Rachel's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 07 Aug 2024 19:08:46 -0700 60 Rachel's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Death of an Ordinary Man 178123 I Lucifer established Glen Duncan as a writer “up there in the literary stratosphere with Martin Amis or T. C. Boyle� (Washington Post). Now with Death of an Ordinary Man, Duncan continues his penetrating and innovative exploration of the supernatural with a novel that is far and away his most powerful and accomplished yet.

Nathan Clark’s gravestone offers a short and hopeful summary: At rest. But Nathan is not at rest, and knows he won’t be until he finds out why he died. How has he come to hover over his own funeral, a spectral spectator to the grief of his family and friends? Privy now to their innermost thoughts and feelings� confessions that are raw, brutal, and unexpected� Nathan spends the day of his wake getting to know the living as he has never known them before: His father struggles with a legacy of family tragedy; his wife and best friend with the baggage of a doomed affair; his older
]]> 304 Glen Duncan 0802170048 Rachel 5 3.36 Death of an Ordinary Man
author: Glen Duncan
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.36
book published:
rating: 5
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Rachel 3 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 3
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date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> Truck 75848 Geek Love, Katherine Dunn, takes us on a journey into the mind of a feisty, adventurous adolescent named Jean "Dutch" Gillis. Dutch goes "trucking" from Portland, Oregon, to Los Angeles on a quest in search of herself, which, like the river trek of Deliverance, is filled with discoveries and sudden violence.

With boyish-looking Dutch is her friend Heydorf, a shadowy character who has his own secrets to hide. With her, too, is the confusion and volatile feelings of youth, when sex is a mystery waiting to be understood...and death seems remote until it brushes close with a breath-stopping suddenness. Truck, perhaps better than any other fictional account about a runaway, is a brilliantly convincing portrait of the archetypal teen rebel, and both the excitement and the terrible betrayals in the world she explores.]]> 214 Katherine Dunn 0446391530 Rachel 2 3.35 1971 Truck
author: Katherine Dunn
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.35
book published: 1971
rating: 2
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date added: 2024/03/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The discovery of the North-west Passage by H.M.S. "Investigator,": Capt. R. M'Clure, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854]]> 1616454 405 0804801401 Rachel 0 to-read 2.00 The discovery of the North-west Passage by H.M.S. "Investigator,": Capt. R. M'Clure, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854
author: Robert John Le Mesurier McClure
name: Rachel
average rating: 2.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/17
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]]> The Boy in the Earth 31415690 Fuminori Nakamura’s Akutagawa Prize-winner plunges us into the depths of a young man’s winding, troubled psyche.

An unnamed taxi driver in Tokyo has experienced a rupture from his everyday life. He cannot stop daydreaming of suicide, envisioning himself returning to the earth in what soon become terrifying blackout episodes. His live-in girlfriend, Sayuko, is in a similarly bad phase, surrendering to alcoholism to escape the memory of her miscarriage. He meets with the director of the orphanage where he once lived, and must confront awful memories of his past and an abusive family before determining what to do next.]]> 160 Fuminori Nakamura 1616955945 Rachel 3 3.30 2005 The Boy in the Earth
author: Fuminori Nakamura
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/23
date added: 2023/05/23
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]]> Harold 62919437
Steven Wright is one of the most significant and influential stand-up comedians in history. Rolling Stone ranked him fifteenth on their �50 Best Stand-ups of All Time� list, while the New York Times has written of his enduring “If you made a family tree of modern stand-up, he would top one of the few major and expanding branches. The children of Mr. Wright pack the comedy scene today.� Now comes his first novel, which is sure to be unlike anything you’ve ever read.

From the outside, Harold is an average seven-year-old third grader growing up in the 1960s. Bored by school. Crushing on a girl. Likes movies and baseball—especially the hometown Boston Red Sox. Enjoys spending time with his grandfather. But inside Harold’s mind, things are a lot more complex and unusual. His thoughts come to him as birds flying through a small rectangle in the middle of his brain. He visits an outdoor cafe on the moon and is invited aboard a spaceship by famed astronomer Carl Sagan. He envisions his own funeral procession and wonders if the driver of the hearse has even been born yet.

Harold documents the meandering, surreal, often hilarious, and always thought-provoking stream-of-consciousness ruminations of the title character during a single day in class. Saturated with the witticisms and profundities for which Wright’s groundbreaking stand-up has long been venerated, this novel will change the way you perceive your daily existence. To quote one of its many memorable “Everything doesn’t have to make sense. Just look at the world and your life.”]]> 256 Steven Wright 1668022699 Rachel 0 currently-reading 3.45 2023 Harold
author: Steven Wright
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/05/23
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #1)]]> 55711617
That’s not the only thing that’s getting carved up, though � this, Jade knows, is the start of a slasher. But what kind? Who’s wearing the mask? Jade’s got an encyclopedic recall of every horror movie on the shelf, but� will that help her survive? Can she get a final girl trained enough to stop all this from happening? Does she even want to?

Isn’t a slasher exactly what her hometown deserves?

This new novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones, called “one of our most talented living writers� by Tommy Orange, explores the changing landscape of the West through his distinct voice of sharp humor and prophetic violence.

Go up the mountain to Proofrock. See if you’ve got what it takes � see if your heart, too, might be a chainsaw.]]> 405 Stephen Graham Jones 1982137630 Rachel 4 3.52 2021 My Heart Is a Chainsaw (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #1)
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/22
date added: 2023/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle]]> 36337550
There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit.

We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer.

Understood? Then let's begin . . .

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others . . .

The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave listeners guessing until the very last second.]]> 432 Stuart Turton Rachel 4 3.78 2018 The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
author: Stuart Turton
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/19
date added: 2023/05/19
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]]> Hurricane Season 46041168 A New York Times Notable Book (2020)
A Guardian Best Book of 2020
A Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020

The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse—by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals—propels the whole village into an investigation of how and why this murder occurred. Rumors and suspicions spread. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters that most would write off as utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.

Like Roberto Bolano’s 2666or Faulkner’s greatest novels, Hurricane Season takes place in a world filled with mythology and violence—real violence, the kind that seeps into the soil, poisoning everything around: it’s a world that becomes more terrifying and more terrifyingly real the deeper you explore it.]]> 224 Fernanda Melchor 0811228037 Rachel 0 currently-reading 3.93 2017 Hurricane Season
author: Fernanda Melchor
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/04/26
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[We Have Always Lived in the Castle]]> 89724 Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secret

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.]]> 152 Shirley Jackson 0143039970 Rachel 0 3.93 1962 We Have Always Lived in the Castle
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/07
date added: 2023/04/26
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]]> My Best Friend's Exorcism 41015038 337 Grady Hendrix Rachel 4 3.94 2016 My Best Friend's Exorcism
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/06
date added: 2023/04/06
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]]> Nutshell 30008702 Nutshell is a classic story of murder and deceit, told by a narrator with a perspective and voice unlike any in recent literature. A bravura performance, it is the finest recent work from a true master.

To be bound in a nutshell, see the world in two inches of ivory, in a grain of sand. Why not, when all of literature, all of art, of human endeavour, is just a speck in the universe of possible things.]]> 208 Ian McEwan Rachel 4 3.65 2016 Nutshell
author: Ian McEwan
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/28
date added: 2023/03/28
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]]> The Twilight World 59576066 The great filmmaker Werner Herzog, in his first novel, tells the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who defended a small island in the Philippines for twenty-nine years after the end of World War II

In 1997, Werner Herzog was in Tokyo to direct an opera. His hosts asked him, Whom would you like to meet? He replied instantly: Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was a former solider famous for having quixotically defended an island in the Philippines for decades after World War II, unaware the fighting was over. Herzog and Onoda developed an instant rapport and would meet many times, talking for hours and together unraveling the story of Onoda's long war.

At the end of 1944, on Lubang Island in the Philippines, with Japanese troops about to withdraw, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was given orders by his superior officer: Hold the island until the Imperial army's return. You are to defend its territory by guerrilla tactics, at all costs. . . . There is only one rule. You are forbidden to die by your own hand. In the event of your capture by the enemy, you are to give them all the misleading information you can. So began Onoda's long campaign, during which he became fluent in the hidden language of the jungle. Soon weeks turned into months, months into years, and years into decades--until eventually time itself seemed to melt away. All the while Onoda continued to fight his fictitious war, at once surreal and tragic, at first with other soldiers, and then, finally, alone, a character in a novel of his own making.

In The Twilight World, Herzog immortalizes and imagines Onoda's years of absurd yet epic struggle in an inimitable, hypnotic style--part documentary, part poem, and part dream--that will be instantly recognizable to fans of his films. The result is a novel completely unto itself, a sort of modern-day Robinson Crusoe tale: a glowing, dancing meditation on the purpose and meaning we give our lives.]]> 144 Werner Herzog 0593490266 Rachel 4 3.85 2021 The Twilight World
author: Werner Herzog
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/20
date added: 2023/03/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the �80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Rachel 3 4.39 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/24
date added: 2023/03/24
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]]> A Sorrow Beyond Dreams 24482
In A Sorrow Beyond Dreams her son sits down to record what he knows, or thinks he knows, about his mother's life and death before, in his words, "the dull speechlessness—the extreme speechlessness" of grief takes hold forever. And yet the experience of speechlessness, as it marks both suffering and love, lies at the heart of Handke's brief but unforgettable elegy. This austere, scrupulous, and deeply moving book is one of the finest achievements of a great contemporary writer.]]> 76 Peter Handke 1590170199 Rachel 4 3.89 1972 A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
author: Peter Handke
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1972
rating: 4
read at: 2023/03/18
date added: 2023/03/18
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]]> Noor 57632292 From Africanfuturist luminary Okorafor comes a new science fiction novel of intense action and thoughtful rumination on biotechnology, destiny, and humanity in a near-future Nigeria.

Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt...natural, and that's putting it lightly. Her parents spent most of the days before she was born praying for her peaceful passing because even in-utero she was wrong. But she lived. Then came the car accident years later that disabled her even further. Yet instead of viewing her strange body the way the world views it, as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. And then one day she goes to her local market and everything goes wrong.

Once on the run, she meets a Fulani herdsman named DNA and the race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria begins. In a world where all things are streamed, everyone is watching the reckoning of the murderess and the terrorist and the saga of the wicked woman and mad man unfold. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn't so predictable. Expect the unaccepted.]]> 214 Nnedi Okorafor 0756416094 Rachel 3 3.76 2021 Noor
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/27
date added: 2023/02/27
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]]> I Wished 56931505 “I started writing books about and for my friend George Miles because whenever I would speak about him honestly like I am doing now I felt a complicated agony beneath my words that talking openly can’t handle.�

For most of his life, Dennis Cooper believed the person he had loved the most and would always love above all others was George Miles. In his first novel in ten years, Dennis Cooper writes about George Miles, love, loss, addiction, suicide, and how fiction can capture these things, and how it fails to capture them. Candid and powerful, I Wished is a radical work of shifting forms. It includes appearances by Santa Claus, land artist James Turrell, sentient prairie dogs, John Wayne Gacy, Nick Drake, and George, the muse for Cooper’s acclaimed novels Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period, collectively known as “The George Miles Cycle.� In revisiting the inspiration for the Cycle, Dennis has written a masterwork: the most raw, personal, and haunted book of his career.]]> 136 Dennis Cooper 1641293047 Rachel 4 3.97 2021 I Wished
author: Dennis Cooper
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/08
date added: 2023/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Marlow Murder Club (Marlow Murder Club, #1)]]> 50576230
Judith Potts is seventy-seven years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.

One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself, and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local Vicar.

Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

When another body turns up, they realise they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape…]]> 340 Robert Thorogood 0008238243 Rachel 0 currently-reading 3.73 2021 The Marlow Murder Club (Marlow Murder Club, #1)
author: Robert Thorogood
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/30
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> My Annihilation 59241078
Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life.

With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed a puzzle box of a narrative in the form of a confessional diary that implicates its reader in a heinous crime.

Delving relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, My Annihilation interrogates the unspeakable thoughts all humans share that can be monstrous when brought to life, revealing with disturbing honesty the psychological motives of a killer.]]> 264 Fuminori Nakamura 1641292725 Rachel 3 3.34 2016 My Annihilation
author: Fuminori Nakamura
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/23
date added: 2023/01/23
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]]> The Cremator 15841762 192 Ladislav Fuks Rachel 5 4.03 1967 The Cremator
author: Ladislav Fuks
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1967
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/18
date added: 2023/01/18
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]]> Lapvona 59693959 In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test, in a spellbinding novel that represents Ottessa Moshfegh’s most exciting leap yet

Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life’s few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him as a baby, as she did so many of the village’s children. Ina’s gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift often brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers, however religious they might be. For some people, Ina’s home in the woods outside of the village is a place to fear and to avoid, a godless place.

Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches. The people’s desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord’s family, new and occult forces upset the old order. By year’s end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, the natural world and the spirit world, civility and savagery, will prove to be very thin indeed.]]> 313 Ottessa Moshfegh Rachel 2 3.53 2022 Lapvona
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/01/13
date added: 2023/01/13
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I officially give up on trying to like Moshfegh. It just isn't going to happen.
]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Rachel 2 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/01/10
date added: 2023/01/12
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]]> O Caledonia 60321053 In the tradition of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a darkly humorous modern classic of Scottish literature about a doomed adolescent growing up in the mid-20th century—featuring a new introduction by Maggie O’Farrell, award-winning author of Hamnet.

Janet lies murdered beneath the castle stairs, attired in her mother’s black lace wedding dress, lamented only by her pet jackdaw�

�Author Elspeth Barker masterfully evokes the harsh climate of Scotland in this atmospheric gothic tale that has been compared to the works of the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, and Edward Gorey. Immersed in a world of isolation and loneliness, Barker’s ill-fated young heroine Janet turns to literature, nature, and her Aunt Lila, who offers brief flashes of respite in an otherwise foreboding life. People, birds, and beasts move through the background in a tale that is as rich and atmospheric as it is witty and mordant. The family’s motto�Moriens sed Invictus (Dying but Unconquered)—is a well-suited epitaph for wild and courageous Janet, whose fierce determination to remain steadfastly herself makes her one of the most unforgettable protagonists in contemporary literature.]]> 188 Elspeth Barker 1668004615 Rachel 5 3.92 1991 O Caledonia
author: Elspeth Barker
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1991
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/11
date added: 2023/01/11
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]]> Elektra 58725016
Clytemnestra
The sister of Helen, wife of Agamemnon - her hopes of averting the curse are dashed when her sister is taken to Troy by the feckless Paris. Her husband raises a great army against them, and determines to win, whatever the cost.

Cassandra
Princess of Troy, and cursed by Apollo to see the future but never to be believed when she speaks of it. She is powerless in her knowledge that the city will fall.

Elektra
The youngest daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, Elektra is horrified by the bloodletting of her kin. But, can she escape the curse, or is her own destiny also bound by violence?]]> 291 Jennifer Saint 125077361X Rachel 3 3.65 2022 Elektra
author: Jennifer Saint
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/04
date added: 2023/01/04
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]]> The Bandit Queens 61065982
But she soon discovers that being known as a "self-made" widow has some surprising perks. No one messes with her, no one threatens her, and no one tries to control (ahem, marry) her. It's even been good for her business; no one wants to risk getting on her bad side by not buying her jewelry.

Freedom must look good on Geeta, because other women in the village have started asking for her help to get rid of their own no-good husbands...but not all of them are asking nicely.

Now that Geeta's fearsome reputation has become a double-edged sword, she must decide how far to go to protect it, along with the life she's built. Because even the best-laid plans of would-be widows tend to go awry.]]> 342 Parini Shroff 059349895X Rachel 0 to-read 3.90 2023 The Bandit Queens
author: Parini Shroff
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Cartographers 55004093 What is the purpose of a map?

Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.

But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence... because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.

But why?

To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps...

From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history.]]> 392 Peng Shepherd 0062910698 Rachel 0 to-read 3.62 2022 The Cartographers
author: Peng Shepherd
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Old Woman with the Knife 57938998 The kinetic story of a sixty-five-year-old female assassin who faces an unexpected threat in the twilight of her career--this is an international bestseller and the English language debut from an award-winning South Korean author

At sixty-five, Hornclaw is beginning to slow down. She lives modestly in a small apartment, with only her aging dog, a rescue named Deadweight, to keep her company. There are expectations for people her age--that she'll retire and live out the rest of her days quietly. But Hornclaw is not like other people. She is an assassin.

Double-crossers, corporate enemies, cheating spouses--for the past four decades, Hornclaw has killed them all with ruthless efficiency, and the less she's known about her targets, the better. But now, nearing the end of her career, she has just slipped up. An injury leads her to an unexpected connection with a doctor and his family. But emotions, for an assassin, are a dangerous proposition. As Hornclaw's world closes in, this final chapter in her career may also mark her own bloody end.

A sensation in South Korea, and now translated into English for the first time by Chi-Young Kim, The Old Woman with the Knife is an electrifying, singular, mordantly funny novel about the expectations imposed on aging bodies and the dramatic ways in which one woman chooses to reclaim her agency.]]> 288 Gu Byeong-mo 1335425764 Rachel 0 to-read 3.49 2013 The Old Woman with the Knife
author: Gu Byeong-mo
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Pallbearers Club 59314692 The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song.

What if the coolest girl you've ever met decided to be your friend?

Art Barbara was so not cool. He was a seventeen-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend thought the Pallbearers Club was cool. And she brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses.

Okay, that part was a little weird.

So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things—terrifying things—that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right?

Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she's making cuts.

Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship.]]> 278 Paul Tremblay 0063069911 Rachel 0 to-read 3.08 2022 The Pallbearers Club
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Rabbit Hutch 59576076
An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents � neighbors, separated only by the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial center of Vacca Vale, Indiana.

Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch.

Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, Blandine shares her apartment with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands, all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them, all searching for meaning in their lives.

Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom.]]> 399 Tess Gunty Rachel 4 3.51 2022 The Rabbit Hutch
author: Tess Gunty
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/28
date added: 2022/12/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes]]> 147371 229 Janet Malcolm 0679751408 Rachel 5 4.06 1993 The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
author: Janet Malcolm
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/25
date added: 2022/12/25
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]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Rachel 4 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/19
date added: 2022/12/19
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]]> The Bone Clocks 20819685
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.]]> 624 David Mitchell 1400065674 Rachel 3 3.82 2014 The Bone Clocks
author: David Mitchell
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2022/12/12
date added: 2022/12/12
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]]> Dinosaurs 60165418 Dinosaurs is both sharp-edged and tender, an emotionally moving, intellectually resonant novel that asks, In the shadow of existential threat, where does hope live?]]> 230 Lydia Millet 1324021462 Rachel 3 3.85 2022 Dinosaurs
author: Lydia Millet
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/26
date added: 2022/11/26
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]]> Slade House 40611069 Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents � an odd brother and sister � extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late...

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.]]> 241 David Mitchell 0812998693 Rachel 4 3.79 2015 Slade House
author: David Mitchell
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/26
date added: 2022/11/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Journalist and the Murderer]]> 55563 The Journalist And The Murderer, Janet Malcolm examines the psychopathology of journalism. She delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject.]]> 163 Janet Malcolm 1862076375 Rachel 0 3.78 1990 The Journalist and the Murderer
author: Janet Malcolm
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at: 2022/11/21
date added: 2022/11/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Ithaca (The Songs of Penelope, #1)]]> 59416521
Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus. While he lived, her position was secure. But now, years on, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are beginning to knock at her door.

No one man is strong enough to claim Odysseus' empty throne—not yet. But everyone waits for the balance of power to tip, and Penelope knows that any choice she makes could plunge Ithaca into bloody civil war. Only through cunning, wit, and her trusted circle of maids, can she maintain the tenuous peace needed for the kingdom to survive.

This is the story of Penelope of Ithaca, famed wife of Odysseus, as it has never been told before. Beyond Ithaca’s shores, the whims of gods dictate the wars of men. But on the isle, it is the choices of the abandoned women—and their goddesses� that will change the course of the world.]]> 391 Claire North Rachel 3 3.69 2022 Ithaca (The Songs of Penelope, #1)
author: Claire North
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/17
date added: 2022/11/17
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]]> <![CDATA[The Butcher and the Wren (Dr. Wren Muller, #1)]]> 60672388
From the co-host of chart-topping true crime podcast Morbid, a thrilling debut novel told from the dueling perspectives of a notorious serial killer and the medical examiner following where his trail of victims leads

Something dark is lurking in the Louisiana bayou: a methodical killer with a penchant for medical experimentation is hard at work completing his most harrowing crime yet, taunting the authorities who desperately try to catch up.

But forensic pathologist Dr. Wren Muller is the best there is. Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of historical crimes, and years of experience working in the Medical Examiner's office, she's never encountered a case she couldn't solve. Until now. Case after case is piling up on Wren's examination table, and soon she is sucked into an all-consuming cat-and-mouse chase with a brutal murderer getting more brazen by the day.

An addictive read with straight-from-the-morgue details only an autopsy technician could provide, The Butcher and the Wren promises to ensnare all who enter.]]> 242 Alaina Urquhart 1638930147 Rachel 0 to-read 3.72 2022 The Butcher and the Wren (Dr. Wren Muller, #1)
author: Alaina Urquhart
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> Long After Midnight 9628
Stories:

A Piece of Wood (1952)
A Story of Love (1976) variant of These Things Happen (1951)
Darling Adolf (1976)
Drink Entire: Against the Madness of Crowds (1976)
Forever and the Earth (1950)
G.B.S. - Mark V � (1976)
Getting Through Sunday Somehow (1962)
Have I Got a Chocolate Bar for You! (1973)
Interval in Sunlight (1954)
Long After Midnight (1963)
One Timeless Spring (1946)
Punishment Without Crime (1950)
The Better Part of Wisdom (1976)
The Blue Bottle (1950)
The Burning Man(1975)
The Messiah (1973)
The Miracles of Jamie (1946)
The October Game (1948)
The Parrot Who Met Papa(1972)
The Pumpernickel (1951)
The Utterly Perfect Murder (1971)
The Wish (1973)]]> 288 Ray Bradbury 0671037692 Rachel 0 4.04 1976 Long After Midnight
author: Ray Bradbury
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at: 2022/11/04
date added: 2022/11/07
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]]> Tin Man 31117613
Ellis and Michael are twelve when they first become friends, and for a long time it is just the two of them, cycling the streets of Oxford, teaching themselves how to swim, discovering poetry, and dodging the fists of an overbearing father. And then one day this closest of friendships grows into something more.

But then we fast forward a decade or so, to find that Ellis is married to Annie, and Michael is nowhere in sight. Which leads to the question, what happened in the years between?

This is almost a love story. But it's not as simple as that.]]> 213 Sarah Winman 0755390962 Rachel 4 3.94 2017 Tin Man
author: Sarah Winman
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/07
date added: 2022/11/07
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]]> Still Life 57001545
As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parrot -- a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics -- he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills.

With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a richly drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.]]> 464 Sarah Winman 0593330757 Rachel 3 4.08 2021 Still Life
author: Sarah Winman
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/01
date added: 2022/11/01
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]]> Man’s Search for Meaning 4069 Man's Search for Meaning has become one of the most influential books in America; it continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living.]]> 165 Viktor E. Frankl 080701429X Rachel 5 4.39 1946 Man’s Search for Meaning
author: Viktor E. Frankl
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1946
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/24
date added: 2022/10/24
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]]> We Spread 60209475 A new work of philosophical suspense.

Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many “incidents.�

Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny—with a growing sense of unrest and distrust—starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling?

At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid’s genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old.]]> 289 Iain Reid 1982169354 Rachel 3 3.76 2022 We Spread
author: Iain Reid
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/18
date added: 2022/10/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Signs Preceding the End of the World]]> 21535546 Winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction

Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back.

Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages � one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.]]> 114 Yuri Herrera 1908276428 Rachel 0 to-read 3.90 2009 Signs Preceding the End of the World
author: Yuri Herrera
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)]]> 58957615
Then a new foe pays Elizabeth a visit. Her mission? Kill or be killed. Suddenly the cold case has become red hot.

While Elizabeth wrestles with her conscience (and a gun), Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim chase down the clues with help from old friends and new. But can the gang solve the mystery and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again?

From an upmarket spa to a prison cell complete with espresso machine to a luxury penthouse high in the sky, this third adventure of the Thursday Murder Club is full of the cleverness, intrigue, and irresistible charm that readers have come to expect from Richard Osman's bestselling series.]]> 413 Richard Osman 0241512425 Rachel 4 4.32 2022 The Bullet That Missed (Thursday Murder Club, #3)
author: Richard Osman
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/13
date added: 2022/10/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Killers of a Certain Age (Killers of a Certain Age, #1)]]> 60149532 Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that's their secret weapon.

They've spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can't just retire - it's kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller.

Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they've been marked for death.

Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They're about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman--and a killer--of a certain age.]]> 368 Deanna Raybourn 0593200683 Rachel 0 to-read 3.82 2022 Killers of a Certain Age (Killers of a Certain Age, #1)
author: Deanna Raybourn
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) 52459864
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.�

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia�. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.]]> 394 Xiran Jay Zhao 0735269939 Rachel 1 4.03 2021 Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1)
author: Xiran Jay Zhao
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 1
read at: 2022/10/06
date added: 2022/10/06
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]]> The Only Good Indians 52180399 The creeping horror of Paul Tremblay meets Tommy Orange’s There There in a dark novel of revenge, cultural identity, and the cost of breaking from tradition in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

Seamlessly blending classic horror and a dramatic narrative with sharp social commentary, The Only Good Indians follows four American Indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives. Tracked by an entity bent on revenge, these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.]]> 305 Stephen Graham Jones 1982136456 Rachel 0 to-read 3.69 2020 The Only Good Indians
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Tender Is the Flesh 49090884
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.� Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.]]> 209 Agustina Bazterrica 1982150920 Rachel 0 to-read 3.76 2017 Tender Is the Flesh
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Foe 37510662
We don’t get visitors. Not out here. We never have.

In Iain Reid’s second haunting, philosophical puzzle of a novel, set in the near-future, Junior and Henrietta live a comfortable, solitary life on their farm, far from the city lights, but in close quarters with each other. One day, a stranger from the city arrives with alarming Junior has been randomly selected to travel far away from the farm...very far away. The most unusual part? Arrangements have already been made so that when he leaves, Henrietta won't have a chance to miss him, because she won't be left alone—not even for a moment. Henrietta will have company. Familiar company.

Told in Reid’s sharp and evocative style, Foe examines the nature of domestic relationships, self-determination, and what it means to be (or not to be) a person. An eerily entrancing page-turner, it churns with unease and suspense from the first words to its shocking finale.]]> 261 Iain Reid 150112742X Rachel 3 3.70 2018 Foe
author: Iain Reid
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2022/09/28
date added: 2022/09/28
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]]> Those Who Walk Away 385068 264 Patricia Highsmith 0871132591 Rachel 4 3.47 1967 Those Who Walk Away
author: Patricia Highsmith
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.47
book published: 1967
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/23
date added: 2022/09/23
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]]> Likes 50403506 A Buzz Book of Fall at Publishers Lunch
A WIRED Ultimate Summer Reading pick

National Book Award finalist Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's highly anticipated return weaves together like and unlike, mythic and modern. In nine stories that range from the real to the unreal, strange to familiar, funny to frightening, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum reminds us why her wildly original debut, Madeleine Is Sleeping, and her masterful Ms. Hempel Chronicles have become contemporary classics--celebrated and beloved.

In a nimble dance of lightness and gravity, Likes explores the full range and contradictions of our contemporary moment. Through unexpected visitors, Waldorf school fairs, aging indie-film stars, the struggle to gain a foothold in the capitalist shell-game of work, the Instagram posts of a twelve-year-old--these stories of friendship and parenthood, celebrity and obsession, race and class and the passage of time, form an engrossing collection that is both otherworldly and suffused with the deceitful humdrum of everyday life.

For readers of Joy Williams, George Saunders, Lauren Groff, and Deborah Eisenberg, Likes helps us see into our unacknowledged desires and, in quick, artful, nearly invisible cuts, exposes the roots of our abiding terrors and delights.]]> 240 Sarah Shun-lien Bynum 0374191948 Rachel 5 3.65 2020 Likes
author: Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/09/20
date added: 2022/09/20
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]]> <![CDATA[Hollywood Babylon (Hollywood Babylon, #1)]]> 70875 305 Kenneth Anger 0517344084 Rachel 2 3.71 1959 Hollywood Babylon (Hollywood Babylon, #1)
author: Kenneth Anger
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1959
rating: 2
read at: 2022/09/14
date added: 2022/09/20
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]]> The Test 41940388 Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test.
He wants his family to belong.

Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress.

When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death.
How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?]]> 108 Sylvain Neuvel 1250312833 Rachel 4 3.82 2019 The Test
author: Sylvain Neuvel
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/05
date added: 2022/09/17
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]]> Wrong Place Wrong Time 59947696
It is midnight on the morning of Halloween, and Jen anxiously waits up for her 18-year-old son, Todd, to return home. But worries about his broken curfew transform into something much more dangerous when Todd finally emerges from the darkness. As Jen watches through the window, she sees her funny, seemingly happy teenage son stab a total stranger.

She doesn’t know who the victim is, or why Todd has committed such a devastating act of violence. All she knows is that her life, and Todd’s, have been shattered.

After her son is taken into custody, Jen falls asleep in despair. But when she wakes up� it is yesterday. The murder has not happened yet—and there may be a chance to stop it. Each morning, when Jen wakes, she is further back in the past, first weeks, then years, before the murder. And Jen realizes that somewhere in the past lies the trigger for Todd’s terrible crime…and it is her mission to find it, and prevent it from taking place.]]> 416 Gillian McAllister 0063252341 Rachel 2 3.95 2022 Wrong Place Wrong Time
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2022/09/14
date added: 2022/09/14
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]]> Curfew 58363123 Think The Handmaid's Tale but with the women in charge, set in a world where all men are electronically tagged and placed under strict curfew, and the murder investigation threatening to undo it all.

Imagine a near-future Britain in which women dominate workplaces, public spaces, and government. Where the gender pay gap no longer exists and motherhood opens doors instead of closing them. Where women are no longer afraid to walk home alone, to cross a dark parking lot, or to catch the last train.

Where all men are electronically tagged and not allowed out after 7 p.m.

But the curfew hasn’t made life easy for everyone. Sarah is a single mother who happily rebuilt her life after her husband, Greg, was sent to prison for breaking curfew. Now he’s about to be released, and Sarah isn’t expecting a happy reunion, given that she’s the reason he was sent there.

Her teenage daughter, Cass, hates living in a world that restricts boys like her best friend, Billy. Billy would never hurt anyone, and she’s determined to prove it. Somehow.

Helen is a teacher at the local school. Secretly desperate for a baby, she’s applied for a cohab certificate with her boyfriend, Tom, and is terrified that they won’t get it. The last thing she wants is to have a baby on her own.

These women don’t know it yet, but one of them is about to be violently murdered. Evidence will suggest that she died late at night and that she knew her attacker. It couldn’t have been a man because a CURFEW tag is a solid alibi.

Isn’t it?]]> 320 Jayne Cowie 059333678X Rachel 3 3.55 2022 Curfew
author: Jayne Cowie
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/09/06
date added: 2022/09/06
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]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Rachel 4 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/02
date added: 2022/09/02
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]]> The Witches Are Coming 38362811 In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

THIS IS A WITCH HUNT.
WE’RE WITCHES,
AND WE’RE HUNTING YOU.

From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one.

In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.

West writes, “We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.�

We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact—checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.]]> 260 Lindy West 0316449881 Rachel 4 4.10 2019 The Witches Are Coming
author: Lindy West
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/01
date added: 2022/09/01
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]]> Mexican Gothic 53152636
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 320 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0525620788 Rachel 3 3.66 2020 Mexican Gothic
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/30
date added: 2022/08/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World]]> 58085265
In the dust of the Gilded Age Bone Wars, two vastly different men emerge with a mission to fill the empty halls of New York’s struggling American Museum of Natural History: Henry Fairfield Osborn, a privileged socialite whose reputation rests on the museum’s success, and intrepid Kansas-born fossil hunter Barnum Brown.

When Brown unearths the first Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils in the Montana wilderness, forever changing the world of paleontology, Osborn sees a path to save his museum from irrelevancy. With four-foot-long jaws capable of crushing the bones of its prey and hips that powered the animal to run at speeds of 25 miles per hour, the T. Rex suggests a prehistoric ecosystem more complex than anyone imagined. As the public turns out in droves to cower before this bone-chilling giant of the past and wonder at the mysteries of its disappearance, Brown and Osborn together turn dinosaurs from a biological oddity into a beloved part of culture.

Vivid and engaging, The Monster’s Bones journeys from prehistory to present day, from remote Patagonia to the unforgiving badlands of the American West to the penthouses of Manhattan. With a wide-ranging cast of robber barons, eugenicists, and opportunistic cowboys, New York Times best-selling author David K. Randall reveals how a monster of a bygone era ignited a new understanding of our planet and our place within it.]]> 288 David K. Randall 1324006536 Rachel 4 3.81 2022 The Monster's Bones: The Discovery of T. Rex and How It Shook Our World
author: David K. Randall
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/25
date added: 2022/08/25
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]]> The Thief 12296546
The Thief is a seasoned pickpocket. Anonymous in his tailored suit, he weaves in and out of Tokyo crowds, stealing wallets from strangers so smoothly sometimes he doesn’t even remember the snatch. Most people are just a blur to him, nameless faces from whom he chooses his victims. He has no family, no friends, no connections.... But he does have a past, which finally catches up with him when Ishikawa, his first partner, reappears in his life, and offers him a job he can’t refuse. It’s an easy job: tie up an old rich man, steal the contents of the safe. No one gets hurt. Only the day after the job does he learn that the old man was a prominent politician, and that he was brutally killed after the robbery. And now the Thief is caught in a tangle even he might not be able to escape.]]> 211 Fuminori Nakamura 1616950218 Rachel 4 3.50 2009 The Thief
author: Fuminori Nakamura
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/24
date added: 2022/08/24
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]]> The Unconsoled 40117
Ishiguro's extraordinary and original study of a man whose life has accelerated beyond his control was met on publication by consternation, vilification � and the highest praise.]]> 535 Kazuo Ishiguro 057122539X Rachel 4 3.59 1995 The Unconsoled
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/16
date added: 2022/08/16
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]]> Pearl 56749656 From the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box and Malorie Josh Malerman comes the legend of a strange new monster unlike any other in horror.

Go to the farm just outside of town and you'll hear it.

A voice. Inside your head.

Or is it?

Come to me...

A voice that makes you want to pick up that axe over in the corner of the barn.

And swing it.

And kill.

Feed us. Feed us now.

It is the voice of Pearl.

Sing for me. Sing for your precious Pearl...


]]> 290 Josh Malerman 0593237838 Rachel 3 3.35 2019 Pearl
author: Josh Malerman
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/31
date added: 2022/08/01
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]]> Reasons to Stay Alive 25733573 Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.

Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. And eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it.

Everyone’s lives are touched by mental illness: if we do not suffer from it ourselves, then we have a friend or loved one who does. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it. Above all, his humor and encouragement never let us lose sight of hope. Speaking as his present self to his former self in the depths of depression, Matt is adamant that the oldest cliché is the truest—there is light at the end of the tunnel. He teaches us to celebrate the small joys and moments of peace that life brings, and reminds us that there are always reasons to stay alive.]]> 256 Matt Haig 0143128728 Rachel 2 4.04 2015 Reasons to Stay Alive
author: Matt Haig
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2022/07/26
date added: 2022/07/26
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]]> <![CDATA[The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made]]> 17404078 The Room, “the Citizen Kane of bad movies� (Entertainment Weekly).

In 2003, an independent film called The Room—written, produced, directed, and starring a very rich social misfit of indeterminate age and origin named Tommy Wiseau—made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as “like getting stabbed in the head,� the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Now in its tenth anniversary year, The Room is an international phenomenon to rival The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Thousands of fans wait in line for hours to attend screenings complete with costumes, audience rituals, merchandising, and thousands of plastic spoons.

Readers need not have seen The Room to appreciate its costar Greg Sestero’s account of how Tommy Wiseau defied every law of artistry, business, and interpersonal relationships to achieve the dream only he could love. While it does unravel mysteries for fans, The Disaster Artist is more than just an hilarious story about cinematic hubris: It is ultimately a surprisingly inspiring tour de force that reads like a page-turning novel, an open-hearted portrait of a supremely enigmatic man who will capture your heart.]]> 270 Greg Sestero 1451661193 Rachel 4 4.26 2013 The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made
author: Greg Sestero
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/21
date added: 2022/07/21
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]]> Echo 53329253
Travel journalist and mountaineer Nick Grevers awakes from a coma to find that his climbing buddy, Augustin, is missing and presumed dead. Nick’s own injuries are as extensive as they are horrifying. His face wrapped in bandages and unable to speak, Nick claims amnesia—but he remembers everything.

He remembers how he and Augustin were mysteriously drawn to the Maudit, a remote and scarcely documented peak in the Swiss Alps.

He remembers how the slopes of Maudit were eerily quiet, and how, when they entered its valley, they got the ominous sense that they were not alone.

He remembers: something was waiting for them...

But it isn’t just the memory of the accident that haunts Nick. Something has awakened inside of him, something that endangers the lives of everyone around him�

It’s one thing to lose your life. It’s another to lose your soul.

FROM THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION THOMAS OLDE HEUVELT comes a thrilling descent into madness and obsession as one man confronts nature—and something even more ancient and evil answers back.]]> 416 Thomas Olde Heuvelt 1250759552 Rachel 3 3.41 2019 Echo
author: Thomas Olde Heuvelt
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2022/07/18
date added: 2022/07/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Form and Emptiness]]> 57004637 A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being

After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world, where "things happen." He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book--a talking thing--who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki--bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.]]> 548 Ruth Ozeki 0399563644 Rachel 4 4.01 2021 The Book of Form and Emptiness
author: Ruth Ozeki
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/06
date added: 2022/07/15
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]]> The Resting Place 57693360 A spine-chilling, propulsive psychological suspense from international sensation Camilla Sten.

The medical term is prosopagnosia. The average person calls it face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face, even the faces of those closest to you.

When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having brushed by a killer, yet not know who could do this—or if they’d be back—overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.

Then a lawyer calls. Vivianne has left her a house—a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a dark past for over fifty years.

Eleanor. Her steadfast boyfriend, Sebastian. Her reckless aunt, Veronika. The lawyer. All will go to this house of secrets, looking for answers. But as they get closer to bringing the truth to light, they’ll wish they had never come to disturb what rests there.

A heart-thumping, relentless thriller that will shake you to your core, The Resting Place is an unforgettable novel of horror and suspense.]]> 336 Camilla Sten 1250249279 Rachel 2 3.57 2020 The Resting Place
author: Camilla Sten
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2020
rating: 2
read at: 2022/06/30
date added: 2022/06/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths]]> 51135393
Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Virgil to from Aeschylus to Sophocles and Euripides. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost three thousand years ago. But modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men, and have routinely shown little interest in telling women’s stories.

Now, in Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes � broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist � redresses this imbalance. Taking Greek creation myths as her starting point and then retelling the four great mythic sagas: the Trojan War, the Royal House of Thebes, Jason and the Argonauts, Heracles, she puts the female characters on equal footing with their menfolk. The result is a vivid and powerful account of the deeds � and misdeeds - of Hera, Aphrodite, Athene and Circe. And away from the goddesses of Mount Olympus it is Helen, Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Antigone and Medea who sing from these pages, not Paris, Agamemnon, Orestes or Jason.]]> 320 Natalie Haynes 1509873112 Rachel 0 4.24 2020 Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/06/28
date added: 2022/06/28
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]]> Till We Have Faces 17343
Set against the backdrop of Glome, a barbaric, pre-Christian world, the struggles between sacred and profane love are illuminated as Orual learns that we cannot understand the intent of the gods "till we have faces" and sincerity in our souls and selves.]]> 313 C.S. Lewis Rachel 0 4.19 1956 Till We Have Faces
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at: 2022/06/08
date added: 2022/06/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch]]> 54785536 The startling, witty, highly anticipated second novel from the critically acclaimed author of Atmospheric Disturbances.

The story begins in 1618, in the German duchy of Württemberg. Plague is spreading. The Thirty Years' War has begun, and fear and suspicion are in the air throughout the Holy Roman Empire. In the small town of Leonberg, Katharina Kepler is accused of being a witch.

Katharina is an illiterate widow, known by her neighbors for her herbal remedies and the success of her children, including her eldest, Johannes, who is the Imperial Mathematician and renowned author of the laws of planetary motion. It's enough to make anyone jealous, and Katharina has done herself no favors by being out and about and in everyone's business.

So when the deranged and insipid Ursula Reinbold (or as Katharina calls her, the Werewolf) accuses Katharina of offering her a bitter, witchy drink that has made her ill, Katharina is in trouble. Her scientist son must turn his attention from the music of the spheres to the job of defending his mother. Facing the threat of financial ruin, torture, and even execution, Katharina tells her side of the story to her friend and next-door neighbor Simon, a reclusive widower imperiled by his own secrets.

Drawing on real historical documents but infused with the intensity of imagination, sly humor, and intellectual fire for which Rivka Galchen is known, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch will both provoke and entertain. The story of how a community becomes implicated in collective aggression and hysterical fear is a tale for our time. Galchen's bold new novel touchingly illuminates a society and a family undone by superstition, the state, and the mortal convulsions of history.]]> 275 Rivka Galchen 0374280460 Rachel 4 3.36 2021 Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
author: Rivka Galchen
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/03
date added: 2022/06/03
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]]> The Books of Jacob 58276619
In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas -- and a new unrest -- begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.

In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs.

The story of Frank -- a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day -- is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries -- those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is -- The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.]]> 965 Olga Tokarczuk Rachel 0 3.89 2014 The Books of Jacob
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at: 2022/05/30
date added: 2022/06/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Grief Is the Thing with Feathers]]> 25334576
In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal.

In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent.]]> 114 Max Porter 0571323766 Rachel 2 3.85 2015 Grief Is the Thing with Feathers
author: Max Porter
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2022/05/15
date added: 2022/05/17
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]]> Address Unknown 114437 Story magazine in 1938, Address Unknown became an immediate social phenomenon and literary sensation. Published in book form a year later and banned in Nazi Germany, it garnered high praise in the United States and much of Europe.



A series of fictional letters between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his former business partner, who has returned to Germany, Address Unknown is a haunting tale of enormous and enduring impact.

]]> 64 Kathrine Kressmann Taylor 0743412710 Rachel 4 4.35 1938 Address Unknown
author: Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1938
rating: 4
read at: 2022/05/11
date added: 2022/05/11
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]]> A Stir of Echoes 33553 This eerie ghost story, from Richard Matheson, the award-winning author of Hell House and I Am Legend, inspired the acclaimed 1999 film starring Kevin Bacon.

Tom Wallace lived an ordinary life, until a chance event awakened psychic abilities he never knew he possessed. Now he's hearing the private thoughts of the people around him-and learning shocking secrets he never wanted to know. But as Tom's existence becomes a waking nightmare, even greater jolts are in store as he becomes the unwilling recipient of a compelling message from beyond the grave!]]> 224 Richard Matheson 0765308711 Rachel 3 3.88 1958 A Stir of Echoes
author: Richard Matheson
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1958
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/10
date added: 2022/05/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2)]]> 55457493
Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He's made a big mistake, and he needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life.

As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn't that be a bonus?

But this time they are up against an enemy who wouldn't bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can The Thursday Murder Club find the killer (and the diamonds) before the killer finds them?]]> 422 Richard Osman Rachel 4 4.36 2021 The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2)
author: Richard Osman
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/03/21
date added: 2022/05/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey, #1)]]> 2113260
Eddie Russett is an above-average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed.

For Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey...]]> 400 Jasper Fforde 0670019631 Rachel 3 4.15 2009 Shades of Grey (Shades of Grey, #1)
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2022/05/05
date added: 2022/05/05
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]]> Nightbitch 55835474
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.

Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...

With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.]]> 256 Rachel Yoder 0385546815 Rachel 4 3.47 2021 Nightbitch
author: Rachel Yoder
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/19
date added: 2022/04/19
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]]> Ravelstein 324245
Deeply insightful and always moving, Saul Bellow's heartfelt novel is a journey through love and memory. It is brave, dark, and bleakly funny: an elegy to friendship and to lives well (or badly) lived.]]> 233 Saul Bellow 0141001763 Rachel 4 3.63 2000 Ravelstein
author: Saul Bellow
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/18
date added: 2022/04/18
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]]> Shit Cassandra Saw 57797983
Cassandra may have seen the future, but it doesn't mean she's resigned to telling the Trojans everything she knows. In this ebullient collection, virgins escape from being sacrificed, witches refuse to be burned, whores aren't ashamed, and every woman gets a chance to be a radioactive cockroach warrior who snaps back at catcallers. Gwen E. Kirby experiments with found structures--a Yelp review, a WikiHow article--which her fierce, irreverent narrators push against, showing how creativity within an enclosed space undermines and deconstructs the constraints themselves. When these women tell the stories of their triumphs as well as their pain, they emerge as funny, angry, loud, horny, lonely, strong protagonists who refuse be secondary characters a moment longer. From "The Best and Only Whore of Cym Hyfryd, 1886" to the "Midwestern Girl [who] is Tired of Appearing in Your Short Stories," Kirby is playing and laughing with the women who have come before her and they are telling her, we have always been this way. You just had to know where to look.]]> 274 Gwen E. Kirby 0143136623 Rachel 3 3.82 2022 Shit Cassandra Saw
author: Gwen E. Kirby
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/03/28
date added: 2022/03/28
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]]> <![CDATA[Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy #2)]]> 33832433
In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King, Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It’s also the story of a century-long feud—seen through the eyes of a 177-year-old witch—that Sogolon had with the Aesi, chancellor to the king. It is said that Aesi works so closely with the king that together they are like the eight limbs of one spider. Aesi’s power is considerable—and deadly. It takes brains and courage to challenge him, which Sogolon does for reasons of her own.

Both a brilliant narrative device—seeing the story told in Black Leopard, Red Wolf from the perspective of an adversary and a woman—as well as a fascinating battle between different versions of empire, Moon Witch, Spider King delves into Sogolon’s world as she fights to tell her own story. Part adventure tale, part chronicle of an indomitable woman who bows to no man, it is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap.]]> 626 Marlon James 0735220220 Rachel 4 4.16 2022 Moon Witch, Spider King (The Dark Star Trilogy #2)
author: Marlon James
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/03/16
date added: 2022/03/16
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]]> Number the Stars 47281 137 Lois Lowry 0440227534 Rachel 4 4.19 1989 Number the Stars
author: Lois Lowry
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1989
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/18
date added: 2022/02/18
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]]> The Cabinet 56353777 Winner of the Munhakdongne Novel Award, South Korea’s most prestigious literary prize.

Cabinet 13 looks exactly like any normal filing cabinet…Except this cabinet is filled with files on the ‘symptomers�, humans whose strange abilities and bizarre experiences might just mark the emergence of a new species.

But to Mr Kong, the harried office worker whose job it is to look after the cabinet, the symptomers are a headache; especially the one who won’t stop calling every day, asking to be turned into a cat.

A richly funny and fantastical novel about the strangeness at the heart of even the most everyday lives, from one of South Korea’s most acclaimed novelists.

Translated by Sean Lin Halbert]]> 304 Kim Un-Su 0857669176 Rachel 3 3.51 2006 The Cabinet
author: Kim Un-Su
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/18
date added: 2022/02/18
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This book reminded me of that song by the Crash Test Dummies.
]]> The Plotters 39618887
Behind every assassination, there is an anonymous mastermind--a plotter--working in the shadows. Plotters quietly dictate the moves of the city's most dangerous criminals, but their existence is little more than legend. Just who are the plotters? And more important, what do they want?
Reseng is an assassin. Raised by a cantankerous killer named Old Raccoon in the crime headquarters "The Library," Reseng never questioned anything: where to go, who to kill, or why his home was filled with books that no one ever read. But one day, Reseng steps out of line on a job, toppling a set of carefully calibrated plans. And when he uncovers an extraordinary scheme set into motion by an eccentric trio of young women--a convenience store clerk, her wheelchair-bound sister, and a cross-eyed librarian--Reseng will have to decide if he will remain a pawn or finally take control of the plot.
Crackling with action and filled with unforgettable characters, The Plotters is a deeply entertaining thriller that soars with the soul, wit, and lyricism of real literary craft.]]> 310 Kim Un-Su 1925603768 Rachel 0 3.58 2010 The Plotters
author: Kim Un-Su
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at: 2020/11/14
date added: 2022/02/18
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lamentation for 77,297 Victims (Modern Czech Classics)]]> 57798119 Original Czech]]> 85 Jiří Weil 8024645351 Rachel 5 4.82 1958 Lamentation for 77,297 Victims (Modern Czech Classics)
author: Jiří Weil
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.82
book published: 1958
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/16
date added: 2022/02/17
shelves:
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]]> Mendelssohn is on the Roof 1188126 228 Jiří Weil 0810116863 Rachel 5 4.11 1960 Mendelssohn is on the Roof
author: Jiří Weil
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1960
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/02/17
shelves:
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]]> Imagine Wanting Only This 31160314 A gorgeous graphic memoir about loss, love, and confronting grief

When Kristen Radtke was in college, the sudden death of a beloved uncle and the sight of an abandoned mining town after his funeral marked the beginning moments of a lifelong fascination with ruins and with people and places left behind. Over time, this fascination deepened until it triggered a journey around the world in search of ruined places. Now, in this genre-smashing graphic memoir, she leads us through deserted cities in the American Midwest, an Icelandic town buried in volcanic ash, islands in the Philippines, New York City, and the delicate passageways of the human heart. Along the way, we learn about her family and a rare genetic heart disease that has been passed down through generations, and revisit tragic events in America's past.

A narrative that is at once narrative and factual, historical and personal, Radtke's stunning illustrations and piercing text never shy away from the big questions: Why are we here, and what will we leave behind?

(With black-and-white illustrations throughout; part of the Pantheon Graphic Novel series)]]> 278 Kristen Radtke 1101870834 Rachel 1 3.33 2017 Imagine Wanting Only This
author: Kristen Radtke
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2022/02/16
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]]> The Constant Rabbit 51801337 United Kingdom Against Rabbit Population), complicating Peter's job as a Rabbit Spotter, and forcing him to take a stand, moving from unconscious leporiphobe to active supporter of the UK's amiable and peaceful population of anthropomorphised rabbits.]]> 307 Jasper Fforde 1444763628 Rachel 4 4.03 2020 The Constant Rabbit
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/16
date added: 2022/02/16
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]]> Life with a Star 956597 224 Jiří Weil 0810116855 Rachel 5 4.18 1949 Life with a Star
author: Jiří Weil
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1949
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/15
date added: 2022/02/15
shelves:
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]]> Happy & You Know It 52358404
After her former band shot to superstardom without her, Claire reluctantly agrees to a gig as a playgroup musician for overprivileged infants on New York’s Park Avenue. Claire is surprised to discover that she is smitten with her new employers, a welcoming clique of wellness addicts with impossibly shiny hair, who whirl from juice cleanse to overpriced miracle vitamins to spin class with limitless energy.

There is perfect hostess Whitney who is on the brink of social-media stardom and just needs to find a way to keep her perfect life from falling apart. Caustically funny, recent stay-at-home mom Amara who is struggling to embrace her new identity. And old money, veteran mom Gwen who never misses an opportunity to dole out parenting advice. But as Claire grows closer to the cool women who pay her bills, she uncovers secrets and betrayals that no amount of activated charcoal can fix.

Filled with humor and shocking twists, Happy and You Know It is a brilliant take on motherhood—exposing it as yet another way for society to pass judgment on women—while also exploring the baffling magnetism of curated social-media lives that are designed to make us feel unworthy. But, ultimately, this dazzling novel celebrates the unlikely bonds that form, and the power that can be unlocked, when a group of very different women is thrown together when each is at her most vulnerable.]]> 384 Laura Hankin 1984806238 Rachel 3 3.67 2020 Happy & You Know It
author: Laura Hankin
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/10
date added: 2022/02/10
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1)]]> 27003
Hades' real target is the beloved Jane Eyre, and it's not long before he plucks her from the pages of Bronte's novel. Enter Thursday Next. She's the Special Operative's renowned literary detective, and she drives a Porsche. With the help of her uncle Mycroft's Prose Portal, Thursday enters the novel to rescue Jane Eyre from this heinous act of literary homicide. It's tricky business, all these interlopers running about Thornfield, and deceptions run rampant as their paths cross with Jane, Rochester, and Miss Fairfax. Can Thursday save Jane Eyre and Bronte's masterpiece? And what of the Crimean War? Will it ever end? And what about those annoying black holes that pop up now and again, sucking things into time-space voids . . .

Suspenseful and outlandish, absorbing and fun, The Eyre Affair is a caper unlike any other and an introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer and his singular fictional universe.]]> 374 Jasper Fforde 0142001805 Rachel 3 3.89 2001 The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1)
author: Jasper Fforde
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/09
date added: 2022/02/09
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Skin of the Sea (Skin of the Sea, #1)]]> 48691825 A way to serve.
A way to save.

Simi prayed to the gods, once. Now she serves them as Mami Wata—a mermaid—collecting the souls of those who die at sea and blessing their journeys back home.

But when a living boy is thrown overboard, Simi goes against an ancient decree and does the unthinkable—she saves his life. And punishment awaits those who dare to defy the gods.

To protect the other Mami Wata, Simi must journey to the Supreme Creator to make amends. But all is not as it seems. There’s the boy she rescued, who knows more than he should. And something is shadowing Simi, something that would rather see her fail. . . .

Danger lurks at every turn, and as Simi draws closer, she must brave vengeful gods, treacherous lands, and legendary creatures. Because if she fails, she risks not only the fate of all Mami Wata, but also the world as she knows it.]]> 336 Natasha Bowen 0593120965 Rachel 3 3.81 2021 Skin of the Sea (Skin of the Sea, #1)
author: Natasha Bowen
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/06
date added: 2022/02/06
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]]> The Twilight Zone 53317468 An engrossing, incantatory novel about the legacy of historical crimes by the author of Space Invaders

It is 1984 in Chile, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández’s mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man’s face on the magazine’s cover with the words “I Tortured People.� His complicity in the worst crimes of the regime and his commitment to speaking about them haunt the narrator into her adulthood and career as a writer and documentarian. Like a secret service agent from the future, through extraordinary feats of the imagination, Fernández follows the “man who tortured people� to places that archives can’t reach, into the sinister twilight zone of history where morning routines, a game of chess, Yuri Gagarin, and the eponymous TV show of the novel’s title coexist with the brutal yet commonplace machinations of the regime.

How do crimes vanish in plain sight? How does one resist a repressive regime? And who gets to shape the truths we live by and take for granted? The Twilight Zone pulls us into the dark portals of the past, reminding us that the work of the writer in the face of historical erasure is to imagine so deeply that these absences can be, for a time, spectacularly illuminated.]]> 232 Nona Fernández 164445047X Rachel 4 4.08 2016 The Twilight Zone
author: Nona Fernández
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2022/02/02
date added: 2022/02/02
shelves:
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]]> Far from the Light of Heaven 57007657 Ragtime docks in the Lagos system, having traveled light-years to bring one thousand sleeping souls to a new home among the stars. But when first mate Michelle Campion rouses, she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake.

Answering Campion's distress call, investigator Rasheed Fin is tasked with finding out who is responsible for these deaths. Soon a sinister mystery unfolds aboard the gigantic vessel, one that will have repercussions for the entire system—from the scheming politicians of Lagos station, to the colony planet Bloodroot, to other far-flung systems, and indeed to Earth itself.]]> Tade Thompson 1549136550 Rachel 3 3.39 2021 Far from the Light of Heaven
author: Tade Thompson
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/28
date added: 2022/01/28
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]]> Anthem 57941459 An epic literary thriller set where America is right now, in which a band of unlikely heroes sets out on a quest to save one innocent life—and might end up saving us all.

Something is happening to teenagers across America, spreading through memes only they can parse.

At the Float Anxiety Abatement Center, in a suburb of Chicago, Simon Oliver is trying to recover from his sister’s tragic passing. He breaks out to join a woman named Louise and a man called The Prophet on a quest as urgent as it is enigmatic. Who lies at the end of the road? A man known as The Wizard, whose past encounter with Louise sparked her own collapse. Their quest becomes a rescue mission when they join up with a man whose sister is being held captive by the Wizard, impregnated and imprisoned in a tower.

Noah Hawley’s new novel is an adventure that finds unquenchable lights in dark corners. Unforgettably vivid characters and a plot as fast and bright as pop cinema blend in a Vonnegutian story that is as timeless as a Grimm’s fairy tale. It is a leap into the idiosyncratic pulse of the American heart, written with the bravado, literary power, and feverish foresight that have made Hawley one of our most essential writers.]]> 427 Noah Hawley 1538711516 Rachel 2 3.43 2022 Anthem
author: Noah Hawley
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2022/01/14
date added: 2022/01/27
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]]> <![CDATA[She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)]]> 48727813 Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner
Astounding Award Winner
Lambda Literary Award Finalist
Hugo Award Finalist
Locus Award Finalist
Otherwise Award Finalist

"Magnificent in every way."—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree

"A dazzling new world of fate, war, love and betrayal."—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister

She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…�

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness�

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future her brother's abandoned greatness.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 Shelley Parker-Chan 1250621798 Rachel 4 3.87 2021 She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)
author: Shelley Parker-Chan
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/24
date added: 2022/01/27
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)]]> 46000520
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

Alternate cover edition can be found here .]]> 382 Richard Osman Rachel 4 3.87 2020 The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/06
date added: 2022/01/27
shelves:
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]]> Flowers of Mold 43064674 212 Ha Seong-nan 1940953960 Rachel 4 3.55 1999 Flowers of Mold
author: Ha Seong-nan
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/16
date added: 2022/01/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Such a Fun Age 43923951 Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.]]> 310 Kiley Reid 052554190X Rachel 3 3.76 2019 Such a Fun Age
author: Kiley Reid
name: Rachel
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/19
date added: 2022/01/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Rachel 4 4.16 2020 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/12
date added: 2022/01/27
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]]> Anna Karenina 153
Anna Karenina seems to have everything - beauty, wealth, popularity and an adored son. But she feels that her life is empty until the moment she encounters the impetuous officer Count Vronsky. Their subsequent affair scandalizes society and family alike and soon brings jealously and bitterness in its wake. Contrasting with this tale of love and self-destruction is the vividly observed story of Levin, a man striving to find contentment and a meaning to his life - and also a self-portrait of Tolstoy himself.]]> 838 Leo Tolstoy 0140449175 Rachel 4 4.21 1878 Anna Karenina
author: Leo Tolstoy
name: Rachel
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1878
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2020/10/22
shelves:
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]]>