en-US Mon, 07 Apr 2025 19:22:58 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 211950996
The Holy Land, 1260: Josseran Sarrazini is a Templar Knight, trained for war. But as the Christian garrisons in the Holy Land begin to fall to the Saracen, he must embark upon a mission of peace: to the golden palaces at Xanadu, to seek an alliance with Kublai Khan, ruler of the greatest empire in history and commander of the invincible Mongol horde.

Josseran’s task is formidable. To ride the treacherous Silk Road to the edge of the known world. To cheat hunger, thirst, and death. And to forge a crucial allegiance with a people who do not honor his cause, or his God.

From the Storehouse of Winds to the Palace of Myriad Tranquillities, from the Pamirs and Hindu Kush to the legendary Xanadu and the dazzling court of Kublai Khan, this is adventure on a breath-taking scale.]]> Colin Falconer 0645814407 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.33 2000
author: Colin Falconer
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 10507
Born a simple peasant in northern Italy, Baudolino has two major gifts-a talent for learning languages and a skill in telling lies. When still a boy he meets a foreign commander in the woods, charming him with his quick wit and lively mind. The commander-who proves to be Emperor Frederick Barbarossa-adopts Baudolino and sends him to the university in Paris, where he makes a number of fearless, adventurous friends.

Spurred on by myths and their own reveries, this merry band sets out in search of Prester John, a legendary priest-king said to rule over a vast kingdom in the East-a phantasmagorical land of strange creatures with eyes on their shoulders and mouths on their stomachs, of eunuchs, unicorns, and lovely maidens.

With dazzling digressions, outrageous tricks, extraordinary feeling, and vicarious reflections on our postmodern age, this is Eco the storyteller at his brilliant best.]]> 527 Umberto Eco 0156029065 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.79 2000
author: Umberto Eco
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 224375 Lempriere's Dictionary, which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of 1992, returns with a vivid, antic, and picaresque fictional tapestry reminiscent of The Name of the Rose which spins around one of history's most bizarre chapters: the 16th-century attempt to procure a rhinoceros for the amusement of Pope Leo X.]]> 592 Lawrence Norfolk 0802139884 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.67 1996
author: Lawrence Norfolk
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32718027
But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass, a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.

After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for...]]> 532 S.A. Chakraborty 0062678108 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.12 2017
author: S.A. Chakraborty
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61294937 Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend.

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.]]> 483 Shannon Chakraborty Tamsin 0 to-read 4.25 2023
author: Shannon Chakraborty
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59660319 In this gripping historical novel, the internationally bestselling author of The Mercies weaves a spellbinding tale of fear, transformation, courage, and love in sixteenth-century France.

Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and when hundreds of other women join her, the men running the city declare a state of emergency and hire musicians to play the Devil out of the mob. Outside the city, pregnant Lisbet lives with her husband and mother-in-law, tending the bees that are the family's livelihood. Though Lisbet is removed from the frenzy of the dancing plague afflicting the city's women, her own quiet life is upended by the arrival of her sister-in-law. Nethe has been away for seven years, serving a penance in the mountains for a crime no one will name.

It is a secret Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand feet, Lisbet becomes caught in a dangerous web of deceit and clandestine passion. Like the women of Strasbourg, she too, is dancing to a dangerous tune. . . .

Set in an era of superstition, hysteria, and extraordinary change, and inspired by true events, The Dance Tree is an impassioned story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge.]]> 304 Kiran Millwood Hargrave Tamsin 0 to-read 3.89 2022
author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 46138193 After a storm has killed off all the island's men, two women in a 1600s Norwegian coastal village struggle to survive against both natural forces and the men who have been sent to rid the community of alleged witchcraft.

Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves.

Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband's authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil.

As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.

Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1620 witch trials, The Mercies is a feminist story of love, evil, and obsession, set at the edge of civilization.]]> 345 Kiran Millwood Hargrave 0316529257 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.99 2020
author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 104344 315 Sheri S. Tepper 0006482708 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.06 1987
author: Sheri S. Tepper
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 229432 The Pickwick Papers�-a comic masterpiece that catapulted its 24-year-old author to immediate fame. Readers were captivated by the adventures of the poet Snodgrass, the lover Tupman, the sportsman Winkle &, above all, by that quintessentially English Quixote, Mr Pickwick, & his cockney Sancho Panza, Sam Weller. From the hallowed turf of Dingley Dell Cricket Club to the unholy fracas of the Eatanswill election, via the Fleet debtor’s prison, characters & incidents sprang to life from Dickens’s pen, to form an enduringly popular work of ebullient humour & literary invention.]]> 801 Charles Dickens Tamsin 0 to-read 3.83 1837
author: Charles Dickens
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1837
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123263848 736 Alexis Wright 1922725323 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.77 2023
author: Alexis Wright
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5728981 168 Harriet Ziskin 0934971439 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.50 1995
author: Harriet Ziskin
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 28881 Philadelphia Inquirer).

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more—except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala—and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.]]> 444 Christopher Moore 0380813815 Tamsin 0 4.23 2002
author: Christopher Moore
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 27833803 From the author of The Postmortal, a fantasy saga unlike any you’ve read before, weaving elements of folk tale and video game into a riveting, unforgettable adventure of what a man will endure to return to his family
Ìý
When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.
Ìý
On a quest of epic, life-or-death proportions, Ben finds help comes in some of the most unexpected forms, including a profane crustacean and a variety of magical objects, tools, and potions. Desperate to return to his family, Ben is determined to track down the “Producer,� the creator of the world in which he is being held hostage and the only one who can free him from the path.
Ìý
At once bitingly funny and emotionally absorbing, Magary’s novel is a remarkably unique addition to the contemporary fantasy genre, one that draws as easily from the world of classic folk tales as it does from video games. In The Hike, Magary takes readers on a daring odyssey away from our day-to-day grind and transports them into an enthralling world propelled by heart, imagination, and survival.]]> 278 Drew Magary 0399563857 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.96 2016
author: Drew Magary
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62032 Captain Bluebear tells the story of his first 13-1/2 lives spent on the mysterious continent of Zamonia, where intelligence is an infectious disease, water flows uphill, and dangers lie in wait for him around every corner.

"A bluebear has twenty-seven lives. I shall recount thirteen and a half of them in this book but keep quiet about the rest," says the narrator of Walter Moers’s epic adventure. "What about the Minipirates? What about the Hobgoblins, the Spiderwitch, the Babbling Billows, the Troglotroll, the Mountain Maggot� Mine is a tale of mortal danger and eternal love, of hair’s breadth, last-minute escapes." Welcome to the fantastic world of Zamonia, populated by all manner of extraordinary characters. It’s a land of imaginative lunacy and supreme adventure, wicked satire and epic fantasy, all mixed together, turned on its head, and lavishly illustrated by the author.]]> 704 Walter Moers 1585678449 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.27 1999
author: Walter Moers
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63083089
In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of “matron.� Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body.

That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite—an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made.

Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K Patrick’s bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.]]> 240 K. Patrick 1609458419 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.61 2023
author: K. Patrick
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 44890081
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.]]> 373 Kate Elizabeth Russell 006294150X Tamsin 0 to-read 4.09 2020
author: Kate Elizabeth Russell
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 15839976 "I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them."

"I live for you," I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.]]> 382 Pierce Brown 0345539788 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.26 2014
author: Pierce Brown
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 143820 The Horseman on the Roof. This novel, which Giono began writing in 1934 and which was published in 1951, expanded and solidified his reputation as one of Europe's most important writers.

This is a novel of adventure, a roman courtois, that tells the story of Angelo, a nobleman who has been forced to leave Italy because of a duel, and is returning to his homeland by way of Provence. But that region is in the grip of a cholera epidemic, travelers are being imprisoned behind barricades, and exposure to the disease is almost certain.

Angelo's escapades, adventures, and heroic self-sacrifice in this hot, hallucinatory landscape, among corpses, criminals, and rioting townspeople, share this epic tale.]]> 426 Jean Giono 086547060X Tamsin 0 to-read 3.95 1951
author: Jean Giono
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 757438 74 Jean Giono 1570625387 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.24 1953
author: Jean Giono
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 80081 An enchanting story that has inspired generations of writers, including Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and KeatsÌý

Written towards the end of the second century AD, The Golden Ass tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination with witchcraft leads him to be transformed into a donkey. The bewitched Lucius passes from owner to owner - encountering a desperate gang of robbers and being forced to perform lewd 'human' tricks on stage - until the Goddess Isis finally breaks the spell and initiates Lucius into her cult. It has long been disputed whether Apuleius meant this last-minute conversion seriously or as a final comic surprise and the challenge of interpretation continues to keep readers fascinated. Apuleius' enchanting story has inspired generations of writers such as Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Cervantes and Keats with its dazzling combination of allegory, satire, bawdiness and sheer exuberance, and The Golden Ass remains the most continuously and accessibly amusing book to have survived from Classical antiquity.
]]> 256 Apuleius 0253200369 Tamsin 0 to-reread 3.90 159
author: Apuleius
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 159
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-reread
review:

]]> 56179372 Set in Colonial New England, Slewfoot is a tale of magic and mystery, of triumph and terror as only dark fantasist Brom can tell it.

A spirited young Englishwoman, Abitha, arrives at a Puritan colony betrothed to a stranger � only to become quickly widowed when her husband dies under mysterious circumstances. All alone in this pious and patriarchal society, Abitha fights for what little freedom she can grasp onto, while trying to stay true to herself and her past.

Enter Slewfoot, a powerful spirit of antiquity newly woken ... and trying to find his own role in the world. Healer or destroyer? Protector or predator? But as the shadows walk and villagers start dying, a new rumor is whispered: Witch.

Both Abitha and Slewfoot must swiftly decide who they are, and what they must do to survive in a world intent on hanging any who meddle in the dark arts.

Complete with 8 pages of Brom’s mesmerizing full-color artwork and chapter illustrations throughout, his latest book is sure to delight.]]> 305 Brom 125062200X Tamsin 0 to-read 4.23 2021
author: Brom
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6266881
Betty De Shong Meador offers here the first collection of original translations of all forty-two hymns along with a lengthy examination of the relevant deity and city, as well as an analysis of the verses themselves. She introduces the volume with discussions of Sumerian history and mythology, as well as with what is known about Enheduanna, thought to be the first high priestess to the moon god Nanna, and daughter of Sargon, founder of one of the first empires in human history.]]> 336 Enheduanna 0292719329 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.12 -2270
author: Enheduanna
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.12
book published: -2270
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 736232
This book provides the complete texts of Enheduanna's hymns to Inanna, skillfully and beautifully rendered by Betty De Shong Meador, who also discusses how the poems reflect Enheduanna's own spiritual and psychological liberation from being an obedient daughter in the shadow of her ruler father. Meador frames the poems with background information on the religious and cultural systems of ancient Mesopotamia and the known facts of Enheduanna's life. With this information, she explores the role of Inanna as the archetypal feminine, the first goddess who encompasses both the celestial and the earthly and shows forth the full scope of women's potential.]]> 225 Enheduanna 0292752423 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.29 -2270
author: Enheduanna
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.29
book published: -2270
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6900710 The Long Ships resurrects the fantastic world of the tenth century AD when the Vikings roamed and rampaged from the northern fastnesses of Scandinavia down to the Mediterranean. Bengtsson’s hero, Red Orm—canny, courageous, and above all lucky—is only a boy when he is abducted from his Danish home by the Vikings and made to take his place at the oars of their dragon-prowed ships.

Orm is then captured by the Moors in Spain, where he is initiated into the pleasures of the senses and fights for the Caliph of Cordova. Escaping from captivity, Orm washes up in Ireland, where he marvels at those epicene creatures, the Christian monks, and from which he then moves on to play an ever more important part in the intrigues of the various Scandinavian kings and clans and dependencies.

Eventually, Orm contributes to the Viking defeat of the army of the king of England and returns home an off-the-cuff Christian and a very rich man, though back on his native turf new trials and tribulations will test his cunning and determination. Packed with pitched battles and blood feuds and told throughout with wit and high spirits, Bengtsson’s book is a splendid adventure that features one of the most unexpectedly winning heroes in modern fiction.
--nyrb.com]]> 503 Frans G. Bengtsson 1590173465 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.37 1941
author: Frans G. Bengtsson
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1941
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43685219 The first volume in The Copenhagen Trilogy, the searing portrait of a woman's journey through love, friendship, ambition and addiction, from one of Denmark's most celebrated twentieth-century writers

Tove knows she is a misfit, whose childhood is made for a completely different girl. In her working-class neighbourhood in Copenhagen, she is enthralled by her wild, red-headed friend Ruth, who initiates her into adult secrets. But Tove cannot reveal her true self to her or to anyone else. For 'long, mysterious words begin to crawl across my soul', and she comes to realize that she has a vocation, something unknowable within her - and that she must one day, painfully but inevitably, leave the narrow street of her childhood behind.

Childhood, the first volume in The Copenhagen Trilogy, is a visceral portrait of girlhood and female friendship, told with lyricism and vivid intensity.]]> 99 Tove Ditlevsen 0241391938 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.15 1967
author: Tove Ditlevsen
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13928
But Sorcha's joy is shattered when her father is bewitched by his new wife, an evil enchantress who binds her brothers with a terrible spell, a spell which only Sorcha can lift—by staying silent. If she speaks before she completes the quest set to her by the Fair Folk and their queen, the Lady of the Forest, she will lose her brothers forever.

When Sorcha is kidnapped by the enemies of Sevenwaters and taken to a foreign land, she is torn between the desire to save her beloved brothers, and a love that comes only once. Sorcha despairs at ever being able to complete her task, but the magic of the Fair Folk knows no boundaries, and love is the strongest magic of them all...]]> 554 Juliet Marillier Tamsin 0 to-read 4.27 1999
author: Juliet Marillier
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60301558 Nat Cassidy’s highly commercial, debut horror novel An Awakening of Terror, blends Midsommar with elements of American Psycho and a pinch of I'll Be Gone in the Dark.Mary is a quiet, middle-aged woman doing her best to blend into the background. Unremarkable. Invisible. Unknown even to herself.But lately, things have been changing inside Mary. Along with the hot flashes and body aches, she can’t look in a mirror without passing out, and the voices in her head have been urging her to do unspeakable things.Fired from her job in New York, she moves back to her hometown, hoping to reconnect with her past and inner self. Instead, visions of terrifying, mutilated specters overwhelm her with increasing regularity and she begins auto-writing strange thoughts and phrases. Mary discovers that these experiences are echoes of an infamous serial killer. Then the killings begin again.Mary’s definitely going to find herself.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 400 Nat Cassidy 1250265223 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.76 2022
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 51475366 Electrifying and provocative, visceral and profound, a powerful literary debut novel about a young woman whose compulsion to eat earth gives her visions of murdered and missing people—an imaginative synthesis of mystery and magical realism that explores the dark tragedies of ordinary lives.

Set in an unnamed slum in contemporary Argentina, Earth-eater is the story of a young woman who finds herself drawn to eating the earth—a compulsion that gives her visions of broken and lost lives. With her first taste of dirt, she learns the horrifying truth of her mother’s death. Disturbed by what she witnesses, the woman keeps her visions to herself. But when Earth-eater begins an unlikely relationship with a withdrawn police officer, word of her ability begins to spread, and soon desperate members of her community beg for her help, anxious to uncover the truth about their own loved ones.

Surreal and haunting, spare yet complex, Earth-eater is a dark, emotionally resonant tale told from a feminist perspective that brilliantly explores the stories of those left behind—the women enduring the pain of uncertainty, whose lives have been shaped by violence and loss.]]> 224 Dolores Reyes 0062987739 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.52 2019
author: Dolores Reyes
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 39072768
María Fernanda Ampuero ha reunido en su primer libro de cuentos a un buen número de seres inocentes que se corrompen, gente enferma de amor, de soledad, de pérdida –personas que luchan, a su manera, contra la nítida crueldad de estar vivos� y lo hace con un libro demoledor y apegado a Latinoamérica, en cuyas páginas se van desgranando elementos culturales, políticos y sociales que retratan a un continente en su complejidad, en sus radicales diferencias y semejanzas.]]> 120 María Fernanda Ampuero 8483936135 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.16 2018
author: María Fernanda Ampuero
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218173295 A debut linked story collection of gritty, streetwise, and wickedly funny fiction from Mexico.

Life’s a bitch. That’s why you gotta rattle her cage, even if she’s foaming at the mouth.

In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once social critique and black comedy, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers.]]> 192 Dahlia de la Cerda 1761380419 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.04 2019
author: Dahlia de la Cerda
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 65212043 From Alison Rumfitt, the author of Tell Me I’m Worthless � “a triumph of transgressive queer horror� (Publishers Weekly) � comes Brainwyrms, a searing body horror novel of obsession, violence and pleasure.

When a transphobic woman bombs Frankie’s workplace, she blows up Frankie’s life with it. As the media descends like vultures, Frankie tries to cope with the carnage: binge-drinking, fucking strangers, pushing away her friends. Then she meets Vanya. Mysterious, beautiful, terrifying Vanya.

The two hit it off immediately, but as their relationship intensifies, so too does Frankie’s feeling that Vanya is hiding something from her. When Vanya’s secrets threaten to tear them apart, Frankie starts digging, and unearths a sinister, depraved conspiracy, the roots of which go deeper than she ever imagined. Shocking, grotesque, and downright filthy, Brainwyrms confronts the creeping reality of political terrorism while exploring the depths of love, pain and identity.]]> 304 Alison Rumfitt 1250866251 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.66 2023
author: Alison Rumfitt
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1145139 136 Ibrahim al-Koni 1566564174 Tamsin 4 3.84 1992
author: Ibrahim al-Koni
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 4014387 184 Volodymyr Vynnychenko 157087588X Tamsin 0 to-read 4.13
author: Volodymyr Vynnychenko
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.13
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 79886358 61 Marina Tsvetaeva 0855361220 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.00 1967
author: Marina Tsvetaeva
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 8981613 Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition can be found here

The story of an immigrant named Mohammed who has spent forty years in France and is about to retire. Taking stock of his life- his devotion to Islam and to his assimilated children-he decides to return to Morocco, where he spends his life's savings building the biggest house in the village and waits for his children and grandchildren to come be with him. A heartbreaking novel about parents and children, A Palace in the Old Village captures the sometimes stark contrasts between old- and new-world values, and an immigrant's abiding pursuit of home.]]> 192 Tahar Ben Jelloun 0143118471 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.50 2009
author: Tahar Ben Jelloun
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 175176 176 Tahar Ben Jelloun 0801864402 Tamsin 4 3.44 1985
author: Tahar Ben Jelloun
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 17875816
When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick’s life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. Just as he revels in Olondria’s Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire’s two most powerful cults.

Even as the country simmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of freeing himself by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that most seductive of necromancies, reading.]]> 317 Sofia Samatar Tamsin 4 to-reread 3.52 2013
author: Sofia Samatar
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: to-reread
review:

]]> 11996 "As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker."

A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.

The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.

Then everything changes... and nothing changes.

A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been... and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.]]> 208 Jacqueline Harpman 0380731819 Tamsin 5 4.22 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves:
review:

]]> 9717 The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover. This magnificent novel juxtaposes geographically distant places, brilliant and playful reflections, and a variety of styles, to take its place as perhaps the major achievement of one of the world’s truly great writers.]]> 314 Milan Kundera 0571224385 Tamsin 0 currently-reading 4.12 1984
author: Milan Kundera
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 36885304 Flights interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion, and migration. Chopin’s heart is carried back to Warsaw in secret by his adoring sister. A woman must return to her native Poland in order to poison her terminally ill high school sweetheart, and a young man slowly descends into madness when his wife and child mysteriously vanish during a vacation and just as suddenly reappear. Through these brilliantly imagined characters and stories, interwoven with haunting, playful, and revelatory meditations, Flights explores what it means to be a traveler, a wanderer, a body in motion not only through space but through time. Where are you from? Where are you coming in from? Where are you going? we call to the traveler. Enchanting, unsettling, and wholly original, Flights is a master storyteller’s answer.

Here I am --
World in your head --
Your head in the world --
Syndrome --
Cabinet of curiosities --
Seeing is knowing --
Seven years of trips --
Guidance from Cioran --
Kunicki: water (I) --
Benedictus, quivenit]]> 416 Olga Tokarczuk 0525534199 Tamsin 2 3.73 2007
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 36739755 Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura.

Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of “Smile Mart,� she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction―many are laid out line by line in the store’s manual―and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a “normal� person excellently, more or less. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action�

A brilliant depiction of a world hidden from view, Convenience Store Woman is an ironic and sharp-eyed look at contemporary work culture and the pressures we all feel to conform, as well as a charming and completely fresh portrait of an unforgettable heroine.]]> 163 Sayaka Murata 0802128254 Tamsin 4 3.65 2016
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 19528 The Mandarins is the emotional odyssey of a woman torn between her inner desire and her public life.

The Mandarins won France's highest literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.]]> 752 Simone de Beauvoir 0007203942 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.18 1954
author: Simone de Beauvoir
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25242224 The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance.

The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women � the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up � a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city's obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable.

The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.]]> 473 Elena Ferrante 1609452860 Tamsin 5 4.47 2014
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 38464651 New York TimesÌýbestselling Neapolitan quartet about two friends in post-war Italy is a rich, intense, and generous-hearted epic by one of today’s most beloved and acclaimed writers, Elena Ferrante, “one of the great novelists of our time.â€� (Roxana Robinson,ÌýThe New York Times.)

In the third book in the Neapolitan quartet, Elena and Lila, the two girls whom readers first met inÌýMy Brilliant Friend, have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and the comforts her marriage brought and now works as a common laborer. Elena has left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and published a successful novel, all of which has opened the doors to a world of learned interlocutors and richly furnished salons. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance and submission. They are afloat on the great sea of opportunities that opened up during the nineteen-seventies. Yet they are still very much bound to each other by a strong, unbreakable bond.

Ferrante is one of the world’s great storytellers. With the Neapolitan quartet,Ìýshe has given her readers an abundant, generous, and masterfully plotted page-turner that is also a stylish work of literary fiction destined to delight readers for many generations to come.]]> 495 Elena Ferrante Tamsin 5 4.40 2013
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 50246
Alternate cover is available here.]]> 329 Daphne du Maurier Tamsin 0 to-read 3.85 1969
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 177343 240 Fatema Mernissi 0816624399 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.86 1990
author: Fatema Mernissi
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 177335 The New York Times Book Review).

"I was born in a harem in 1940 in Fez, Morocco . . . "

So begins Fatima Mernissi in this illuminating narrative of a childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem. In Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi weaves her own memories with the dreams and memories of the women who surrounded her in the courtyard of her youth—women who, without access to the world outside, recreated it from sheer imagination.

A beautifully written account of a girl confronting the mysteries of time and place, gender and sex, Dreams of Trespass illuminates what it was like to be a modern Muslim woman in a place steeped in tradition.]]> 242 Fatima Mernissi 0201489376 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.93 1994
author: Fatima Mernissi
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32703696 The Gray House is an astounding tale of how what others understand as liabilities can be leveraged into strengths.

Bound to wheelchairs and dependent on prosthetic limbs, the physically disabled students living in the House are overlooked by the Outsides. Not that it matters to anyone living in the House, a hulking old structure that its residents know is alive. From the corridors and crawl spaces to the classrooms and dorms, the House is full of tribes, tinctures, scared teachers, and laws—all seen and understood through a prismatic array of teenagers� eyes.

But student deaths and mounting pressure from the Outsides put the time-defying order of the House in danger. As the tribe leaders struggle to maintain power, they defer to the awesome power of the House, attempting to make it through days and nights that pass in ways that clocks and watches cannot record.]]> 736 Mariam Petrosyan 1503997812 Tamsin 0 currently-reading 3.84 2009
author: Mariam Petrosyan
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 93157 'He now saw himself stained with the most loathed and monstrous sins, the object of universal execration ... doomed to perish in tortures the most severe'

Shocking, erotic and violent, The Monk is the story of Ambrosio, torn between his spiritual vows and the temptations of physical pleasure. His internal battle leads to sexual obsession, rape and murder, yet this book also contains knowing parody of its own excesses as well as social comedy. Written by Matthew Lewis when he was only nineteen, it was a ground-breaking novel in the Gothic Horror genre and spawned hundreds of imitators, drawn in by its mixture of bloodshed, sex and scandal.]]> 431 Matthew Gregory Lewis 0140436030 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.83 1796
author: Matthew Gregory Lewis
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1796
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1918702 Long, long ago a good woman lived contentedly with her three daughters—Shang, tao, and Paotze—in the country-side of northern China...

But one day she had to leave to visit their granny, so she warned her children to close the door tight and to latch it.

Son after, to their surprise, there was a knock at the door and a voice saying that it was their granny, their Po Po. What could the children do but let her in? But what a low voice she had, what thorny hands, and what a hairy face!

The Chinese tale of Lon Po Po, Granny Wolf, like the European tale of Little Red Riding Hood, comes from an ancient oral tradition and is thought to be over a thousand years old. It is a favorite tale of artist Ed young, who translated and illustrated this version. Using a dramatic style that combines techniques used in ancient Chinese panel art with a powerful contemporary palette or watercolors and pastels, Mr. Young has created a book of classic beauty and charm.

Ed Young was born in Tientsin, China, grew up in Shanghai, and brings his Eastern heritage to his artwork. From the authentic Oriental papercut technique of The Emperor and the Kite to the rich and glowing pastels of Yeh Shin, Mr. Young attains a versatility of feeling, theme, and style. Cats are Cats, his much lauded collaboration with anthologist Nancy Larrick, was named one of the Ten Best Illustrated Children's Books of 1988 as well as an ALA Notable Book for Children.

1990 Caldecott Medal Winner

Edition MSRP: $16�� USA / $25�� CAN (ISBN 0-399-21619-7)]]> 32 Ed Young 0399216197 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.06 1989
author: Ed Young
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 410047 The abbey's wise herbalist, Brother Cadfael, follows the trail of bloodied petals. He knows the lovely widow's dowry is far greater with her house included, and she will likely wed again. But before Cadfael can ponder if a greedy suitor has done this dreadful deed, another crime is committed. Now the good monk must thread his way through a tangle more tortuous than the widow's thorny bushes -- or there will be more tears...]]> 240 Ellis Peters 0446405337 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.15 1986
author: Ellis Peters
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7996 A quest to recover a legendary lost weapon by bumbling young apprentice monk, mouse Matthias.

Redwall Abbey, tranquil home to a community of peace-loving mice, is threatened by Cluny the Scourge savage bilge rat warlord and his battle-hardened horde. But the Redwall mice and their loyal woodland friends combine their courage and strength.]]> 352 Brian Jacques 1862301387 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.14 1986
author: Brian Jacques
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 27208 The last of O'Brien's novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O'Brien's other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.]]> 200 Flann O'Brien 156478214X Tamsin 0 to-read 4.00 1967
author: Flann O'Brien
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 256205 —from the introduction by Ben Marcus

This dystopia is a tour de force of scabrous invention. It is also uncomfortably real. As a kid I flipped through Science News and got an unpleasant shock when I inadvertently put my finger on a close-up of a spider's mandibles. Similarly, something about Ohle's prose closes the gap between the representation of a disturbing thing and the thing itself. You feel you ought to wash your hands after touching the page. But if you think that wiping will remove the stain, consider Doing time in the French Sewers (don't ask), Moldenke learns that they supply the bakery where edible paper�"for money, for waivers, for wiping, for books"—is made. Shit is books, books are food, food is shit. The conclusion? We're in it. Deep.
—Shelley Jackson, from a review in BookForum]]> 152 David Ohle 0970942826 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.09 1972
author: David Ohle
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 636223 158 Anna Kavan 0720612683 Tamsin 0 currently-reading 3.70 1967
author: Anna Kavan
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 70241 Crash explores the disturbing potentialities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.]]> 224 J.G. Ballard 0312420331 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.62 1973
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.62
book published: 1973
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12505 667 Fyodor Dostoevsky 0679642420 Tamsin 1 4.22 1869
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1869
rating: 1
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:
I love reading Dostoevsky bc it’s always amazing to read how much he puts his heart into missing the point� He’s one of the girls.
]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, MieczysÅ‚aw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inÌýGörbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.66 2022
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 249715 224 Peter J. Carroll 0877286396 Tamsin 5 to-reread 3.97 1987
author: Peter J. Carroll
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/19
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-reread
review:

]]> 204185 300 Nikolai Leskov 0812966961 Tamsin 5 russian, to-reread 3.96 1873
author: Nikolai Leskov
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1873
rating: 5
read at: 2019/11/11
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: russian, to-reread
review:

]]> 39058 Lord of the Rings, reign as one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. At the center of it all is the seventy-seventh Earl, Titus Groan, who stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom, unless the conniving Steerpike, who is determined to rise above his menial position and control the House of Groan, has his way.

In these extraordinary novels, Peake has created a world where all is like a dream - lush, fantastical, and vivid. Accompanying the text are Peake's own drawings, illustrating the whole assembly of strange and marvelous creatures that inhabit Gormenghast.

Also featuring:
Introductory essays by Anthony Burgess and Quentin Crisp
Twelve critical essays, curated by Peake scholar Peter G. Winnington
Fragment of the unpublished novel, Titus Awakes

]]> 1173 Mervyn Peake 0879516283 Tamsin 5 to-reread 4.02 1959
author: Mervyn Peake
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1959
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-reread
review:

]]> 52397
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.]]> 345 Octavia E. Butler 0446675504 Tamsin 5 to-reread 4.21 1993
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2019/10/18
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-reread
review:

]]> 779509 Precious Bane is a novel that haunts us with its beauty and its timeless truths about our deepest hopes. Set in Shropshire in the 1800s, it is alive with the many moods of Nature, benevolent and violent and the many moods -- equally benevolent and violent -- of the people making lives there.
Ìý
Prue Sarn is an unlikely heroine, born with a facial disfiguration which the Fates have dictated will deny her love. But Prue has strength far beyond her handicap, and this woman, suspected of witchcraft by her fellow townspeople, rises above them all through an all-encompassing sweetness of spirit.
Ìý
Precious Bane is also the story of Gideon, Prue's doomed brother, equally strong-willed, but with other motives. Determined to defeat the poverty of their farm, he devotes all his energies to making money. His only diversion from this ambition, he abandons her for the stronger drive of his money lust.
Ìý
And finally, it is the story of Kester Woodseaves, whose steady love for all created things leads him to resist people's cruelty toward nature and each other, and whose love for Prue Sarn enables him to discern her natural loveliness beneath her blighted appearance.Ìý

Rebecca West, a contemporary of Mary Webb, called her, simply, "a genius," and G. K. Chesterton, another contemporary, asserted: "the light in the stories . . . is a light not shining on the things but through them."
Ìý
Critic Hilda Addison summed up Precious Bane: "The book opens with one of those simple sentences which haunt the mind until the curiosity has been satisfied . . . It strikes a note which never fails throughout; it opens with a beauty which is justified to the last sentence."
Ìý
When the book was first published in 1926 in America, the New York Times Book Review predicted: " on some bookshelves, we feel sure, Precious Bane will find almost a hallowed place."Ìý]]> 328 Mary Webb 0268015384 Tamsin 5 to-reread 4.23 1924
author: Mary Webb
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1924
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-reread
review:

]]> 656
War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.

As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy brilliantly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.


Tolstoy gave his personal approval to this translation, published here in a new single volume edition, which includes an introduction by Henry Gifford, and Tolstoy's important essay `Some Words about War and Peace'.]]> 1392 Leo Tolstoy 0192833987 Tamsin 5 russian, to-reread 4.14 1869
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1869
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: russian, to-reread
review:

]]> 69516
There, as a fat and much admired young war widow, she spent her days working for a mad, near-bankrupt publisher ("of very good books") and her nights dispensing advice at her small South Kensington rooming house. At work and at home Mrs. Hawkins soon uncovered evil: shady literary doings and a deadly enemy; anonymous letters, blackmail, and suicide. With aplomb, however, Mrs. Hawkins confidently set about putting things to order, little imagining the mayhem that would ensue.

Now decades older, thin, successful, and delighted with life in Italy--quite a far cry from Kensington--Mrs. Hawkins looks back to all those dark doings and recounts how her own life changed forever. She still, however, loves to give advice: "It's easy to get thin. You eat and drink the same as always, only half...I offer this advice without fee; it is included in the price of this book."]]> 189 Muriel Spark 0811214575 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.80 1988
author: Muriel Spark
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217323302 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered, horror fans will be delighted to discover a whole new list of horror recommendations—all by women writers.

Taking a cue from the popular practice of mood reading, the most common requests she gets on social media, and the overwhelming positive reaction to the icons included in her first book, Sadie has carefully curated and organized her 200+ recommendations into reading lists based on, well, vibes. Are you in your “Gothic Era?� Sadie has a list for that. Going on vacation and need some good dark beach reads? There’s a list for that. Just finished Mexican Gothic and need more “Sporror in your life?� You guessed it, there’s a list for that too! Each book on every list will include its title, author(s), date of publication, publisher, page count, theme, a spoiler-free description alongside Sadie’s recommendation.

Featuring five brand-new essays from popular and rising voices in the genre—Alma Katsu, Alexis Henderson, Christina Henry, Rae Knowles, and Laura Purcell, this illustrated reader’s guide is perfect for anyone looking to get out of a reading slump or diversify their TBR pile.]]> Sadie Hartmann Tamsin 0 to-read 5.00
author: Sadie Hartmann
name: Tamsin
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Tamsin 5 3.61 2007
author: Han Kang
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 17465515 My Brilliant Friend introduced readers to the unforgettable Elena and Lila, whose lifelong friendship provides the backbone for the Neapolitan Novels. The Story of a New Name is the second book in this series. With these books, which the New Yorker's James Wood described as "large, captivating, amiably peopled ... a beautiful and delicate tale of confluence and reversal," Ferrante proves herself to be one of Italy's most accomplished storytellers. She writes vividly about a specific neighborhood of Naples from the late-1950s through to the current day and about two remarkable young women who are very much the products of that place and time. Yet in doing so she has created a world in which readers will recognize themselves and has drawn a marvelously nuanced portrait of friendship.

In The Story of a New Name, Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighborhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life's challenges. In these Neapolitan Novels, Elena Ferrante, the acclaimed author of The Days of Abandonment, gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.]]> 471 Elena Ferrante Tamsin 5 4.47 2012
author: Elena Ferrante
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 61121126 Han Kang’s most revelatory book since The Vegetarian, We Do Not Part tells the story of a friendship between two women while powerfully reckoning with a hidden chapter of Korean history.

One winter morning, Kyungha receives an urgent message from her friend Inseon to visit her at a hospital in Seoul. Inseon has injured herself in an accident, and she begs Kyungha to return to Jeju Island, where she lives, to save her beloved pet—a white bird called Ama.

A snowstorm hits the island when Kyungha arrives. She must reach Inseon’s house at all costs, but the icy wind and squalls slow her down as night begins to fall. She wonders if she will arrive in time to save the animal—or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. Lost in a world of snow, she doesn't yet suspect the vertiginous plunge into the darkness that awaits her at her friend's house.

Blurring the boundaries between dream and reality, We Do Not Part powerfully illuminates a forgotten chapter in Korean history, buried for decades—bringing to light the lost voices of the past to save them from oblivion. Both a hymn to an enduring friendship and an argument for remembering, it is the story of profound love in the face of unspeakable violence—and a celebration of life, however fragile it might be.]]> 272 Han Kang Tamsin 0 to-read 4.04 2021
author: Han Kang
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61686012 “Now and then, language would thrust its way into her sleep like a skewer through meat, startling her awake several times a night.�

In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.

Soon the two discover a deeper pain binds them together. For her, in the space of just a few months, she has lost both her mother and the custody battle for her nine-year-old son. For him, it’s the pain of growing up between Korea and Germany, being torn between two cultures and languages, and the fear of losing his independence.

Greek Lessons tells the story of two ordinary people brought together at a moment of private anguish—the fading light of a man losing his vision meeting the silence of a woman who has lost her language. Yet these are the very things that draw them to each other. Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity—their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to breath and expression.

Greek Lessons is the story of the unlikely bond between this pair and a tender love letter to human intimacy and connection—a novel to awaken the senses, one that vividly conjures the essence of what it means to be alive.]]> 192 Han Kang 0593595270 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.54 2011
author: Han Kang
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 30091914 A riveting, poetic, and fearless portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice by the acclaimed author of The Vegetarian.

In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed.

The story of this tragic episode unfolds in a sequence of interconnected chapters as the victims and the bereaved encounter suppression, denial, and the echoing agony of the massacre. From Dong-ho’s best friend, who meets his own fateful end, to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, both suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother, their collective heartbreak and acts of hope tell the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.

An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of a historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.]]> 218 Han Kang 1101906723 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.26 2014
author: Han Kang
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211004176 Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.�

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters� bond but also their lives will be at risk…]]> 133 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341086 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.21 2025
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212806663 “A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.�—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

“A must for the obsessive reader.�—Elif Batuman, author of Either/Or and The Idiot

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners�.

Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?

Bibliophobia is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.]]> 240 Sarah Chihaya 059359472X Tamsin 0 to-read 3.80 2025
author: Sarah Chihaya
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208840704 Just add lemon, garlic, and a dash of the one percent.

This smart, biting novel explores what happens when a Haitian American girl uses her previously hidden zombie abilities to exact revenge on the wealthy elites who’ve caused her family pain.

Brielle Petitfour loves to cook. But with a chronically sick mother and bills to pay, becoming a chef isn’t exactly a realistic career path.

When Brielle’s mom suddenly loses her job, Brielle steps in and uses her culinary skills to earn some extra money. The rich families who love her cooking praise her use of unique flavors and textures, which keep everyone guessing what’s in Brielle’s dishes. The secret ingredient? Human flesh.

Written by the storytelling duo Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, The Summer I Ate the Rich is a modern-day fable inspired by Haitian zombie lore that scrutinizes the socioeconomic and racial inequity that is the foundation of our society. Just like Brielle’s clients, it will have you asking: What’s for dinner?]]> 400 Maika Moulite 0374390533 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.73
author: Maika Moulite
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.73
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 215149209 From Axie Oh, the New York Times-bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, Final Fantasy meets Shadow and Bone in this romantic fantasy reimagining the Korean legend of Celestial Maidens.

Sunho lives in the Under World, a land of perpetual darkness. An ex-soldier, he can remember little of his life from before two years ago, when he woke up alone with only his name and his sword. Now he does odd-jobs to scrape by, until he comes across the score of a lifetime—a chest of coins for any mercenary who can hunt down a girl who wields silver light.

Meanwhile, far to the east, Ren is a cheerful and spirited acrobat traveling with her adoptive family and performing at villages. But everything changes during one of their festival performances when the village is attacked by a horrific humanlike demon. In a moment of fear and rage, Ren releases a blast of silver light—a power she has kept hidden since childhood—and kills the monster. But her efforts are not in time to prevent her adoptive family from suffering a devastating loss, or to save her beloved uncle from being grievously wounded.

Determined to save him from succumbing to the poisoned wound, Ren sets off over the mountains, where the creature came from—and from where Ren herself fled ten years ago. Her path sets her on a collision course with Sunho, but he doesn't realize she's the girl that he—and a hundred other swords-for-hire—is looking for. As the two grow closer through their travels, they come to realize that their pasts—and destinies—are far more entwined than either of them could have imagined...]]> 368 Axie Oh 1250853087 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.20 2025
author: Axie Oh
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219838837 From the author ofÌýThere Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, a piercing debut novel following two families in alternative timelines of the Salvadoran civil war—a stunning exploration of the mechanisms of fate, the gravity of the past, and the endurance of love.

“An important voice in U.S. fiction. Ruben Reyes Jr. is a wonder.â€� —ÌýHéctor Tobar

Cambridge, 2018.ÌýAna and Luis’s relationship is on the rocks, despite their many similarities, including their mothers who both fled El Salvador during the war. In her search for answers, and against her best judgement, Ana uses The Defractor, an experimental device that allows users to peek into alternate versions of their lives. What she sees leads her and Luis on a quest through Havana and San Salvador to uncover the family histories they are desperate to know, eager to learn if what might have been could fix what is.

Havana, 1978. The Salvadoran war is brewing, and Neto, a young revolutionary with a knack for forging government papers, meets Rafael at a meeting for the People's Revolutionary Army. The two form an intense and forbidden love, shedding their fake names and revealing themselves to each other inside the covert world of their activism. When their work separates them, they begin to exchange weekly letters, but soon, as the devastating war rages on, forces beyond their control threaten to pull them apart forever.

Ruben Reyes Jr.’s debut novel is an epic, genre-bending journey through inverted worlds—one where war ends with a peace treaty, and one where it ends with a decisive victory by the Salvadoran government. What unfolds is a stunning story of displacement and belonging, of loss and love. It’s both a daring imagining of what might have been and a powerful reckoning of our past.]]> 288 Ruben Reyes Jr. 0063336316 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.36 2025
author: Ruben Reyes Jr.
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 229033 431 Ysabeau S. Wilce 0152054332 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.68 2007
author: Ysabeau S. Wilce
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 20949642
Ysabeau S. Wilce is the author of Flora Segunda, Andre Norton Award–winner Flora's Dare, and Flora's Fury, and she has published work in Asimov's, Steampunk!, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in San Francisco, California.
]]> 272 Ysabeau S. Wilce 1618730894 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.04 2014
author: Ysabeau S. Wilce
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23282249
Archivist Wasp fears she is not the chosen one, that she won't survive the trip to the underworld, that the brutal life she has escaped might be better than where she is going. There is only one way to find out.]]> 268 Nicole Kornher-Stace 1618730975 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.72 2015
author: Nicole Kornher-Stace
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 21535640
Contents:
Young Woman in a Garden
The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor
The Red Piano
La Fée Verte
Walpurgis Afternoon
The Parwat Ruby
The Fairy Cony-Catcher
Sacred Harp
The Printer’s Daughter
Nanny Peters and the Feathery Bride
Miss Carstairs and the Merman
The Maid on the Shore
The Fiddler of Bayou Teche
Land’s End]]> 312 Delia Sherman 1618730916 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.91 2014
author: Delia Sherman
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 23282059
Prodigies explores the story of the poet Novalis's birthplace in the German town of Weissenfels after it is converted into a boarding house. Moving, subtle, and full of wit, irony, and dreams, this novel fills the house with the women who lived there throughout the nineteenth century, and across the flow of history constructs the secret drama of their destinies.

Praise for Prodigies :

"I am so in love with this book I could explode! I want to hug it and pet it and call it George. I knew it would be good, because Small Beer Press publishes the best, but I had no idea how just enchanted I would be with this delightful novel of unusual tenants at a boarding house in the nineteenth century. This book scratched my Muriel Spark/Barbara Comyns itches, with an extra side of the unusual. Originally published in 1994, this is Argentinian writer Gorodischer’s third novel to be translated into English. I will definitely be reading the first two now!�
� Liberty Hardy, Book Riot

“Put strangers around a common table and you have possibilities, in life and in literature. Thus the driving premise of The Magic Mountain, and thus Argentine novelist Gorodischer’s slender book. . . . Gorodischer writes a poetic, vigorous prose. Her story, dreamlike and start-and-stop, takes effort, for though brief, it is dense—and well worth the trouble.�
� Kirkus Reviews

"Because of Prodigies ' unusual style, it requires great care and thoughtfulness to read. It cannot be rushed through or casually scanned. An impatient reader will abandon this book long before its rich rewards can be reaped. The right audience will have a willingness to savor, to double-back over sentences, to bob along to wherever the author and characters wish to take you. If you are ready for the experience of Prodigies , it is definitely ready for you."
� Carmen Maria Machado, NPR

"Gorodischer's rhythmic and transparent prose reveals the violence underlying bourgeois respectability. Prodigies is both incisive and incantatory."—Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria

" Prodigies , which she considers to be her best novel . . . takes place in Germany in the home of the poet Novalis after his death, and is a humorous and ironic portrayal of the women who passed through that home."� Women and Power in Argentinean Literature

Angélica Gorodischer was born in Buenos Aires in 1928 and has lived in Rosario since 1936. She has published many novels and short story collections including Kalpa Imperial , Mango Juice , and Trafalgar , as well as a memoir, History of My Mother . Her work has been translated into many languages and her translators include Ursula K. Le Guin and Alberto Manguel. With certain self-satisfaction she claims she has never written plays or poems, not even at sixteen when everybody writes poems, especially on unrequited love. She received two Fulbright awards as well as many literary awards around the world, including a 2014 Konex Special Mention Award.]]> 192 Angélica Gorodischer 1618730991 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.63 1994
author: Angélica Gorodischer
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 7126 The epic tale of wrongful imprisonment, adventure and revenge, in its definitive translation

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to use the treasure to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas� epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.

Translated with an Introduction by Robin Buss

An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here]]> 1276 Alexandre Dumas 0140449264 Tamsin 2 4.29 1846
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1846
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 537094 57 Nikolai Gogol 1419176528 Tamsin 0 4.17 1842
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1842
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 87346
In Chekhov's tragi-comedy - perhaps his most popular play - the Gayev family is torn by powerful forces, forces rooted deep in history, and in the society around them. Their estate is hopelessly in debt: urged to cut down their beautiful cherry orchard and sell the land for holiday cottages, they struggle to act decisively. Tom Murphy's fine vernacular version allows us to re-imagine the events of the play in the last days of Anglo-Irish colonialism. It gives this great play vivid new life within our own history and social consciousness.]]> 96 Anton Chekhov 0413774031 Tamsin 0 3.72 1903
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1903
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 19104 103 Nikolai Gogol 0486270572 Tamsin 0 4.23 1836
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1836
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 113205 123 Mikhail Bulgakov 0802150594 Tamsin 0 4.15 1925
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 19117
Fathers and Sons enraged the old and the young, reactionaries, romantics, and radicals alike when it was first published. At the same time, Turgenev won the acclaim of Flaubert, Maupassant, and Henry James for his craftsmanship as a writer and his psychological insight. Fathers and Sons is now considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century.

A timeless depiction of generational conflict during social upheaval, it vividly portrays the clash between the older Russian aristocracy and the youthful radicalism that foreshadowed the revolution to come—and offers modern-day readers much to reflect upon as they look around at their own tumultuous, ever changing world.

Introduction by Jane Costlow]]> 244 Ivan Turgenev 0451529693 Tamsin 0 3.99 1862
author: Ivan Turgenev
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1862
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 28381 Dead Souls, Russia's first major novel, is one of the most unusual works of nineteenth-century fiction and a devastating satire on social hypocrisy.

In his introduction to this new translation, Robert A. Maguire discusses Gogol's life and literary career, his depiction of Russian society, and the language and narrative techniques employed in Dead Souls. This edition also includes a chronology, further reading, appendices, a glossary, map and notes.]]> 464 Nikolai Gogol 0140448071 Tamsin 0 4.00 1842
author: Nikolai Gogol
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1842
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 7144 671 Fyodor Dostoevsky Tamsin 0 4.26 1866
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1866
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 910444
Now, with a new introduction and full-color artwork, this passionate and important text shows even more clearly that the religion of the Goddess—which is tied to the cycles of women’s bodies, the seasons, the phases of the moon, and the fertility of the earth—was the original religion of all humanity.]]> 501 Monica Sjöö 0062507915 Tamsin 0 currently-reading 4.03 1981
author: Monica Sjöö
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 41886271 A son struggling to grasp his violent future,
A father blind to the danger that threatens them all.

When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?

High on a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire’s enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name ‘The Sword of Kaigen.�

Born into Kusanagi’s legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family’s fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen’s alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.

Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.]]> 651 M.L. Wang Tamsin 0 to-read 4.46 2019
author: M.L. Wang
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50884430 The first unabridged publication of Goncharov's masterpiece, which took him twenty years to finish. This new translation is by the award-winning translator Stephen Pearl.

After his university studies and a short stint in the army and the civil service, thirty-something Boris Pavlovich Raisky enjoys the life of an artist, frequenting St Petersburg's elegant circles, dabbing at his paintings, playing a little music and entertaining thoughts of writing a novel. But for a man like him, who has achieved nothing so far and by his own admission is “not born to work�, the bustle of the capital proves too much, so he decides to visit his country estate of Malinovka. There he hopes to rediscover the joys of a simpler and more authentic life--but when he becomes emotionally involved with his beautiful cousin Vera and meets the dangerous freethinker Mark Volokhov, the scene is set for a chain of events that will lead to disappointment, confrontation and, ultimately, tragedy.

Conceived twenty years before its initial publication in 1869, and regarded by its author as his best work, Malinovka Heights (previously translated in English as The Precipice) is Goncharov's crowning achievement as a novelist and a triumph of psychological insight. Here presented for the first time in unabridged form in a sparkling new translation by Stephen Pearl, Goncharov's final novel deserves to be reassessed as one of the most important classics of nineteenth-century Russian literature.]]> 752 Ivan Goncharov 1847498388 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.00 1869
author: Ivan Goncharov
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1869
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 51042792 368 Phoebe Waller-Bridge 1529394805 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.88 2019
author: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.88
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 239844 180 Christine Peri Rossi 0930523547 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.96 1984
author: Christine Peri Rossi
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6314852 160 Cherie Dimaline 1894778383 Tamsin 0 to-read 3.92 2007
author: Cherie Dimaline
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 38902341
Initially confident, the narrator becomes increasingly uneasy in the room. He attempts to conquer his fear by lighting candles, but keeping the candles lit in the draughty room becomes an ongoing battle. Each time a candle is snuffed out, the narrator's fear increases. He begins to imagine that the drafts are guided by a malevolent intelligence. As the narrator's fear reaches a crescendo, he stumbles onto a large piece of furniture (possibly the bed), and ricochets off the walls, in a blind panic; hitting his head and eventually falling unconscious. The caretakers, who find him in the morning, feel vindicated when the narrator agrees that the room is haunted. They are eager to hear a description of the phantom, but he surprises them by explaining that there is no ghost residing in the room. The room is haunted by fear itself.]]> 29 H.G. Wells Tamsin 0 to-read 3.06 1894
author: H.G. Wells
name: Tamsin
average rating: 3.06
book published: 1894
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 878307 Bracken was born on an April night in a warm dark burrow deep in the historic system of Duncton Wood, six moleyears after Rebecca. This is the story of their love, and their epic struggle to find it.

The moles of Duncton Wood are a varied lot. There are the aggressive Westsiders, the secretive and sickly Marchenders and the independent Eastsiders. Despite their differences, all are members of the same once proud and famous mole system, and all are now the tyrannised by Mandrake a mole so powerful and senselessly destructive that his name seems a curse on those who utter it.

But the source of the evil that spreads through Duncton lies not only in Mandrake but in the growing disinterest in the rites and traditions that surround the now deserted standing Stone that was once the heart of the system itself.

It is in the shadow of this towering stone that the lonely Bracken by chance meets Rebecca, daughter of Mandrake. They exchange a few words and scurry off in the different directions, never to forget a moment which will change the course of their lives for ever. Only Hulver the Elder, guardian of the old ways, understands that the future happiness of the system depends on their love, and the courage with which they can pursue its suffering and joy.

Accompanied by Boswell, the strange scribemole from Uffington, Bracken sets out to revive the ancient rituals and disperse the evil from Duncton. Together they seek the sacred seventh stillstone.]]> 736 William Horwood 0099443007 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.03 1980
author: William Horwood
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 581188 555 William Horwood 0531098737 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.05 1982
author: William Horwood
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 431221
Skallagrigg - whatever the name signifies, whoever he is - will come to transform all their lives. And William Horwood's inspired, heart-rending story of rescue and redemptive love will undoubtedly touch your life too.]]> 728 William Horwood 0140072063 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.53 1987
author: William Horwood
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 47906
In this powerful sequel to Obernewtyn , young Elspeth Gordie-possessed of extraordinary mental powers-has united with others Misfits for refuge on the remote mountain keep of Obernewtyn. Yet the threat from the totalitarian Council to their safety is ever present. Their only defense is to work hard to develop their mental powers before an inevitable confrontation.

But when Elspeth is lured off the mountain in a dangerous quest to rescue a powerful Misfit, the fate of the Obernewtyn colony will hang in the balance.]]> 320 Isobelle Carmody 0765342715 Tamsin 0 to-read 4.16 1990
author: Isobelle Carmody
name: Tamsin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>