Susie's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 30 Mar 2025 14:15:17 -0700 60 Susie's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Third Gilmore Girl 207298106 “Come for the Gilmore Girls anecdotes, stay for the revealing truths about what it takes to build a lifelong career in and out of Hollywood� (The A.V. Club) in this candid and captivating memoir from award-winning and beloved actress Kelly Bishop, spanning her six decades in show business from A Chorus Line, Dirty Dancing, Gilmore Girls, and much more.

Kelly Bishop’s long, storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing. But it is probably her iconic role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy.

Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future with The Third Gilmore Girl. She shares some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced—among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer—Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life.

Full of witty insights, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and spirited memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades and has no plans on slowing down.]]> 256 Kelly Bishop 1668023776 Susie 0 currently-reading 4.35 2024 The Third Gilmore Girl
author: Kelly Bishop
name: Susie
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Susie 5 2025-reads, current-favorites 4.56 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Susie
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: 2025-reads, current-favorites
review:

]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Susie 4 2025-reads, audiobooks 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: Susie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Public library and other stories]]> 29777081 A richly inventive new collection of stories from Ali Smith, author of How to be both, winner of the Baileys Women's Prize and the Costa Novel Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Why are books so very powerful?

What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us?

What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us?

The stories in Ali Smith's new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make.

Public libraries are places of joy, freedom, community and discovery - and right now they are under threat from funding cuts and widespread closures across the UK and further afield. With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their true place in our culture and history.]]> 220 Ali Smith 0241974593 Susie 0 to-read 3.59 2015 Public library and other stories
author: Ali Smith
name: Susie
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)]]> 213243908 A hopeless romantic meets a jaded radio host in this cozy, Sleepless in Seattle-inspired love story from beloved author B.K. Borison.

Aiden Valentine has a secret: he's fallen out of love with love. And as the host of Baltimore's romance hotline, that's a bit of a problem. But when a young girl calls in to the station asking for dating advice for her mom, the interview goes viral, thrusting Aiden and Heartstrings into the limelight.

Lucie Stone thought she was doing just fine. She has a good job; an incredible family; and a smart, slightly devious kid. But when all of Baltimore is suddenly scrutinizing her love life-or lack thereof—she begins to question if she's as happy as she thought. Maybe a little more romance wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Everyone wants Lucie to find her happy ending... even the handsome, temperamental man calling the shots. But when sparks start to fly behind the scenes, Lucie must make the final call between the radio-sponsored happily ever after or the man in the headphones next to her.]]> 448 B.K. Borison 0593641191 Susie 0 currently-reading 4.09 2025 First-Time Caller (Heartstrings, #1)
author: B.K. Borison
name: Susie
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 382 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Susie 0 to-read 4.67 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Susie
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> Bibliophobia: A Memoir 212806663 “A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.”—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

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

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

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

Bibliophobia is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.]]> 240 Sarah Chihaya 059359472X Susie 0 to-read 3.79 2025 Bibliophobia: A Memoir
author: Sarah Chihaya
name: Susie
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Dance Tree 59660319 In this gripping historical novel, the internationally bestselling author of The Mercies weaves a spellbinding tale of fear, transformation, courage, and love in sixteenth-century France.

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

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

Set in an era of superstition, hysteria, and extraordinary change, and inspired by true events, The Dance Tree is an impassioned story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge.]]> 304 Kiran Millwood Hargrave Susie 0 to-read 3.89 2022 The Dance Tree
author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
name: Susie
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> The Deal (Off-Campus, #1) 45484397
All Garrett Graham has ever wanted is to play professional hockey after graduation, but his plummeting GPA is threatening everything he's worked so hard for. If helping a sarcastic brunette make another guy jealous will help him secure his position on the team, he's all for it. But when one unexpected kiss leads to the wildest sex of both their lives, it doesn't take long for Garrett to realize that pretend isn't going to cut it. Now he just has to convince Hannah that the man she wants looks a lot like him.]]> 360 Elle Kennedy Susie 0 to-read 4.17 2015 The Deal (Off-Campus, #1)
author: Elle Kennedy
name: Susie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Water Moon 211479192 A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy novel.

On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.

But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.]]> 384 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0593724992 Susie 5 2025-reads, current-favorites I didn't want it to end. ✨️ 3.82 2025 Water Moon
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: Susie
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: 2025-reads, current-favorites
review:
I didn't want it to end. ✨️
]]> The Vegetarian 25489025
Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.]]> 188 Han Kang 0553448188 Susie 0 to-read 3.61 2007 The Vegetarian
author: Han Kang
name: Susie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Want 207006355 What do you want, when no one is watching?
What do you want, when the lights are off?
What do you want, when you are anonymous?

When we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain. And yet for many reasons � some complicated, some not � so many of us don't talk about it. Our deepest, most intimate fears and fantasies remain locked away inside of us, until someone comes along with the key. Here's the key. In this generation-defining book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous letters of hundreds of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous letter). Want reveals how women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous.]]> 372 Gillian Anderson 1419777297 Susie 0 to-read 3.44 2024 Want
author: Gillian Anderson
name: Susie
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bride (Bride, #1) 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 Susie 0 to-read 3.98 2024 Bride (Bride, #1)
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Susie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Seven Year Slip 62926938 An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.]]> 336 Ashley Poston Susie 0 to-read 4.18 2023 The Seven Year Slip
author: Ashley Poston
name: Susie
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)]]> 58684524
While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere� ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?

The New York Times bestselling author of Life's Too Short delivers a refreshingly modern fairy tale perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Emily Henry.]]> 389 Abby Jimenez 1538704374 Susie 0 to-read 4.26 2022 Part of Your World (Part of Your World, #1)
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Susie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)]]> 60657589
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, and the Fair Folk.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.]]> 336 Heather Fawcett 059350013X Susie 0 to-read 3.99 2023 Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)
author: Heather Fawcett
name: Susie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Susie 0 to-read 4.39 2024 The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Susie
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Deep End 212808709 A competitive diver and an ace swimmer jump into forbidden waters in this steamy college romance from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis.

Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.

Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.

So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water...]]> 464 Ali Hazelwood Susie 4 2025-reads, audiobooks 3.96 2025 Deep End
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Susie
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> Death of the Author 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 Susie 0 to-read 4.07 2025 Death of the Author
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Susie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Check & Mate 60683957 done with chess. Every move counts nowadays. After the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory's focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. That is, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious "Kingkiller" Nolan Sawyer: current world champion and reigning bad boy of chess.

Nolan's loss to an unknown rook-ie shocks everyone—especially Mallory. What's even more confusing? His desire to cross pawns again. What kind of gambit is Nolan playing? The smart move would be to walk away. Resign. Game over. But Mallory's victory opens the door to sorely needed cash prizes and, despite everything, she can't help feeling drawn to the enigmatic strategist....

As she rockets up the ranks, Mallory struggles to keep her family safely separated from the game that wrecked it in the first place. And as her love for the sport she so desperately wanted to hate begins to rekindle, Mallory quickly realizes that the games aren't only on the board, the spotlight is hotter than she imagined, and the competition can be fierce(-ly attractive. And intelligent...and infuriating...)]]> 347 Ali Hazelwood 0593619919 Susie 0 to-read 3.93 2023 Check & Mate
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Susie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Silence Project 60850047
In the aftermath of what comes to be known as the Event, the Community's global influence quickly grows. As a result, the whole world has an opinion about Rachel - whether they see her as a callous monster or a heroic martyr - but Emilia has never voiced hers publicly. Until now.

When she publishes her own account of her mother's life in a memoir called The Silence Project, Emilia also decides to reveal just how sinister the Community has become. In the process, she steps out of Rachel's shadow once and for all, so that her own voice may finally be heard.]]> 400 Carole Hailey 1838956077 Susie 0 to-read 3.69 2023 The Silence Project
author: Carole Hailey
name: Susie
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Neighbor Favor (The Greene Sisters, #1)]]> 61111295 In this heart-fluttering romance by Kristina Forest, a shy bookworm enlists her charming neighbor to help her score a date, not knowing he's the obscure author she's been corresponding with.

Shy, bookish, and admittedly awkward, Lily Greene has always felt inadequate compared to the rest of her accomplished family, who strive for Black excellence. She dreams of becoming an editor of children's books but has been frustratingly stuck in the nonfiction division for years without a promotion in sight. Lily finds escapism in her correspondences with her favorite fantasy author, and what begins as two lonely people connecting over e-mail turns into a tentative friendship and possibly something else Lily won't let herself entertain--until he ghosts her.

Months later, still crushed but determined to take charge of her life, Lily seeks a date to her sister's wedding. And the perfect person to help her is Nick Brown, her charming, attractive new neighbor, whom she feels drawn to for unexplainable reasons. Little does she know that Nick is an author--her favorite fantasy author.

Nick, who has his reasons for using a pen name and for pushing people away, soon realizes that the beautiful, quiet woman from down the hall is the same Lily he fell in love with over e-mail months ago. Unwilling to complicate things even more between them, he agrees to set her up with someone else, though this simple favor between two neighbors is anything but--not when he can't get her off his mind.]]> 403 Kristina Forest 0593546431 Susie 4 2025-reads, audiobooks 3.80 2023 The Neighbor Favor (The Greene Sisters, #1)
author: Kristina Forest
name: Susie
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobooks
review:
3.5 stars. Just what I needed
]]> The Book of Doors 156480764
In New York City, bookseller Cassie Andrews is living an unassuming life when she is given a gift by a favourite customer. It's a book - an unusual book, full of strange writing and mysterious drawings. And at the very front there is a handwritten message to Cassie, telling her that this is the Book of Doors, and that any door is every door .

What Cassie is about to discover is that the Book of Doors is a special book that bestows an extraordinary powers on whoever possesses it, and soon she and her best friend Izzy are exploring all that the Book of Doors can do, swept away from their quiet lives by the possibilities of travelling to anywhere they want.

But the Book of Doors is not the only magical book in the world. There are other books that can do wondrous and dreadful things when wielded by dangerous and ruthless individuals - individuals who crave what Cassie now possesses.

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is, it seems, Drummond Fox. He is a man fleeing his own demons - a man with his own secret library of magical books that he has hidden away in the shadows for safekeeping. Because there is a nameless evil out there that is hunting them all . . .

Because some doors should never be opened.]]> 408 Gareth Brown 1787637247 Susie 0 to-read 4.04 2024 The Book of Doors
author: Gareth Brown
name: Susie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dragonet Prophecy (Wings of Fire, #1)]]> 13228487
The seven dragon tribes have been at war for generations, locked in an endless battle over an ancient, lost treasure. A secret movement called the Talons of Peace is determined to bring an end to the fighting, with the help of a prophecy -- a foretelling that calls for great sacrifice.

Five dragonets are collected to fulfill the prophecy, raised in a hidden cave and enlisted, against their will, to end the terrible war.

But not every dragonet wants a destiny. And when the select five escape their underground captors to look for their original homes, what has been unleashed on the dragon world may be far more than the revolutionary planners intended . . .]]> 336 Tui T. Sutherland 0545349184 Susie 0 to-read 4.22 2012 The Dragonet Prophecy (Wings of Fire, #1)
author: Tui T. Sutherland
name: Susie
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3) 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 Susie 3 2025-reads, audiobooks 4.18 2025 Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Susie
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> Blob: A Love Story 212994452 'A modern-day Mrs. Caliban, BLOB is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways'
Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here

A hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend...

The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Now at twenty-three, after getting dumped and dropping out of college, Vi works as a front desk attendant at a hotel where she refills cucumber water samovars and fends off overtures of friendship from her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. But when Vi decides to accompany Rachel to a local drag show, her life changes forever. In the alley outside the bar, next to a trash can, is a blob with beady black eyes. Unable to leave it behind, Vi picks up the creature and, in a moment of drunken desperation, takes it home with her.

As her pet blob becomes sentient, Vi realizes it obeys her commands and she decides to mold the blob into her ideal partner. She feeds it sugary cereal and a stream of pop culture, and soon the creature transforms into a movie-star handsome white man. But as Vi's desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, the ex-boyfriend who has unfriended her, and the racial marginalization that has defined her relationships. Ultimately, Vi embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that it's impossible to control those you love.

Blending the familiar with the fantastical, BLOB tells a witty, heartfelt story of what it means to be human.

'An inventive, utterly unique debut'
Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light]]> 256 Maggie Su 0063358646 Susie 0 to-read 3.43 2025 Blob: A Love Story
author: Maggie Su
name: Susie
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Antiracist Baby 52535437 Antiracist Baby introduces the youngest readers and the grown-ups in their lives to the concept and power of antiracism. Providing the language necessary to begin critical conversations at the earliest age, Antiracist Baby is the perfect gift for readers of all ages dedicated to forming a just society.]]> 24 Ibram X. Kendi 0593110412 Susie 0 to-read 4.04 2020 Antiracist Baby
author: Ibram X. Kendi
name: Susie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Colored Television 220572119 An alternative cover edition can be found here

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

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

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse content� for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.� She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.]]> 287 Danzy Senna Susie 4 2025-reads 3.75 2024 Colored Television
author: Danzy Senna
name: Susie
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: 2025-reads
review:

]]> Weather 37506228
As Lizzie dives into this polarized world, she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once you've seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to address the limits of her own experience—but still she tries to save everyone, using everything she's learned about empathy and despair, conscience and collusion, from her years of wandering the library stacks... And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in—funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.]]> 208 Jenny Offill 0385351100 Susie 0 to-read 3.57 2020 Weather
author: Jenny Offill
name: Susie
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lovely One: A Memoir 203164398 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � In her inspiring, intimate memoir, the first Black woman to ever be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States chronicles her extraordinary life story.

With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.

Named “Ketanji Onyika,� meaning “Lovely One,� based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams: from hearing stories of her grandparents and parents breaking barriers in the segregated South, to honing her voice in high school as an oratory champion and student body president, to graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, where she performed in musical theater and improv and participated in pivotal student organizations.

Here, Justice Jackson pulls back the curtain, marrying the public record of her life with what is less known. She reveals what it takes to advance in the legal profession when most people in power don’t look like you, and to reconcile a demanding career with the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.

Through trials and triumphs, Justice Jackson’s journey will resonate with dreamers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and refuse to be turned aside. This moving, open-hearted tale will spread hope for a more just world, for generations to come.]]> 432 Ketanji Brown Jackson 0593729900 Susie 0 to-read 4.46 2024 Lovely One: A Memoir
author: Ketanji Brown Jackson
name: Susie
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Several People Are Typing 54468020
Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.

Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is.

Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes.

Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?

In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.]]> 256 Calvin Kasulke Susie 4 2025-reads 3.63 2021 Several People Are Typing
author: Calvin Kasulke
name: Susie
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: 2025-reads
review:

]]> Hello Stranger 61884987 Love isn’t blind, it’s just a little blurry.

Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she’s celebrating the biggest achievement of her life—placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition—the next, she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary� condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie’s new reality with every face she sees.

But, as she struggles to cope, hang on to her artistic dream, work through major family issues, and take care of her beloved dog, Peanut, she falls into—love? Lust? A temporary obsession to distract from the real problems in her life?—with not one man but two very different ones. The timing couldn’t be worse.

If only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to find her way. But perceiving anything clearly right now seems impossible. Even though there are things we can only find when we aren’t looking. And there are people who show up when we least expect them. And there are always, always other ways of seeing.]]> 323 Katherine Center 1250283787 Susie 3 2025-reads, audiobooks 3.92 2023 Hello Stranger
author: Katherine Center
name: Susie
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> The Girls from Corona del Mar 18518285 Mia and Lorrie Ann are lifelong friends: hard-hearted Mia and untouchably beautiful, kind Lorrie Ann. While Mia struggles with a mother who drinks, a pregnancy at fifteen, and younger brothers she loves but can't quite be good to, Lorrie Ann is luminous, surrounded by her close-knit family, immune to the mistakes that mar her best friend's life. Until a sudden loss catapults Lorrie Ann into tragedy: things fall apart, and then fall apart further-and there is nothing Mia can do to help. And as good, kind, brave Lorrie Ann stops being so good, Mia begins to question just who this woman is and what that question means about them both. A staggeringly arresting, honest novel of love, motherhood, loyalty, and the myth of the perfect friendship that moves us to ask ourselves just how well we know those we love, what we owe our children, and who we are without our friends.]]> 256 Rufi Thorpe 0385351968 Susie 0 to-read 3.59 2014 The Girls from Corona del Mar
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Susie
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Susie 0 to-read 3.87 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Susie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.]]> 385 Charmaine Wilkerson Susie 0 to-read 4.06 2022 Black Cake
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Susie
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

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

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

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
]]> 318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X Susie 0 to-read 4.05 2022 The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Susie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Practice Makes Perfect (When in Rome, #2)]]> 61897968 A small-town sweetheart and an emotionally unavailable bad boy try to find some common ground in this chemistry-filled romance from the author of The Cheat Sheet and When in Rome.

Annie Walker is on a quest to find her perfect match—someone who complements her happy, quiet life running the local flower shop in Rome, Kentucky. But finding her dream man may be harder than Annie imagined. Everyone knows everyone in her hometown, and the dating prospects are getting fewer by the day. After she overhears her latest date say she is “so unbelievably boring,� Annie starts to think the problem might be her. Is it too late to become flirtatious and fun like the leading ladies in her favorite romance movies? Maybe she only needs a little practice . . . and Annie has the perfect person in mind to be her tutor: Will Griffin.

Will—the sexy, tattooed, and absolutely gorgeous bodyguard—is temporarily back in Rome, providing security for Amelia Rose as excitement builds for her upcoming marriage to Noah Walker, Annie’s brother. He has one personal objective while on the job: stay away from Annie Walker and any other possible attachments to this sleepy town. But no sooner than he gets settled, Will finds himself tasked with helping Annie find the love of her life by becoming the next leading lady of Rome, Kentucky. Will wants no part in changing the sweet and lovely Annie. He knows for a fact that some stuffy, straitlaced guy won’t make her happy, but he doesn’t have the heart to say no.

Amid steamy practice dates and strictly “educational� tutoring lessons, Annie discovers there are more layers to Will’s usual stoic attitude. As the lines of their friendship become dangerously blurred, Annie reconsiders her dream guy. Maybe her love life doesn’t need to be perfect—it just needs to be real.]]> 335 Sarah Adams 0593500806 Susie 3 2025-reads, audiobooks 4.00 2023 Practice Makes Perfect (When in Rome, #2)
author: Sarah Adams
name: Susie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> Sociopath: A Memoir 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing� felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X Susie 5 2025-reads, current-favorites 3.74 2024 Sociopath: A Memoir
author: Patric Gagne
name: Susie
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: 2025-reads, current-favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls]]> 40046084
As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls.

With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai'i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It's a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful.]]> 336 T Kira Madden 1635571855 Susie 0 to-read 4.27 2019 Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
author: T Kira Madden
name: Susie
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America]]> 203579067 Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars. One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person's sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,� she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing. Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns-funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians-in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and Christian. But Amanda Jones wouldn't give up without a she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance. Mapping the book banning crisis occurring all across the nation, That Librarian draws the battle lines in the war against equity and inclusion, calling book lovers everywhere to rise in defense of our readers.]]> 288 Amanda Jones 1639733531 Susie 3 2025-reads, audiobooks 3.82 2024 That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America
author: Amanda Jones
name: Susie
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobooks
review:
This is a great and heartbreaking depiction of the attacks on librarians, censorship, and book banning. I found it a bit repetitive, but overall, a solid memoir.
]]> <![CDATA[The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store]]> 65678550
Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served the neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated the town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming that the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents—roused by Chona's kindess and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin—banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town’s establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community—heaven and earth—that ultimately sustain us.]]> 385 James McBride 0593422945 Susie 0 to-read 3.84 2023 The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
author: James McBride
name: Susie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Susie 0 to-read 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Susie
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life]]> 203578897 “Brigid Schulte is a vital voice on the future of work, and her carefully researched book lights the way to fewer hours, less stress, and more meaning.�
―Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and Hidden Potential, and host of the podcast WorkLife

From the New York Times bestselling author of Overwhelmed, a deeply reported exploration of why American work isn’t working and how our lives can be made more meaningful

Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte’s groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention to the greatest culprit in America’s quality-of-life crisis: the way our economy and culture conceive of work. Americans across all demographics, industries, and socioeconomic levels report exhaustion, burnout, and the wish for more meaningful lives. This full-system failure in our structure of work affects everything from gender inequality to domestic stability, and it even shortens our lifespans.

Drawing on years of research, Schulte traces the arc of our discontent from a time before the 1980s, when work was compatible with well-being and allowed a single earner to support a family, until today, with millions of people working multiple hourly jobs or in white-collar positions where no hours are ever off duty.

She casts a wide net in search of solutions, exploring the movement to institute a four-day workweek, introducing Japan’s Housewives Brigade—which demands legal protection for family time—and embedding with CEOs who are making the business case for humane conditions. And she demonstrates the power of a collective and creative demand for change, showing that work can be organized in an infinite number of ways that are good for humans and for business.

Fiercely argued and vividly told, rich with stories and informed by deep investigation, Over Work lays out a clear vision for ending our punishing grind and reclaiming leisure, joy, and meaning.]]> 432 Brigid Schulte 1250801729 Susie 0 to-read 3.91 Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life
author: Brigid Schulte
name: Susie
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

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

In this sweeping, evocative novel, Charmaine Wilkerson brings to life a multi-generational epic that examines how the past informs our present.]]> 368 Charmaine Wilkerson 0593358368 Susie 4 2025-reads, audiobooks 4.06 2025 Good Dirt
author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Susie
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: 2025-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair]]> 199389219
What if our cats could talk? Would they ask endless questions about why we haven't given them wet food...again? Would they scream greetings at the first sign of life before the sun even rises? Linney certainly will.

Have you met Linney yet? If not, prepared to be blessed! Lucy Knisley's online Linney comics are collected for the very first time in this gifty hardcover featuring the internet sensation, Linney. With all-new comics, this collection shows us just how amazing, and what a true gift, all cats are.]]> 208 Lucy Knisley 0593177649 Susie 4 2025-reads 4.36 2024 Woe: A Housecat's Story of Despair
author: Lucy Knisley
name: Susie
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: 2025-reads
review:

]]> The Wood at Midwinter 216094515
From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting and haunting Christmas short story
_________________________________

'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees � and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst � and the path of her life is changed forever.


**With exquisite illustrations by Victoria Sawdon**]]> 64 Susanna Clarke 1526675218 Susie 3 2025-reads 3.61 2024 The Wood at Midwinter
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Susie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: 2025-reads
review:
Perfect for the first snow day of the year!
]]> Little Weirds 44284906 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Hello and welcome to my book. Inside you will find:

Ă— The smell of honeysuckle
Ă— Heartbreak
Ă— A French-kissing rabbit
Ă— A haunted house
Ă— Death
Ă— A vagina singing sad old songs
Ă— Young geraniums in an ancient castle
Ă— Birth
Ă— A dog who appears in dreams as a spiritual guide
Ă— Divorce
Ă— Electromagnetic energy fields
Ă— Emotional horniness
Ă— The ghost of a sea captain
Ă— And more

I hope you enjoy these little weirds.

Love,
Jenny Slate]]> 224 Jenny Slate Susie 0 to-read 3.87 2019 Little Weirds
author: Jenny Slate
name: Susie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Girls That Invest: Your Guide to Financial Independence through Shares and Stocks]]> 61324281 215 Simran Kaur� 111989378X Susie 0 to-read 4.52 2022 Girls That Invest: Your Guide to Financial Independence through Shares and Stocks
author: Simran Kaur�
name: Susie
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Liars 200555235 A searing novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars out of us all, from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments.

“Painful and brilliant—I loved it.”—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I’d always known that. But I’d never suspected how easily I’d fall into one anyway.

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joy and labor of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

Combining the intensity of Elena Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment and the pithy wisdom of Jenny Offill’s Dept of Speculation, Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.]]> 272 Sarah Manguso 0593241258 Susie 0 to-read 3.67 2024 Liars
author: Sarah Manguso
name: Susie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What You Are Looking For Is in the Library]]> 91274427 For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.]]> 304 Michiko Aoyama 1335005625 Susie 5 4.07 2020 What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Susie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: audiobooks, current-favorites, 2025-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story]]> 112974865
When journalist Pagan Kennedy went looking for this forgotten pioneer, she discovered that even Marty Goddard's closest friends had lost track of her. As Pagan followed a trail of clues to solve the mystery of Marty, she also delved into the problematic history of forensics in America. The Secret History of the Rape Kit chronicles one journalist's mission to understand a crucial innovation in forensics and the woman who championed it. As Pagan Kennedy hunts for answers, she reflects on her own experiences with sexual assault and her own desire for justice.]]> 237 Pagan Kennedy 0593314727 Susie 0 to-read 3.91 2025 The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story
author: Pagan Kennedy
name: Susie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All, #1)]]> 55533831 Following the recipe is the key to a successful bake. Rosaline Palmer has always lived by those rules—well, except for when she dropped out of college to raise her daughter, Amelie. Now, with a paycheck as useful as greaseproof paper and a house crumbling faster than biscuits in tea, she’s teetering on the edge of financial disaster. But where there’s a whisk there’s a way . . . and Rosaline has just landed a spot on the nation’s most beloved baking show.

Winning the prize money would give her daughter the life she deserves—and Rosaline is determined to stick to the instructions. However, more than collapsing trifles stand between Rosaline and sweet, sweet victory.  Suave, well-educated, and parent-approved Alain Pope knows all the right moves to sweep her off her feet, but it’s shy electrician Harry Dobson who makes Rosaline question her long-held beliefs—about herself, her family, and her desires.

Rosaline fears falling for Harry is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Yet as the competition—and the ovens—heat up, Rosaline starts to realize the most delicious bakes come from the heart.]]> 449 Alexis Hall Susie 0 to-read 3.84 2021 Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake (Winner Bakes All, #1)
author: Alexis Hall
name: Susie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
“[An] enormously entertaining and lovable book.� —Nick Hornby, New York Times Book Review

A bold, laugh-out-loud funny, and heartwarming story about one young woman’s attempt to navigate adulthood, new motherhood, and her meager bank account in our increasingly online world—from the PEN/Faulkner finalist and critically acclaimed author of The Knockout Queen.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

Now, at twenty, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion—fast. When her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with childcare. Then Margo begins to form a plan: she’ll start an OnlyFans as an experiment, and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx’s advice from the world of wrestling. Like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she’s turned it into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo’s problems, or does internet fame come with too high a price?

Blisteringly funny and filled with sharp insight, Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a tender tale starring an endearing young heroine who’s struggling to wrest money and power from a world that has little interest in giving it to her. It’s a playful and honest examination of the art of storytelling and controlling your own narrative, and an empowering portrait of coming into your own, both online and off.

“A wholly original novel. . . . Thorpe is both poetic and profound in the way she brings her remarkable story to an end.� —The Associated Press]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 Susie 5 2024-reads, current-favorites 3.87 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Susie
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: 2024-reads, current-favorites
review:

]]> Yellowface 62047984
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.]]> 319 R.F. Kuang 000853277X Susie 5 2024-reads 3.69 2023 Yellowface
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Susie
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Merry Little Meet Cute (A Christmas Notch, #1)]]> 60121411 Cowritten by #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Murphy and USA Today bestselling author Sierra Simone—a steamy plus-size holiday rom-com about an adult film star who is semi-accidentally cast as a lead in a family-friendly Christmas movie, and the former bad-boy pop star she falls in love with.

Bee Hobbes (aka Bianca Von Honey) has a successful career as a plus-size adult film star. With a huge following and two supportive moms, Bee couldn’t ask for more. But when Bee’s favorite producer casts her to star in a Christmas movie he’s making for the squeaky-clean Hope Channel, Bee’s career is about to take a more family-friendly direction.

Forced to keep her work as Bianca under wraps, Bee quickly learns this is a task a lot easier said than done. Though it all becomes worthwhile when she discovers her co-star is none other than childhood crush Nolan Shaw, an ex-boy band member in desperate need of career rehab. Nolan’s promised his bulldog manager to keep it zipped up on set, and he will if it means he’ll be able to provide a more stable living situation for his sister and mom.

But things heat up quickly in Christmas Notch, Vermont, when Nolan recognizes his new co-star from her ClosedDoors account (oh yeah, he’s a member). Now Bee and Nolan are sneaking off for quickies on set, keeping their new relationship a secret from the Hope Channel’s execs. Things only get trickier when the reporter who torpedoed Nolan’s singing career comes snooping around—and takes an instant interest in mysterious newcomer Bee.

And if Bee and Nolan can’t keep their off-camera romance behind the scenes, then this merry little meet cute might end up on the cutting room floor.]]> 418 Julie Murphy 0063222574 Susie 4 2024-reads 3.31 2022 A Merry Little Meet Cute (A Christmas Notch, #1)
author: Julie Murphy
name: Susie
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Susie 4 2021-reads, audiobooks 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Susie
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/07/18
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: 2021-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Susie 0 to-read 4.47 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Susie
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pony Confidential 207611550 In this one-of-a-kind mystery with heart and humor, a hilariously grumpy pony must save the only human he’s ever loved after discovering she stands accused of a murder he knows she didn’t commit.

Pony has been passed from owner to owner for longer than he can remember. Fed up, he busts out and goes on a cross-country mission to reunite with the only little girl he ever loved, Penny, who he was separated from and hasn’t seen in years.

Penny, now an adult, is living an ordinary life when she gets a knock on her door and finds herself in handcuffs, accused of murder and whisked back to the place she grew up. Her only comfort when the past comes back to haunt her are the memories of her precious, rebellious pony.

Hearing of Penny’s fate, Pony knows that Penny is no murderer. So, as smart and devious as he is cute, the pony must use his hard-won knowledge of human weakness and cruelty to try to clear Penny’s name and find the real killer.

This acutely observant feel-good mystery reveals the humanity of animals and beastliness of humans in a rollicking escapade of epic proportions.]]> 384 Christina Lynch 0593640365 Susie 0 to-read 3.95 2024 Pony Confidential
author: Christina Lynch
name: Susie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Goodbye, Vitamin 33670452 Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Huffington Post, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, Women.com, Booklist, and The Independent

"A quietly brilliant disquisition . . . told in prose that is so startling in its spare beauty that I found myself thinking about Khong's turns of phrase for days after I finished reading."�Doree Shafrir, The New York Times Book Review

"One of those rare books that is both devastating and light-hearted, heartful and joyful. . . . Don't miss it."� Buzzfeed

"Hello, Rachel Khong. Kudos for this delectable take on familial devotion and dementia."�NPR

Her life at a crossroads, a young woman goes home again in this funny and inescapably moving debut from a wonderfully original new literary voice.

Freshly disengaged from her fiancé and feeling that life has not turned out quite the way she planned, thirty-year-old Ruth quits her job, leaves town and arrives at her parents� home to find that situation more complicated than she'd realized. Her father, a prominent history professor, is losing his memory and is only erratically lucid. Ruth’s mother, meanwhile, is lucidly erratic. But as Ruth's father’s condition intensifies, the comedy in her situation takes hold, gently transforming her all her grief.

Told in captivating glimpses and drawn from a deep well of insight, humor, and unexpected tenderness, Goodbye, Vitamin pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing in this life.]]> 208 Rachel Khong 1250109159 Susie 5 2024-reads 3.91 2017 Goodbye, Vitamin
author: Rachel Khong
name: Susie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> Wreck the Halls 123247668
Beat Dawkins, the lead singer’s son, is Melody’s opposite—the camera loves him, he could charm the pants off anyone, and his mom is not a potential cult leader. Still, they might have been best friends if not for the legendary feud that broke up the band. When they met as teenagers, Mel felt an instant spark, but it’s nothing compared to the wild, intense attraction that builds as they embark on a madcap mission to convince their mothers to perform one last show.

While dealing with rock star shenanigans, a 24-hour film crew, brawling Santas, and mobs of adoring fans, Mel starts to step out of her comfort zone. With Beat by her side, cheering her on, she’s never felt so understood. But Christmas Eve is fast approaching, and a decades-old scandal is poised to wreck everything—the Steel Birds reunion, their relationships with their mothers, and their newfound love.]]> 358 Tessa Bailey 0063308312 Susie 4 2024-reads 3.60 2023 Wreck the Halls
author: Tessa Bailey
name: Susie
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans]]> 176443714
We’ve all heard of Amway, Mary Kay, Tupperware, and LuLaRoe, but few know the nefarious way they and countless other multilevel marketing (MLM) companies prey on desperate Americans struggling to make ends meet.

When factories close, stalwart industries shutter, and blue-collar opportunities evaporate, MLMs are there, ready to pounce on the crumbling American Dream. MLMs thrive in rural areas and on military bases, targeting women with promises of being their own boss and millions of dollars in easy income—even at the risk of their entire life savings. But the vast majority�99.7%—of those who join an MLM make no money or lose money, and wind up stuck with inventory they can’t sell to recoup their losses.

Featuring in-depth reporting and intimate research, Selling the Dream reveals how these companies—often owned by political and corporate elites, such as the Devos and the Van Andels families—have made a windfall in profit off of the desperation of the American working class.]]> 320 Jane Marie 1982155779 Susie 0 to-read 3.74 2024 Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans
author: Jane Marie
name: Susie
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Small Things Like These 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 Susie 0 to-read 4.14 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Susie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)]]> 37442 When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

]]> 406 Gregory Maguire 0060987103 Susie 4 to-read 3.52 1995 Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Susie
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[When in Rome (When in Rome, #1)]]> 60092579 Opposites certainly attract for the stranded pop star and small-town baker in this charming slice of romance from the author of the TikTok sensation The Cheat Sheet.

Amelia Rose, known as Rae Rose to her adoring fans, is burned-out from years of maintaining her "princess of pop" image. Inspired by her favorite Audrey Hepburn film, Roman Holiday, she drives off in the middle of the night for a break in Rome . . . Rome, Kentucky, that is.

When Noah Walker finds Amelia on his front lawn in her broken-down car, he makes it clear he doesn't have the time or patience for celebrity problems. He's too busy running the pie shop his grandmother left him and reminding his nosy but lovable neighbors to mind their own damn business. Despite his better judgment, he lets her stay in his guest room—but only until her car is fixed—then she's on her own.

Then Noah starts to see a different side of Rae Rose—she's Amelia: kindhearted and goofy, yet lonely from years in the public eye. He can't help but get close to her. Soon she'll have to return to her glamorous life on tour, but until then, Noah will show Amelia all the charming small-town experiences she's been missing, and she'll help him open his heart to more.

Amelia can't resist falling for the cozy town and her grumpy tour guide, but even Audrey had to leave Rome eventually.]]> 320 Sarah Adams 0593500784 Susie 4 2024-reads 3.88 2022 When in Rome (When in Rome, #1)
author: Sarah Adams
name: Susie
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Nightmare Before Kissmas (Royals and Romance, #1)]]> 207200706 Featuring beautiful ruby sprayed edges!

Red, White & Royal Blue meets The Nightmare Before Christmas in a sexy, quirky rom-com where the golden-hearted Prince of Christmas falls for the totally off-limits Prince of Halloween.

Nicholas “Coal� Claus used to love Christmas. Until his father, the reigning Santa, turned the holiday into a PR façade. Coal will do anything to escape the spectacle, including getting tangled in a drunken, supremely hot make-out session with a beautiful man behind a seedy bar one night.

But the heir to Christmas is soon commanded to do his he will marry his best friend, Iris, the Easter Princess and his brother’s not-so-secret crush. A situation that has disaster written all over it.

Things go from bad to worse when a rival arrives to challenge Coal for the princess’s hand…and Coal comes face-to-face with his mysterious behind-the-bar Hex, the Prince of Halloween.

It’s a fake competition between two holiday princes who can’t keep their hands off each other over a marriage of convenience that no one wants. And it all leads to one of the sweetest, sexiest, messiest, most delightfully unforgettable love stories of the year.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 304 Sara Raasch 1250333202 Susie 0 to-read 3.96 2024 The Nightmare Before Kissmas (Royals and Romance, #1)
author: Sara Raasch
name: Susie
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> I'll Be Gone for Christmas 205655474
Bee Tyler needs a break. In the bustling San Francisco tech community, no one ever seems to stand still—especially her perfect sister and business partner, Beth. So when her best friend suggests a getaway on the wildly popular house-swap app, Vacate, Bee decides a countryside retreat might be exactly what she needs.

Clover Mills has had a year. Between losing her mother and making the complicated decision to leave her fiancé, sticking around the idyllic Christmas obsessed town of Salem, Ohio, just doesn’t feel right. So when she hears about Vacate, she jumps at the chance to spend the holidays in the unfamiliar city of San Francisco.

Soon enough, Bee is living in Clover’s cozy Salem cottage, and Clover is living in Bee’s sleek San Francisco apartment. As Clover can’t seem to stop running into Bee’s frustratingly gorgeous sister, Beth, and Bee finds herself spending more and more time with Clover’s ultra charming ex-fiancé, Knox, the two women realize that this Christmas they may find just what they were looking for and more…]]> 284 Georgia K. Boone 0063244039 Susie 0 to-read 3.72 2024 I'll Be Gone for Christmas
author: Georgia K. Boone
name: Susie
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Rachel Incident 73971348 A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three

Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535715 Susie 4 2024-reads 4.12 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Susie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> Lincoln in the Bardo 36579325
On February 22, 1862, two days after his death, Willie Lincoln was laid to rest in a marble crypt in a Georgetown cemetery. That very night, shattered by grief, Abraham Lincoln arrives at the cemetery under cover of darkness and visits the crypt, alone, to spend time with his son’s body. Set over the course of that one night and populated by ghosts of the recently passed and the long dead, Lincoln in the Bardo is a thrilling exploration of death, grief, the powers of good and evil, a novel - in its form and voice - completely unlike anything you have read before. It is also, in the end, an exploration of the deeper meaning and possibilities of life, written as only George Saunders can: with humor, pathos, and grace.]]> 358 George Saunders 0525511083 Susie 3 2024-reads 3.93 2017 Lincoln in the Bardo
author: George Saunders
name: Susie
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> I Who Have Never Known Men 60457992 Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 175 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492627 Susie 5 2024-reads, current-favorites 4.11 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Susie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: 2024-reads, current-favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The House at Pooh Corner (Full-Color Gift Edition)]]> 2360076 180 A.A. Milne 0525447741 Susie 4 2012-reads 4.41 1928 The House at Pooh Corner (Full-Color Gift Edition)
author: A.A. Milne
name: Susie
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1928
rating: 4
read at: 2012/03/15
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: 2012-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[From Here to the Great Unknown]]> 204905217
A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.]]> 304 Lisa Marie Presley 0593733878 Susie 4 2024-reads, audiobooks 4.27 2024 From Here to the Great Unknown
author: Lisa Marie Presley
name: Susie
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: 2024-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> The House of the Spirits 9328
The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.]]> 448 Isabel Allende 0553383809 Susie 0 to-read 4.26 1982 The House of the Spirits
author: Isabel Allende
name: Susie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1982
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age]]> 52754076 Keep your brain young, healthy, and sharp with this science-driven guide to protecting your mind from decline by neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta.

Throughout our life, we look for ways to keep our mind sharp and effortlessly productive. Now, globetrotting neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta offers insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting-edge research can help you heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age.

Keep Sharp debunks common myths about aging and cognitive decline, explores whether there’s a “best� diet or exercise regimen for the brain, and explains whether it’s healthier to play video games that test memory and processing speed, or to engage in more social interaction. Discover what we can learn from “super-brained� people who are in their eighties and nineties with no signs of slowing down—and whether there are truly any benefits to drugs, supplements, and vitamins. Dr. Gupta also addresses brain disease, particularly Alzheimer’s, answers all your questions about the signs and symptoms, and shows how to ward against it and stay healthy while caring for a partner in cognitive decline. He likewise provides you with a personalized twelve-week program featuring practical strategies to strengthen your brain every day.

Keep Sharp is the only owner’s manual you’ll need to keep your brain young and healthy regardless of your age!]]> 336 Sanjay Gupta Susie 5 2024-reads, current-favorites 4.05 2021 Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age
author: Sanjay Gupta
name: Susie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/01
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: 2024-reads, current-favorites
review:

]]> The Truth According to Ember 201752567
Ember Lee Cardinal has not always been a liar—well, not for anything that counted at least. But her job search is not going well and when her resumé is rejected for the thirty-seventh time, she takes matters into her own hands. She gets “creative� listing her qualifications and answers the ethnicity question on applications with a lie—a half-lie, technically. No one wanted Native American Ember, but white Ember has just landed her dream accounting job on Park Avenue (Oklahoma City, that is).

Accountant Ember thrives in corporate life—and her love life seems to be looking up too: Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy and fellow Native who caught her eye on her first day, seems to actually be interested in her too. Despite her unease over the no-dating policy at work, they start to see each other secretly, which somehow makes it even hotter? But when they’re caught in a compromising position on a work trip, a scheming colleague blackmails Ember, threatening to expose their relationship. As the manipulation continues to grow, so do Ember’s lies. She must make the hard decision to either stay silent or finally tell the truth, which could cost her everything.]]> 358 Danica Nava 0593642600 Susie 0 to-read 3.68 2024 The Truth According to Ember
author: Danica Nava
name: Susie
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Berry Pickers 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Susie 0 to-read 4.04 2023 The Berry Pickers
author: Amanda Peters
name: Susie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cure for Burnout: How to Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life]]> 185034564
In The Cure for Burnout , burnout management coach and TikTok influencer Emily Ballesteros combines scientific and cultural research, her expertise in organizational psychology, and the tried-and-true strategies she’s successfully implemented with clients around the globe to demystify burnout for our post-pandemic world � and set you on a path toward a life of personal and professional balance. Ballesteros outlines five areas in which you can build healthy habits to combat burnout � mindset, personal care, time management, boundaries , and stress management . She offers clear, easy-to-implement tools to help you find greater balance, energy, and fulfillment, showing you how

� break burnout habits that keep you in a pattern of chronic overwhelm
� create sustainable work/life balance through predictable personal care
� get more done in less time while creating forward momentum toward a meaningful life
� identify and set your personal and professional limits , guilt-free
� master your stress and detach from your stressors

The Cure for Burnout provides a holistic method for burnout management to address the epidemic of our always-on, chronically overextended culture, empowering us to reclaim control of our own lives once and for all.]]> 272 Emily Ballesteros 0593596315 Susie 0 to-read 4.10 The Cure for Burnout: How to Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life
author: Emily Ballesteros
name: Susie
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil]]> 195790835 Stories I Wrote for the Devil lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil, where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of living people. Ananda Lima speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences―of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging―and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.]]> 181 Ananda Lima 1250292972 Susie 0 to-read 3.42 2024 Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil
author: Ananda Lima
name: Susie
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Susie 5 2024-reads, current-favorites 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Susie
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves: 2024-reads, current-favorites
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet)]]> 11409560
Meg Murray, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course, and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract," which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time. Meg's father had been experimenting with time-travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?

In 1962, Madeleine L’Engle debuted her novel  A Wrinkle in Time , which would go on to win the 1963 Newbery Medal. Bridging science and fantasy, darkness and light, fear and friendship, the story became a classic of children’s literature and is beloved around the world.

A Wrinkle in Time  is the first book in The Time Quintet, which consists of  A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters , and  An Acceptable Time .

© 2007 by Taeeun Yoo. Used with permission of Pippin Properties, Inc.]]> Madeleine L'Engle 030791657X Susie 4 2024-reads 3.83 1962 A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet)
author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: Susie
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection]]> 220341391 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525426051 Susie 0 to-read 4.62 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
author: John Green
name: Susie
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 213939313
When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 15 Liz Moore 0593867793 Susie 0 to-read 3.83 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Susie
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Novel Love Story 199261152 A professor of literature finds herself caught up in a work of fiction� literally.

Eileen Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily-ever-after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in a book. At home. Which might be why she’s so set on going to her annual book club retreat this year—she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures—no matter what.

But when her car unexpectedly breaks down on the way, she finds herself stranded in a quaint town that feels like it’s right out of a novel�

Because it is.

This place can’t be real, and yet� she’s here, in Eloraton, the town of her favorite romance series, where the candy store’s honey taffy is always sweet, the local bar’s burgers are always a little burnt, and rain always comes in the afternoon. It feels like home. It’s perfect—and perfectly frozen, trapped in the late author’s last unfinished story.

Elsy is sure that’s why she must be here: to help bring the town to its storybook ending.

Except there is a character in Eloraton that she can’t place—a grumpy bookstore owner with mint-green eyes, an irritatingly sexy mouth and impeccable taste in novels. And he does not want her finishing this book.

Which is a problem because Elsy is beginning to think the town’s happily-ever-after might just be intertwined with her own.]]> 368 Ashley Poston 0593640977 Susie 5 2024-reads, current-favorites 3.63 2024 A Novel Love Story
author: Ashley Poston
name: Susie
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: 2024-reads, current-favorites
review:

]]> Best Hex Ever 204640549 A kitchen witch with a penchant for baking and a (literally) cursed love life meets someone who's worth breaking a hex for in this sweet and spicy debut romance.

As a skilled kitchen witch, Dina Whitlock knows her way around a pastry recipe. In fact, she runs her very own London café serving magic-infused pastries for her loyal customers. But only a select few friends know about her magical abilities or the hex that has plagued her love life. It’s hard to fall in love when your partner is guaranteed to have a string of bad luck the second they start to have feelings for you.

Scott Mason is back from traveling the world and is excited to begin his new job as a curator at the British Museum. After leaving London to heal from a brutal breakup two years ago, Scott only now realizes how much he missed out on. Now that his best friend’s wedding is right around the corner, Scott is determined to be the most amazing best man ever, but he doesn’t expect to be bewitched by the maid of honor, who also happens to be the owner of his new favorite café and, more surprisingly, a witch?!

After a weekend in the countryside full of peculiar hedge mazes, palm readings by candlelight, and a midnight Halloween ritual, there’s no denying the chemistry between them. But there’s just one problem: The hex still holds, and Dina knows that Scott is in danger. In the past, she’s always cut her losses, but this time is different. Scott could be the one. Will Dina be able to undo the hex, before it’s too late?]]> 320 Nadia El-Fassi 0593871790 Susie 0 to-read 3.50 2024 Best Hex Ever
author: Nadia El-Fassi
name: Susie
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Witches of Bellinas 196849379
Tansy and her husband Guy are the newest arrivals in Bellinas, a lush oasis tucked into the coast of northern California where a reclusive, creative community is beginning to take shape. Helmed by Guy’s cousin Mia, a famous model -turned -wellness -luminary, and her tech mogul husband, the group renounces the outside world in pursuit of purity, fashioning their own rules about what to eat and how to live.

Mia and the other women drape Tansy in expensive clothing and spend their days fawning over their babies, while the men surf and dive for abalone. Everything seems perfect in Bellinas: food is abundant, flowers are always in bloom, and nearby wildfires leave the town remarkably unscathed.

While Guy is happy in their new lives, Tansy becomes more and more suspicious of the community and increasingly desperate to save her already-fragile marriage. And as lonely women have throughout the ages, she wants to believe in what may only be a beautiful lie.

The Witches of Bellinas unfolds as a confession from Tansy, filled with anguish over the life, and sense of self, she’s surrendered in her desperation to belong. In J. Nicole Jones’s clever reimagining of cult power and groupthink, the question isn’t why join, but rather, what happens when you understand the danger, but can’t conceive of a way out?]]> 240 J. Nicole Jones 164622180X Susie 0 to-read 2.98 2024 The Witches of Bellinas
author: J. Nicole Jones
name: Susie
average rating: 2.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II]]> 208275543
At the start of WWII, the US found itself in desperate need of an intelligence agency. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to today’s CIA, was quickly formed—and, in an effort to fill its ranks with experts, the OSS turned to academia for recruits. Suddenly, literature professors, librarians, and historians were training to perform undercover operations and investigative work—and these surprising spies would go on to profoundly shape both the course of the war and our cultural institutions with their efforts.

In Book and Dagger, Elyse Graham draws on personal histories, diaries, and declassified OSS files to tell the story of a small but connected group of humanities scholars turned unlikely spies. Among them are Joseph Curtiss, a literature professor who hunted down German spies and turned them into double agents; Sherman Kent, a smart-mouthed history professor who rose to become the head of analysis for all of Europe and Africa; and Adele Kibre, an archivist who was sent to Stockholm to secretly acquire documents for the OSS. These unforgettable characters would ultimately help lay the foundations of modern intelligence and transform American higher education when they returned after the war.

Thrillingly paced and rigorously researched, Book and Dagger is an inspiring and gripping true story about a group of academics who helped beat the Nazis—a tale that reveals the indelible power of humanities to change the world.]]> 400 Elyse Graham 0063417308 Susie 0 to-read 4.14 2024 Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II
author: Elyse Graham
name: Susie
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Oona Out of Order 45046893 A remarkably inventive novel that explores what it means to live a life fully in the moment, even if those moments are out of order.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order...

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met? Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.]]> 339 Margarita Montimore 1250236606 Susie 0 to-read 3.84 2020 Oona Out of Order
author: Margarita Montimore
name: Susie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Follows is True: Crescent Hotel]]> 61479953
Located in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, the Crescent Hotel is considered one of the most haunted hotels in the U.S. However, the tragic years when it operated as a cancer hospital haunt the hotel far more than tales of specters.

What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel blends oral histories, newspaper articles and Norman Baker's biography to examine this historical happening and yesteryear's monsters. Sean Fitzgibbon's fully painted graphic nonfiction utilizes atmospheric imagery that transports readers into the hotel's dark and bizarre past.]]> 232 sean fitzgibbon Susie 0 to-read 4.14 What Follows is True: Crescent Hotel
author: sean fitzgibbon
name: Susie
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> So Thirsty 203608552 A woman must learn to take life by the throat after a night out leads to irrevocable changes in this juicy, thrilling novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Black Sheep.

Sloane Parker is dreading her birthday. She doesn’t need a reminder she’s getting older, or that she’s feeling indifferent about her own life.

Her husband surprises her with a birthday weekend getaway—not with him, but with Sloane’s longtime best friend, troublemaker extraordinaire Naomi.

Sloane anticipates a weekend of wine tastings and cozy robes and strategic avoidance of issues she’d rather not confront, like her husband’s repeated infidelity. But when they arrive at their rental cottage, it becomes clear Naomi has something else in mind. She wants Sloane to stop letting things happen to her, for Sloane to really live. So Naomi orchestrates a wild night out with a group of mysterious strangers, only for it to take a horrifying turn that changes Sloane’s and Naomi’s lives literally forever.

The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected.]]> 304 Rachel Harrison 0593642546 Susie 3 2024-reads, audiobooks 3.50 2024 So Thirsty
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Susie
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/06
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: 2024-reads, audiobooks
review:

]]> Beach Read 52867387 A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.]]> 400 Emily Henry 1984806734 Susie 0 to-read 3.99 2020 Beach Read
author: Emily Henry
name: Susie
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom]]> 61272711 New York Times Bestseller | New York Times 10 Best Books of 2023

The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as “his� slave.

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.

Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.

But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher.

With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.]]> 416 Ilyon Woo 1501191055 Susie 0 to-read 3.95 2023 Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
author: Ilyon Woo
name: Susie
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Notes from a Young Black Chef (Adapted for Young Adults)]]> 55156597
Food was Kwame Onwuachi's first great love. He connected to cooking via his mother, in the family's modest Bronx apartment. From that spark, he launched his own catering company with twenty thousand dollars he made selling candy on the subway and trained in the kitchens of some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country. He faced many challenges on the road to success, including breaking free of a dangerous downward spiral due to temptation and easy money, and grappling with just how unwelcoming the world of fine dining can be for people of color.

Born on Long Island and raised in New York City, Nigeria, and Louisiana, Kwame Onwuachi's incredible story is one of survival and ingenuity in the face of adversity.]]> 272 Kwame Onwuachi 0593176006 Susie 0 to-read, artba-tbr 3.77 2019 Notes from a Young Black Chef (Adapted for Young Adults)
author: Kwame Onwuachi
name: Susie
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves: to-read, artba-tbr
review:

]]> The Love of My Afterlife 199928276 A recently deceased woman meets “the one� in the afterlife waiting room, scoring a second chance at life (and love!) if she can find him on Earth before ten days are up�.

If she wasn’t dead already, Delphie would be dying of embarrassment. Not only did she just die by choking on a microwaveable burger, she’s also now standing in her "sparkle and shine" nightie in front of the hottest man she’s ever seen. And he’s smiling at her.

As they start to chat, everything else becomes background noise. That is, until someone comes running through a door yelling something about a huge mistake and sends the dreamy stranger back down to Earth. And here Delphie was thinking her luck might be different in the afterlife.

When Delphie is offered a deal in which she can return to Earth and reconnect with the mysterious man, she jumps at the opportunity to find her possible soulmate and a fresh start. But to find him in a city of millions, Delphie is going to have to listen to her heart, learn to ask for help, and perhaps even see the magic in the life she’s leaving behind. . . .]]> 369 Kirsty Greenwood 0593816137 Susie 3 2024-reads 4.05 2024 The Love of My Afterlife
author: Kirsty Greenwood
name: Susie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> Love, Theoretically 61326735
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and broody older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And that same Jack who now sits on the hiring committee at MIT, right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?]]> 389 Ali Hazelwood 1408725797 Susie 4 2024-reads 4.07 2023 Love, Theoretically
author: Ali Hazelwood
name: Susie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance]]> 27213329
Why do some people succeed and others fail? Sharing new insights from her landmark research on grit, Angela Duckworth explains why talent is hardly a guarantor of success. Rather, other factors can be even more crucial such as identifying our passions and following through on our commitments.

Drawing on her own powerful story as the daughter of a scientist who frequently bemoaned her lack of smarts, Duckworth describes her winding path through teaching, business consulting, and neuroscience, which led to the hypothesis that what really drives success is not genius, but a special blend of passion and long-term perseverance. As a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duckworth created her own character lab and set out to test her theory.

Here, she takes readers into the field to visit teachers working in some of the toughest schools, cadets struggling through their first days at West Point, and young finalists in the National Spelling Bee. She also mines fascinating insights from history and shows what can be gleaned from modern experiments in peak performance. Finally, she shares what she's learned from interviewing dozens of high achievers; from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon to the cartoon editor of The New Yorker to Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll.

Winningly personal, insightful, and even life-changing, Grit is a book about what goes through your head when you fall down, and how that not talent or luck makes all the difference.]]> 277 Angela Duckworth 1443442313 Susie 0 to-read 4.07 2016 Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
author: Angela Duckworth
name: Susie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Greenlights 52838315 From the Academy Award®–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.

I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.

Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.�

So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.

Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.

It’s a love letter. To life.

It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights - and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.

Good luck.]]> 289 Matthew McConaughey 0593139135 Susie 5 4.21 2020 Greenlights
author: Matthew McConaughey
name: Susie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/05
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: 2024-reads, audiobooks, current-favorites
review:

]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit. Fast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other. ]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 Susie 4 2024-reads 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: Susie
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: 2024-reads
review:

]]> All Fours 197798168
A semifamous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to New York. Twenty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 336 Miranda July 0593190262 Susie 5 2024-reads, current-favorites 3.54 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Susie
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/31
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: 2024-reads, current-favorites
review:

]]> Breakfast at Tiffany's 9888 157 Truman Capote 0140274111 Susie 4 2013-reads 3.72 1958 Breakfast at Tiffany's
author: Truman Capote
name: Susie
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1958
rating: 4
read at: 2013/05/13
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: 2013-reads
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos]]> 203722157
Newly arrived from Manila to lead their travel app’s Asia division, nothing matters more to Dalisay than tradition and family. When Evan asks her out, she soundly rejects him for his cheek.

Evan learns from his Filipino friends that Dalisay expects more from potential suitors. If he wants a chance with her, he’s going to have to go through the Five the courtship ritual that lovers in the Philippines have performed for generations.

At first, Evan is skeptical—what, exactly, does “servitude� entail? And he has to sing?! But when Dalisay bets Evan that he doesn’t have the nerve to make it through the stages, the game is on.

As Evan attempts to prove to Dalisay that he can win her heart—and the bet—Dalisay is driven to distraction by Evan’s sexy labors, and soon their “courtship� turns into a sizzling secret.

But when modern love and family expectations collide, Dalisay and Evan must find a way to carry a rich history into a shared future.]]> 300 Melissa de la Cruz 1454947683 Susie 4 2024-reads
It had some pacing issues for me, but overall a sweet and steamy love story. I loved learning a little about Filipino culture.❤️]]> 3.56 2024 The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos
author: Melissa de la Cruz
name: Susie
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/10
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves: 2024-reads
review:
3.5 stars

It had some pacing issues for me, but overall a sweet and steamy love story. I loved learning a little about Filipino culture.❤️
]]> <![CDATA[Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men]]> 41104077
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women�, diving into women’s lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.]]> 448 Caroline Criado Pérez 1419729071 Susie 0 to-read 4.35 2019 Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
author: Caroline Criado PĂ©rez
name: Susie
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>