Lisa's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 07 Aug 2024 21:07:56 -0700 60 Lisa's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naĂŻve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TłÜ°ů˛Ô±đ»ĺ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Lisa 5 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Death in Venice and Other Tales]]> 53064 384 Thomas Mann 0141181737 Lisa 4 3.92 1911 Death in Venice and Other Tales
author: Thomas Mann
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1911
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Nijinsky 1508918 0 Vaslav Nijinsky 0671818368 Lisa 4 3.70 1934 Nijinsky
author: Vaslav Nijinsky
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1934
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/06/11
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]]> First Lie Wins 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

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

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

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

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]> 340 Ashley Elston Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.97 2024 First Lie Wins
author: Ashley Elston
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/22
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]]> Oblomov 254308 586 Ivan Goncharov 1933480092 Lisa 5 4.09 1859 Oblomov
author: Ivan Goncharov
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1859
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/08/01
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]]> Where Reasons End 40147915
"Li has converted the messy and devastating stuff of life into a remarkable work of art.”â€� TheĚýWall Street Journal

WINNER OF THE PEN/JEAN STEIN AWARD � LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD � NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST FICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Parul Seghal, The New York Times � NPR � The Guardian � The Paris Review

The narrator of Where Reasons End writes, � I had but one delusion, which I held on to with all my We once gave Nikolai a life of flesh and blood; and I’m doing it over again, this time by words .�

Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, Where Reasons End trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship.

Written with originality, precision, and poise, Where Reasons End is suffused with intimacy, inescapable pain, and fierce love.]]> 170 Yiyun Li 198481737X Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.77 2019 Where Reasons End
author: Yiyun Li
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/04
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]]> The Book of Goose 59808607 A gripping, heartbreaking new novel about female friendship, art, and memory by the award-winning author of Where Reasons End.

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised--the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now, Agnès is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves--until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school to to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnès can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a haunting story of friendship, art, exploitation, and memory by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.]]> 348 Yiyun Li 037460634X Lisa 0 to-read 3.67 2022 The Book of Goose
author: Yiyun Li
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/04
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]]> The Chain 52588652
“You are not the first. And you will certainly not be the last.� Rachel is now part of The Chain, an unending and ingenious scheme that turns victims into criminals � and is making someone else very rich in the process. The rules are simple, the moral challenges impossible; find the money fast, find your victim , and then commit a horrible act you’d have thought yourself incapable of just twenty-four hours ago.

But what the masterminds behind The Chain know is that parents will do anything for their children. It turns out that kidnapping is only the beginning.]]> 368 Adrian McKinty 0316531235 Lisa 0 to-read 3.83 2019 The Chain
author: Adrian McKinty
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/11/04
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]]> Know My Name 50196744
Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.]]> 384 Chanel Miller 0735223718 Lisa 5 4.69 2019 Know My Name
author: Chanel Miller
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/12/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic]]> 44643351 Fentanyl, Inc. is the first deep-dive investigation of a hazardous and illicit industry that has created a worldwide epidemic, ravaging communities and overwhelming and confounding government agencies that are challenged to combat it. "A whole new crop of chemicals is radically changing the recreational drug landscape," writes Ben Westhoff. "These are known as Novel Psychoactive Substances (NPS) and they include replacements for known drugs like heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, and marijuana. They are synthetic, made in a laboratory, and are much more potent than traditional drugs"--and all-too-often tragically lethal. Drugs like fentanyl, K2, and Spice--and those with arcane acronyms like 25i-NBOMe-- were all originally conceived in legitimate laboratories for proper scientific and medicinal purposes. Their formulas were then hijacked and manufactured by rogue chemists, largely in China, who change their molecular structures to stay ahead of the law, making the drugs' effects impossible to predict. Westhoff has infiltrated this shadowy world, becoming the first journalist to report from inside an illicit Chinese fentanyls lab and providing startling and original reporting on how China's vast chemical industry operates, and how the Chinese government subsidizes it. He tracks down the little-known scientists who invented these drugs and inadvertently killed thousands, as well as a mysterious drug baron who turned the law upside down in his home country of New Zealand. Poignantly, Westhoff chronicles the lives of addicted users and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug awareness organizers in the U.S. and Europe. Together they represent the shocking and riveting full anatomy of a calamity we are just beginning to understand. From its depths, as Westhoff relates, are emerging new strategies that may provide essential long-term solutions to the drug crisis that has affected so many.]]> 356 Ben Westhoff 0802127436 Lisa 0 to-read 4.00 2019 Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
author: Ben Westhoff
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/12
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]]> Best Russian Short Stories 1091479 Thomas Seltzer 142800792X Lisa 5 4.01 1917 Best Russian Short Stories
author: Thomas Seltzer
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1917
rating: 5
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date added: 2018/06/19
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]]> The Silver Linings Playbook 7788995 Meet Pat Peoples. Pat Peoples has a theory that his life is actually a movie produced by God, and that his God-given mission in life is to become physically fit and emotionally literate, whereupon God will ensure a happy ending � which, for Pat, means the return of his estranged wife Nikki. (It might not come as any surprise to learn that Pat has spent several years in a mental health facility.)

The problem is, Pat's home now, and everything feels off. No one will talk to him about Nikki; his beloved Philadelphia Eagles keep losing; his old friends are saddled with families; he's being pursued by the deeply odd Tiffany; his new therapist seems to recommend adultery as a form of therapy. Plus, Kenny G keeps haunting him!

The Silver Linings Playbook is the riotous and poignant story of how one man regains his memory and comes to terms with his wife's betrayal. Matthew Quick takes us inside Pat's mind, deftly showing us the world from his distorted yet endearing perspective. The result is a touching and funny novel that helps us look at both depression and love in a wonderfully refreshing way.

]]> 289 Matthew Quick 0374532281 Lisa 0 to-read 3.88 2008 The Silver Linings Playbook
author: Matthew Quick
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/10/17
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]]> Fates and Furies 24612118
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.]]> 390 Lauren Groff 1594634475 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.55 2015 Fates and Furies
author: Lauren Groff
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/10/01
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]]> Go Set a Watchman 24817626 To Kill a Mockingbird. Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch�"Scout"—returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise's homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt. Featuring many of the iconic characters from To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman perfectly captures a young woman, and a world, in a painful yet necessary transition out of the illusions of the past—a journey that can be guided only by one's conscience. Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor and effortless precision—a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to an American classic.]]> 278 Harper Lee 0062409859 Lisa 0 to-read 3.28 2015 Go Set a Watchman
author: Harper Lee
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.28
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/07/12
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]]> Us Conductors 18492619 In a finely woven series of flashbacks and correspondence, Lev Termen, the Russian scientist, inventor, and spy, tells the story of his life to his “one true love,� Clara Rockmore, the finest theremin player in the world. In the first half of the book, we learn of Termen’s early days as a scientist in Leningrad during the Bolshevik Revolution, the acclaim he receives as the inventor of the theremin, and his arrival in 1930s New York under the aegis of the Russian state. In the United States he makes a name for himself teaching the theremin to eager music students and marketing his inventions to American companies. In the second half, the novel builds to a crescendo as Termen returns to Russia, where he is imprisoned in a Siberian gulag and later brought to Moscow, tasked with eavesdropping on Stalin himself. Throughout all this, his love for Clara remains constant and unflagging, traveling through the ether much like a theremin’s notes. Us Conductors is steeped in beauty, wonder, and looping heartbreak, a sublime debut that inhabits the idea of invention on every level.
]]> 464 Sean Michaels 1935639811 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.67 2014 Us Conductors
author: Sean Michaels
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/07/02
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> BUtterfield 8 49715 BUtterfield 8 was inspired by a news account of the discovery of the body of a beautiful young woman washed up on a Long Island beach. Was it an accident, a murder, a suicide? The circumstances of her death were never resolved, but O’Hara seized upon the tragedy to imagine the woman’s down-and-out life in New York City in the early 1930s.

“O’Hara understood better than any other American writer how class can both reveal and shape character,� Fran Lebowitz writes in her Introduction. With brash honesty and a flair for the unconventional, BUtterfield 8 lays bare the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. The result is a masterpiece of American fiction.]]> 228 John O'Hara 0812966988 Lisa 4 currently-reading 3.58 1935 BUtterfield 8
author: John O'Hara
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1935
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/06/05
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Brief History of Seven Killings]]> 20893314
Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters—assassins, journalists, drug dealers, and even ghosts�A Brief History of Seven Killings is the fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time and its bloody aftermath, from the streets and slums of Kingston in the 70s, to the crack wars in 80s New York, to a radically altered Jamaica in the 90s. Brilliantly inventive and stunningly ambitious, this novel is a revealing modern epic that will secure Marlon James� place among the great literary talents of his generation.]]> 688 Marlon James 159448600X Lisa 4 3.91 2014 A Brief History of Seven Killings
author: Marlon James
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/05/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Summer House with Swimming Pool]]> 18594633 The blistering, compulsively readable new novel from Herman Koch, author of the instant New York Times bestseller The Dinner.

When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers. After all, reputation is everything in this business. Personally, he’s not exactly upset that Ralph is gone, but as a high profile doctor to the stars, Marc can't hide from the truth forever.

It all started the previous summer. Marc, his wife, and their two beautiful teenage daughters agreed to spend a week at the Meier’s extravagant summer home on the Mediterranean. Joined by Ralph and his striking wife Judith, her mother, and film director Stanley Forbes and his much younger girlfriend, the large group settles in for days of sunshine, wine tasting, and trips to the beach. But when a violent incident disrupts the idyll, darker motivations are revealed, and suddenly no one can be trusted. As the ultimate holiday soon turns into a nightmare, the circumstances surrounding Ralph’s later death begin to reveal the disturbing reality behind that summer’s tragedy.

Featuring the razor-sharp humor and acute psychological insight that made The Dinner an international phenomenon, Summer House with Swimming Pool is a controversial, thought-provoking novel that showcases Herman Koch at his finest.]]> 389 Herman Koch 0804138818 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.40 2011 Summer House with Swimming Pool
author: Herman Koch
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/05/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Final Silence (Jack Lennon #4)]]> 18460050 Stuart Neville, “the current master of neo-noir detective fiction� (Boston Globe), is back with a chilling new thriller
Ěý
Belfast, Northern Ireland: Rea Carlisle has inherited a house from an uncle she never knew. It doesn't take her long to clear out the dead man's remaining possessions, but one room remains stubbornly locked. When Rea finally forces it open, she discovers inside a chair, a table—and a leather-bound book, its pages filled with locks of hair, fingernails: a catalogue of victims.
Ěý
Horrified, Rea wants to go straight to the police but her family intervenes, fearing that scandal will mar her politician father's public image. Rea turns to the only person she can think of: disgraced police inspector Jack Lennon. He is facing suspension from the force and his new supervisor, DCI Serena Flanagan, is the toughest cop he's ever met. But a gruesome murder brings the dead man's terrifying journal to the top of the Belfast police's priority list.]]> 368 Stuart Neville 1846556953 Lisa 0 3.77 2014 The Final Silence (Jack Lennon #4)
author: Stuart Neville
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/05/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Notes From The Underground (Dodo Publishing)]]> 20582698
****
** Check Out More Great Titles From Dodo Publishing **
****
Click on "Dodo Publishing (Editor)" under the title to see a full list of all of our great books!!

New titles are being added daily, so be sure to check back often to find more great discounted books!!]]> 124 Fyodor Dostoevsky Lisa 4 4.09 1864 Notes From The Underground (Dodo Publishing)
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1864
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/04/05
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]]> Long Time Coming 6465693 391 Robert Goddard 0593060253 Lisa 0 3.75 2010 Long Time Coming
author: Robert Goddard
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2015/03/31
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]]> The Cypress House 8585317 A journey to Florida's coast becomes an inescapable nightmare in the newest supernatural thriller from international bestseller Michael Koryta.

Arlen Wagner has seen it in men before--a trace of smoke in their eyes that promises imminent death. He is never wrong.

When Arlen awakens on a train one hot Florida night and sees death's telltale sign in the eyes of his fellow passengers, he tries to warn them. Only 19-year-old Paul Brickhill believes him, and the two abandon the train, hoping to escape certain death. They continue south, but soon are stranded at the Cypress House--an isolated Gulf Coast boarding house run by the beautiful Rebecca Cady--directly in the path of an approaching hurricane.

The storm isn't the only approaching danger, though. A much deadlier force controls the county and everyone living in it, and Arlen wants out--fast. But Paul refuses to abandon Rebecca to face the threats alone, even though Arlen's eerie gift warns that if they stay too long they may never leave. From its chilling beginning to terrifying end, The Cypress House is a story of relentless suspense from "one of the best of the best" (Michael Connelly).]]> 415 Michael Koryta 0316053724 Lisa 3 3.73 2011 The Cypress House
author: Michael Koryta
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2011
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/01/31
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]]> Swamplandia! 8584686
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly #1 in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness in a last-ditch effort to keep their family business from going under. Ava’s father, affectionately known as Chief Bigtree, is AWOL; and that leaves Ava, a resourceful but terrified thirteen, to manage ninety-eight gators and the vast, inscrutable landscape of her own grief.

Against a backdrop of hauntingly fecund plant life animated by ancient lizards and lawless hungers, Karen Russell has written an utterly singular novel about a family’s struggle to stay afloat in a world that is inexorably sinking. An arrestingly beautiful and inventive work from a vibrant new voice in fiction.]]> 315 Karen Russell 0307263991 Lisa 2 3.22 2011 Swamplandia!
author: Karen Russell
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2011
rating: 2
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date added: 2015/01/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)]]> 7093952
But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd given him the brush-off--probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again.

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not.

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he’s a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he’s willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.]]> 400 Tana French 0670021873 Lisa 4 3.98 2010 Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #3)
author: Tana French
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/01/31
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]]> Dancer 110896 336 Colum McCann 0312423187 Lisa 5 3.94 2003 Dancer
author: Colum McCann
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/01/31
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]]> Canada 12872236
When fifteen-year-old Dell Parsons' parents rob a bank, his sense of normal life is forever altered. In an instant, this private cataclysm drives his life into before and after, a threshold that can never be uncrossed.

His parents' arrest and imprisonment mean a threatening and uncertain future for Dell and his twin sister, Berner. Willful and burning with resentment, Berner flees their home in Montana, abandoning her brother and her life. But Dell is not completely alone. A family friend intervenes, spiriting him across the Canadian border, in hopes of delivering him to a better life. There, afloat on the prairie of Saskatchewan, Dell is taken in by Arthur Remlinger, an enigmatic and charismatic American whose cool reserve masks a dark and violent nature.

Undone by the calamity of his parents' robbery and arrest, Dell struggles under the vast prairie sky to remake himself and define the adults he thought he once knew. But his search for grace and peace only moves him nearer to a harrowing and murderous collision with Remlinger, an elemental force of darkness.

A true masterwork of haunting and spectacular vision from one of America's greatest writers, Canada is a profound novel of boundaries traversed, innocence lost and reconciled, and the mysterious and consoling bonds of family. Told in spare, elegant prose, both resonant and luminous, it is destined to become a modern classic.]]> 420 Richard Ford 0061692042 Lisa 3 but so sad]]> 3.50 2012 Canada
author: Richard Ford
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2012/09/20
date added: 2015/01/31
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beautifully written lots to think about
but so sad
]]> <![CDATA[The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society]]> 2728527
“Treat yourself to this book, please - I can’t recommend it highly enough.� (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love)

“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.�

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb....

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends - and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island - boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.

Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises and of finding connection in the most surprising ways.

Praise for The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

“A jewel... Poignant and keenly observed, Guernsey is a small masterpiece about love, war, and the immeasurable sustenance to be found in good books and good friends.� (People)

“A book-lover’s delight, an implicit and sometimes explicit paean to all things literary.� (Chicago Sun-Times)

“A sparkling epistolary novel radiating wit, lightly worn erudition and written with great assurance and aplomb.� (The Sunday Times [London])

“Cooked perfectly à point: subtle and elegant in flavour, yet emotionally satisfying to the finish.� (The Times [London])]]> 277 Mary Ann Shaffer 0385340990 Lisa 3 4.13 2008 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
author: Mary Ann Shaffer
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2013/01/28
date added: 2015/01/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder]]> 421518 Get Me Out of Here, reveals what mental illness looks and feels like from the inside, and how healing from borderline personality disorder is possible through intensive therapy and the support of loved ones. A mother, wife, and working professional, Reiland was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder at the age of 29—a diagnosis that finally explained her explosive anger, manipulative behaviors, and self-destructive episodes including bouts of anorexia, substance abuse, and promiscuity. A truly riveting read with a hopeful message.]]> 436 Rachel Reiland 1592850995 Lisa 5 delete 3.94 2002 Get Me Out of Here: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder
author: Rachel Reiland
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2014/01/12
date added: 2015/01/31
shelves: delete
review:

]]> Scar Tissue 4300
In 1983, four self-described "knuckleheads" burst out of the mosh-pitted mosaic of the neo-punk rock scene in L.A. with their own unique brand of cosmic hardcore mayhem funk. Over twenty years later, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, against all odds, have become one of the most successful bands in the world. Though the band has gone through many incarnations, Anthony Kiedis, the group's lyricist and dynamic lead singer, has been there for the whole roller-coaster ride. In Scar Tissue , Kiedis delivers a compelling life story from a man "in love with everything"—the darkness, the death, the disease. Even his descent into drug addiction was a part of that journey, another element transformed into art.

Whether he's honoring the influence of the beautiful, strong women who have been his muses or remembering the roaring crowds of Woodstock and the Dalai Lama's humble compound, Kiedis shares a compelling story about the price of success and excess. Scar Tissue is a story of dedication and debauchery, of intrigue and integrity, of recklessness and redemption—a story that could only have come out of the world of rock.]]> 465 Anthony Kiedis 1401301010 Lisa 3 I am very disappointed. I keep wishing that Anthony had written it as a satire of himself. That might have redeemed it in some way, but still you would end up nothing nothing about the man. I still like the Anthony who wrote Green Heaven, Behind the Sun, and Taste the Pain. This Anthony is cruel, selfish , shallow and extremely lucky. As both rock stars and real men, I greatly prefer Bob Forrest of Thelonius Monster.
I will keep the funky Anthony I loved back in a box with all my euphoric ecstasy memories of a youth long gone. ]]> 4.02 2004 Scar Tissue
author: Anthony Kiedis
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/11
date added: 2015/01/19
shelves:
review:
I fell in love with this band in 1987 and the love affair lasted until John quit the first time.
I am very disappointed. I keep wishing that Anthony had written it as a satire of himself. That might have redeemed it in some way, but still you would end up nothing nothing about the man. I still like the Anthony who wrote Green Heaven, Behind the Sun, and Taste the Pain. This Anthony is cruel, selfish , shallow and extremely lucky. As both rock stars and real men, I greatly prefer Bob Forrest of Thelonius Monster.
I will keep the funky Anthony I loved back in a box with all my euphoric ecstasy memories of a youth long gone.
]]> <![CDATA[The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing]]> 22318578 Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you'll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo's clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).

With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house "spark joy" (and which don't), this international best seller featuring Tokyo's newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home - and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.

]]> 213 Marie KondĹŤ 1607747308 Lisa 5 3.88 2010 The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
author: Marie KondĹŤ
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2015/01/18
shelves:
review:
I love this book and I started tidying the minute I finished it. The book and the lifestyle aren't for everyone, but what is? This is a gem. When I was in grade school, I was fascinated by Ethan Allen catalogues and McCalls. I enjoyed this book so much! In 6 months, I will write an update on my results. The next few months no longer seem like " the winter of my discontent."
]]> <![CDATA[The Big Blowdown (D.C. Quartet #1)]]> 307439 313 George P. Pelecanos 1852427388 Lisa 0 to-read 4.04 1996 The Big Blowdown (D.C. Quartet #1)
author: George P. Pelecanos
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sandrine's Case 16129297 Sandrine's Case, a lush and twisting literary mystery in which a college professor falls in love with his wife all over again...while on trial for her murder.
Samuel Madison always wondered what Sandrine saw in him. He was a meek, stuffy doctorate student, and she a brilliant, beautiful, bohemian with limitless talents and imagination. On the surface their relationship and marriage semed perfectly tranquil: jobs at the same small, liberal arts college, a precocious young daughter, a home filled with beautiful art and captivating literature, and trips to some of the world's most beautiful cities and towns. And then one night Sandrine is found dead in their bed and Samuel is accused of her murder.
As the truth about their often tumultuous relationship unspools and the facts surrounding Sandrine’s strange death come to light, Samuel must face a town and media convinced of his guilt, a daughter whose faith in her father has been shaken to its core, and astonishing revelations about his wife that make him fall in love with her for a second time. Sandrine’s Case is a searing novel about love lost and rediscovered, from one of our greatest chroniclers of the human heart.]]> 341 Thomas H. Cook 0802126081 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.55 2013 Sandrine's Case
author: Thomas H. Cook
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/09/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Running with Monsters 16030696
Life has been one strange trip for Bob Forrest. He started out as a suburban teenage drunkard from the Southern California suburbs and went on to become a member of a hip Hollywood crowd that included the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Depp, and River Phoenix. Los Angeles was their playground, and they hung out in such infamous haunts as the Viper Room and the Whisky a Go Go.
Ěý
Always one to push things to their limit, Bob partied the hardest and could usually be found at the center of the drama. Drugs weren’t Bob’s only passion. He was also a talented musician who commanded the stage as the wild andĚýunpredictable lead singer of Thelonious Monster. They traveled the world, and their future seemed bright and wide open. But Bob’s demons grew stronger as he achieved more success and he sank deeper into his chemical dependency, which included alcohol, crack, and heroin habits. No matter how many times he went to rehab, sobriety just wouldn’t stick for him. Soon he saw his once-promising music career slip away entirely.
Ěý
Eventually Bob found a way to defeat his addiction, and once he did, he saw the opportunity to help other hopeless cases by becoming a certified drug counselor. He’s helped addicts from all walks of life, often employing methods that are very much at odds with the traditional rehab approach.
Ěý
Running with Monsters is an electrifying chronicle of the LA rock scene of the 1980s and �90s, the story of a man who survived and triumphed over his demons, and a controversial perspective on the rehab industry and what it really takes to beat addiction. Bob tells his story with unflinching honesty and hard-won perspective, making this a reading experience that shocks, entertains, and ultimately inspires.]]> 240 Bob Forrest 077043598X Lisa 3 3.68 2013 Running with Monsters
author: Bob Forrest
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2014/08/10
date added: 2014/08/14
shelves:
review:
I read this book in one night. If you really want to know Bob Forrest, I suggest you listen to his music and read his lyrics. I wish I could call him on the phone whenever I think about relapsing. I wish I could hang out with him and have a cup of coffee. My husband is tired of hearing about him. The book just doesnt shine and comfort the way the real live Bobby does.
]]> The Goldfinch 17333794 WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review

Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love--and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.]]> 718 Donna Tartt 0316248673 Lisa 5 ]]> 4.01 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2013/10/24
date added: 2014/06/06
shelves:
review:
Loved it so h,sad I am done. Well worth the wait as usual. I will write more when I don't have to use my kindle,there's lots I want to share about the iconic D.T.

]]> <![CDATA[The Double and The Gambler (Vintage Classics)]]> 20659011 The Double and The Gambler. The Double is a surprisingly modern hallucinatory nightmare foreshadowing Kafka and Sartre in which a minor official named Goliadkin becomes aware of a mysterious doppelganger, a man who has his name and his face and who gradually and relentlessly begins to displace him with his friends and colleagues. The Gambler is a stunning psychological portrait of a young man's exhilarating and destructive addiction to gambling, a compulsion that Dostoevsky who once gambled away his young wife's wedding ring knew intimately from his own experience. In chronicling the disastrous love affairs and gambling adventures of Alexei Ivanovich, Dostoevsky explores the irresistible temptation to look into the abyss of ultimate risk that he believed was an essential part of the Russian national character.]]> 368 Fyodor Dostoevsky Lisa 0 to-read 4.14 1846 The Double and The Gambler (Vintage Classics)
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1846
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Gambler 20565073 170 Fyodor Dostoevsky Lisa 5 4.05 1866 The Gambler
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1866
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/06/03
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[White Nights and Other Stories]]> 19516472 334 Fyodor Dostoevsky 149441001X Lisa 5 4.83 1848 White Nights and Other Stories
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.83
book published: 1848
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Elements of Style [Illustrated]]]> 453553 The Elements of Style. The book’s mantra, make every word tell, is still on point. This much-loved classic, now in its fourth edition, will forever be the go-to guide when in need of a hint to make a turn of phrase clearer or a reminder on how to enliven prose with the active voice. The only style manual to ever appear on bestseller lists has explained to millions of readers the basic principals of plain English, and Maira Kalman’s fifty-seven exquisite illustrations give the revered work a jolt of new energy, making the learning experience more colorful and clear.
--back cover]]> 147 William Strunk Jr. 0143112724 Lisa 5 4.35 1918 The Elements of Style [Illustrated]
author: William Strunk Jr.
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1918
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/05/15
shelves:
review:
classy like an old Oxford shirt
]]> <![CDATA[Book Review: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt]]> 19392095
Learn what the experts are saying about Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch with this literary review. Dark themes prevail throughout the novel as protagonist Theo Decker copes with the violent and untimely death of his mother. As a 13-year-old boy, Theo’s grasp of reality is limited, and the tragic event forces despair and self-defeating behavior. With sophisticated themes like death, abuse and sex, this book is better suited for a mature audience. If you are looking for an intellectually stimulating novel that keeps you guessing, then The Goldfinch may be just what you need.

See how Donna Tartt’s novel scores with expert ratings and quotes from popular publications. The Goldfinch is an exemplary book filled with vivid imagery and superb character development. Each cast member in the play of Theo’s life has a mixture of positive traits and flaws that make up a believable character. A comparison of the good and bad aspects of the book help you determine the book’s value. Compare this book to Greek tragedies to see how death portrays a universal theme that has great impacts on any protagonist. This comprehensive review of The Goldfinch gives you the big picture of what to expect from your reading.]]> 46 Expert Book Reviews Lisa 5 4.00 2013 Book Review: The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
author: Expert Book Reviews
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> The Little Friend 775346
The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents� yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss.]]> 624 Donna Tartt 1400031699 Lisa 5 3.47 2002 The Little Friend
author: Donna Tartt
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/04/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Morning I'll be Gone (Detective Sean Duffy, #3)]]> 17187220 326 Adrian McKinty 1846688205 Lisa 4 currently-reading 4.19 2014 In the Morning I'll be Gone (Detective Sean Duffy, #3)
author: Adrian McKinty
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/04/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Eugene Onegin 27822 Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s Russia, Pushkin's verse novel follows the fates of three men and three women. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it also portrays a large cast of other
characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translation conveys the literal sense and the poetic music of the original.]]> 240 Alexander Pushkin Lisa 5 4.11 1833 Eugene Onegin
author: Alexander Pushkin
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1833
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/04/01
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review:

]]> Demons 5695 0679734511. (ISBN13: 9780679734512)

Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet" in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russia.]]> 733 Fyodor Dostoevsky Lisa 5 currently-reading 4.31 1872 Demons
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1872
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2014/04/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Flash Boys 20604826 Four years after his #1 bestseller The Big Short, Michael Lewis returns to Wall Street to report on a high-tech predator stalking the equity markets.

Flash Boys is about a small group of Wall Street guys who figure out that the U.S. stock market has been rigged for the benefit of insiders and that, post–financial crisis, the markets have become not more free but less, and more controlled by the big Wall Street banks. Working at different firms, they come to this realization separately; but after they discover one another, the flash boys band together and set out to reform the financial markets. This they do by creating an exchange in which high-frequency trading—source of the most intractable problems—will have no advantage whatsoever.

The characters in Flash Boys are fabulous, each completely different from what you think of when you think “Wall Street guy.� Several have walked away from jobs in the financial sector that paid them millions of dollars a year. From their new vantage point they investigate the big banks, the world’s stock exchanges, and high-frequency trading firms as they have never been investigated, and expose the many strange new ways that Wall Street generates profits.

The light that Lewis shines into the darkest corners of the financial world may not be good for your blood pressure, because if you have any contact with the market, even a retirement account, this story is happening to you. But in the end, Flash Boys is an uplifting read. Here are people who have somehow preserved a moral sense in an environment where you don’t get paid for that; they have perceived an institutionalized injustice and are willing to go to war to fix it.]]> 274 Michael Lewis 0393244660 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.03 2014 Flash Boys
author: Michael Lewis
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/04/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Russian Grammar Illustrated 6951247
8-е издание, Ńтереотипное.]]> 0 K.I. Pekhlivanova 5200009464 Lisa 0 to-read 4.80 Russian Grammar Illustrated
author: K.I. Pekhlivanova
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.80
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Hear the Sirens in the Street (Detective Sean Duffy, #2)]]> 16162561
Still, one tiny clue is all it takes, and there it is. A tattoo. So Duffy, fully fit and back at work after the severe trauma of his last case, is ready to follow the trail of blood-however faint-that always, always connects a body to its killer.

A legendarily stubborn man, Duffy becomes obsessed with this mystery as a distraction from the ruins of his love life, and to push down the seed of self-doubt that he seems to have traded for his youthful arrogance.

So from country lanes to city streets, Duffy works every angle. And wherever he goes, he smells a rat...]]> 334 Adrian McKinty 1846688183 Lisa 4 4.03 2013 I Hear the Sirens in the Street (Detective Sean Duffy, #2)
author: Adrian McKinty
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery]]> 18433004 Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is forced to unlock the secrets of a nearly perfect murder in this taut psychological thriller.

On a rainy April day, a body--or what is left of it--is found by a young girl. Wrapped in a blanket with no hands, feet, or head, it signals the work of a brutal, methodical killer. The victim, Leopold Verhaven, was a track star before he was convicted for killing two of his ex-lovers. He consistently proclaimed his innocence, however, and was killed on the day of his return to society. This latest murder is more than a little perplexing and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is determined to discover the truth, even if it means taking the law into his own hands.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."]]> HĂĄkan Nesser 1299062369 Lisa 4 3.78 1995 The Return: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2014/02/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Apple Tree Yard 17452179 Apple Tree Yard.]]> 320 Louise Doughty 0571297889 Lisa 0 currently-reading 3.65 2013 Apple Tree Yard
author: Louise Doughty
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/02/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle]]> 12187 Ada, or Ardor is one of Nabokov's greatest masterpieces, the glorious culmination of his career as a novelist.ĚýIt tells a love story troubled by incest.ĚýBut more: it is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue. Ada, or Ardor is no less than the superb work of an imagination at white heat.

This is the first American edition to include the extensive and ingeniouslyĚýsardonic appendix by the author, written under the anagrammatic pseudonym Vivian Darkbloom.]]> 606 Vladimir Nabokov 0679725229 Lisa 4 4.14 1969 Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
author: Vladimir Nabokov
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at: 2014/01/12
date added: 2014/01/12
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unraveled: A Novel About A Meltdown]]> 17697263 203 Alda SigmundsdĂłttir Lisa 0 to-read 3.76 2013 Unraveled: A Novel About A Meltdown
author: Alda SigmundsdĂłttir
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Locked Room (Martin Beck, #8)]]> 1105470 291 Maj Sjöwall 0007242980 Lisa 3 3.94 1972 The Locked Room (Martin Beck, #8)
author: Maj Sjöwall
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1972
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/12/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Glass Castle 7445 THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.]]> 288 Jeannette Walls 074324754X Lisa 2 4.32 2005 The Glass Castle
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2005
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2013/12/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Goldfinch 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Lisa 5 to-read 3.94 2013 The Goldfinch
author: Donna Tartt
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2013/12/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Woman with Birthmark: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (4)]]> 18421402 Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is on the case once more in this breathless thriller of deception, blackmail, and cold murder.
Van Veeteren and his associates are left bewildered by the curious murder of a man shot twice in the heart and twice below the belt. An utterly dull man, the only suspicious activity his surviving wife can report is a series of peculiar phone calls. Repeatedly the telephone would ring, offering no answer but an obscure pop song from the 1960s. This siren song would be linked to an identical murder, but the true connection remains unknown. With a cool, critical eye, Van Veeteren pursues his subject across the country, wading through outrageous leads and fruitless tips in this chilling mystery from master crime novelist Hakan Nesser. "From the Trade Paperback edition."]]> HĂĄkan Nesser 1299204430 Lisa 3 4.10 1996 Woman with Birthmark: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery (4)
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2013/09/05
date added: 2013/11/30
shelves:
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]]> Goldfinch Drones 15780844 398 Cyrus Paul 0615623557 Lisa 0 to-read 3.62 2012 Goldfinch Drones
author: Cyrus Paul
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Aire 17844546
"Danger, magic, romance, and royal intrigue, AIRE is a must read!" —NYT Bestselling Author JESSICA ANDERSEN

"Looking for something fresh and new to read? Try Lena Goldfinch's AIRE." —Serena Chase, USA Today HEA

A tale of Legends reborn, royal intrigue, and an unforgettable, heart-melting romance that will sweep you away.

Annalisia is a seer, a princess with a courageous spirit—and a soft spot for Legends.

Jovanni is a Legend, a commoner with no patience for pampered royals.

Principessa Annalisia is stunned and conscience-stricken when an unknown enemy mistakenly abducts her maidservant. Determined to find the girl, Annalisia disguises herself as plain Anna and slips away from the palace. She tracks down Jovanni, her maidservant's daring older brother, and they soon begin to search together. As they uncover clues, Anna also discovers a kindred spirit in Jovanni. But would he be so free with her if he knew who she really was? Doubtful. Even so, she reveals her secret gift of visions to him, and in so doing disobeys the orders of her beloved grandmother, the queen.

With Jovanni, Anna can almost imagine she’s like any other seventeen year old girl, free to pursue the longings of her heart. When she learns that he also has a secret—he's a sentinel, an ancient shapeshifter who can take the form of a falcon—it seems as if they were destined to be together, as in the legends of il Sentiro. Though Anna is tempted to wish otherwise, she can’t forget that she’s a princess and it's her duty to marry another. Meanwhile, their hunt leads Anna ever closer to danger, for she herself is being hunted.

A princess and a commoner.

They never should have fallen in love...but they did.

AIRE is a lush, romantic fantasy, inspired by ancient Italy and Turkey.

YOUNG ADULT FANTASY ROMANCE]]> 350 Lena Goldfinch 1484060210 Lisa 0 delete 3.68 2013 Aire
author: Lena Goldfinch
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/10/26
shelves: delete
review:

]]> The Language of Souls 15848469 A fast-paced tale of adventure and soul-stirring romance that will leave you breathless.

Solena trespasses into hostile territory to search for a rare herb to cure the grandfather she loves. When a young enemy soldier captures her and she's accused of being a spy, she discovers just how much she’s risked.

As a soldier, Rundan struggles to please his father, a ruthless army commander. When his father orders him to take the beautiful trespasser to the royal courts, where she’ll surely be tried and executed, Rundan is plagued by an inconvenient desire to protect her.

The handsome young soldier confuses Solena. First, he cruelly captures her, and then treats her with uncommon kindness. When he risks his life to save hers, she fears she may have risked more than her life on her journey…she may have lost her heart.

YOUNG ADULT Fantasy/Romance/Novella
TEEN FICTION]]> 148 Lena Goldfinch Lisa 0 delete 3.61 2010 The Language of Souls
author: Lena Goldfinch
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/10/26
shelves: delete
review:

]]> Songstone 17610485 ...an original fantasy world inhabited by superstitious tribal nations and intriguingly developed characters." USA Today

A sorcerer enslaves seventeen-year-old Kita with his forbidden black magic. She longs for freedom from her miserable existence, but her master's spells blind the villagers, and they can't see who he really is.

Each day, his magical hold tightens around her.

And there is no one to help her.

Then a young journeyman arrives from the other side of the island. In Pono, Kita finally sees her chance to escape...

The story of a girl who yearns for freedom, a boy determined to be more than what's expected of him, and the desperate journey that will leave them both forever changed.

A dark, twisty tale of sorcery, tummy-tingling romance, and island adventure.]]> 304 Lena Goldfinch 0615824811 Lisa 0 delete 3.85 2013 Songstone
author: Lena Goldfinch
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/10/26
shelves: delete
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Whisperer (Mila Vasquez, #1)]]> 11038479 A gripping literary thriller and smash bestseller that has taken Italy, France, Germany and the UK by storm.

Six severed arms are discovered, arranged in a mysterious circle and buried in a clearing in the woods. Five of them appear to belong to missing girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. The sixth is yet to be identified. Worse still, the girls' bodies, alive or dead, are nowhere to be found.

Lead investigators Mila Vasquez, a celebrated profiler, and Goran Gavila, an eerily prescient criminologist, dive into the case. They're confident they've got the right suspect in their sights until they discover no link between him and any of the kidnappings except the first. The evidence in the case of the second missing child points in a vastly different direction, creating more questions than it answers.

Vasquez and Gavila begin to wonder if they've been brought in to take the fall in a near-hopeless case. Is it all coincidence? Or is a copycat criminal at work? Obsessed with a case that becomes more tangled and intense as they unravel the layers of evil, Gavila and Vasquez find that their lives are increasingly in each other's hands.

THE WHISPERER, as sensational a bestseller in Europe as the Stieg Larsson novels, is that rare creation: a thought-provoking, intelligent thriller that is also utterly unputdownable.]]> 432 Donato Carrisi 0316194727 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.16 2009 The Whisperer (Mila Vasquez, #1)
author: Donato Carrisi
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/10/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[MĂĽnsters Fall (Inspector Van Veeteren, #6)]]> 741810
(Four retirees celebrate their lottery win in a pub. Drowned in drunkenness, the four are making their way home. Hours later, one of them is dead, stabbed in the back of his own apartment. Commissioner MĂĽnster takes over the case, because Commissioner Van Veeteren has taken a leave of absence for a year and works in a second-hand bookshop. But none of his colleagues believes that he can let go of the investigation work. In fact, MĂĽnster is soon consulting Van Veeteren, because the case is becoming more and more mysterious. So presents the victim's widow as perpetrator and makes a confession. Van Veeteren is convinced that she is lying ... )]]> 316 HĂĄkan Nesser 3442725577 Lisa 3 3.72 1998 MĂĽnsters Fall (Inspector Van Veeteren, #6)
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1998
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2013/10/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Inspector and Silence (Inspector Van Veeteren, #5)]]> 8109216

(Bestselling author HĂĄkan Nesser has proven himself several times and with great success that he can tell exciting stories whose dissolution also unexpectedly hits connoisseurs of the genre. His fan base in Germany is now huge. With his idiosyncratic investigator Van Veeteren he has created a hero who has the makings of a classic - a middle-aged man with stomach discomfort, who loves classical music and solves his cases with a mixture of black humor and intuition. This time Van Veeteren faces a particularly difficult task. Two little girls have disappeared from a summer camp. Shortly thereafter, they are found murdered. Is an obscure sect leader behind the deeds? Or is it related to an unknown psychopath? Most importantly, can Van Veeteren stop him before he strikes again?)]]> 288 HĂĄkan Nesser 0230746705 Lisa 3 3.72 1997 The Inspector and Silence (Inspector Van Veeteren, #5)
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1997
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/10/19
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Woman with Birthmark (Inspector Van Veeteren, #4)]]> 4278632
Em Maardam, uma pequena cidade sueca, um estranho crime é cometido: um homem é assassinado em frente a sua casa com dois tiros no peito e outros dois na região genital. Entretanto, nada em sua residência é roubado. Sem uma investigação mais aprofundada, o crime é solenemente ignorado pela imprensa local. Porém, dias depois mais dois homens são encontrados mortos nas mesmas circunstâncias. Com a suspeita de que um perigoso serial killer esteja à solta, o comissário Van Veeteren é convocado para solucionar o caso.

Com o andar das investigações o experiente policial sueco vai montando um confuso e obscuro quebra-cabeças que reúne coincidências envolvendo as vítimas, como o fato de terem estudado juntas em uma escola militar. Além disso, Van Veeteren descobre que antes de morrerem, elas receberam uma ligação com uma famosa canção dos anos 60 ao fundo.

Apesar de pistas confusas e desconexas fazerem desta investigação um desafio complexo para Veeteren, as suspeitas de que os crimes sejam motivados por vingança vão se tornando cada vez mais concretas. Antes que surjam mais vítimas, o oficial sueco terá que correr contra o tempo para desvendar os fatos do passado que podem ter culminado com a série de assassinatos.]]> 336 Håkan Nesser 0375425047 Lisa 2 3.83 1996 Woman with Birthmark (Inspector Van Veeteren, #4)
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1996
rating: 2
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date added: 2013/10/19
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Borkmann's Point (Inspector Van Veeteren, #2)]]> 359126 International BestsellerĚý

Internationally bestselling author Häkan Nesser makes his U.S. debut with this riveting tale of murder and suspense that reveals the deep humanity of the characters portrayed even as it sends chills up the spine.

Ěý

Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is called to the sleepy coastal town of Kalbringen to assist the local police in the investigation of two recent ax murders. Soon the case turns from bad to worse when another body turns up and one of Van Veeteren’s colleagues, a young female detective, disappears without a trace. Now Van Veeteren must find the killer, and, it is hoped, his colleague, before anyone else comes to harm. Riveting and intellectually satisfying, Borkmann’s Point unfolds like a chess match where each move could prove deadly.]]> 321 Håkan Nesser 1400030323 Lisa 4 3.75 1994 Borkmann's Point (Inspector Van Veeteren, #2)
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1994
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/10/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Mind's Eye (Inspector Van Veeteren #1)]]> 2289516
Chief Inspector Van Veeteren knew that murder cases were never as open-and-shut as this one: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and discovered his wife of three months lying facedown in the bathtub, dead. With only the flimsiest excuse as his defense, he is found guilty of a drunken crime of passion and imprisoned in a mental institution.

But Van Veeteren’s suspicions about the identity of the killer are borne out when Mitter also becomes a murder victim. Now the chief inspector launches a full-scale investigation of the two slayings. But it may only be the unspoken secrets of the dead–revealed in a mysterious letter that Mitter wrote shortly before his death–that will finally allow Van Veeteren to unmask the killer and expose the shocking root of this sordid violence.]]> 278 Håkan Nesser 0375425039 Lisa 4 to-read 3.64 1993 Mind's Eye (Inspector Van Veeteren #1)
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/10/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> Mind's Eye 18409537 Hakan Nesser is firmly established as one of the world's bestselling crime novelists. And now the novel that introduced Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is available for the first time in English.

The swift conviction left Van Veeteren uneasy: Janek Mitter woke one morning with a brutal hangover and his wife dead in the bathtub. With only the flimsiest defense, he is found guilty and imprisoned in a mental institution. But when Mitter is murdered in his bed, Van Veeteren regrets not following his gut and launches an investigation into the two murders. As the chief inspector delves deeper, the twisted root of these violent murders will shock even him.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."]]> HĂĄkan Nesser 1283996871 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.25 1993 Mind's Eye
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> My Profession 8096433
Translated from Russian.]]> 255 Sergei Obraztsov Lisa 0 to-read 4.43 1950 My Profession
author: Sergei Obraztsov
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.43
book published: 1950
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane]]> 9928471 In the tradition of John Richardson's Picasso, a commanding new biography of the Italian master's tumultuous life and mysterious death.

For four hundred years Caravaggio's (1571-1610) staggering artistic achievements have thrilled viewers, yet his volatile personal trajectory—the murder of Ranuccio Tomasini, the doubt surrounding Caravaggio's sexuality, the chain of events that began with his imprisonment on Malta and ended with his premature death—has long confounded historians.

In a bravura performance, Andrew Graham-Dixon delves into the original Italian sources, presenting fresh details about Caravaggio's sex life, his many crimes and public brawls, and the most convincing account yet published of the painter's tragic death at the age of thirty-eight. With illuminating readings of Caravaggio's infamous religious paintings, which often depict prostitutes and poor people, Graham-Dixon immerses readers in the world of Italy at the height of the Counter-Reformation and creates a masterful profile of the mercurial painter's life and work.

40 pages full-color illustrations.]]> 514 Andrew Graham-Dixon 0393081494 Lisa 4 4.38 2011 Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane
author: Andrew Graham-Dixon
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/09/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Washington Irving: An American Original]]> 367451 456 Brian Jay Jones 1559708360 Lisa 0 currently-reading 4.09 2007 Washington Irving: An American Original
author: Brian Jay Jones
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Boardwalk Empire 10088403 A colorful cast of characters, led by Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, populates this stranger-than-fiction account of corrupt politics and the toxic power structure that grew out of guile, finesse, and extortion. Atlantic City's shadowy past through its rise, fall, and rebirth is given new light in this revealing, and often appalling, study of legislative abuse and organized crime.

This audiobook, narrated by Joe Mantegna, is the true story that inspired the upcoming HBO series of the same name. It includes a foreword written and narrated by Terence Winter.]]> 320 Nelson Johnson 0091941245 Lisa 0 to-read 3.63 2002 Boardwalk Empire
author: Nelson Johnson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/09/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 13 Words 6872008 2. Despondent
3. Cake
4. Dog
5. Busy
6. Convertible
7. Goat
8. Hat
9. Haberdashery
10. Scarlet
11. Baby
12. Panache
13. Mezzo-Soprano]]> 40 Lemony Snicket 0061664669 Lisa 4 3.72 2010 13 Words
author: Lemony Snicket
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/09/05
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beautiful pics, but at the end I felt lol ed the little Bird, despondent
]]> <![CDATA[Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)]]> 7264440 144 Ingrid Schaffner 3791350358 Lisa 5 4.47 2010 Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)
author: Ingrid Schaffner
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/09/05
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makes me want to jump! She is delightful
]]> Six Years 15811568
But six years haven’t come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd’s obituary, he can’t keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd’s wife he’s hoping for…but she is not Natalie. Whoever the mourning widow is, she’s been married to Todd for almost two decades, and with that fact everything Jake thought he knew about the best time of his life—a time he has never gotten over—is turned completely inside out.

As Jake searches for the truth, his picture-perfect memories of Natalie begin to unravel. Mutual friends of the couple either can’t be found, or don’t remember Jake. No one has seen Natalie in years. Jake’s search for the woman who broke his heart, who lied to him, soon puts his very life at risk as it dawns on him that the man he has become may be based on a carefully constructed fiction.]]> 351 Harlan Coben 0525953485 Lisa 1 3.80 2013 Six Years
author: Harlan Coben
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2013
rating: 1
read at: 2013/08/29
date added: 2013/08/29
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]]> The Sea 3656 The Untouchable (“contemporary fiction gets no better than this”—Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review) now gives us a luminous novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory. The narrator is Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who, soon after his wife’s death, has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child—a retreat from the grief, anger, and numbness of his life without her. But it is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled vacationing family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time.

The seductive mother; the imperious father; the twins—Chloe, fiery and forthright, and Myles, silent and expressionless—in whose mysterious connection Max became profoundly entangled, each of them a part of the “barely bearable raw immediacy� of his childhood memories. Interwoven with this story are Morden’s memories of his wife, Anna—of their life together, of her death—and the moments, both significant and mundane, that make up his life now: his relationship with his grown daughter, Claire, desperate to pull him from his grief; and with the other boarders at the house where he is staying, where the past beats inside him “like a second heart.� What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, vividly dramatic, beautifully written novel—among the finest we have had from this extraordinary writer]]> 195 John Banville 1400097029 Lisa 5 3.54 2005 The Sea
author: John Banville
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2005
rating: 5
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date added: 2013/08/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Ancient Light (The Cleave Trilogy #3)]]> 13414604 The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea gives us a brilliant, profoundly moving new novel about an actor in the twilight of his life and his career: a meditation on love and loss, and on the inscrutable immediacy of the past in our present lives.

Is there any difference between memory and invention? That is the question that fuels this stunning novel, written with the depth of character, the clarifying lyricism and the sly humor that have marked all of John Banville’s extraordinary works. And it is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave, an actor in the twilight of his career and of his life, as he plumbs the memories of his first—and perhaps only—love (he, fifteen years old, the woman more than twice his age, the mother of his best friend; the situation impossible, thrilling, devouring and finally devastating) . . . and of his daughter, lost to a kind of madness of mind and heart that Cleave can only fail to understand. When his dormant acting career is suddenly, inexplicably revived with a movie role portraying a man who may not be who he says he is, his young leading lady—famous and fragile—unwittingly gives him the opportunity to see with aching clarity the “chasm that yawns between the doing of a thing and the recollection of what was done.�

Ancient Light is a profoundly moving meditation on love and loss, on the inscrutable immediacy of the past in our present lives, on how invention shapes memory and memory shapes the man. It is a book of spellbinding power and pathos from one of the greatest masters of prose at work today.]]> John Banville 044901343X Lisa 0 to-read 3.61 2012 Ancient Light (The Cleave Trilogy #3)
author: John Banville
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution]]> 10411930
Remember When All You Wanted Was Your MTV?

It was a pretty radical idea-a channel for teenagers, showing nothing but music videos. It was such a radical idea that almost no one thought it would actually succeed, much less become a force in the worlds of music, television, film, fashion, sports, and even politics. But it did work. MTV became more than anyone had ever imagined.

I Want My MTV tells the story of the first decade of MTV, the golden era when MTV's programming was all videos, all the time, and kids watched religiously to see their favorite bands, learn about new music, and have something to talk about at parties. From its start in 1981 with a small cache of videos by mostly unknown British new wave acts to the launch of the reality-television craze with The Real World in 1992, MTV grew into a tastemaker, a career maker, and a mammoth business.

Featuring interviews with nearly four hundred artists, directors, VJs, and television and music executives, I Want My MTV is a testament to the channel that changed popular culture forever.]]> 608 Craig Marks 0525952306 Lisa 4 3.87 2011 I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution
author: Craig Marks
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/08/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Return (Inspector Van Veeteren, #3)]]> 2289517 321 HĂĄkan Nesser 023001528X Lisa 4 3.75 1995 The Return (Inspector Van Veeteren, #3)
author: HĂĄkan Nesser
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/08/22
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Sun Storm (Rebecka Martinsson, #1)]]> 423523
Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the town she’d left in disgrace years before. A Stockholm attorney, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the revivalist church his charisma helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and a dogged policewoman. But to help her friend, and to find the real killer of a man she once adored and is now not sure she ever knew, Rebecka must relive the darkness she left behind in Kiruna, delve into a sordid conspiracy of deceit, and confront a killer whose motives are dark, wrenching, and impossible to guess. . . .

Praise for Sun Storm

“Richly atmospheric.� � Kirkus Reviews

“Larsson builds suspense gradually but inexorably, and she is equally good at creating mood. . . .This impressive debut heralds another striking voice from Scandinavia.â€� â€� Booklist Ěý

“For those who eschew exotic travel in favor of the familiar hammock, there’s nothing better than a well-written and well-translated story from some place you’ll probably never visit. is that story and more!â€� â€� Rocky Mountain NewsĚýĚý]]> 310 Ă…sa Larsson 0385340788 Lisa 0 to-read 3.70 2003 Sun Storm (Rebecka Martinsson, #1)
author: Ă…sa Larsson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/08/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Still Midnight (Alex Morrow, #1)]]> 6389743 342 Denise Mina 0752884042 Lisa 0 to-read 3.59 2009 Still Midnight (Alex Morrow, #1)
author: Denise Mina
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Blackwater 823198
Like Gorky Park and Smilla's Sense of Snow, Blackwater is a unique trhiller in which the hearts and minds of the characters are as strikingly compelling as the exotic northern landscape that envelops them.]]> 448 Kerstin Ekman 0312152477 Lisa 0 to-read 3.63 1993 Blackwater
author: Kerstin Ekman
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/08/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Cold Day in Paradise (Alex McKnight, #1)]]> 1044234 320 Steve Hamilton 0312969198 Lisa 4 3.77 1998 A Cold Day in Paradise (Alex McKnight, #1)
author: Steve Hamilton
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/08/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Tonight I Said Goodbye (Lincoln Perry, #1)]]> 424644 A remarkable debut mystery from the award-winning author of the 2003 St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America Prize for Best First Private Eye Novel.

Michael Koryta's Tonight I Said Goodbye marks the emergence of a stunning new voice in crime fiction. With its edge-of-your-seat pacing, finely drawn characters, and rock-solid prose, Tonight I Said Goodbye would seem to be the work of a grizzled pro; the fact that the author is just twenty-one years old makes it all the more amazing.

Investigator Wayne Weston is found dead of an apparent suicide in his home in an upscale Cleveland suburb, and his wife and six-year-old daughter are missing. Weston's father insists that private investigators Lincoln Perry and Joe Pritchard take the case to exonerate his son and find his granddaughter and daughter-in-law. As they begin to work they discover there is much more to the situation than has been described in the prevalent media reports. There are rumors of gambling debts and extortion, and a group of Russians with ties to organized crime who don't appreciate being investigated--a point they make clear with baseball bats.

With some assistance from newspaper reporter Amy Ambrose, Perry and Pritchard believe they are making swift progress. But then they are warned off the investigation by a millionaire real estate tycoon and the FBI. Just when they feel they are closing in on a possible source of answers, another murder forces them to change direction in the case.

Perry travels to a resort town in South Carolina and there he finds more than one game being played, and all of them are deadly. The stakes quickly become very personal for Perry, and it's clear that there will be no walking away from this case.

In a debut that has already garnered praise from some of today's top writers, Michael Koryta immediately establishes himself as a standard bearer for the next generation of crime writers.

Tonight I Said Goodbye is a 2005 Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel.]]> 307 Michael Koryta 031293209X Lisa 4 3.82 2004 Tonight I Said Goodbye (Lincoln Perry, #1)
author: Michael Koryta
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2013/08/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Misery Bay (Alex McKnight, #8)]]> 10248088 The New York Times Bestseller

One of The Boston Globe's Best Mysteries of 2011

ALEX MCKNIGHT IS BACK in the long-awaited return of one of crime fiction's most critically acclaimed series.

On a frozen January night, a young man loops one end of a long rope over the branch of a tree. The other end he ties around his neck. A snowmobiler will find him thirty-six hours later, his lifeless eyes staring out at the endless cold water of Lake Superior. It happens in a lonely corner of the Upper Peninsula, in a place they call Misery Bay.
Alex McKnight does not know this young man, and he won't even hear about the suicide until another cold night, two months later and 250 miles away, when the door to the Glasgow Inn opens and the last person Alex would ever expect to see comes walking in to ask for his help.
What seems like a simple quest to find a few answers will turn into a nightmare of sudden violence and bloody revenge, and a race against time to catch a ruthless killer. McKnight knows all about evil, of course, having faced down a madman who killed his partner and left a bullet next to his heart. Mobsters, drug dealers, hit men--he's seen them all, and they've taken away almost everything he's ever loved. But none of them could have ever prepared him for the darkness he's about to face.]]> 294 Steve Hamilton 0312380437 Lisa 4 4.12 2011 Misery Bay (Alex McKnight, #8)
author: Steve Hamilton
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/08/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Rogue Island (Liam Mulligan, #1)]]> 8522372 2011 Edgar Award Winner for Best First Novel

Liam Mulligan is as old school as a newspaper man gets. His beat is Providence, Rhode Island, and he knows every street and alley. He knows the priests and prostitutes, the cops and street thugs. He knows the mobsters and politicians—who are pretty much one and the same.

Someone is systematically burning down the neighborhood Mulligan grew up in, people he knows and loves are perishing in the flames, and the public is on the verge of panic. With the whole city of Providence on his back, Mulligan must weed through a wildly colorful array of characters to find the truth.]]> 304 Bruce DeSilva 0765327260 Lisa 4 3.61 2010 Rogue Island (Liam Mulligan, #1)
author: Bruce DeSilva
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2013/08/22
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Snow Angels (Inspector Kari Vaara, #1)]]> 6978614
Kaamos: Just before Christmas, the darkest time of the year in Lapland, above the Arctic Circle. The unrelenting darkness and extreme cold cause everyone to go just a little bit insane, whether or not they’ve just killed someone�

A beautiful Somalian refugee-turned-actress is found murdered on a reindeer farm, gruesomely mutilated, a racial slur carved into her chest. Inspector Kari Vaara, head of the rural police force, is under great pressure not only to solve this crime himself, without the help of the big-city cops from Helsinki, but also to keep the potentially explosive case out of the news. Sufia Elmi had become a tabloid fixture, and her death—not to mention the awful way she met it—is sure to send shock waves across this insular, secretly racist country. Was this murder a hate crime, a sex crime—or both?

Kari is dealing with culture shock at home, too. His wife, Kate, is a young American woman, newly pregnant with their first child. She doesn’t understand much about Finnish customs or the Finns themselves and is struggling to come to terms with her new home. Kari himself is haunted by his rough childhood and his past, and even as he tries to shape a new life with Kate, the past keeps biting at his heels: the rich man his ex-wife left him for years ago may be Sufia’s killer.]]> 264 James Thompson 0399156178 Lisa 0 to-read 3.67 2010 Snow Angels (Inspector Kari Vaara, #1)
author: James Thompson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/08/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Stations (Arkady Renko, #7)]]> 6362651
So begins Martin Cruz Smith’s masterful Three Stations, a suspenseful, intricately constructed novel featuring Investigator Arkady Renko. For the last three decades, beginning with the trailblazing Gorky Park, Renko (and Smith) have captivated readers with detective tales set in Russia. Renko is the ironic, brilliantly observant cop who finds solutions to heinous crimes when other lawmen refuse to even acknowledge that crimes have occurred. He uses his biting humor and intuitive leaps to fight not only wrongdoers but the corrupt state apparatus as well.

In Three Stations, Renko’s skills are put to their most severe test. Though he has been technically suspended from the prosecutor’s office for once again turning up unpleasant truths, he strives to solve a last case: the death of an elegant young woman whose body is found in a construction trailer on the perimeter of Moscow’s main rail hub. It looks like a simple drug overdose to everyone—except to Renko, whose examination of the crime scene turns up some inexplicable clues, most notably an invitation to Russia’s premier charity ball, the billionaires� Nijinksy Fair. Thus a sordid death becomes interwoven with the lifestyles of Moscow’s rich and famous, many of whom are clinging to their cash in the face of Putin’s crackdown on the very oligarchs who placed him in power.

Renko uncovers a web of death, money, madness and a kidnapping that threatens the woman he is coming to love and the lives of children he is desperate to protect. In Three Stations, Smith produces a complex and haunting vision of an emergent Russia’s secret underclass of street urchins, greedy thugs and a bureaucracy still paralyzed by power and fear.]]> 243 Martin Cruz Smith 0743276744 Lisa 0 to-read 3.73 2010 Three Stations (Arkady Renko, #7)
author: Martin Cruz Smith
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Stalin's Ghost (Arkady Renko, #6)]]> 151346
The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating.

That's a rating decidedly better than that of Renko, whose lover, Eva, has left him for Detective Nikolai Isakov, a charismatic veteran of the civil war in Chechnya, a hero of the far right and, Renko suspects, a killer for hire. The cases entwine, and Renko’s quests become a personal inquiry fueled by jealousy.

The investigation leads to the fields of Tver outside of Moscow, where once a million soldiers fought. There, amidst the detritus, Renko must confront the ghost of his own father, a favorite general of Stalin’s. In these barren fields, patriots and shady entrepreneurs—the Red Diggers and Black Diggers—collect the bones, weapons and personal effects of slain World War II soldiers, and find that even among the dead there are surprises

"Stalin’s Ghost" is replete with Martin Cruz Smith’s trademark wit, dark humor and action. In this tale of Arkady Renko, Smith has again fashioned an unforgettable character as cynical as Philip Marlowe, but with the heart of a Chekhovian Everyman. The reader is treated to an unparalleled thriller woven with a depth of humanity found in the finest literature.]]> 352 Martin Cruz Smith 0743276728 Lisa 3 3.75 2007 Stalin's Ghost (Arkady Renko, #6)
author: Martin Cruz Smith
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[The Winter Queen (Erast Fandorin Mysteries, #1)]]> 61463
Fandorin is not satisfied with the conclusion that this is an open-and-shut case, nor with the preliminary detective work the precinct has done—and for good reason: The bizarre and tragic suicide is soon connected to a clear case of murder, witnessed firsthand by Fandorin. There are many unresolved questions. Why, for instance, have both victims left their fortunes to an orphanage run by the English Lady Astair? And who is the beautiful "A.B.," whose signed photograph is found in the apparent suicide's apartment? Relying on his keen intuition, the eager sleuth plunges into an investigation that leads him across Europe, landing him at the deadly center of a terrorist conspiracy of worldwide proportions.]]> 256 Boris Akunin 0753817594 Lisa 0 to-read 3.86 1998 The Winter Queen (Erast Fandorin Mysteries, #1)
author: Boris Akunin
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Speech (Leo Demidov, #2)]]> 6045456 Former state security officer Leo Demidov is struggling to change as the Soviet Union changes around him. The two young girls he adopted have yet to forgive him for his part in the death of their parents, and they are not alone; now that the truth is out, Leo and his family are in grave danger from someone consumed by the dark legacy of Leo's past.

Tom Rob Smith - the author whose debut, Child 44, has been called "brilliant" (Chicago Tribune), "remarkable" (Newsweek) and "sensational" (Entertainment Weekly) - returns with an intense, suspenseful new novel: a story where the sins of the past threaten to destroy the present, where families must overcome unimaginable obstacles to save their loved ones, and where hope for a better tomorrow is found in the most unlikely of circumstances . . .
The Secret Speech

Soviet Union, 1956. Stalin is dead, and a violent regime is beginning to fracture-leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals, and the criminals are innocent. A secret speech composed by Stalin's successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant. Its promise: The Soviet Union will change.

Facing his own personal turmoil, former state security officer Leo Demidov is also struggling to change. The two young girls he and his wife Raisa adopted have yet to forgive him for his part in the death of their parents. They are not alone. Now that the truth is out, Leo, Raisa, and their family are in grave danger from someone consumed by the dark legacy of Leo's past career. Someone transformed beyond recognition into the perfect model of vengeance.

From the streets of Moscow in the throes of political upheaval, to the Siberian gulags, and to the center of the Hungarian uprising in Budapest, The Secret Speech is a breathtaking, epic novel that confirms Tom Rob Smith as one of the most exciting new authors writing today.]]> 416 Tom Rob Smith 0446402400 Lisa 3 3.78 2009 The Secret Speech (Leo Demidov, #2)
author: Tom Rob Smith
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/08/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Eye of the Red Tsar (Inspector Pekkala, #1)]]> 7015336
Shortly after midnight on July 17, 1918, the imprisoned family of Tsar Nicholas Romanov was awakened and led down to the basement of the Ipatiev house. There they were summarily executed. Their bodies were hidden away, the location a secret of the Soviet state.

A decade later, one man lives in purgatory, banished to a forest on the outskirts of humanity. Pekkala was once the most trusted secret agent of the Romanovs, the right-hand man of the Tsar himself. Now he is Prisoner 4745-P, living a harsh existence in which even the strongest vanish into the merciless Soviet winter.

But the state needs Pekkala one last time. The man who knew the Romanovs best is given a final mission: catch their killers, locate the royal child rumored to be alive, and give Stalin the international coup he craves. Find the bodies, Pekkala is told, and you will find your freedom. Find the survivor of that bloody night and you will change history.

In a land of uneasy alliances and deadly treachery, pursuing clues that have eluded everyone, Pekkala is thrust into the past where he once reigned. There he will meet the man who betrayed him and the woman he loved and lost in the fires of rebellion—and uncover a secret so shocking that it will shake to its core the land he loves.

With stunning period detail and crackling suspense, Eye of the Red Tsar introduces a complex and compelling investigator in a fiercely intelligent thriller perfect for readers of Gorky Park, Child 44, and City of Thieves.]]> 278 Sam Eastland 0553807811 Lisa 3 3.76 2010 Eye of the Red Tsar (Inspector Pekkala, #1)
author: Sam Eastland
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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date added: 2013/08/22
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]]> Wild Town 246699 176 Jim Thompson 0679733124 Lisa 0 to-read 3.81 1957 Wild Town
author: Jim Thompson
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1957
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Right as Rain (Derek Strange & Terry Quinn #1)]]> 298064 344 George P. Pelecanos 0752843885 Lisa 0 to-read 3.89 2001 Right as Rain (Derek Strange & Terry Quinn #1)
author: George P. Pelecanos
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Hunter (Parker, #1) 618399
University of Chicago Press has embarked on a project to return the early volumes of this series to print.]]> 208 Richard Stark Lisa 0 to-read 4.01 1962 The Hunter (Parker, #1)
author: Richard Stark
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ice Princess (Fjällbacka, #1)]]> 7058405
Erica conceives a book about the beautiful but remote Alex, one that will answer questions about their own shared past. While her interest grows into an obsession, local detective Patrik Hedstrom is following his own suspicions about the case. But it is only when they start working together that the truth begins to emerge about a small town with a deeply disturbing past.]]> 393 Camilla Läckberg 1605980927 Lisa 0 to-read 3.78 2003 The Ice Princess (Fjällbacka, #1)
author: Camilla Läckberg
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/22
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]]> Once Were Cops 3244406
Paired with an unstable cop nicknamed Kebar for his liberal use of a short, lethal metal stick called a K-bar, the two unlikely partners become a devastatingly effective force in the war against crime.

But Kebar harbors a dangerous secret: he's sold out to the mob to help his sister. Her rape and beating leaves her in a coma and pushes an already unstable Kebar over the edge just as Shea's dark secrets threaten boil over and into the streets of New York.

Once Were Cops melds the street poetry of Brooklyn and Dublin into a fast-paced, incomparable hard-boiled novel. This is Ken Bruen at his best.]]> 304 Ken Bruen 0312384408 Lisa 0 to-read 3.85 2008 Once Were Cops
author: Ken Bruen
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2013/08/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece]]> 478558
In the predawn gloom of a February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo. They snatched one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and fled with their $72 million trophy. The thieves made sure the world was watching: the Winter Olympics, in Lillehammer, began that same morning. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police called on the world's greatest art detective, a half-English, half-American undercover cop named Charley Hill.

In this rollicking narrative, Edward Dolnick takes us inside the art underworld. The trail leads high and low, and the cast ranges from titled aristocrats to thick-necked thugs. Lord Bath, resplendent in ponytail and velvet jacket, presides over a 9,000-acre estate. David Duddin, a 300-pound fence who once tried to sell a stolen Rembrandt, spins exuberant tales of his misdeeds. We meet Munch, too, a haunted misfit who spends his evenings drinking in the Black Piglet Café and his nights feverishly trying to capture in paint the visions in his head. The most compelling character of all is Charley Hill, an ex-soldier, a would-be priest, and a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm. The hunt for The Scream will either cap his career and rescue one of the world's best-known paintings or end in a fiasco that will dog him forever.]]> 270 Edward Dolnick 0060531177 Lisa 0 to-read 3.78 2005 The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece
author: Edward Dolnick
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business]]> 12609433
Marketers at Procter & Gamble study videos of people making their beds. They are desperately trying to figure out how to sell a new product called Febreze, on track to be one of the biggest flops in company history. Suddenly, one of them detects a nearly imperceptible pattern—and with a slight shift in advertising, Febreze goes on to earn a billion dollars a year.

An untested CEO takes over one of the largest companies in America. His first order of business is attacking a single pattern among his employees—how they approach worker safety—and soon the firm, Alcoa, becomes the top performer in the Dow Jones.

What do all these people have in common? They achieved success by focusing on the patterns that shape every aspect of our lives.

They succeeded by transforming habits.

In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the thrilling edge of scientific discoveries that explain why habits exist and how they can be changed. With penetrating intelligence and an ability to distill vast amounts of information into engrossing narratives, Duhigg brings to life a whole new understanding of human nature and its potential for transformation.

Along the way we learn why some people and companies struggle to change, despite years of trying, while others seem to remake themselves overnight. We visit laboratories where neuroscientists explore how habits work and where, exactly, they reside in our brains. We discover how the right habits were crucial to the success of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and civil-rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr. We go inside Procter & Gamble, Target superstores, Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, NFL locker rooms, and the nation’s largest hospitals and see how implementing so-called keystone habits can earn billions and mean the difference between failure and success, life and death.

At its core, The Power of Habit contains an exhilarating argument: The key to exercising regularly, losing weight, raising exceptional children, becoming more productive, building revolutionary companies and social movements, and achieving success is understanding how habits work.

Habits aren’t destiny. As Charles Duhigg shows, by harnessing this new science, we can transform our businesses, our communities, and our lives.]]> 375 Charles Duhigg 1400069289 Lisa 3 4.13 2012 The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
author: Charles Duhigg
name: Lisa
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/08/17
date added: 2013/08/17
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]]> Bait 1446271 376 Kenneth Abel 0440217202 Lisa 3 3.29 1994 Bait
author: Kenneth Abel
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.29
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2013/08/17
date added: 2013/08/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald]]> 15994634
When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame.

Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.]]> 464 Therese Anne Fowler 1250028647 Lisa 3 3.86 2013 Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
author: Therese Anne Fowler
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2013/08/17
date added: 2013/08/17
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]]> Roseanna (Martin Beck, #1) 595538 224 Maj Sjöwall 067974598X Lisa 4 3.77 1965 Roseanna (Martin Beck, #1)
author: Maj Sjöwall
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at: 2013/08/17
date added: 2013/08/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Gods of Gotham (Timothy Wilde, #1)]]> 11890816
Timothy Wilde tends bar near the Exchange, fantasizing about the day he has enough money to win the girl of his dreams. But when his dreams literally incinerate in a fire devastating downtown Manhattan, he finds himself disfigured, unemployed, and homeless. His older brother obtains Timothy a job in the newly minted NYPD, but he is highly skeptical of this new "police force." And he is less than thrilled that his new beat is the notoriously down-and-out Sixth Ward - at the border of Five Points, the world's most notorious slum.

One night while making his rounds, Wilde literally runs into a little slip of a girl - a girl not more than ten years old - dashing through the dark in her nightshirt... covered head to toe in blood.

Timothy knows he should take the girl to the House of Refuge, yet he can't bring himself to abandon her. Instead, he takes her home, where she spins wild stories, claiming that dozens of bodies are buried in the forest north of 23rd Street. Timothy isn't sure whether to believe her or not, but, as the truth unfolds, the reluctant copper star finds himself engaged in a battle for justice that nearly costs him his brother, his romantic obsession, and his own life.]]> 408 Lyndsay Faye 0399158375 Lisa 3 3.86 2012 The Gods of Gotham (Timothy Wilde, #1)
author: Lyndsay Faye
name: Lisa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2013/08/17
date added: 2013/08/17
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]]>