en-US Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:21:35 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 195474144 From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories set in New York and Los Angeles. The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood�� describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age. Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next. Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting historical fiction.]]> 451 Amor Towles 0593296370 Larissa 5 audiobooks 4.15 2024
author: Amor Towles
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 200987258
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic�� books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

But Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome�� dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.]]> 298 Kirsten Miller 0063348691 Larissa 4 4.06 2024
author: Kirsten Miller
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
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]]> 57109107 The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.]]> 576 Amor Towles 0735222355 Larissa 5 audiobooks 4.18 2021
author: Amor Towles
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 27424547 New victims. New betrayals. New secrets.

When Cassie Hobbes joined the FBI’s Naturals program, she had one goal: uncover the truth about her mother’s murder. But now, everything Cassie thought she knew about what happened that night has been called into question. Her mother is alive, and the people holding her captive are more powerful—and dangerous—than anything the Naturals have faced so far. As Cassie and the team work to uncover the secrets of a group that has been killing in secret for generations, they find themselves racing a ticking clock.

The bodies begin piling up, the deaths hit closer and closer to home, and it soon becomes apparent that this time, the Naturals aren’t just hunting serial killers.

They’re being hunted themselves.]]> 384 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1484757327 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.37 2016
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 60399181 Four-time Hugo Award-winning and��New York Times��bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts��a glorious tale��of identity,��resistance, magic and��myth.

All��is not well in the city that never sleeps.��Even though��the avatars of New York City��have��temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading—and destroying the entire universe in the process—the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of��gentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order"��may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside.��

In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings,��the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.

N.K. Jemisin’s Great Cities Duology, which began with��The City We Became��and concludes with��The World We Make, is a masterpiece of speculative fiction from one of the most important��writers of her generation.
]]> 357 N.K. Jemisin 035651269X Larissa 5 4.05 2022
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 24849026
After a string of brutal murders in Las Vegas, Cassie Hobbes and the Naturals are called in to investigate. But even with the team's unique profiling talents, these murders seem baffling: unlike many serial killers, this one uses different methods every time. All of the victims were killed in public, yet the killer does not show up on any tape. And each victim has a string of numbers tattooed on their wrist. Hidden in the numbers is a code—and the closer the Naturals come to unraveling the mystery, the more perilous the case becomes.

Meanwhile, Cassie is dealing with an equally dangerous and much more painful mystery. For the first time in years, there's been a break in her mother's case. As personal issues and tensions between the team mount, Cassie and the Naturals will be faced with impossible odds—and impossible choices.]]> 378 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1484716434 Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.35 2015
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 20409231
But when victims of a brutal new serial killer start turning up, the Naturals are pulled into an active case that strikes too close to home: the killer is a perfect copycat of Dean’s incarcerated father—a man he’d do anything to forget. Forced deeper into a murderer’s psyche than ever before, will the Naturals be able to outsmart the enigmatic killer’s brutal mind games before this copycat twists them into his web for good?

With her trademark wit, brilliant plotting, and twists that no one will see coming, Jennifer Lynn Barnes will keep readers on the edge of their seats (and looking over their shoulders) as they race through the pages of this thrilling novel.]]> 375 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1423168321 Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.27 2014
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 13597723
What Cassie doesn’t realize is that there’s more at risk than a few unsolved homicides—especially when she’s sent to live with a group of teens whose gifts are as unusual as her own. Sarcastic, privileged Michael has a knack for reading emotions, which he uses to get inside Cassie’s head—and under her skin. Brooding Dean shares Cassie’s gift for profiling, but keeps her at arm’s length.

Soon, it becomes clear that no one in the Naturals program is what they seem. And when a new killer strikes, danger looms closer than Cassie could ever have imagined. Caught in a lethal game of cat and mouse with a killer, the Naturals are going to have to use all of their gifts just to survive.]]> 308 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1423168232 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.22 2013
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 136116 182 Emmuska Orczy 1576469239 Larissa 5 4.07 1905
author: Emmuska Orczy
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1905
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/02
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]]> 198281740
“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…��

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.]]> 324 Matt Haig 0593489276 Larissa 4 3.45 2024
author: Matt Haig
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/30
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]]> 32875402 Astrid en Sonja Holleeder besluiten in 2013 te doen wat niemand voor mogelijk hield: ze staan op tegen hun broer Willem �� die na zijn vrijlating in 2012 tot nationale knuffelcrimineel was uitgegroeid �� en leggen zeer belastende verklaringen tegen hem af, net als zijn ex-vriendin Sandra den Hartog. De dag dat het nieuws op 24 maart 2015 naar buiten komt �� ‘Vrouwen vloeren Holleeder�� �� worden in een uitzending van rtl Late Night een aantal schokkende geluidsfragmenten uitgezonden. Het luidt de val van de onaantastbare Willem Holleeder in.
Wat weinigen wisten, is dat Willem Holleeder zijn familie dertig jaar lang terroriseerde, afperste en bedreigde, precies zoals zijn alcoholistische vader �� werknemer bij Heineken �� de familie jarenlang had overheerst en mishandeld. Kinderen, vrouwen, aangetrouwde familie, tot aan moeder Stien toe: niemand ontkwam aan hun despotische gedrag.
Judas speelt zich af tussen 2012 en het heden, en is doorspekt met flashbacks naar spraakmakende gebeurtenissen in het verleden. Het is een verbijsterende familiekroniek waarin Astrid Holleeder een onthutsend portret schetst van een gezin dat sinds 1983 �� het jaar van de Heineken-ontvoering �� alleen nog maar een achternaam heeft: Holleeder. In dit unieke boek vertelt zij op indringende wijze over de impact van de ontvoering op alle familieleden, de verwijdering tussen de bloedgabbers Willem Holleeder en Cor van Hout (die in 2003 om het leven kwam), de bedreiging van Peter R. de Vries, liquidaties en afpersingen in het criminele milieu. Ook spreekt ze vrijuit over haar jeugd en haar moeder, de kinderen, haar ex-partners, haar werk als advocate en haar dubbelrol als consigliere van haar broer.
Door zich als vertrouweling op te stellen kon Astrid dicht in de nabijheid van haar broer verkeren, en hun gesprekken in het geheim opnemen, met maar één doel: hem levenslang geven.]]> 571 Astrid Holleeder 9048825024 Larissa 4 audiobooks 3.78 2016
author: Astrid Holleeder
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 123136728
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?]]> 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Larissa 5 3.55 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> 24
Ignoring such dangers - and yet curiously obsessed by them - Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extroverted, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this...]]> 335 Bill Bryson 0767903862 Larissa 5 4.06 2000
author: Bill Bryson
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
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]]> 212294468 When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature in the latest puzzling entry in this USA Today bestselling series.

An ice fisherman is savagely mauled to death in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and an eyewitness claims the man was attacked by a hodag. There's just one problem with it's well known that the creature is not real and was created by a local hoaxer. So how could an imaginary creature be chomping on local sportsmen?��

The suggestion that a hodag killed someone isn’t well received by the townsfolk because of its beloved ties to the town and the money it generates from tourist dollars. Due to this, people begin to suspect the witness is the real killer, especially when it’s discovered he has a tangled past with the victim.��

The witness to the attack happens to be the nephew of Morgan Carter’s bookstore employee, Rita Bosworth, who convinces the professional cryptozoologist to travel to Wisconsin to prove that a hodag not only exists but killed the victim.��

Clues may be hard to come by, but one thing's for something killed that man, and that something now has its eyes focused on Morgan.]]> 320 Annelise Ryan 0593816056 Larissa 3 audiobooks 3.74 2025
author: Annelise Ryan
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 59148726 From the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain, twelve enthralling stories of skulduggery and intrigue by one of the most decorated journalists of our time.

Patrick Radden Keefe has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award to the Orwell Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award for his meticulously reported, hypnotically engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. Rogues brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from The New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface, "They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial."

Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the "worst of the worst," among other bravura works of literary journalism.

The appearance of his byline in The New Yorker is always an event, and collected here for the first time readers can see his work forms an always enthralling but deeply human portrait of criminals and rascals, as well as those who stand up against them.]]> 368 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385548516 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.00 2022
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/05
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 35900387 No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.

Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.

But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.

Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .

The only way to survive is to open your heart. ]]> 390 Gail Honeyman 0008172145 Larissa 4 4.17 2017
author: Gail Honeyman
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/23
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]]> 43868109 The highly anticipated portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing.

The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions: Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing OxyContin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis.

Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.]]> 535 Patrick Radden Keefe 0385545681 Larissa 5 audiobooks 4.54 2021
author: Patrick Radden Keefe
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/18
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 42074525
Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.]]> 437 N.K. Jemisin Larissa 5 3.83 2020
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/17
date added: 2025/02/17
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]]> 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire.��A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 Larissa 5 4.11 2023
author: Daniel Mason
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/14
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]]> 65213543 When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn't always what we seek.

In Bookshops & Bonedust, a prequel to Legends & Lattes, author Travis Baldree takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and second-hand books.

Viv's career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam's Ravens isn't going as planned.

Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she's packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from the action that she worries she'll never be able to return to it.

What's a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn't possibly imagine.

Still, adventure isn't all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.]]> 336 Travis Baldree 1250886104 Larissa 4 4.13 2023
author: Travis Baldree
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/09
date added: 2025/02/10
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]]> 43352954 Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]> 209 Amal El-Mohtar Larissa 5 3.86 2019
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves:
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]]> 32828538 From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a familiar story with a dark hook—a tale about Peter Pan and the friend who became his nemesis, a nemesis who may not be the blackhearted villain Peter says he is��

There is one version of my story that everyone knows. And then there is the truth. This is how it happened. How I went from being Peter Pan’s first—and favorite—lost boy to his greatest enemy.
��
Peter brought me to his island because there were no rules and no grownups to make us mind. He brought boys from the Other Place to join in the fun, but Peter's idea of fun is sharper than a pirate’s sword. Because it’s never been all fun and games on the island. Our neighbors are pirates and monsters. Our toys are knife and stick and rock—the kinds of playthings that bite.

Peter promised we would all be young and happy forever. Peter lies.]]> 292 Christina Henry 0399584021 Larissa 4 4.22 2017
author: Christina Henry
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
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]]> 35074096
This stunning book features classical artwork inspired by the myths, as well as learned notes from the author. Each adventure is infused with Fry's distinctive wit, voice, and writing style. Connoisseurs of the Greek myths will appreciate this fresh-yet-reverential interpretation, while newcomers will feel welcome. Retellings brim with humor and emotion and offer rich cultural context

Celebrating the thrills, grandeur, and unabashed fun of the Greek myths, Mythos breathes life into ancient tales—from Pandora's box to Prometheus's fire.

This gorgeous volume invites you to explore a captivating world with the brilliant storyteller Stephen Fry as your guide.]]> 416 Stephen Fry 0718188721 Larissa 5 4.27 2017
author: Stephen Fry
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves:
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]]> 199798305 A historical adventure story about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a new understanding of human history

In the early 1800s the world was a safe and cozy place. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled upon a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates—the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, Victorians unearthed enormous bones—bones that reached as high as a man’s head.

Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had imagined that creatures like three-toed giants once lumbered across the land. And if anyone conjured up such a scene, they would never imagine that all those animals could have vanished hundreds of millions years ago. The thought of sudden, arbitrary disappearance from life was unnerving and forced the Victorians to rethink everything they knew about the world. Celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads readers through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today.]]> 352 Edward Dolnick 198219961X Larissa 4 audiobooks 3.75 2024
author: Edward Dolnick
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 61215384
The inspiration for the upcoming original series on Prime Video, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The Return of the King is the third part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic adventure The Lord of the Rings.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The Dark Lord has risen, and as he unleashes hordes of Orcs to conquer all Middle-earth, Frodo and Sam struggle deep into his realm in Mordor.

To defeat Sauron, the One Ring must be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. But the way is impossibly hard, and Frodo is weakening. The Ring corrupts all who bear it and Frodo’s time is running out.

Will Sam and Frodo succeed, or will the Dark Lord rule Middle-earth once more?]]> 432 J.R.R. Tolkien Larissa 5 4.67 1955
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.67
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/22
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves:
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]]> 54621096 447 Janice Hallett 1788165292 Larissa 4 3.83 2021
author: Janice Hallett
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves:
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]]> 207294238
Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course, must find six students from all walks of life across the United Kingdom for her new master’s program before the university cuts her funding. The students are nothing but trouble from day one.

There’s Jem, a talented sculptor recently graduated from her university program and eager to make her mark as an artist at any cost. Jonathan, who has little experience in art practice aside from running his family’s gallery. Patrick runs an art supply store, but can barely operate his phone, much less design software. Ludya is a single mother and graphic designer more interested in a paycheck than homework. Cameron is a marketing executive in search of a hobby or a career change. And Alyson, already a successful artist, seems to be overqualified. Finally, there is the examiner, the man hired to grade students�� final works—an art installation for a local cloud-based solutions company that may have an ulterior agenda—and who, in sifting through final essays, texts, and message boards, warns that someone is in danger…or already dead. And nothing about this course has been left up to chance.

With her trademark “unique and exhilarating�� (Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot) voice, Janice Hallett weaves a fresh and mind-bending mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end.]]> 480 Janice Hallett 1668023423 Larissa 3 3.71 2024
author: Janice Hallett
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
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]]> 164444179 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593492918.

Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.

Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn’t like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there’s still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn’t be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .]]> 340 Ashley Elston Larissa 3 3.97 2024
author: Ashley Elston
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves:
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]]> 59900688 Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll
take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.��

Javier Zamora’s adventure is a 3,000-mile journey from his small town in
El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border.
He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a
mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling
alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote�� hired to lead them to safety,
Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.

At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents�� arms,
snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He
cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns,
arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two
weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants
who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.

A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and
intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey,
but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most
unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story
of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.]]> 384 Javier Zamora 0593498062 Larissa 5 4.46 2022
author: Javier Zamora
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
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]]> 442780 He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson.
He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city.
He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. . . .
--Sherlock Holmes on Professor Moriarty in The Final Problem

The Victorian era's most infamous thief, Adam Worth was the original Napoleon of crime. Suave, cunning Worth learned early that the best way to succeed was to steal. And steal he did.

Following a strict code of honor, Worth won the respect of Victorian society. He also aroused its fear by becoming a chilling phantom, mingling undetected with the upper classes, whose valuables he brazenly stole. His most celebrated heist: Gainsborough's grand portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire--ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales--a painting Worth adored and often slept with for twenty years.

With a brilliant gang that included "Piano" Charley, a jewel thief, train robber, and playboy, and "the Scratch" Becker, master forger, Worth secretly ran operations from New York to London, Paris, and South Africa--until betrayal and a Pinkerton man finally brought him down.

In a decadent age, Worth was an icon. His biography is a grand, dazzling tour into the gaslit underworld of the last century. . . and into the doomed genius of a criminal mastermind.]]> 384 Ben Macintyre 0385319932 Larissa 3 3.78 1997
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
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]]> 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Larissa 5 4.46 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves:
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]]> 478558
In the predawn gloom of a February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo. They snatched one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's The Scream, and fled with their $72 million trophy. The thieves made sure the world was watching: the Winter Olympics, in Lillehammer, began that same morning. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police called on the world's greatest art detective, a half-English, half-American undercover cop named Charley Hill.

In this rollicking narrative, Edward Dolnick takes us inside the art underworld. The trail leads high and low, and the cast ranges from titled aristocrats to thick-necked thugs. Lord Bath, resplendent in ponytail and velvet jacket, presides over a 9,000-acre estate. David Duddin, a 300-pound fence who once tried to sell a stolen Rembrandt, spins exuberant tales of his misdeeds. We meet Munch, too, a haunted misfit who spends his evenings drinking in the Black Piglet Café and his nights feverishly trying to capture in paint the visions in his head. The most compelling character of all is Charley Hill, an ex-soldier, a would-be priest, and a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm. The hunt for The Scream will either cap his career and rescue one of the world's best-known paintings or end in a fiasco that will dog him forever.]]> 270 Edward Dolnick 0060531177 Larissa 4 3.78 2005
author: Edward Dolnick
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
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]]> 43178811 ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S BEST YA OF THE DECADE NEW YORK TIMES bestsellerBrand new edition of Victoria Schwab's long out-of-print, stunning debut.All-new deluxe edition of an out-of-print gem, containing in-universe short story "The Ash-Born Boy" and a never-before-seen introduction from V.E. Schwab.The Near Witch is only an old story told to frighten children.��If the wind calls at night, you must not listen. The wind is lonely, and always looking for company.��There are no strangers in the town of Near.��These are the truths that Lexi has heard all her life.��But when an actual stranger, a boy who seems to fade like smoke, appears outside her home on the moor at night, she knows that at least one of these sayings is no longer true.��The next night, the children of Near start disappearing from their beds, and the mysterious boy falls under suspicion.��As the hunt for the children intensifies, so does Lexi's need to know about the witch that just might be more than a bedtime story, about the wind that seems to speak through the walls at night, and about the history of this nameless boy.��Part fairy tale, part love story, Victoria Schwab's debut novel is entirely original yet achingly a song you heard long ago, a whisper carried by the wind, and a dream you won't soon forget.]]> 279 Victoria E. Schwab Larissa 4 3.83 2011
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> 63250712 The Lilac. The bard songs say that she’s the world’s most fearsome bounty hunter. That there’s no criminal she can’t catch, no mystery she can’t solve.

None of that is true. Yet.

In reality, the Lilac is just a kid, and the bard who wrote all that is her best friend, Dulcinetta. But the Lilac has set her goals on becoming the best bounty hunter in the Thirteen Kingdoms—and when a priceless artifact goes missing from the home of famed monster hunter Baron Angbar, the Lilac and Netta are eager to apprehend the thief and make a name for themselves.

But when their investigation brings them to a dinner party at Castle Angbar, and they meet the Angbar family and their servants and guests—an unsavory group of nobles, mages, and assorted creatures, each more shady than the last—the Lilac begins to wonder if the reward is worth the trouble.

And that’s before the dead body is discovered.

Now everyone is magically sealed inside the castle—and there is a murderer among them. If the Lilac wants to make it out with her reputation intact, it’s going to be up to her to figure out who the killer is. But everyone in the castle—even the Lilac herself—has secrets to hide, and as the walls literally start to close in around them, the Lilac worries that her first job as a bounty hunter may be her last. . . .]]> 376 Christopher Healy 0062341944 Larissa 3 3.97 2023
author: Christopher Healy
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves:
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]]> 61423989
The Roaring Twenties--the Jazz Age--has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows �� their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman �� Madge Oberholtzer �� who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

A FEVER IN THE HEARTLAND marries a propulsive drama to a powerful and page-turning reckoning with one of the darkest threads in American history.]]> 432 Timothy Egan 0735225265 Larissa 5 4.33 2023
author: Timothy Egan
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
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]]> 55077697
But today, Kinch Na Shannack has picked the wrong mark.

Galva is a knight, a survivor of the brutal goblin wars, and handmaiden of the goddess of death. She is searching for her queen, missing since a distant northern city fell to giants.

Unsuccessful in his robbery and lucky to escape with his life, Kinch now finds his fate entangled with Galva's. Common enemies and uncommon dangers force thief and knight on an epic journey where goblins hunger for human flesh, krakens hunt in dark waters, and honor is a luxury few can afford.]]> 416 Christopher Buehlman 1250621194 Larissa 4 4.17 2021
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 171681821
A must-read for all parents: the generation-defining investigation into the collapse of youth mental health in the era of smartphones, social media, and big tech—and a plan for a healthier, freer childhood.

“With tenacity and candor, Haidt lays out the consequences that have come with allowing kids to drift further into the virtual world . . . While also offering suggestions and solutions that could help protect a new generation of kids.�� —Shannon Carlin, ,i>TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why?

In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the “play-based childhood�� began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the “phone-based childhood�� in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this “great rewiring of childhood�� has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies.

Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the “collective action problems�� that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Haidt has spent his career speaking truth backed by data in the most difficult landscapes—communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the public health emergency faced by Gen Z. We cannot afford to ignore his findings about protecting our children—and ourselves—from the psychological damage of a phone-based life.]]> 400 Jonathan Haidt 0593655036 Larissa 0 audiobooks 4.36 2024
author: Jonathan Haidt
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 61062194 From the magical moments on set as Draco Malfoy to the challenges of growing up in the spotlight, get a backstage pass into Tom Felton’s life on and off the big screen in this #1 New York Times bestseller.

Tom Felton’s adolescence was anything but ordinary. His early rise to fame in beloved films like The Borrowers catapulted him into the limelight, but nothing could prepare him for what was to come after he landed the iconic role of the Draco Malfoy, the bleached blonde villain of the Harry Potter movies. For the next ten years, he was at the center of a huge pop culture phenomenon and yet, in between filming, he would go back to being a normal teenager trying to fit into a normal school.

Speaking with great candor and his signature humor, Tom shares his experience growing up as part of the wizarding world while also trying to navigate the muggle world. He tells stories from his early days in the business like his first acting gig where he was mistaken for fellow blonde child actor Macaulay Culkin and his Harry Potter audition where, in a very Draco-like move, he fudged how well he knew the books the series was based on (not at all). He reflects on his experiences working with cinematic greats such as Alan Rickman, Sir Michael Gambon, Dame Maggie Smith, and Ralph Fiennes (including that awkward Voldemort hug). And, perhaps most poignantly, he discusses the lasting relationships he made over that decade of filming, including with Emma Watson, who started out as a pesky nine-year-old whom he mocked for not knowing what a boom mic was but who soon grew into one of his dearest friends. Then, of course, there are the highs and lows of fame and navigating life after such a momentous and life-changing experience.

Tom Felton’s Beyond the Wand is an entertaining, funny, and poignant must-read for any Harry Potter fan. Prepare to meet a real-life wizard.]]> 288 Tom Felton 1538741369 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.28 2022
author: Tom Felton
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/24
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 61294937 Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend.

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.]]> 483 Shannon Chakraborty Larissa 5 4.25 2023
author: Shannon Chakraborty
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves:
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]]> 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Larissa 4 4.15 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/28
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves:
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]]> 16703
But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his life—and also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murder—right under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritage—and with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.
(front flap)]]> 414 Michael Chabon 0007149824 Larissa 3 3.72 2007
author: Michael Chabon
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves:
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]]> 154488299 The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives��. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories �� dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.]]> 201 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717716 Larissa 4 3.70 2013
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves:
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]]> 205063868 The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is the second book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Kamogawa Food Detectives series, for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps recreate them...

Chef Nagare and his daughter Koishi serve their customers more than delicious food at their Kamogawa Diner down a quiet street in Kyoto. They can help recreate meals from their customers�� most treasured memories. Through ingenious investigations, these “food detectives�� untangle flavors and pore through old shopping lists to remake unique dishes from the past.

From the swimmer who misses his father’s lunchbox to the model who longs for fried rice from her childhood, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect��

A beloved bestseller in Japan, The Restaurant of Lost Recipes is a tender and healing novel that celebrates the power of community and delicious food.]]> 214 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717805 Larissa 5 3.85 2014
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
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]]> 204316914 A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in this cozy fantasy mystery.

Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural. But when someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town's new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the "Demon-Hunting Society," Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon. This riotous mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote is a lesson for demons and murderers.

Never mess with a librarian.]]> 339 C.M. Waggoner 1984805886 Larissa 3 3.39 2024
author: C.M. Waggoner
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
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]]> 11996 "As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker."

A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.

The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.

Then everything changes... and nothing changes.

A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been... and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.]]> 208 Jacqueline Harpman 0380731819 Larissa 5 4.22 1995
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves:
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]]> 42779092
"You are not the first. And you will certainly not be the last." Rachel is now part of The Chain, an unending and ingenious scheme that turns victims into criminals—and is making someone else very rich in the process. The rules are simple, the moral challenges impossible; find the money fast, find your victim, and then commit a horrible act you'd have thought yourself incapable of just twenty-four hours ago.

But what the masterminds behind The Chain know is that parents will do anything for their children. It turns out that kidnapping is only the beginning.]]> 357 Adrian McKinty 031653126X Larissa 4 3.77 2019
author: Adrian McKinty
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/05
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 20820995
In Southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to an end. The board chair announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to a personnel issue. “Issue�� is the correct word. It's also an understatement. The proposal up for a vote is whether to authorize the killing of a local reporter. The vote is unanimous, five to zero in favor.

Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is helping a friend by looking into a dognapping. It seems to be turning into something much bigger and uglier—a team of dognappers supplying medical labs—when he gets a call from Lucas Davenport. A murdered body has been found—and the victim is a local reporter!

Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is part of the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing - "Ocean Prey."]]> 388 John Sandford 0399162372 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.14 2014
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 127282939 From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 Larissa 5 4.08 2024
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves:
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]]> 65137920 The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets.

‘The thing about books,�� she said ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.��

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found��

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder�� where nothing is as it seems.]]> 432 Evie Woods 0008609209 Larissa 3 4.03 2023
author: Evie Woods
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 17707502
No more than a few days later, Virgil Flowers in Minnesota gets a message from Lucas Davenport, "You're about to get a visitor." It's an Israeli cop, and she's chasing a man who smuggled out an extraordinary relic �� an ancient inscribed stone which may revel startling details about the man known as King Solomon.

"Wait a minute," laughs Virgil. "Is this one of those mystical movie-plot deals? The secret artifact, the blockbuster revelation, the teams of murderous bad guys? Should I be boning up on my Bible verses?" He looks at the Israeli investigator. She's not laughing.

As it turns out, there are very bad men chasing the relic, and they don't care who's in the way or what they have to do to get it. "They're crazies," she says. "What kind of crazies?" asks Virgil. "Palestinian crazies, Syrian crazies, Egyptian crazies, maybe a couple of Israeli crazies. Turks. Some Americans, too, I suppose. Maybe the Pope."

Perhaps Virgil should start praying.

Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is part of the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing - "Ocean Prey."]]> 376 John Sandford 0399159304 Larissa 3 audiobooks 3.88 2013
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/16
date added: 2024/10/19
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 13593555
It's not until Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers steps into the Shinder murder scene that the clues begin to come together. As the crime spree cuts a swath through rural Minnesota, a growing army of cops join Virgil in trying to track the teenagers down. But even Virgil doesn't realize what's about to happen.

Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is part of the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing - "Ocean Prey."]]> 387 John Sandford 0399157700 Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.16 2012
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 9925913
Talk about risky business.

A superstore chain, PyeMart, has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two very angry groups want to stop it: the local merchants fearing for their businesses, and the environmentalists predicting ecological disaster. The protests don't seem to be slowing the project down though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands.

The first bomb goes off on the top floor of PyeMart's headquarters in Michigan. The second one explodes at the construction site itself. The blasts are meant to inflict maximum damage - and they do. Who's behind the bombs and how far will they go? It's Virgil Flowers's job to find out . . . before more people get killed.

Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is part of the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing - "Ocean Prey."]]> John Sandford Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.18 2011
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 7713965
One late fall Sunday in southern Minnesota, a farmer brings a load of soybeans to a local grain elevator- and a young man hits him on the head with, was it a steel bar?, and then drops him into the grain bin as he first waits until he's sure he's dead, and then calls the sheriff to report the "accident." Suspicious, the sheriff calls in Virgil Flowers, who quickly breaks the kid down.

The next day the boy is found hanging in his cell. Remorse? Virgil isn't so sure. As he investigates, he begins to uncover a multigeneration, multifamily conspiracy - a series of crimes of such monstrosity that, though he's seen an awful lot in his life, even he has difficulty in comprehending.

More importantly, he has to figure out what to do.

Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is part of the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing - "Ocean Prey."]]> 388 John Sandford 0399156909 Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.20
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 199927030 The Chronicles of Narnia, this wild and wondrous novel is a fairy tale for grown-ups who still knock on the back of wardrobes—just in case—from the author of The Wishing Game.

As boys, best friends Jeremy Cox and Rafe Howell went missing in a vast West Virginia state forest, only to mysteriously reappear six months later with no explanation for where they’d gone or how they’d survived.

Fifteen years after their miraculous homecoming, Rafe is a reclusive artist who still bears scars inside and out but has no memory of what happened during those months. Meanwhile, Jeremy has become a famed missing persons�� investigator. With his uncanny abilities, he is the one person who can help vet tech Emilie Wendell find her sister, who vanished in the very same forest as Rafe and Jeremy.

Jeremy alone knows the fantastical truth about the disappearances, for while the rest of the world was searching for them, the two missing boys were in a magical realm filled with impossible beauty and terrible danger. He believes it is there that they will find Emilie’s sister. However, Jeremy has kept Rafe in the dark since their return for his own inscrutable reasons. But the time for burying secrets comes to an end as the quest for Emilie’s sister begins. The former lost boys must confront their shared past, no matter how traumatic the memories.

Alongside the headstrong Emilie, Rafe and Jeremy must return to the enchanted world they called home for six months—for only then can they get back everything and everyone they’ve lost.]]> 352 Meg Shaffer 0593598873 Larissa 4 3.78 2024
author: Meg Shaffer
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/26
date added: 2024/09/26
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]]> 6433836
The resort is for women only, a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic surgery, commune with nature, and while it didn't start out to be a place mostly for those with Sapphic inclinations, that's pretty much what it is today.

Which makes things more complicated for Virgil because, as he begins investigating, he finds connections between people at the resort and some local women, notably a talented country singer. The more he digs, the more he discovers arrows of suspicion that point in many directions, with many motives: jealousy, blackmail, greed, anger, and fear. Then he discovers that this is not the first murder, that there was a second, seemingly unrelated, the year before. And that there's about to be a third, definitely related. As to a fourth... well, Virgil better hope he can catch the killer before that happens. Because it could be his own.

Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is part of the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing - "Ocean Prey."]]> 388 John Sandford 0399155988 Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.14 2009
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/09/22
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 199347538 Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade. Featuring gorgeous orange sprayed edges!

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 125088120X Larissa 4 4.17 2024
author: T.J. Klune
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/21
date added: 2024/09/22
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]]> 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats�� from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge��: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as ��1847�� or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,�� “Spotify,�� and “the collapse of the British Empire.�� But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Larissa 3 3.54 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/12
date added: 2024/09/22
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]]> 3080212
Working the murders, Flowers becomes convinced that someone is keeping a list—with many more names on it. And when he discovers what connects them all, he’s almost sorry. Because if it’s true, then this whole thing leads down a lot more trails than he thought it did—and every one of them is booby-trapped.

Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is in the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing - "Ocean Prey."]]> 388 John Sandford 0399155279 Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.14 2008
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/16
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 988950
In the small town of Bluestem, a house way up on a ridge explodes into flames, its owner, a man named Judd, trapped inside. There is a lot of reason to hate him, Flowers discovers. Years ago, Judd had perpetrated a scam that'd driven a lot of local farmers out of business, even to suicide. There are also rumors of some very dicey activities with other men's wives, of involvement with some nutcase religious guy, and of an out-of-wedlock daughter. In fact, you'd probably have to dig around to find a person who didn't despise him.

That wasn't even the reason Flowers had come to Bluestem. Three weeks before, there'd been another murder �� two, in fact. There hadn't been a murder in Bluestem in years �� and now suddenly three? But just how personal is something even he doesn't realize, and may not find out until too late. Because the next victim... may be himself.

Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is in the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing, "Ocean Prey."]]> 373 John Sandford 0399154779 Larissa 3 audiobooks 3.94 2007
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 29044 559 Donna Tartt 1400031702 Larissa 5 4.17 1992
author: Donna Tartt
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1992
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2024/09/02
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]]> 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 Larissa 3 audiobooks 3.87 2020
author: Richard Osman
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2024/08/21
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 40180098 The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

A New York Times Bestseller.]]> 502 Richard Powers 039335668X Larissa 5 audiobooks 4.10 2018
author: Richard Powers
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/12
date added: 2024/08/12
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 43183121
There have been many attempts to understand what makes a good story �� from Joseph Campbell’s well-worn theories about myth and archetype to recent attempts to crack the ‘Bestseller Code��. But few have used a scientific approach. This is curious, for if we are to truly understand storytelling in its grandest sense, we must first come to understand the ultimate storyteller �� the human brain.

In this scalpel-sharp, thought-provoking book, Will Storr demonstrates how master storytellers manipulate and compel us, leading us on a journey from the Hebrew scriptures to Mr Men, from Booker Prize-winning literature to box set TV. Applying dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to the foundations of our myths and archetypes, he shows how we can use these tools to tell better stories �� and make sense of our chaotic modern world.]]> 144 Will Storr Larissa 3 4.01 2019
author: Will Storr
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Larissa 5 4.18 2000
author: Michael Chabon
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
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]]> 195769180
Gaia is dying.

That, at least, is what Dr. Lionel Scott believes. A renowned expert in tropical and infectious diseases, Scott has witnessed the devastating impact of illness and turmoil at critical scale. Society as it exists is untenable, and the direct link to Earth’s death spiral; population levels are out of control and people have allowed disarray and disorder to run rampant. While most are concerned about deadly disease, Scott knows that it is truly humanity itself that will destroy Gaia. It’s only by removing the threat then the planet can continue to prosper, and luckily, Scott is just the right man for the job��

When Scott then disappears without a trace, Letty Davenport is tasked with tracking down any and all leads. Scott’s connections to sensitive research into virus and pathogen spread has multiple national and international organizations on high alert, and his shockingly high clearance levels at various institutions, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, make him the last person they’d like to go missing. As the web around Scott becomes more tangled, Letty calls in her father, Lucas, help her lead a group of specialists to find Scott as soon as possible. But as Letty and Lucas begin to uncover startling and disturbing connections between Scott and Gaia conspiracists, their worst fears are confirmed, and it quickly becomes a race to find him before the virus he created becomes the perfect weapon.]]> 400 John Sandford 0593714504 Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.43 2024
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/25
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 22733729
Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.]]> 518 Becky Chambers 1500453307 Larissa 5 4.15 2014
author: Becky Chambers
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/21
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]]> 78441449 Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers team up to crack an unsolvable case in this thrilling new novel by John Sandford.

Alex Sand was spending the evening at home playing basketball with his two young sons when all three were shot in cold blood. A wealthy federal judge, there’s no short list of people who could have a vendetta against Sands, but the gruesome murders, especially that of his children, turn their St. Paul community on its head. Sand was on the verge of a major donation to a local housing charity, Heart/Twin Cities, and with the money in limbo, eyes suddenly turn to his grieving widow, Margaret Cooper, to see what she might do with the money. Margaret, distraught over the death of her family, struggles to move forward, and can’t imagine how or why anyone would target her husband.

With public pressure mounting and both the local police force and FBI hitting dead end after dead end, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are called in to do what others could not: find answers. With each potential lead flawed, Davenport and Flowers are determined to chase every theory until they figure out who killed the Sands. But when they find themselves being stonewalled by the most unlikely of forces, the two wonder if perhaps each misdirection could lead them closer to the truth.]]> 395 John Sandford Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.41 2023
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/19
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 53121631 Underland, Robert Macfarlane delivers an epic exploration of the Earth’s underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself. Traveling through the dizzying expanse of geologic time—from prehistoric art in Norwegian sea caves, to the blue depths of the Greenland ice cap, to a deep-sunk "hiding place" where nuclear waste will be stored for 100,000 years to come��Underland takes us on an extraordinary journey into our relationship with darkness, burial, and what lies beneath the surface of both place and mind.

Global in its geography and written with great lyricism, Underland speaks powerfully to our present moment. At once ancient and urgent, this is a book that will change the way you see the world.]]> 496 Robert Macfarlane 0393358097 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.23 2019
author: Robert Macfarlane
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/17
date added: 2024/07/17
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 56389580
The sickly royal icing marked the moment Katy found her voice. The madeira cake was the sun her group therapy sessions orbited. The 'missing cake' from a lost holiday has never let go. The Bara brith eaten in hospital after a life-altering car crash was as tough as the metal that hit her. The supermarket rock cake was where she 'practised wanting'.

Shocking, raw, darkly funny and deeply humane, Katy Wix's exploration of trauma, grief, addiction, love, loss, memory and hope is truly unforgettable.]]> 288 Katy Wix 1472261194 Larissa 4 4.12 2021
author: Katy Wix
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/14
date added: 2024/07/15
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]]> 61242426
The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success �� not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.]]> 296 Travis Baldree Larissa 4 Ariane, it’s adorbs. 4.04 2022
author: Travis Baldree
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/11
date added: 2024/07/11
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Ariane, it’s adorbs.
]]> 60067154
“We’re going to murder people who need to be murdered.��

So begins a press release from a mysterious group known only as 'The Five,' shortly after a vicious predator is murdered in San Francisco. The Five is made up of vigilante killers who are very bored…and very rich. They target the worst of society—rapists, murderers, and thieves—and then use their unlimited resources to offset the damage done by those who they’ve killed, donating untraceable Bitcoins to charities and victims via the dark net. The Five soon become popular figures in the media …though their motives may not be entirely pure.

After The Five strike again in the Twin Cities, Virgil Flowers and Lucas Davenport are sent in to investigate. And they soon have their hands full--the killings are smart and carefully choreographed. With no apparent direct connection to the victims, the killers are virtually untraceable. But if anyone can destroy this group, it will be the dynamic team of Davenport and Flowers.]]> 416 John Sandford Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.42 2022
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 38819868
My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker - and more difficult to get out of the carpet - than water...]]> 226 Oyinkan Braithwaite 0385544235 Larissa 4 3.64 2018
author: Oyinkan Braithwaite
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves:
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]]> 54747051
They're federal officers killed on the job, which means the case is the FBI's turf. When the FBI's investigation stalls out, Lucas Davenport of the U.S. Marshals Service gets a call. The case turns even more lethal and Davenport needs to bring in every asset he can find, including a detective with a fundamentally criminal mind: Virgil Flowers.]]> 431 John Sandford 0593087038 Larissa 0 audiobooks 4.40 2021
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/04
date added: 2024/07/04
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 179311283 In New York Times–bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s ingenious fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound

Riverside Close is a picture-perfect community. The six exclusive and attractive houses are tucked far away from the noise and grime of city life, allowing the residents to enjoy beautiful gardens, pleasant birdsong and tranquility from behind the security of a locked gate.

It is the perfect idyll until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, a gaggle of shrieking children and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. Obvious outsiders, the Kentworthys do not belong in Riverside Close, and they quickly offend every last one of their neighbours.

When Giles Kentworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator that can be called on to solve the case.

Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect?]]> 432 Anthony Horowitz 006330564X Larissa 5 4.06 2024
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/02
date added: 2024/07/02
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]]> 52752171 Lucas Davenport investigates a vitriolic blog that seems to be targeting the children of U.S. politicians in the latest thriller by #1 New York Times-bestselling author John Sandford.

The daughter of a U.S. Senator is monitoring her social media presence when she finds a picture of herself on a strange blog. And there are other pictures . . . of the children of other influential Washington politicians, walking or standing outside their schools, each identified by name. Surrounding the photos are texts of vicious political rants from a motley variety of radical groups.

It's obviously alarming--is there an unstable extremist tracking the loved ones of powerful politicians with deadly intent? But when the FBI is called in, there isn't much the feds can do. The anonymous photographer can't be pinned down to one location or IP address, and more importantly, at least to the paper-processing bureaucrats, no crime has actually been committed. With nowhere else to turn, influential Senators decide to call in someone who can operate outside the FBI's constraints: Lucas Davenport.]]> 416 John Sandford Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.20 2020
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/30
date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 6033525
In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.]]> 352 Daniel James Brown 0061348104 Larissa 5 4.24 2009
author: Daniel James Brown
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/06/17
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]]> 40982957
It was a relatively minor criminal matter, all things considered, but enough that the U.S. Marshals obtained a warrant to enter the home. They didn't expect to unearth trophies from a score of killings.

Now Davenport is on the trail of a serial murderer, one who was able to operate for years without notice or suspicion. But there's even more to this killer than meets the eye...]]> 400 John Sandford Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.29 2019
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]> 43822024
In this pulse-pounding conclusion to New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe trilogy, constitutions are tested and old friends are brought back from the dead.]]> 625 Neal Shusterman 1481497065 Larissa 5 4.15 2019
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/07
date added: 2024/06/07
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]]> 41104077
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women��, diving into women’s lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor’s office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.]]> 448 Caroline Criado Pérez 1419729071 Larissa 5 audiobooks 4.35 2019
author: Caroline Criado Pérez
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/04
date added: 2024/06/04
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 156480764
In New York City, bookseller Cassie Andrews is living an unassuming life when she is given a gift by a favourite customer. It's a book - an unusual book, full of strange writing and mysterious drawings. And at the very front there is a handwritten message to Cassie, telling her that this is the Book of Doors, and that any door is every door .

What Cassie is about to discover is that the Book of Doors is a special book that bestows an extraordinary powers on whoever possesses it, and soon she and her best friend Izzy are exploring all that the Book of Doors can do, swept away from their quiet lives by the possibilities of travelling to anywhere they want.

But the Book of Doors is not the only magical book in the world. There are other books that can do wondrous and dreadful things when wielded by dangerous and ruthless individuals - individuals who crave what Cassie now possesses.

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is, it seems, Drummond Fox. He is a man fleeing his own demons - a man with his own secret library of magical books that he has hidden away in the shadows for safekeeping. Because there is a nameless evil out there that is hunting them all . . .

Because some doors should never be opened.]]> 408 Gareth Brown 1787637247 Larissa 4 4.03 2024
author: Gareth Brown
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
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]]> 181350367 For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate.... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.

It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.

In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?

As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune.]]> 358 Kristen Perrin 0593474015 Larissa 4 3.76 2024
author: Kristen Perrin
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/05/27
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]]> 36168749
A rich psychopath, Taryn Grant had run successfully for the U.S. Senate, where Lucas had predicted she'd fit right in. He was also convinced that she'd been responsible for three murders, though he'd never been able to prove it. Once a psychopath gets that kind of rush though, he or she often needs another fix, and Davenport figured he might be seeing Taryn Grant again.

He was right. A federal marshal now, with a very wide scope of investigation, he's heard rumors that Grant has found her seat on the Senate intelligence committee, and the contacts she's made from it, to be very...useful. Pinning those rumors down was likely to be just as difficult as before, and considerably more dangerous.

But they had unfinished business, Davenport and Grant. One way or the other, he was going to see it through to the end.]]> 395 John Sandford Larissa 3 audiobooks 4.48 2018
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/22
date added: 2024/05/22
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 125373512
Merritt Fernsby’s life has changed considerably since he inherited Whimbrel House. He’s engaged to Hulda Larkin, who opened his eyes to the uncanny. And he’s grown quite protective of his uncle Owein—several generations, and iterations, removed. Owein is presently inhabiting the body of a mixed-breed terrier when Merritt receives a missive from none other than Alexandrina Victoria, the Queen of England: I am interested in your dog.

It’s the queen’s duty to the peerage to keep British wizardry empowered. Her offer: England will find a human vessel for Owein, marry him into the royal family, and add this remarkable soul-shifter to its lineage. For Owein, a boy trapped in the body of a pup, it’s a dream come true. How can Merritt refuse? However, once they are in London and in consortium with a necromancer, the situation doesn’t feel right, both with their hosts and the house they inhabit. Owein is having nightmares. And Hulda’s premonitions warn of danger in Merritt’s future. Clearly, someone doesn’t want them in town.

But after two hundred years of being cursed to drift, Owein is determined to chart his own destiny. He’s ready to defy whatever chaos is coming. After all, Owein is the master of chaos, and with Merritt and Hulda’s love and magical support, he can overcome anything.]]> 299 Charlie N. Holmberg 1662508727 Larissa 4 4.31 2024
author: Charlie N. Holmberg
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/20
date added: 2024/05/20
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]]> 46042377 From the author of The House of the Spirits, this epic novel spanning decades and crossing continents follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in search of a place to call home.

In the late 1930s, civil war grips Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires.

Together with two thousand other refugees, they embark on the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, to Chile: “the long petal of sea and wine and snow.�� As unlikely partners, they embrace exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war. Starting over on a new continent, their trials are just beginning, and over the course of their lives, they will face trial after trial. But they will also find joy as they patiently await the day when they will be exiles no more. Through it all, their hope of returning to Spain keeps them going. Destined to witness the battle between freedom and repression as it plays out across the world, Roser and Victor will find that home might have been closer than they thought all along.

A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile, and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea shows Isabel Allende at the height of her powers. ]]> 325 Isabel Allende Larissa 5 4.03 2019
author: Isabel Allende
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
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]]> 31379212 The man was smart and he didn’t mind killing people. Welcome to the big leagues, Davenport. Lucas Davenport’s first case as a U.S. Marshal sends him into uncharted territory, in the thrilling new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series.

Thanks to some very influential people whose lives he saved, Lucas is no longer working for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but for the U.S. Marshals Service, and with unusual scope. He gets to pick his own cases, whatever they are, wherever they lead him.

And where they’ve led him this time is into real trouble. A Biloxi, Mississippi, drug-cartel counting house gets robbed, and suitcases full of cash disappear, leaving behind five bodies, including that of a six-year-old girl. Davenport takes the case, which quickly spirals out of control, as cartel assassins, including a torturer known as the “Queen of home-improvement tools�� compete with Davenport to find the Dixie Hicks shooters who knocked over the counting house. Things get ugly real fast, and neither the cartel killers nor the holdup men give a damn about whose lives Davenport might have saved; to them, he’s just another large target.]]> 393 John Sandford 0399184570 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.15 2017
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/12
date added: 2024/05/12
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 26025992
After the events in "Gathering Prey", Lucas Davenport finds himself in a very unusual situation—no longer employed by the Minnesota BCA. His friend the governor is just cranking up a presidential campaign though, and he invites Lucas to come along as part of his campaign staff. “Should be fun!�� he says, and it kind of is—until they find they have a shadow: an armed man intent on killing the governor . . . and anyone who gets in the way.]]> 406 John Sandford 0399176055 Larissa 4 4.16 2016
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/05
date added: 2024/05/05
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]]> 23281640 ��
They call them Travelers. They move from city to city, panhandling, committing no crimes—they just like to stay on the move. And now somebody is killing them.

Lucas Davenport’s adopted daughter, Letty, is home from college when she gets a phone call from a woman Traveler she’d befriended in San Francisco. The woman thinks somebody’s killing her friends, she’s afraid she knows who it is, and now her male companion has gone missing. She’s hiding out in North Dakota, and she doesn’t know what to do.

Letty tells Lucas she’s going to get her, and, though he suspects Letty’s getting played, he volunteers to go with her. When he hears the woman’s story, though, he begins to think there’s something in it. Little does he know. In the days to come, he will embark upon an odyssey through a subculture unlike any he has ever seen, a trip that will not only put the two of them in danger—but just may change the course of his life.]]> 407 John Sandford 0399168796 Larissa 4 4.12 2015
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/01
date added: 2024/05/01
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]]> 18667817
He’d picked the perfect spot to lose his virginity to his girlfriend, an abandoned farmyard in the middle of cornfields: nice, private, and quiet. The only problem was . . . something smelled bad—like, really bad. He mentioned it to a county deputy he knew, and when the cop took a look, he found a body stuffed down a cistern. And then another, and another.

By the time Lucas Davenport was called in, the police were up to fifteen bodies and counting. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, when Lucas began to investigate, he made some disturbing discoveries of his own. The victims had been killed over a great many years, one every summer, regular as clockwork. How could this have happened without anybody noticing?

Because one thing was for sure: the killer had to live close by. He was probably even someone they saw every day. . . .]]> 392 John Sandford 0399162380 Larissa 4 4.20 2014
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/29
date added: 2024/04/29
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]]> 33555224
Citra, now a junior scythe under Scythe Curie, sees the corruption and wants to help change it from the inside out, but is thwarted at every turn, and threatened by the “new order�� scythes. Realizing she cannot do this alone—or even with the help of Scythe Curie and Faraday, she does the unthinkable, and risks being “deadish�� so she can communicate with the Thunderhead—the only being on earth wise enough to solve the dire problems of a perfect world. But will it help solve those problems, or simply watch as perfection goes into decline?]]> 504 Neal Shusterman 1442472456 Larissa 5 4.38 2018
author: Neal Shusterman
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
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]]> 16158527
Davenport is investigating another case when the trail leads to the man’s disappearance, then—very troublingly—to the Minneapolis police department, then—most troublingly of all—to a woman who could give Machiavelli lessons. She has very definite ideas about the way the world should work, and the money, ruthlessness, and sheer will to make it happen.

No matter who gets in the way.]]> 406 John Sandford 0399159312 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.14 2012
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/25
date added: 2024/04/25
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 13093001
There’s something about the scene that pokes at Lucas’s cop instincts—it looks an awful lot like the kind of scorched-earth retribution he’s seen in drug killings sometimes. But this is a seriously upscale town, and the husband was an executive vice president at a big bank. It just doesn’t seem to fit.

Until it does. And where it leads Lucas will take him into the darkest nightmare of his life.]]> 402 John Sandford 0399157689 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.15 2012
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/21
date added: 2024/04/21
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 51187948
On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold the country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally-and willing to fight to the end.

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

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

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when-in the face of unrelenting horror-Churchill's eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together."--]]> 546 Erik Larson 038534872X Larissa 5 audiobooks 4.30 2020
author: Erik Larson
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/18
date added: 2024/04/18
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 9440448
In 1985, Davenport was a young cop with a reputation for recklessness, and the girls' disappearance was a big deal. His bosses ultimately declared the case closed, but he never agreed with that. Now that he has a chance to investigate it all over again, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: It wasn't just the bodies that were buried. It was the truth.]]> 390 John Sandford 0399157387 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.25 2011
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/11
date added: 2024/04/11
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 6878614
'Storm Prey' - just another great thriller from John Sandford!]]> 408 John Sandford 1847376177 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.13 2010
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/08
date added: 2024/04/08
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 62703226 At seventeen, Lenora Hope
Hung her sister with a rope

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

Stabbed her father with a knife
Took her mother’s happy life

It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer��I want to tell you everything.

“It wasn’t me,�� Lenora said
But she’s the only one not dead

As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.]]> 383 Riley Sager 0593183223 Larissa 4 4.12 2023
author: Riley Sager
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/28
date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 36086 The Ghost Map is a riveting page-turner about a real-life historical hero, Dr. John Snow. It's the summer of 1854, and London is just emerging as one of the first modern cities in the world. But lacking the infrastructure—garbage removal, clean water, sewers—necessary to support its rapidly expanding population, the city has become the perfect breeding ground for a terrifying disease no one knows how to cure. As the cholera outbreak takes hold, a physician and a local curate are spurred to action—and ultimately solve the most pressing medical riddle of their time. In a triumph of multidisciplinary thinking, Johnson illuminates the intertwined histories and inter-connectedness of the spread of disease, contagion theory, the rise of cities, and the nature of scientific inquiry, offering both a riveting history and a powerful explanation of how it has shaped the world we live in.]]> 299 Steven Johnson 1594489254 Larissa 4 3.89 2006
author: Steven Johnson
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/08
date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 5867331 402 John Sandford 0399155678 Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.12 2009
author: John Sandford
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 61714633 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. The powerful narrative reveals the deeper meaning of the events on the Wager, showing that it was not only the captain and crew who ended up on trial, but the very idea of empire.

On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as "the prize of all the oceans," it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.

But then . . . six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes - they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death--for whomever the court found guilty could hang.

The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann's recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O'Brian, his portrayal of the castaways' desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann's work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.]]> 331 David Grann 0385534264 Larissa 5 4.14 2023
author: David Grann
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/04/01
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]]> 62804258 Four brothers. Two missions. One explosive read. Jennifer Lynn Barnes returns to the world of her #1 bestselling Inheritance Games trilogy, and the stakes have never been higher. ��
��
Grayson Hawthorne was raised as the heir apparent to his billionaire grandfather, taught from the cradle to put family first. Now the great Tobias Hawthorne is dead and his family disinherited, but some lessons linger. When Grayson’s half-sisters find themselves in trouble, he swoops in to do what he does best: take care of the problem—efficiently, effectively, mercilessly. And without getting bogged down in emotional entanglements.
��
Jameson Hawthorne is a risk-taker, a sensation-seeker, a player of games. When his mysterious father appears and asks for a favor, Jameson can’t resist the challenge. Now he must infiltrate London’s most exclusive underground gambling club, which caters to the rich, the powerful, and the aristocratic, and win an impossible game of greatest stakes. Luckily, Jameson Hawthorne lives for impossible.
��
Drawn into twisted games on opposite sides of the globe, Grayson and Jameson—with the help of their brothers and the girl who inherited their grandfather’s fortune—must dig deep to decide who they want to be and what each of them will sacrifice to win.]]> 480 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 0316480770 Larissa 3 audiobooks 3.90 2023
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Larissa
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/28
date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: audiobooks
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]]> 58658940 Avery’s fortune, life, and loves are on the line in the game that everyone will be talking about.

To inherit billions, all Avery Kylie Grambs has to do is survive a few more weeks living in Hawthorne House. The paparazzi are dogging her every step. Financial pressures are building. Danger is a fact of life. And the only thing getting Avery through it all is the Hawthorne brothers. Her life is intertwined with theirs. She knows their secrets and they know her.

But as the clock ticks down to the moment when Avery will become the richest teenager on the planet, trouble arrives in the form of a visitor who needs her help—and whose presence in Hawthorne House could change everything. It soon becomes clear that there is one last puzzle to solve, and Avery and the Hawthorne brothers are drawn into a dangerous game against an unknown and powerful player.]]> 400 Jennifer Lynn Barnes Larissa 4 audiobooks 4.10 2022
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Larissa
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/24
date added: 2024/03/24
shelves: audiobooks
review:

]]>