Kathleen's bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 15 May 2025 06:43:45 -0700 60 Kathleen's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)]]> 10572
It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles.

Here is the second volume in George R.R. Martin magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Storm of Swords. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R.R. Martin stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.]]> 1009 George R.R. Martin 0553381695 Kathleen 5 4.42 1998 A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/15
date added: 2025/05/15
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]]> Bitter Passage 208549080 A nineteenth-century Arctic expedition descends into a chilling nightmare in a gripping and epic historical novel of discovery, rescue, deliverance, and survival by any means.

In May 1845, Sir John Franklin, commander of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, departed England to seek a navigable route across the top of the Americas. He and his 128 men never returned.

Four years later, Royal Navy Lieutenant Frederick Robinson and Assistant Surgeon Edward Adams are determined to find the men missing in the Arctic. While they are united in purpose, they are divided in ambition. The pious and idealistic Adams strives to save his boyhood hero. Robinson hungers for promotion through the Admiralty ranks. Weathering a relationship as volatile as the icy, barren land upon which they trek, Robinson and Adams lead a team of seamen in search of the lost expedition. What awaits them is a struggle against not only the elements but each other as loneliness, starvation, and maddening isolation prove more chilling than the deadliest Arctic blast.

A harrowing novel set against the background of true events, Bitter Passage explores two men’s driving need for redemption and the lengths to which a desperate soul will go to survive.]]> 297 Colin Mills 166252059X Kathleen 4 3.97 2025 Bitter Passage
author: Colin Mills
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/13
date added: 2025/05/13
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]]> The Lost Letters of Aisling 200125574 A woman faces the past she fled in a heart-stirring novel about unforgettable love and indomitable courage by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Lighthouse Keeper.

Rainey’s grandmother makes a startling request: Take me home. To Ireland, the country she fled post–World War II. Though they’re inseparably close, Rainey knows few of her grandmother’s secrets. Until they arrive at Aisling—the majestic estate on the southern coast of Ireland where her grandmother was raised—and Rainey discovers a collection of seventy-year-old letters in a trunk.

Dublin, 1945. The Germans surrender, celebrants crowd the streets, and fourteen-year-old Evie meets her best friend, the spirited Harding McGovern. Years on, they are more like sisters when rumors begin that Harding works in the black market trade—a source of wealth that could give her a dream life in America but could also cause great danger. Evie is uncertain of the truth but will stand by Harding, whatever the cost.

As Rainey uses the letters to reunite her grandmother with the past, what unfolds is a never-forgotten story of family, friendship, and love, and the healing that comes from letting go of secrets.]]> 302 Cynthia Ellingsen Kathleen 0 to-read 4.32 2024 The Lost Letters of Aisling
author: Cynthia Ellingsen
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/10
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]]> <![CDATA[Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania]]> 22551730
On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat.

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

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war.]]> 430 Erik Larson 0307408868 Kathleen 5 re-reads, currently-reading 4.10 2015 Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
author: Erik Larson
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2017/10/12
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: re-reads, currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Sword Catcher (The Chronicles of Castellane, #1)]]> 210985549
Kel is an orphan, stolen from the life he knew to become the Sword Catcher--the body double of a royal heir, Prince Conor Aurelian. He and Conor are as close as brothers, but his destiny is to die for Conor. No other future is possible.

Lin Caster is a physician from a small community whose members still possess magical abilities. But despite her skills, she cannot heal her best friend without access to forbidden knowledge.

After a failed assassination attempt brings Lin and Kel together, they are drawn into the web of the mysterious Ragpicker King, the ruler of Castellane's criminal underworld. But as long-kept secrets begin to unravel and forbidden attractions arise, they must ask themselves: Is knowledge worth the price of betrayal? And will their discoveries plunge their nation into war--and the world into chaos?]]> 624 Cassandra Clare 052562001X Kathleen 0 to-read 3.89 2023 Sword Catcher (The Chronicles of Castellane, #1)
author: Cassandra Clare
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/06
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]]> Circle of Days 219856609 A FLINT MINER WITH A GIFT
Seft, a talented flint miner, walks the Great Plain in the high summer heat, to witness the rituals that signal the start of a new year. He is there to trade his stone at the Midsummer Fair, and to find Neen, the girl he loves. Her family live in prosperity and offer Seft an escape from his brutish father and brothers, within their herder community.

A PRIESTESS WHO BELIEVES THE IMPOSSIBLE
Joia, Neen’s sister, is a priestess with a vision and an unmatched ability to lead. As a child, she watches the Midsummer ceremony, enthralled, and dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. But trouble is brewing among the hills and woodlands of the Great Plain.

A MONUMENT THAT WILL DEFINE A CIVILIZATION
Joia’s vision of a great stone circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Plain, will inspire Seft and become their life’s work. But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders � and an act of savage violence leads to open warfare�

Truly ambitious in scope, Circle of Days invites you to join master storyteller Ken Follett in exploring one of the greatest mysteries of our age: Stonehenge.]]> 704 Ken Follett 1538772779 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.09 Circle of Days
author: Ken Follett
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3, Part 2 of 2)]]> 147915
Robb Stark may be King in the North, but he must bend to the will of the old tyrant Walder Frey if he is to hold his crown. And while his youngest sister, Arya, has escaped the clutches of the depraved Cersei Lannister and her son, the capricious boy-king Joffrey, Sansa Stark remains their captive.

Meanwhile, across the ocean, Daenerys Stormborn, the last heir of the Dragon King, delivers death to the slave-trading cities of Astapor and Yunkai as she approaches Westeros with vengeance in her heart.]]> 639 George R.R. Martin 0007119550 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.54 2000 A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3, Part 2 of 2)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/04
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]]> <![CDATA[A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3.1)]]> 768889
The Seven Kingdoms are divided by revolt and blood feud. In the northern wastes, a horde of hungry, savage people steeped in the dark magic of the wilderness is poised to invade the Kingdom of the North where Robb Stark wears his new-forged crown. And Robb's defences are ranged against the South, the land of the cunning and cruel Lannisters, who have his young sisters in their power.

Throughout Westeros, the war for the Iron Throne rages more fiercely than ever, but if the wall is breached, no king will live to claim it.]]> 663 George R.R. Martin 0006479901 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.47 2000 A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3.1)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/04
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]]> <![CDATA[A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)]]> 10664113 Alternate cover edition of ASIN B004XISI4A

In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance—beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has thousands of enemies, and many have set out to find her. As they gather, one young man embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind.

Fleeing from Westeros with a price on his head, Tyrion Lannister, too, is making his way to Daenerys. But his newest allies in this quest are not the rag-tag band they seem, and at their heart lies one who could undo Daenerys’s claim to Westeros forever.

Meanwhile, to the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone—a structure only as strong as those guarding it. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, will face his greatest challenge. For he has powerful foes not only within the Watch but also beyond, in the land of the creatures of ice.

From all corners, bitter conflicts reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will fail, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will lead inevitably to the greatest dance of all.]]> 1125 George R.R. Martin Kathleen 0 to-read 4.33 2011 A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/04
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]]> <![CDATA[The Winds of Winter (A Song of Ice and Fire, #6)]]> 12111823 The Winds of Winter is the forthcoming sixth novel in the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin.

The previous installment, A Dance with Dragons, covered less story than Martin intended, omitting at least one planned large battle sequence and leaving several character threads ending in cliffhangers. Martin intends to resolve these cliffhangers "very early" in The Winds of Winter, saying "I'm going to open with the two big battles that I was building up to, the battle in the ice and the battle at Meereen—the battle of Slaver's Bay. And then take it from there."]]> George R.R. Martin 0002247410 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.40 The Winds of Winter (A Song of Ice and Fire, #6)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)]]> 13497 Crows will fight over a dead man's flesh, and kill each other for his eyes.

Bloodthirsty, treacherous and cunning, the Lannisters are in power on the Iron Throne in the name of the boy-king Tommen. The war in the Seven Kingdoms has burned itself out, but in its bitter aftermath new conflicts spark to life.

The Martells of Dorne and the Starks of Winterfell seek vengeance for their dead. Euron Crow's Eye, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail, returns from the smoking ruins of Valyria to claim the Iron Isles. From the icy north, where Others threaten the Wall, apprentice Maester Samwell Tarly brings a mysterious babe in arms to the Citadel.

Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory will go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel and the coldest hearts.]]> 1060 George R.R. Martin 055358202X Kathleen 0 to-read 4.16 2005 A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)]]> 214331246 When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

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

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

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.]]> 387 Suzanne Collins 1546171460 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.59 2025 Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)]]> 51901147
The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined -- every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.]]> 541 Suzanne Collins Kathleen 0 to-read 3.99 2020 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> Blonde Dust 222139778
A “Hollywood tale with heart� about a reimagined friendship between Marilyn Monroe and a young maid whose life will be changed forever, from the New York Times bestselling author of Sarah’s Key. (Adriana Trigliani)

Pauline, a young chambermaid who works at the legendary Mapes Hotel in Reno, Nevada, is asked to step in for a colleague and clean Suite 614. Although she was told the rooms were empty, a dazed, sleepy woman appears before her. This is Mrs. Miller, aka Marilyn Monroe, whose stay in Reno coincides with the breakdown of her marriage to Arthur Miller and the filming of what was to be her last film, The Misfits.

Set in the American West in 1960 where the mustang horses run wild, an unexpected friendship unfolds between the most famous movie star in the world and a young cleaning woman whose life will be changed forever through the course of a few weeks. A testament to the enduring power of female friendship and a reimagining of a side of Marilyn Monroe that has never been seen before.]]> 320 Tatiana de Rosnay 1538770962 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.85 Blonde Dust
author: Tatiana de Rosnay
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/25
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]]> One of Us 222376809 A playfully macabre and utterly thrilling tale about orphaned twins on the run from their murderous uncle who find refuge in a bizarre travelling carnival, from one of the masters of literary horror

It’s 1915 and the world is transforming, but for thirteen-year-old Bolt and Eleanor—twins so close they can literally read each other’s minds—life is falling apart. When their mother dies, they are forced to leave home under the care of a vicious con man who claims he’s their long-lost uncle Charlie, the only kin they have left. When, during a late-night poker game, one of his rages ends in murder, they decide to flee.

Salvation arrives in the form of Mr. Jengling, founder of the Emporium of Wonders, and father to its many members. He adopts Bolt and Eleanor, and the twins travel by train across the vast, sometimes brutal American frontier with their new family, watching as the exhibitions spark amazement wherever they go. There’s Minnie the three-legged lady, and Dr. Chui who stands over seven feet tall; Thistle Britches, the clown with no nose, and Rosalie, who can foretell the death of anyone she meets.

After a lifetime of having only each other, Eleanor and Bolt are finally part of something bigger. But as Bolt falls in deeper with their new clan, he finds Eleanor pulling further away from him. And when Uncle Charlie picks up their trail, the twins find themselves facing a peril as strange as it is terrifying, one which will forever alter the trajectory of their lives.

An ode to the misfits and the marginalized, One of Us is a riotous and singularly creepy celebration of the strange and the spectacular and of family in its many forms.]]> 288 Dan Chaon 1250175232 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.71 One of Us
author: Dan Chaon
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.71
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]]> Queen Esther 225642083 After forty years, John Irving returns to the world of his bestselling classic novel and Academy Award–winning film, The Cider House Rules, revisiting the orphanage in St. Cloud’s, Maine, where Dr. Wilbur Larch takes in Esther—a Viennese-born Jew whose life is shaped by anti-Semitism.

Esther Nacht is born in Vienna in 1905. Her father dies on board the ship to Portland, Maine; her mother is murdered by anti-Semites in Portland. Dr. Larch knows it won’t be easy to find a Jewish family to adopt Esther; in fact, he won’t find any family who’ll adopt her.

When Esther is fourteen, soon to be a ward of the state, Dr. Larch meets the Winslows, a philanthropic New England family with a history of providing foster care for unadopted orphans. The Winslows aren’t Jewish, but they despise anti-Semitism. Esther’s gratitude for the Winslows is unending; even as she retraces her roots back to Vienna, she never stops loving and protecting the Winslows. In the final chapter, set in Jerusalem in 1981, Esther Nacht is seventy-six.

John Irving’s sixteenth novel is a testament to his enduring ability to weave complex characters and intricate narratives that challenge and captivate. Queen Esther is not just a story of survival but a profound exploration of identity, belonging, and the enduring impact of history on our personal lives showcasing why Irving remains one of the world’s most beloved, provocative, and entertaining authors—a storyteller of our time and for all time.]]> 432 John Irving 1501189441 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.60 2025 Queen Esther
author: John Irving
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Vinegar Girl 27070127
Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work � her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner.

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

When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying � as usual � on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around?]]> 237 Anne Tyler 0804141266 Kathleen 0 currently-reading 3.35 2016 Vinegar Girl
author: Anne Tyler
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
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]]> You Remind Me of Me 227481
You Remind Me of Me begins with a series of separate In 1977, a little boy is savagely attacked by his mother’s pet Doberman; in 1997 another little boy disappears from his grandmother’s backyard on a sunny summer morning; in 1966, a pregnant teenager admits herself to a maternity home, with the intention of giving her child up for adoption; in 1991, a young man drifts toward a career as a drug dealer, even as he hopes for something better. With penetrating insight and a deep devotion to his characters, Dan Chaon explores the secret connections that irrevocably link them. In the process he examines questions of identity, fate, and Why do we become the people that we become? How do we end up stuck in lives that we never wanted? And can we change the course of what seems inevitable?

In language that is both unflinching and exquisite, Chaon moves deftly between the past and the present in the small-town prairie Midwest and shows us the extraordinary lives of “ordinary� people.]]> 356 Dan Chaon 0345441419 Kathleen 4 3.63 2004 You Remind Me of Me
author: Dan Chaon
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
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]]> <![CDATA[A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)]]> 13496
Sweeping from a harsh land of cold to a summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, A Game of Thrones tells a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Here an enigmatic band of warriors bear swords of no human metal; a tribe of fierce wildlings carry men off into madness; a cruel young dragon prince barters his sister to win back his throne; a child is lost in the twilight between life and death; and a determined woman undertakes a treacherous journey to protect all she holds dear. Amid plots and counter-plots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, allies and enemies, the fate of the Starks hangs perilously in the balance, as each side endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.]]> 835 George R.R. Martin 0553588486 Kathleen 5 4.44 1996 A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
author: George R.R. Martin
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/18
date added: 2025/04/18
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]]> Stone Yard Devotional 168632462 A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers.

"Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout." THE GUARDIAN UK]]> 320 Charlotte Wood Kathleen 0 to-read 3.73 2023 Stone Yard Devotional
author: Charlotte Wood
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> The Antidote 214537790 FromĚýPulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestsellingĚýauthor of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples� memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.]]> 432 Karen Russell 059380225X Kathleen 0 to-read 4.00 2025 The Antidote
author: Karen Russell
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois]]> 51183428 Homegoing; Sing, Unburied, Sing; and The Water Dancer—that chronicles the journey of one American family, from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to our own tumultuous era.

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,� a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers—Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.

Ailey is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women—her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries—that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.

To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family’s past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors—Indigenous, Black, and white—in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression and resistance, bondage and independence, cruelty and resilience that is the story—and the song—of America itself.]]> 816 Honorée Fanonne Jeffers 006294293X Kathleen 0 to-read 4.50 2021 The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
author: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> Wandering Stars 174147294
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family.

Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.]]> 315 Tommy Orange 0593318250 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.83 2024 Wandering Stars
author: Tommy Orange
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> There There 36692478 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525520375.

Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.]]> 294 Tommy Orange Kathleen 0 to-read 3.98 2018 There There
author: Tommy Orange
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> The Family Izquierdo 60165386 Longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award

A masterful debut that weaves together the lives of three generations of a Mexican American family bound by love, and a curse. The tight-knit Izquierdo family is grappling with misfortunes none of them can explain. Their beloved patriarch has suffered from an emotional collapse and is dying; eldest son Gonzalo’s marriage is falling apart; daughter Dina, beleaguered by the fear that her nightmares are real, is a shut-in. When Gonzalo digs up a strange object in the backyard of the family home, the Izquierdos take it as proof that a jealous neighbor has cursed them―could this be the reason for all their troubles? As the Izquierdos face a distressing present and an uncertain future, they are sustained by the blood that binds them, a divine presence, and an abiding love for one another. Told in a series of soulful voices brimming with warmth and humor, The Family Izquierdo is a tender narrative of a family at a turning point.]]> 304 Ruben Degollado 0393866823 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.78 2022 The Family Izquierdo
author: Ruben Degollado
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)]]> 6101138 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780007230181

England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?]]> 653 Hilary Mantel Kathleen 4 to-read 3.90 2009 Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/12/22
date added: 2025/03/21
shelves: to-read
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I enjoyed reading about Thomas Cromwell and his roll in the time of Henry VIII's rule. I have read many books on that period of England and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall did not disappoint me.
]]> American Dirt 45046527
Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.

Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?]]> 459 Jeanine Cummins Kathleen 4 4.32 2020 American Dirt
author: Jeanine Cummins
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/01
date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> In Cold Blood 168642
As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.]]> 343 Truman Capote 0679745580 Kathleen 4 4.08 1966 In Cold Blood
author: Truman Capote
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1966
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/03/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)]]> 54968297
The sequel to Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Bring Up the Bodies delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn.

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

At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head?

Bring Up the Bodies is one of The New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2012, one of Publishers Weekly's Top 10 Best Books of 2012 and one of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2012]]> 432 Hilary Mantel 1250806720 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.43 2012 Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2)
author: Hilary Mantel
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Beautiful Dreamer 530517

Just one step behind the vigilantes a solitary lawman tracks the men as he wrestles with the choice to either turn the customary blind eye or to put a stop to the intolerable logic of racial hatred. As the point of view moves seamlessly between characters, Christopher Bigsby crafts what Booklist calls a "taut, poetic narrative that has all the hypnotic power of an incantation."


Dark and gritty, Beautiful Dreamer traces the struggle between reluctant good and dedicated evil, where morality is a matter of life or death and the choices made have consequences as lasting as they are unexpected.]]> 192 Christopher Bigsby 0312355831 Kathleen 3 3.54 2006 Beautiful Dreamer
author: Christopher Bigsby
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2008/11/18
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
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]]> Outback (DS Walker, #1) 61930362
DS Lucas Walker is on leave in his hometown, Caloodie, looking after his dying grandmother. When two young German backpackers vanish from the area on their way to a ranch, he finds himself unofficially on the case. But why all the interest from the Federal Police, when they have probably just ditched the heat and dust of the outback for the coast?

As the number of days the couple are missing climbs, DS Walker is joined by the girl's sister. A detective herself from Berlin, she is desperate to find her before it's too late.

Walker remains convinced there is more at play. Working in the organised crime unit has opened his eyes to the growing drug trade in Australia's remote interior. Could this be connected?

As temperatures soar, the search intensifies to a thrilling crescendo against the unforgiving backdrop of the scorching Australian summer.]]> 292 Patricia Wolf Kathleen 4 4.16 2022 Outback (DS Walker, #1)
author: Patricia Wolf
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
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]]> The Langoliers 224036381 304 Stephen King Kathleen 3 3.70 The Langoliers
author: Stephen King
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.70
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
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]]> The Berry Pickers 123036004 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

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

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

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646221958 Kathleen 4 4.04 2023 The Berry Pickers
author: Amanda Peters
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
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]]> The Lost House 211004069 In Melissa Larsen's The Lost House comes the mesmerizing story of a young woman with a haunting past who returns to her ancestral home in Iceland to investigate a gruesome murder in her family.

Forty years ago, a young woman and her infant daughter were found buried in the cold Icelandic snow, lying together as peacefully as though sleeping. Except the mother’s throat had been slashed and the infant drowned. The case was never solved. There were no arrests, no conviction. Just a suspicion turned into a the husband did it. When he took his son and fled halfway across the world to California, it was proof enough of his guilt.

Now, nearly half a century later and a year after his death, his granddaughter, Agnes, is ready to clear her grandfather’s name once and for all. Still recovering from his death and a devastating injury, Agnes wants nothing more than an excuse to escape the shambles of her once-stable life—which is why she so readily accepts true crime expert Nora Carver’s invitation to be interviewed for her popular podcast. Agnes packs a bag and hops on a last-minute flight to the remote town of Bifröst, Iceland, where Nora is staying, where Agnes’s father grew up, and where, supposedly, her grandfather slaughtered his wife and infant daughter.

Is it merely coincidence that a local girl goes missing the very same weekend Agnes arrives? Suddenly, Agnes and Nora’s investigation is turned upside down, and everyone in the small Icelandic town is once again a suspect. Seeking to unearth old and new truths alike, Agnes finds herself drawn into a web of secrets that threaten the redemption she is hell-bent on delivering, and even her life—discovering how far a person will go to protect their family, their safety, and their secrets.

Set against an unforgiving Icelandic winter landscape, The Lost House is a chilling and razor-sharp thriller packed with jaw-dropping twists that will leave you breathless.]]> 352 Melissa Larsen 1250332877 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.49 2025 The Lost House
author: Melissa Larsen
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/10
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]]> The Briar Club 181110045 A haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, D.C. boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?]]> 432 Kate Quinn 0063244748 Kathleen 4 4.26 2024 The Briar Club
author: Kate Quinn
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/08
date added: 2025/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hobbit, or There and Back Again]]> 5907 Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent. The text in this 372-page paperback edition is based on that first published in Great Britain by Collins Modern Classics (1998), and includes a note on the text by Douglas A. Anderson (2001).]]> 366 J.R.R. Tolkien Kathleen 4 4.29 1937 The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/01/28
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]]> The Mighty Red 199793431
Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.]]> 384 Louise Erdrich 0063277050 Kathleen 5 3.78 2024 The Mighty Red
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Wrath of Ivar (The Viking Blood and Blade Saga, #2)]]> 59750549 The Wrath of Ivar continues the unmissable Viking historical fiction sagaĚýseries which began with Peter Gibbons' debut Viking Blood and Blade.Ěý]]> 251 Peter Gibbons Kathleen 3 4.42 The Wrath of Ivar (The Viking Blood and Blade Saga, #2)
author: Peter Gibbons
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
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]]> When the Rain Ends 61246288 From The Brighter the Light author Mary Ellen Taylor comes the emotional story of a mother and daughter learning to endure life’s twists and turns as they grieve a loss and face an uncertain future.

When artist Dani Peterson learns she’s slowly losing her vision, she becomes unmoored. Her ex-husband died only months before, leaving Dani and her preteen daughter grief stricken. Suddenly, the life Dani built for her family on the Outer Banks feels like a painful reminder of all they’ve lost.

On a whim, Dani sells her waterfront home and buys an old farm inland near the Virginia state line. But Dani’s daughter recoils at the sudden, drastic change. The Outer Banks� sun-swept beaches, pink dawns, and savage storms are all she’s ever known.

But Dani is resolute, and the pair move to Virginia to embark on a challenging renovation. That summer, their efforts to turn a run-down silo into an art studio bring forth new friends, new loves, and new challenges.

As mother and daughter navigate the fiercest storm of their lives, they learn that instead of waiting for the skies to clear, they can withstand the wind and rain, so long as they do it together.]]> 334 Mary Ellen Taylor 1542034523 Kathleen 3 4.14 2023 When the Rain Ends
author: Mary Ellen Taylor
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Viking Blood and Blade (The Viking Blood and Blade Saga, #1)]]> 58681160 865 AD. The fierce Vikings stormed onto Saxon soil hungry for spoils, conquest, and vengeance for the death of Ragnar Lothbrok.

Hundr, a Northman with a dog's name... a crew of battle hardened warriors... and Ivar the Boneless.

Amidst the invasion of Saxon England by the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, Hundr joins a crew of Viking warriors under the command of Einar the Brawler. Hundr fights to forge a warriors reputation under the glare of Ivar and his equally fearsome brothers, but to do that he must battle the Saxons and treachery from within the Viking army itself...

Hundr must navigate the invasion, survive brutal attacks, and find his place in the vicious world of the Vikings in this fast paced adventure with memorable characters.]]> 487 Peter Gibbons Kathleen 4 4.36 Viking Blood and Blade (The Viking Blood and Blade Saga, #1)
author: Peter Gibbons
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
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]]> The Hive 52734671
In the Pacific Northwest, police officer Lindsay Jackman is investigating the murder of a young journalist found at the bottom of a ravine. Lindsay soon learns that the victim was writing an exposé. Her subject: a charismatic wellness guru who’s pulled millions into her euphoric orbit�

To hear Marnie Spellman tell it, when she was a child, a swarm of bees lifted her off the ground and toward the sunlight, illuming her spiritual connection with nature—an uncanny event on which Marnie built a cosmetics empire and became a legend, a healer, and the queen of holistic health and eternal beauty. In her inner circle is an intimate band of devotees called the Hive. They share Marnie’s secrets of success—including one cloaked in darkness for twenty years.

Determined to uncover the possibly deadly mysteries of the group, Lindsay focuses her investigation on Marnie and the former members of the Hive, who are just as determined to keep Lindsay from their secrets as they are to maintain their status.]]> 475 Gregg Olsen 1542016452 Kathleen 3 3.84 2021 The Hive
author: Gregg Olsen
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
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]]> In Dubious Battle 56083 In Dubious Battle is set in the California apple country, where a strike by migrant workers against rapacious landowners spirals out of control. Caught in the upheaval is Jim Nolan, a once aimless man who finds himself in the course of the strike.]]> 274 John Steinbeck 0143039636 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.91 1936 In Dubious Battle
author: John Steinbeck
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1936
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Greenland 58986624 A dazzling, debut novel-within-a-novel in the vein of The Prophets and Memorial, about a young author writing about the secret love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl--in which Mohammed's story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction.

In 1919, Mohammed el Adl, the young Egyptian lover of British author E. M. Forster, spent six months in a jail cell. A century later, Kip Starling has locked himself in his Brooklyn basement study with a pistol and twenty-one gallons of Poland Spring to write Mohammed's story.

Kip has only three weeks until his publisher's deadline to immerse himself in the mind of Mohammed who, like Kip, is Black, queer, an Other. The similarities don't end there. Both of their lives have been deeply affected by their confrontations with Whiteness, homophobia, their upper crust education, and their white romantic partners. As Kip immerses himself in his writing, Mohammed's story - and then Mohammed himself - begins to speak to him, and his life becomes a Proustian portal into Kip's own memories and psyche. Greenland seamlessly conjures two distinct yet overlapping worlds where the past mirrors the present, and the artist's journey transforms into a quest for truth that offers a world of possibility.

Electric and unforgettable, David Santos Donaldson's tour de force excavates the dream of white assimilation, the foibles of interracial relationships, and not only the legacy of a literary giant, but literature itself.]]> 326 David Santos Donaldson 0063159554 Kathleen 3 3.76 2022 Greenland
author: David Santos Donaldson
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings]]> 43305488 Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology, their art and culture. From Björn Ironside, who led an expedition to sack Rome, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most travelled woman in the world, Price shows us the real Vikings, not the caricatures they have become in popular culture and history.]]> 656 Neil Price Kathleen 0 to-read 4.14 2020 Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
author: Neil Price
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Crash 216223604 The nightmare she’s running from is nothing compared to where she’s headed.

Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.

She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.

And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself—and her unborn child.

A gut-wrenching story of motherhood, survival, and twisted expectations, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone.
]]> 384 Freida McFadden 1464232989 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.58 2025 The Crash
author: Freida McFadden
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Three Days in June 213243949 A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life,ĚýThree Days in JuneĚýis a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers

]]> 165 Anne Tyler 0593803485 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.60 2025 Three Days in June
author: Anne Tyler
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> My Friends 217163697 "The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else's belief in them."

Most people don’t even notice them—three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of a wide expanse of sea. But Louisa, soon to be eighteen years old and an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise. She is determined to find out the story behind these three enigmatic figures.

More than two decades before, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up every morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

Out of that summer emerges a transcendent work of art, a painting that, after a chance encounter in an alleyway, will unexpectedly be placed into Louisa’s care. She embarks on a surprise-filled cross-country journey to discover how the painting came to be and to decide what to do with it. The closer she gets to the painting’s birthplace, the more anxious she becomes about what she'll find. Louisa's complicated life is proof that happy endings are sometimes possible, but they don't always take the form we expect them to.

Fredrik Backman's signature charm, humor, and attention to the poignant details of everyday life are on full display in this funny, moving novel. His most heartfelt and personal tale yet, My Friends is a stunning testament to the transformative, timeless power of art and friendship.]]> 436 Fredrik Backman 1982112824 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.59 2025 My Friends
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Iron Lake (Cork O'Connor, #1) 175828
Once a cop on Chicago’s South Side, there’s not much that can shock him. But when the town’s judge is brutally murdered, and a young Eagle Scout is reported missing, Cork takes on this complicated and perplexing case of conspiracy, corruption, and a small-town secret that hits painfully close to home.]]> 464 William Kent Krueger 0671016970 Kathleen 4 3.89 1998 Iron Lake (Cork O'Connor, #1)
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
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]]> Nine Perfect Strangers 39280445 Could ten days at a health resort really change you forever?

These nine perfect strangers are about to find out...

Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.

Frances Welty, the formerly best-selling romantic novelist, arrives at Tranquillum House nursing a bad back, a broken heart, and an exquisitely painful paper cut. She’s immediately intrigued by her fellow guests. Most of them don’t look to be in need of a health resort at all. But the person that intrigues her most is the strange and charismatic owner/director of Tranquillum House. Could this person really have the answers Frances didn’t even know she was seeking? Should Frances put aside her doubts and immerse herself in everything Tranquillum House has to offer—or should she run while she still can?

It’s not long before every guest at Tranquillum House is asking exactly the same question.

Combining all of the hallmarks that have made Liane Moriarty's writing a go-to for anyone looking for wickedly smart, page-turning fiction that will make you laugh and gasp, Nine Perfect Strangers once again shows why she is a master of her craft.]]> 453 Liane Moriarty 1250069823 Kathleen 4 3.53 2018 Nine Perfect Strangers
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
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]]> Road Out of Winter 49374466 In an endless winter, she carries seeds of hope

Wylodine comes from a world of paranoia and poverty—her family grows marijuana illegally, and life has always been a battle. Now she’s been left behind to tend the crop alone. Then spring doesn’t return for the second year in a row, bringing unprecedented extreme winter.

With grow lights stashed in her truck and a pouch of precious seeds, she begins a journey, determined to start over away from Appalachian Ohio. But the icy roads and strangers hidden in the hills are treacherous. After a harrowing encounter with a violent cult, Wylodine and her small group of exiles become a target for its volatile leader. Because she has the most valuable skill in the climate chaos: she can make things grow.

Urgent and poignant, Road Out of Winter is a glimpse of an all-too-possible near future, with a chosen family forged in the face of dystopian collapse. With the gripping suspense of The Road and the lyricism of Station Eleven, Stine’s vision is of a changing world where an unexpected hero searches for a place hope might take root.]]> 315 Alison Stine 0778309924 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.65 2020 Road Out of Winter
author: Alison Stine
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> Time of the Child 201608156
Doctor Jack Troy was born and raised in Faha, but his responsibilities for the sick and his care for the dying mean he has always been set apart from the town. His eldest daughter, Ronnie, has grown up in her father's shadow, and remains there, having missed one chance at love � and passed up another offer of marriage from an unsuitable man.

But in the Advent season of 1962, as the town readies itself for Christmas, Ronnie and Doctor Troy's lives are turned upside down when a baby is left in their care. As the winter passes, father and daughter's lives, the understanding of their family, and their role in their community are changed forever.

Set over the course of one December in the same village as Williams' beloved This Is Happiness, Time of the Child is a tender return to Faha for readers who know its charms, and a heartwarming welcome to new readers entering for the very first time.]]> 304 Niall Williams 1639734201 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.16 2024 Time of the Child
author: Niall Williams
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels]]> 177185884
For centuries, people who died destitute or alone were buried in potter’s fields—a Dickensian end that even the most hard-pressed families tried to avoid. Today, more and more relatives are abandoning their dead, leaving it to local governments to dispose of the bodies. Up to 150,000 Americans now go unclaimed each year. Who are they? Why are they being forgotten? And what is the meaning of life if your death doesn’t matter to others?

In this extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, eight years in the making, sociologists Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans uncover a hidden social world. They follow four individuals in Los Angeles, tracing the twisting, poignant paths that put each at risk of going unclaimed, and introducing us to the scene investigators, notification officers, and crematorium workers who care for them when no one else will.

The Unclaimed lays bare the difficult truth that anyone can be abandoned. It forces us to confront a variety of social ills, from the fracturing of families and the loneliness of cities to the toll of rising inequality. But it is also filled with unexpected moments of tenderness. In Boyle Heights, a Mexican American neighborhood not far from the glitter of Hollywood, hundreds of strangers come together each year to mourn the deaths of people they never knew. These ceremonies, springing up across the country, reaffirm our shared humanity and help mend our frayed social fabric.

Beautifully crafted and profoundly empathetic, The Unclaimed urges us to expand our circle of caring—in death and in life.]]> 336 Pamela Prickett 0593239059 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.00 2024 The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels
author: Pamela Prickett
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum]]> 145624993 The Immortal Life ofĚýHenriettaĚýLacks, a page-turning 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, thatĚý New York Times Ěýbestselling author Clint Smith describes as “a book that left me breathless.â€�

On a cold day in March ofĚý1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland.ĚýUnder the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum.
Ěý
In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
Ěý
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus.
Ěý
In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.
Ěý]]> 368 Antonia Hylton 1538723697 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.25 2024 Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
author: Antonia Hylton
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi]]> 204316858 A shocking and revelatory account of the murder of Emmett Till that lays bare how forces from around the world converged on the Mississippi Delta in the long lead-up to the crime, and how the truth was erased for so long. Wright Thompson’s family farm in Mississippi is 23 miles from the site of one of the most notorious and consequential killings in American history, yet he had to leave the state for college before he learned the first thing about it. To this day, fundamental truths about the crime are widely unknown, including where it took place and how many people were involved. This is no the cover-up began at once, and it is ongoing.ĚýIn August 1955, two men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were charged with the torture and murder of the 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi.ĚýAfter their inevitable acquittal in a mockery of justice, they gave a false confession to a journalist, which was misleading about where the long night of hell took place and who was involved.ĚýIn fact, Wright Thompson reveals, at least nine people can be placed at the scene, which was inside the barn of one of the killers, on a plot of land within the six-square-mile grid whose official name is Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, fabled in the Delta of myth as the birthplace of the blues on nearby Dockery Plantation. Even in the context of the brutal caste regime of the time, the four-hour torture and murder of a boy barely in his teens for whistling at a young white woman was acutely depraved; Till’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley’s decision to keep the casket open seared the crime indelibly into American consciousness. Wright Thompson has a deep understanding of this story—the world of the families of both Emmett Till and his killers, and all the forces that aligned to place them together on that spot on the map.ĚýAs he shows, the full horror of the crime was its inevitability, and how much about it we still need to understand. Ultimately this is a story about property, and money, and power.ĚýIt implicates all of us.ĚýIn The Barn, Thompson befriends the few people who have been engaged in the hard, fearful business of bringing the truth to light, people like Wheeler Parker, Emmett Till’s friend, who came down from Chicago with him that summer, and is the last person alive to know him well.ĚýWheeler Parker’s journey to put the killing floor of the barn on the map of Township 22 North, Range 4 West, Section 2, West Half, and the Delta, and America, is a journey we all need to go on if this country is to heal from its oldest, deepest wound.]]> 448 Wright Thompson 0593299825 Kathleen 0 to-read 4.36 2024 The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi
author: Wright Thompson
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> Grave Talk 209496283 Time is a healer, but it helps to have a friend.

The last thing Alice expects to see at her husband’s graveside on his birthday is a giant, talking frog. On closer inspection, it’s a grown man dressed as Kermit.

Turns out Alice’s husband is buried next to Ben’s older brother Harry, who—as a parting practical joke in his will—insisted that Ben visit his grave each year, on this specific day, dressed in an as-yet-undisclosed pageant of embarrassing fancy dress.

With little but their grief and this one day in common, Alice and Ben form a very special, very strange friendship, meeting just once a same day, same time, same place—different silly costume. As the years pass and grief alters, can their unique bond help them cope with the hardest part of life?]]> 314 Nick Spalding 1662519990 Kathleen 3 4.24 2024 Grave Talk
author: Nick Spalding
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
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]]> Big Little Lies 33516773 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

From the author of Truly Madly Guilty and The Husband s Secret comes a novel about the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive.

A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.

Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.]]> 460 Liane Moriarty 0399587195 Kathleen 4 4.40 2014 Big Little Lies
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Faithful Trail (Courage on the Oregon Trail, #2)]]> 53834240 An epic, heartfelt saga of love and discovery, Faithful Trail follows a Virginia orphan learning to be a pastor’s wife while surviving on the Oregon Trail.

1850, Independence, Missouri: Olivia Greenwood, a Virginia orphan raised by indifferent relatives, dreams of a life filled with love and purpose. When she meets Luke Montgomery, a charismatic traveling preacher, his stories of adventure and freedom ignite a spark of hope within her.

After a whirlwind marriage to this kind yet impulsive man, Olivia learns that Luke intends to journey to Oregon to establish a new church. Faced with the daunting realities of the Oregon Trail, Olivia grapples with her new role as a pastor’s wife, a position she never envisioned for herself.

As they traverse the treacherous path to Oregon, Olivia confronts the harsh demands of frontier life and the overwhelming responsibilities of her marriage. Her cherished dreams seem increasingly distant, and she questions whether this journey will fulfill her deepest desires or become the greatest regret of her life.

Can the challenges of the Oregon Trail and her marriage lead Olivia to a life of true fulfillment, or will they unravel everything she holds dear?

Discover the trials, triumphs, and tender moments in this compelling tale of love and faith on the frontier.

All the books in the Courage on the Oregon Trail series take place within the same wagon company's trip west and run concurrently. They can be read in any order.]]> 276 A.T. Butler Kathleen 3 4.30 Faithful Trail (Courage on the Oregon Trail, #2)
author: A.T. Butler
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
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]]> The Greenlanders 14305 The Greenlanders is an enthralling novel in the epic tradition of the old Norse sagas. Set in the fourteenth century in Europe’s most far-flung outpost, a land of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains, The Greenlanders is the story of one family–proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable book. Jane Smiley takes us into this world of farmers, priests, and lawspeakers, of hunts and feasts and long-standing feuds, and by an act of literary magic, makes a remote time, place, and people not only real but dear to us.]]> 584 Jane Smiley 1400095468 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.93 1988 The Greenlanders
author: Jane Smiley
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Little, Crazy Children: A True Crime Tragedy of Lost Innocence]]> 62927917
In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett, a poetry lover and member of a church youth group, was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend, when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy’s home.

The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa’s friends and peers. Together they wove a damning narrative that circled back to a likely “weird� high school outcast Kevin Young. Without a shred of evidence the teen was arrested, charged, and tried for the crime. His eventual acquittal didn’t squelch the anger and outrage among those who believed that Kevin got away with murder.

With a fresh perspective and painstaking research culled from police files, court records, transcripts, uncollected evidence, and new interviews, James Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. What emerges is a portrait of a community seething with dark undercurrents—its single-minded authorities, protective status-conscious parents, and the deeply peer-pressured teens within Lisa’s circle.

Who had the capacity for such unchecked violence? What monsters still lurk in the dark? After more than thirty years, questions like these continue to fester among the community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, still deeply scarred by wounds that remain hidden, unspoken, and unhealed.]]> 336 James Renner 0806542551 Kathleen 3 3.63 2023 Little, Crazy Children: A True Crime Tragedy of Lost Innocence
author: James Renner
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[The Housemaid's Secret (The Housemaid, #2)]]> 62848145 As he continues showing me their incredible penthouse apartment, I have a terrible feeling about the woman behind closed doors. But I can't risk losing this job � not if I want to keep my darkest secret safe . . .

It's hard to find an employer who doesn't ask too many questions about my past. So I thank my lucky stars that the Garricks miraculously give me a job, cleaning their stunning penthouse with views across the city and preparing fancy meals in their shiny kitchen. I can work here for a while, stay quiet until I get what I want. It's almost perfect. But I still haven't met Mrs Garrick, or seen inside the guest bedroom. I'm sure I hear her crying. I notice spots of blood around the neck of her white nightgowns when I'm doing laundry. And one day I can't help but knock on the door. When it gently swings open, what I see inside changes everything...

That's when I make a promise. After all, I've done this before. I can protect Mrs. Garrick while keeping my own secrets locked up safe. Douglas Garrick has done wrong. He is going to pay. It's simply a question of how far I'm willing to go...]]> 318 Freida McFadden 1837901317 Kathleen 3 4.21 2023 The Housemaid's Secret (The Housemaid, #2)
author: Freida McFadden
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The American Queen: A Novel Based on the True Story of Appalachia’s Kingdom of the Happy Land]]> 180871112 368 Vanessa Miller 0840708874 Kathleen 4 4.10 The American Queen: A Novel Based on the True Story of Appalachia’s Kingdom of the Happy Land
author: Vanessa Miller
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries]]> 60310691 A lively tour through the history of US cemeteries that explores how, where, and why we bury our dead

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born ˛Ń±đ±ô±ąľ±±ô±ô±đ’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead.

˛Ń±đ±ô±ąľ±±ô±ô±đ’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it. Cemeteries have given birth to landscape architecture and famous parks, as well as influenced architectural styles. They’ve inspired and motivated some of our greatest poets and authors—Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. They’ve been used as political tools to shift the country’s discourse and as important symbols of the United States' ambition and reach.

But they are changing and fading. Embalming and burial is incredibly toxic, and while cremations have just recently surpassed burials in popularity, they’re not great for the environment either. Over My Dead Body explores everything—history, sustainability, land use, and more—and what it really means to memorialize.

Locales visited in Over My Dead Body
Shawsheen Cemetery � Bedford, Massachusetts
The 1607 Burial Ground � Historic Jamestowne, Virginia
Burial Hill � Plymouth, Massachusetts
Colonial Jewish Burial Ground � Newport, Rhode Island
Monticello’s African American Graveyard � Charlottesville, Virginia
Mount Auburn Cemetery � Cambridge, Massachusetts
Green-Wood Cemetery � Brooklyn, New York
Laurel Grove Cemetery � Savannah, Georgia
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery � Concord, Massachusetts
Central Park � New York, New York
Gettysburg National Cemetery � Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Arlington National Cemetery � Arlington, Virginia
Woodlawn Cemetery � Bronx, New York
Boothill Graveyard � Tombhill, Arizona
Forest Lawn Memorial-Park � Glenwood, California
The Chapel of the Chimes � Oakland, California
Hollywood Forever Cemetery � Los Angeles, California
Nature's Sanctuary � Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]]> 272 Greg Melville 1419754858 Kathleen 5 3.97 2022 Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries
author: Greg Melville
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/24
date added: 2024/11/24
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]]> Here One Moment 208516656 If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.�

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.]]> 512 Liane Moriarty 0593798600 Kathleen 5 3.98 2024 Here One Moment
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
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]]> Shadow Tag 6673172 Shadow Tag is an intense and heart-wrenching story of a troubled marriage and a family in disarray-and a radical departure from Erdrich's previous acclaimed work.

"Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me.

"Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you could."

When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and her marriage, while turning her Red Diary-hidden where Gil will find it-into a manipulative farce. Alternating between these two records, complemented by unflinching third-person narration, Shadow Tag, is an eerily gripping read.

When the novel opens, Irene is resuming work on her doctoral thesis about George Catlin, the nineteenth-century painter whose Native American subjects often regarded his portraits with suspicious wonder. Gil, who gained notoriety as an artist through his emotionally revealing portraits of his wife-work that is adoring, sensual, and humiliating, even shocking-realizes that his fear of losing Irene may force him to create the defining work of his career.

Meanwhile, Irene and Gil fight to keep up appearances for their three children: fourteen-year-old genius Florian, who escapes his family's unraveling with joints and a stolen bottle of wine; Riel, their only daughter, an eleven-year-old feverishly planning to preserve her family, no matter what disaster strikes; and sweet kindergartener Stoney, who was born, his parents come to realize, at the beginning of the end.

As her home increasingly becomes a place of violence and secrets, and she drifts into alcoholism, Irene moves to end her marriage. But her attachment to Gil is filled with shadowy need and delicious ironies. In brilliantly controlled prose, Shadow Tag fearlessly explores the complex nature of love, the fluid boundaries of identity, and one family's struggle for survival and redemption.]]> 255 Louise Erdrich 0061536091 Kathleen 4 3.44 2010 Shadow Tag
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2010/04/13
date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> The Plague of Doves 2227528 The unsolved murder of a farm family still haunts the white small town of Pluto, North Dakota, generations after the vengeance exacted and the distortions of fact transformed the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation.

Part Ojibwe, part white, Evelina Harp is an ambitious young girl prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. And Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, who bears witness, understands the weight of historical injustice better than anyone. Through the distinct and winning voices of three unforgettable narrators, the collective stories of two interwoven communities ultimately come together to reveal a final wrenching truth.

]]> 314 Louise Erdrich 0060515120 Kathleen 0 to-read 3.78 2008 The Plague of Doves
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Sentence 56816904
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written]]> 387 Louise Erdrich 006267112X Kathleen 0 to-read 3.92 2021 The Sentence
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Answer Is No 219876684 In a hilarious short story from New York Times bestselling author Fredrik Backman, the absurdities of modern life cause one man’s solitary world to spin suddenly, and comically, out of control.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone?

Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.]]> 68 Fredrik Backman 1662526520 Kathleen 4 3.94 2024 The Answer Is No
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
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]]> The Plum Tree 13333093
“Bloom where you’re planted,� is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It’s a world she’s begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for.

Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler’s regime. Anti-Jewish posters are everywhere, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job—and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo’s wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to be with the man she loves, to survive—and finally, to speak out.

Set against the backdrop of the German home front, this is an unforgettable novel of courage and resolve, of the inhumanity of war, and the heartbreak and hope left in its wake.]]> 387 Ellen Marie Wiseman 0758278438 Kathleen 3 4.03 2012 The Plum Tree
author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/10
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]]> Outer Dark 40471 256 Cormac McCarthy 0330314920 Kathleen 4 3.88 1968 Outer Dark
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1968
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
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]]> The Orphan Collector 49244342
Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision. It becomes her sinister mission to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable, planning to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.�

Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. Instead, she is taken to St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum � the first step in a long and arduous journey. As Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost in the months and years that follow, Pia must confront her own shame and fear, risking everything to see justice � and love � triumph at last. Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most.]]> 390 Ellen Marie Wiseman 1496715861 Kathleen 4 4.14 2020 The Orphan Collector
author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Gut Decision (David Wolf #0.5)]]> 21951824
His survival instincts and fresh memories of military action are wreaking havoc on his chances of making a good impression, and when he screws up during his first week on patrol, everyone has written him off as hopeless--a dangerous kid without any self control.

So when he thinks he sees trouble happening during a routine call, probie-Officer Wolf must decide if he can defy orders and trust the instincts that got him through six tours of death-defying military action, or if he's just seeing things again.

This action packed short story will have your page-turn button smoking.]]> 52 Jeff Carson Kathleen 4 4.34 2014 Gut Decision (David Wolf #0.5)
author: Jeff Carson
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Murder Beyond the Grave (ID True Crime, 3)]]> 36673550

Murder Beyond the Grave (with Andrew Bourelle): Stephen Small has it all: a Ferrari, fancy house, loving wife, and three boys. But the only thing he needs right now is enough air to breathe. Kidnapped, buried in a box, and held for ransom, Stephen has forty-eight hours of oxygen. The clock is ticking . . .




Murder in Paradise (with Christopher Charles): High in the Sierra Nevada mountains, developers Jim and Bonnie Hood excitedly tour Camp Nelson Lodge. They intend to buy and modernize this beautiful rustic property, but the locals don't like rich outsiders changing their way of life. After a grisly shooting, everybody will discover just how you can make a killing in real estate . . .]]> 304 James Patterson 1538762080 Kathleen 3 3.71 2018 Murder Beyond the Grave (ID True Crime, 3)
author: James Patterson
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2024/10/27
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]]> Savage Run (Joe Pickett, #2) 244105 Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett uncovers a conspiracy in this explosive novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

When a massive blast rocks the forests of Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett is called to the scene to help investigate the death of a colorful environmental activist. The case is wrapped up quickly, explained as an environmental publicity stunt gone wrong, but Joe isn't convinced. He soon discovers clues that suggest a deadly conspiracy–one that will test his courage, his survival skills, and his determination to “do the right thing� despite all costs.]]> 304 C.J. Box 0425189244 Kathleen 2 4.06 2002 Savage Run (Joe Pickett, #2)
author: C.J. Box
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2002
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
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]]> ...And Ladies of the Club 576666 New York Times bestseller--and an American classic--now in trade paperback...

A groundbreaking bestseller with two and a half million copies in print, "...And Ladies of the Club" centers on the members of a book club and their struggles to understand themselves, each other, and the tumultuous world they live in. A true classic, it is sure to enchant, enthrall, and intrigue readers for years to come.]]> 1184 Helen Hooven Santmyer 0425174409 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.16 1982 ...And Ladies of the Club
author: Helen Hooven Santmyer
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> Terms of Endearment 63461 416 Larry McMurtry 075283455X Kathleen 0 own-it 4.15 1975 Terms of Endearment
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1975
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Evening Star (Terms of Endearment)]]> 9246505 The earthy humor and the powerful emotional impact that set McMurtry's Terms of Endearment apart from other novels now rise to brilliant new heights with The Evening Star.McMurtry takes us deep into the heart of Texas, and deep into the heart of one of the most memorable characters of our time, Aurora Greenway—along with her family, friends, and lovers—in a tale of affectionate wit, bittersweet tenderness, and the unexpected turns that life can take. This is Larry McMurtry at his very warm, compassionate, full of comic invention, an author so attuned to the feelings, needs, and desires of his characters that they possess a reality unique in American fiction.]]> 681 Larry McMurtry 1451607725 Kathleen 0 own-it 3.96 1992 The Evening Star (Terms of Endearment)
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2)]]> 12959233 Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life engulfed by the Nazi tide until she commits a deed of great courage and heartbreak. . . . American brothers Woody and Chuck Dewar, each with a secret, take separate paths to momentous events, one in Washington, the other in the bloody jungles of the Pacific. . . . English student Lloyd Williams discovers in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War that he must fight Communism just as hard as Fascism. . . . Daisy Peshkov, a driven American social climber, cares only for popularity and the fast set, until the war transforms her life, not just once but twice, while her cousin Volodya carves out a position in Soviet intelligence that will affect not only this war—but the war to come.

These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as their experiences illuminate the cataclysms that marked the century. From the drawing rooms of the rich to the blood and smoke of battle, their lives intertwine, propelling the reader into dramas of ever-increasing complexity.

]]> 940 Ken Follett 0525952926 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.36 2012 Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2)
author: Ken Follett
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2012
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> Alaska 42953 Alaska traces a bold and majestic saga of the enduring spirit of a land and its people.]]> 868 James A. Michener 037576142X Kathleen 0 own-it 4.13 1988 Alaska
author: James A. Michener
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> Great Expectations 2623
Pip must discover his true self, and his own set of values and priorities. Whether such values allow one to prosper in the complex world of early Victorian England is the major question posed by Great Expectations, one of Dickens's most fascinating, and disturbing, novels.

This edition includes the original, discarded ending, Dickens's brief working notes, and the serial instalments and chapter divisions in different editions. It also uses the definitive Clarendon text.]]> 544 Charles Dickens 0192833596 Kathleen 0 own-it 3.78 1861 Great Expectations
author: Charles Dickens
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1861
rating: 0
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]]> Flags of Our Fathers 10058
In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima—and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag.

Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever.

To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island—an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo—three were killed during the battle—were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back."

Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 382 James D. Bradley 0553384155 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.22 2000 Flags of Our Fathers
author: James D. Bradley
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> Salthouse Place 75338083
In the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest, three best friends spend a day at the lake…but only two come home.

Ten years later, Delia Albio is tormented by the mystery of what happened to fifteen-year-old Zee on the lake that day. When she receives an email from Cara, the remaining friend in the trio, she can’t resist the pull of the “life-changing� news in the message. Delia, hopeful for answers, travels home to see her old friend.

But Cara is gone by the time she gets there, setting off another mystery. When Delia hears about the women’s empowerment group that Cara joined, she sets out for the group’s retreat property on the Oregon coast to find her. Delia feels this could be her chance to reconnect with Cara and reckon with that fateful day at the lake.

Instead, Delia uncovers a possessive group with a dark agenda. As their leadership closes in, Delia hurtles ever closer to the truth—if only she can survive a cult that will protect its secrets at any cost.]]> 312 Jamie Lee Sogn 166251087X Kathleen 0 own-it 3.62 2023 Salthouse Place
author: Jamie Lee Sogn
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> The Forest 161063935 764 Edward Rutherfurd Kathleen 0 own-it 3.83 2000 The Forest
author: Edward Rutherfurd
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> London 1949680 829 pages 800 Edward Rutherford 0712678387 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.16 1997 London
author: Edward Rutherford
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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]]> The Great Divide 181110028
Ada Bunting tem apenas dezasseis anos quando chega ao Panamá como clandestina. Sozinha e sem recursos, procura um emprego que lhe permita ganhar dinheiro para pagar a cirurgia de que a irmã precisa desesperadamente. A sua sorte vai ser ditada pelo acaso - ao ver um rapaz desmaiado na rua, Ada é a única pessoa a socorrê-lo.

Omar é um jovem local que decide trabalhar na construção do canal. A sua infância foi protegida e solitária, e ele encontra neste trabalho a possibilidade de se tornar independente e conhecer pessoas. Mas para o seu pai, Francisco, um pescador revoltado com a interferência de estrangeiros no seu país, nada é mais perturbador do que ver o filho juntar-se-lhes.

O cientista John Oswald vem de longe movido por uma missão: erradicar a malária. Mas tudo fica em suspenso quando a sua mulher, Marian, adoece. Um dia, John testemunha um ato de bravura e compaixão de Ada e contrata-a de imediato para cuidar de Marian. Esta decisão fatídica põe em marcha uma história arrebatadora de ambição, lealdade e sacrifício.]]> 321 Cristina Henríquez 0063291320 Kathleen 3 3.61 2024 The Great Divide
author: Cristina HenrĂ­quez
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> Night Angels 61053576
From the author of The Last Rose of Shanghai comes a profoundly moving novel based on the true story of a diplomat and his wife who risked their lives to help Viennese Jews escape the Nazis.

1938. Dr. Ho Fengshan, consul general of China, is posted in Vienna with his American wife, Grace. Shy and ill at ease with the societal obligations of diplomats� wives, Grace is an outsider in a city beginning to feel the sweep of the Nazi dragnet. When Grace forms a friendship with her Jewish tutor, Lola Schnitzler, Dr. Ho requests that Grace keep her distance. His instructions are to maintain amicable relations with the Third Reich, and he and Grace are already under their vigilant eye.

But when Lola’s family is subjugated to a brutal pogrom, Dr. Ho decides to issue them visas to Shanghai. As violence against the Jews escalates after Kristallnacht, and threats mount, Dr. Ho must issue thousands more to help Jews escape Vienna before World War II explodes.

Based on a remarkable true story, Night Angels explores the risks brave souls took and the love and friendship they built and lost while fighting against incalculable evil.]]> 375 Weina Dai Randel 1542037999 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.22 2023 Night Angels
author: Weina Dai Randel
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ordeals of Elly Robin (The Ordeals of Elly Robin #1)]]> 63341196 Among them is a six year old girl whose distaste for speaking or looking anyone in the eye makes people think she's "touched"--but who plays the piano like a young Mozart. Billed as "Baby Elly Robin, the Wonderchild," she is one of the stars of the show.
The troupe arrives in San Francisco just in time to experience the city's destruction by a devastating earthquake. Next day a small girl is found wandering through the smoking ruins, clutching her blackened doll, mute and traumatized. Unable to determine her identity (and convinced she's an imbecile), the authorities consign her to a dismal children's asylum...
So begins the first volume of P.D. Quaver's extraordinary multi-volume saga, THE ORDEALS OF ELLY ROBIN.]]> 417 P.D. Quaver Kathleen 0 own-it 4.72 2015 The Ordeals of Elly Robin (The Ordeals of Elly Robin #1)
author: P.D. Quaver
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.72
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> Please Tell Me 123167557
When eight-year-old Kathy Stone turns up on the side of the road a year after her abduction, the world awaits her harrowing story. But Kathy doesn’t say a word. Traumatized by her ordeal, she doesn’t speak at all, not even to her own parents.
Child therapist Robin Hart is the only one who’s had success connecting with the girl. Robin has been using play therapy to help Kathy process her memories. But as their work continues, Kathy’s playtime takes a grim turn: a doll looks to stab another doll, a tiny figurine is chained to a plastic toy couch. All of these horrifying moments, enacted within a Victorian doll house. Every session, another toy dies.
But the most disturbing detail?
Kathy seems to be playacting real unsolved murders. Soon Robin wonders if Kathy not only holds the key to the murders of the past but if she knows something about the murders of the future.
Can Robin unlock the secrets in Kathy’s brain and stop a serial killer before he strikes again? Or is Robin’s work with Kathy putting her in the killer’s sights?]]> 379 Mike Omer 1662509367 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.14 2023 Please Tell Me
author: Mike Omer
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> Bellefleur 177869
Bellefleur traces the lives of several generations of this unusual family. At its center is Gideon Bellefleur and his imperious, somewhat psychic, very beautiful wife, Leah, their three children (one with frightening psychic abilities), and the servants and relatives, living and dead, who inhabit the mansion and its environs. Their story offers a profound look at the world's changeableness, time and eternity, space and soul, pride and physicality versus love. Bellefleur is an allegory of caritas versus cupiditas, love and selflessness versus pride and selfishness. It is a novel of change, baffling complexity, mystery.

Written with a voluptuousness and startling immediacy that transcends Joyce Carol Oates's early works, Bellefleur is widely regarded as a masterwork—a feat of literary genius.]]> 592 Joyce Carol Oates 0452267943 Kathleen 0 own-it 3.79 1980 Bellefleur
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Don't Say a Thing: A Predator, a Pursuit, and the Women Who Persevered]]> 74873368 In a powerful true-crime memoir, an Emmy Award–winning journalist seeks closure in a decades-long series of crimes and freedom from her own personal demons.

In April 1999, reporter Tamara Leitner woke to an active crime scene outside her Arizona apartment. Her neighbor had been sexually assaulted by a man who would later be identified as Claude Dean Hull II, a serial rapist who escaped justice for decades. New identities. New states. New victims—more than one hundred suspected across the country and thousands more victimized in myriad ways. Tamara’s twenty-year compulsion to follow the investigation began.

She needed to question a failed system. She needed to know the women whose lives were irrevocably altered. And she needed to face the root of her obsession with Hull and his crimes.

In interviewing, befriending, and profoundly connecting with Hull’s survivors, Tamara crafts a unique true-crime narrative. It not only reveals the struggles of the justice system to help victims of sexual violence but explores how these resilient women—and Tamara herself—strove to reclaim their power in the wake of indelible trauma.]]> 461 Tamara Leitner 1542039436 Kathleen 0 own-it 3.89 Don't Say a Thing: A Predator, a Pursuit, and the Women Who Persevered
author: Tamara Leitner
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> Cleopatra's Dagger 58990962
New York, 1880. Elizabeth van den Broek is the only female reporter at the Herald, the city’s most popular newspaper. Then she and her bohemian friend Carlotta Ackerman find a woman’s body wrapped like a mummy in a freshly dug hole in Central Park—the intended site of an obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle. The macabre discovery takes Elizabeth away from the society pages to follow an investigation into New York City’s darkest shadows.

When more bodies turn up, each tied to Egyptian lore, Elizabeth is onto a headline-making scoop more sinister than she could have imagined. Her reporting has readers spellbound, and each new clue implicates New York’s richest and most powerful citizens. And a serial killer is watching every headline.

Now a madman with an indecipherable motive is coming after Elizabeth and everyone she loves. She wants a good story? She may have to die to get it.]]> 361 Carole Lawrence 1542014298 Kathleen 0 own-it 3.76 2022 Cleopatra's Dagger
author: Carole Lawrence
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> The Bad Weather Friend 135415637 Benny is so nice they feel compelled to destroy him, but he has a friend who should scare the hell out of them.

Benny Catspaw’s perpetually sunny disposition is tested when he loses his job, his reputation, his fiancée, and his favorite chair. He’s not paranoid. Someone is out to get him. He just doesn’t know who or why. Then Benny receives an inheritance from an uncle he’s never heard of: a giant crate and a video message. All will be well in time.

How strange—though it’s a blessing, his uncle promises. Stranger yet is what’s inside the crate. He’s a seven-foot-tall self-described “bad weather friend� named Spike whose mission is to help people who are just too good for this world. Spike will take care of it. He’ll find Benny’s enemies. He’ll deal with them. This might be satisfying if Spike wasn’t such a menacing presence with terrifying techniques of intimidation.

In the company of Spike and a fascinated young waitress-cum-PI-in-training named Harper, Benny plunges into a perilous high-speed adventure, the likes of which never would have crossed the mind of a decent guy like him.]]> 374 Dean Koontz 1662500483 Kathleen 0 own-it 3.89 2024 The Bad Weather Friend
author: Dean Koontz
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> Fairy Tale 60177373 Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes deep into the well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for their world or ours.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is impossible to believe, and a responsibility far too massive for a boy to shoulder.

Because within the shed is a portal to another world—one whose denizens are in peril and whose monstrous leaders may destroy their own world, and ours. In this parallel universe, where two moons race across the sky, and the grand towers of a sprawling palace pierce the clouds, there are exiled princesses and princes who suffer horrific punishments; there are dungeons; there are games in which men and women must fight each other to the death for the amusement of the “Fair One.� And there is a magic sundial that can turn back time.

A story as old as myth, and as startling and iconic as the rest of King’s work, Fairy Tale is about an ordinary guy forced into the hero’s role by circumstance, and it is both spectacularly suspenseful and satisfying.]]> 607 Stephen King 1668002175 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.05 2022 Fairy Tale
author: Stephen King
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> The Witch of Tin Mountain 60864419
Blood and power bind three generations of women in the Ozark Mountains. So does an evil that’s followed them across the decades.

1931. Gracelynn Doherty lives peacefully on Tin Mountain, helping her adoptive granny work her cures. Despite whispers that the women are witches, the superstitious locals still seek them out, whether they suffer from arthritis or a broken heart. But when evangelist Josiah Bellflower comes to town touting miracle healing, full bellies, and prosperity, his revivals soon hold Tin Mountain in thrall—and Granny in abject fear.

Granny recognizes Josiah. Fifty years ago, in a dark and desperate moment, she made a terrible promise. Now Josiah, an enemy, has returned to collect his due.

As Granny sickens and the drought-ridden countryside falls under a curse, Gracelynn must choose: flee Tin Mountain and the only family she knows or confront the vengeful preacher whose unholy mission is to destroy her.]]> 328 Paulette Kennedy 1662507631 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.05 2023 The Witch of Tin Mountain
author: Paulette Kennedy
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Heaven and Hell (North and South, #3)]]> 64279
In the series� epic conclusion, Jakes expertly blends personal conflict with historical events, crafting a haunting page-turner about America’s constant change and unyielding hope.]]> 781 John Jakes 0451200837 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.04 1987 Heaven and Hell (North and South, #3)
author: John Jakes
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Love and War (North and South, #2)]]> 159177 This surging drama is the second part of the trilogy that includes NORTH AND SOUTH and HEAVEN AND HELL

]]> 1087 John Jakes 0451200829 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.13 1984 Love and War (North and South, #2)
author: John Jakes
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[North and South (North and South, #1)]]> 159178 812 John Jakes 0451200810 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.20 1982 North and South (North and South, #1)
author: John Jakes
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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]]> What Never Happened 59362274
But as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realizes that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar…and not natural. Then Coco receives a sinister threat in the mail: her own obituary.

As Coco begins to draw connections between a serial killer’s crimes and her own family tragedy, she fears that the secrets on Catalina Island might be too deep to survive. Because whoever is watching her is hell-bent on finally putting her past to rest.]]> 423 Rachel Howzell Hall 1662504144 Kathleen 0 own-it 3.63 2023 What Never Happened
author: Rachel Howzell Hall
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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]]> The Runaway Family 26002092
Germany 1937: Fear and betrayal stalk the streets. People disappear. Persecution of the Jews has become a national pastime.

When Ruth Friedman's husband is arrested by the SS, she is left to fend for herself and her four children. She alone stands as their shield against the Nazis. But where can she go? Where will her family be safe?

Ruth must overcome the indifference, hatred and cruelty that surrounds her as she and her family race to escape the advancing Nazi army's final solution...]]> 320 Diney Costeloe Kathleen 0 own-it 4.18 2009 The Runaway Family
author: Diney Costeloe
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> Light to the Hills 63107523 A richly rewarding novel about family bonds, the power of words, and the resilience of mothers and daughters in 1930s Appalachia.

The folks in the Kentucky Appalachians are scraping by. Coal mining and hardscrabble know-how are a way of life for these isolated people. But when Amanda Rye, a young widowed mother and traveling packhorse librarian, comes through a mountain community hit hard by the nation’s economic collapse, she brings with her hope, courage, and apple pie. Along the way, Amanda takes a shine to the MacInteer family, especially to the gentle Rai; her quick-study daughter, Sass; and Finn, the eldest son who’s easy to warm to. They remind Amanda of her childhood and her parents with whom she longs to be reconciled.

Her connection with the MacInteers deepens, and Amanda shares with them a dangerous secret from her past. When that secret catches up with Amanda in the present, she, Rai, Sass, and Finn find their lives intersecting—and threatened—in the most unexpected ways. Now they must come together as the truth lights a path toward survival, mountain justice, forgiveness, and hope.]]> 271 Bonnie Blaylock 1542039932 Kathleen 0 own-it 4.33 2022 Light to the Hills
author: Bonnie Blaylock
name: Kathleen
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> Under Her Care 57818226 From the bestselling author of The Perfect Child comes a shocking thriller about the disturbing complexities of a mother’s love and the deadly consequences of unravelling family secrets.

On a humid summer day in Alabama, a mayor’s wife turns up brutally murdered under a railroad bridge. Standing next to her body is fourteen-year-old Mason Hill, the autistic son of former Miss USA Genevieve Hill. The locals are quick to level their verdict on young Mason: he did it.

The town detective calls in local autism expert Casey Walker to consult on the case. At first, Casey tries to keep an open mind. But the more time she spends with Genevieve, the more her unease grows, and she suspects that Genevieve is doing more than just protecting her son.

Casey’s misgivings surrounding Genevieve’s story only intensify when she meets Savannah, Genevieve’s nineteen-year-old daughter. Savannah, as it turns out, has some disturbing secrets of her own. But as Casey dives ever deeper into the Hill family dynamic, her search for the truth leads to another shocking murder—one that shatters her understanding of the human condition in ways she never imagined.]]> 279 Lucinda Berry 1542035457 Kathleen 0 own-it 3.86 2022 Under Her Care
author: Lucinda Berry
name: Kathleen
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/22
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