indian and Scottish creations nevermore.]]> 312 Gigi Pandian 1250805015 Michelle 0 to-read 3.72 2023 The Raven Thief (Secret Staircase Mystery, #2)
author: Gigi Pandian
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Under Lock & Skeleton Key (Secret Staircase Mystery, #1)]]> 57693382 Under Lock & Skeleton Key layers architecture with mouthwatering food in an ode to classic locked-room mysteries.

An impossible crime. A family legacy. The intrigue of hidden rooms and secret staircases.

After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfather’s Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings her closer to the inevitable: working for her father’s company. Secret Staircase Construction specializes in bringing the magic of childhood to all by transforming clients� homes with sliding bookcases, intricate locks, backyard treehouses, and hidden reading nooks.

When Tempest visits her dad’s latest renovation project, her former stage double is discovered dead inside a wall that’s supposedly been sealed for more than a century. Fearing she was the intended victim, it’s up to Tempest to solve this seemingly impossible crime. But as she delves further into the mystery, Tempest can’t help but wonder if the Raj family curse that’s plagued her family for generations—something she used to swear didn’t exist—has finally come for her.]]> 343 Gigi Pandian 1250804981 Michelle 0 to-read 3.50 2022 Under Lock & Skeleton Key (Secret Staircase Mystery, #1)
author: Gigi Pandian
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/25
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]]> <![CDATA[A Midnight Puzzle (Secret Staircase Mystery, #3)]]> 126918057
Secret Staircase Construction is under attack, and Tempest Raj feels helpless. After former client Julian Rhodes tried to kill his wife, he blamed her "accident" on the home renovation company’s craftsmanship. Now the family business—known for bringing magic into homes through hidden doors, floating staircases, and architectural puzzle walls—is at a breaking point. No amount of Scottish and Indian meals from her grandfather can distract Tempest from the they’re being framed.

When Tempest receives an urgent midnight phone call from Julian, she decides to meet him at the historic Whispering Creek Theater—only to find his dead body, a sword through his chest. After a blade appears from thin air to claim another victim, Tempest is certain they’re dealing with a booby trap� something Secret Staircase Construction could easily build. Tempest refuses to wait for the investigation to turn to her or her loved ones. She knows the pieces of the puzzle are right in front of her, she just has to put them together correctly before more disaster strikes.

Multiple award-winning author Gigi Pandian and her sleuth Tempest Raj return in A Midnight Puzzle, where an old theater reveals a deadly booby trap, secrets, and one puzzle of a mystery.]]> 342 Gigi Pandian Michelle 0 to-read 3.92 2024 A Midnight Puzzle (Secret Staircase Mystery, #3)
author: Gigi Pandian
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/25
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]]> Society of Lies 200704039 How far would you go to belong?

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

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

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

Maya knows that her sister isn't the first person in the society to turn up dead. Now every clue is leading Maya back to the past . . . and to the secret she's been keeping all these years.]]> 368 Lauren Ling Brown 0593723368 Michelle 0 to-read 3.79 2024 Society of Lies
author: Lauren Ling Brown
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Framed Women of Ardemore House]]> 126059097
Jo Jones has always had a little trouble fitting in. As a neurodivergent, hyperlexicÌýbook editor and divorced New Yorker transplanted into the English countryside, Jo doesn’t know what stands out - her Americanisms or her autism. After losing her job, her mother,Ìýand her marriage all in one year, she couldn’t be happier to take possession of a possibly haunted (and clearly unwanted) family estate in North Yorkshire. But when the body of the moody town groundskeeper turns up on her rug with three bullets in his back, Jo finds herself in potential danger—and she’s also a potential suspect. At the same time, a peculiar family portrait vanishes from a secret room in the manor, bearing a strange connection to both the dead body and Jo’s mysteriousÌýfamily history. With the aid of a Welsh antiques dealer, the morose local detective,Ìýand the Irish innkeeper’s wife, Jo embarks on a mission to clear herself of blame and find the missing painting, unearthing a slew of secrets about the town—and herself—along the way. And she’ll have to do it all before the killer strikes again…Ì�

"A must read for any mystery lover." � DEANNA RAYBOURN, New York Times bestselling author of KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE]]> 355 Brandy Schillace 0369747712 Michelle 0 to-read 3.94 2024 The Framed Women of Ardemore House
author: Brandy Schillace
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels]]> 61157639
Now, true crime author Amanda Bailey is looking to revive her career by writing a book on the case. The Alperton baby has turned eighteen; finding them will be the scoop of the year. But rival author Oliver Menzies is just as smart, better connected, and also on the baby’s trail.

As Amanda and Oliver are forced to collaborate, they realize that the truth about the Angels is much darker and stranger than they’d ever imagined, and in pursuit of the story they risk becoming part of it.]]> 416 Janice Hallett 1800810407 Michelle 0 to-read 3.91 2023 The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
author: Janice Hallett
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Old Girls Behaving Badly (Old Girls #1)]]> 210214214
Something old, something new, something stolen�?

Gina Knight is looking forward to the prospect of retirement with her husband of forty-three years. Until, to her surprise, said husband decides he needs to 'find himself' � alone � and disappears to Santa Fe, leaving divorce papers in his wake.

Now Gina needs a new role in life, not to mention somewhere to live, so she applies for the position of Companion to elderly Dorothy Reed. At eighty-nine, ‘Dot� needs someone to help her around the house � or at least, her family seems to think so. Her companion’s first role would be to accompany Dot for a week-long extravagant wedding party.

But when Georgina arrives at the large Norfolk estate where the wedding will take place, she quickly discovers Dot has an ulterior motive for hiring her. While the other guests are busy sipping champagne and playing croquet, Dot needs Georgina to help her solve a mystery � about a missing painting, which she believes is hidden somewhere in the house.

Because, after all, who would suspect two old ladies of getting up to mischief?]]> 282 Kate Galley 1835338607 Michelle 4 3.93 2024 Old Girls Behaving Badly (Old Girls #1)
author: Kate Galley
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Kind Worth Killing (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #1)]]> 21936809 The Girl on the Train will love this modern reimagining of Patricia Highsmith’s classic Strangers on a Train from the author of the acclaimed The Girl with a Clock for a Heart—which the Washington Post said “should be a contender for crime fiction’s best first novel of 2014.�

On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché.

But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.� After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse. . . .

Back in Boston, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Miranda's demise. But there are a few things about Lily’s past that she hasn’t shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth.

Suddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive . . . with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail.]]> 320 Peter Swanson 0062267523 Michelle 4 3.98 2015 The Kind Worth Killing (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #1)
author: Peter Swanson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
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]]> Women Who Run With the Wolves 241823
In "Women Who Run With the Wolves," Dr Estes unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairytales and stories, many from her own family, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Dr Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.]]> 537 Clarissa Pinkola Estés 0345409876 Michelle 0 to-read 4.12 1992 Women Who Run With the Wolves
author: Clarissa Pinkola Estés
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West]]> 76401 The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down."

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.]]> 509 Dee Brown 0805066691 Michelle 0 to-read 4.24 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
author: Dee Brown
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1970
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> Eight Hundred Grapes 60285627
There are secrets you share, and secrets you hide�

Growing up on her family’s Sonoma vineyard, Georgia Ford learned some important secrets. The secret number of grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine: eight hundred. The secret ingredient in her mother’s lasagna: chocolate. The secret behind ending a fight: hold hands.

But just a week before her wedding, thirty-year-old Georgia discovers her beloved fiancé has been keeping a secret so explosive, it will change their lives forever.

Georgia does what she’s always done: she returns to the family vineyard, expecting the comfort of her long-married parents, and her brothers, and everything familiar. But it turns out her fiancé is not the only one who’s been keeping secrets…]]> 274 Laura Dave 1476789258 Michelle 3 3.57 2015 Eight Hundred Grapes
author: Laura Dave
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)]]> 60916172 In this spectacularly devious novel by New York Times bestselling author Peter Swanson—featuring the smart and complex Lily Kintner from his acclaimed novel, The Kind Worth Killing—a private eye starts to follow a possibly adulterous husband, but little does he know that the twisted trail will lead back to the woman who hired him.

There was always something slightly dangerous about Joan. So, when she turns up at private investigator Henry Kimball’s office asking him to investigate her husband, he can’t help feeling ill at ease. Just the sight of her stirs up a chilling memory: he knew Joan in his previous life as a high school English teacher, when he was at the center of a tragedy.

Now Joan needs his help in proving that her husband is cheating. But what should be a simple case of infidelity becomes much more complicated when Kimball finds two bodies in an uninhabited suburban home with a “for sale� sign out front. Suddenly it feels like the past is repeating itself, and Henry must go back to one of the worst days of his life to uncover the truth.

Is it possible that Joan knows something about that day, something she’s hidden all these years? Could there still be a killer out there, someone who believes they have gotten away with murder? Henry is determined to find out, but as he steps closer to the truth, a murderer is getting closer to him, and in this hair-raising game of cat and mouse only one of them will survive.]]> 303 Peter Swanson 0063204983 Michelle 0 to-read 3.65 2023 The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball/Lily Kintner, #2)
author: Peter Swanson
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> First Lie Wins 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn’t like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]> 340 Ashley Elston Michelle 3 3.97 2024 First Lie Wins
author: Ashley Elston
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> The Soulmate 60784540
Picture a lovely cottage on a cliff, with sloping lawns, walking paths, and beautiful flowers. It’s Gabe and Pippa Gerard’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Over the past several months, Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge.

Until one day, he doesn’t. When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral. . . .Did the victim jump? Was she pushed? And would Gabe, the love of Pippa’s life, her soulmate . . . lie? As the perfect façade of their marriage begins to crack, the deepest and darkest secrets begin to unravel. Because sometimes, the most convincing lies are the ones we tell ourselves.]]> 327 Sally Hepworth 1250229707 Michelle 3 3.78 2022 The Soulmate
author: Sally Hepworth
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
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]]> Julie Chan Is Dead 220161576 In this razor-sharp, diabolical debut thriller, a young woman steps into her deceased twin’s influencer life, only to discover dark secrets hidden behind her social media façade.

Julie Chan has nothing. Her twin sister has everything. Except a pulse.

Julie Chan, a supermarket cashier with nothing to lose, finds herself thrust into the glamorous yet perilous world of her late twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, a popular influencer. Separated at a young age, the identical twins were polar opposites and rarely spoke, except for one viral video that Chloe initiated (Finding My Long-Lost Twin And Buying Her A House #EMOTIONAL). When Julie discovers Chloe’s lifeless body under mysterious circumstances, she seizes the chance to live the life she’s always envied.

Transforming into Chloe is easier than expected. Julie effortlessly adopts Chloe’s luxurious influencer life, complete with designer clothes, a meticulous skincare routine, and millions of adoring followers. However, Julie soon realizes that Chloe’s seemingly picture-perfect life was anything but.

Haunted by Chloe’s untimely death and struggling to fit into the privileged influencer circle, Julie faces mounting challenges during a weeklong island retreat with Chloe’s exclusive group of influencer friends. As events spiral out of control, Julie uncovers the sinister forces that may have led to her sister’s demise and realizes she might be the next target.]]> 320 Liann Zhang 1668067897 Michelle 0 to-read 3.89 2025 Julie Chan Is Dead
author: Liann Zhang
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> The Queens of Crime 211003830 The Mystery of Mrs. Christie returns with a thrilling story of Christie’s legendary rival Dorothy Sayers, the race to solve a murder, and the power of friendship among women.

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

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

Inspired by a true story in Sayers� own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.]]> 310 Marie Benedict 1250280753 Michelle 0 to-read 3.84 2025 The Queens of Crime
author: Marie Benedict
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> Atmosphere 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Michelle 0 to-read 4.45 2025 Atmosphere
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> The Listeners 56988057
January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.

Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

Meanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats� secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.

June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.]]> 400 Maggie Stiefvater 0593655508 Michelle 0 to-read 4.04 2025 The Listeners
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> My Friends 217163697 #1ÌýNew York TimesÌýbestselling author Fredrik Backman returns with an unforgettably funny, deeply moving tale of four teenagers whose friendship creates a bond so powerful that it changes a stranger’s life twenty-five years later.

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

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

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that will unexpectedly be put into eighteen-year-old Louisa’s care. As she struggles to decide what to do with this bequest, she embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to learn the story of how the painting came to be. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more she feels compelled to unleash her own artistic spirit, but happy endings don’t always take the form we expect in this fresh testament to the transformative power of friendship and art.]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Michelle 0 to-read 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> Dream Count 219521090 A publishing event ten years in the making�a searing, exquisite new novel by the best-selling and award-winning author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists�the story of four women and their loves, longings, and desires.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until � betrayed and brokenhearted � she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America � but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.

In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power. It confirms Adichie’s status as one of the most exciting and dynamic writers on the literary landscape.]]> 416 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 059380273X Michelle 0 to-read 3.97 2025 Dream Count
author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Good Dirt 213618132 The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake, a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well.

The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart without any explanation, that's exactly what they get.

So Ebby flees to France, only for her past to follow her there. And as she tries to process what's happened, she begins to think about the other loss her family suffered on that day eighteen years ago—the stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations, brought North by an enslaved ancestor. But little does she know that the handcrafted piece of pottery held more than just her family's history—it might also hold the key to unlocking her own future.

In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.]]> 368 Charmaine Wilkerson 0593358368 Michelle 0 to-read 4.06 2025 Good Dirt
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> The Stolen Queen 211025454 From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same.

New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.� Though Annie soon realizes she’ll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana’s capricious demands and exacting standards.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, wants little to do with the upcoming gala. She’s consumed with her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.

That is, until the night of the gala. When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing . . . and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening.

As Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they’re to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.]]> 352 Fiona Davis 0593474279 Michelle 0 to-read 3.93 2025 The Stolen Queen
author: Fiona Davis
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Quiche of Death (Agatha Raisin, #1)]]> 139176 246 M.C. Beaton 0312939167 Michelle 0 to-read 3.77 1992 The Quiche of Death (Agatha Raisin, #1)
author: M.C. Beaton
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Generation of Vipers (Nell Ward, #4)]]> 110774605
When Dr Nell Ward stumbles across a woman's body amongst the purple heather on Furze Heath, she was on the lookout for nests of poisonous adders.

But something is lurking out here far more dangerous than vipers.

A cold-blooded killer is on the loose and this is not his first victim. As DI James Clark begins to investigate, a pattern emerges pointing towards this being the work of a serial killer. Every victim shares the same physical characteristics - all of which are a match to Nell herself.

As Nell is pulled into a tightly coiled mystery, she can't help feeling someone is tracking her every move...

Can she unmask the murderer before they strike again?]]> 256 Sarah Yarwood-Lovett 1471414310 Michelle 3 4.04 2023 A Generation of Vipers (Nell Ward, #4)
author: Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[A Mischief of Rats (Nell Ward, #3)]]> 61415259
Back in her natural habitat, Dr Nell Ward heads to a woodland pond to survey local newt populations. She's shocked to discover a car submerged in the water - with the driver dead behind the wheel.

Nell recognises the dead man as professional racing driver, and tabloid love rat, Jack Rafferty, whose performance on (and off) Finchmere's racetrack had earned him enemies.

Suspecting this isn't the tragic accident it appears DI James Clark calls upon Nell and her ecological skills to help find the murderer. But she soon finds that more lurks under the surface than she could ever have imagined. Despite the danger, Nell is determined to dredge up the truth from the murky depths of this case, before it's too late...]]> 420 Sarah Yarwood-Lovett Michelle 4 3.86 2023 A Mischief of Rats (Nell Ward, #3)
author: Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves:
review:

]]> The Library 58142687 Tom is a teenager and blends into the background of life. After a row with his dad, and facing an unhappy future at the dog food factory, he escapes to the library. Tom unwittingly ends up with a bagful of romance novels and comes under the suspicion of Maggie.

Maggie is a pensioner and has been happily alone for ten years, at least that's what she tells herself. When Tom comes to her rescue, a friendship develops that could change her life. As Maggie helps Tom to stand up for himself, Tom helps Maggie realise the mistakes of her past don't have to define her future.

They each set out to prove that the library isn't just about books � it's the heart of their community.

Together they discover some things are worth fighting for.]]> 384 Bella Osborne Michelle 0 to-read 4.17 2021 The Library
author: Bella Osborne
name: Michelle
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Cast of Falcons (Nell Ward, #2)]]> 61415256
When her childhood friend Percy announces she's engaged to handsome businessman Hawke McAnstruther, Dr Nell Ward rashly offers to host the wedding at Finchmere, her family's estate. But she hadn't anticipated Percy's parents' fiery disapproval of the groom.

The ceremony is barely over before Hawke's shady personal and professional life starts to unravel, and tension ripples through the assembled guests. When the wedding night ends with a shocking death, Nell, best-friend, Rav and DI James Clarke all find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery worthy of Agatha Christie.

Surviving a terrifying threat to her own life, Nell has to face up to the truth. Not just about murder at Finchmere, but about where her heart truly lies...]]> 380 Sarah Yarwood-Lovett Michelle 4 3.87 2022 A Cast of Falcons (Nell Ward, #2)
author: Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Murder of Crows (Nell Ward, #1)]]> 60845211
In the sleepy village of Cookingdean, Dr Nell Ward is busy working in the grounds of a local manor house. Whilst inspecting an old tunnel, the last thing she expects to overhear is a murder. As the only person with any clues as to what happened, Nell soon finds herself in the middle of the investigation.

Desperate to clear her name Nell, along with her colleague Adam, set out solving the murder using their skills as ecologists to uncover details no one else would notice. But it soon becomes clear that playing Agatha Christie is much harder than it might at first appear�

The start of an exciting new cosy crime series � perfect for fans of Richard Osman, Faith Martin and Joy Ellis.]]> 368 Sarah Yarwood-Lovett Michelle 4 3.80 2022 A Murder of Crows (Nell Ward, #1)
author: Sarah Yarwood-Lovett
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule 22571509 New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker andÌýMrs. Lincoln's Rival imagines the inner life of Julia Grant, beloved as a Civil War general’s wife and the First Lady, yet who grappled with a profound and complex relationship with the slave who was her namesake—until she forged a proud identity of her own.

In 1844, Missouri belle Julia Dent met dazzling horseman Lieutenant Ulysses S Grant. Four years passed before their parents permitted them to wed, and the groom’s abolitionist family refused to attend the ceremony.

Since childhood, Julia owned as a slave another Julia, known as Jule. Jule guarded her mistress’s closely held twin secrets: She had perilously poor vision but was gifted with prophetic sight. So it was that Jule became Julia’s eyes to the world.
And what a world it was, marked by gathering clouds of war. The Grants vowed never to be separated, but as Ulysses rose through the ranks—becoming general in chief of the Union Army—so did the stakes of their pact. During the war, Julia would travel, often in the company of Jule and the four Grant children, facing unreliable transportation and certain danger to be at her husband’s side.

Yet Julia and Jule saw two different wars. While Julia spoke out for women—Union and Confederate—she continued to hold Jule as a slave behind Union lines. Upon the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Jule claimed her freedom and rose to prominence as a businesswoman in her own right, taking the honorary title Madame. The two women’s paths continued to cross throughout the Grants� White House years in Washington, DC, and later in New York City, the site of Grant’s Tomb.

Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule is the first novel to chronicle this singular relationship, bound by sight and shadow.]]> 386 Jennifer Chiaverini 0525954295 Michelle 5 3.73 2015 Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule
author: Jennifer Chiaverini
name: Michelle
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves:
review:

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