Jan's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 27 Feb 2025 08:35:35 -0800 60 Jan's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[A Rescued Heart (Come to My Rescue, #1)]]> 19000256 262 Natalie Replogle 1618080741 Jan 0 to-read 3.64 2013 A Rescued Heart (Come to My Rescue, #1)
author: Natalie Replogle
name: Jan
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/27
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The Frozen River 112975658 A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]>
432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546874 Jan 0 to-read 4.37 2023 The Frozen River
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Jan
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
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Isola 212806636 A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this epic saga of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.]]>
368 Allegra Goodman 0593730089 Jan 0 to-read 4.00 2025 Isola
author: Allegra Goodman
name: Jan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
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A Story Like the Wind 113387 384 Laurens van der Post 0156852616 Jan 0 to-read 4.39 1972 A Story Like the Wind
author: Laurens van der Post
name: Jan
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1972
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/22
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<![CDATA[Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland #1)]]> 32970179 When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.

Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.

Masterful, clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective.

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505 Anthony Horowitz 0062645242 Jan 0 to-read 4.02 2016 Magpie Murders (Susan Ryeland #1)
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Jan
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/08
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And Then There Were None 16299
"Ten little boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there were nine. Nine little boys sat up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight. Eight little boys traveling in Devon; One said he'd stay there then there were seven. Seven little boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in half and then there were six. Six little boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five. Five little boys going in for law; One got in Chancery and then there were four. Four little boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three. Three little boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two. Two little boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was one. One little boy left all alone; He went out and hanged himself and then there were none."

When they realize that murders are occurring as described in the rhyme, terror mounts. One by one they fall prey. Before the weekend is out, there will be none. Who has choreographed this dastardly scheme? And who will be left to tell the tale? Only the dead are above suspicion.]]>
264 Agatha Christie 0312330871 Jan 0 to-read 4.28 1939 And Then There Were None
author: Agatha Christie
name: Jan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1939
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/08
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Grace 33830631 A sweeping, Dickensian story of a young girl and her brother on a great journey across nineteenth-century Ireland on the eve of the Great Famine.

Early one October morning, Grace's mother snatches her from sleep and brutally cuts off her hair, declaring, "You are the strong one now." With winter close at hand and Ireland already suffering, Grace is no longer safe at home. And so her mother outfits Grace in men's clothing and casts her out. When her younger brother Colly follows after her, the two set off on a life-changing odyssey in the looming shadow of the Great Famine.

To survive, Grace will become a boy, a bandit, a penitent and finally, a woman. A meditation on love, life and destiny, Grace is an epic coming-of-age novel, and a poetic evocation of the Irish famine as it has never been written.]]>
368 Paul Lynch 0316316296 Jan 0 to-read 3.92 2017 Grace
author: Paul Lynch
name: Jan
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/08
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The Book of Lost Names 52762903 The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.]]>
388 Kristin Harmel 1982131896 Jan 0 to-read 4.41 2020 The Book of Lost Names
author: Kristin Harmel
name: Jan
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/08
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<![CDATA[A Month of Summer (Blue Sky Hill #1)]]> 2241723 359 Lisa Wingate 0451224035 Jan 0 to-read 4.01 2008 A Month of Summer (Blue Sky Hill #1)
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Jan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/06
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Book Lovers 58690308 One summer. Two rivals. A plot twist they didn't see coming....

Nora Stephens� life is books—she’s read them all—and she is not that type of heroine. Not the plucky one, not the laidback dream girl, and especially not the sweetheart. In fact, the only people Nora is a heroine for are her clients, for whom she lands enormous deals as a cutthroat literary agent, and her beloved little sister Libby.

Which is why she agrees to go to Sunshine Falls, North Carolina for the month of August when Libby begs her for a sisters� trip away—with visions of a small-town transformation for Nora, who she’s convinced needs to become the heroine in her own story. But instead of picnics in meadows, or run-ins with a handsome country doctor or bulging-forearmed bartender, Nora keeps bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor from back in the city. It would be a meet-cute if not for the fact that they’ve met many times and it’s never been cute.

If Nora knows she’s not an ideal heroine, Charlie knows he’s nobody’s hero, but as they are thrown together again and again—in a series of coincidences no editor worth their salt would allow—what they discover might just unravel the carefully crafted stories they’ve written about themselves.]]>
377 Emily Henry 0593334833 Jan 0 to-read 4.09 2022 Book Lovers
author: Emily Henry
name: Jan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/02
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On a Quiet Street 58977601 A New York Times Book Review Summer Read andEdgar Award nominee!Don’t miss this unputdownable psychological thriller! Perfect for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware!

When you really start to look beyond the airy open floor plans and marble counters, Brighton Hills is filled with secrets. Some big, some little, some deadly. And one by one, they’re about to be revealed� “A writer to watch.� �Publishers Weekly

The perfect neighborhood can be the perfect place to hide�

Who wouldn’t want to live in Brighton Hills? This exclusive community on the Oregon coast is the perfect mix of luxury and natural beauty. Stunning houses nestle beneath mighty Douglas firs, and lush backyards roll down to the lakefront. It’s the kind of place where neighbors look out for one another. Sometimes a little too closely�

Cora thinks her husband, Finn, is cheating—she just needs to catch him in the act. That’s where Paige comes in. Paige lost her son to a hit-and-run last year, and she’s drowning in the kind of grief that makes people do reckless things like spying on the locals, searching for proof that her son’s death was no accident…and agreeing to Cora’s plan to reveal what kind of man Finn really is. All the while, their reclusive new neighbor, Georgia, is acting more strangely every day. But what could such a lovely young mother possibly be hiding?

Don't miss Seraphina's upcoming novel, The Vanishing Hour. You won't be able to put it down!

Other thrillers from Seraphina to keep you up all
The Vanishing Hour Such a Good Wife Someone’s Listening

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302 Seraphina Nova Glass 0369717058 Jan 0 to-read 4.13 2022 On a Quiet Street
author: Seraphina Nova Glass
name: Jan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/02
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Little Fires Everywhere 34331079
Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, ŷ, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more...

Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more. ]]>
348 Celeste Ng Jan 0 to-read 4.23 2017 Little Fires Everywhere
author: Celeste Ng
name: Jan
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/02/09
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<![CDATA[The Last Line (Tracy Crosswhite, #8.5)]]> 58481394
His old life in the rearview, Del Castigliano has left Wisconsin to work homicide for the Seattle PD. Breaking him in is veteran detective Moss Gunderson, and he’s handing Del a big catch: the bodies of two unidentified men fished from Lake Union. It’s a major opportunity for the new detective, and Del runs with it, chasing every lead—to every dead end. Despite the help of another section rookie, Vic Fazzio, Del is going nowhere fast. Until one shotgun theory looks to be dead right: the victims are casualties of a drug smuggling operation. But critical information is missing—or purposely hidden. It’s forcing Del into a crisis of character and duty that not even the people he trusts can help him resolve.]]>
53 Robert Dugoni 1542036542 Jan 0 currently-reading 3.85 2021 The Last Line (Tracy Crosswhite, #8.5)
author: Robert Dugoni
name: Jan
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/26
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<![CDATA[Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity]]> 44300042 A revised edition of Kim Scott's perennial bestseller that created a cultural revolution and took workplaces worldwide by storm.

Radical Candor is back with an all new foreword, afterword, FAQ, and radically candid performance review.

From the time we learn to speak, we’re told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. When you become a manager, it’s your job to say it—and your obligation.

Author Kim Scott was an executive at Google and then Apple, where she worked with a team to develop a class on how to be a good boss. What emerged was her vital new approach to effective management, Radical Candor.

Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring it’s obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging it’s ruinous empathy. When you do neither it’s manipulative insincerity.

This simple framework can help you build better relationships at work, and fulfill your three key responsibilities as a leader: creating a culture of feedback, building a cohesive team, and achieving results you’re all proud of.

Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from the author’s experience and giving actionable lessons to the reader, it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people love both their work and their colleagues.

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272 Kim Malone Scott Jan 0 currently-reading 4.09 2017 Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
author: Kim Malone Scott
name: Jan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/04/29
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<![CDATA[The Defendants (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thrillers #2)]]> 20761390 266 John Ellsworth Jan 0 currently-reading 4.21 2014 The Defendants (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thrillers #2)
author: John Ellsworth
name: Jan
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/16
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<![CDATA[Out of the Silence: After the Crash]]> 44612965 A personal story of survival, hope, and spiritual awakening in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

It’s the unfathomable modern legend that has become a testament to the resilience of the human spirit: the 1972 Andes plane crash and the Uruguayan rugby teammates who suffered seventy-two days among the dead and dying. It was a harrowing test of endurance on a snowbound cordillera that ended in a miraculous rescue. Now comes the unflinching and emotional true story by one of the men who found his way home.

Four decades after the tragedy, a climber discovered survivor Eduardo Strauch’s wallet near the memorialized crash site and returned it to him. It was a gesture that compelled Strauch to finally “break the silence of the mountains.�

In this revelatory and rewarding memoir, Strauch withholds nothing as he reveals the truth behind the life-changing events that challenged him physically and tested him spiritually, but would never destroy him. In revisiting the horror story we thought we knew, Strauch shares the lessons gleaned from far outside the realm of rational learning: how surviving on the mountain, in the face of its fierce, unforgiving power and desolate beauty, forever altered his perception of love, friendship, death, fear, loss, and hope.]]>
172 Eduardo Strauch Urioste 1542042941 Jan 0 currently-reading 3.88 2012 Out of the Silence: After the Crash
author: Eduardo Strauch Urioste
name: Jan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/09/16
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<![CDATA[If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood]]> 45299992
After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.

For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

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431 Gregg Olsen 1542005248 Jan 0 3.99 2019 If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood
author: Gregg Olsen
name: Jan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2020/09/16
date added: 2020/09/16
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<![CDATA[The Night Bird (Frost Easton, #1)]]> 31820555 What if you had to relive your most terrifying memory…over and over? A detective and a psychiatrist investigate in Thriller Award–winning author Brian Freeman’s gripping psychological novel.

Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn’t like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco—as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks—Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie’s controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories…and all the victims were her patients.

As Frost and Frankie carry out their own investigations, the case becomes increasingly personal—and dangerous. Long-submerged secrets surface as someone called the Night Bird taunts the pair with cryptic messages pertaining to the deaths. Soon Frankie is forced to confront strange gaps in her own memory, and Frost faces a killer who knows the detective’s worst fears.

As the body count rises and the Night Bird circles ever closer, a dedicated cop and a brilliant doctor race to solve the puzzle before a cunning killer claims another victim.

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364 Brian Freeman 1503996891 Jan 0 currently-reading 4.12 2017 The Night Bird (Frost Easton, #1)
author: Brian Freeman
name: Jan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/08/30
shelves: currently-reading
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<![CDATA[Moments We Forget (Thatcher Sisters #2)]]> 42683659
Now, Jillian's on the road to recovery after finally finishing chemo and radiation, but residual effects of the treatment keep her from reclaiming her life as she'd hoped. And just when her dreams might be falling into place, a life-altering revelation from her husband sends her reeling again.

Will Jillian ever achieve her own dreams, or will she always be "just Jillian," the less-than Thatcher sister? Can she count on her sisters as she tries to step into a stronger place, or are they stuck in their childhood roles forever?]]>
448 Beth K. Vogt 1496427289 Jan 0 to-read 4.13 2019 Moments We Forget (Thatcher Sisters #2)
author: Beth K. Vogt
name: Jan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/29
shelves: to-read
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An Invisible Thread 12902549 New York Times bestseller chronicles the lifelong friendship between a busy sales executive and a disadvantaged young boy, and how both of their lives were changed by what began as one small gesture of kindness. A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York�.an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter-Kirkus Reviews.

Stopping was never part of the plan...

She was a successful ad sales rep in Manhattan. He was a homeless, eleven-year-old panhandler on the street. He asked for spare change; she kept walking. But then something stopped her in her tracks, and she went back. And she continued to go back, again and again. They met up nearly every week for years and built an unexpected, life-changing friendship that has today spanned almost three decades.

Whatever made me notice him on that street corner so many years ago is clearly something that cannot be extinguished, no matter how relentless the forces aligned against it. Some may call it spirit. Some may call it heart. It drew me to him, as if we were bound by some invisible, unbreakable thread. And whatever it is, it binds us still.]]>
260 Laura Schroff Jan 0 to-read 4.06 2010 An Invisible Thread
author: Laura Schroff
name: Jan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/29
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Everything You Want Me to Be 29276588
Hattie Hoffman has spent her whole life playing many parts: the good student, the good daughter, the good girlfriend. But Hattie wants something more, something bigger, and ultimately something that turns out to be exceedingly dangerous. When she’s found brutally stabbed to death, the tragedy rips right through the fabric of her small-town community.

It soon comes to light that Hattie was engaged in a highly compromising and potentially explosive secret online relationship. The question is: Did anyone else know? And to what lengths might they have gone to end it? Hattie’s boyfriend seems distraught over her death, but had he fallen so deeply in love with her that she had become an obsession? Or did Hattie’s impulsive, daredevil nature simply put her in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading her to a violent death at the hands of a stranger?

Full of twists and turns, Everything You Want Me to Be reconstructs a year in the life of a dangerously mesmerizing young woman, during which a small town’s darkest secrets come to the forefront…and she inches closer and closer to death.

Evocative and razor-sharp, Everything You Want Me to Be challenges you to test the lines between innocence and culpability, identity and deception. Does love lead to self-discovery—or destruction?]]>
352 Mindy Mejia 1501123424 Jan 3 3.78 2017 Everything You Want Me to Be
author: Mindy Mejia
name: Jan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2017/10/29
date added: 2019/10/29
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If the Creek Don't Rise 32804703
In a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands, Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She’s been married to Roy Tupkin for fifteen days, and she knows now that she should have listened to the folks who said he was trouble. But when a stranger sweeps in and knocks the world off-kilter for everyone in town, Sadie begins to think there might be more to life than being Roy’s wife.

As stark and magnificent as Appalachia itself, If the Creek Don’t Rise is a bold and beautifully layered debut about a dusty, desperate town finding the inner strength it needs to outrun its demons. The folks of Baines Creek will take you deep into the mountains with heart, honesty, and homegrown grit.]]>
305 Leah Weiss 1492647454 Jan 4 3.86 2017 If the Creek Don't Rise
author: Leah Weiss
name: Jan
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/29
date added: 2019/10/29
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Crossing to Safety 9820 335 Wallace Stegner 037575931X Jan 0 to-read 4.16 1987 Crossing to Safety
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Jan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/02/27
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Tell the Wolves I'm Home 17162148
1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart.

At Finn’s funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most.

An emotionally charged coming-of-age novel, Tell the Wolves I’m Home is a tender story of love lost and found, an unforgettable portrait of the way compassion can make us whole again.]]>
384 Carol Rifka Brunt 0812982851 Jan 0 to-read 4.13 2012 Tell the Wolves I'm Home
author: Carol Rifka Brunt
name: Jan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/02/27
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Finding Grace 43170493 This morning, my daughter sat right here, munching her breakfast, too excited to finish it. Now, she is missing.

The day after her ninth birthday, Lucie and Blake Sullivan agree, for the very first time, to let their daughter, Grace, make the four-minute walk back home alone from a friend’s house just down the street.

They joke with friends about hiding behind bushes to ensure she is safe. But the joke turns sour when Grace does not appear.

Despite the best efforts of the police and local community, Grace seems to have vanished into thin air. With hope fading fast, Lucie knows she can rely on her husband to support her through such dark times. That is until the day she makes a shocking discovery, hidden in Blake’s desk, and suddenly she begins to doubt everything she knew about the man she married.

But Lucie harbours a terrible secret of her own. One that she has never shared with anyone, even Blake �

And as the search for Grace reaches fever pitch, Lucie receives a terrifying message. If she is ever to see Grace again, Lucie has no choice but to face the past she tried hard to bury forever. And she must do it alone.]]>
337 K.L. Slater 1786817616 Jan 0 to-read 3.93 2019 Finding Grace
author: K.L. Slater
name: Jan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/02/15
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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 Jan 0 to-read 4.35 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing
author: Delia Owens
name: Jan
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/02/15
shelves: to-read
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The Silent Patient 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

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

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]>
336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Jan 0 to-read 4.17 2019 The Silent Patient
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Jan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Chalk Man 35356382
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.

That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.]]>
280 C.J. Tudor 1524760986 Jan 0 to-read 3.68 2018 The Chalk Man
author: C.J. Tudor
name: Jan
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/11/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Identicals 32498122 From New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand, a summertime story about identical twins who couldn't be any less alike.

Nantucket is only two and a half hours away from Martha's Vineyard by ferry. But the two islands might as well be worlds apart for a set of identical twin sisters who have been at odds for years. When a family crisis forces them to band together � or at least appear to � the twins slowly come to realize that the special bond that they share is more important than the sibling rivalry that's driven them apart for the better part of their lives. A touching depiction of all the pleasures and annoyances of the sibling relationship, Elin Hilderbrand's next New York Times bestseller, THE IDENTICALS proves once and for all that just because twins look exactly the same doesn't mean they're anything alike.


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421 Elin Hilderbrand 031655247X Jan 0 to-read 3.83 2017 The Identicals
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Jan
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Days Without End (Days Without End, #1)]]> 30212107
Moving from the plains of Wyoming to Tennessee, Sebastian Barry’s latest work is a masterpiece of atmosphere and language. An intensely poignant story of two men and the makeshift family they create with a young Sioux girl, Winona, Days Without End is a fresh and haunting portrait of the most fateful years in American history and is a novel never to be forgotten.]]>
259 Sebastian Barry 0525427368 Jan 0 to-read 3.93 2016 Days Without End (Days Without End, #1)
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Jan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/30
shelves: to-read
review:

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Katalin Street 33534091
Their lives are torn apart in 1944 by the German occupation, which only the Elekes family survives intact. The postwar regime relocates them to a cramped Soviet-style apartment and they struggle to come to terms with social and political change, personal loss, and unstated feelings of guilt over the deportation of the Held parents and the death of little Henriette, who had been left in their protection. But the girl survives in a miasmal afterlife, and reappears at key moments as a mute witness to the inescapable power of past events.

As in The Door and Iza’s Ballad, Magda Szabó conducts a clear-eyed investigation into the ways in which we inflict suffering on those we love. Katalin Street, which won the 2007 Prix Cévennes for Best European novel, is a poignant, somber, at times harrowing novel, but beautifully conceived and truly unforgettable.]]>
235 Magda Szabó 1681371529 Jan 0 to-read 4.12 1969 Katalin Street
author: Magda Szabó
name: Jan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/30
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere, #1)]]> 30644891 When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead.

In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth’s population—killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant—the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power—and the strong who possess it.

A few women like her survived, though they are scarce. Even fewer are safe from the clans of men, who, driven by fear, seek to control those remaining. To preserve her freedom, she dons men’s clothing, goes by false names, and avoids as many people as possible. But as the world continues to grapple with its terrible circumstances, she’ll discover a role greater than chasing a pale imitation of independence.

After all, if humanity is to be reborn, someone must be its guide.]]>
300 Meg Elison 1503994112 Jan 0 to-read 4.19 2014 The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere, #1)
author: Meg Elison
name: Jan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/27
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards]]> 23647129
The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning first with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, live for, go to church with, don't like, don't understand, fear, struggle with, compare ourselves to, and judge. People are the best and worst thing about the human life.

Jen Hatmaker knows this all too well, and so she reveals how to practice kindness, grace, truthfulness, vision, and love to ourselves and those around us. By doing this, For the Love leads our generation to reimagine Jesus' grace as a way of life, and it does it in a funny yet profound manner that Christian readers will love. Along the way, Hatmaker shows readers how to reclaim their prophetic voices and become Good News again to a hurting, polarized world.]]>
224 Jen Hatmaker 0718031822 Jan 0 to-read 4.06 2015 For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards
author: Jen Hatmaker
name: Jan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Force of Nature (Aaron Falk, #2)]]> 34275222
Only four come out on the other side.

The hike through the rugged Giralang Ranges is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and encourage teamwork and resilience. At least, that's what the corporate retreat website advertises.

Federal Police investigator Aaron Falk has a keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing hiker, Alice Russell. Because Alice knew secrets, about the company she worked for and the people she worked with.

The four returning women tell Falk a tale of fear, violence and fractured trust during their days in the remote Australian bushland. And as Falk delves into the disappearance of Alice, he begins to suspect some dangers ran far deeper than anyone knew.]]>
326 Jane Harper 1250105633 Jan 0 to-read 3.78 2017 Force of Nature (Aaron Falk, #2)
author: Jane Harper
name: Jan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI]]> 29496076
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,� roamed � virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. The book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly riveting, but also emotionally devastating.]]>
359 David Grann 0385534256 Jan 0 to-read 4.12 2017 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
author: David Grann
name: Jan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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Everything's Eventual 10579
Nothing is quite as it seems. Expect the unexpected in this veritable treasure trove of enthralling, witty, dark tales that could only come from the imagination of the greatest storyteller of our time.]]>
605 Stephen King 1416524355 Jan 0 to-read 3.99 2002 Everything's Eventual
author: Stephen King
name: Jan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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Before We Were Yours 32148570 Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.]]>
342 Lisa Wingate 0425284689 Jan 5 favorites
"A woman's past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music."

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate is a powerful, heart-wrenching story that sheds light on the true story of the horrific child-brokering scheme of Georgia Tann, and The Tenneessee Children's Home Society from the early 1930s to 1950s. Families were literally ripped apart!

There are two story lines; The PAST: 1939, as told by Rill Foss, a twelve yr old river gypsy and her Mom, Queenie, Dad, Briney, a brother and three sisters on a Shanty-Boat on the Mississippi River. They are very poor with few possessions but they have love and each other! Rill was left to care for her siblings when her pregnant Mother has to be taken to the hospital. Meantime, Rill and her siblings are snatched away by strangers, and taken to the Children's Home Society run by Georgia Tann. There, in horrible conditions, Rill struggles to survive and keep her siblings safe and together in such a deplorable and abusive setting! My heart goes out to Rill:

"It's just a little ache, and I know where it comes from. I can stop it anytime. The one in my heart is way bigger. I can't fix it no matter how hard I try. It scares me so much that I can't even breathe."

AND PRESENT Day: Told by Avery Stafford, a young woman and lawyer, from a very prominent family in Aikens, SC. One day in a Nursing Home a woman named May, calls her by another name. This sends Avery on an intriguing journey searching through her Grandmother Judy's history, and finding hidden family secrets!

"The idea splits me down the middle, leaving half of my identity on each side of the divide. Am I my father's daughter, or am I just me? Do I have to sacrifice one to be the other? " Avery's dilemma!

Wingate intertwined the two story lines beautifully, and then she created an awesome finish that leaves you yearing for more!

I learned a lot through this story about this horrific time in our history. It left me with feelings of astonishment and anger! It's so sad that authorities knew of, and colluded in, this terrible travesty---the TCHS's scheme of child-brokering to affluent families, and that this went on for years!!!

This was an amazing read! And even though there is sadness and sorrow, and makes you angry, there is also joy; and in the end, you have hope! Hope in love and family!

5 Stars! I highly recommend!

.]]>
4.38 2017 Before We Were Yours
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Jan
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2017/10/06
date added: 2017/10/21
shelves: favorites
review:
This was such a good story! A wonderful historical fiction! Very compelling and lovingly written!

"A woman's past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music."

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate is a powerful, heart-wrenching story that sheds light on the true story of the horrific child-brokering scheme of Georgia Tann, and The Tenneessee Children's Home Society from the early 1930s to 1950s. Families were literally ripped apart!

There are two story lines; The PAST: 1939, as told by Rill Foss, a twelve yr old river gypsy and her Mom, Queenie, Dad, Briney, a brother and three sisters on a Shanty-Boat on the Mississippi River. They are very poor with few possessions but they have love and each other! Rill was left to care for her siblings when her pregnant Mother has to be taken to the hospital. Meantime, Rill and her siblings are snatched away by strangers, and taken to the Children's Home Society run by Georgia Tann. There, in horrible conditions, Rill struggles to survive and keep her siblings safe and together in such a deplorable and abusive setting! My heart goes out to Rill:

"It's just a little ache, and I know where it comes from. I can stop it anytime. The one in my heart is way bigger. I can't fix it no matter how hard I try. It scares me so much that I can't even breathe."

AND PRESENT Day: Told by Avery Stafford, a young woman and lawyer, from a very prominent family in Aikens, SC. One day in a Nursing Home a woman named May, calls her by another name. This sends Avery on an intriguing journey searching through her Grandmother Judy's history, and finding hidden family secrets!

"The idea splits me down the middle, leaving half of my identity on each side of the divide. Am I my father's daughter, or am I just me? Do I have to sacrifice one to be the other? " Avery's dilemma!

Wingate intertwined the two story lines beautifully, and then she created an awesome finish that leaves you yearing for more!

I learned a lot through this story about this horrific time in our history. It left me with feelings of astonishment and anger! It's so sad that authorities knew of, and colluded in, this terrible travesty---the TCHS's scheme of child-brokering to affluent families, and that this went on for years!!!

This was an amazing read! And even though there is sadness and sorrow, and makes you angry, there is also joy; and in the end, you have hope! Hope in love and family!

5 Stars! I highly recommend!

.
]]>
The Identicals 32498081 From New York Times bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand, a summertime story about identical twins who couldn't be any less alike.

Nantucket is only two and a half hours away from Martha's Vineyard by ferry. But the two islands might as well be worlds apart for a set of identical twin sisters who have been at odds for years. When a family crisis forces them to band together � or at least appear to � the twins slowly come to realize that the special bond that they share is more important than the sibling rivalry that's driven them apart for the better part of their lives. A touching depiction of all the pleasures and annoyances of the sibling relationship, Elin Hilderbrand's next New York Times bestseller, THE IDENTICALS proves once and for all that just because twins look exactly the same doesn't mean they're anything alike.


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432 Elin Hilderbrand 0316375195 Jan 0 to-read 3.98 2017 The Identicals
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Jan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/19
shelves: to-read
review:

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Future Home of the Living God 34217599
Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate, fueled by a swelling panic about the end of humanity.]]>
269 Louise Erdrich 0062694057 Jan 0 to-read 3.58 2017 Future Home of the Living God
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Jan
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/17
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Last Child (Johnny Merrimon, #1)]]> 5556466
Determined to find his sister, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown. It is a desperate, terrifying search, but Johnny is not as alone as he might think. Detective Clyde Hunt has never stopped looking for Alyssa either, and he has a soft spot for Johnny. He watches over the boy and tries to keep him safe, but when Johnny uncovers a dangerous lead and vows to follow it, Hunt has no choice but to intervene.

Then a second child goes missing...

Undeterred by Hunt's threats or his mother's pleas, Johnny enlists the help of his last friend, and together they plunge into the wild, to a forgotten place with a history of violence that goes back more than a hundred years. There, they meet a giant of a man, an escaped convict on his own tragic quest. What they learn from him will shatter every notion Johnny had about the fate of his sister; it will lead them to another far place, to a truth that will test both boys to the limit.

Traveling the wilderness between innocence and hard wisdom, between hopelessness and faith, The Last Child leaves all categories behind and establishes John Hart as a writer of unique power.]]>
373 John Hart 0312359322 Jan 0 to-read 4.11 2009 The Last Child (Johnny Merrimon, #1)
author: John Hart
name: Jan
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1)]]> 18131
It was a dark and stormy night.

Out of this wild night, a strange visitor comes to the Murry house and beckons Meg, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe on a most dangerous and extraordinary adventure—one that will threaten their lives and our universe.

A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L'Engle's classic Time Quintet.]]>
211 Madeleine L'Engle 0440498058 Jan 0 to-read 4.04 1962 A Wrinkle in Time (A Wrinkle in Time Quintet, #1)
author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: Jan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Last Mrs. Parrish (Mrs. Parrish, #1)]]> 34043643
To everyone in the exclusive town of Bishops Harbor, Connecticut, Daphne—a socialite and philanthropist—and her real-estate mogul husband, Jackson, are a couple straight out of a fairy tale.

Amber’s envy could eat her alive . . . if she didn't have a plan. Amber uses Daphne’s compassion and caring to insinuate herself into the family’s life—the first step in a meticulous scheme to undermine her. Before long, Amber is Daphne’s closest confidante, traveling to Europe with the Parrishes and their lovely young daughters, and growing closer to Jackson. But a skeleton from her past may undermine everything that Amber has worked towards, and if it is discovered, her well-laid plan may fall to pieces.

With shocking turns and dark secrets that will keep you guessing until the very end, The Last Mrs. Parrish is a fresh, juicy, and utterly addictive thriller from a diabolically imaginative talent.]]>
560 Liv Constantine 0062688162 Jan 0 to-read 3.93 2017 The Last Mrs. Parrish (Mrs. Parrish, #1)
author: Liv Constantine
name: Jan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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Close Enough to Touch 30753714 Can you miss something you never had?

Jubilee Jenkins is no ordinary librarian. With a rare allergy to human touch, any skin-to-skin contact could literally kill her. But after retreating into solitude for nearly ten years, Jubilee’s decided to brave the world again, despite the risks. Armed with a pair of gloves, long sleeves, and her trusty bicycle, she finally ventures out the front door—and into her future.

Eric Keegan has troubles of his own. With his daughter from a failed marriage no longer speaking to him, and his brilliant, if psychologically troubled, adopted son attempting telekinesis, Eric’s struggling to figure out how his life got so off course, and how to be the dad—and man—he wants so desperately to be. So when an encounter over the check-out desk at the local library entangles his life with that of a beautiful—albeit eccentric—woman, he finds himself wanting nothing more than to be near her.]]>
306 Colleen Oakley 1501139266 Jan 5 CLOSE ENOUGH TO TOUCH By Colleen Oakley is a great read!

"People did stare at me in high school -- like I was a curiosity -- but I didn't think anyone ever noticed me. It's a strange feeling to be seen but invisible at the same time."

I loved the heroine, Jubilee Jenkins! She is very charming and down-to-earth. She is a young woman with a terrible, rare allergy. She is deathly allergic to human skin contact! She can't be touched! Her mother left home when Jubilee was eighteen. And, due to a terrible incident at the end of high school, Jubilee became a recluse and lived at home alone for nine years, never venturing outside until she learned that her mother died. I rooted for her throughout the story as she struggled to find her way in the outside world!

Then there is Eric, a handsome young businessman, a divorced father who just moved to town with a young adopted son, Aja, who is a very intelligent boy, but has psychological problems. Eric also has a fourteen year old daughter who is troubled by the divorce, and lives with his wife.

Through a unique set of circumstances, all three main characters meet and connect with each other, each on their own level. They help each other to cope with their various problems and fears.

I love Colleen Oakley's easy-reading style of writing. She has a wonderful way of telling about real situations and adding just the right amount humor to make it so warm and inviting! I developed a strong emotional connection to Jubilee, Eric and his son Aja. I laughed out loud and I cried tears of joy!

The ending was one that I didn't foresee, but I loved! And then I wanted more!!

What a great read! Highly recommend!
4.5 stars! I can't wait to read some of Oakley's other works. Hope you ALL read this one!]]>
3.93 2017 Close Enough to Touch
author: Colleen Oakley
name: Jan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2017/10/15
date added: 2017/10/16
shelves:
review:
A Wonderful, Quirky, Feel-Good Story!
CLOSE ENOUGH TO TOUCH By Colleen Oakley is a great read!

"People did stare at me in high school -- like I was a curiosity -- but I didn't think anyone ever noticed me. It's a strange feeling to be seen but invisible at the same time."

I loved the heroine, Jubilee Jenkins! She is very charming and down-to-earth. She is a young woman with a terrible, rare allergy. She is deathly allergic to human skin contact! She can't be touched! Her mother left home when Jubilee was eighteen. And, due to a terrible incident at the end of high school, Jubilee became a recluse and lived at home alone for nine years, never venturing outside until she learned that her mother died. I rooted for her throughout the story as she struggled to find her way in the outside world!

Then there is Eric, a handsome young businessman, a divorced father who just moved to town with a young adopted son, Aja, who is a very intelligent boy, but has psychological problems. Eric also has a fourteen year old daughter who is troubled by the divorce, and lives with his wife.

Through a unique set of circumstances, all three main characters meet and connect with each other, each on their own level. They help each other to cope with their various problems and fears.

I love Colleen Oakley's easy-reading style of writing. She has a wonderful way of telling about real situations and adding just the right amount humor to make it so warm and inviting! I developed a strong emotional connection to Jubilee, Eric and his son Aja. I laughed out loud and I cried tears of joy!

The ending was one that I didn't foresee, but I loved! And then I wanted more!!

What a great read! Highly recommend!
4.5 stars! I can't wait to read some of Oakley's other works. Hope you ALL read this one!
]]>
<![CDATA[The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle, #1)]]> 34017098 The Enchanted about an investigator who must use her unique insights to find a missing little girl.

"Where are you, Madison Culver? Flying with the angels, a silver speck on a wing? Are you dreaming, buried under snow? Or—is it possible—you are still alive?"

Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon’s Skookum National Forest. She would be eight-years-old now—if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Known to the police and a select group of parents as "the Child Finder," Naomi is their last hope.

Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past. She understands children like Madison because once upon a time, she was a lost girl, too.

As Naomi relentlessly pursues and slowly uncovers the truth behind Madison’s disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce the defenses that have protected her, reminding her of a terrible loss she feels but cannot remember. If she finds Madison, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?

Told in the alternating voices of Naomi and a deeply imaginative child, The Child Finder is a breathtaking, exquisitely rendered literary page-turner about redemption, the line between reality and memories and dreams, and the human capacity to survive.]]>
288 Rene Denfeld 0062692690 Jan 0 to-read 3.98 2017 The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle, #1)
author: Rene Denfeld
name: Jan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

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Reservoir 13 33283659 Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over thirteen years as the aftershocks of a tragedy refuse to subside.]]> 336 Jon McGregor 0008238626 Jan 0 to-read 3.72 2017 Reservoir 13
author: Jon McGregor
name: Jan
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/15
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Tobacconist 32708925 When seventeen-year-old Franz exchanges his home in the idyllic beauty of the Austrian lake district for the bustle of Vienna, his homesickness quickly dissolves amidst the thrum of the city. In his role as apprentice to the elderly tobacconist Otto Trsnyek, he will soon be supplying the great and good of Vienna with their newspapers and cigarettes. Among the regulars is a Professor Freud, whose predilection for cigars and occasional willingness to dispense romantic advice will forge a bond between him and young Franz.

It is 1937. In a matter of months Germany will annex Austria and the storm that has been threatening to engulf the little tobacconist will descend, leaving the lives of Franz, Otto and Professor Freud irredeemably changed. In the tradition of novels such as Fred Uhlman's classic Reunion, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Rachel Seiffert's The Dark Room, The Tobacconist tells a deeply moving story of ordinary lives profoundly affected by the Third Reich.

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241 Robert Seethaler Jan 0 to-read 3.84 2012 The Tobacconist
author: Robert Seethaler
name: Jan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/14
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton]]> 32096 Her new novel, set in the 1850s, speaks to us in a splendidly quirky voice--the strong, wry, no-nonsense voice of Lidie Harkness of Quincy, Illinois, a young woman of courage, good sense, and good heart. It carries us into an America so violently torn apart by the question of slavery that it makes our current political battlegrounds seem a peaceable kingdom.
Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive--a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at twenty, making a good marriage--to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State.
Lidie packs up and goes with him. And the novel races alongside them into the Territory, into the maelstrom of "Bloody Kansas," where slaveholding Missourians constantly and viciously clash with Free Staters, where wandering youths kill you as soon as look at you--where Lidie becomes even more fervently abolitionist than her husband as the young couple again and again barely escape entrapment in webs of atrocity on both sides of the great question.
And when, suddenly, cold-blooded murder invades her own intimate circle, Lidie doesn't falter. She cuts off her hair, disguises herself as a boy, and rides into Missouri in search of the killers--a woman in a fiercely male world, an abolitionist spy in slave territory. On the run, her life threatened, her wits sharpened, she takes on yet another identity--and, in the very midst of her masquerade, discovers herself.
Lidie grows increasingly important to us as we follow her travels and adventures on the feverish eve of the War Between the States. With its crackling portrayal of a totally individual and wonderfully articulate woman, its storytelling drive, and its powerful recapturing of an almost forgotten part of the American story, this is Jane Smiley at her enthralling and enriching best.]]>
452 Jane Smiley 0449910830 Jan 0 to-read 3.57 1998 The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
author: Jane Smiley
name: Jan
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Secrets She Keeps 33584818 In the bestselling tradition of The Girl on the Train and In a Dark, Dark Wood, from the internationally bestselling author whom Stephen King called “an absolute master� of the psychological thriller, comes a riveting suspense novel about the unlikely friendship between two pregnant women that asks: how far would you go to create the perfect family?

Agatha is pregnant and works part-time stocking shelves at a grocery store in a ritzy London suburb, counting down the days until her baby is due. As the hours of her shifts creep by in increasing discomfort, the one thing she looks forward to at work is catching a glimpse of Meghan, the effortlessly chic customer whose elegant lifestyle dazzles her. Meghan has it all: two perfect children, a handsome husband, a happy marriage, a stylish group of friends, and she writes perfectly droll confessional posts on her popular parenting blog—posts that Agatha reads with devotion each night as she waits for her absent boyfriend, the father of her baby, to maybe return her calls.

When Agatha learns that Meghan is pregnant again, and that their due dates fall within the same month, she finally musters up the courage to speak to her, thrilled that they now have the ordeal of childbearing in common. Little does Meghan know that the mundane exchange she has with a grocery store employee during a hurried afternoon shopping trip is about to change the course of her not-so-perfect life forever�

With its brilliant rendering of the secrets some women hold close and a shocking act that cannot be undone, The Secrets She Keeps delivers a dark and twisted page-turner that is absolutely impossible to put down.]]>
352 Michael Robotham 1501170317 Jan 4
THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS by Michael Robatham.

This story takes place in present day London and revolves around two very different women leading very different lives. They each have their own secrets and each risk everything to keep them!

Agatha is a supermarket shelf-stocker, lives in poverty, has very few friends, is pregnant, and her boyfriend is on deployment in the Navy.

Meghan is married to a handsome TV sports reporter, upper middle-class, pretty, beautiful home, has two children, is also a noted mommy-blogger, and is pregnant too.

Soon their lives crash together and nothing will ever be the same!!

We learn right away that Agatha is a consummate liar and that she seems to be stalking Meghan, whose "perfect life" she covets!

"I think I'd make a good spy because I'm gloriously bland, as adaptable as water, able to flow into spaces and settle into cracks, becoming so smooth and still that I reflect my surroundings. I learned how to do that as a child, when I was rarely seen and less often heard." -- Agatha

In this psychological thriller, Robotham did a wonderful job with the character development, and in building the suspense skillfully, page by page! The Secrets She Keeps is a gripping, suspenseful, and very compelling read! I was hooked from the start!

This is my first Robotham novel, but it won't be my last! I highly recommend!
4 Stars!]]>
4.01 2017 The Secrets She Keeps
author: Michael Robotham
name: Jan
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/10/10
date added: 2017/10/11
shelves:
review:
Great thriller! What a page turner!

THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS by Michael Robatham.

This story takes place in present day London and revolves around two very different women leading very different lives. They each have their own secrets and each risk everything to keep them!

Agatha is a supermarket shelf-stocker, lives in poverty, has very few friends, is pregnant, and her boyfriend is on deployment in the Navy.

Meghan is married to a handsome TV sports reporter, upper middle-class, pretty, beautiful home, has two children, is also a noted mommy-blogger, and is pregnant too.

Soon their lives crash together and nothing will ever be the same!!

We learn right away that Agatha is a consummate liar and that she seems to be stalking Meghan, whose "perfect life" she covets!

"I think I'd make a good spy because I'm gloriously bland, as adaptable as water, able to flow into spaces and settle into cracks, becoming so smooth and still that I reflect my surroundings. I learned how to do that as a child, when I was rarely seen and less often heard." -- Agatha

In this psychological thriller, Robotham did a wonderful job with the character development, and in building the suspense skillfully, page by page! The Secrets She Keeps is a gripping, suspenseful, and very compelling read! I was hooked from the start!

This is my first Robotham novel, but it won't be my last! I highly recommend!
4 Stars!
]]>
The Great Gatsby 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]>
180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Jan 0 to-read 3.93 1925 The Great Gatsby
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Jan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

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Shoes for Anthony 23346632 ‘They’re running wild. Feral! If I had a shilling for every time a Scott Street boy said he was doing something when he was doing something else entirely I’d be living in Cardiff in a house made of Lardy cake. What did I say? Bad things will happen!�

The idea of the war coming to their small, impoverished Welsh mining village always seemed remote, but with one explosive event and the arrival of the Americans preparing for the invasion of France, the people of Treherbert find their world turned upside down.

But war brings distrust, lies and danger. And as the villagers find themselves hopelessly divided, Anthony, an 11-year-old who hasn’t had a pair of shoes in years, is going to have to choose between what is popular and what is right.

Joyous, thrilling and nostalgic, Emma Kennedy’s Shoes For Anthony will have you wiping your eyes one moment and beaming from ear-to-ear the next.]]>
400 Emma Kennedy 0091956625 Jan 0 currently-reading 4.06 2017 Shoes for Anthony
author: Emma Kennedy
name: Jan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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Now That You Mention It 35172445
One step forward. Two steps back. The Tufts scholarship that put Nora Stuart on the path to becoming a Boston medical specialist was a step forward. Being hit by a car and then overhearing her boyfriend hit on another doctor when she thought she was dying? Two major steps back.

Injured in more ways than one, Nora feels her carefully built life cracking at the edges. There’s only one place to home. But the tiny Maine community she left fifteen years ago doesn’t necessarily want her. At every turn, someone holds the prodigal daughter of Scupper Island responsible for small-town drama and big-time disappointments.

With a tough islander mother who’s always been distant, a wild-child sister in jail, and a withdrawn teenage niece as eager to ditch the island as Nora once was, Nora has her work cut out for her if she’s going to take what might be her last chance to mend the family. Balancing loss and opportunity, dark events from her past with hope for the future, Nora will discover that tackling old pain makes room for promise... and the chance to begin again.

“Powerful, entertaining... Balancing emotion, humor, and a redemptive theme, Higgins hits all the right notes with precision, perception, and panache.� � Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“She only gets better with each book.� � New York Times]]>
404 Kristan Higgins 1488029261 Jan 0 to-read 4.32 2017 Now That You Mention It
author: Kristan Higgins
name: Jan
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Witch Is When It All Began (A Witch P.I. Mystery, #1)]]> 25987394 When the going gets tough...

Private investigator, Jill Gooder, has been hired to find a serial killer because, as usual, the police can't buy a clue. Jill, the not so proud owner of a crazy, one-eyed cat, probably can't expect too much help from her PA/Secretary, Mrs V, who spends all day knitting.

And just in case all of that wasn't bad enough, Jill's just about to discover she's a witch.

...break out the custard creams.]]>
212 Adele Abbott Jan 0 to-read 3.91 2015 Witch Is When It All Began (A Witch P.I. Mystery, #1)
author: Adele Abbott
name: Jan
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

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Odd Child Out (Jim Clemo, #2) 34150785 How well do you know the people you love�?

Best friends Noah Sandler and Abdi Mahad have always been inseparable. But when Noah is found floating unconscious in Bristol's Feeder Canal, Abdi can't--or won't--tell anyone what happened.

Just back from a mandatory leave following his last case, Detective Jim Clemo is now assigned to look into this unfortunate accident. But tragedy strikes and what looked like the simple case of a prank gone wrong soon ignites into a public battle. Noah is British. Abdi is a Somali refugee. And social tensions have been rising rapidly in Bristol. Against this background of fear and fury two families fight for their sons and for the truth. Neither of them know how far they will have to go, what demons they will have to face, what pain they will have to suffer.

Because the truth hurts.]]>
432 Gilly Macmillan 0062476823 Jan 0 to-read 3.62 2017 Odd Child Out (Jim Clemo, #2)
author: Gilly Macmillan
name: Jan
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Mistake 35627101 You think you know the truth about the people you love.

But one discovery can change everything�

Eight-year-old Billy goes missing one day, out flying his kite with his sister Rose. Two days later, he is found dead.

Sixteen years on, Rose still blames herself for Billy’s death. How could she have failed to protect her little brother?

Rose has never fully recovered from the trauma, and one of the few people she trusts is her neighbour Ronnie, who she has known all her life. But one day Ronnie falls ill, and Rose goes next door to help him� and what she finds in his attic room turns her world upside down.

Rose thought she knew the truth about what happened to Billy. She thought she knew her neighbour. Now the only thing she knows is that she is in danger�
]]>
318 K.L. Slater 1786812436 Jan 0 to-read 3.87 2017 The Mistake
author: K.L. Slater
name: Jan
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Chalk Man 36317792
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out his other friends got the same messages, they think it could be a prank... until one of them turns up dead. That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

Expertly alternating between flashbacks and the present day, The Chalk Man is the very best kind of suspense novel, one where every character is wonderfully fleshed out and compelling, where every mystery has a satisfying payoff, and where the twists will shock even the savviest reader.]]>
283 C.J. Tudor Jan 0 to-read 3.78 2018 The Chalk Man
author: C.J. Tudor
name: Jan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Ghostwriter 30962267
I wasn't surprised. Telling stories is what made me famous. Fifteen bestsellers. Millions of fans. Fame and fortune.

Now, I have one last story to write. It'll be my best one yet, with a jaw-dropping twist that will leave them stunned and gasping for breath.

They say that sticks and stones will break your bones, but this story? It will be the one that kills me.


This book is not a romance. It is contemporary fiction, but very suspenseful in nature. It is about a famous romance author and a dark secret she keeps. ]]>
321 A.R. Torre Jan 0 to-read 4.04 2017 The Ghostwriter
author: A.R. Torre
name: Jan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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Sourdough 33916024
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.

When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?]]>
259 Robin Sloan 0374203105 Jan 0 to-read 3.73 2017 Sourdough
author: Robin Sloan
name: Jan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Paris Wife 8683812
Though deeply in love, the Hemingways are ill prepared for the hard-drinking and fast-living life of Jazz Age Paris, which hardly values traditional notions of family and monogamy. Surrounded by beautiful women and competing egos, Ernest struggles to find the voice that will earn him a place in history, pouring all the richness and intensity of his life with Hadley and their circle of friends into the novel that will become The Sun Also Rises. Hadley, meanwhile, strives to hold on to her sense of self as the demands of life with Ernest grow costly and her roles as wife, friend, and muse become more challenging. Despite their extraordinary bond, they eventually find themselves facing the ultimate crisis of their marriage—a deception that will lead to the unraveling of everything they’ve fought so hard for.

A heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty, The Paris Wife is all the more poignant because we know that, in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.]]>
314 Paula McLain 0345521307 Jan 0 to-read 3.81 2011 The Paris Wife
author: Paula McLain
name: Jan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/10/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Passenger 26154406 In case you were wondering, I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with Frank’s death. I don’t have an alibi, so you’ll have to take my word for it...

Forty-eight hours after leaving her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It’s not the first time.

She meets Blue, a female bartender who recognizes the hunted look in a fugitive’s eyes and offers her a place to stay. With dwindling choices, Tanya-now-Amelia accepts. An uneasy―and dangerous―alliance is born.

It’s almost impossible to live off the grid today, but Amelia-now-Debra and Blue have the courage, the ingenuity, and the desperation, to try. Hopscotching from city to city, Debra especially is chased by a very dark secret…can she outrun her past?]]>
304 Lisa Lutz 1451686633 Jan 0 to-read 3.67 2016 The Passenger
author: Lisa Lutz
name: Jan
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Marriage of Opposites 24823287 O, The Oprah Magazine) from the New York Times bestselling author of The Museum of Extraordinary Things: a forbidden love story set on a tropical island about the extraordinary woman who gave birth to painter Camille Pissarro—the Father of Impressionism.

Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel’s mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel’s salvation is their maid Adelle’s belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle’s daughter. But Rachel’s life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father’s business. When her older husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Frédérick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.]]>
384 Alice Hoffman 1451693613 Jan 0 to-read 4.19 2015 The Marriage of Opposites
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Jan
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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Letters to the Pianist 35989543
In war torn London, 1941, fourteen-year-old Ruth Goldberg and her two younger siblings, Gabi and Hannah, survive the terrifying bombing of their family home. They believe their parents are dead, their bodies buried underneath the burnt remains � but unbeknownst to them, their father, Joe, survives and is taken to hospital with amnesia.

Four years on, Ruth, stumbles across a newspaper photo of a celebrated pianist and is struck by the resemblance to her father. Desperate for evidence she sends him a letter, and as the pianist’s dormant memories emerge, his past unravels, revealing his true identity � as her beloved father, Joe.

Ruth sets out to meet him, only to find herself plunged into an aristocratic world of sinister dark secrets. Can she help him escape and find a way to stay alive?


LETTERS TO THE PIANIST is a compelling page turner packed with drama, intrigue and suspense. If you loved The Book Thief, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Foyles War then discover this exciting new novel.
]]>
412 S.D. Mayes Jan 0 to-read 4.30 2017 Letters to the Pianist
author: S.D. Mayes
name: Jan
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Man in the Queue (Inspector Alan Grant, #1)]]> 243400
A long line had formed for the standing-room-only section of the Woffington Theatre. London’s favorite musical comedy of the past two years was finishing its run at the end of the week. Suddenly, the line began to move, forming a wedge before the open doors as hopeful theatergoers nudged their way forward. But one man, his head sunk down upon his chest, slowly sank to his knees and then, still more slowly, keeled over on his face. Thinking he had fainted, a spectator moved to help, but recoiled in horror from what lay before him: the man in the queue had a small silver dagger neatly plunged into his back. With the wit and guile that have made Inspector Grant a favorite of mystery fans, the inspector sets about discovering just how a murder occurred among so many witnesses, none of whom saw a thing.]]>
255 Josephine Tey 0684815028 Jan 0 to-read 3.76 1929 The Man in the Queue (Inspector Alan Grant, #1)
author: Josephine Tey
name: Jan
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[An Expert in Murder (Josephine Tey, #1)]]> 2444787
March 1934. Revered mystery writer Josephine Tey is traveling from Scotland to London for the final week of her celebrated play "Richard of Bordeaux," But joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with the murder of a young woman she had befriended on the train ride, and Tey quickly finds herself plunged into a mystery as puzzling as any of those in her own works.

Detective Inspector Archie Penrose is convinced that the killing is connected to her play. "Richard of Bordeaux" has been the surprise hit of the season, with pacifist themes that strike a chord in a world still haunted by war. Now, however, it seems that Tey could become the victim of her own success, as her reputation--and even her life--is put at risk.

A second murder confirms Penrose's suspicions that somewhere among this flamboyant theatre set is a ruthless and spiteful killer. Together, Penrose and Tey must confront their own ghosts in search of someone who will stop at nothing.

An Expert in Murder is both a tribute to one of the most enduringly popular writers of crime and a richly atmospheric detective novel in its own right.]]>
292 Nicola Upson 0571237703 Jan 0 to-read 3.48 2008 An Expert in Murder (Josephine Tey, #1)
author: Nicola Upson
name: Jan
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

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Wolf Season 34381453 319 Helen Benedict 1942658303 Jan 0 to-read 3.98 2017 Wolf Season
author: Helen Benedict
name: Jan
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

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A Hundred Small Lessons 35707810 The Railwayman’s Wife, called a “literary and literate gem� by Psychology Today, comes an emotionally resonant and profound new novel of two families, interconnected through the house that bears witness to their lives.

When Elsie Gormley leaves the Brisbane house in which she has lived for more than sixty years, Lucy Kiss and her family move in, eager to establish their new life. As they settle in, Lucy and her husband Ben struggle to navigate their transformation from adventurous lovers to new parents, taking comfort in memories of their vibrant past as they begin to unearth who their future selves might be. But the house has secrets of its own, and the rooms seem to share recollections of Elsie’s life with Lucy.

In her nearby nursing home, Elsie traces the span of her life—the moments she can’t bear to let go and the places to which she dreams of returning. Her beloved former house is at the heart of her memories of marriage, motherhood, love, and death, and the boundary between present and past becomes increasingly porous for both her and Lucy.

Over the course of one hot Brisbane summer, two families� stories intersect in sudden and unexpected ways. Through the richly intertwined narratives of two ordinary, extraordinary women, Ashley Hay uses her “lyrical prose, poetic dialogue, and stunning imagery� (RT magazine) to weave an intricate, bighearted story of what it is to be human.]]>
306 Ashley Hay 1501165151 Jan 0 to-read 3.57 2017 A Hundred Small Lessons
author: Ashley Hay
name: Jan
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Marsh King's Daughter 32889533
Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too…until she learned precisely how savage he could be.

More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King–because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter.]]>
310 Karen Dionne 0735213003 Jan 4
"It was a good life, until it wasn't. "

What happens when you know you are responsible for putting your father in prison? What do you do when you find out that he has escaped? What happens when you don't tell anyone, even your husband, about your past? What happens when you try to assimilate into the "real" world?

This story is told by Helena, and she has such an incredible story to tell! She is a young married woman with two little daughters who sells jams and jellies, which she learned to make as a child. One day she finds out that kidnapper, rapist, and murderer, Jacob Holbrook, escaped from prison; this man is her father, "The Marsh King"! He kidnapped Helena's mother when she was just 14 years old, and took her to a cabin in a marsh in Upper Penninsula of Michigan. There, Helena was born 2 1/2 years later, and raised in the swamp marsh, not ever knowing of her captivity. Then, when Helena is 12 years old she learns of the circumstance of her life in captivity. She and her mother escape, and her father is captured and put in prison.

Twenty years later her father escapes from prison, and Helena believes that she is the ONLY one that can find her father. She knows how he thinks, how he hunts, and what he is capable of!

"My father's ability to manipulate any situation to his advantage is almost beyond comprehension."

Helena also knows that her husband and daughters are now in danger... She must find him! And the desperate chase begins!

I like the way the author tells the story by going back and forth from Helenas childhood, to the present, while on the hunt for her father. We learn all about her up-bringing in the Marsh, and of all the things her father taught her; how to hunt, fish, track, and live off the land. Dionne shows us the sights and sounds of the Marsh beautifully!

So much of Helena's mindset has to do with her isolation as a child, and having been raised by her father and mother in the desolate Marsh. All she knew of the "world" was from magazines left in the run-down cabin. Throughout her life, Helena will constantly struggle with her feelings about her father. She will forever be "The Marsh King's Daughter"!

This story was intense and fast-paced!
I was completely engaged in this well- written psychological thriller! Dionne's prose was wonderful, and I look forward to another one of her books. The only negative for me were the explicit hunting passages, which made me cringe!

I Recommend this book! 4 Stars!]]>
3.85 2017 The Marsh King's Daughter
author: Karen Dionne
name: Jan
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/09/23
date added: 2017/09/26
shelves:
review:
The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne was such a wonderful thriller! This is not my usual genre, but I'm so glad that I read it! It was eerie, yet fascinating!

"It was a good life, until it wasn't. "

What happens when you know you are responsible for putting your father in prison? What do you do when you find out that he has escaped? What happens when you don't tell anyone, even your husband, about your past? What happens when you try to assimilate into the "real" world?

This story is told by Helena, and she has such an incredible story to tell! She is a young married woman with two little daughters who sells jams and jellies, which she learned to make as a child. One day she finds out that kidnapper, rapist, and murderer, Jacob Holbrook, escaped from prison; this man is her father, "The Marsh King"! He kidnapped Helena's mother when she was just 14 years old, and took her to a cabin in a marsh in Upper Penninsula of Michigan. There, Helena was born 2 1/2 years later, and raised in the swamp marsh, not ever knowing of her captivity. Then, when Helena is 12 years old she learns of the circumstance of her life in captivity. She and her mother escape, and her father is captured and put in prison.

Twenty years later her father escapes from prison, and Helena believes that she is the ONLY one that can find her father. She knows how he thinks, how he hunts, and what he is capable of!

"My father's ability to manipulate any situation to his advantage is almost beyond comprehension."

Helena also knows that her husband and daughters are now in danger... She must find him! And the desperate chase begins!

I like the way the author tells the story by going back and forth from Helenas childhood, to the present, while on the hunt for her father. We learn all about her up-bringing in the Marsh, and of all the things her father taught her; how to hunt, fish, track, and live off the land. Dionne shows us the sights and sounds of the Marsh beautifully!

So much of Helena's mindset has to do with her isolation as a child, and having been raised by her father and mother in the desolate Marsh. All she knew of the "world" was from magazines left in the run-down cabin. Throughout her life, Helena will constantly struggle with her feelings about her father. She will forever be "The Marsh King's Daughter"!

This story was intense and fast-paced!
I was completely engaged in this well- written psychological thriller! Dionne's prose was wonderful, and I look forward to another one of her books. The only negative for me were the explicit hunting passages, which made me cringe!

I Recommend this book! 4 Stars!
]]>
Autumn (Seasonal, #1) 30269094 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781101870730.

A breathtakingly inventive new novel from the Man Booker-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-winning author of How to be Both.

Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy and the colour-hit of Pop Art—via a bit of very contemporary skulduggery and skull-diggery�Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture, and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.

Autumn is the first instalment in Ali Smith’s novel quartet Seasonal: four standalone books, separate yet interconnected and cyclical (as the seasons are), exploring what time is, how we experience it, and the recurring markers in the shapes our lives take and in our ways with narrative.

From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, and a story about ageing and time and love and stories themselves.]]>
263 Ali Smith Jan 0 to-read 3.78 2016 Autumn (Seasonal, #1)
author: Ali Smith
name: Jan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/23
shelves: to-read
review:

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Clara 17133916 A sweeping tale of love and friendship, for readers of Suite Francaise, The Reader, and The Imposter Bride.

Clara Herzog is a privileged, intelligent, and thoughtful young woman whose world is changed forever when 1930s Vienna is swept up by the dark prelude of the Second World War. The cavalry officer she married in spite of her family's objections is soon called away to the thick of the conflict, and it falls to Clara, as to so many mothers, wives, sisters, and sweethearts through the centuries, to stay at home to provide and protect.

Through the war, its aftermath, and into the present, Clara must make choices and take risks that are as heroic and life-altering as any that men make in battle. She is an unforgettable character, and this is an unforgettable novel about family bonds and women's deep friendships, about courage and the love that can endure even in unimaginable times.]]>
384 Kurt Palka 0771071329 Jan 0 to-read 3.54 2012 Clara
author: Kurt Palka
name: Jan
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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Nineteen Minutes 14866
Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens -- until the day its complacency is shattered by a shocking act of violence. In the aftermath, the town's residents must not only seek justice in order to begin healing but also come to terms with the role they played in the tragedy. For them, the lines between truth and fiction, right and wrong, insider and outsider have been obscured forever. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, could be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened in front of her own eyes. And as the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show, destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Nineteen Minutes is New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult's most raw, honest, and important novel yet. Told with the straightforward style for which she has become known, it asks simple questions that have no easy answers: Can your own child become a mystery to you? What does it mean to be different in our society? Is it ever okay for a victim to strike back? And who -- if anyone -- has the right to judge someone else?]]>
440 Jodi Picoult 0743496728 Jan 0 to-read 4.16 2007 Nineteen Minutes
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Jan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Memory Watcher 33828876
From behind a computer screen, Autumn watches Grace's every memory, from birthdays to holidays to bedtime snuggles. But what starts as an innocent fascination spirals into an addictive obsession met with a screeching halt the day the McMullen family closes their Instaface account without so much as a warning.

Frantic and desperate to reconnect with her daughter, Autumn applies for a nanny position with the McMullens, manipulating herself into Grace's life under false pretenses. And it's only then that Autumn discovers pictures lie, the perfect family doesn't exist, and beautiful people? They have the ugliest secrets.]]>
338 Minka Kent Jan 0 to-read 3.95 2016 The Memory Watcher
author: Minka Kent
name: Jan
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/10
shelves: to-read
review:

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Everything You Want Me to Be 32934730
Hattie Hoffman has spent her whole life playing many parts: the good student, the good daughter, the good girlfriend. But Hattie wants something more, something bigger, and ultimately something that turns out to be exceedingly dangerous. When she’s found brutally stabbed to death, the tragedy rips right through the fabric of her small-town community.

It soon comes to light that Hattie was engaged in a highly compromising and potentially explosive secret online relationship. The question is: Did anyone else know? And to what lengths might they have gone to end it? Hattie’s boyfriend seems distraught over her death, but had he fallen so deeply in love with her that she had become an obsession? Or did Hattie’s impulsive, daredevil nature simply put her in the wrong place at the wrong time, leading her to a violent death at the hands of a stranger?

Full of twists and turns, Everything You Want Me to Be reconstructs a year in the life of a dangerously mesmerizing young woman, during which a small town’s darkest secrets come to the forefront…and she inches closer and closer to death.

Evocative and razor-sharp, Everything You Want Me to Be challenges you to test the lines between innocence and culpability, identity and deception. Does love lead to self-discovery—or destruction?]]>
352 Mindy Mejia 1501123440 Jan 0 to-read 4.00 2017 Everything You Want Me to Be
author: Mindy Mejia
name: Jan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

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Hidden Truth 22930848 After a tragic accident claims the life of his father, Jacob's mother meets the unsavoury Thaddeus Stone. Jacob leaves home after many violent incidents ultimately come to a head. He meets fellow run away, Finbar McHugh who becomes his best friend as they embark on careers as fishing men; their ultimate goal to own their own smack. Luckily for them, they are mentored by a just and fair smack owner who provides invaluable support. Jacob grows into a fine young man, with good morals and a philanthropic mission to improve the lives and hidden suffering of young apprentices on fishing boats.]]> 314 Stephen Bloy 184963789X Jan 0 to-read 5.00 2014 Hidden Truth
author: Stephen Bloy
name: Jan
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Girl Who Was Taken 31409239 A chilling thriller where nothing is at it seems and each reveal is more shocking than the last…right up to the jaw-dropping final twist.

Two abducted girls—one who returns, one who doesn't.

The night they go missing, high school seniors Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are at a beach party in their small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. Police launch a massive search, but hope is almost lost--until Megan escapes from a bunker deep in the woods...A year later, the bestselling account of her ordeal has made Megan a celebrity. It's a triumphant story, except for one inconvenient thing, Nicole is still missing.

Nicole's older sister, Livia, a fellow in forensic pathology, expects that one day soon Nicole's body will be found and her sister's fate determined. Instead, the first clue comes from another body--that of a young man connected to Nicole's past. Livia reaches out to Megan to learn more about that fateful night. Other girls have disappeared, and she's increasingly sure the cases are connected.

Megan knows more than she revealed in her book. Flashes of memory are pointing to something more monstrous than she described. And the deeper she and Livia dig, the more they realize that sometimes true terror lies in finding exactly what you've been looking for...]]>
340 Charlie Donlea 1496701003 Jan 0 to-read 4.03 2017 The Girl Who Was Taken
author: Charlie Donlea
name: Jan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle, #1)]]> 33621787 The Enchanted about an investigator who must use her unique insights to find a missing little girl.

"Where are you, Madison Culver? Flying with the angels, a silver speck on a wing? Are you dreaming, buried under snow? Or—is it possible—you are still alive?"

Three years ago, Madison Culver disappeared when her family was choosing a Christmas tree in Oregon’s Skookum National Forest. She would be eight-years-old now—if she has survived. Desperate to find their beloved daughter, certain someone took her, the Culvers turn to Naomi, a private investigator with an uncanny talent for locating the lost and missing. Known to the police and a select group of parents as "the Child Finder," Naomi is their last hope.

Naomi’s methodical search takes her deep into the icy, mysterious forest in the Pacific Northwest, and into her own fragmented past. She understands children like Madison because once upon a time, she was a lost girl, too.

As Naomi relentlessly pursues and slowly uncovers the truth behind Madison’s disappearance, shards of a dark dream pierce the defenses that have protected her, reminding her of a terrible loss she feels but cannot remember. If she finds Madison, will Naomi ultimately unlock the secrets of her own life?

Told in the alternating voices of Naomi and a deeply imaginative child, The Child Finder is a breathtaking, exquisitely rendered literary page-turner about redemption, the line between reality and memories and dreams, and the human capacity to survive.]]>
288 Rene Denfeld Jan 0 to-read 4.18 2017 The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle, #1)
author: Rene Denfeld
name: Jan
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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Everything I Never Told You 18693763
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue - in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.

When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest in the family - Hannah - who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.

Everything I Never Told You is a gripping page-turner, about secrets, love, longing, lies and race.

Librarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.]]>
297 Celeste Ng 159420571X Jan 0 to-read 3.81 2014 Everything I Never Told You
author: Celeste Ng
name: Jan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #13)]]> 33602101
From the moment the creature's shadow falls over the village, Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Quebec, suspects it has deep roots and a dark purpose. Yet he does nothing. What can he do? Only watch and wait. And hope his mounting fears are not realized.

But when the figure vanishes overnight and a body is discovered, it falls to Gamache to discover if a debt has been paid or levied.

Months later, on a steamy July day, as the trial for the accused begins in Montréal, Chief Superintendent Gamache continues to struggle with actions he set in motion that bitter November from which there is no going back. More than the accused is on trial. Gamache's own conscience is standing in judgment.

In her latest utterly gripping book, number-one New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny shatters the conventions of the crime novel to explore what Gandhi called the court of conscience. A court that supersedes all others.]]>
391 Louise Penny 1250066190 Jan 0 to-read 4.24 2017 Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #13)
author: Louise Penny
name: Jan
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories (Sarah Agnes Prine, #1)]]> 348225
Rich in authentic everyday details and alive with truly unforgettable characters, These Is My Words brilliantly brings a vanished world to breathtaking life again.]]>
384 Nancy E. Turner 0060987510 Jan 5
I avidly enjoyed These Is My Words by Nancy Turner! Turner did a wonderful job capturing a very vivid picture of Sarah Prine, and of the people and conditions of this period in the Arizona Territory. Turner's writing makes you feel like you are actually there, and making the trek along with Sarah.

These Is My Words is a wonderful, exciting story of the hard pioneer life, written as diary entries based on author Nancy Turner's own ancestor, Sarah Agnes Prine, from the time she is 17, in 1881, to 1901 in the Arizona Territory. Sarah is humble, witty, and full of grit and resilience; and... SHE JUST CAPTURED MY HEART! �

Sarah is strong ...loving...competent... never gives up...and as fiercely determined a young woman as there ever was; who edures many hardships and perseveres through it all! I admire how Sarah always hungers to learn, reading anything and everything she gets her hands on! Writing down her daily adventures as she makes her way towards homesteading in Arizona, her writing improves each day. Sarah also runs a ranch, wrangles the cattle, shoots well, has a soap making business, AND lovingly takes care of her children!

"A nice girl doesn't go anywhere
without a loaded gun and a big
knife."

And then there is the tall, handsome Calvary Captain, Jack Elliot and LOVE ensues! They are both very strong and different people, but also very good together. He drove her CRAZY... with love!

"I don't have any use for a man that
isn't stubborn. Likely a stubborn
fellow will stay with you through
thick and thin, and a spineless one
will take off, or let his heart wander."

"Taking up marriage is a good
excuse for taking up cursing,
I think."

I loved seeing how this story unfolded, and rooted for Sarah as the heroine! I cried from the heartache of much tragedy, and the joys of love!

I am always fascinated by the courageous pioneers who settled our American West, and this is a wonderful historical fiction that does a marvelous job of depicting this!

I'm giving this book 4.5 Stars! Sarah and Jack will stay with me for a long time to come! I Recommend this book to all!]]>
4.36 1998 These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901, Arizona Territories (Sarah Agnes Prine, #1)
author: Nancy E. Turner
name: Jan
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2017/08/31
date added: 2017/09/06
shelves:
review:
"My life feels like a book left out on the porch, and the wind blows the pages faster and faster, turning always toward a new chapter faster than I can stop and read it."

I avidly enjoyed These Is My Words by Nancy Turner! Turner did a wonderful job capturing a very vivid picture of Sarah Prine, and of the people and conditions of this period in the Arizona Territory. Turner's writing makes you feel like you are actually there, and making the trek along with Sarah.

These Is My Words is a wonderful, exciting story of the hard pioneer life, written as diary entries based on author Nancy Turner's own ancestor, Sarah Agnes Prine, from the time she is 17, in 1881, to 1901 in the Arizona Territory. Sarah is humble, witty, and full of grit and resilience; and... SHE JUST CAPTURED MY HEART! �

Sarah is strong ...loving...competent... never gives up...and as fiercely determined a young woman as there ever was; who edures many hardships and perseveres through it all! I admire how Sarah always hungers to learn, reading anything and everything she gets her hands on! Writing down her daily adventures as she makes her way towards homesteading in Arizona, her writing improves each day. Sarah also runs a ranch, wrangles the cattle, shoots well, has a soap making business, AND lovingly takes care of her children!

"A nice girl doesn't go anywhere
without a loaded gun and a big
knife."

And then there is the tall, handsome Calvary Captain, Jack Elliot and LOVE ensues! They are both very strong and different people, but also very good together. He drove her CRAZY... with love!

"I don't have any use for a man that
isn't stubborn. Likely a stubborn
fellow will stay with you through
thick and thin, and a spineless one
will take off, or let his heart wander."

"Taking up marriage is a good
excuse for taking up cursing,
I think."

I loved seeing how this story unfolded, and rooted for Sarah as the heroine! I cried from the heartache of much tragedy, and the joys of love!

I am always fascinated by the courageous pioneers who settled our American West, and this is a wonderful historical fiction that does a marvelous job of depicting this!

I'm giving this book 4.5 Stars! Sarah and Jack will stay with me for a long time to come! I Recommend this book to all!
]]>
Cross Creek 93485
Originally published in 1942, Cross Creek has become a classic in modern American literature. For the millions of readers raised on The Yearling, here is the story of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's experiences in the remote Florida hamlet of Cross Creek, where she lived for thirteen years. From the daily labors of managing a seventy-two-acre orange grove to bouts with runaway pigs and a succession of unruly farmhands, Rawlings describes her life at the Creek with humor and spirit. Her tireless determination to overcome the challenges of her adopted home in the Florida backcountry, her deep-rooted love of the earth, and her genius for character and description result in a most delightful and heartwarming memoir.]]>
380 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings 0684818795 Jan 0 4.03 1942 Cross Creek
author: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
name: Jan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1942
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/05
shelves:
review:

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Lilli de Jong 31752152 A young woman finds the most powerful love of her life when she gives birth at an institution for unwed mothers in 1883 Philadelphia. She is told she must give up her daughter to avoid a life of poverty and shame. But she chooses to keep her.

Pregnant, abandoned by her lover, and banished from her Quaker home and teaching position, Lilli de Jong enters a charity for wronged women to deliver her child. She is stunned at how much her infant needs her and at how quickly their bond overpowers her heart. Mothers in her position have no sensible alternative to giving up their children, but Lilli can't bear such an outcome. Determined to chart a path toward an independent life, Lilli braves moral condemnation and financial ruin in a quest to keep herself and her baby alive.

Confiding their story to her diary as it unfolds, Lilli takes readers from an impoverished charity to a wealthy family's home to the perilous streets of a burgeoning American city. Lilli de Jong is at once a historical saga, an intimate romance, and a lasting testament to the work of mothers. "So little is permissible for a woman," writes Lilli, yet on her back every human climbs to adulthood."]]>
352 Janet Benton 0385541457 Jan 0 to-read 3.97 2017 Lilli de Jong
author: Janet Benton
name: Jan
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/05
shelves: to-read
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The Glass Castle 7445 THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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

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

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.]]>
288 Jeannette Walls 074324754X Jan 0 to-read 4.32 2005 The Glass Castle
author: Jeannette Walls
name: Jan
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/05
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Little Mercies (English Edition)]]> 18722887
Meanwhile, ten-year-old Jenny Briard has been living with her well-meaning but irresponsible father since her mother left them, sleeping on friends' couches and moving in and out of cheap motels. When Jenny suddenly finds herself on her own, she is forced to survive with nothing but a few dollars and her street smarts. The last thing she wants is a social worker, but when Ellen's and Jenny's lives collide, little do they know just how much they can help one another.

A powerful and emotionally charged tale about motherhood and justice, Little Mercies is a searing portrait of the tenuous grasp we have on the things we love the most, and of the ties that unexpectedly bring us together.]]>
320 Heather Gudenkauf 0778316335 Jan 0 to-read 4.03 2014 Little Mercies (English Edition)
author: Heather Gudenkauf
name: Jan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Saboteur 33602108
February, 1943. Both the Allies and the Nazis are closing in on attempts to construct the decisive weapon of the war.
Kurt Nordstrum, an engineer in Oslo, puts his life aside to take up arms against the Germans as part of the Norwegian resistance. After the loss of his fiancée, his outfit whittled to shreds, he commandeers a coastal steamer and escapes to England to transmit secret evidence of the Nazis’s progress towards an atomic bomb at an isolated factory in Norway. There, he joins a team of dedicated Norwegians in training in the Scottish Highlands for a mission to disrupt the Nazis� plans before they advance any further.

Parachuted onto the most unforgiving terrain in Europe, braving the fiercest of mountain storms, Nordstrum and his team attempt the most daring raid of the war, targeting the heavily-guarded factory built on a shelf of rock thought to be impregnable, a mission even they know they likely will not survive. Months later, Nordstrum is called upon again to do the impossible, opposed by both elite Nazi soldiers and a long-standing enemy who is now a local collaborator—one man against overwhelming odds, with the fate of the war in the balance, but the choice to act means putting the one person he has a chance to love in peril.

Based on the stirring true story, The Saboteur is Andrew Gross’s follow-up to the riveting historical thriller, The One Man. A richly-woven story probing the limits of heroism, sacrifice and determination, The Saboteur portrays a hero who must weigh duty against his heart in order to singlehandedly end the one threat that could alter the course of the war.

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401 Andrew Gross 1250079519 Jan 0 to-read 4.03 2017 The Saboteur
author: Andrew Gross
name: Jan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/04
shelves: to-read
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Chihuly: 365 Days 2288472 Chihuly: 365 Days is a richly illustrated photo survey of his entire four-decade career, with more than 500 pictures showing all facets of his work—from intimate smaller pieces to the tremendous outdoor installations that have thrilled millions of visitors. There are also personal photos of the artist; of “Team chihuly� at the Boathouse, his studio in Seattle, Washington; and of his marvelous drawings—all selected by the artist himself. Most of the photographs have never before been published.

Quotations from and about Chihuly, as well as descriptions of his various types of works and short texts on his most prominent series pieces, accompany the images. The captions also act as a chronology of his life and work.]]>
744 Dale Chihuly 0810970880 Jan 0 to-read 4.49 2007 Chihuly: 365 Days
author: Dale Chihuly
name: Jan
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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Guest Bed 32603148
Ron’s day is off to a bad start. Blinded by frustration after another argument with his wife, and heartbroken that his marriage may be over, he accidentally crashes his car on his way to work. Dazed, he takes the train the rest of the way, where he is quickly delighted by the presence of another rider, Courtney, whose smoldering smile makes him remember what it feels like to be wanted.

What seems like a new friendship quickly turns into temptation, leaving Ron torn with internal conflict and guilt. But when his new friend starts to seem a little off, he begins to question her motives. As one seemingly harmless favor leads to another, Ron soon finds himself wondering if Courtney really is who she says she is, or if she’s actually part of an elaborate setup.

Steep with tension, this roller coaster of emotions takes the reader behind closed doors to explore the conundrum of love, life, and the unexpected.

“In Guest Bed, Luke Narlee weaves a romantic tale that turns both tragic and comic, revealing the ins and outs of marriage, and how sometimes after you think you’ve known someone forever, they can still surprise you?�—Christopher Barzak, author of Wonders of the invisible world.]]>
274 Luke P. Narlee 0692786996 Jan 0 to-read 3.96 2016 Guest Bed
author: Luke P. Narlee
name: Jan
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

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Miller's Valley 26131641 Miller’s Valley is a masterly study of family, memory, loss, and, ultimately, discovery, of finding true identity and a new vision of home. As Mimi says, “No one ever leaves the town where they grew up, even if they go.� Miller’s Valley reminds us that the place where you grew up can disappear, and the people in it too, but all will live on in your heart forever.']]> 257 Anna Quindlen 0812996089 Jan 0 to-read 3.82 2016 Miller's Valley
author: Anna Quindlen
name: Jan
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Girl In The Ice (DCI Erika Foster, #1)]]> 28721136
When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation.

The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.

What dark secrets is the girl in the ice hiding?

As Erika inches closer to uncovering the truth, the killer is closing in on Erika.

The last investigation Erika led went badly wrong� resulting in the death of her husband. With her career hanging by a thread, Erika must now battle her own personal demons as well as a killer more deadly than any she’s faced before. But will she get to him before he strikes again?]]>
394 Robert Bryndza 1910751774 Jan 0 to-read 3.83 2016 The Girl In The Ice (DCI Erika Foster, #1)
author: Robert Bryndza
name: Jan
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe]]> 30176294
MISSION: JIMMY STEWART AND THE FIGHT FOR EUROPE [GoodKnight Books, October 24, 2016] provides the first in-depth look at the military career of Hollywood actor James M. Stewart, beginning with his family “mission� passed on from his grandfather (a Civil War hero) and father (who served in World War I) that military service in time of war was mandatory for the Stewarts. Jim tailored his life to this eventual outcome, learning to be a pilot so he could serve as an aviator in the war.

MISSION describes Stewart’s childhood, college years at Princeton, Broadway career, and meteoric rise to Academy Award-winning actor in Hollywood. People today can’t imagine that Stewart was a ladies� man, but he had a reputation as one of the most active bachelors in Hollywood, with a list of lovers that includes the A-list of female movie stars.

In 1941, before America entered World War II, Jim was drafted into the Army and gleefully left Hollywood behind to fulfill that family mission. What happened to him in the service has never been covered in detail because he refused to talk about his experiences afterward. MISSION begins and ends with production of the first film Stewart made after returning from the war: It's a Wonderful Life, which in December 2016 will celebrate its 70th anniversary.

MISSION also includes the stories of three other supporting characters, a radio man who flew with Stewart, a German civilian girl, and the German general in charge of fighter aircraft. They provide perspective on what Stewart was attempting to do and why.]]>
400 Robert Matzen 0996274057 Jan 0 to-read 4.22 Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe
author: Robert Matzen
name: Jan
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/03
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Camino Island (Camino Island, #1)]]> 34121119 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER � “A delightfully lighthearted caper ... [a] fast-moving, entertaining tale.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A gang of thieves stage a daring heist from a secure vault deep below Princeton University’s Firestone Library. Their loot is priceless, but Princeton has insured it for twenty-five million dollars.

Bruce Cable owns a popular bookstore in the sleepy resort town of Santa Rosa on Camino Island in Florida. He makes his real money, though, as a prominent dealer in rare books. Very few people know that he occasionally dabbles in the black market of stolen books and manuscripts.

Mercer Mann is a young novelist with a severe case of writer’s block who has recently been laid off from her teaching position. She is approached by an elegant, mysterious woman working for an even more mysterious company. A generous offer of money convinces Mercer to go undercover and infiltrate Bruce Cable’s circle of literary friends, ideally getting close enough to him to learn his secrets.

But eventually Mercer learns far too much, and there’s trouble in paradise as only John Grisham can deliver it.]]>
290 John Grisham 0385543026 Jan 0 to-read 3.69 2017 Camino Island (Camino Island, #1)
author: John Grisham
name: Jan
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Little Brother 23281505
Even’s older brother Gabe continues to live in Cucamonga with their emotionally unstable mother. Though he feels discarded and left behind, Gabe visits Even and their father on the weekends.

Even doesn’t seem too worried about Gabe’s quick-to-ignite temper or his evolving addiction to skipping school and smoking weed.

But then Gabe commits a crime so unbelievably heinous that Even can’t forgive his own flesh and blood for it. In his personal recounting for THE LITTLE BROTHER, Even shares the events immediately following his brother and two of his friends savagely gang raping (while videotaping) an unconscious girl. When Gabe somehow ends up losing the video tape (which ends up in Even’s hand) it is up to Even to make the life-changing decision: does he do the right thing and turn his own brother in to the police or does family come first?]]>
320 Victoria Patterson 1619025388 Jan 0 to-read 3.80 2015 The Little Brother
author: Victoria Patterson
name: Jan
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

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Artemis 34928122
Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.]]>
305 Andy Weir 0553448129 Jan 0 to-read 3.66 2017 Artemis
author: Andy Weir
name: Jan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Shadow of the Wind 6992964
Daniel’s father coaxes him to choose a book from the spiraling labyrinth of shelves, one that, it is said, will have a special meaning for him. And Daniel so loves the book he selects, a novel called The Shadow of the Wind by one Julián Carax, that he sets out to find the rest of Carax’s work. To his shock, he discovers that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book this author has written. In fact, he may have the last of Carax’s books in existence.

Before Daniel knows it, his seemingly innocent quest has opened a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets, an epic story of murder, magic, madness, and doomed love, and before long he realizes that if he doesn’t find out the truth about Julián Carax, he and those closest to him will suffer horribly]]>
482 Carlos Ruiz Zafón 1429516143 Jan 0 to-read 4.14 2001 The Shadow of the Wind
author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón
name: Jan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[A Constellation of Vital Phenomena]]> 18428067
In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces. Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbor Akhmed—a failed physician—to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of wounded rebels and refugees and mourns her missing sister. Over the course of five dramatic days, Akhmed and Sonja reach back into their pasts to unravel the intricate mystery of coincidence, betrayal, and forgiveness that unexpectedly binds them and decides their fate.

With The English Patient's dramatic sweep and The Tiger's Wife's expert sense of place, Marra gives us a searing debut about the transcendent power of love in wartime, and how it can cause us to become greater than we ever thought possible.]]>
416 Anthony Marra 0770436420 Jan 0 to-read 4.10 2013 A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
author: Anthony Marra
name: Jan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Burning Girl 34068534 New York Times best-selling author of The Emperor’s Children.

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship.

Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way.]]>
247 Claire Messud 0393635023 Jan 0 to-read 3.24 2017 The Burning Girl
author: Claire Messud
name: Jan
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer]]> 31140489
“I read this beautifully imagined and moving novella in one sitting, utterly wowed, wanting to share it with everyone I know.� —Lisa Genova, bestselling author of Still Alice

From the New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove , My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry , Britt-Marie Was Here , and Anxious People comes an exquisitely moving portrait of an elderly man’s struggle to hold on to his most precious memories, and his family’s efforts to care for him even as they must find a way to let go.

With all the same charm of his bestselling full-length novels, here Fredrik Backman once again reveals his unrivaled understanding of human nature and deep compassion for people in difficult circumstances. This is a tiny gem with a message you’ll treasure for a lifetime.]]>
0 Fredrik Backman 1508230714 Jan 0 to-read 4.29 2015 And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Jan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/31
shelves: to-read
review:

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Hide and Seek 35528918 The sun is out. Your little boy is smiling. The next time you look� he’s gone.

Lana Cross would do anything to protect her perfect family but on a trip to an adventure park, they slip out of her sight. When she finds her husband, he’s out cold on the forest floor. Then the truth sinks in: Cooper, her four-year-old son, is missing.

No one stopped the man carrying the sleeping boy. The park cameras don’t show where he went. Then Lana receives an anonymous message, telling her to visit a local school with a horrifying history...

This is no random attack. Whoever took Cooper is playing a twisted game, and if Lana wants to find him, she must participate.

How could there be a link between the school and her missing son? And can Lana find her little boy before it’s too late?]]>
347 Richard Jay Parker Jan 0 to-read 3.80 2017 Hide and Seek
author: Richard Jay Parker
name: Jan
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/30
shelves: to-read
review:

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The One Man 28221006
Nathan Blum works behind a desk at an intelligence office in Washington, DC, but he longs to contribute to the war effort in a more meaningful way, and he has a particular skill set the U.S. suddenly needs. Nathan is fluent in German and Polish, he is Semitic looking, and he proved his scrappiness at a young age when he escaped from the Polish ghetto. Now, the government wants him to take on the most dangerous assignment of his life: Nathan must sneak into Auschwitz, on a mission to find and escape with one man.

This historical thriller from New York Times bestseller Andrew Gross is a deeply affecting, unputdownable series of twists and turns through a landscape at times horrifyingly familiar but still completely compelling.]]>
416 Andrew Gross 1250079500 Jan 0 to-read 4.29 2016 The One Man
author: Andrew Gross
name: Jan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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All Is Not Forgotten 26114146
Until one night when young Jenny Kramer is attacked at a local party. In the hours immediately after, she is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But, in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, and with no factual recall of the attack, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory. Her father, Tom, becomes obsessed with his inability to find her attacker and seek justice while her mother, Charlotte, prefers to pretend this horrific event did not touch her perfect country club world.

As they seek help for their daughter, the fault lines within their marriage and their close-knit community emerge from the shadows where they have been hidden for years, and the relentless quest to find the monster who invaded their town - or perhaps lives among them - drive this psychological thriller to a shocking and unexpected conclusion.]]>
310 Wendy Walker 1250097916 Jan 0 to-read 3.64 2016 All Is Not Forgotten
author: Wendy Walker
name: Jan
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Anything Is Possible (Amgash, #2)]]> 32080126 Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.

Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author’s celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.

Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout’s place as one of America’s most respected and cherished authors.]]>
254 Elizabeth Strout 0812989406 Jan 4
I am so happy to have discovered Elizabeth Strout! She is a wonderful, compassionate writer! She has a way of saying so much with so little~amazing!
I really enjoyed My Name is Lucy Barton, and was so glad when this sequel came out!

In Anything is Possible, each chapter is a separare story. Each story gives a vivid, private look into the lives of the characters and their past. They are all people from Lucy's life, and abusive past, in her hometown of Amgash, Illinois. Each chapter stands alone, but they also combine to tell a great story of family, community and humankind.

I liked these stories that were simply and beautifully told, with compassion! This is what drew me in, and made me care about these characters. One of my favorite chapters was "sister", in which Lucy, who is now a famous author, comes back to her hometown and her abusive past, after being gone for 17 years. She goes to visit her brother, Pete and older sister, Vicky. Pete is alone, living in the dilapidated home, but still tries to be a good host for his sister, Lucy. Vicky, who is still very resentful and angry, drops in to visit, and they all get into a very heated argument, about a past abuse from their childhood. Lucy says, "It was not too bad", and Vicky replies "It was exactly that bad, Lucy." Later on, Pete says "Vicky, we didn't turn out so bad, you know."

Lucy is only "physically" in one chapter, but she is the one that is central, and connects them all!

This is a story about relationships; husbands and wives, children and parents, mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, cousins, and others. It is about all the many POSSIBILITIES of kindness, love, and forgiveness in this unsure world.

4.5 Stars. I really enjoyed this one, and highly recommend to all!]]>
3.74 2017 Anything Is Possible (Amgash, #2)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Jan
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2017/08/29
date added: 2017/08/29
shelves:
review:
"This was the skin that protected you from the world---this loving of another person you shared your life with."

I am so happy to have discovered Elizabeth Strout! She is a wonderful, compassionate writer! She has a way of saying so much with so little~amazing!
I really enjoyed My Name is Lucy Barton, and was so glad when this sequel came out!

In Anything is Possible, each chapter is a separare story. Each story gives a vivid, private look into the lives of the characters and their past. They are all people from Lucy's life, and abusive past, in her hometown of Amgash, Illinois. Each chapter stands alone, but they also combine to tell a great story of family, community and humankind.

I liked these stories that were simply and beautifully told, with compassion! This is what drew me in, and made me care about these characters. One of my favorite chapters was "sister", in which Lucy, who is now a famous author, comes back to her hometown and her abusive past, after being gone for 17 years. She goes to visit her brother, Pete and older sister, Vicky. Pete is alone, living in the dilapidated home, but still tries to be a good host for his sister, Lucy. Vicky, who is still very resentful and angry, drops in to visit, and they all get into a very heated argument, about a past abuse from their childhood. Lucy says, "It was not too bad", and Vicky replies "It was exactly that bad, Lucy." Later on, Pete says "Vicky, we didn't turn out so bad, you know."

Lucy is only "physically" in one chapter, but she is the one that is central, and connects them all!

This is a story about relationships; husbands and wives, children and parents, mothers and daughters, sisters and brothers, cousins, and others. It is about all the many POSSIBILITIES of kindness, love, and forgiveness in this unsure world.

4.5 Stars. I really enjoyed this one, and highly recommend to all!
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Say Nothing 30689366
For Scott and his wife Alison, the kidnapper's call is only the beginning of a twisting, gut-churning ordeal of blackmail, deceit, and terror. Through it all, they will stop at nothing to get their children back, no matter the cost to themselves . . . or to each other.]]>
448 Brad Parks 1101985593 Jan 0 to-read 3.90 2017 Say Nothing
author: Brad Parks
name: Jan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/21
shelves: to-read
review:

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The Road 6288
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,� are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.]]>
241 Cormac McCarthy 0307265439 Jan 0 to-read 3.99 2006 The Road
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Jan
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2017/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

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