en-US Thu, 01 May 2025 15:37:49 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 55405296
Tulip and his brother Rowan have left the simple comforts of their remote Scottish island with a to grow succulent, organic vegetables in an idyllic market garden, and to open a restaurant serving these wholesome culinary delights to the busy sprawl of London.

The world of fine dining seems impossibly competitive... until they discover a deliriously scrumptious new species of mushroom. The dish brings diners in droves, catapulting their small restaurant to success beyond their wildest dreams.

Now, pressured by the demands of a hungry city, Tulip is desperate to crack the secret of their new ingredient's growth. But just how much will he sacrifice to feed his own insatiable ambition?]]> 320 James Albon 160309492X Theo 4 adults, comics-graphic-novels 3.89 2021
author: James Albon
name: Theo
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: adults, comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> 123604 Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, to hire Cork O'Connor to find his daughter, and Cork joins a search party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. Others are on her trail as well -- men hired not just to find her, but to kill her.
As the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town's snowy streets. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter falls hard. Cork's team of searchers loses contact with civilization, and like the brutal winds of a Minnesota blizzard, death -- violent and sudden -- stalks them.]]> 416 William Kent Krueger 0671016997 Theo 0 4.02 1999
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Theo
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading, adults, mystery
review:

]]> 218401840 Her beauty hides a deadly purpose.

Xishi’s beauty is seen as a blessing to the villagers of Yue—convinced that the best fate for a girl is to marry well and support her family. When Xishi draws the attention of the famous young military advisor, Fanli, he presents her with a rare opportunity: to use her beauty as a weapon. One that could topple the rival neighboring kingdom of Wu, improve the lives of her people, and avenge her sister’s murder. All she has to do is infiltrate the enemy palace as a spy, seduce their immoral king, and weaken them from within.

Trained by Fanli in everything from classical instruments to concealing emotion, Xishi hones her beauty into the perfect blade. But she knows Fanli can see through every deception she masters, the attraction between them burning away any falsehoods.

Once inside the enemy palace, Xishi finds herself under the hungry gaze of the king’s advisors while the king himself shows her great affection. Despite his gentleness, a brutality lurks and Xishi knows she can never let her guard down. But the higher Xishi climbs in the Wu court, the farther she and Fanli have to fall—and if she is unmasked as a traitor, she will bring both kingdoms down.]]> 11 Ann Liang Theo 3
This the author's adult debut after publishing young adult novels, and it shows. There's not a lot of depth of character or intricate world-building that you might expect in adult historical fiction. It was an interesting story, but I wasn't wowed.

The narrator of the audiobook did an excellent job lending an elegant air to the ancient court Xishi joins, and it was helpful for my Western ears to hear the names and places pronounced.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.66 2024
author: Ann Liang
name: Theo
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: adults, fantasy, mythology, epic-fantasy, netgalley
review:
Xishi is known for her beauty. In fact, she will become remembered as one of the Four Beauties of Ancient China. But, as beautiful as she is, when Fanli offers her the role of spy for the king, it's not just her beauty, but also her self-sacrificing compassion that gets her the job. She must infiltrate the Wu kingdom by seducing and influencing the king.

This the author's adult debut after publishing young adult novels, and it shows. There's not a lot of depth of character or intricate world-building that you might expect in adult historical fiction. It was an interesting story, but I wasn't wowed.

The narrator of the audiobook did an excellent job lending an elegant air to the ancient court Xishi joins, and it was helpful for my Western ears to hear the names and places pronounced.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 204593562 B&N Best Horror of 2024
A Golden Poppy Octavia E. Butler Award Finalist
A Book of the Month Club Pick

A new mom in need of help opens her door to her long-estranged��mother—only to invite something much darker inside—in this "fast-paced and frightening debut" (Rachel Harrison) about the long shadows cast by family secrets, perfect for readers of Grady Hendrix or Ashley Audrain.

Flora is a new mom enamored of her baby girl, Iris, even if she arrived a few weeks early. With her husband still deployed, Flora navigates the newborn stage alone. But as the sleepless nights pass in the loneliness of their half-empty home, the edges of her reality begin to blur.

Just as Flora becomes convinced she is losing her mind, a surprising guest shows up: Flora’s own mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken in years. Can they mend their fraught relationship? Or is there more Flora’s mother isn’t telling her about the events that led to their estrangement?

As stranger and scarier events unfold, Flora begins to suspect the house is not as empty as she once thought. She must determine: is her hold on reality slipping dangerously away? Or is she, in fact, the only thing standing between a terrifying visitor and her baby?��]]> 297 Jacquie Walters 0316580295 Theo 0 3.50 2024
author: Jacquie Walters
name: Theo
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: adults, psychological-suspense, thriller-suspense, currently-reading
review:

]]> 213618141
“An extraordinary reinvention of some of our oldest stories. Nilsen brings these old gods to an electrifying new life, and gives us a new sense of humanity as well.”—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Mind-bendingly good. It’s up there with Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan.�� —Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Set in a version of modern Central Asia, Tongues is a retelling of the Greek myth of Prometheus. It follows the captive god’s friendship with the eagle who carries out his daily sentence of torture and chronicles his pursuit of revenge on the god that has imprisoned him.

Prometheus’s story is entwined with that of an East African orphan on an errand of murder, and a young man with a teddy bear strapped to his back, wandering aimlessly into catastrophe (a character readers may recognize from Nilsen’s Dogs and Water). The story is set against the backdrop of tensions]]> 368 Anders Nilsen 1524747203 Theo 0 4.21
author: Anders Nilsen
name: Theo
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: currently-reading, adults, comics-graphic-novels, netgalley, mythology
review:

]]> 207611566 There’s power in a book��

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid…and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master�� (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Theo 3 adults, horror, netgalley
A pre-Rowe story that packs an especially hard punch in our post-Rowe world.

Thank you Berkley Publishing Group for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 4.00 2025
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Theo
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: adults, horror, netgalley
review:
It's 1970 and Neva is 15 years old and pregnant. Her father has brought her to another state to live at Wellwood House, a home for unwed mothers. She's promised that after her pregnancy has ended, she can go home like nothing ever happened. The baby will be adopted by a good family and she will go back to being a teenager. At Wellwood House, each girl is given a new name to protect their reputations, so Neva becomes Fern and makes new friends in Rose, Holly, and Zinnia. But as their pregnancies progress, they begin to question what they really want, and when the librarian who works on the bookmobile that visits the home gives Fern a copy of "How to Be a Groovy Witch," they feel like they finally have some agency in their lives. Of course, nothing comes without a price, and there are no easy escapes in a world where women bear the literal burden of premarital sex and men continue to live their lives.

A pre-Rowe story that packs an especially hard punch in our post-Rowe world.

Thank you Berkley Publishing Group for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 20613470 565 Sarah J. Maas 1619630656 Theo 3 fantasy, teens, epic-fantasy 4.47 2014
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Theo
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: fantasy, teens, epic-fantasy
review:

]]> 38359009 ‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.��

A portrait of race and class, innocence and injustice, hypocrisy and heroism, tradition and transformation in the Deep South of the 1930s, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains as important today as it was upon its initial publication in 1960, during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement.

Now, reborn as a graphic novel. Scout, Jem, Boo Radley, Atticus Finch and the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, are all captured in illustrations by artist Fred Fordham.]]> 279 Fred Fordham 0062798189 Theo 3 adults, comics-graphic-novels 4.42 2018
author: Fred Fordham
name: Theo
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: adults, comics-graphic-novels
review:

]]> 213618146 New school, new country, but only half a family?! Embark on a coming of age journey with a middle school teen navigating their parent’s divorce while moving to a new country in this stunning graphic novel.

Ave thought moving to Kansas would be boring and flat after enjoying the mountains and trails in Mexico, but at least they would have their family with them. Unfortunately, while Ave, their mom, and their younger brother are relocating to the US, Ave's father and older sister will be staying in Mexico...permanently. Their parents are getting a divorce.

As if learning a whole new language wasn't hard enough, and now a Middle-Schooler has to figure out a new family dynamic...and what this means for them as they start middle school with no friends.

Jose Pimienta's stunningly illustrated and thought provoking middle graphic novel is about exploring identity, understanding family, making friends with a language barrier, and above all else, learning what truly makes a place a home.]]> 256 José Pimienta 0593569423 Theo 3
The artwork is gentle and welcoming even when showcasing the vast desert landscape of Mexicali or the imposing architecture on the University of Kansas campus. Ave's gender is explored through clothing, hair, and makeup choices that showcase the character's fluid identity. While US-Mexican border relations are touched on, the story keeps a generally lighthearted tone.

Thank you Random House Children's for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.93 2025
author: José Pimienta
name: Theo
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: children, comics-graphic-novels, realistic-fiction, netgalley
review:
Ave, a nonbinary middle schooler, moves with their family to the United States after growing up in Mexicali, Mexico. Ave struggles to assimilate, unlike their younger brother who chooses a more English-sounding nickname and prefers speaking in English. Ave is also struggling because their family is separated. Their father and older sister have stayed behind in Mexicali. As Ave struggles, they find a supportive group of friends. It's a moving reflection of culture, identity, and change.

The artwork is gentle and welcoming even when showcasing the vast desert landscape of Mexicali or the imposing architecture on the University of Kansas campus. Ave's gender is explored through clothing, hair, and makeup choices that showcase the character's fluid identity. While US-Mexican border relations are touched on, the story keeps a generally lighthearted tone.

Thank you Random House Children's for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 214329001 The future of storytelling is here.

Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next.

In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes.

What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur.

Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.]]> 448 Nnedi Okorafor 0063391155 Theo 4
Told through multiple viewpoints, we read Zelu's story, interspersed with selections from her philosophical science fiction novel about a post-human world populated by robots and AI. There are also interviews with those in Zelu's orbit. She's not the easiest character to love, but as the novel progresses, so does our understanding of her. The novel takes lots of zany turns, and as a reader, I was never sure what might happen next, but at its heart, I think the novel is an examination of what makes us human, what motivates and connects us to the world, and what role technology can play in that. Highly recommend!

Thank you William Morrow for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 4.04 2025
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Theo
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: adults, literary-fiction, science-fiction, netgalley
review:
Zelu is a complicated character dealing with professional rejection and a family that doesn't understand her. The daughter of Nigerian immigrants and paralyzed from the waist down since a childhood accident, she struggles to prove her worth in a world that condescends to her existence. At a very low point, she writes a novel that will completely change her life's trajectory, for good and bad.

Told through multiple viewpoints, we read Zelu's story, interspersed with selections from her philosophical science fiction novel about a post-human world populated by robots and AI. There are also interviews with those in Zelu's orbit. She's not the easiest character to love, but as the novel progresses, so does our understanding of her. The novel takes lots of zany turns, and as a reader, I was never sure what might happen next, but at its heart, I think the novel is an examination of what makes us human, what motivates and connects us to the world, and what role technology can play in that. Highly recommend!

Thank you William Morrow for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 24113 777 Douglas R. Hofstadter 0465026567 Theo 0 to-read 4.29 1979
author: Douglas R. Hofstadter
name: Theo
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60149573 A novel about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear.

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. Bird knows to not ask too many questions, stand out too much, or stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve “American culture�� in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic—including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York City, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.]]> 335 Celeste Ng 0593492544 Theo 0 to-read 3.74 2022
author: Celeste Ng
name: Theo
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151565 A read-in-one-night suspense thriller narrated by a compulsive liar whose little white lies allow her to enter into the life and comfort of a wealthy married couple who are harboring much darker secrets themselves. For the millions of us still chasing those gone girls, this is perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Lucy Foley, and Laura Dave.

Sloane Caraway is a liar.

Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.

So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can't help herself—she tells the girl's (very attractive) dad she's a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl's foot.

With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy, and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island.

But maybe Sloane isn't the only one lying, and all that's picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth. To say anything more is to spoil the most exciting, twisty, and bitingly smart suspense novel to come out in years.

The thing about lies is that they add up, form their own truth and a twisted prison of a world. And in Count My Lies, Sophie Stava spins a breakneck, unputdownable thriller about the secrets we keep, and the terrifying dangers that lurk just under the images we spend so much time trying to maintain.

Careful what you lie for.]]> 336 Sophie Stava 1668079348 Theo 0 to-read 3.73 2025
author: Sophie Stava
name: Theo
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199798217 A heartfelt novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Tehran, Iran.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.��

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls�� high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.]]> 327 Marjan Kamali 1668036584 Theo 0 to-read 4.47 2024
author: Marjan Kamali
name: Theo
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3652134
In 1991, mountain climbers on the Niederjoch Glacier on the Italian-Austrian border came across something a body. It had been a very warm summer, and five bodies had already turned up in the area. But something here was different. The materials found with the body suggested it might be very old, perhaps from the 1800s. But radiocarbon dating proved the iceman was 5,300 years older, from the Copper Age. He was named Ötzi and he is the oldest human mummy preserved in ice ever found.��In this Sibert Honor Book, James M. Deem takes us on a captivating and creepy journey to learn about glaciers, hulking masses of moving ice that are now offering up many secrets of the past.]]> 58 James M. Deem 061880045X Theo 3 children, society-culture 3.84 2008
author: James M. Deem
name: Theo
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2013/03/07
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: children, society-culture
review:

]]> 7029188 With those words, six restless young men raided the linens at a friend’s mansion in 1866. They pulled white sheets over their heads, hopped on horses, and cavorted through the streets of Pulaski, Tennessee. Soon, the six friends named their club the Ku Klux Klan and began patterning their initiations after fraternity rites, with passwords and mysterious handshakes. All too quickly, this club would grow into the self-proclaimed “Invisible Empire,�� with secret dens spread across the South. On their brutal raids, the nightriders would claim to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers and would use psychological and physical terror against former slaves who dared to vote, own land, attend school, or worship as they pleased.

This is the story of how a secret terrorist group took root in America’s democracy. Filled with chilling and vivid personal accounts unearthed from oral histories, congressional documents, and other primary sources, this is a book to read and remember.

]]> 172 Susan Campbell Bartoletti 061844033X Theo 4 3.85 2010
author: Susan Campbell Bartoletti
name: Theo
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/06/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: teens, history, society-culture
review:

]]> 43726584 Free Lunch is the story of Rex’s efforts to navigate his first semester of sixth grade—who to sit with, not being able to join the football team, Halloween in a handmade costume, classmates and a teacher who take one look at him and decide he’s trouble—all while wearing secondhand clothes and being hungry. His mom and her boyfriend are out of work, and life at home is punctuated by outbursts of violence. Halfway through the semester, his family is evicted and ends up in government-subsidized housing in view of the school. Rex lingers at the end of last period every day until the buses have left, so no one will see where he lives.


Unsparing and realistic, Free Lunch is a story of hardship threaded with hope and moments of grace. Rex’s voice is compelling and authentic, and Free Lunch is a true, timely, and essential work that illuminates the lived experience of poverty in America.]]> 208 Rex Ogle 132400360X Theo 3 4.36 2019
author: Rex Ogle
name: Theo
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/19
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: autobiography-memoir, children, biography, society-culture
review:

]]> 17346698
Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall.

Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1950s comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations.

(Back flap)]]> 128 John Lewis 1603093001 Theo 4 4.34 2013
author: John Lewis
name: Theo
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2019/11/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, teens, autobiography-memoir, comics-graphic-novels, history, biography, society-culture
review:

]]> 40230144 A profound and personal exploration of the intersections of womanhood, femininity, and creativity

This Woman��s Work is a powerfully raw autobiographical work that asks vital questions about femininity and the assumptions we make about gender. Julie Delporte examines cultural artifacts and sometimes traumatic memories through the lens of the woman she is today—a feminist who understands the reality of the women around her, how experiencing rape culture and sexual abuse is almost synonymous with being a woman, and the struggle of reconciling one’s feminist beliefs with the desire to be loved. She sometimes resents being a woman and would rather be anything but.

Told through beautifully evocative colored pencil drawings and sparse but compelling prose, This Woman��s Work documents Delporte’s memories and cultural consumption through journal-like entries that represent her struggles with femininity and womanhood. She structures these moments in a nonlinear fashion, presenting each one as a snapshot of a place and time—trips abroad, the moment you realize a relationship is over, and a traumatizing childhood event of sexual abuse that haunts her to this day. While This Woman’s Work is deeply personal, it is also a reflection of the conversations that women have with themselves when trying to carve out their feminist identity. Delporte’s search for answers in the turmoil created by gender assumptions is profoundly resonant in the era of #MeToo.]]> 256 Julie Delporte 1770463453 Theo 3 4.04 2017
author: Julie Delporte
name: Theo
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2020/02/14
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, comics-graphic-novels, autobiography-memoir, society-culture
review:

]]> 27161156 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062300546.

Hillbilly Elegy recounts J.D. Vance's powerful origin story...

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as a U.S. Senator from Ohio and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for the 2024 election, an incisive account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.]]> 264 J.D. Vance Theo 4 3.81 2016
author: J.D. Vance
name: Theo
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2020/11/20
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, autobiography-memoir, society-culture
review:

]]> 1347813 336 Rachel Corrie 0393065715 Theo 3 4.17
author: Rachel Corrie
name: Theo
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2021/10/31
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, teens, autobiography-memoir, society-culture
review:

]]> 146470602 The revelatory New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award.

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation―and the moral implications that affect us all.

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo―because we are all implicated.]]> 11 Siddharth Kara 1250882400 Theo 5
The narrator does an excellent job of negotiating a variety of accents and voices, and the pacing keeps listeners engaged with a weighty and difficult topic.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 4.33 2023
author: Siddharth Kara
name: Theo
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/08
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, history, netgalley, society-culture
review:
As I listened to this audiobook, the irony that I was using a smartphone powered by a lithium-ion battery was not lost on me. Like the author's comparison to the 19th century English and sugar, as we are shocked and horrified by the exploitative labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we continue to use our phones, drive our electric vehicles, and rely on cobalt as our way to a cleaner future. Siddharth Kara has crafted an accessible, engaging look at what is happening right now in the DRC, and how it has been shaped by the exploitation of generations of Congolese people from the days of King Leopold. It's an incredibly powerful read.

The narrator does an excellent job of negotiating a variety of accents and voices, and the pacing keeps listeners engaged with a weighty and difficult topic.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 123157760 From a bold new voice in nonfiction, an exhilarating account of the lives and works of influential 17th and 18th century feminist philosophers Mary Wollstonecraft and her predecessors who have been written out of history, and a searing look at the author’s experience of patriarchy and sexism in academia

As a young woman growing up in small-town Iowa, Regan Penaluna daydreamed about the big questions: Who are we and what is this strange world we find ourselves in? In college she fell in love with philosophy and chose to pursue it as an academician, the first step, she believed, to becoming a self-determined person living a life of the mind. What Penaluna didn’t realize was that the Western philosophical canon taught in American universities, as well as the culture surrounding it, would slowly grind her down through its misogyny, its harassment, its devaluation of women and their intellect. Where were the women philosophers?

One day, in an obscure monograph, Penaluna came across Damaris Cudworth Masham’s name. The daughter of philosopher Ralph Cudworth and a contemporary of John Locke, Masham wrote about knowledge and God, and the condition of women. Masham’s work led Penaluna to other remarkable women philosophers of the era: Mary Astell, who moved to London at age twenty-one and made a living writing philosophy; Catharine Cockburn, a philosopher, novelist, and playwright; and the better-known Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote extensively in defense of women’s minds. Together, these women rekindled Penaluna’s love of philosophy and awakened her feminist consciousness.

In How to Think Like a Woman, Regan Penaluna blends memoir, biography, and criticism to tell the stories of these four women, weaving throughout an alternative history of philosophy as well as her own search for love and truth. Funny, honest, and wickedly intelligent, this is a moving meditation on what philosophy could look like if women were treated equally.]]> 9 Regan Penaluna 1666633798 Theo 3
As for the audio narration, it wasn't my favorite. With nonfiction, the narrator has a big job to communicate all the facts in an engaging and informative way. I don't know if the narrator always succeeded. Also, I had some issues with pronunciations. The narrator went out of her way to pronounce French names, places, and ideas with the proper French pronunciation, but then mispronounced some British English place names, like Magdalene College at Cambridge, which is 'Maudlyn' in British vernacular.

Thank you Dreamscape Media for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.82 2023
author: Regan Penaluna
name: Theo
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/31
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, netgalley, autobiography-memoir, biography, society-culture
review:
I had a hard time deciding what to say about this book. I appreciated the dive into feminist philosophy and the contributions women have made from the beginnings of philosophical thought. I even connected to some of the comparisons that she made between her own life and those of women throughout history and the idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same. However, the memoir style of book didn't always work for me and I found some of the author's insights into her own life taking away from the narrative. I wanted to learn more about the highlighted philosophers and others that she mentioned and less about the author's romantic and interpersonal struggles.

As for the audio narration, it wasn't my favorite. With nonfiction, the narrator has a big job to communicate all the facts in an engaging and informative way. I don't know if the narrator always succeeded. Also, I had some issues with pronunciations. The narrator went out of her way to pronounce French names, places, and ideas with the proper French pronunciation, but then mispronounced some British English place names, like Magdalene College at Cambridge, which is 'Maudlyn' in British vernacular.

Thank you Dreamscape Media for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 52203668
Essays in A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South, examine issues of sex, gender, academia, family, immigration, health, social justice, sports, music, and more. Kiese Laymon navigates the racial politics of publishing while recording his audiobook in Mississippi. Regina Bradley moves to Indiana and grapples with a landscape devoid of her Southern cultural touchstones, like Popeyes and OutKast. Aruni Kashyap apartment hunts in Athens and encounters a minefield of invasive questions. Frederick McKindra delves into the particularly Southern history of Beyonce’s black majorettes.

From the DMV to the college basketball court to doctors�� offices, there are no shortage of places of tension in the American South. Urgent, necessary, funny, and poignant, these essays from new and established voices confront the complexities of the South’s relationship with race, uncovering the particular difficulties and profound joys of being a southerner in the 21st century.

With writing from Cinelle Barnes, Jaswinder Bolina, Regina Bradley, Jennifer Hope Choi, Tiana Clark, Christena Cleveland, Osayi Endolyn, M. Evelina Galang, Minda Honey, Gary Jackson, Toni Jensen, Aruni Kashyap, Latria Graham, Soniah Kamal, Frederick McKindra, Devi Laskar, Kiese Laymon, Nichole Perkins, Joy Priest, Ivelisse Rodriguez, and Natalia Sylvester.]]> 189 Cinelle Barnes 1938235711 Theo 4 4.29 2020
author: Cinelle Barnes
name: Theo
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/20
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, anthologies-short-stories, society-culture
review:

]]> 96177370 A striking graphic novel edition of the National Book Award-winning history of how racist ideas have shaped American life—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist.

Racism has persisted throughout history—but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it. Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of five key American figures, preeminent historian Ibram X. Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it.

In collaboration with award-winning historian and comic artist Joel Christian Gill, this stunningly illustrated graphic-novel adaptation of Dr. Kendi’s groundbreaking Stamped from the Beginning explores, with vivid clarity and dimensionality, the living history of America, and how we can learn from the past to work toward a more equitable, antiracist future.]]> 288 Ibram X. Kendi 1984859439 Theo 4 4.36 2023
author: Ibram X. Kendi
name: Theo
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/06
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, comics-graphic-novels, history, society-culture
review:

]]> 57840335
What’s to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.

Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter’s Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.

Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature’s lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem—and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.]]> 308 Mary Roach 1324001844 Theo 4 4.02 2021
author: Mary Roach
name: Theo
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/15
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, science, society-culture
review:

]]> 58734811 In her new masterpiece, the author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet reveals the power of a bittersweet outlook on life, and why we’ve been so blind to its value.

With Quiet, Susan Cain urged our society to cultivate space for the undervalued, indispensable introverts among us, thereby revealing an untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now she employs the same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore why we experience sorrow and longing, and the surprising lessons these states of mind teach us about creativity, compassion, leadership, spirituality, mortality, and love.

Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy when beholding beauty. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired. A song in a minor key, an elegiac poem, or even a touching television commercial all can bring us to this sublime, even holy, state of mind—and, ultimately, to greater kinship with our fellow humans.

But bittersweetness is not, as we tend to think, just a momentary feeling or event. It’s also a way of being, a storied heritage. Our artistic and spiritual traditions—amplified by recent scientific and management research—teach us its power.

Cain shows how a bittersweet state of mind is the quiet force that helps us transcend our personal and collective pain. If we don’t acknowledge our own sorrows and longings, she says, we can end up inflicting them on others via abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that all humans know—or will know—loss and suffering, we can turn toward each other. And we can learn to transform our own pain into creativity, transcendence, and connection.

At a time of profound discord and personal anxiety, Bittersweet brings us together in deep and unexpected ways.]]> 310 Susan Cain 0451499786 Theo 3 adults, society-culture 3.96 2022
author: Susan Cain
name: Theo
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: adults, society-culture
review:

]]> 212421066
From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes an addictive thriller about a new mother’s world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie?

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

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

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

Famous Last Words is the story of a crime, a marriage, and more secrets than Camilla ever could have imagined. This novel cements Gillian McAllister’s reputation as “the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.�� (Emily Henry)]]> 336 Gillian McAllister 0063338424 Theo 3 adults, thriller-suspense 3.71 2025
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Theo
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: adults, thriller-suspense
review:

]]> 27070127
Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work �� her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner.

Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, all would be lost.

When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying �� as usual �� on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around?]]> 237 Anne Tyler 0804141266 Theo 0 to-read 3.35 2016
author: Anne Tyler
name: Theo
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 37955748
One of the most celebrated, beloved, and enduring actors of our time, Sally Field has an infectious charm that has captivated the nation for more than five decades, beginning with her first TV role at the age of seventeen.

With raw honesty and with all the humility and authenticity her fans have come to expect, Field brings readers behind-the-scenes for not only the highs and lows of her star-studded early career in Hollywood, but deep into the truth of her lifelong relationships--including her complicated love for her own mother. Powerful and unforgettable, In Pieces is an inspiring account of life as a woman in the second half of the twentieth century.

]]> Sally Field 1549143077 Theo 3 adults, autobiography-memoir 3.85 2018
author: Sally Field
name: Theo
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: adults, autobiography-memoir
review:

]]> 213051939 The quirky and singular Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock, a founder of modern genetics who did things her own way, is honored in this lively young STEM biography by Sibert Honor winner Lori Alexander.

Celebrating the power of curiosity and the rewards of tenacity, this engaging and highly illustrated biography introduces young readers to the field of genetics. As a rare female botanist in early twentieth-century America, Barbara McClintock never let other people’s notions of what was proper slow her down. When she faced doubting colleagues and unsupportive institutions, she drove across the United States, climbed through windows, and even slept in her laboratory to conduct her research. In so doing, she helped pave the way for future scientific discoveries that can cure diseases and save lives—and won a Nobel Prize in the process!

Back matter includes a timeline, glossary, source notes, and further reading.]]> 128 Lori Alexander 006324599X Theo 4
The illustrations are soft and cozy, adding a whimsical touch to the biography that reflects McClintock's at-times-unorthodox scientific approach.

Thank you HarperCollins Children's Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 4.41
author: Lori Alexander
name: Theo
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: biography, science, children, netgalley
review:
A clear and precise biography of scientific and feminist hero Barbara McClintock written for older elementary school students. This book highlights genetic concepts and advances in a way anyone can understand. Told in a linear fashion, the reader meets McClintock as a young girl so fascinated by learning that she forgets her name. She bucks traditional roles for girls and women in the early 20th century, cutting her hair short, wearing pants, and insisting on going to college. Her scientific career also bucks tradition, as she challenges the beliefs of other scientists through her meticulous, often solo, experiments. She became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine as a solo scientist (30 years after she made her groundbreaking discovery) and the book takes the time to show how her work led to the advances we see in genetics today.

The illustrations are soft and cozy, adding a whimsical touch to the biography that reflects McClintock's at-times-unorthodox scientific approach.

Thank you HarperCollins Children's Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 42270835 Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida.

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.]]> 213 Colson Whitehead Theo 4 4.25 2019
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Theo
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/25
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves: teens, historical-fiction, adults
review:

]]> 68429
The impossible has been accomplished. The Lord Ruler—the man who claimed to be god incarnate and brutally ruled the world for a thousand years—has been vanquished. But Kelsier, the hero who masterminded that triumph, is dead too, and now the awesome task of building a new world has been left to his young protégé, Vin, the former street urchin who is now the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and to the idealistic young nobleman she loves.

As Kelsier's protégé and slayer of the Lord Ruler she is now venerated by a budding new religion, a distinction that makes her intensely uncomfortable. Even more worrying, the mists have begun behaving strangely since the Lord Ruler died, and seem to harbor a strange vaporous entity that haunts her.

Stopping assassins may keep Vin's Mistborn skills sharp, but it's the least of her problems. Luthadel, the largest city of the former empire, doesn't run itself, and Vin and the other members of Kelsier's crew, who lead the revolution, must learn a whole new set of practical and political skills to help. It certainly won't get easier with three armies - one of them composed of ferocious giants - now vying to conquer the city, and no sign of the Lord Ruler's hidden cache of atium, the rarest and most powerful allomantic metal.

As the siege of Luthadel tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension or what manner of power it bestows.]]> 590 Brandon Sanderson 0765316889 Theo 0 4.38 2007
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Theo
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: teens, epic-fantasy, adults, currently-reading
review:

]]> 199700434 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide.

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances.

Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet, The God of the Woods is a story of inheritance and second chances, the tensions between a family and a community, and a history that will not let any of them go.]]> 478 Liz Moore 0593418913 Theo 0 4.09 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Theo
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: adults, literary-fiction, currently-reading
review:

]]> 209439446
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 527 Rebecca Yarros 1649374186 Theo 4 4.17 2025
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Theo
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: adults, fantasy, epic-fantasy, teens
review:

]]> 205804581 Love comes home for the challah-days in this sparkling romance.

Snow is falling, holiday lights are twinkling, and Abby Cohen is pissed. For one thing, her most annoying customer, Seth, has been coming into her café every morning with his sunshiny attitude, determined to break down her carefully constructed emotional walls. And, as the only Jew on the tourism board of her Vermont town, Abby's been charged with planning��their fledgling Hanukkah festival. Unfortunately, the local vendors don’t understand that the story of Hanukkah cannot be told with light-up plastic figures from the Nativity scene, even if the Three Wise Men wear yarmulkes.

Desperate for support, Abby puts out a call for help online and discovers she was wrong about being the only Jew within a hundred miles. There's one Seth.

As it turns out, Seth’s parents have been badgering him to bring a Nice Jewish Girlfriend home to New York City for Hanukkah, and if Abby can survive his incessant, irritatingly��handsome smiles, he’ll introduce her to all the vendors she needs to make the festival a success. But over latkes, doughnuts, and winter adventures in Manhattan, Abby begins to realize that her fake boyfriend and his family might just be igniting a flame in her own guarded heart.]]> 368 Amanda Elliot 0593815831 Theo 4
The fake relationship trope works well with this grumpy-sunshine romance. Abby doesn't let people in because of childhood trauma, but Seth's optimism and gentle presence seems to be the balm her soul needs. I also enjoyed meeting Seth's friends, and seeing Abby connect not just with Seth, but also with them. A great winter holiday read!

Thank you Berkley Publishing Group for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.79 2024
author: Amanda Elliot
name: Theo
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: adults, contemporary-romance, netgalley
review:
Abby Cohen is struggling to keep her coffee shop open in the small Vermont town she now calls home. When she's recruited to drum up tourism by creating a Hanukkah festival (the Vermont market is saturated with Christmas festivals), Abby struggles with the microaggressions of other small business owners who think dressing a Christmas festival in blue and white is close enough. Searching for allies, she discovers the only other Jewish person in town just happens to be her most annoying customer, and he's got a proposition: he'll help her make the festival a success if she goes home with him to New York and pretends to be his girlfriend.

The fake relationship trope works well with this grumpy-sunshine romance. Abby doesn't let people in because of childhood trauma, but Seth's optimism and gentle presence seems to be the balm her soul needs. I also enjoyed meeting Seth's friends, and seeing Abby connect not just with Seth, but also with them. A great winter holiday read!

Thank you Berkley Publishing Group for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 18652002 The Handmaid's Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut.

Born into the lowest class of her society, Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, only fit to clean her orchard hive. Living to accept, obey and serve, she is prepared to sacrifice everything for her beloved holy mother, the Queen. Yet Flora has talents that are not typical of her kin. And while mutant bees are usually instantly destroyed, Flora is reassigned to feed the newborns, before becoming a forager, collecting pollen on the wing. Then she finds her way into the Queen's inner sanctum, where she discovers secrets both sublime and ominous. Enemies roam everywhere, from the fearsome fertility police to the high priestesses who jealously guard the Hive Mind. But Flora cannot help but break the most sacred law of all, and her instinct to serve is overshadowed by a desire, as overwhelming as it is forbidden...

Laline Paull's chilling yet ultimately triumphant novel creates a luminous world both alien and uncannily familiar. Thrilling and imaginative, The Bees is the story of a heroine who changes her destiny and her world.]]> 340 Laline Paull 0062331159 Theo 4 adults, apocalyptic-dystopia 3.69 2014
author: Laline Paull
name: Theo
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: adults, apocalyptic-dystopia
review:

]]> 62022 258 Walter Tevis 1400030609 Theo 0 to-read 4.14 1983
author: Walter Tevis
name: Theo
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 22055262
Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.]]> 400 Victoria E. Schwab 0765376458 Theo 0 to-read 4.04 2015
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Theo
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40916679
Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town.

But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer?

Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn't want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger.]]> 433 Holly Jackson 1405293187 Theo 0 to-read 4.30 2019
author: Holly Jackson
name: Theo
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217536270
In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn't much a girl wouldn't do for a glass of water.

Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen's reservoirs for as long as she can remember.

But a secret is like a knot. Sooner or later, it is bound to come undone.

When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently re-opens a gateway between realms and is transported to a land of ice and snow. The Fae have always been the stuff of myth, of legend, of nightmares... but it turns out they're real, and Saeris has landed herself in the middle of a centuries-long conflict that might just get her killed.

The first of her kind to tread the frozen mountains of Yvelia in over a thousand years, Saeris mistakenly binds herself to Kingfisher, a handsome Fae warrior, who has secrets and nefarious agendas of his own. He will use her Alchemist's magic to protect his people, no matter what it costs him . . . or her.

Death has a name. It is Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate. His past is murky. His attitude stinks. And he's the only way Saeris is going to make it home.]]> 624 Callie Hart 1538774194 Theo 0 to-read 4.29 2024
author: Callie Hart
name: Theo
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 181344829 A dangerous alliance between a Vampyre bride and an Alpha Werewolf becomes a love deep enough to sink your teeth into in this new paranormal romance.

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again...

Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was��.

Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she's ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory…alone with the wolf.]]> 410 Ali Hazelwood Theo 0 to-read 3.98 2024
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Theo
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 195820807
Emma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka.

It's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected--including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together?]]> 432 Abby Jimenez 1538704439 Theo 0 to-read 4.35 2024
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Theo
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]> 336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Theo 0 to-read 4.17 2019
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Theo
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 5886881
Since then, she has been drifting. But when she is contacted by a group who are convinced of Ben's innocence, Libby starts to ask questions she never dared to before. Was the voice she heard her brother's? Ben was a misfit in their small town, but was he capable of murder? Are there secrets to uncover at the family farm or is Libby deluding herself because she wants her brother back?

She begins to realise that everyone in her family had something to hide that day... especially Ben. Now, twenty-four years later, the truth is going to be even harder to find.

Who did massacre the Day family?]]> 424 Gillian Flynn 0307341569 Theo 4 3.95 2009
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Theo
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: adults, psychological-suspense
review:

]]> 116563 323 Diane Duane 0152047387 Theo 0 teens, fantasy, next-to-read 3.84 1983
author: Diane Duane
name: Theo
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: teens, fantasy, next-to-read
review:

]]> 320 417 Gabriel García Márquez Theo 3 4.10 1967
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Theo
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1967
rating: 3
read at: 2005/09/01
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: adults, literary-fiction, classics, magical-realism
review:

]]> 9476470 ��
So when Charlie dies in dark circumstances, Vera knows a lot more than anyone—the kids at school, his family, even the police. But will she emerge to clear his name? Does she even want to?
��
Edgy and gripping, Please Ignore Vera Dietz is an unforgettable novel: smart, funny, dramatic, and always surprising.




From the Hardcover edition.]]> 251 A.S. King 0375896171 Theo 5 3.60 2010
author: A.S. King
name: Theo
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2011/06/15
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: teens, realistic-fiction, literary-fiction, magical-realism
review:

]]> 8430473 294 Aimee Bender Theo 4 3.43 2010
author: Aimee Bender
name: Theo
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/01
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: adults, teens, literary-fiction, magical-realism
review:

]]> 674155 A mysterious and haunting tale of romance and murder, that begins with the marriage of a man and a woman in love. But when he inexplicably mistreats his beloved on the night of the wedding, he is in turn murdered by her brothers, and we are left with a strange sense of inevitability and passions gone terribly awry.


From the Paperback edition.]]> 120 Gabriel García Márquez 0394530748 Theo 3 3.84 1981
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: Theo
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1981
rating: 3
read at: 2011/12/16
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: adults, literary-fiction, classics, magical-realism
review:

]]> 47831
We begin -- at the turn of the century, in an unnamed South American country -- in the childhood home of the woman who will be the mother and grandmother of the clan, Clara del Valle. A warm-hearted, hypersensitive girl, Clara has distinguished herself from an early age with her telepathic abilities -- she can read fortunes, make objects move as if they had lives of their own, and predict the future. Following the mysterious death of her sister, the fabled Rosa the Beautiful, Clara has been mute for nine years, resisting all attempts to make her speak. When she breaks her silence, it is to announce that she will be married soon.

Her husband-to-be is Esteban Trueba, a stern, willful man, given to fits of rage and haunted by a profound loneliness. At the age of thirty-five, he has returned to the capital from his country estate to visit his dying mother and to find a wife. (He was Rosa's fiance, and her death has marked him as deeply as it has Clara.) This is the man Clara has foreseen -- has summoned -- to be her husband; Esteban, in turn, will conceive a passion for Clara that will last the rest of his long and rancorous life.

We go with this couple as they move into the extravagant house he builds for her, a structure that everyone calls "the big house on the corner," which is soon populated with Clara's spiritualist friends, the artists she sponsors, the charity cases she takes an interest in, with Esteban's political cronies, and, above all, with the Trueba children...their daughter, Blanca, a practical, self-effacing girl who will, to the fury of her father, form a lifelong liaison with the son of his foreman...the twins, Jaime and Nicolas, the former a solitary, taciturn boy who becomes a doctor to the poor and unfortunate; the latter a playboy, a dabbler in Eastern religions and mystical disciplines...and, in the third generation, the child Alba, Blanca's daughter (the family does not recognize the real father for years, so great is Esteban's anger), a child who is fondled and indulged and instructed by them all.

For all their good fortune, their natural (and supernatural) talents, and their powerful attachments to one another, the inhabitants of "the big house on the corner" are not immune to the larger forces of the world. And, as the twentieth century beats on...as Esteban becomes more strident in his opposition to Communism...as Jaime becomes the friend and confidant of the Socialist leader known as the Candidate...as Alba falls in love with a student radical...the Truebas become actors -- and victims -- in a tragic series of events that gives The House of the Spirits a deeper resonance and meaning.

It is the supreme achievement of this splendid novel that we feel ourselves members of this large, passionate (and sometimes exasperating) family, that we become attached to them as if they were our own. That this is the author's first novel makes it all the more extraordinary. The House of the Spirits marks the appearance of a major, international writer.]]> 368 Isabel Allende 0394539079 Theo 4 4.11 1982
author: Isabel Allende
name: Theo
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2012/06/23
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: adults, literary-fiction, classics, magical-realism
review:

]]> 12518906
But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting. He’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming. . . .

This monster, though, is something different. Something ancient, something wild. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor.

It wants the truth.

Patrick Ness spins a tale from the final story idea of Siobhan Dowd, whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself. Darkly mischievous and painfully funny, A Monster Calls is an extraordinarily moving novel about coming to terms with loss from two of our finest writers for young adults.]]> 224 Patrick Ness 076365633X Theo 5 4.36 2011
author: Patrick Ness
name: Theo
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2012/10/27
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: teens, literary-fiction, magical-realism
review:

]]> 13262783 Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone A wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.]]> 322 David Levithan 0307931889 Theo 4 3.91 2012
author: David Levithan
name: Theo
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2016/09/17
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: teens, literary-fiction, magical-realism
review:

]]> 123847255 A dazzling magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez, The Bullet Swallower follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to save his family, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generations in the making.

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He’s good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he’s also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul.

In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico’s most renowned actor and singer. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio’s timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors�� crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower.

A family saga that’s epic in scope and magical in its blood, and based loosely on the author’s own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.]]> 272 Elizabeth Gonzalez James 1668009323 Theo 4 3.75 2024
author: Elizabeth Gonzalez James
name: Theo
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: adults, historical-fiction, literary-fiction, magical-realism
review:

]]> 62919375
At first, Wren internally resists her husband’s fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis changes? Then, a glimpse of Lewis’s developing carnivorous nature activates long-repressed memories for Wren, whose story vacillates between her childhood living on a houseboat in Oklahoma, her time with her college ex-girlfriend, and her unusual friendship with a woman pregnant with twin birds.]]> 416 Emily Habeck 1668006499 Theo 4 3.95 2023
author: Emily Habeck
name: Theo
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: adults, romance, literary-fiction, magical-realism
review:

]]> 386298
Though he thinks the house is empty, the daughter of the house is home. Thus begins the love between Peter Lake, a middle-aged Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young girl, who is dying.

Peter Lake, a simple, uneducated man, because of a love that, at first he does not fully understand, is driven to stop time and bring back the dead. His great struggle, in a city ever alight with its own energy and besieged by unprecedented winters, is one of the most beautiful and extraordinary stories of American literature.]]> 673 Mark Helprin 0151972036 Theo 4 3.85 1983
author: Mark Helprin
name: Theo
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1983
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: adults, literary-fiction, magical-realism
review:

]]> 338691
But Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets...]]> 293 Louise Penny 0312948557 Theo 4 adults, mystery 3.86 2005
author: Louise Penny
name: Theo
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: adults, mystery
review:

]]> 56732449
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor--and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding... six-pack abs.

Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.]]> 356 Ali Hazelwood 0593336828 Theo 4 4.11 2021
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Theo
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/09
shelves: adults, contemporary-romance, romantic-comedy
review:

]]> 56898223
Called "Pastoral," this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it�� he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.

Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease��rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.

Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind.]]> 354 Shea Ernshaw 1982164808 Theo 3 3.92 2021
author: Shea Ernshaw
name: Theo
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: adults, psychological-suspense
review:

]]> 6449064
He slips into their homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, unaware of the horrors they soon will endure. The precision of the killer's methods suggests he is a deranged man of medicine, propelling the Boston newspapers and the frightened public to name him "The Surgeon."

The cops' only clue rests with another surgeon, the victim of a nearly identical crime. Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and killed her attacker before he could complete his assault. Now she hides her fears of intimacy behind a cool and elegant exterior and a well-earned reputation as a top trauma surgeon.

Cordell's careful facade is about to crack as this new killer recreates, with chilling accuracy, the details of Cordell's own ordeal. With every new murder he seems to be taunting her, cutting ever closer, from her hospital to her home. Her only comfort comes from Thomas Moore, the detective assigned to the case. But even Moore cannot protect Cordell from a brilliant hunter who somehow understands--and savors--the secret fears of every woman he kills.

Filled with the authentic detail that is the trademark of this doctor turned author . . . and peopled with rich and complex characters--from the ER to the squad room to the city morgue--here is a thriller of unprecedented depth and suspense. Exposing the shocking link between those who kill and cure, punish and protect, The Surgeon is Tess Gerritsen's most exciting accomplishment yet.]]> 220 Tess Gerritsen 0345449436 Theo 5 adults, medical-thriller 3.92 2001
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2012/04/20
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 7145759 The Silent Girl.

The bestselling author of The Surgeon returns—and so does that chilling novel’s diabolical villain. Though held behind bars, Warren Hoyt still haunts a helpless city, seeming to bequeath his evil legacy to a student all-too-diligent . . . and all-too-deadly.

THE APPRENTICE

It is a boiling hot Boston summer. Adding to the city’s woes is a series of shocking crimes, in which wealthy men are made to watch while their wives are brutalized. A sadistic demand that ends in abduction and death.

The pattern suggests one serial killer Warren Hoyt, recently removed from the city’s streets. Police can only assume an acolyte is at large, a maniac basing his attacks on the twisted medical techniques of the madman he so admires. At least that’s what Detective Jane Rizzoli thinks. Forced again to confront the killer who scarred her—literally and figuratively—she is determined to finally end Hoyt’s awful influence . . . even if it means receiving more resistance from her all-male homicide squad.

But Rizzoli isn’t counting on the U.S. government’s sudden interest. Or on meeting Special Agent Gabriel Dean, who knows more than he will tell. Most of all, she isn’t counting on becoming a target herself, once Hoyt is suddenly free, joining his mysterious blood brother in a vicious vendetta. . . .

Filled with superbly created characters—and the medical and police procedural details that are her trademark��The Apprentice is Tess Gerritsen at her brilliant best. Set in a stunning world where evil is easy to learn and hard to end, this is a thriller by a master who could teach other authors a thing or two.]]> 436 Tess Gerritsen 0345509439 Theo 5 adults, medical-thriller 3.95 2002
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2012/04/23
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 6591525 352 Tess Gerritsen 0345464451 Theo 4 adults, medical-thriller 3.93 2003
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2013/10/16
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:
In this, the 3rd book in the series, we finally become acquainted with Dr. Maura Isles. I was beginning to wonder why the series was named after both Rizzoli and Isles, as Isles is not in the first book and not much more than a secondary character in the second. But in The Sinner, we get to know the medical examiner and get a better idea of the person behind the cold "Queen of the Dead" exterior. While the story didn't excite me as much as the previous two, it was still a solid tale of suspense, and I'm curious to continue the journey with these characters.
]]> 7261679 The Surgeon and The Sinner.

Dr. Maura Isles makes her living dealing with death. As a pathologist in a major metropolitan city, she has seen more than her share of corpses every day–many of them victims of violent murder. But never before has her blood run cold, and never has the grim expression "dead ringer" rung so terrifyingly true. Because never before has the lifeless body on the medical examiner's table been her own.

Yet there can be no denying the mind-reeling evidence before her shocked eyes and those of her colleagues, including Detective Jane Rizzoli, the woman found shot to death outside Maura’s home is the mirror image of Maura, down to the most intimate physical nuances. Even more chilling is the discovery that they share the same birth date and blood type. For the stunned Maura, an only child, there can be just one explanation. And when a DNA test confirms that Maura's mysterious doppelganger is in fact her twin sister, an already bizarre murder investigation becomes a disturbing and dangerous excursion into a past full of dark secrets.

Searching for answers, Maura is drawn to a seaside town in Maine where other horrifying surprises await. But perhaps more frightening, an unknown murderer is at large on a cross-country killing spree. To stop the massacre and uncover the twisted truth about her own roots, Maura must probe her first living subject, the mother that she never knew . . . an icy and cunning woman who could be responsible for giving Maura life-and who just may have a plan to take it away.]]> 270 Tess Gerritsen 0345478657 Theo 3 adults, medical-thriller 4.03 2004
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2014/02/12
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 32255 A blessed event becomes a nightmare for pregnant homicide detective Jane Rizzoli when she finds herself on the wrong side of a hostage crisis in this timely and relentless thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Body Double.

A nameless, beautiful woman appears to be just another corpse in the morgue. An apparent suicide, she lies on a gurney, awaiting the dissecting scalpel of medical examiner Maura Isles. But when Maura unzips the body bag and looks down at the body, she gets the fright of her life. The corpse opens its eyes.

Very much alive, the woman is rushed to the hospital, where with shockingly cool precision, she murders a security guard and seizes hostages . . . one of them a pregnant patient, Jane Rizzoli.

Who is this violent, desperate soul, and what does she want? As the tense hours tick by, Maura joins forces with Jane's husband, FBI agent Gabriel Dean, to track down the mysterious killer's identity. When federal agents suddenly appear on the scene, Maura and Gabriel realize that they are dealing with a case that goes far deeper than just an ordinary hostage crisis.

Only Jane, trapped with the armed madwoman, holds the key to the mystery. And only she can solve it if she survives the night. From the Hardcover edition.]]> 401 Tess Gerritsen 0345476980 Theo 3 adults, medical-thriller 4.12 2005
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2014/03/27
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 40659048 This is an updated cover of this Kindle edition.

Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles—the inspiration for the hit TNT series—continue their bestselling crime-solving streak. �� Evil exists. Evil walks the streets. And evil has spawned a diabolical new disciple in this white-knuckle thriller from New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen.

PECCAVI
The Latin word is scrawled in blood at the scene of a young woman’s brutal murder: I HAVE SINNED. It’s a chilling Christmas greeting for Boston medical examiner Maura Isles and Detective Jane Rizzoli, who swiftly link the victim to controversial celebrity psychiatrist Joyce O’Donnell–Jane’s professional nemesis and member of a sinister cabal called the Mephisto Club.

On top of Beacon Hill, the club’s acolytes devote themselves to the analysis of evil: Can it be explained by science? Does it have a physical presence? Do demons walk the earth? Drawing on a wealth of dark historical data and mysterious religious symbolism, the Mephisto scholars aim to prove a startling theory: that Satan himself exists among us.

With the grisly appearance of a corpse on their doorstep, it’s clear that someone–or something–is indeed prowling the city. The members of the club begin to fear the very subject of their study. Could this maniacal killer be one of their own–or have they inadvertently summoned an evil entity from the darkness?

Delving deep into the most baffling and unusual case of their careers, Maura and Jane embark on a terrifying journey to the very heart of evil, where they encounter a malevolent foe more dangerous than any they have ever faced . . . one whose work is only just beginning.]]> 368 Tess Gerritsen 0345495306 Theo 4 adults, medical-thriller 4.22 2006
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2014/10/18
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 6603345
To Maura and Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, the forensic evidence is unmistakable, its implications terrifying. And when the grisly remains of yet another woman are found in the hidden recesses of the museum, it becomes chillingly clear that a maniac is at large—and is now taunting them.

Archaeologist Josephine Pulcillo’s blood runs cold when the killer’s cryptic missives are discovered, and her darkest dread becomes real when the carefully preserved corpse of yet a third victim is left in her car like a gruesome offering—or perhaps a ghastly promise of what’s to come.

The twisted killer’s familiarity with post-mortem rituals suggests to Maura and Jane that he may have scientific expertise in common with Josephine. Only Josephine knows that her stalker shares a knowledge even more personally terrifying: details of a dark secret she had thought forever buried.

Now Maura must summon her own dusty knowledge of ancient death traditions to unravel a murderer’s twisted endgame. And when Josephine vanishes, Maura and Jane have precious little time to derail the Archaeology Killer before he adds another chilling piece to his monstrous collection.]]> 263 Tess Gerritsen 0345509390 Theo 3 adults, medical-thriller 3.82 2008
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2014/11/13
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 7202831 As night falls, the group seeks refuge from the blizzard in the remote village of Kingdom Come, where twelve eerily identical houses stand dark and abandoned. Something terrible has happened in Kingdom Come: Meals sit untouched on tables, cars are still parked in garages. The town's previous residents seem to have vanished into thin air, but footprints in the snow betray the presence of someone who still lurks in the cold darkness--someone who is watching Maura and her friends.
Days later, Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli receives the grim news that Maura's charred body has been found in a mountain ravine. Shocked and grieving, Jane is determined to learn what happened to her friend. The investigation plunges Jane into the twisted history of Kingdom Come, where a gruesome discovery lies buried beneath the snow. As horrifying revelations come to light, Jane closes in on an enemy both powerful and merciless--and the chilling truth about Maura's fate.

Published in the UK as THE KILLING PLACE.]]> 322 Tess Gerritsen 034551548X Theo 3 adults, medical-thriller 4.16 2010
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2015/05/06
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 9578677
In the murky shadows of an alley lies a female’s severed hand. On the tenement rooftop above is the corpse belonging to that hand, a red-haired woman dressed all in black, her head nearly severed. Two strands of silver hair—not human—cling to her body. They are Rizzoli’s only clues, but they’re enough for her and medical examiner Maura Isles to make the startling discovery: that this violent death had a chilling prequel.

Nineteen years earlier, a horrifying murder-suicide in a Chinatown restaurant left five people dead. But one woman connected to that massacre is still alive: a mysterious martial arts master who knows a secret she dares not tell, a secret that lives and breathes in the shadows of Chinatown. A secret that may not even be human. Now she’s the target of someone, or something, deeply and relentlessly evil.

Cracking a crime resonating with bone-chilling echoes of an ancient Chinese legend, Rizzoli and Isles must outwit an unseen enemy with centuries of cunning—and a swift, avenging blade.]]> 315 Tess Gerritsen 0345515501 Theo 4 adults, medical-thriller 4.12 2011
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2016/09/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 13272498
Jane spirits Teddy to the exclusive Evensong boarding school, a sanctuary where young victims of violent crime learn the secrets and skills of survival in a dangerous world. But even behind locked gates, and surrounded by acres of sheltering Maine wilderness, Jane fears that Evensong’s mysterious benefactors aren’t the only ones watching. When strange blood-splattered dolls are found dangling from a tree, Jane knows that her instincts are dead on. And when she meets Will Yablonski and Claire Ward, students whose tragic pasts bear a shocking resemblance to Teddy’s, it becomes chillingly clear that a circling predator has more than one victim in mind.

Joining forces with her trusted partner, medical examiner Maura Isles, Jane is determined to keep these orphans safe from harm. But an unspeakable secret dooms the children’s fate—unless Jane and Maura can finally put an end to an obsessed killer’s twisted quest.]]> 338 Tess Gerritsen 0345515633 Theo 3 4.11 2012
author: Tess Gerritsen
name: Theo
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: adults, teens, medical-thriller
review:

]]> 2238065
But Trouble comes careening down the road one night in the form of a pickup truck that strikes Henry’s older brother, Franklin. In the truck is Chay Chouan, a young Cambodian from Franklin’s preparatory school, and the accident sparks racial tensions in the school—and in the well-established town where Henry’s family has lived for generations. Caught between anger and grief, Henry sets out to do the only thing he can think climb Mt. Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine, which he and Franklin were going to climb together. Along with Black Dog, whom Henry has rescued from drowning, and a friend, Henry leaves without his parents�� knowledge. The journey, both exhilarating and dangerous, turns into an odyssey of discovery about himself, his older sister, Louisa, his ancestry, and why one can never escape from Trouble.]]> 297 Gary D. Schmidt 0618927662 Theo 4 realistic-fiction, teens 4.07 2008
author: Gary D. Schmidt
name: Theo
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2011/10/24
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: realistic-fiction, teens
review:

]]> 58155174
Finally, the entire Eisner Award-winning epic in one complete volume, with a new cover from co-creator CLIFF CHIANG!

Four 12-year-old newspaper delivery girls from the year 1988 uncover the most important story of all time. Suburban drama and otherworldly mysteries collide in this critically acclaimed series about nostalgia, first jobs, and the last days of childhood.

Collects PAPER GIRLS #1-30]]> 784 Brian K. Vaughan 1534319999 Theo 4 4.32 2021
author: Brian K. Vaughan
name: Theo
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: adults, comics-graphic-novels, science-fiction
review:

]]> 60018639
Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas' ancestral home in Russia--but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine's blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family's traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide--erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.

An enchanted adventure illuminated by Jewish myth and adorned with lyrical prose as tantalizing and sweet as briar berries, Thistlefoot is an immersive modern fantasy saga by a bold new talent.]]> 448 GennaRose Nethercott 059346883X Theo 4 3.92 2022
author: GennaRose Nethercott
name: Theo
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: adults, adaptations-retellings
review:

]]> 52588078
When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election.

There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other?

Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere -- through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise -- until Mallory learns she's dying.

Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.]]> 432 Elin Hilderbrand 0316420042 Theo 4 4.12 2020
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Theo
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: adults, romance, relationship-fiction
review:

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

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

Soon, his questions become an obsession, and he embarks on a tense and potentially deadly investigation to discover the truth about the murders he’s committed.]]> 368 Adam Hamdy 1668031523 Theo 2 adults, netgalley
The book has an interesting premise, but is full of one-dimensional caricatures and a highly unlikeable protagonist. It seems the author wants us to question the growing divide between the have and have nots, and our complicity in global problems, but it feels more self-righteous than thought-provoking. This one was not for me.

Thank you Atria Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.55 2024
author: Adam Hamdy
name: Theo
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: adults, netgalley
review:
Peyton Collard is a deadbeat, as the title of this novel suggests. His life has been on a downward spiral ever since he served time for involuntary manslaughter. He spends a lot of time trying to convince the reader that he is trapped in his circumstances, but I never bought it. When an anonymous stranger offers him a huge sum to kill a man, Peyton has to make a decision, and it's no surprise, based on the way he never takes responsibility for his actions, that he goes through with becoming a hitman. But as the payouts get higher and higher, so do the stakes.

The book has an interesting premise, but is full of one-dimensional caricatures and a highly unlikeable protagonist. It seems the author wants us to question the growing divide between the have and have nots, and our complicity in global problems, but it feels more self-righteous than thought-provoking. This one was not for me.

Thank you Atria Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 211004023 A spine-tingling thriller by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about a 10-year-old girl with an impossible power, her father, and an unlikely stranger, who come together to confront the dangerous forces that want her at all costs. A strange story of family, love, comets, and bacon. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother wants nothing to do with him, and he's been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington DC. With nothing left to lose, he returns to his family's summer cabin outside the small mountain town of Roseland, Oregon to try and find some sense of direction. The cabin should be empty. It's not. Inside is a man named Alex. And with him is an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader. Artemis, who isn't exactly as she appears.

Soon it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: let himself drown in the memories of his past, or fight for a future he never thought possible. Because the girl is special. And forces are descending upon them who want nothing more than to control her.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 1250890438 Theo 0 to-read 4.11 2018
author: T.J. Klune
name: Theo
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 200966981
When Dr. Castine takes a job as the president of the prestigious Stonepost College in rural Virginia, Noni is forced to leave her New England home and, most importantly, a prime internship and her friends. She and her mother move into the “big house�� on Tangleroot Plantation.

Tangleroot was built by one of Noni’s ancestors, an enslaved man named Cuffee Fortune―who Dr. Castine believes was also the original founder of Stonepost College, and that the school was originally formed for Black students. Dr. Castine spends much of her time trying to piece together enough undeniable truth in order to change the name of the school in Cuffee’s honor―and to force the university to reckon with its own racist past.

Meanwhile, Noni hates everything about her new home, but finds herself morbidly fascinated by the white, slaveholding family who once lived in it. Slowly, she begins to unpeel the layers of sinister history that envelop her Virginia town, her mother’s workplace, her ancestry―and her life story as she knew it. Through it all, she must navigate the ancient prejudices of the citizens in her small town, and ultimately, she finds herself both affirming her mother’s position and her own―but also discovering a secret that changes everything.]]> 324 Kalela Williams 125088067X Theo 3 mystery, netgalley, teens
Williams does an excellent job of portraying the intricacies of historical and current race relations in a way that is accessible for a teen audience. I was drawn in by the history that Noni uncovers as she digs into the past, reflecting the research the author did to create a compelling and believable story. I struggled, though, with Noni's story. As a coming-of-age contemporary story, I never really felt Noni escaped her mother's influence. I also found some storylines wrapped up a little too neatly and the antagonists sometimes felt one-dimensional.

The audiobook narrator did a fine job distinguishing between the large cast of characters, historic and contemporary.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for providing this audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 4.12 2024
author: Kalela Williams
name: Theo
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: mystery, netgalley, teens
review:
Sophronia "Noni" Reid is a 17-year-old recent high school graduate with big plans. That is until her mom tells her she can't stay in Boston for a costume design internship, but instead must travel to Podunk (actually it's Magnolia), Virginia where her mother has recently taken over as the president of a small private liberal arts college. Now she's living in an old plantation house called Tangleroot where her ancestors were once enslaved, and her mom is making waves because she's working to prove the college was actually founded by Cuffee Fortune, one of those formerly enslaved ancestors, and not founded by the wealthy (and white) "founding families," as is the prevailing story in Magnolia.

Williams does an excellent job of portraying the intricacies of historical and current race relations in a way that is accessible for a teen audience. I was drawn in by the history that Noni uncovers as she digs into the past, reflecting the research the author did to create a compelling and believable story. I struggled, though, with Noni's story. As a coming-of-age contemporary story, I never really felt Noni escaped her mother's influence. I also found some storylines wrapped up a little too neatly and the antagonists sometimes felt one-dimensional.

The audiobook narrator did a fine job distinguishing between the large cast of characters, historic and contemporary.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for providing this audiobook for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

]]> 176443476
For a sixteen-year-old, a summer internship working for a private investigator seems like a dream come true—particularly since the PI is investigating the most shocking crime to hit Bloomington, Indiana, in decades. A local woman has vanished, and the last time anyone saw her, she was in the backseat of a police car driven by a man impersonating an officer.

Marshall Miller’s internship puts him at the center of the action, a position he relishes until a terrifying moment that turns public praise for his sharp observations and uncanny memory into accusations of lying and imperiling the case. His detective mentor withdraws, friends and family worry and whisper, and Marshall alone understands that the darkness visiting his town this summer goes far beyond a single crime. Now his task is to explain it—and himself.

Lost Man's Lane is a coming-of-age tale of terror.]]> 516 Scott Carson 1982191457 Theo 0 4.14 2024
author: Scott Carson
name: Theo
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: currently-reading, horror, netgalley
review:

]]> 60149532 Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that's their secret weapon.

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

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

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

Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They're about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman--and a killer--of a certain age.]]> 368 Deanna Raybourn 0593200683 Theo 4 adults, thriller-suspense 3.82 2022
author: Deanna Raybourn
name: Theo
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: adults, thriller-suspense
review:

]]> 204309713
What he can afford, unfortunately, is part-time con artist and full-time charming menace Luca Piere.

Luca, for his part, is trying to reinvent himself in a new city. All he wants to do is make some easy money and try to forget the crime he committed in his hometown. He didn’t plan on being blackmailed into giving sword lessons to a chronically responsible—and inconveniently handsome—wool merchant like Matti.

However, neither Matti’s business troubles nor Luca himself are quite what they seem. As the days count down to Matti’s wedding, the two of them become entangled in the intrigue and sabotage that have brought Matti’s house to the brink of ruin. And when Luca’s secrets threaten to drive a blade through their growing alliance, both Matti and Luca will have to answer the question: how many lies are you prepared to strip away, when the truth could mean losing everything you want?]]> 372 Freya Marske 1250341620 Theo 4
Matti Jay has lived a life of responsibility and duty to his family and their business, but when financial struggles lead him to an arranged marriage with a wealthy friend, his life flips completely upside down. Because of customs in his society, Matti must employ a 'best man' to act as duelist should anyone challenge him for the hand of his betrothed, and Luca, the only man he can afford, is as exasperating as he is attractive. As the heat between the two of them rises, secrets are uncovered about why his family business is in such dire straits, and Luca's secretive background might be connected. Political intrigue keeps the plot moving, but it's the romance between Matti and Luca that will keep the reader's attention.

Thank you Tor Publishing Group for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.93 2024
author: Freya Marske
name: Theo
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: adults, fantasy-romance, netgalley, romance
review:
Featuring strong world building, fully realized characters, and steamy sex, this queer romantasy was a fun read!

Matti Jay has lived a life of responsibility and duty to his family and their business, but when financial struggles lead him to an arranged marriage with a wealthy friend, his life flips completely upside down. Because of customs in his society, Matti must employ a 'best man' to act as duelist should anyone challenge him for the hand of his betrothed, and Luca, the only man he can afford, is as exasperating as he is attractive. As the heat between the two of them rises, secrets are uncovered about why his family business is in such dire straits, and Luca's secretive background might be connected. Political intrigue keeps the plot moving, but it's the romance between Matti and Luca that will keep the reader's attention.

Thank you Tor Publishing Group for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 144647216
One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton walks in and offers to turn Magnolia’s luck around with a lucrative “modeling�� job at his family’s funeral home. She accepts. But despite things looking up, Magnolia’s problems fatten along with her wallet. When Cotton’s requests become increasingly weird, Magnolia discovers there’s a lot more at stake than just her rent.

Sharp as a belted knife, this sly social commentary cuts straight to the bone. House of Cotton will keep you mesmerized until the very end.]]> 11 Monica Brashears 125088229X Theo 3
The novel has something to say about race and class in the American South, and the horror elements keep the story engaging. The writing, while lyrical, can sometimes get heavy-handed, and the addition of side stories and characters sometimes distracts.

The audiobook narrator does an excellent job of capturing the characters' voices, adding depth and meaning to a story that needs a little direction.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.]]> 3.00 2023
author: Monica Brashears
name: Theo
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: adults, gothic-fiction, netgalley
review:
Magnolia Brown is a young woman struggling to get by after the death of her grandmother, and guardian, Mama Brown. Her job at a gas station is not going to pay her rent, so when a mysterious stranger offers her a job "modeling," she takes a chance. With steady money coming in, and the ability to escape her lecherous landlord, Magnolia's problems should be disappearing, but life with Cotton and his Aunt Eden just complicates matters more.

The novel has something to say about race and class in the American South, and the horror elements keep the story engaging. The writing, while lyrical, can sometimes get heavy-handed, and the addition of side stories and characters sometimes distracts.

The audiobook narrator does an excellent job of capturing the characters' voices, adding depth and meaning to a story that needs a little direction.

Thank you Macmillan Audio for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
]]> 54304125 An electrifying novel about the meteoric rise of an iconic interracial rock duo in the 1970s, their sensational breakup, and the dark secrets unearthed when they try to reunite decades later for one last tour.

Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and attitude, Afro-punk before that term existed. Coming of age in Detroit, she can’t imagine settling for a 9-to-5 job—despite her unusual looks, Opal believes she can be a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her at a bar’s amateur night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together for the fledgling Rivington Records.

In early seventies New York City, just as she’s finding her niche as part of a flamboyant and funky creative scene, a rival band signed to her label brandishes a Confederate flag at a promotional concert. Opal’s bold protest and the violence that ensues set off a chain of events that will not only change the lives of those she loves, but also be a deadly reminder that repercussions are always harsher for women, especially black women, who dare to speak their truth.

Decades later, as Opal considers a 2016 reunion with Nev, music journalist S. Sunny Shelton seizes the chance to curate an oral history about her idols. Sunny thought she knew most of the stories leading up to the cult duo’s most politicized chapter. But as her interviews dig deeper, a nasty new allegation from an unexpected source threatens to blow up everything.

Provocative and chilling, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev features a backup chorus of unforgettable voices, a heroine the likes of which we’ve not seen in storytelling, and a daring structure, and introduces a bold new voice in contemporary fiction.]]> 368 Dawnie Walton 198214016X Theo 4 adults, literary-fiction 3.81 2021
author: Dawnie Walton
name: Theo
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: adults, literary-fiction
review:

]]> 54860443
But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.

Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop is a magical, sexy, big-hearted romance where the impossible becomes possible as August does everything in her power to save the girl lost in time.]]> 418 Casey McQuiston 1250244498 Theo 0 3.90 2021
author: Casey McQuiston
name: Theo
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: currently-reading, contemporary-romance, romantic-comedy, adults, romance
review:

]]> 49504061
But when the Eastwood sisters--James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna--join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There's no such thing as witches. But there will be.]]> 517 Alix E. Harrow 0316422045 Theo 0 to-read 4.01 2020
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Theo
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 195790787 In this steamy Regency romp, Lady Selina is determined to find the Duke of Stanhope the perfect wife―the only problem is she's starting to think that might be her.

Peter Kent―newly inherited Duke of Stanhope and recently of New Orleans, Louisiana―must become respectable. Between his radical politics and the time he interrupted a minor royal wedding with a flock of sheep―not his fault!―he’s developed a scandalous reputation at odds with his goal of becoming guardian to his half siblings. For help, he turns to the cleverest and most managing woman of his acquaintance, Lady Selina Ravenscroft.

Selina is society’s most proper debutante, save one tiny secret: she runs an erotic circulating library for women. When Peter asks for her help, she suggests courtship and marriage to a lady of unimpeachable reputation. (Which is to say, definitely not herself.)

But matchmaking doesn’t go according to plan. Peter’s siblings run rampant on Bond Street. Selina ends up in the Serpentine. And worst of all, the scorching chemistry between Peter and Selina proves impossible to resist. For the disreputable duke and his unpredictable matchmaker, falling in love just might be the ultimate scandal.]]> 352 Alexandra Vasti 1250910943 Theo 0 to-read 3.81 2024
author: Alexandra Vasti
name: Theo
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Theo 0 4.16 2020
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Theo
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: historical-fantasy, adults, currently-reading
review:

]]> 58587145 A dazzling epic of betrayal, love, and fate that spans five generations of an Indigenous Chicano family in the American West, from the author of the National Book Award Finalist Sabrina & Corina

"There is one every generation--a seer who keeps the stories."

Luz "Little Light" Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930's Denver on her own, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors' origins, how her family flourished and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

Written in Kali Fajardo-Anstine's singular voice, the wildly entertaining and complex lives of the Lopez family fill the pages of this multigenerational western saga. Woman of Light is a transfixing novel about survival, family secrets, and love, filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz.]]> 336 Kali Fajardo-Anstine 0525511326 Theo 0 adults, currently-reading 3.62 2022
author: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
name: Theo
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: adults, currently-reading
review:

]]> 28436716 The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry returns with an irresistible novel about finding love and second chances in the most unlikely of places.

Britt-Marie can’t stand mess. A disorganized cutlery drawer ranks high on her list of unforgivable sins. She begins her day at 6 a.m., because only lunatics wake up later than that. And she is not passive-aggressive. Not in the least. It's just that sometimes people interpret her helpful suggestions as criticisms, which is certainly not her intention. She is not one to judge others—no matter how ill-mannered, unkempt, or morally suspect they might be.

But hidden inside the socially awkward, fussy busybody is a woman who has more imagination,bigger dreams, and a warmer heart that anyone around her realizes.

When Britt-Marie walks out on her cheating husband and has to fend for herself in the miserable backwater town of Borg—of which the kindest thing one can say is that it has a road going through it—she is more than a little unprepared. Employed as the caretaker of a soon-to-be demolished recreation center, the fastidious Britt-Marie has to cope with muddy floors, unruly children, and a (literal) rat for a roommate. She finds herself being drawn into the daily doings of her fellow citizens, an odd assortment of miscreants, drunkards, layabouts—and a handsome local policeman whose romantic attentions to Britt-Marie are as unmistakable as they are unwanted. Most alarming of all, she’s given the impossible task of leading the supremely untalented children’s soccer team to victory. In this small town of big-hearted misfits, can Britt-Marie find a place where she truly belongs?

Funny and moving, observant and humane, Britt-Marie Was Here celebrates the unexpected friendships that change us forever, and the power of even the gentlest of spirits to make the world a better place.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1501142550 Theo 4 adults, relationship-fiction 4.21 2014
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Theo
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: adults, relationship-fiction
review:

]]> 58558352 Crane's formal use of the comics medium �� threading several timelines and the interior and exterior lives of its protagonists together to create an increasing, almost Hitchcockian sense of dread and paranoia �� is masterful. But as the title hints, there are dualities at its core that make it one of the most exciting works of graphic literary fiction in recent memory, a brilliant adult drama that showcases a deep empathy and compassion for its characters as well as a visually arresting showcase of Crane's considerable talents. Keeping Two is ostensibly a story about loss, but by the end, it just might also be about finding something along the way �� something that had seemed irredeemable up to that point. In that way, it's also a deeply romantic book.
Cartoonist Jordan Crane has been one of the most quietly influential comics-makers of the past quarter-century �� in multiple senses of the as a cartoonist, a designer, an editor, a publisher, a printmaker, an advocate, an archivist, and more. But Keeping Two is his biggest project in close to two decades and will be one of the most anticipated graphic novels of 2022.
Full-color illustrations throughout]]> 304 Jordan Crane 1683965183 Theo 0 to-read 3.61 2022
author: Jordan Crane
name: Theo
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36597702 AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! A 2018 Most Anticipated Young Adult book from debut author Adrienne Young, Sky in the Deep is part Wonder Woman, part Vikings—and all heart.OND ELDR. BREATHE FIRE.Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient, rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield—her brother, fighting with the enemy—the brother she watched die five years ago.Faced with her brother's betrayal, she must survive the winter in the mountains with the Riki, in a village where every neighbor is an enemy, every battle scar possibly one she delivered. But when the Riki village is raided by a ruthless clan thought to be a legend, Eelyn is even more desperate to get back to her beloved family.She is given no choice but to trust Fiske, her brother’s friend, who sees her as a threat. They must do the unite the clans to fight together, or risk being slaughtered one by one. Driven by a love for her clan and her growing love for Fiske, Eelyn must confront her own definition of loyalty and family while daring to put her faith in the people she’s spent her life hating.��THIS IS A GRIPPING STORY, RICHLY TOLD.�� —Renée Ahdieh, New York Times bestselling author of Flame in the Mist"FIERCE, VIVID, AND VIOLENTLY BEAUTIFUL.�� —Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of Caraval��A STUNNING DEBUT�� —Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Touched Queen��BLEAK BEAUTIFUL AND DEADLY�� —Traci Chee, New York Times bestselling author of The Reader��WHOLLY UNIQUE AND INSTANTLY ADDICTIVE�� —Kerri Maniscalco, New York Times bestselling author of Hunting Prince Dracula ��HEARTRENDING, HEART-MENDING�� —Kayla Olson, bestselling author of Sandcastle Empire]]> 350 Adrienne Young 1250168473 Theo 3 teens, fantasy 4.13 2018
author: Adrienne Young
name: Theo
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: teens, fantasy
review:

]]> 58132544
As Jack and Adaira reluctantly work together, they find they make better allies than rivals as their partnership turns into something more. But with each passing song, it becomes apparent the trouble with the spirits is far more sinister than they first expected, and an older, darker secret about Cadence lurks beneath the surface, threatening to undo them all.]]> 480 Rebecca Ross 0063055988 Theo 4 adults, fantasy 4.06 2022
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Theo
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: adults, fantasy
review:

]]> 58887254 A gut-wrenching, startling window into communist Romania and the citizen spy network that devastated a nation, from the #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of Salt to the Sea and Between Shades of Gray.

Romania, 1989. Communist regimes are crumbling across Europe. Seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu dreams of becoming a writer, but Romanians aren’t free to dream; they are bound by rules and force.

Amidst the tyrannical dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu in a country governed by isolation and fear, Cristian is blackmailed by the secret police to become an informer. He’s left with only two choices: betray everyone and everything he loves—or use his position to creatively undermine the most notoriously evil dictator in Eastern Europe.

Cristian risks everything to unmask the truth behind the regime, give voice to fellow Romanians, and expose to the world what is happening in his country. He eagerly joins the revolution to fight for change when the time arrives. But what is the cost of freedom?

Master storyteller Ruta Sepetys is back with a historical thriller that examines the little-known history of a nation defined by silence, pain, and the unwavering conviction of the human spirit.]]> 335 Ruta Sepetys 1984836056 Theo 3 historical-fiction, teens 4.47 2022
author: Ruta Sepetys
name: Theo
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: historical-fiction, teens
review:

]]> 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

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

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

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

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Theo 5 4.17 2022
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Theo
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: historical-fantasy, adults, dark-fantasy, teens
review:

]]> 200468411 From the author of the bestselling Clytemnestra comes another intoxicating excursion into ancient history, as Casati reimagines the rise to power of the Assyrian empire's only female ruler, Semiramis.

When kings fall, queens rise.

Nothing about Semiramis's upbringing could have foretold her legacy or the power she would come to wield. A female ruler, once an orphan raised on the outskirts of an empire - certainly no one in Ancient Assyria would bend to her command willingly. Semiramis was a woman who knew if she wanted power, she would have to claim it.

There are whispers of her fame in Mesopotamian myth- Semiramis was a queen, an ambitious warrior, a commander whose reputation reaches the majestic proportions of Alexander the Great. Historical record, on the other hand, falls eerily quiet.

In her second novel, Costanza Casati brilliantly weaves myth and ancient history together to give Semiramis a voice, charting her captivating ascent to a throne no one promised her. The world Casati expertly builds is rich with dazzling detail and will transport her readers to the heat of the Assyrian Empire and a world long gone.]]> 400 Costanza Casati 0241609631 Theo 0 to-read 4.25 2024
author: Costanza Casati
name: Theo
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 65213595 A grim and gothic new tale from author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can't stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland--and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.

Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.

As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares.

If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.]]> 320 Alix E. Harrow 1250799058 Theo 4 adults, gothic-fiction 3.77 2023
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Theo
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: adults, gothic-fiction
review:

]]> 17167166 "A line that should never be crossed is about to be breached.

It puts this entire castle in jeopardy—and the life of your friend."

From the throne of glass rules a king with a fist of iron and a soul as black as pitch. Assassin Celaena Sardothien won a brutal contest to become his Champion. Yet Celaena is far from loyal to the crown. She hides her secret vigilantly; she knows that the man she serves is bent on evil.

Keeping up the deadly charade becomes increasingly difficult when Celaena realizes she is not the only one seeking justice. As she tries to untangle the mysteries buried deep within the glass castle, her closest relationships suffer. It seems no one is above questioning her allegiances—not the Crown Prince Dorian; not Chaol, the Captain of the Guard; not even her best friend, Nehemia, a foreign princess with a rebel heart.

Then one terrible night, the secrets they have all been keeping lead to an unspeakable tragedy. As Celaena's world shatters, she will be forced to give up the very thing most precious to her and decide once and for all where her true loyalties lie... and whom she is ultimately willing to fight for.]]> 420 Sarah J. Maas 1619630621 Theo 3 fantasy, teens, epic-fantasy 4.35 2013
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Theo
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/13
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: fantasy, teens, epic-fantasy
review:

]]> 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yōko Ogawa 1101870605 Theo 0 to-read 3.72 1994
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: Theo
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62919356
Princess Calla Tuoleimi lurks in hiding. Five years ago, a massacre killed her parents and left the palace of Er empty…and she was the one who did it. Before King Kasa’s forces in San can catch her, she plans to finish the job and bring down the monarchy. Her reclusive uncle always greets the victor of the games, so if she wins, she gets her opportunity at last to kill him.

Enter Anton Makusa, an exiled aristocrat. His childhood love has lain in a coma since they were both ousted from the palace, and he’s deep in debt trying to keep her alive. Thankfully, he’s one of the best jumpers in the kingdom, flitting from body to body at will. His last chance at saving her is entering the games and winning.

Calla finds both an unexpected alliance with Anton and help from King Kasa’s adopted son, August, who wants to mend Talin’s ills. But the three of them have very different goals, even as Calla and Anton’s partnership spirals into something all-consuming. Before the games close, Calla must decide what she’s playing for—her lover or her kingdom.]]> 372 Chloe Gong 1668000229 Theo 4 epic-fantasy, adults 3.52 2023
author: Chloe Gong
name: Theo
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: epic-fantasy, adults
review:

]]> 61423847 A forbidden love between a Mexican heiress and a shrewd British politician makes for a tantalizing Victorian season.

Ana María Luna Valdés has strived to be the perfect daughter, the perfect niece, and the perfect representative of the powerful Luna familia. So, when Ana María is secretly sent to London with her sisters to seek refuge during the French occupation of Mexico, she experiences her first taste of freedom far from the judgmental eyes of her domineering father. If only she could ignore the piercing looks she receives across ballroom floors from the austere Mr. Fox.

Gideon Fox elevated himself from the London gutters by chasing his burning desire for more: more opportunities, more choices. For everyone. Now as a member of Parliament, Gideon's on the cusp of securing the votes he needs to put forth a measure to abolish the Atlantic slave trade once and for all--a cause that is close to his heart as the grandson of a formerly enslaved woman. The charmingly vexing Ana María is a distraction he must ignore.

But when Ana María finds herself in the crosshairs of a nefarious nobleman with his own political agenda, Gideon knows he must offer his hand as protection...but will this Mexican heiress win his heart as well?]]> 352 Liana De la Rosa 0593440889 Theo 4 adults, historical-romance 3.44 2023
author: Liana De la Rosa
name: Theo
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves: adults, historical-romance
review:

]]> 57840571 Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches...

In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.

But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.

When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?

Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her.

Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.

Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.]]> 352 Isabel Cañas Theo 4 3.83 2022
author: Isabel Cañas
name: Theo
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: adults, gothic-fiction, historical-fiction
review:

]]> 53288434 A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them - setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.

Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.

One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose - selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.

In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders�� that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate - and not everyone will survive.]]> 301 Sarah Penner 0778311015 Theo 3 historical-fiction, adults 3.72 2021
author: Sarah Penner
name: Theo
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/08
date added: 2024/12/08
shelves: historical-fiction, adults
review:

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