Alex's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 20 Jan 2025 17:25:09 -0800 60 Alex's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI]]> 193388249
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And this was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered.

As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.]]> 338 David Grann 0593470834 Alex 0 currently-reading 4.12 2017 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
author: David Grann
name: Alex
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> Alexander Hamilton 16130 An alternate cover edition can be found here.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation.

In the first full-length biography of Alexander Hamilton in decades, Ron Chernow tells the riveting story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. According to historian Joseph Ellis, Alexander Hamilton is “a robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all.�

Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. “To repudiate his legacy,� Chernow writes, “is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.� Chernow here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.Historians have long told the story of America’s birth as the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we’ve encountered before—from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamilton’s famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804.

Chernow’s biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America’s birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots, Alexander Hamilton will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans.]]> 818 Ron Chernow Alex 0 currently-reading 4.19 2004 Alexander Hamilton
author: Ron Chernow
name: Alex
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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]]> We Were the Mulvaneys 5204 454 Joyce Carol Oates 0452282829 Alex 4 3.75 1996 We Were the Mulvaneys
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Alex
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1996
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[L.A. Bizarro: The All New Insider's Guide to the Obscure, the Absurd, and the Perverse in Los Angeles]]> 5866777 368 Anthony Lovett 0811865118 Alex 5 4.13 2009 L.A. Bizarro: The All New Insider's Guide to the Obscure, the Absurd, and the Perverse in Los Angeles
author: Anthony Lovett
name: Alex
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> Death Comes to Pemberley 12875355
It is 1803, six years since Elizabeth and Darcy embarked on their life together at Pemberley, Darcy’s magnificent estate. Their peaceful, orderly world seems almost unassailable. Elizabeth has found her footing as the chatelaine of the great house. They have two fine sons, Fitzwilliam and Charles. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; her father visits often; there is optimistic talk about the prospects of marriage for Darcy’s sister Georgiana. And preparations are under way for their much-anticipated annual autumn ball.

Then, on the eve of the ball, the patrician idyll is shattered. A coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. She stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery.

Inspired by a lifelong passion for Austen, P. D. James masterfully re-creates the world of Pride and Prejudice, electrifying it with the excitement and suspense of a brilliantly crafted crime story, as only she can write it.]]> 291 P.D. James 0307959856 Alex 0 3.32 2011 Death Comes to Pemberley
author: P.D. James
name: Alex
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America]]> 64147827 An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver—the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.Ěý

From award-winning writer Leila Philip, Beaverland is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers.
Ěý
Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer�.
Ěý
What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, Beaverland reveals the profound ways in which one oddĚýcreature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment. The New York Times Editors' Choice

NPR Science Friday Book Club Selection]]> 437 Leila Philip Alex 5 4.16 2022 Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America
author: Leila Philip
name: Alex
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 5
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Alex 5 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate � Discoveries from a Secret World]]> 29507568 The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group.

Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.
]]> 288 Peter Wohlleben 1771642491 Alex 0 4.23 2015 The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries from a Secret World
author: Peter Wohlleben
name: Alex
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming]]> 43373984
An “epoch-defining bookâ€� (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Springâ€� (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable EarthĚýis both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress.

The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s.]]> 386 David Wallace-Wells 052557672X Alex 0 currently-reading 4.15 2019 The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
author: David Wallace-Wells
name: Alex
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems]]> 9006 Whether David Rakoff's contrasting the elegance of one of the last flights of the supersonic Concorde with the good-times-and-chicken-wings populism of Hooters Air; working as a cabana boy at a South Beach hotel; or traveling to a private island off the coast of Belize to watch a soft-core video shoot where he is provided with his very own personal manservant rarely have greed, vanity, selfishness, and vapidity been so mercilessly skewered. Somewhere along the line, our healthy self-regard has exploded into obliterating narcissism; our manic getting and spending have now become celebrated as moral virtues. Simultaneously a Wildean satire and a plea for a little human decency, Don t Get Too Comfortable shows that far from being bobos in paradise, we are in a special circle of gilded-age hell.]]> 222 David Rakoff 0767916034 Alex 4 recently-read 3.73 2005 Don't Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems
author: David Rakoff
name: Alex
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/01
date added: 2023/02/06
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]]> The Collection 34440830 The first table of contents (at the very beginning of the ebook) lists the titles of all novels included in this volume. By clicking on one of those titles you will be redirected to the beginning of that work, where you'll find a new TOC that lists all the chapters and sub-chapters of that specific work.

Here you will find the following 31 novels of H. G. Wells in the chronological order of their original publication:

- The Time Machine
- The Wonderful Visit
- The Island of Doctor Moreau
- The Wheels of Chance
- The Invisible Man
- The War of the Worlds
- Love and Mr Lewisham
- The First Men in the Moon
- The Sea Lady
- The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth
- Kipps
- A Modern Utopia
- In the Days of the Comet
- The War in the Air
- Tono-Bungay
- Ann Veronica
- The History of Mr. Polly
- The Sleeper Awakes
- The New Machiavelli
- Marriage
- The Passionate Friends
- The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
- The World Set Free
- Bealby
- Boon
- The Research Magnificent
- Mr. Britling Sees It Through
- The Soul of a Bishop
- Joan and Peter
- The Undying Fire
- The Secret Places of the Heart]]> 5641 H.G. Wells 8826061521 Alex 0 4.39 The Collection
author: H.G. Wells
name: Alex
average rating: 4.39
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]]> <![CDATA[A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #1-3)]]> 18635622 368 George R.R. Martin 0345533488 Alex 0 to-read 4.24 2015 A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #1-3)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)]]> 10572
It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles.

Here is the second volume in George R.R. Martin magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R.R. Martin stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.]]> 1009 George R.R. Martin 0553381695 Alex 0 4.42 1998 A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History, #1)]]> 39943621
Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen—the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria—took up residence on Dragonstone. Fire and Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart.

What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why did it become so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What is the origin of Daenerys’s three dragon eggs? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel and featuring more than eighty all-new black-and-white illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley. Readers have glimpsed small parts of this narrative in such volumes as The World of Ice & Fire, but now, for the first time, the full tapestry of Targaryen history is revealed.

With all the scope and grandeur of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Fire and Blood is the ultimate game of thrones, giving readers a whole new appreciation for the dynamic, often bloody, and always fascinating history of Westeros.]]> 706 George R.R. Martin 152479628X Alex 5 4.03 2018 Fire & Blood (A Targaryen History, #1)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz]]> 51187948
On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London.

Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports-some released only recently-Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela's illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisers who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his lovestruck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."--]]> 546 Erik Larson 038534872X Alex 0 4.30 2020 The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
author: Erik Larson
name: Alex
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/03
date added: 2022/02/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Peanuts Papers: Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life]]> 44300078
Peanuts, Charles Schulz's beloved comic strip, has given the world a cast of characters for the ages--Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and Lucy among them. Here, in an unprecedented collection of thirty-two essays, artists and writers ranging from Ann Patchett to Chris Ware consider the deeper truths of Peanuts, its influence on their lives and on the culture more broadly, and the lessons it can teach us about disappointment, melancholy, and those fleeting moments of warm-puppy happiness. The contributors reflect on the experience of discovering Peanuts as a child, their identification with its characters and predicaments, and, for the artists in the book, the momentous effects of their encounters with the strip on their later careers. Taken together, the essays and comics of The Peanuts Papers enrich our understanding of the Peanuts gang and its world, with contributions not only about Charlie Brown and Snoopy but also Linus, Sally, Pigpen, and Peppermint Patty. The Peanuts Papers is an enchanting, poignant gathering of responses to the greatest American comic strip, enabling us to see it anew in fresh and revealing ways.]]> 352 Andrew Blauner 1598536168 Alex 5 recently-read 3.72 2019 The Peanuts Papers: Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life
author: Andrew Blauner
name: Alex
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)]]> 54860229 The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.

The story begins in May 1536: Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell, a man with only his wits to rely on, has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to the breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. All of England lies at his feet, ripe for innovation and religious reform. But as fortune’s wheel turns, Cromwell’s enemies are gathering in the shadows. The inevitable question remains: how long can anyone survive under Henry’s cruel and capricious gaze?

Eagerly awaited and eight years in the making, The Mirror & the Light completes Cromwell’s journey from self-made man to one of the most feared, influential figures of his time. Portrayed by Mantel with pathos and terrific energy, Cromwell is as complex as he is unforgettable: a politician and a fixer, a husband and a father, a man who both defied and defined his age.]]> 759 Hilary Mantel 1250182492 Alex 5 recently-read 4.38 2020 The Mirror & the Light (Thomas Cromwell, #3)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Alex
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]> 653 Hilary Mantel Alex 5 recently-read 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Alex
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)]]> 58111604 New York Times bestseller, Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn

Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head? ]]> 433 Hilary Mantel Alex 5 4.56 2012 Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Alex
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2021/12/15
date added: 2021/12/15
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]]> Congo 7672
Ten thousand miles away, Karen Ross, the Congo Project Supervisor, watches a gruesome video transmission of the aftermath: a camp destroyed, tents crushed and torn, equipment scattered in the mud alongside dead bodies � all motionless except for one moving image � a grainy, dark, man-shaped blur.

In San Francisco, primatologist Peter Elliot works with Amy, a gorilla with an extraordinary vocabulary of 620 “signs,� the most ever learned by a primate, and she likes to fingerpaint. But recently, her behavior has been erratic and her drawings match, with stunning accuracy, the brittle pages of a Portuguese print dating back to 1642 . . . a drawing of an ancient lost city. A new expedition � along with Amy � is sent into the Congo where they enter a secret world, and the only way out may be through a horrifying death �
source: michaelcrichton.com]]> 442 Michael Crichton 0060541830 Alex 2 recently-read 3.63 1980 Congo
author: Michael Crichton
name: Alex
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1980
rating: 2
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date added: 2021/09/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad #4)]]> 54568340 From Tana French, author of The Witch Elm, a New York Times bestselling novel that “proves anew that [Tana French] is one of the most talented crime writers alive� (The Washington Post).

Mick “Scorcherˮ Kennedy is the star of the Dublin Murder Squad. He plays by the books and plays hard, and thatʼs how the biggest case of the year ends up in his hands.

On one of the half-abandoned “luxuryˮ developments that litter Ireland, Patrick Spain and his two young children have been murdered. His wife, Jenny, is in intensive care. At first, Scorcher thinks itʼs going to be an easy solve, but too many small things canʼt be explained: the half-dozen baby monitors pointed at holes smashed in the Spainsʼ walls, the files erased from the familyʼs computer, the story Jenny told her sister about a shadowy intruder slipping past the houseʼs locks. And this neighborhood—once called Broken Harbor—holds memories for Scorcher and his troubled sister, Dina: childhood memories that Scorcher thought he had tightly under control.]]> 456 Tana French Alex 0 4.17 2012 Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad #4)
author: Tana French
name: Alex
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2021/08/16
date added: 2021/08/16
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]]> Why Not Me? 30268522 From the author of the beloved New York Times bestselling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and the creator and star of The Mindy Project comes a collection of essays that are as hilarious and insightful as they are deeply personal.

In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it's falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you're constantly reminded that no one looks like you.
In "How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet's Confessions", Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, ("Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn't the land of appropriate-this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman s traditional hair color is honey blonde.") "Player" tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. ("I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.") In "Unlikely Leading Lady", she muses on America's fixation with the weight of actresses, ("Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they're walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.") And in "Soup Snakes", Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak ("I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.")
Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who's ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who've never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.]]> 240 Mindy Kaling 0804138168 Alex 4 3.93 2015 Why Not Me?
author: Mindy Kaling
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[From Doon with Death (Inspector Wexford #1)]]> 18964357 242 Ruth Rendell 0307829553 Alex 0 3.72 1964 From Doon with Death (Inspector Wexford #1)
author: Ruth Rendell
name: Alex
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at: 2021/06/21
date added: 2021/06/21
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]]> Gone Girl 13261812 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 422 Gillian Flynn Alex 0 4.16 2012 Gone Girl
author: Gillian Flynn
name: Alex
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2021/06/15
date added: 2021/06/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad #3)]]> 45053088 From Tana French—author of The Witch Elm and “the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years� (The Washington Post)—the bestseller called “the most stunning of her books� (The New York Times) and a finalist for the Edgar Award.

Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was a nineteen-year-old kid with a dream of escaping his familyʼs cramped flat on Faithful Place and running away to London with his girl, Rosie Daly. But on the night they were supposed to leave, Rosie didnʼt show. Frank took it for granted that sheʼd dumped him—probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again. Neither did Rosie. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosieʼs suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank, now a detective in the Dublin Undercover Squad, is going home whether he likes it or not.]]> 449 Tana French Alex 5 4.21 2010 Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad #3)
author: Tana French
name: Alex
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2021/05/30
date added: 2021/05/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Shirley Jackson Collection: A Library of America Boxed Set]]> 51008642 The Lottery, and twenty-one other stories.

Collects:
Shirley Jackson: Novels & Stories (LOA #204) - The Lottery; or, The Adventures of James Harris, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Uncollected Stories (15), Unpublished Stories (6), and an Appendix: "Biography of a Story".

Shirley Jackson: Four Novels of the 1940s & '50s (LOA #336) - The Road Through the Wall, Hangsaman, The Bird's Nest, and The Sundial.]]> 1732 Shirley Jackson 1598536710 Alex 5 recently-read 5.00 The Shirley Jackson Collection: A Library of America Boxed Set
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 5.00
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rating: 5
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]]> The Lottery and Other Stories 89723 The Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.]]> 302 Shirley Jackson 0374529531 Alex 0 4.05 1949 The Lottery and Other Stories
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1949
rating: 0
read at: 2021/04/14
date added: 2021/04/14
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]]> The Sundial 131181 (Chicago Tribune): When an aging heiress learns of an impending apocalypse while on a garden walk, her family becomes fixated on preparing for the imminent doom. “One of the premiere gothic horror writers of the 20th century’s funniest and strangest endeavors� Think P. G. Wodehouse meets The Twilight Zone� (AudioFile).

Before there was Hill House, there was the Halloran mansion of Jackson’s stunningly creepy fourth novel, The Sundial. Aunt Fanny has always been somewhat peculiar. When the Halloran clan gathers at the family home for a funeral, no one is surprised when she wanders off into the secret garden. But then Aunt Fanny returns to report an astonishing vision of an apocalypse from which only the Hallorans and their hangers-on will be spared, and the family finds itself engulfed in growing madness, fear, and violence as they prepare for a terrible new world. For Aunt Fanny's long-dead father has given her the precise date of the final cataclysm!]]> 245 Shirley Jackson 0140083170 Alex 0 3.83 1958 The Sundial
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1958
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words]]> 908053 432 Andrew Morton 0671024124 Alex 2 3.79 1993 Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words
author: Andrew Morton
name: Alex
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1993
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2021/03/24
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]]> The Road Through the Wall 131190 220 Shirley Jackson 044503128X Alex 5 3.61 1948 The Road Through the Wall
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.61
book published: 1948
rating: 5
read at: 2021/01/01
date added: 2021/03/24
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]]> The Bird's Nest 131179 The Bird's Nest, Jackson's third novel, develops hallmarks of the horror master's most unsettling work: tormented heroines, riveting familial mysteries, and a disquieting vision inside the human mind.]]> 276 Shirley Jackson 1567230644 Alex 5 3.73 1954 The Bird's Nest
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1954
rating: 5
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]]> Hangsaman 131177 Hangsaman is Miss Jackson's second novel. The story is a simple one but the overtones are immediately present. "Natalie Waite who was seventeen years old but who felt that she had been truly conscious only since she was about fifteen lived in an odd corner of a world of sound and sight, past the daily voices of her father and mother and their incomprehensible actions." In a few graphic pages, the family is before us—Arnold Waite, a writer, egotistical and embittered; his wife, the complaining martyr; Bud, the younger brother who has not yet felt the need to establish his independence; and Natalie, in the nightmare of being seventeen.

The Sunday afternoon cocktail party, to which Arnold Waite has invited his literary friends and neighbors, serves to etch in the details of this family's life, and to draw Natalie into the vortex. The story concentrates on the next few critical months in Natalie's life, away at college, where each experience reproduces on a larger scale the crucial failure of her emotional life at home. With a mounting tension rising from character and situation as well as the particular magic of which Miss Jackson is master, the novel proceeds inexorably to the stinging melodrama of its conclusion. The bitter cruelty of the passage from adolescence to womanhood, of a sensitive and lonely girl caught in a world not of her own devising, is a theme well suited to Miss Jackson's brilliant talent.]]> 191 Shirley Jackson 0445031174 Alex 4 3.78 1951 Hangsaman
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1951
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era]]> 44527554 “Gareth Russell has chosen a handful of passengers on the doomed liner and by training a spotlight on every detail of their lives, he has given us a meticulous, sensitive, and at times harsh picture of the early 20th century in Britain and America. A marvelous piece of work.� —Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey

A riveting account of the Titanic disaster and the unraveling of the gilded Edwardian society that had created it.

In April 1912, six notable people were among those privileged to experience the height of luxury—first class passage on “the ship of dreams,� the RMS Titanic: Lucy Leslie, Countess of Rothes; son of the British Empire, Tommy Andrews; American captain of industry John Thayer and his son Jack; Jewish-American immigrant Ida Straus; and American model and movie star Dorothy Gibson. Within a week of setting sail, they were all caught up in the horrifying disaster of the Titanic’s sinking, one of the biggest news stories of the century. Today, we can see their stories and the Titanic’s voyage as the beginning of the end of the established hierarchy of the Edwardian era.

Writing in his elegant signature prose and using previously unpublished sources, deck plans, journal entries, and surviving artifacts, Gareth Russell peers through the portholes of these first-class travelers to immerse us in a time of unprecedented change in British and American history. Through their intertwining lives, he examines social, technological, political, and economic forces such as the nuances of the British class system, the explosion of competition in the shipping trade, the birth of the movie industry, the Irish Home Rule Crisis, and the Jewish-American immigrant experience while also recounting their intimate stories of bravery, tragedy, and selflessness.

Masterful in its superb grasp of the forces of history, gripping in its moment-by-moment account of the sinking, revelatory in discounting long-held myths, and lavishly illustrated with color and black and white photographs, this absorbing, accessible, and authoritative account of the Titanic’s life and death is destined to become the definitive book on the subject.]]> 346 Gareth Russell Alex 0 4.14 2019 The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era
author: Gareth Russell
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2021/02/12
date added: 2021/02/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World (Hinges of History Book 5)]]> 20185737 How the Irish Saved Civilization, a fascinating look at how medieval thinkers created the origins of modern intellectual movements.

After the long period of decline known as the Dark Ages, medieval Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today, from the entry of women into professions that had long been closed to them to the early investigations into alchemy that would form the basis of experimental science. On visits to the great cities of Europe-monumental Rome; the intellectually explosive Paris of Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas; the hotbed of scientific study that was Oxford; and the incomparable Florence of Dante and Giotto-acclaimed historian Thomas Cahill brilliantly captures the spirit of experimentation, the colorful pageantry, and the passionate pursuit of knowledge that built the foundations for the modern world.

BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Thomas Cahill'sĚýHeretics and Heroes.Ěý]]> 431 Thomas Cahill Alex 0 4.07 2006 Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World (Hinges of History Book 5)
author: Thomas Cahill
name: Alex
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/11
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]]> <![CDATA[What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America]]> 54666
The New York Times bestseller, praised as "hilariously funny . . . the only way to understand why so many Americans have decided to vote against their own economic and political interests" (Molly Ivins)

Hailed as "dazzlingly insightful and wonderfully sardonic" (Chicago Tribune), "very funny and very painful" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "in a different league from most political books" (The New York Observer), What's the Matter with Kansas? unravels the great political mystery of our day: Why do so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests? With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank answers the riddle by examining his home state, Kansas-a place once famous for its radicalism that now ranks among the nation's most eager participants in the culture wars. Charting what he calls the "thirty-year backlash"-the popular revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment-Frank reveals how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans.

A brilliant analysis-and funny to boot-What's the Matter with Kansas? is a vivid portrait of an upside-down world where blue-collar patriots recite the Pledge while they strangle their life chances; where small farmers cast their votes for a Wall Street order that will eventually push them off their land; and where a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs has managed to convince the country that it speaks on behalf of the People.
]]> 332 Thomas Frank 080507774X Alex 0 to-read 3.84 2004 What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
author: Thomas Frank
name: Alex
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Hidden in Plain Sight (William Warwick, #2)]]> 49127523
As the investigation progresses, William runs into enemies old and new: Adrian Heath, from his school days, now a street dealer who he convinces to turn informer; and financier Miles Faulkner, who makes a mistake that could finally see him put behind bars. Meanwhile, William and his fiancée Beth enjoy making preparations for their upcoming wedding, though an unpleasant surprise awaits them at the altar.

As William’s team closes the net around a criminal network like none they have ever faced before, he devises a trap they would never expect, one that is hidden in plain sight . . .]]> 295 Jeffrey Archer 1250200784 Alex 0 to-read 3.80 2020 Hidden in Plain Sight (William Warwick, #2)
author: Jeffrey Archer
name: Alex
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer]]> 41948137 THE BASIS FOR THE MAJOR 6-PART HBO® DOCUMENTARY SERIES

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A BEST BOOK OF THE

Washington Post Ěý| Maureen Corrigan,ĚýNPRĚý|ĚýPasteĚý|ĚýSeattle TimesĚý|ĚýEntertainment WeeklyĚý|ĚýEsquireĚý|ĚýSlateĚý| Buzzfeed |ĚýJezebelĚý|ĚýPhiladelphia InquirerĚý|ĚýPublishers WeeklyĚý|ĚýKirkus ReviewsĚý|ĚýLibrary JournalĚý|ĚýBustleĚý

Winner of the Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ Choice Awards for Nonfiction | Anthony Award Winner | SCIBA Book Award Winner | Finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime |ĚýLonglisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence

TheĚýhaunting true story of the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California during the 70s and 80s, and ofĚýthe gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case—which was solved in April 2018.

TheĚýhaunting true story of the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California during the 70s and 80s, and ofĚýthe gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case—which was solved in April 2018.

Introduction by Gillian FlynnĚýâ€� Afterword by Patton Oswalt

“A brilliant genre-buster.... Propulsive, can’t-stop-now reading.”ĚýĚ� —Stephen King

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark —the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Utterly original and compelling, it has been hailed as a modern true crime classic—one which fulfilled Michelle's helping unmask the Golden State Killer.]]> 384 Michelle McNamara 0062916319 Alex 0 4.14 2018 I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer
author: Michelle McNamara
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2020/09/20
date added: 2020/09/20
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]]> <![CDATA[So You Want to Talk About Race]]> 53249847 In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a hard-hitting but user-friendly examination of race in America
Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy--from police brutality to the mass incarceration of African Americans--have made it impossible to ignore the issue of race. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about. How do you tell your roommate her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law take umbrage when you asked to touch her hair--and how do you make it right? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?
In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life.
"Oluo gives us--both white people and people of color--that language to engage in clear, constructive, and confident dialogue with each other about how to deal with racial prejudices and biases."--National Book Review
"Generous and empathetic, yet usefully blunt . . . it's for anyone who wants to be smarter and more empathetic about matters of race and engage in more productive anti-racist action."--Salon (Required Reading)
]]> 266 Ijeoma Oluo 1541619226 Alex 4 4.55 2018 So You Want to Talk About Race
author: Ijeoma Oluo
name: Alex
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/08/31
date added: 2020/08/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss]]> 45993775 New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family—and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.



Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father—and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver.



And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds—the natural one and our own—“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.�



Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut.]]> 240 Margaret Renkl 1571319875 Alex 5 4.29 2019 Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss
author: Margaret Renkl
name: Alex
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Rabbit Is Rich (Rabbit Angstrom, #3)]]> 85391
Ten years after Rabbit Redux, Harry Angstrom has come to enjoy prosperity as the Chief Sales Representative of Springer Motors. The rest of the world may be falling to pieces, but Harry's doing all right. That is, until his son returns from the West, and the image of an old love pays a visit to his lot....]]> 480 John Updike 0140249435 Alex 5 3.92 1981 Rabbit Is Rich (Rabbit Angstrom, #3)
author: John Updike
name: Alex
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/31
date added: 2020/08/31
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Warm, satisfying and a total gem. Updike invests every grubby, all-too-recognizable corner of small-town Pennsylvania and all his oddball, jerky and even unsavory characters with liveliness, striving, humor and heart. It’s impossible not to laugh or groan out loud at some of the scenes that unfold here. Losing or winning, Rabbit is us and we root for him regardless.
]]> <![CDATA[The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women]]> 34394482 The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive - until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...]]> 506 Kate Moore 1492649368 Alex 5 4.28 2016 The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women
author: Kate Moore
name: Alex
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/08/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Different Seasons: Four Novellas]]> 28094689 Includes the stories “The Body� and “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”—set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine A “hypnotic� (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas—including the inspirations behind the films Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption—from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters.This gripping collection begins with “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,� in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge—the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption. Next is “Apt Pupil,� the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town. In “The Body,� four rambunctious young boys plunge through the façade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me. Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in “The Breathing Method.� “The wondrous readability of his work, as well as the instant sense of communication with his characters, are what make Stephen King the consummate storyteller that he is,� hailed the Houston Chronicle about Different Seasons.]]> 687 Stephen King Alex 4 4.37 1982 Different Seasons: Four Novellas
author: Stephen King
name: Alex
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2020/07/18
date added: 2020/07/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Tangled Woods (Dark Corners Collection, #5)]]> 41132332
Poison-tongued film critic Reginald Wright is known for his creative insults and intolerance for the garbage culture, insufferable rudeness, and thoughtless racism of predictably common people. Now, against his better judgment, and with a marriage in crisis, he’s attempting a getaway in the Poconos that quickly fulfills his every low expectation. In fact, it’s becoming a nightmare. And that’s just what Reginald needs to wake up.

Emily Raboteau’s The Tangled Woods is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.]]> 37 Emily Raboteau 1542041295 Alex 0 2.86 2018 The Tangled Woods (Dark Corners Collection, #5)
author: Emily Raboteau
name: Alex
average rating: 2.86
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2020/04/27
date added: 2020/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Remedy (Dark Corners Collection, #6)]]> 41455792
After years of traditional treatments and therapies, Derrick still suffers from pain ineluctable enough that it has become his identity. Then he hears of an exclusive, very private New York clinic that promises relief. It comes highly recommended by a friend. The multisession remedy unfolds as a sensorial wonder that’s so illuminating it’s enough to bring tears to Derrick’s eyes. It’s all working so well. So unexpectedly well.

Adam Haslett’s The Remedy is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.]]> 30 Adam Haslett 1542040167 Alex 0 2.96 2018 The Remedy (Dark Corners Collection, #6)
author: Adam Haslett
name: Alex
average rating: 2.96
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2020/04/27
date added: 2020/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Hannah-Beast (Dark Corners Collection, #1)]]> 41080498
Thirty-four years ago, on October 31, poor Hannah Talbott took part in a scavenger hunt gone violently wrong. The mean girls made sure of it. To this day, for a haunted local mother, the most unsettling Halloween costume of all is an urban legend they call Hannah-Beast. It’s a reminder of the past she can’t forget. Especially tonight when it’s come back, so close to home.

Jennifer McMahon’s Hannah-Beast is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.]]> 48 Jennifer McMahon 1542090415 Alex 0 3.80 2018 Hannah-Beast (Dark Corners Collection, #1)
author: Jennifer McMahon
name: Alex
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2020/04/27
date added: 2020/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[There's a Giant Trapdoor Spider Under Your Bed (Dark Corners Collection, #3)]]> 41561433
It’s bad enough that its venom-dripping chelicerae can slice through flesh like warm butter. Worse? It’s right there under the bunk. It’s a fact now. To make it through the night, the children must obey the don’t get out of bed, stay out of the shadows, and don’t wake the beast. But as the threats multiply, so do the rules of survival. And with the safety of dawn still hours away, the fun is just beginning.

Edgar Cantero’s There’s a Giant Trapdoor Spider under Your Bed is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.]]> 24 Edgar Cantero 1542090423 Alex 2 2.85 2018 There's a Giant Trapdoor Spider Under Your Bed (Dark Corners Collection, #3)
author: Edgar Cantero
name: Alex
average rating: 2.85
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2020/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Oak Avenue (Dark Corners Collection, #7)]]> 41131903
While renovating her Victorian home, Ana Clementine finds an ornate door buried under forty years of earth. Once she restores it to the attic, she starts hearing whispers, her loving husband becomes a stranger, and her baby daughter learns a chilling new word. Maybe Ana has unlocked the house’s secrets. Or maybe she’s becoming just a little unhinged herself.

Brandi Reeds’s Oak Avenue is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.]]> 72 Brandi Reeds 1542090636 Alex 0 3.60 2018 Oak Avenue (Dark Corners Collection, #7)
author: Brandi Reeds
name: Alex
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2020/04/17
date added: 2020/04/17
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]]> 1984 40961427 Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmarish vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life—the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language—and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written.]]> 298 George Orwell Alex 5 4.24 1949 1984
author: George Orwell
name: Alex
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1949
rating: 5
read at: 2020/04/17
date added: 2020/04/17
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]]> Charles Dickens: A Life 12042722 500 Claire Tomalin 1101547995 Alex 0 4.27 2011 Charles Dickens: A Life
author: Claire Tomalin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at: 2020/04/09
date added: 2020/04/09
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]]> <![CDATA[A Night to Remember (The Titanic Chronicles, #1)]]> 44107395
On April 15th, 1912, Titanic, the world's largest passenger ship, sank after colliding with an iceberg, claiming more than 1,500 lives. Walter Lord's classic bestselling history of the voyage, the wreck and the aftermath is a tour de force of detailed investigation and the upstairs/downstairs divide. "A Night to Remember" provides a vivid, gripping and deeply personal account of the 'unsinkable' Titanic's descent.

It comes with a new foreword by Julian Fellowes and the cover is annotated 'The Classic Bestselling Account of the Sinking of the Titanic'.]]> 209 Walter Lord Alex 0 4.24 1955 A Night to Remember (The Titanic Chronicles, #1)
author: Walter Lord
name: Alex
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at: 2020/03/15
date added: 2020/03/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania]]> 22551730
On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war.]]> 430 Erik Larson 0307408868 Alex 0 to-read 4.10 2015 Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
author: Erik Larson
name: Alex
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/03/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[House of Salt and Sorrows (Sisters of the Salt #1)]]> 42766858 Get swept away in Erin A. Craig's mesmerizing House of Salt and Sorrows. As one by one her beautiful sisters mysteriously die on their isolated island estate, Annaleigh must unravel the curse that haunts her family. Be careful who you dance with. . . .

Four of Annaleigh Thaumas's eleven sisters have returned to the Salt, the brackish water that surrounds their lonely island home, their lives cut short, each more tragically than the last. Whispers throughout the Highmoor estate say the girls have been cursed by the gods.

When Annaleigh finds out that her sisters have been sneaking out to attend glittering midnight balls and dance until dawn, she's not sure whether to stop them--or join them. And when she begins to see a series of horrific, ghostly visions and more sisters die, she realizes she must solve the mystery--with the help of Cassius, a sea captain who knows much more about her than he should--and unravel the Thaumas curse before she descends into madness or . . . it claims her next.]]> 406 Erin A. Craig 1984831941 Alex 0 3.98 2019 House of Salt and Sorrows (Sisters of the Salt #1)
author: Erin A. Craig
name: Alex
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2020/02/22
date added: 2020/02/22
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]]> Life Itself 11384682 Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and was the first film critic ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. He has appeared on television for four decades, including twenty-three years as cohost of Siskel & Ebert at the Movies.

In 2006, complications from thyroid cancer treatment resulted in the loss of his ability to eat, drink, or speak. But with the loss of his voice, Ebert has only become a more prolific and influential writer. And now, for the first time, he tells the full, dramatic story of his life and career.

Roger Ebert's journalism carried him on a path far from his nearly idyllic childhood in Urbana, Illinois. It is a journey that began as a reporter for his local daily, and took him to Chicago, where he was unexpectedly given the job of film critic for the Sun-Times, launching a lifetime's adventures.

In this candid, personal history, Ebert chronicles it all: his loves, losses, and obsessions; his struggle and recovery from alcoholism; his marriage; his politics; and his spiritual beliefs. He writes about his years at the Sun-Times, his colorful newspaper friends, and his life-changing collaboration with Gene Siskel. He remembers his friendships with Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Oprah Winfrey, and Russ Meyer (for whom he wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and an ill-fated Sex Pistols movie). He shares his insights into movie stars and directors like John Wayne, Werner Herzog, and Martin Scorsese.

This is a story that only Roger Ebert could tell. Filled with the same deep insight, dry wit, and sharp observations that his readers have long cherished, this is more than a memoir-it is a singular, warm-hearted, inspiring look at life itself.

"I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."
-from LIFE ITSELF]]> 427 Roger Ebert Alex 5 4.16 2011 Life Itself
author: Roger Ebert
name: Alex
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2020/01/12
date added: 2020/01/13
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Except for a weird, disjointed chapter on Robert Mitchum (who was apparently a weird, disjointed person), I enjoyed this so much. Mr. Ebert's whole book is full of warmth, good humor and passion - for his journalism work, travel (the chapter on London is wonderful; a separate book contains his musing on his favorite walks through the city), wife Chaz and family, friendships, and of course, films. It's just the ticket - no pun intended - if you wish dearly you'd have been able to have a long, rambling walk-and-talk with him. I still miss his columns greatly.
]]> <![CDATA[My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere]]> 91863 New Yorker writer and author of The Library Book takes readers on a series of remarkable journeys in this uniquely witty, sophisticated, and far-flung travel book.

In this irresistible collection of adventures far and near, Orlean conducts a tour of the world via its subcultures, from the heart of the African music scene in Paris to the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois--and even into her own apartment, where she imagines a very famous houseguest taking advantage of her hospitality.

With Orlean as guide, lucky readers partake in all manner of armchair activity. They will climb Mt. Fuji and experience a hike most intrepid Japanese have never attempted; play ball with Cuba's Little Leaguers, promising young athletes born in a country where baseball and politics are inextricably intertwined; trawl Icelandic waters with Keiko, everyone's favorite whale as he tries to make it on his own; stay awhile in Midland, Texas, hometown of George W. Bush, a place where oil time is the only time that matters; explore the halls of a New York City school so troubled it's known as "Horror High"; and stalk caged tigers in Jackson, New Jersey, a suburban town with one of the highest concentrations of tigers per square mile anywhere in the world.

Vivid, humorous, unconventional, and incomparably entertaining, Susan Orlean's writings for The New Yorker have delighted readers for over a decade. My Kind of Place is an inimitable treat by one of America's premier literary journalists.]]> 302 Susan Orlean 0812974875 Alex 5 3.52 2004 My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere
author: Susan Orlean
name: Alex
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2019/12/04
date added: 2019/12/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The White Lioness (Kurt Wallander, #3)]]> 39801
Combining compelling insights into the sinister side of modern life with a riveting tale of international intrigue, The White Lioness keeps you on the knife-edge of suspense.]]> 576 Henning Mankell Alex 0 3.87 1993 The White Lioness (Kurt Wallander, #3)
author: Henning Mankell
name: Alex
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at: 2019/03/20
date added: 2019/11/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Sidetracked (Kurt Wallander, #5)]]> 39796
In the award-winning Sidetracked, Kurt Wallander is called to a nearby rapeseed field where a teenage girl has been loitering all day long. He arrives just in time to watch her douse herself in gasoline and set herself aflame. The next day he is called to a beach where Sweden’s former Minister of Justice has been axed to death and scalped. The murder has the obvious markings of a demented serial killer, and Wallander is frantic to find him before he strikes again. But his investigation is beset with a handful of obstacles—a department distracted by the threat of impending cutbacks and the frivolity of World Cup soccer, a tenuous long-distance relationship with a murdered policeman’s widow, and the unshakably haunting preoccupation with the young girl who set herself on fire. Fascinating and astute, Sidetracked is a compelling mystery enhanced by keen social awareness.]]> 420 Henning Mankell 1400031567 Alex 0 4.08 1995 Sidetracked (Kurt Wallander, #5)
author: Henning Mankell
name: Alex
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2019/10/13
date added: 2019/11/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy]]> 23834688
Thirty years later, Apatow is still that same comedy nerd—and he’s still interviewing funny people about why they do what they do.

Sick in the Head gathers Apatow’s most memorable and revealing conversations into one hilarious, wide-ranging, and incredibly candid collection that spans not only his career but his entire adult life. Here are the comedy legends who inspired and shaped him, from Mel Brooks to Steve Martin. Here are the contemporaries he grew up with in Hollywood, from Spike Jonze to Sarah Silverman. And here, finally, are the brightest stars in comedy today, many of whom Apatow has been fortunate to work with, from Seth Rogen to Amy Schumer. And along the way, something kind of magical happens: What started as a lifetime’s worth of conversations about comedy becomes something else entirely. It becomes an exploration of creativity, ambition, neediness, generosity, spirituality, and the joy that comes from making people laugh.

Loaded with the kind of back-of-the-club stories that comics tell one another when no one else is watching, this fascinating, personal (and borderline-obsessive) book is Judd Apatow’s gift to comedy nerds everywhere.

Praise for Sick in the Head

“I can’t stop reading it. . . . I don’t want this book to end.�—Jimmy Fallon

“An essential for any comedy geek.��Entertainment Weekly

“Fascinating . . . a collection of interviews with many of the great figures of comedy in the latter half of the twentieth century.� —The Washington Post

“Open this book anywhere, and you’re bound to find some interesting nugget from someone who has had you in stitches many, many times.�—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“An amazing read, full of insights and connections both creative and interpersonal.��The New Yorker

“Fascinating and revelatory.� —Chicago Tribune

“For fans of stand-up, Sick in the Head is a Bible of sorts.��Newsweek

“These are wonderful, expansive interviews—at times brutal, at times breathtaking—with artists whose wit, intelligence, gaze, and insights are all sharp enough to draw blood.�—Michael Chabon

“Anyone even remotely interested in comedy or humanity should own this book. It is hilarious and informative and it contains insightful interviews with the greatest comics, comedians, and comediennes of our time. My representatives assure me I will appear in a future edition.�—Will Ferrell


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 489 Judd Apatow 0812997581 Alex 4 3.64 2015 Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy
author: Judd Apatow
name: Alex
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/16
date added: 2019/11/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Rabbit Redux (Rabbit Angstrom, #2)]]> 46917 Rabbit, Run, John Updike resumes the spiritual quest of his anxious Everyman, Harry “Rabbit� Angstrom. Ten years have passed; the impulsive former athlete has become a paunchy thirty-six-year-old conservative, and Eisenhower’s becalmed America has become 1969’s lurid turmoil of technology, fantasy, drugs, and violence. Rabbit is abandoned by his family, his home invaded by a runaway and a radical, his past reduced to a ruined inner landscape; still he clings to semblances of decency and responsibility, and yearns to belong and to believe.]]> 440 John Updike 0449911934 Alex 4 3.81 1971 Rabbit Redux (Rabbit Angstrom, #2)
author: John Updike
name: Alex
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1971
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2019/11/22
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]]> <![CDATA[My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy, #1)]]> 48132 My Family and Other Animals was intended to embrace the natural history of the island but ended up as a delightful account of Durrell’s family’s experiences, from the many eccentric hangers-on to the ceaseless procession of puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies into their home.]]> 273 Gerald Durrell 0142004413 Alex 5 4.19 1956 My Family and Other Animals (Corfu Trilogy, #1)
author: Gerald Durrell
name: Alex
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1956
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/01
date added: 2019/11/22
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Utterly charming and hilarious! Equal parts zoological encounters and familial entanglements. You will want to move to Durrell's Corfu of yesteryear.
]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander, #4)]]> 39792 The Man Who Smiled begins with Inspector Kurt Wallander deep in a personal and professional crisis after killing a man in the line of duty; eventually, he vows to quit the Ystad police force for good. Just then, however, a friend who had asked Wallander to look into the death of his father winds up dead himself, shot three times. Ann-Britt Hoglund, the department's first female detective, proves to be his best ally as he tries to pierce the smiling facade of his prime suspect, a powerful multinational business tycoon. But just as he comes close to uncovering the truth, the same shadowy threats responsible for the murders close in on Wallander himself.

All of Henning Mankell's talents as a master of the modern police procedural, which have earned him legions of fans worldwide, are showcased in The Man Who Smiled, which is the fourth of the eight Wallander books published thus far in English.]]> 325 Henning Mankell 1565849930 Alex 4 3.96 1994 The Man Who Smiled (Kurt Wallander, #4)
author: Henning Mankell
name: Alex
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2019/08/01
date added: 2019/11/22
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]]> <![CDATA[One Step Behind (Kurt Wallander, #7)]]> 39799 450 Henning Mankell 0099448874 Alex 0 recently-read 4.09 1997 One Step Behind (Kurt Wallander, #7)
author: Henning Mankell
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2019/11/01
date added: 2019/11/20
shelves: recently-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Troubled Man (Kurt Wallander, #10)]]> 8755555 Trådarna leder bakåt i tiden, till det kalla kriget, högerextrema sammanslutningar och lönnmördare från det gamla Östeuropa. Wallander anar att han har kommit en stor hemlighet på spåren. Kanske befinner han sig i utkanten av något som är mångdubbelt allvarligare än Wennerströmaffären, den värsta spionhärva Sverige upplevt.
Wallander kastas in i ett skeende vars förvecklingar han har svårt att överblicka. Samtidigt dyker ett ännu mörkare moln upp på hans himmel …]]> 367 Henning Mankell 0307593495 Alex 4 3.98 2009 The Troubled Man (Kurt Wallander, #10)
author: Henning Mankell
name: Alex
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/01
date added: 2019/11/20
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]]> Firewall (Kurt Wallander, #8) 39798 534 Henning Mankell 0099459051 Alex 0 recently-read 3.97 1998 Firewall (Kurt Wallander, #8)
author: Henning Mankell
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2019/11/01
date added: 2019/11/20
shelves: recently-read
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]]> Metropolitan Stories 43680369 From a writer who worked at the Metropolitan Museum for more than twenty-five years, an enchanting novel that shows us the Met that the public doesn't see.

Hidden behind the Picassos and Vermeers, the Temple of Dendur and the American Wing, exists another world: the hallways and offices, conservation studios, storerooms, and cafeteria that are home to the museum's devoted and peculiar staff of 2,200 people--along with a few ghosts.

A surreal love letter to this private side of the Met, Metropolitan Stories unfolds in a series of amusing and poignant vignettes in which we discover larger-than-life characters, the downside of survival, and the powerful voices of the art itself. The result is a novel bursting with magic, humor, and energetic detail, but also a beautiful book about introspection, an ode to lives lived for art, ultimately building a powerful collage of human experience and the world of the imagination.]]> 249 Christine Coulson 1590510585 Alex 0 to-read 3.66 2019 Metropolitan Stories
author: Christine Coulson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves]]> 40180060 New York Times best-selling author and primatologist Frans de Waal explores the fascinating world of animal and human emotions.

Frans de Waal has spent four decades at the forefront of animal research. Following up on the best-selling Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, which investigated animal intelligence, Mama’s Last Hug delivers a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals.

Mama’s Last Hug begins with the death of Mama, a chimpanzee matriarch who formed a deep bond with biologist Jan van Hooff. When Mama was dying, van Hooff took the unusual step of visiting her in her night cage for a last hug. Their goodbyes were filmed and went viral. Millions of people were deeply moved by the way Mama embraced the professor, welcoming him with a big smile while reassuring him by patting his neck, in a gesture often considered typically human but that is in fact common to all primates. This story and others like it form the core of de Waal’s argument, showing that humans are not the only species with the capacity for love, hate, fear, shame, guilt, joy, disgust, and empathy.

De Waal discusses facial expressions, the emotions behind human politics, the illusion of free will, animal sentience, and, of course, Mama’s life and death. The message is one of continuity between us and other species, such as the radical proposal that emotions are like organs: we don’t have a single organ that other animals don’t have, and the same is true for our emotions. Mama’s Last Hug opens our hearts and minds to the many ways in which humans and other animals are connected, transforming how we view the living world around us.]]> 336 Frans de Waal 0393635066 Alex 5 4.14 2019 Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves
author: Frans de Waal
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2019/10/15
date added: 2019/10/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Fifth Woman (Kurt Wallander, #6)]]> 52415
In an African convent, four nuns and a unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered--the death of the unknown woman covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled and appalled by two murders. Holger Eriksson, a retired car dealer and bird watcher, is impaled on sharpened bamboo poles in a ditch behind his secluded home, and the body of a missing florist is discovered--strangled and tied to a tree. The only clues Wallander has to go on are a skull, a diary, and a photo of three men. What ensues is a case that will test Wallander’s strength and patience, because in order to discover the reason behind these murders, he will also need to uncover the elusive connection between these deaths and the earlier unsolved murder in Africa of the fifth woman.]]> 438 Henning Mankell 1400031540 Alex 0 recently-read 4.03 1996 The Fifth Woman (Kurt Wallander, #6)
author: Henning Mankell
name: Alex
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/15
shelves: recently-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Elephant of Harlan Kooter]]> 25005856
From PUBLISHERS
Meet Harlan Kooter--a kind, plucky lad with "the reddest hair anyone had ever seen" who is mercilessly teased by his classmates for being poor and small. When the circus comes to town, Harlan discovers a runaway animal in his "a medium-sized elephant, which is to say it was about the size of a delivery van." Hannibal, a perceptive pachyderm with the gift of gab, turns out to be just the kind of chum Harlan needs; the two form a risky and protective partnership. In his deftly written first novel, Harvey seamlessly blends passages of chuckle-producing humor with gently affecting moments--the whole overlaid with an ingenuous, old-fashioned charm. Richardson's black-and-white pencil sketches, droll and delicate, perfectly complement the book's slightly fey tone. Harlan and Hannibal are an endearing pair whose happy ending is cause for cheering. Ages 7-10.

From THE BULLETIN OF THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN'S
Forlorn yet plucky Harlan and his talking pachyderm pal, combined with a slightly exotic Florida setting, will please many readers, even some who thought they were too old for such folly. Recommended for grades 3-5]]> 130 Dean Harvey Alex 4 3.33 1992 The Secret Elephant of Harlan Kooter
author: Dean Harvey
name: Alex
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/08/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her]]> 5329124 288 Robin Gerber 0061341312 Alex 4 3.66 2009 Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her
author: Robin Gerber
name: Alex
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/15
date added: 2019/08/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City]]> 25852784 Evicted, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of 21st-century America's most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.]]> 418 Matthew Desmond 0553447432 Alex 5 4.47 2016 Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
author: Matthew Desmond
name: Alex
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2019/06/01
date added: 2019/08/13
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Engrossing and heartbreaking, this book should be required reading for high schools, policymakers and anyone, like me, bewildered by the causes and cyclical epidemic of poverty in our country. Desmond's work sets his research findings and statistics alongside intimate portraits of black and white families struggling to keep their housing in Milwaukee - and the policies and judgments which stack the odds against them in favor of profit-pocketing landlords. Difficult to put down and an unignorable wake-up call for this nation.
]]> <![CDATA[Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners]]> 29467289
Ladies, welcome to the 19th century, where there's arsenic in your face cream, a pot of cold pee sits under your bed, and all of your underwear is crotchless. (Why? Shush, dear. A lady doesn't question.)

UNMENTIONABLE is your hilarious, illustrated, scandalously honest (yet never crass) guide to the secrets of Victorian womanhood, giving you detailed advice on:

~ What to wear
~ Where to relieve yourself
~ How to conceal your loathsome addiction to menstruating
~ What to expect on your wedding night
~ How to be the perfect Victorian wife
~ Why masturbating will kill you
~ And more

Irresistibly charming, laugh-out-loud funny, and featuring nearly 200 images from Victorian publications, UNMENTIONABLE will inspire a whole new level of respect for Elizabeth Bennett, Scarlet O'Hara, Jane Eyre, and all of our great, great grandmothers.

(And it just might leave you feeling ecstatically grateful to live in an age of pants, super absorbency tampons, epidurals, anti-depressants, and not-dying-of-the-syphilis-your-husband-brought-home.)

]]> 307 Therese Oneill 031635791X Alex 4 3.81 2016 Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners
author: Therese Oneill
name: Alex
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2019/08/12
date added: 2019/08/12
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]]> The Silent Patient 43210826 Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

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

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....]]> 9 Alex Michaelides Alex 0 to-read 3.82 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Alex
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/08/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[How to Care for Aging Parents: A One-Stop Resource for All Your Medical, Financial, Housing, and Emotional Issues]]> 20907573 “The bible of eldercare”—ABC World News. “An indispensable book”—AARP. “A compassionate guide of encyclopedic proportion”â€�The Washington Post. And, winner of a Books for a Better Life Award.ĚýHow to Care for Aging ParentsĚýis the best and bestselling book of its kind, and its author, Virginia Morris, is the go-to person on eldercare for the media, appearing onĚýOprah,ĚýTODAY, andĚýGood Morning America, among many other outlets.

How to Care for Aging ParentsĚýis an authoritative, clear, and comforting source of advice and support for the ever-growing number of Americans—now 42 million—who care for an elderly parent, relative, or friend. And now, in its third edition, it is completely overhauled and updated, chapter-by-chapter and page-by-page, with the most recent medical findings and recommendations. It includes a whole new chapter on fraud; details on the latest “aging in placeâ€� technologies; more helpful online resources; and everything you need to know about current laws and regulations. Also new are fill-in worksheets for gathering specifics on medications; caregiversâ€� names, schedules, and contact info; doctorsâ€� phone numbers and addresses; and other essential information in one handy place at the back of the book.



From having that first difficult conversation to arranging a funeral and dealing with grief—and all of the other important issues in betweenâ€�How to Care for Aging ParentsĚýis the essential guide.

]]> 1045 Virginia B. Morris Alex 0 4.01 1996 How to Care for Aging Parents: A One-Stop Resource for All Your Medical, Financial, Housing, and Emotional Issues
author: Virginia B. Morris
name: Alex
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/06/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ocean at the End of the Lane]]> 15783514
Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.]]> 181 Neil Gaiman 0062255657 Alex 0 to-read 4.00 2013 The Ocean at the End of the Lane
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Alex
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/05/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Library Book 39507318
Weaving her lifelong love of books and reading into an investigation of the fire, award-winning New Yorker reporter and New York Times bestselling author Susan Orlean delivers a mesmerizing and uniquely compelling book that manages to tell the broader story of libraries and librarians in a way that has never been done before.

In The Library Book, Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity; brings each department of the library to vivid life through on-the-ground reporting; studies arson and attempts to burn a copy of a book herself; reflects on her own experiences in libraries; and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the blond-haired actor long suspected of setting fire to the LAPL more than thirty years ago.

Along the way, Orlean introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters from libraries past and present—from Mary Foy, who in 1880 at eighteen years old was named the head of the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when men still dominated the role, to Dr. C.J.K. Jones, a pastor, citrus farmer, and polymath known as “The Human Encyclopedia� who roamed the library dispensing information; from Charles Lummis, a wildly eccentric journalist and adventurer who was determined to make the L.A. library one of the best in the world, to the current staff, who do heroic work every day to ensure that their institution remains a vital part of the city it serves.

Brimming with her signature wit, insight, compassion, and talent for deep research, The Library Book is Susan Orlean’s thrilling journey through the stacks that reveals how these beloved institutions provide much more than just books—and why they remain an essential part of the heart, mind, and soul of our country. It is also a master journalist’s reminder that, perhaps especially in the digital era, they are more necessary than ever.]]> 317 Susan Orlean 1476740186 Alex 0 to-read 3.88 2018 The Library Book
author: Susan Orlean
name: Alex
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> On the Black Hill 319964 On the Black Hill is an elegantly written tale of identical twin brothers who grow up on a farm in rural Wales and never leave home. They till the rough soil and sleep in the same bed, touched only occasionally by the advances of the twentieth century.

In depicting the lives of Benjamin and Lewis and their interactions with their small local community Chatwin comments movingly on the larger questions of human experience.]]> 262 Bruce Chatwin Alex 0 to-read 4.01 1982 On the Black Hill
author: Bruce Chatwin
name: Alex
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/04/04
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]]> Passing 349929 Alternate Cover Edition for 9780142437278.

“I’ve often wondered why more coloured girls…never â€passedâ€� over. It’s such a frightfully easy thing to do. If one’s the type, all that’s needed is a little nerve.â€�

Clare Kendry leads a dangerous life. Fair, elegant, and ambitious, she is married to a white man unaware of her African American heritage, and has severed all ties to her past. Clare’s childhood friend, Irene Redfield, just as light-skinned, has chosen to remain within the African American community, but refuses to acknowledge the racism that continues to constrict her family’s happiness. A chance encounter forces both women to confront the lies they have told others—and the secret fears they have buried within themselves.

First published in 1929, Passing is a remarkably candid exploration of shifting racial and sexual boundaries. As acclaimed Larsen biographer Thadious M. Davis writes in her introduction, this landmark novel by the Harlem Renaissance’s premier woman writer also depicts “the golden days of black cultural consciousness.�

Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Thadious M. Davis]]> 122 Nella Larsen Alex 0 to-read 3.93 1929 Passing
author: Nella Larsen
name: Alex
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/03/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Diary of a Bookseller (Diary of a Bookseller, #1)]]> 35512560
In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.]]> 310 Shaun Bythell 1781258627 Alex 0 to-read 3.76 2017 The Diary of a Bookseller (Diary of a Bookseller, #1)
author: Shaun Bythell
name: Alex
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/02/27
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]]> How to Be a Victorian 17321139
We know what life was like for Victoria and Albert, but what was it like for a commoner? How did it feel to cook with coal and wash with tea leaves? Drink beer for breakfast and clean your teeth with cuttlefish? Dress in whalebone and feed opium to the baby? Catch the omnibus to work and wash laundry while wearing a corset?

How To Be A Victorian is a new approach to history, a journey back in time more intimate, personal, and physical than anything before. It is one told from the inside out--how our forebears interacted with the practicalities of their world--and it's a history of those things that make up the day-to-day reality of life, matters so small and seemingly mundane that people scarcely mention them in their diaries or letters. Moving through the rhythm of the day, from waking up to the sound of a knocker-upper man poking a stick at your window, to retiring for nocturnal activities, when the door finally closes on twenty-four hours of life, this astonishing guide illuminates the overlapping worlds of health, sex, fashion, food, school, work, and play.

If you liked The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century or 1000 Years of Annoying the French, you will love this book.]]> 458 Ruth Goodman 0670921351 Alex 0 to-read 4.24 2013 How to Be a Victorian
author: Ruth Goodman
name: Alex
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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]]> S Is for Space 550202
Chrysalis
Pillar of Fire
Zero Hour
The Man
Time in Thy Flight
The Pedestrian
Hall and Farewell
Invisible Boy
Come into My Cellar
The Million-Year Picnic
The Screaming Woman
The Smile
Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed
The Trolley
The Flying Machine
Icarus Montgolfier Wright]]> 211 Ray Bradbury 0553232487 Alex 5 4.11 1966 S Is for Space
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Alex
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 2019/02/18
date added: 2019/02/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic]]> 27485
In her 20 years of clinical experience, Perel has treated hundreds of couples whose home lives are empty of passion. They describe relationships that are open and loving, yet sexually dull. What is going on?

In this explosively original book, Perel explains that our cultural penchant for equality, togetherness, and absolute candor is antithetical to erotic desire for both men and women. Sexual excitement doesn't always play by the rules of good citizenship. It is politically incorrect. It thrives on power plays, unfair advantages, and the space between self and other. More exciting, playful, even poetic sex is possible, but first we must kick egalitarian ideals and emotional housekeeping out of our bedrooms.

While Mating in Captivity shows why the domestic realm can feel like a cage, Perel's take on bedroom dynamics promises to liberate, enchant, and provoke. Flinging the doors open on erotic life and domesticity, she invites us to put the "X" back in sex.

©2006 Esther Perel (P)2006 HarperCollins Publishers]]> 272 Esther Perel 0060753633 Alex 3 4.17 2006 Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic
author: Esther Perel
name: Alex
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2019/02/09
date added: 2019/02/09
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]]> Where the Crawdads Sing 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Alex 0 to-read 4.35 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
author: Delia Owens
name: Alex
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Nine Stories 4009
The stories are:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
"The Laughing Man"
"Down at the Dinghy"
"For Esmé � with Love and Squalor"
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
"Teddy"]]> 302 J.D. Salinger 0316767727 Alex 4 4.20 1953 Nine Stories
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Alex
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1953
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/02
date added: 2018/11/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Astrophysics for People in a Hurry]]> 32191710
But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth succinctly and clearly, with sparkling wit, in tasty chapters consumable anytime and anywhere in your busy day.]]> 223 Neil deGrasse Tyson 0393609391 Alex 0 to-read 4.07 2017 Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
author: Neil deGrasse Tyson
name: Alex
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/11/02
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]]> The Help 4667024
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women, mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends, view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.


Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here]]> 464 Kathryn Stockett 0399155341 Alex 4 4.46 2009 The Help
author: Kathryn Stockett
name: Alex
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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]]> Howards End 38374795 318 E.M. Forster 1984295292 Alex 4 3.97 1910 Howards End
author: E.M. Forster
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1910
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/04/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish]]> 18210768
As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and beautifully. In The Lost Art of Dress , historian and dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals that this wasn't always true.
In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women -- the so-called Dress Doctors -- taught American women that knowledge, not money, was key to a beautiful wardrobe. They empowered women to design, make, and choose clothing for both the workplace and the home. Armed with the Dress Doctors' simple design principles -- harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, emphasis -- modern American women from all classes learned to dress for all occasions in ways that made them confident, engaged members of society.

A captivating and beautifully illustrated look at the world of the Dress Doctors, The Lost Art of Dress introduces a new audience to their timeless rules of fashion and beauty -- rules which, with a little help, we can certainly learn again.]]> 347 Linda Przybyszewski 0465036716 Alex 3 recently-read 3.87 2014 The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish
author: Linda Przybyszewski
name: Alex
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2018/04/05
date added: 2018/04/05
shelves: recently-read
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]]> Girl Unknown 35423930 'I think you might be my father . . .'

When first-year student Zoë Barry walks into Professor David Connolly's office and tentatively says these words, he is left reeling. But it is the lives of his family - particularly his wife Caroline - which are turned upside down by the arrival of this stranger.

A daughter, a sister, a friend . . . an enemy?

Though no one knows quite who Zoë is, she is soon entangled in their lives. Yet her stories don't ring true and Caroline is determined to learn if the girl is the unlucky innocent she claims to be or someone with a far darker agenda.

A deadly cuckoo in the nest . . .Because by letting Zoë in, David and Caroline aren't just leaving themselves vulnerable. They're risking the most precious thing in the world - the lives of their children . . .]]> 293 Karen Perry 0805098747 Alex 0 to-read 3.40 2016 Girl Unknown
author: Karen Perry
name: Alex
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2018/03/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination]]> 23731881
Drawing from stories of her own post-graduate years, the world famous author addresses some of life's most important questions with acuity and emotional force.]]> 74 J.K. Rowling 0316369152 Alex 0 to-read 4.09 2015 Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Alex
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/12/07
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]]> <![CDATA[We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone]]> 36530066
In his debut short story collection, Bram Stoker Award finalist Ronald Malfi mines the depths and depravities of the human condition, exploring the dark underside of religion, marriage, love, fear, regret, and hunger in a world that spins just slightly askew on its axis. Rich in atmosphere and character, Malfi's debut collection is not to be missed.]]> 244 Ronald Malfi 1945373989 Alex 0 to-read 3.57 2017 We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone
author: Ronald Malfi
name: Alex
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2017/11/28
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]]> The Underground Railroad 30555488
In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver's Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey--hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.]]> 320 Colson Whitehead 0385542364 Alex 0 to-read 4.04 2016 The Underground Railroad
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Alex
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
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]]> Gallowglass 702468 304 Barbara Vine 0517088193 Alex 4 3.74 1990 Gallowglass
author: Barbara Vine
name: Alex
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1990
rating: 4
read at: 2017/10/24
date added: 2017/10/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World]]> 13532265 Ěý
In Volume VI of his acclaimed Hinges of History series, Thomas Cahill guides us through the thrilling period of the Renaissance and theĚýReformation (the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth century), so full of innovation and cultural change that the Western world would not experience its like again until the twentieth century. Beginning with the continent-wide disaster of the Black Death, Cahill traces the manyĚýdevelopments in European thought and experience that served both the new humanism of the Renaissance and the seemingly abrupt religious alterations of the increasingly radical Reformation. This is an age of the most sublime artistic and scientific adventure, but also of newly powerful princes and armies and of newly found courage, as many thousands refuse to bow their heads to the religious pieties of the past.Ěý It is an era of just-discovered continents and previously unknown peoples.ĚýMore than anything, it is a time of individuality in which a whole culture must achieve a new balance if the West is to continue.]]> 368 Thomas Cahill 0385495579 Alex 0 to-read 3.74 2013 Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World
author: Thomas Cahill
name: Alex
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2013
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]]> <![CDATA[Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (The Hinges of History)]]> 27200 Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea, his fourth volume to explore "the hinges of history," Thomas Cahill escorts the reader on another entertaining—and historically unassailable—journey through the landmarks of art and bloodshed that defined Greek culture nearly three millennia ago.

In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek islands, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader, demystified experience, and opened the way for civil discussion and experimentation—yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad recount a conflict in which rage and outrage spur men to action and suggest that their "bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons" is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of "shock and awe." And, centuries before Zorba, Greece was a land where music, dance, and freely flowing wine were essential to the high life. Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview.]]> 304 Thomas Cahill 0385495544 Alex 0 to-read 3.74 2003 Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (The Hinges of History)
author: Thomas Cahill
name: Alex
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2003
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]]> <![CDATA[Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus]]> 775405
In Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Thomas Cahill takes up his most daring and provocative subject yet: Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Western civilization.

Introducing us first to "the people Jesus knew," Thomas Cahill describes the oppressive Roman political presence, the pervasive Greek cultural influence, and especially the widely varied social and religious context of the Judaism in which Jesus moved and flourished. These backgrounds, essential to a complete understanding of Jesus, lead to the author's stunningly original interpretation of the New Testament--much of it based on material from the ancient Greek brilliantly translated by the author himself--that will delight readers and surprise even biblical scholars.

Thomas Cahill's most unusual skill may lie in his ability to bring to life people of a faraway world whose concerns seem at first to be utterly removed from the present day. We see Jesus as a real person, sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, but kind, humorous, and affectionate, shadowed by the inevitable climax of crucifixion, the cruelest form of execution ever devised by humankind. Mary, while not quite the "perpetual virgin" of popular piety, is a vivid presence and forceful influence on her son. And the apostle Paul, the carrier of Jesus' message and most important figure in the early Jesus movement (which became Christianity), finds rehabilitation in Cahill's realistic, revealing portrait of him.

The third volume in the Hinges of History series, this unique presentation of Jesus and his times is for believers and nonbelievers alike (for Jews and Christians, it is intended by the author as an act of reconciliation). With the same lively narration and irresistible perceptions that characterize How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill invites readers into an ancient world to commune with some of the most influential people who ever lived.]]> 353 Thomas Cahill 0385483724 Alex 0 to-read 3.97 2013 Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus
author: Thomas Cahill
name: Alex
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2013
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]]> <![CDATA[The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels]]> 27202
The author of the runaway bestseller How the Irish Saved Civilization has done it again. In The Gifts of the Jews Thomas Cahill takes us on another enchanting journey into history, once again recreating a time when the actions of a small band of people had repercussions that are still felt today.

The Gifts of the Jews reveals the critical change that made western civilization possible. Within the matrix of ancient religions and philosophies, life was seen as part of an endless cycle of birth and death; time was like a wheel, spinning ceaselessly. Yet somehow, the ancient Jews began to see time differently. For them, time had a beginning and an end; it was a narrative, whose triumphant conclusion would come in the future. From this insight came a new conception of men and women as individuals with unique destinies--a conception that would inform the Declaration of Independence--and our hopeful belief in progress and the sense that tomorrow can be better than today. As Thomas Cahill narrates this momentous shift, he also explains the real significance of such Biblical figures as Abraham and Sarah, Moses and the Pharaoh, Joshua, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.

Full of compelling stories, insights and humor, The Gifts of the Jews is an irresistible exploration of history as fascinating and fun as How the Irish Saved Civilization.]]> 304 Thomas Cahill 074595054X Alex 0 to-read 3.88 1998 The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels
author: Thomas Cahill
name: Alex
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1998
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]]> <![CDATA[How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval EuropeĚý]]> 25669
In this delightful and illuminating look into a crucial but little-known "hinge" of history, Thomas Cahill takes us to the "island of saints and scholars, " the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the west's written treasures. With the return of stability in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning. Thus the Irish not only were conservators of civilization, but became shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on western culture.]]> 246 Thomas Cahill 0385418493 Alex 5 3.81 1995 How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval EuropeĚý
author: Thomas Cahill
name: Alex
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2017/10/17
date added: 2017/10/18
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]]> <![CDATA[A Is for Alibi (Kinsey Millhone #1)]]> 64863
A IS FOR ACCUSED. That's why she draws desperate clients like Nikki Fife. Eight years ago, she was convicted of killing her philandering husband. Now she's out on parole and needs Kinsey's help to find the real killer. But after all this time, clearing Nikki's bad name won't be easy.

A IS FOR ALIBI. If there's one thing that makes Kinsey Millhone feel alive, it's playing on the edge. When her investigation turns up a second corpse, more suspects, and a new reason to kill, Kinsey discovers that the edge is closer--and sharper--than she imagined.]]> 308 Sue Grafton 0312938993 Alex 5 3.87 1982 A Is for Alibi (Kinsey Millhone #1)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Alex
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2017/07/01
date added: 2017/10/13
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]]> <![CDATA[B is for Burglar (Kinsey Millhone, #2)]]> 64865
Kinsey's hunch proves true when she begins her inquiries into Elaine's whereabouts and discovers that the attractive widow was last seen in a flashy lynx coat boarding a plane for Boca Raton. But the more Kinsey searches for Elaine the more questions she encounters. Is Elaine's disappearance tied in to the brutal murder several months ago of one of her bridge partners? And what happened to Elaine's Persian cat who seems to have also vanished?

Things take a turn for the worse when a stranger vandalizes the home of one of Elaine's neighbors and another neighbor turns up murdered. With her reputation and career on the line, Kinsey risks all to find a missing woman and a killer who's waiting in the shadows to strike again…]]> 320 Sue Grafton 0312939000 Alex 5 3.86 1985 B is for Burglar (Kinsey Millhone, #2)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Alex
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1985
rating: 5
read at: 2017/07/01
date added: 2017/10/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?]]> 18594409 #1 New York Times Bestseller

2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the "crazy closet"—with predictable results—the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed.

While the particulars are Chast-ian in their idiosyncrasies—an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care.

An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.]]> 228 Roz Chast 1608198065 Alex 5 4.14 2014 Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
author: Roz Chast
name: Alex
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/01
date added: 2017/10/13
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For anyone who's ever had a parent.... Ms. Chast's brilliant, hilarious and heartbreaking book could also be known as, 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Old Age, But Were Afraid to Ask.' I've always admired her nervy, neurotic cartoons and these go a step beyond humor to the gray period we all fear seeing and speaking about for ourselves and our loved ones - old age, illness and death. This book has been particularly hard-hitting and relevant for me in recent years and I cannot recommend it highly enough for filling a void of humor, information and painful details.
]]> <![CDATA[In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin]]> 9938498
A mild-mannered professor from Chicago, Dodd brings along his wife, son, and flamboyant daughter, Martha. At first Martha is entranced by the parties and pomp, and the handsome young men of the Third Reich with their infectious enthusiasm for restoring Germany to a position of world prominence. Enamored of the New Germany, she has one affair after another, including with the surprisingly honorable first chief of the Gestapo, Rudolf Diels. But as evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, confirmed by chilling first-person testimony, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department back home. Dodd watches with alarm as Jews are attacked, the press is censored, and drafts of frightening new laws begin to circulate. As that first year unfolds and the shadows deepen, the Dodds experience days full of excitement, intrigue, romance and ultimately, horror, when a climactic spasm of violence and murder reveals Hitler's true character and ruthless ambition.

Suffused with the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of the bizarre Goring and the expectedly charming—yet wholly sinister—Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts lends a stunning, eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold in real time, revealing an era of surprising nuance and complexity. The result is a dazzling, addictively readable work that speaks volumes about why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until Berlin, and Europe, were awash in blood and terror.]]> 448 Erik Larson 0307408841 Alex 5 recently-read 3.87 2011 In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
author: Erik Larson
name: Alex
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/01
date added: 2017/10/13
shelves: recently-read
review:

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