Tori's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 04 Apr 2025 13:05:57 -0700 60 Tori's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)]]> 33387769
But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.

]]> 152 Martha Wells 0765397536 Tori 0 currently-reading 4.10 2017 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
author: Martha Wells
name: Tori
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> Katabasis 210191773 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 560 R.F. Kuang 0063021471 Tori 0 to-read 4.24 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Tori
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> Drawings 18240266 influential writers will be surprised and delighted to discover that he was also a gifted graphic artist. This book brings together the finest examples of his funny,
strange, and moving drawings in an inexpensive, beautifully produced gift
volume for every Vonnegut fan.

Kurt Vonnegut's daughter Nanette introduces this volume of his never before
published drawings with an intimate remembrance of her father. Vonnegut always drew, and many of his novels contain sketches. Breakfast of Champions (1973) included many felt-tip pen drawings, and he had a show in 1983 of his drawings at
New York's Margo Feiden Gallery, but really got going in the early 1990s when he
became acquainted with the screenprinter Joe Petro III, who became his partner in
making his colorful drawings available as silkscreens.

With a touch of cubism, mixed with a Paul Klee gift for caricature, a Calder-like ability
to balance color and line, and more than a touch of sixties psychedelic sensibility,
Vonnegut's aesthetic is as idiosyncratic and defiant of tradition as his books. While writing came to be more onerous in his later years, making art became his joyful
primary activity, and he made drawings up until his death in 2007. This volume, and a
planned touring exhibition of the drawings, will introduce Vonnegut's legion of fans to
an entirely new side of his irrepressible creative personality.]]> 176 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1580933777 Tori 0 currently-reading 4.25 2014 Drawings
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Tori
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
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]]> Walking Practice 61150781 Squid Game meets The Left Hand of Darkness meets Under the Skin in this radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien's hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human.

After crashing their spacecraft in the middle of nowhere, a shapeshifting alien find themself stranded on an unfamiliar planet and disabled by Earth's gravity. To survive, they will need to practice walking. And what better way than to hunt for food? As they discover, humans are delicious.

Intelligent, clever, and adaptable, the alien shift their gender, appearance, and conduct to suit a prey's sexual preference, then attack at the pivotal moment of their encounter. They use a variety of hunting tools, including a popular dating app, to target the juiciest prey and carry a backpack filled with torturous instruments and cleaning equipment. But the alien's existence begins to unravel one night when they fail to kill their latest meal.

Thrust into an ill-fated chase across the city, the alien is confronted with the psychological and physical tolls their experience on Earth has taken. Questioning what they must do to sustain their own survival, they begin to understand why humans also fight to live. But their hunger is insatiable, and the alien once again targets a new prey, not knowing what awaits. . . .

Dolki Min's haunting debut novel is part psychological thriller, part searing critique of the social structures that marginalize those who are different--the disabled, queer, and nonconformist. Walking Practice uncovers humanity in who we consider to be alien, and illuminates how alienation can shape the human experience.

Walking Practice features 21 black-and-white line drawings throughout.

Translated from the Korean by Victoria Caudle]]> 166 Dolki Min 0063258617 Tori 3 3.62 2022 Walking Practice
author: Dolki Min
name: Tori
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/04
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]]> The Electric State 38642323 A teen girl and her robot embark on a cross-country mission in this illustrated science fiction story, perfect for fans of Ready Player One and Black Mirror.

In late 1997, a runaway teenager and her small yellow toy robot travel west through a strange American landscape where the ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside, along with the discarded trash of a high-tech consumerist society addicted to a virtual-reality system. As they approach the edge of the continent, the world outside the car window seems to unravel at an ever faster pace, as if somewhere beyond the horizon, the hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.]]> 144 Simon St?lenhag 1501181416 Tori 3 4.42 2017 The Electric State
author: Simon St?lenhag
name: Tori
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/04/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar]]> 220160852 A Chinese American woman spins tragedy into comedy when her life falls apart in a taut, wry debut novel that grapples with grief, motherhood, and myths—perfect for fans of Joan Is Okay and Crying in H Mart.

A man and a woman walk into a restaurant. The woman expects a lovely night filled with endless plates of samosas. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie.

A short while after, her chest starts to ache. She walks into an examination room, where she finds out the pain in her breast isn’t just heartbreak—it’s cancer. She decides to call the tumor Maggie.

Unfolding in fragments over the course of the ensuing months, Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar follows the narrator as she embarks on a journey of grief, healing, and reclamation. She starts talking to Maggie (the tumor), getting acquainted with her body’s new inhabitant. She overgenerously creates a “Guide to My A User’s Manual” for Maggie (the other woman), hoping to ease the process of discovering her ex-husband’s whims and quirks. She turns her children’s bedtime stories into retellings of Chinese folklore passed down by her own mother, in an attempt to make them fall in love with their shared culture—and to maybe save herself in the process.

In the style of Jenny Offill and the tradition of Nora Ephron’s hilarious and devastating writing on heartbreak and womanhood, Maggie is a master class in transforming personal tragedy into a form of defiant comedy.]]> 208 Katie Yee 166808421X Tori 0 to-read 4.24 2025 Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar
author: Katie Yee
name: Tori
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Seven Days in June 55648820
When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry - or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since.

Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered...

With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781538719107.]]> 336 Tia Williams Tori 0 to-read 3.98 2021 Seven Days in June
author: Tia Williams
name: Tori
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/28
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]]> The Unworthy 214151601 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668051885 Tori 4 3.67 2023 The Unworthy
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Tori
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
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]]> A Killing Cold 211004079 A woman invited to her wealthy fiance’s family retreat realizes they are hiding a terrible secret—and that she’s been there before, by the bestselling author of What Lies in the Woods.

A whirlwind romance.
When Theodora Scott met Connor—wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family—she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives.

Stay away from Connor Dalton.
Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood.

I’ve been here before.
Theo has almost no recollection of her earliest years, but now she begins to piece together the fragments of her memories. Someone here has a shocking secret that they will do anything to keep hidden, and Theo is in terrible danger. Because the Daltons do not lose, and discovering what happened at Idlewood may cost Theo everything.]]> 291 Kate Alice Marshall 1250343054 Tori 3 3.81 2025 A Killing Cold
author: Kate Alice Marshall
name: Tori
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/17
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]]> At Dark, I Become Loathsome 210906882 From Eric LaRocca—Bram Stoker Award–nominated and Splatterpunk Award–winning author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke—肠辞尘别蝉 At Dark, I Become Loathsome, a grim yet gentle, horrifying yet hopeful, intense tale of death, trauma, and love.

“If you’re reading this, you’ve likely thought that the world would be a better place without you.”

A single line of text, glowing in the darkness of the internet. Written by Ashley Lutin, who has often thought the same—and worse—in the years since his wife died and his young son disappeared. But the peace of the grave is not for him—it’s for those he can help. Ashley has constructed a peculiar ritual for those whose desire to die is at war with their yearning to live a better life.

Struggling to overcome his own endless grief, one night Ashley finds connection with Jinx—a potential candidate for Ashley’s next ritual—who spins a tale both revolting and fascinating. Thus begins a relationship that traps the two men in an ever-tightening spiral of painful revelations, where long-hidden secrets are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the light.

Only through pain can we find healing. Only through death can we find new life.]]> 178 Eric LaRocca Tori 3 3.37 2025 At Dark, I Become Loathsome
author: Eric LaRocca
name: Tori
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
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While I do love Eric LaRocca's stories, the writing in this one got way too repetitive for me.
]]> Clear 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 196 Carys Davies 1668030667 Tori 2 3.85 Clear
author: Carys Davies
name: Tori
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/03/10
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]]> Everything Is Tuberculosis 220341389 John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

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

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

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.]]> 208 John Green 0525556575 Tori 5 4.57 2025 Everything Is Tuberculosis
author: John Green
name: Tori
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
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We do not deserve this man, but I am so glad he exists.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

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

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Tori 5 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Tori
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
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]]> The Favorites 211399784 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating about a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice

She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating—and each other—to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and rollercoaster relationship. Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the "real story" through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary. But she can't stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy either. So, after a decade of silence, she's telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.

Inspired by the powerful love and hate that fuel Emily Bronte’s classic, Wuthering Heights, The Favorites is an exhilarating dance between passion, ambition, and what it truly means to win.]]> 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 Tori 4 4.20 2025 The Favorites
author: Layne Fargo
name: Tori
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3) 209439446
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 527 Rebecca Yarros 1649374186 Tori 4 4.19 2025 Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Tori
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
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]]> SPY×FAMILY 13 199137756 194 Tatsuya Endo 4088838394 Tori 4 4.38 2024 SPY×FAMILY 13
author: Tatsuya Endo
name: Tori
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
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]]> Blood on the Tracks, Vol. 3 50245222 The last days of summer creep toward a violent climax...

Seiichi's family begins to fall apart in the wake of his cousin's "accident," but nothing compares to the mental and emotional torture he undergoes as he tries to maintain some sense of self in the face of his mother's manipulations. Torn by his love for her, Seiichi is pushed to the breaking point and finds himself unable to speak, both literally and figuratively.

The tension continues to build in Shuzo Oshimi's masterwork of understated psychological horror, as Seiichi falls further and further into the abyss of his mother's unraveling psyche.]]> 224 Shuzo Oshimi 1949980782 Tori 2 4.21 2018 Blood on the Tracks, Vol. 3
author: Shuzo Oshimi
name: Tori
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/29
date added: 2025/01/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)]]> 57185878 Giant turtles, impossible ships, and tidal rivers ridden by a Drowned girl in search of a family in the latest in the bestselling Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire.

Nadya had three mothers: the one who bore her, the country that poisoned her, and the one who adopted her.

Nadya never considered herself less than whole, not until her adoptive parents fitted her with a prosthetic arm against her will, seeking to replace the one she'd been missing from birth.

It was cumbersome; it was uncomfortable; it was wrong.

It wasn't her.

Frustrated and unable to express why, Nadya began to wander, until the day she fell through a door into Belyyreka, the Land Beneath the Lake--and found herself in a world of water, filled with child-eating amphibians, majestic giant turtles, and impossible ships that sailed as happily beneath the surface as on top. In Belyyreka, she found herself understood for who she was: a Drowned Girl, who had made her way to her real home, accepted by the river and its people.

But even in Belyyreka, there are dangers, and trials, and Nadya would soon find herself fighting to keep hold of everything she had come to treasure.]]> 160 Seanan McGuire Tori 3 4.04 2025 Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear (Wayward Children, #10)
author: Seanan McGuire
name: Tori
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/21
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]]> Midwestern Gothic 151221365 Kill Creek author and Kansas native Scott Thomas takes a hatchet to the idyllic tropes of the American heartland.

In The Door in the Field, Thomas follows a quarrelsome construction worker named Rayland Allen, whose bad day becomes a far worse night when drinks at an off-the-books establishment deep in the woods set Ray down an unforeseeably bloody path.

In The Boy in the Woods, Thomas follows young Eddie Reicher, who lingers a day too long at summer camp as unholy terror creeps in. Something evil has infected the counselors. And Eddie will have to do everything he can―even kill―if he hopes to survive the night.

In One Half of a Child’s Face, Thomas follows the recently divorced Sienna Franklin. Spying on her son and ex-husband, she notices an odd painting hanging on the wall of an adjacent apartment. Over the course of the next few days, Sienna will watch with growing horror as the children in the apartment building begin to gather before the painting as if called to it.

With this collection, Thomas digs his hands into the soil of the American heartland and establishes himself as the master of Midwestern Gothic.]]> 440 Scott Thomas 1950301710 Tori 0 to-read 3.93 2024 Midwestern Gothic
author: Scott Thomas
name: Tori
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> Too Old for This 221115923 A retired serial killer’s quiet life is upended by an unexpected visitor. To protect her secret, there’s only one option left—what’s another murder? From bestselling author Samantha Downing.

Lottie Jones thought her crimes were behind her.

Decades earlier, she changed her identity and tucked herself away in a small town. Her most exciting nights are the weekly bingo games at the local church and gossiping with her friends.?

When investigative journalist Plum Dixon shows up on her doorstep asking questions about Lottie’s past and specifically her involvement with numerous unsolved cases, well, Lottie just can’t have that.

But getting away with murder is hard enough when you’re young. And when Lottie receives another annoying knock on the door, she realizes this crime might just be the death of her…]]> 400 Samantha Downing 0593101030 Tori 0 to-read 4.53 2025 Too Old for This
author: Samantha Downing
name: Tori
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> The Bewitching 220458657 Three women in three different eras encounter danger and witchcraft in this eerie multigenerational horror saga from the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic.

“Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches”: That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva—stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that’s why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.

In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay’s most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay’s manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.

Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.]]> 368 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0593874323 Tori 0 to-read 4.37 2025 The Bewitching
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Tori
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil]]> 215020997 London, 1837.
Boston, 2019.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.

One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.

And all of them grow teeth.]]> 560 Victoria E. Schwab 1035064642 Tori 0 to-read 4.38 2025 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Tori
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Revenge of the Librarians 59808600
Tom Gauld returns with his wittiest and most trenchant collection of literary cartoons to date. Perfectly composed drawings are punctuated with the artist’s signature brand of humour, hitting high and low. After all, Gauld is just as comfortable taking jabs at Jane Eyre and Game of Thrones .

Some particularly favoured targets include the pretentious procrastinating novelist, the commercial mercenary of the dispassionate editor, the willful obscurantism of the vainglorious poet. Quake in the presence of the stack of bedside books as it grows taller! Gnash your teeth at the ever-moving deadline that the writer never meets! Quail before the critic’s incisive dissection of the manuscript! And most importantly, seethe with envy at the paragon of creative productivity!

Revenge of the Librarians contains even more murders, drubbings, and castigations than The Department of Mind-Blowing Theories, Baking For Kafka, or any other collections of mordant scribblings by the inimitably excellent Gauld.]]> 180 Tom Gauld 1770466169 Tori 5 3.96 2022 Revenge of the Librarians
author: Tom Gauld
name: Tori
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century]]> 59808031
“Amia Srinivasan is an unparalleled and extraordinary writer―no one X-rays an argument, a desire, a contradiction, a defense mechanism quite like her. In stripping the new politics of sex and power down to its fundamental and sometimes clashing principles, The Right to Sex is a bracing revivification of a crucial lineage in feminist Srinivasan is daring, compassionate, and in relentless search of a new frame.” ―Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Reflections on Self Delusion

Thrilling, sharp, and deeply humane, the philosopher Amia Srinivasan’s The Right to Feminism in the Twenty-First Century upends the way we discuss―or avoid discussing―the problems and politics of sex.

How should we think about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do, a supposedly private act laden with public meaning, a personal preference shaped by outside forces, a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart.

How should we talk about sex? Since #MeToo, many have fixed on consent as the key framework for achieving sexual justice. Yet consent is a blunt tool. To grasp sex in all its complexity―its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race, and power―we need to move beyond yes and no, wanted and unwanted.

We do not know the future of sex―but perhaps we could imagine it. Amia Srinivasan’s stunning debut helps us do just that. She traces the meaning of sex in our world, animated by the hope for a different world. She reaches back into an older feminist tradition that was unafraid to think of sex as a political phenomenon. She discusses a range of fraught relationships―between discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, punishment and accountability, students and teachers, pleasure and power, capitalism and liberation.

The Right to Feminism in the Twenty-First Century is a provocation and a promise, transforming many of our most urgent political debates and asking what it might mean to be free.]]> 304 Amia Srinivasan 1250858798 Tori 4 4.10 2021 The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
author: Amia Srinivasan
name: Tori
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
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]]> Private Rites 203579085 From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world

It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.

More estranged than ever, the sisters’ lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.]]> 291 Julia Armfield 125034431X Tori 0 3.59 2024 Private Rites
author: Julia Armfield
name: Tori
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
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]]> <![CDATA[A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)]]> 55077657 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250236210.

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?]]> 147 Becky Chambers Tori 3 4.25 2021 A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Tori
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves:
review:
A very cute story that deals with the unnecessary pressures humans put onto themselves. I will say, however, I felt that there were too many parallels drawn between humans and animals by Mosscap in order to defend the sentiment "it's enough to just be." Yes, we are very similar, but we also have conscious thought, ambition, and intelligence, and we have a responsibility to use those capabilities to help make the world a better place.
]]> King of Ashes 219833252 Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.

Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his himself, and his own particular set of skills.

Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.

Because everything burns.]]> 352 S.A. Cosby 1250832063 Tori 0 to-read 4.30 2025 King of Ashes
author: S.A. Cosby
name: Tori
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> Gone to See the River Man 52373510
These people will give anything for the idols they worship, be they rock stars, actors or authors. Or even serial killers.

Lori is just such a fanatic. Her obsession is with Edmund Cox, a man of sadistic cruelty who butchered more than twenty women. She’s gone so far as to forge a relationship with him, visiting him in prison and sending him letters on a regular basis. She will do anything to get close to him, so when he gives her a task, she eagerly accepts it.

She has no idea of the horror that awaits her.

Edmund tells her she must go to his cabin in the woods of Killen and retrieve a key to deliver to a mysterious figure known only as The River Man.

In her quest, she brings along her handicapped sister, and they journey through the deep, dark valley, beginning their trip upriver. The trip quickly becomes a surreal nightmare, one that digs up Lori’s personal demons, the ones she feels bonds her to Edmund. The river runs with flesh, the cabin is a vault of horrors, and ghostly blues music echoes through the mountains. Soon they will learn that The River Man is not quite fact or folklore, and definitely not human -- at least, not anymore. And the key is just the beginning of what is required of Lori to prove she’s worthy of a madman’s love.]]> 182 Kristopher Triana Tori 3 3.65 2020 Gone to See the River Man
author: Kristopher Triana
name: Tori
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> When the Wolf Comes Home 211004893
As they attempt to evade the boy's increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first, Jess thinks she understands what they're up against, but she's about to learn there's more to these surreal and grisly events than she could've ever imagined.

And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.]]> 304 Nat Cassidy 125035434X Tori 0 to-read 4.59 2025 When the Wolf Comes Home
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Tori
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> This Book Will Bury Me 213570821 From the bestselling author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and Midnight is the Darkest Hour comes a chilling, compulsive story of five amateur sleuths, whose hunt for an elusive killer catapults them into danger as the world watches.

It's the most famous crime in modern history. But only she knows the true story.

After the unexpected death of her father, college student Jane Sharp longs for a distraction from her grief. She becomes obsessed with true crime, befriending armchair detectives who teach her how to hunt killers from afar. In this morbid internet underground, Jane finds friendship, purpose, and even glory...

So when news of the shocking deaths of three college girls in Delphine, Idaho takes the world by storm, and sleuths everywhere race to solve the crimes, Jane and her friends are determined to beat them. But the case turns out to be stranger than anyone expected. Details don't add up, the police are cagey, and there seems to be more media hype and internet theorizing than actual evidence. When Jane and her sleuths take a step closer, they find that every answer only begs more questions. Something's not adding up, and they begin to suspect their killer may be smarter and more prolific than any they've faced before. Placing themselves in the center of the story starts to feel more and more like walking into a trap...

Told one year after the astounding events that concluded the case and left the world reeling, when Jane has finally decided to break her silence about what really happened, she tells the true story of the Delphine Massacres. And what she has to confess will shock even the most seasoned true crime fans...


]]> 480 Ashley Winstead 1728270006 Tori 0 to-read 3.81 2025 This Book Will Bury Me
author: Ashley Winstead
name: Tori
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Rest Stop 209336456 160 Nat Cassidy 1959565362 Tori 3 3.69 2024 Rest Stop
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Tori
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
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]]> Evenings and Weekends 181109993 For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast of intricately linked characters during a heatwave in London as simmering tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.

London, 2019. It’s the hottest June on record, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. In the streets of the city, four old acquaintances want more from life than they’ve been given. On the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, their paths will intersect at a party that will change their lives forever…

Maggie, a once-hopeful artist turned waitress, is pregnant and preparing to move back to her hometown with her boyfriend and father-to-be Ed, leaving the city she loves and the life she imagined for herself.

Ed, coasting through life as a barely competent bike courier, is ready for a new start with Maggie and their baby, if only to finally leave behind his secret past of hooking up with strange men in train station bathrooms—and his secret past with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, who sleepwalks through his office job and lives for the weekends, is on the brink of achieving his first real relationship with his roommate Keith. The two live in an illegal warehouse commune with other quirky creatives and idealists—the site of the party to end all parties.

As the temperature continues to climb, Maggie, Ed, and Phil will have to confront their shared pasts, current desires, and limits of their future lives together before the weekend is over.

Strikingly heartfelt, sexually charged, and disarmingly comic, Oisín McKenna’s addictive, page-turning debut is a mesmerizing dive into the soul of a city and a critical look at the political, emotional, and financial hurdles facing young adults trying to build lives there and often living for their evenings and weekends.]]> 352 Oisín McKenna 0063319977 Tori 0 to-read 3.78 2024 Evenings and Weekends
author: Oisín McKenna
name: Tori
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> Nowhere 214195323 Mare of Easttown meets The Outsider in this spine-tingling and twisty debut about a series of disappearances in a small, fundamentalist town and what one broken family must do to remain together as dark forces close in.

After losing her young son in an accident, Rachel Kennan throws herself into her career as police chief of a small Virginia town to avoid focusing on her grief. Meanwhile, her husband, Finn, a washed-up writer whose alcoholism led to the devastating tragedy that changed everything, struggles to redeem himself before his family completely falls apart. Their two daughters are the only things keeping Rachel and Finn together, but the girls have demons of their own.

At the same time, a disturbing crime rocks their tightknit, religious community, sending Rachel chasing leads in a place that does not take kindly to outsiders. When an ominous force in the forest starts calling to the children, fear spawns hate among the townspeople, placing the Kennan family directly in the line of fire. Left with no choice but to rely on each other, Rachel and Finn must come together to face threats inside and out.

A haunting family saga and a disquieting horror debut, Nowhere draws from Appalachian folklore to caution us that true terror is what we bury in our own hearts.]]> 304 Allison Gunn 1668046679 Tori 0 to-read 3.77 2025 Nowhere
author: Allison Gunn
name: Tori
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Last Session 214151571 From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Writing Retreat, a white-knuckled locked-room thriller about a social worker who, after coming face-to-face with her dark past, must infiltrate a mysterious wellness center in the deserts of New Mexico.

When a catatonic woman shows up at the psychiatric unit, social worker Thea swears she knows her from somewhere. She’s shocked to discover the patient holds a link to a traumatic time in her past. Upon regaining lucidity, the patient claims she can’t remember the horrific recent events that caused her brain to shut down. Thea’s at a loss—especially when the patient is ripped away from her as suddenly as she appeared.

Determined to find her, Thea follows a trail of clues to a remote center in Southwestern New Mexico, where a charismatic couple holds a controversial monthly retreat to uncover attendees’ romantic and sexual issues. Forced to participate in increasingly intimate exercises, Thea finds herself inching closer not only to her missing patient, but also to tantalizing answers about her harrowing past. However, time is running out, and if she stays for the last session, she too might lose her mind…or worse.]]> 368 Julia Bartz 1982199490 Tori 0 to-read 3.20 2025 The Last Session
author: Julia Bartz
name: Tori
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Assassin and the Healer (Throne of Glass, #0.2)]]> 25978565 40 Sarah J. Maas Tori 3 3.78 2013 The Assassin and the Healer (Throne of Glass, #0.2)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Tori
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/14
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight]]> 197036037 272 Shawn Cohen 1728272998 Tori 4 3.55 2024 College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight
author: Shawn Cohen
name: Tori
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
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]]> Sunburn 75715117 Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023'

It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.

Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.

Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.

But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness.

Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.]]> 288 Chloe Michelle Howarth 0857308416 Tori 5 4.33 2023 Sunburn
author: Chloe Michelle Howarth
name: Tori
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/09
date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> Bloom 78627220 A sweet sapphic romance takes a deadly dark turn in this sharp-as-a-knife novella from the New York Times bestselling author.

Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers’ market. Ash—precise, pretty, and practically perfect—sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants. Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she’s not the one doing the devouring…]]> 203 Delilah S. Dawson Tori 5 3.82 2023 Bloom
author: Delilah S. Dawson
name: Tori
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/28
date added: 2024/12/16
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]]> Society of Lies 202102003 How far would you go to belong?

Maya has returned to Princeton for her college reunion - it's been a decade since she graduated, and this visit is special because she will also be attending the graduation of her little sister, Naomi.

But what should have been a dream weekend becomes Maya's worst nightmare when she receives the news that Naomi is dead. The police are calling it an accident, but Maya suspects that there is more to the story than they are letting on.

As Maya pieces together what happened in the months leading up to her sister's death, she begins to realise how much Naomi hid from her. Despite Maya's warnings, Naomi had joined Sterling Club, the most exclusive social club on campus - the same one Maya belonged to. And if she had to guess, Naomi was likely tapped for the secret society within it.

Maya knows that her sister isn't the first person in the society to turn up dead. Now every clue is leading Maya back to the past . . . and to the secret she's been keeping all these years.]]> 384 Lauren Ling Brown 059372335X Tori 3 3.48 2024 Society of Lies
author: Lauren Ling Brown
name: Tori
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves:
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]]> The Room 17830958
Bjorn is a compulsive, meticulous bureaucrat who discovers a secret room at the government office where he works - a secret room that no one else in his office will acknowledge. When Bjorn is in his room, what his co-workers see is him standing by the wall and staring off into space looking dazed, relaxed, and decidedly creepy. Bjorn's bizarre behavior eventually leads his co-workers to try to have him fired, but Bjorn will turn the tables on them with help from his secret room.

Debut author Jonas Karlsson doesn't leave a word out of place in this brilliant, bizarre, delightful take on how far we will go--in a world ruled by conformity - to live an individual and examined life.]]> 190 Jonas Karlsson 0804139989 Tori 2 3.56 2014 The Room
author: Jonas Karlsson
name: Tori
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/10
date added: 2024/12/10
shelves:
review:

]]> An Atlas of Tolkien 43316749 ]]> 256 David Day 1626864934 Tori 5 4.15 2015 An Atlas of Tolkien
author: David Day
name: Tori
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[It Will Only Hurt for a Moment]]> 206180583 In this highly atmospheric thriller from the Bram Stoker Award–nominated author of The Violence, a young woman hopes to reinvent herself at an isolated artists’ colony . . . only to be drawn into its dark, twisted past.

Sarah Carpenter is starting over.

She’s on the run—leaving behind her unsupportive, narcissistic ex-boyfriend and alcoholic, abusive mother—and headed for a new beginning at Tranquil Falls, a secluded artists’ colony on the grounds of a closed hotel. There, with no cell signal or internet to distract her, she hopes to rediscover her love for pottery and put the broken pieces of her life back together.

But when Sarah uncovers the body of a young woman while digging a hole for a pit kiln, things start to fall apart. Her fellow artists begin to act in troubling ways. The eccentric fiber artist knits an endless scarf. The musician plays the same carousel song over and over until his fingers bleed. The calligrapher grins with ink-stained teeth. Not to mention the haunting dreams Sarah has night after night.

When she discovers glass shards in her clay, Sarah wonders if someone is out to get her—or if she’s losing her grip on reality out here in the wilds, where the pounding of the waterfall never, ever fades. As she investigates the beautiful valley and the crumbling resort looming over them all, she unearths a chilling past that refuses to remain buried . . .]]> 368 Delilah S. Dawson 059315665X Tori 3 3.63 2024 It Will Only Hurt for a Moment
author: Delilah S. Dawson
name: Tori
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves:
review:
While I appreciate the larger reason behind the story, it felt so disjointed between the first and second halves. There are also several instances of on-page sexual assault that were never disclosed. Read only if you’re comfortable.
]]> Spy×Family 12 124938153 202 Tatsuya Endo 4088836758 Tori 4 4.39 2023 Spy×Family 12
author: Tatsuya Endo
name: Tori
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves:
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]]> Feast While You Can 207567782 For readers of Nightbitch and We Ride Upon Sticks, this strange and sexy novel of queer love in a small town is an unsettling reminder that the horrors of modern life are monsters ready to possess us all.

In the valley at the intersection of three towering mountains sits Cadenze, an ugly, remote town with little to its name. It's filled with tourists in the summer and dead the rest of the year, when most of its residents surrender to a sleepier existence. Except, that is, for whatever is lurking in the caves...

Angelina Sicco was born and raised in Cadenze, and for many generations, so was every member of her family. Determined to be content with her lot in life, she walks her mongrel dog, attends her brother's heavy metal concerts, holds court in the local dive bar, and does everything she can to bait hot, queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown. But on the night of a family party much like every other, Angelina runs into Patrick's ex, the sternly handsome Jagvi, who's back in town for a spell. Perhaps enticed by Jagvi’s arrival, an ancient evil lying dormant in those caves is awakened, and soon Angelina’s small, contained world begins to shatter.

As the monstrous force grows bolder, it infiltrates Angelina’s life. It talks with her dog’s mouth; it guzzles on her memories; it controls Angelina from the inside. Only Jagvi’s touch repels it — the final trigger for a secret, passionate romance. But this monster feasts on all the passion, heartbreak, and mess that makes up a life, and Angelina Sicco’s life has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And what will it cost her?]]> 304 Mikaella Clements 153874225X Tori 0 to-read 3.89 2024 Feast While You Can
author: Mikaella Clements
name: Tori
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Last One at the Wedding 203579177 From the bestselling author of Hidden Pictures comes a breathtaking work of suspense about a father trying to save his daughter from a life-altering decision that will put everything he loves on the line.

Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.

He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.

An edge-of-your-seat thriller that delves deep into the heart of one family, The Last One at the Wedding is a work of brilliant suspense from a true modern master.]]> 338 Jason Rekulak 1250895782 Tori 3 3.62 2024 The Last One at the Wedding
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Tori
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/14
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]]> 84, Charing Cross Road 368916
[text from the back cover of the book]]]> 106 Helene Hanff Tori 3 4.17 1970 84, Charing Cross Road
author: Helene Hanff
name: Tori
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1970
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves:
review:

]]> The Hitchcock Hotel 204316865 A Hitchcock fanatic with an agenda invites old friends for a weekend stay at his secluded themed hotel in this fiendishly clever, suspenseful new novel.

Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.

To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.

But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.

After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.]]> 352 Stephanie Wrobel 059354711X Tori 3 3.57 2024 The Hitchcock Hotel
author: Stephanie Wrobel
name: Tori
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves:
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]]> Graveyard Shift: A Novella 207377065 Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.]]> 126 M.L. Rio 1250356776 Tori 3 3.23 2024 Graveyard Shift: A Novella
author: M.L. Rio
name: Tori
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/30
date added: 2024/10/30
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]]> The Night Guest 127306444
I?unn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same ― have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.

Until one night I?unn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .

What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?]]> 197 Hildur Knútsdóttir 1250322049 Tori 3 3.30 2021 The Night Guest
author: Hildur Knútsdóttir
name: Tori
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
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]]> Haunt Sweet Home 203579272 On the set of a kitschy reality TV show, staged scares transform into unnerving reality in this spooky ghost story from multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker.

“Don’t talk to day about what we do at night.”

When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she's truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.

Eerie and empathetic, Haunt Sweet Home is a multifaceted, supernatural exploration of finding your own way into adulthood, and into yourself.]]> 165 Sarah Pinsker 1250330262 Tori 3 3.34 2024 Haunt Sweet Home
author: Sarah Pinsker
name: Tori
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
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]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Tori 3 3.88 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Tori
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
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]]> So Thirsty 203608552 A woman must learn to take life by the throat after a night out leads to irrevocable changes in this juicy, thrilling novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Black Sheep.

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

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

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

The friends are forced to come to terms with some pretty eternal consequences in this bloody, seductive novel about how it’s never too late to find satisfaction, even though it might taste different than expected.]]> 304 Rachel Harrison 0593642546 Tori 3 3.50 2024 So Thirsty
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Tori
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves:
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Always love Rachel Harrison's creativity and humor, but she somehow made the absolutely lamest vampires. The story barely went anywhere.
]]> Mapping the Interior 33099584 Mapping the Interior is a horrifying, inward-looking novella from Stephen Graham Jones that Paul Tremblay calls "emotionally raw, disturbing, creepy, and brilliant."

Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew.

The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.]]> 109 Stephen Graham Jones 076539510X Tori 2 3.76 2017 Mapping the Interior
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Tori
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
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]]> An Academy for Liars 203956639 A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger.

Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.

Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.

After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.

As Lennon continues in her studies her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton College, and the way her mentor’s tragic and violent past intertwines with it. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns. For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption . . . and it's a test she's terrified she is going to fail.]]> 464 Alexis Henderson 0593638301 Tori 4 3.45 2024 An Academy for Liars
author: Alexis Henderson
name: Tori
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves:
review:
A wonderful dark academia story, but almost every chapter after the 30% mark ends with her blacking out and waking up somewhere else. It got old and repetitive.
]]> Guillotine 203613879
Thrift fashionista Dez Lane doesn't want to date Patrick Ruskin; she just wants to meet his mother, the editor-in-chief of Nouveau magazine. When he invites her to his family's big Easter reunion at their ancestral home, she's certain she can put up with his arrogance and fend off his advances long enough to ask Marie Caulfield-Ruskin for an internship someone with her pedigree could never nab through the regular submission route.

When they arrive at the enormous island mansion, Dez is floored—she's never witnessed how the 1% lives before in all their ridiculous, unnecessary luxury. But once all the family members are on the island and the ferry has departed, things take a dark turn. For decades, the Ruskins have made their servants sign contracts that are basically indentured servitude, and with nothing to lose, the servants have decided their only route to freedom is to get rid of the Ruskins for good…]]> 208 Delilah S. Dawson 1803368330 Tori 4 3.99 2024 Guillotine
author: Delilah S. Dawson
name: Tori
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/26
date added: 2024/09/26
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review:
The ultimate "good for her" book.
]]> <![CDATA[That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America]]> 203579067 Part memoir, part manifesto, the inspiring story of a Louisiana librarian advocating for inclusivity on the front lines of our vicious culture wars. One of the things small town librarian Amanda Jones values most about books is how they can affirm a young person's sense of self. So in 2022, when she caught wind of a local public hearing that would discuss “book content,” she knew what was at stake. Schools and libraries nationwide have been bombarded by demands for books with LGTBQ+ references, discussions of racism, and more to be purged from the shelves. Amanda would be damned if her community were to ban stories representing minority groups. She spoke out that night at the meeting. Days later, she woke up to a nightmare that is still ongoing. Amanda Jones has been called a groomer, a pedo, and a porn-pusher; she has faced death threats and attacks from strangers and friends alike. Her decision to support a collection of books with diverse perspectives made her a target for extremists using book banning campaigns-funded by dark money organizations and advanced by hard right politicians-in a crusade to make America more white, straight, and Christian. But Amanda Jones wouldn't give up without a she sued her harassers for defamation and urged others to join her in the resistance. Mapping the book banning crisis occurring all across the nation, That Librarian draws the battle lines in the war against equity and inclusion, calling book lovers everywhere to rise in defense of our readers.]]> 288 Amanda Jones 1639733531 Tori 5 3.82 2024 That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America
author: Amanda Jones
name: Tori
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/17
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves:
review:
Amanda Jones is the hero we need. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done and continue to do for intellectual freedom.
]]> <![CDATA[In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia anthology]]> 203613932 ENROLLMENT BEGINS NOW

A beguiling, sinister collection of 12 dark academia short stories from masters of the genre, including Olivie Blake, M.L. Rio, Susie Yang and more!

In these stories, dear student, retribution visits a lothario lecturer; the sinister truth is revealed about a missing professor; a forsaken lover uses a séance for revenge; an obsession blooms about a possible illicit affair; two graduates exhume the secrets of a reclusive scholar; horrors are uncovered in an obscure academic department; five hopeful initiates must complete a murderous task and much more!

Featuring brand-new stories from:
Olivie Blake
M.L. Rio
David Bell
Susie Yang
Layne Fargo
J.T. Ellison
James Tate Hill
Kelly Andrew
Phoebe Wynne
Kate Weinberg
Helen Grant
Tori Bovalino

Definition of dark academia in English:
dark academia
1. An internet subculture concerned with higher education, the arts, and literature, or an idealised version thereof with a focus on the pursuit of knowledge and an exploration of death.
2. A set of aesthetic principles. Scholarly with a gothic edge – tweed blazers, vintage cardigans, scuffed loafers, a worn leather satchel full of brooding poetry. Enthusiasts are usually found in museums and darkened libraries.]]> 368 Marie O'Regan 1803365641 Tori 4 3.49 2023 In These Hallowed Halls: A Dark Academia anthology
author: Marie O'Regan
name: Tori
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Assembly 60021187
FINALIST FOR THE 2022 LA TIMES ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION.

“The electrifying fiction debut that has been called ‘a modern? Mrs. Dalloway .’”—THE ATLANTIC

"Mind-bending and utterly original."—Brandon Taylor

“Slim in the hand, but its impact is massive.”—Ali Smith

One woman. One day. One decision. A? blistering, fearless, and unforgettable literary debut from "a stunning new writer." (Bernardine Evaristo) Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Go to college, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things . Buy an apartment. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman.?She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the is it time to take it all apart?

Assembly is a story about the stories we live within – those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers. And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. With a steely, unfaltering gaze, Natasha Brown dismantles the mythology of whiteness, lining up the debris in a neat row and walking away.]]> 112 Natasha Brown 0316268364 Tori 2 3.72 2021 Assembly
author: Natasha Brown
name: Tori
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/10
date added: 2024/09/10
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]]> The Unmothers 201632539 In this emotionally raw and propulsive folk horror-mystery, a journalist goes to a small town and unravels a dark secret that the women have been keeping for generations.

Marshall is still trying to put the pieces together after the death of her husband. After she is involved in a terrible accident, her editor sends her to the small, backwards town of Raeford to investigate a clearly ridiculous rumor: that a horse has given birth to a healthy, human baby boy.

When Marshall arrives in Raeford, she finds an insular town that is kinder to the horses they are famous for breeding than to their own people. But when two horribly mangled bodies are discovered in a field—one a horse, one a human—she realizes that there might be a real story here.

As she’s pulled deeper into the town and its guarded people, her sense of reality is tipped on its head. Is she losing her grip? Or is this impossible story the key to a dark secret that has haunted the women of Raeford for generations?

Unbearably tense and utterly gripping, this atmospheric tale of female rage, bodily autonomy, and generational trauma hails the arrival of a masterful storyteller.]]> 320 Leslie J. Anderson 1683694295 Tori 3 3.32 2024 The Unmothers
author: Leslie J. Anderson
name: Tori
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/29
date added: 2024/09/01
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]]> Find Me 45448146 In this spellbinding exploration of the varieties of love, the author of the worldwide bestseller Call Me by Your Name revisits its complex and beguiling characters decades after their first meeting.

No novel in recent memory has spoken more movingly to contemporary readers about the nature of love than André Aciman’s haunting Call Me by Your Name. First published in 2007, it was hailed as “a love letter, an invocation . . . an exceptionally beautiful book” (Stacey D’Erasmo, The New York Times Book Review). Nearly three quarters of a million copies have been sold, and the book became a much-loved, Academy Award–winning film starring Timothée Chalamet as the young Elio and Armie Hammer as Oliver, the graduate student with whom he falls in love.

In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, who has become a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train with a beautiful young woman upends Sami’s plans and changes his life forever.

Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, now a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.

Aciman is a master of sensibility, of the intimate details and the emotional nuances that are the substance of passion. Find Me brings us back inside the magic circle of one of our greatest contemporary romances to ask if, in fact, true love ever dies.]]> 273 André Aciman 0374722102 Tori 3 3.60 2019 Find Me
author: André Aciman
name: Tori
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/22
date added: 2024/08/22
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]]> The Book of Witching 205064706 A mother must fight for her daughter’s life in this fierce and haunting tale of witchcraft and revenge from the author of A Haunting in the Arctic.

Clem gets a call that is every mother’s worst nightmare. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn’t recognize her mother. And she doesn’t answer to her name, but insists she is someone named Nyx.

Clem travels the site of her daughter’s accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin’s strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind, or the effects of an ancient curse?]]> 365 C.J. Cooke 059381696X Tori 0 to-read 3.74 2024 The Book of Witching
author: C.J. Cooke
name: Tori
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[And Then? And Then? What Else?]]> 200628690 A bold, candid, vulnerable, and entertaining memoir of the literary life of Daniel Handler, the writer otherwise known as Lemony Snicket

Part memoir, part inspiration for aspiring writers, And Then? And Then? What Else? traces Daniel Handler’s sometimes challenging and often amusing path toward one of the most spectacularly successful writing careers of the twenty-first century. Declaring his love of strange literature, Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil in particular, Handler reflects on the life experiences―some of them deeply personal and revealed for the first time―and the cultural influences that shaped his writing, both under his own name and under his pseudonym Lemony Snicket.]]> 240 Daniel Handler 132409060X Tori 4 3.88 2024 And Then? And Then? What Else?
author: Daniel Handler
name: Tori
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)]]> 36336078 Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera. Unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, at first each feigns indifference. But during the restless summer weeks that follow, unrelenting buried currents of obsession and fear, fascination and desire, intensify their passion as they test the charged ground between them. What grows from the depths of their spirits is a romance of scarcely six weeks' duration and an experience that marks them for a lifetime. For what the two discover on the Riviera and during a sultry evening in Rome is the one thing both already fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy.

The psychological maneuvers that accompany attraction have seldom been more shrewdly captured than in André Aciman's frank, unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Call Me by Your Name is clear-eyed, bare-knuckled, and ultimately unforgettable.]]> 248 André Aciman 1786495252 Tori 3 4.08 2007 Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1)
author: André Aciman
name: Tori
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves:
review:

]]> The Magic Fish 42394599 Ti?n loves his family and his friends…but Ti?n has a secret he's been keeping from them, and it might change everything. An amazing YA graphic novel that deals with the complexity of family and how stories can bring us together.

Real life isn't a fairytale.

But Ti?n still enjoys reading his favorite stories with his parents from the books he borrows from the local library. It's hard enough trying to communicate with your parents as a kid, but for Ti?n, he doesn't even have the right words because his parents are struggling with their English. Is there a Vietnamese word for what he's going through?

Is there a way to tell them he's gay?

A beautifully illustrated story by Trung Le Nguyen that follows a young boy as he tries to navigate life through fairytales, an instant classic that shows us how we are all connected. The Magic Fish tackles tough subjects in a way that accessible with readers of all ages, and teaches us that no matter what—we can all have our own happy endings.]]> 256 Trung Le Nguyen Tori 5 4.50 2020 The Magic Fish
author: Trung Le Nguyen
name: Tori
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]]> 27161156 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062300546.

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

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

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

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

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.]]> 264 J.D. Vance Tori 1 3.81 2016 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
author: J.D. Vance
name: Tori
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at: 2018/11/17
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 199700434 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide.

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 478 Liz Moore 0593418913 Tori 3 4.10 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Tori
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/10
date added: 2024/08/10
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]]> Knife River 198137715 368 Justine Champine 0593447204 Tori 3 3.44 2024 Knife River
author: Justine Champine
name: Tori
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves:
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]]> We Used to Live Here 199798006
As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the strangers enter their home, inexplicable things start happening, including the family’s youngest child going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?

This unputdownable and spine-tingling novel “is like quicksand: the further you delve into its pages, the more immobilized you become by a spiral of terror. We Used to Live Here will haunt you even after you have finished it” (Agustina Bazterrica, author of Tender Is the Flesh).]]> 312 Marcus Kliewer 1982198788 Tori 5 3.68 2024 We Used to Live Here
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: Tori
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/27
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves:
review:
I’ve never had a physical reaction to a thriller until now. Fantastic.
]]> The Eyes Are the Best Part 195703882 Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.]]> 278 Monika Kim 1645661237 Tori 4 3.82 2024 The Eyes Are the Best Part
author: Monika Kim
name: Tori
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/23
date added: 2024/07/23
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]]> <![CDATA[More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #2)]]> 199295788 In this charming and emotionally resonant follow up to the internationally bestselling Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, Satoshi Yagisawa paints a poignant and thoughtful portrait of life, love, and how much books and bookstores mean to the people who love them.

Set again in the beloved Japanese bookshop and nearby coffee shop in the Jimbocho neighborhood of Toyko, More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop deepens the relationship between Takako, her uncle Satoru , and the people in their lives. A new cast of heartwarming regulars have appeared in the shop, including an old man who wears the same ragged mouse-colored sweater and another who collects books solely for the official stamps with the author’s personal seal.

Satoshi Yagisawa illuminates the everyday relationships between people that are forged and grown through a shared love of books. As time passes, Satoru, with Takako’s help, must choose whether to keep the bookshop open or shutter its doors forever. Making the decision will take uncle and niece on an emotional journey back to their family’s roots and remind them again what a bookstore can mean to an individual, a neighborhood, and a whole culture.]]> 176 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278715 Tori 2 3.90 2011 More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #2)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Tori
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/19
shelves:
review:
This read more like a daytime soap opera than what's happening at the Morisaki Bookshop. I feel like this was just a money grab.
]]> <![CDATA[Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk]]> 78130090 An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.

Hey girlfriend I got a proposition goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want

Kathleen Hanna’s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like “Rebel Girl” and “Double Dare Ya” are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?

In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumul?tuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk “girl band” in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.

But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her, including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman. And her friendships with musicians like Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon, and Joan Jett reminded her that, despite the odds, the punk world could still nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its exclusivity.

In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful—and how they continue to fuel her revolutionary art and music.]]> 326 Kathleen Hanna 0062825232 Tori 4 4.40 2024 Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk
author: Kathleen Hanna
name: Tori
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves:
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]]> A Left-Handed Woman: Essays 59808578 A collection of essays from Judith Thurman, National Book Award-winning writer and New Yorker staff writer.



Judith Thurman, a prolific staff writer at The New Yorker for more than two decades, has gathered a selection of her essays and profiles in A Left-Handed Woman. They consider our culture in all its guises: literature, history, politics, gender, fashion, and art, though their paramount subject is the human condition.

Thurman is one of the preeminent essayists of our time--"a master of vivisection," as Kathryn Harrison wrote in The New York Times. "When she's done with a subject, it's still living, mystery intact."]]> 432 Judith Thurman 0374607168 Tori 0 to-read 4.00 2022 A Left-Handed Woman: Essays
author: Judith Thurman
name: Tori
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology]]> 75293507
Norris Black, Amber Blaeser-Wardzala, Phoenix Boudreau, Cherie Dimaline, Carson Faust, Kelli Jo Ford, Kate Hart, Shane Hawk, Brandon Hobson, Darcie Little Badger, Conley Lyons, Nick Medina, Tiffany Morris, Tommy Orange, Mona Susan Power, Marcie R. Rendon, Waubgeshig Rice, Rebecca Roanhorse, Andrea L. Rogers, Morgan Talty, D.H. Trujillo, Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., Richard Van Camp, David Heska, Wanbli Weiden, Royce Young, Wolf Mathilda Zeller.

Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.

These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce listeners to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.]]> 400 Shane Hawk 0593468465 Tori 0 to-read 3.91 2023 Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
author: Shane Hawk
name: Tori
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil]]> 195790835 Stories I Wrote for the Devil lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil, where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of living people. Ananda Lima speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences―of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging―and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.]]> 181 Ananda Lima 1250292972 Tori 2 3.42 2024 Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil
author: Ananda Lima
name: Tori
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/07/14
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves:
review:
This was severely mismarketed. Even from the start, we were told the pivotal story happened in 1981, even though the dust jacket and summary says 1999. The Devil is also barely a part of any of these stories minus the first one.
]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading]]> 193767144
To be a bookseller or librarian…

You have to play detective.

Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. An advocate. A visionary.

A person who creates “book joy” by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, “You’ve got to read this. You’re going to love it.”

Step inside The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians and enter a world where you can feed your curiosities, discover new voices, find whatever you want or require. This place has the magic of rainbows and unicorns, but it's also a business. The book business.

Meet the smart and talented people who live between the pages—and who can’t wait to help you find your next favorite book.]]> 335 James Patterson 0316567531 Tori 4
Also, and I’ll say it again for people in the back, THE LORD OF THE RINGS IS NOT A TRILOGY.]]> 3.88 2024 The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading
author: James Patterson
name: Tori
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed this, but hot damn does James Patterson love himself. I could’ve easily done with all of the self-applauding of James Patterson throughout this.

Also, and I’ll say it again for people in the back, THE LORD OF THE RINGS IS NOT A TRILOGY.
]]> I Who Have Never Known Men 60457992 Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


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


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 175 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492627 Tori 3 4.12 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Tori
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/10
date added: 2024/07/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Home Is Where the Bodies Are 194020321
After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm’s length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn’t been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before.

While going through their parent’s belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the VHS tapes reveals a night back in 1999 that none of them have any recollection of. On screen, their father appears covered in blood. What follows is a dead body and a pact between their parents to get rid of it, before the video abruptly ends.

Beth, Nicole, and Michael must now decide whether to leave the past in the past or uncover the dark secret their mother took to her grave.]]> 256 Jeneva Rose Tori 4 3.77 2024 Home Is Where the Bodies Are
author: Jeneva Rose
name: Tori
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/07
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves:
review:

]]> The House That Horror Built 196848553 A single mother working in the gothic mansion of a reclusive horror director stumbles upon terrifying secrets.

Harry Adams loves horror movies,?so it’s no coincidence?that she accepted a job cleaning house for horror-movie director Javier Castillo. His forbidding gray-stone?Chicago?mansion,?Bright Horses, is filled from top to bottom with terrifying props and costumes as well as glittering awards from his career making movies that thrilled audiences—until family tragedy and scandal forced him to vanish from the industry.

Javier values discretion, and Harry always tries to keep the house immaculate, her head down, and her job safe. Then she hears noises from behind a locked door, noises that sound remarkably like a human voice calling for help. Harry knows not asking questions is a vital part of keeping her job, but she soon discovers that the house may be home to secrets she can’t ignore.]]> 317 Christina Henry 0593638212 Tori 4 3.19 2024 The House That Horror Built
author: Christina Henry
name: Tori
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/02
date added: 2024/07/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Margo's Got Money Troubles 199534613
Margo braucht Geld. Seit sie ungewollt von ihrem Collegeprofessor, der sie jetzt mit dem Kind alleinl?sst, schwanger wurde, mehr denn je. Wie Margo es auch dreht und wendet, kein Job scheint passend zu sein, oder k?nnte auch nur ansatzweise ihr Leben mit einem Baby finanzieren. Durch einen Zufall wird sie auf die Plattform OnlyFans aufmerksam, und Margo ist fasziniert von dieser Welt, in der Frauen mit sich und ihrem K?rper experimentieren, und offenbar gut dabei verdienen. Also beginnt auch sie, Inhalte zu produzieren. Dabei erh?lt sie Unterstützung von ihrer Mitbewohnerin Suzie, einem gro?en Cosplay-Fan, und auch von ihrem Vater Jinx, einem Ex-Wrestlingprofi. Ehe sie sich versieht, ist Margo ein Online-Ph?nomen. K?nnte dies die Antwort auf all ihre Probleme sein, oder hat der Internet-Ruhm einen zu hohen Preis?]]> 304 Rufi Thorpe 0063356589 Tori 3 3.87 2024 Margo's Got Money Troubles
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Tori
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/27
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 2 (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, #2)]]> 32191885 My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two is the eagerly awaited conclusion to one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of the past decade. Presented as the fictional graphic diary of 10-year-old Karen Reyes as she tries to solve the murder of her beloved and enigmatic upstairs neighbor, Anka Silverberg, a holocaust survivor, while the interconnected stories of those around her unfold. In Book Two, dark mysteries past and present continue to abound in the tumultuous and violent Chicago summer of 1968. Young Karen attends the Yippie-organized Festival of Life in Grant Park and finds herself swept up in a police stomping. Privately, she continues to investigate Anka’s recent death and discovers one last cassette tape that sheds light upon Anka's heroic activities in Nazi Germany. She wrestles with her own sexual identity, the death of her mother, and the secrets she suspects her brother Deez of hiding. Ferris’s exhilarating cast of characters experience revelations and epiphanies that both resolve and deepen the mysteries visited upon them earlier. Visually, the story is told in Ferris's inimitable style that breathtakingly and seamlessly combines panel-to-panel storytelling and cartoon montages filled with B-movie horror and pulp monster mag iconography. Full-color illustrations throughout]]> 304 Emil Ferris 168396019X Tori 2 4.23 2024 My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 2 (My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, #2)
author: Emil Ferris
name: Tori
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/23
date added: 2024/06/23
shelves:
review:

]]> Diavola 157035866 Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, Diavola is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology.

Anna has two rules for the annual Pace family destination vacations: Tread lightly and survive.

It isn’t easy when she’s the only one in the family who doesn’t quite fit in. Her twin brother, Benny, goes with the flow so much he’s practically dissolved, and her older sister, Nicole, is so used to everyone—including her blandly docile husband and two kids—falling in line that Anna often ends up in trouble for simply asking a question. Mom seizes every opportunity to question her life choices, and Dad, when not reminding everyone who paid for this vacation, just wants some peace and quiet.

The gorgeous, remote villa in tiny Monteperso seems like a perfect place to endure so much family togetherness, until things start going off the rails—the strange noises at night, the unsettling warnings from the local villagers, and the dark, violent past of the villa itself.

(Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)]]> 293 Jennifer Marie Thorne 1250826128 Tori 3 3.86 2024 Diavola
author: Jennifer Marie Thorne
name: Tori
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/22
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves:
review:

]]> Late Bloomer 127280315 A sapphic opposites-attract romance with Mazey Edding's signature sparkling voice!

Winning the lottery has ruined Opal Devlin's’s life. After quitting her dead-end job where she’d earned minimum wage and even less respect, she’s bombarded by people knocking at her door for a handout the second they found out her bank account was overflowing with cash. And Opal can’t seem to stop saying yes.

With her tender heart thoroughly abused, Opal decides to protect herself by any means necessary, which to her translates to putting almost all her new money to buying a failing flower farm in Asheville, North Carolina to let the flowers live out their plant destiny while she uses the cabin on the property to start her painting business.

But her plans for isolation and self-preservation go hopelessly awry when an angry (albeit gorgeous) Pepper Smith is waiting for her at her new farm. Pepper states she’s the rightful owner of Thistle and Bloom Farms, and isn’t moving out. The unlikely pair strike up an agreement of co-habitation, and butt-heads at every turn. Can these opposites both live out their dreams and plant roots? Or will their combustible arguing (and growing attraction) burn the whole place down?]]> 400 Mazey Eddings 1250847087 Tori 3 3.69 2024 Late Bloomer
author: Mazey Eddings
name: Tori
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
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]]> 血の轍 2 [Chi no Wadachi 2] 36615458
ママ、なぜ「あんなこと」をしたの!?

母?静子の突然の“异常行动”.
息つく间もなく
静一の自我を粉々に打ち砕く次なる“事件”が起こり…
幸せだった家庭は、静かに、逃げ场のない地狱へと
変容してゆく…闭闭> 216 Shuzo Oshimi 4091897061 Tori 3 4.16 2017 血の轍 2 [Chi no Wadachi 2]
author: Shuzo Oshimi
name: Tori
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Grief Is the Thing with Feathers]]> 26114444 In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.

In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal.

In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.

]]> 128 Max Porter 1555977413 Tori 2 3.80 2015 Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
author: Max Porter
name: Tori
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
review:

]]> The Gathering 186872450 A detective investigating a grisly crime in rural Alaska finds herself caught?up in the dark secrets and?superstitions of a small town in this riveting novel from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man

Deadhart, Alaska. 873. Living.

In a small Alaska town, a boy is found with his throat ripped out and all the blood drained from his body. The inhabitants of Deadhart haven’t seen a killing like this in twenty-five years. But they know who’s responsible: a member of the Colony, an ostracized community of vampyrs living in an old mine settlement deep in the woods.

Detective Barbara Atkins, a specialist in vampyr killings, is called in to officially determine if this is a Colony killing—and authorize a cull. Old suspicions die hard in a town like Deadhart, but Barbara isn’t so sure. Determined to find the truth, she enlists the help of a former Deadhart sheriff, Jenson Tucker, whose investigation into the previous murder almost cost him his life. Since then, Tucker has become a recluse. But he knows the Colony better than almost anyone.

As the pair delve into the town’s history, they uncover secrets darker than they could have imagined. And then another body is found. While the snow thickens and the nights grow longer, a killer stalks Deadhart, and two disparate communities circle each other for blood. Time is running out for Atkins and Tucker to find the truth: Are they hunting a bloodthirsty monster . . . or a twisted psychopath? And which is more dangerous?]]> 336 C.J. Tudor 0593356594 Tori 4 3.86 2024 The Gathering
author: C.J. Tudor
name: Tori
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2024/06/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beautiful World, Where Are You]]> 56597885 356 Sally Rooney 0374602603 Tori 2 3.53 2021 Beautiful World, Where Are You
author: Sally Rooney
name: Tori
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/05
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves:
review:
Definitely not my favorite. Really wish I would've known about all of the overly gratuitous sex (that added nothing to the story and made this book way too long), as well as how much religion and Catholicism would play a big role in this story. Also, if you like Felix, you're a red flag. I don't mind unlikeable characters, but when there are zero redeeming qualities and other characters accept their gaslighting without any kind of discussion, reprimand, or solution, it becomes ridiculous. Felix treated Alice horribly for no justifiable reason, and she just accepted it. And everyone else allowed it to happen. I understand Sally Rooney's books tend to just be about normal people living their everyday normal lives (with all of the messiness that comes with it), but this is unnecessary and could arguably be hurtful for some people.
]]> Blood on the Tracks, Vol. 1 52133331 Until one terrible summer day, that all changes...

Shuzo Oshimi (The Flowers of Evil) delivers his most unsettling work yet, the tale of a seemingly normal family suddenly swallowed up by the creeping horror of everyday life.

Gorgeous art and an understated script only serve to heighten the tension as we watch Seiichi Osabe's life spiral into nightmare.]]> 208 Shuzo Oshimi 1949980138 Tori 3 4.06 2017 Blood on the Tracks, Vol. 1
author: Shuzo Oshimi
name: Tori
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Middle of the Night 199026522 In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.

The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.

Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?

The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.

The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.]]> 367 Riley Sager 0593472373 Tori 1 3.66 2024 Middle of the Night
author: Riley Sager
name: Tori
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves:
review:
For the love of God, please stop writing books.
]]> <![CDATA[First Love: Essays on Friendship]]> 195888551
Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger felt a new urgency in her devotion to the women in her life—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.

Each essay in this incisive collection is grounded in a close female friendship in Dancyger’s life, reaching outward to dissect cultural assumptions about identity and desire, and the many ways women create space for each other in a world that wants us small. Seamlessly weaving personal experience with literature and pop culture—ranging from fairytales to true crime, from Ana?s Nin and Sylvia Plath to Heavenly Creatures and the “sad girls” of Tumblr—Dancyger’s essays form a kaleidoscopic story of a life told through friendships, and an expansive interrogation of what it means to love each other.

Though friendship will never be enough to keep us safe from the dangers of the world, Dancyger reminds us that love is always worth the risk, and that when tragedy strikes, it’s our friends who will help us survive. In First Love, these essential bonds get their due.]]> 224 Lilly Dancyger 0593447573 Tori 3 3.90 2024 First Love: Essays on Friendship
author: Lilly Dancyger
name: Tori
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves:
review:

]]> Conversations with Friends 37506350
Written with gemlike precision and marked by a sly sense of humor, Conversations with Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth, and the messy edges of female friendship.]]> 307 Sally Rooney 0451499069 Tori 4 3.77 2017 Conversations with Friends
author: Sally Rooney
name: Tori
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/28
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves:
review:

]]> The Woods All Black 177003235 The Woods All Black is equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood-soaked revenge, all set in 1920s Appalachia

Leslie Bruin is assigned to the backwoods township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, under its usual mandate: vaccinate the flock, birth babies, and weather the judgements of churchy locals who look at him and see a failed woman. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares.

Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice has focused on a young person they insist is an unruly tomboy who must be brought to heel. Violence is bubbling when Leslie arrives, ready to spill over, and he'll have to act fast if he intends to be of use. But the hills enfolding Spar Creek have a mind of their own, and the woods are haunted in ways Leslie does not understand.

The Woods All Black is a story of passion, prejudice, and power — an Appalachian period piece that explores reproductive justice and bodily autonomy, the terrors of small-town religiosity, and the necessity of fighting tooth and claw to live as who you truly are.]]> 150 Lee Mandelo 125079031X Tori 4 3.55 2024 The Woods All Black
author: Lee Mandelo
name: Tori
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances]]> 182506465
Four devastating tales from a master of modern horror...

This Skin Was Once Mine
When her father dies under mysterious circumstances, Jillian Finch finds herself grieving the man she idolized while struggling to feel comfortable in the childhood home she was sent away from nearly twenty years ago by her venomous mother. Then Jillian discovers a dark secret in her family's past--a secret that will threaten to undo everything she has ever known to be true about her beloved father and, more importantly, herself. It's only natural to hurt the things we love the most...

Seedling?
A young man’s father calls him early in the morning to say that his mother has passed away. He arrives home to find his mother's body still in the house. Struggling to process what has happened he notices a small black wound appear on his wrist—the inside of the wound as black as onyx and as seemingly limitless as the cosmos. He is even more unsettled when he discovers his father is cursed with the same affliction. The young man becomes obsessed with his father’s new wounds, exploring the boundless insides and tethering himself to the black threads that curl from inside his poor father...

Prickle
Two old men revive a cruel game with devastating consequences...

All the Parts of You That Won't Easily Burn
Enoch Leadbetter goes to buy a knife for his husband to use at a forthcoming dinner party. He encounters a strange shopkeeper who draws him into an intoxicating new obsession and sets him on a path towards mutilation and destruction...]]> 240 Eric LaRocca 1803366648 Tori 4 3.52 2024 This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances
author: Eric LaRocca
name: Tori
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/25
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves:
review:

]]> The Familiar 133286777 From the New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent, and creator of the Grishaverse series comes a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.]]> 387 Leigh Bardugo 125088425X Tori 2 3.74 2024 The Familiar
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Tori
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/24
shelves:
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]]> Normal People 41057294
A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.]]> 273 Sally Rooney 1984822179 Tori 4 3.81 2018 Normal People
author: Sally Rooney
name: Tori
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/20
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves:
review:
Devoured this in 24 hours. Loved the dynamic between Connell and Marianne, as well as their individual growth throughout the story. The one critique I have is that Marianne wasn't offered the same type of mental health services or solutions that Connell was. There seemed to be no attempt to help Marianne like Connell was helped, which leads me to feel like Connell was somehow more important than Marianne, even though it's very clear she has the more difficult home life and upbringing that contribute to her current state.
]]> Funny Story 194802722 A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex... right?]]> 400 Emily Henry Tori 4 4.21 2024 Funny Story
author: Emily Henry
name: Tori
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/17
date added: 2024/05/17
shelves:
review:

]]> Down the Drain 123183412
This commitment to authenticity has never been more on display than in Down the Drain . With writing that is both eloquent and accessible, Fox recounts her turbulent path to cultural her parents’ volatile relationship that divided her childhood between Italy and New York City and left her largely raising herself; a possessive and abusive drug-dealing boyfriend whose torment continued even from within Rikers Island; her own trips to jail as well as to a psychiatric hospital; her work as a dominatrix that led to a complicated entanglement with a sugar daddy; a heroin habit that led to New Orleans trap houses and that she would kick only after the fatal overdose of her best friend; her own near-lethal overdoses and the deaths of still more friends from drugs and suicide; an emotionally explosive, tabloid-dominating romance with a figure she dubs “The Artist”; a whirlwind, short-lived marriage and her trials as a single parent striving to support her young son. Yet as extraordinary as her story is, its universality is what makes it so powerful. Fox doesn’t just capture her improbable evolution from grade-school outcast to fashion-world icon, she captures her transition from girlhood to womanhood to motherhood. Family and friendship, sex and death, violence and love, money and power, innocence and experience—it’s all here, in raw, remarkable and riveting detail.

More than a year before the book’s publication, Fox’s description of it as “a masterpiece” in a red carpet interview went viral. As always, she was just being honest. Down the Drain is a true literary achievement, as one-of-a-kind as its author.]]> 318 Julia Fox 1668011506 Tori 4 4.38 2023 Down the Drain
author: Julia Fox
name: Tori
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/07
date added: 2024/05/07
shelves:
review:
I could have done without all the fat shaming of the various characters, but otherwise, very interesting story.
]]> <![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Tori 4 3.87 2019 This Is How You Lose the Time War
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Tori
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/03
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder]]> 199344846
On the morning of August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black—black clothes, black mask—rushed down the aisle toward him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide.

Knife is Rushdie at the peak of his powers, writing with urgency, with gravity, with unflinching honesty. It is also a deeply moving reminder of literature’s capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.]]> 209 Salman Rushdie 0593730240 Tori 4 4.00 2024 Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
author: Salman Rushdie
name: Tori
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/01
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)]]> 62047992 The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover's paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako's boyfriend reveals he's marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle's offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.]]> 150 Satoshi Yagisawa 0063278677 Tori 4 3.67 2010 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #1)
author: Satoshi Yagisawa
name: Tori
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/27
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)]]> 76706470 576 Sarah J. Maas Tori 5 4.44 2014 Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3)
author: Sarah J. Maas
name: Tori
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves:
review:

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