Lauren's bookshelf: read en-US Mon, 09 Dec 2024 08:28:01 -0800 60 Lauren's bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Cricket on the Hearth 549938
The title creature is a sort of barometer of life at the home of John Peerybingle and his much younger wife Dot. When things go well, the cricket on the hearth chirps; it is silent when there is sorrow. Tackleton, a jealous old man, poisons John's mind about Dot, but the cricket through its supernatural powers restores John's confidence and all ends happily.]]> 82 Charles Dickens 0809500418 Lauren 0 to-read 3.48 1845 The Cricket on the Hearth
author: Charles Dickens
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.48
book published: 1845
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> Reliquary (Pendergast, #2) 39030 464 Douglas Preston 0765354950 Lauren 4 audiobook 4.03 1997 Reliquary (Pendergast, #2)
author: Douglas Preston
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2015/07/03
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: audiobook
review:
Spooky, exciting. Reminded me of reading Jurassic Park (although not quite as good for obvs reasons) - science, ritual, solid characters, excellent pacing. The setting is fascinating. I'll definitely read more in the series. I didn't read book 1 first and it was no problem. The audiobook was good, narrator did a good job with action although his lady voices weren't the best. Also they used some truly odd sound effects. Buyer beware, some Pendergast books have been narrated by the dastardly Scott Brick. Avoid them.
]]> The Free World 10969864 372 David Bezmozgis 1429966629 Lauren 0 to-read 3.40 2011 The Free World
author: David Bezmozgis
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Fates Will Find Their Way 10119563


Already acclaimed for her short fiction—a McSweeney’s Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award winner whose work was selected by Salman Rushdie for inclusion in 2008 Best American Short Stories� 100 Distinguished Stories—Hannah Pittard proves herself a master of long form fiction as well with her haunting, masterfully crafted debut novel, The Fates Will Find Their Way. A powerful and beautiful literary masterwork reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides, Pittard’s The Fates Will Find Their Way tells the unforgettable story of a teenaged girl gone missing, and the boys she grew up with who find themselves caught in the mysterious wake of her absence for the rest of their lives.]]> 261 Hannah Pittard 0062041576 Lauren 0 to-read 3.25 2011 The Fates Will Find Their Way
author: Hannah Pittard
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> Blindsight (Firefall, #1) 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

Two months since sixty-five thousand alien objects clenched around the Earth like a luminous fist, screaming to the heavens as the atmosphere burned them to ash. Two months since that moment of brief, bright surveillance by agents unknown.

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune’s orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever’s out there isn’t talking to us. It’s talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.

So who do you send to force introductions on an intelligence with motives unknown, maybe unknowable? Who do you send to meet the alien when the alien doesn’t want to meet?

You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees X-rays and tastes ultrasound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won’t be needed, and a fainter hope she’ll do any good if she is needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called “vampire,� recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist � an informational topologist with half his mind gone � as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge.

You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they’ve been sent to find.

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Lauren 0 to-read 4.01 2006 Blindsight (Firefall, #1)
author: Peter Watts
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Glass Houses: Privacy, Secrecy, and Cyber Insecurity in a Transparent World]]> 17707765
Shortly after 9/11, Joel Brenner entered the inner sanctum of American espionage, first as the inspector general of the National Security Agency, then as the head of counterintelligence for the director of National Intelligence. He saw at close range the battleground on which adversaries are attacking cyberspace.

Like the rest of us, governments and corporations inhabit “glass houses,� all but transparent to a new generation of spies who operate remotely from such places as China, the Middle East, Russia, and even France. In this urgent wake-up call, Brenner draws on his extraordinary background to show what we can—and cannot—do to prevent cyber spies and hackers from compromising our security and stealing our latest technology.]]> 320 Joel Brenner 0143122118 Lauren 0 to-read 3.77 2011 Glass Houses: Privacy, Secrecy, and Cyber Insecurity in a Transparent World
author: Joel Brenner
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Homer Price 766917 The comic genius of Robert McCloskey and his wry look at small-town America has kept readers in stitches for generations!

]]> 149 Robert McCloskey 0140309276 Lauren 0 to-read 4.09 1943 Homer Price
author: Robert McCloskey
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Museum of Terror, Vol. 1: Tomie 1]]> 13630 375 Junji Ito 1593075421 Lauren 0 to-read 4.12 1987 Museum of Terror, Vol. 1: Tomie 1
author: Junji Ito
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> Preacher, Book 1 5428776
After merging with a bizarre spiritual force called Genesis, Texan preacher Jesse Custer has become completely disillusioned with the beliefs to which he had dedicated his entire life. Now possessing the power of "the word," an ability to make people do whatever he utters, Custer begins a violent and riotous journey across the country. Joined by his gun-toting girlfriend Tulip and the hard-drinking Irish vampire Cassidy, Custer loses faith in both God and man as he witnesses dark atrocities and improbable calamities during his exploration of America.

This new collected edition features an all-new introduction by series writer Garth Ennis.]]> 335 Garth Ennis 140122279X Lauren 0 to-read 4.41 2009 Preacher, Book 1
author: Garth Ennis
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Pig City 43122090 0 Louis Sachar 1785052748 Lauren 3 3.94 1987 Pig City
author: Louis Sachar
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1987
rating: 3
read at: 2019/12/11
date added: 2023/09/28
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions]]> 604025
Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.’s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.’s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world’s most sophisticated casinos for more than three million dollars. But their success also brings with it the formidable ire of casino owners and launches them into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas with its private investigators and other violent heavies.]]> 257 Ben Mezrich 0743249992 Lauren 1 3.88 2002 Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
author: Ben Mezrich
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2002
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2023/09/12
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]]> Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 Lauren 0 to-read 4.00 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dead House (The Dead House, #1)]]> 22396591
Re-opened police records, psychiatric reports, transcripts of video footage and fragments of diary reveal a web of deceit and intrigue, violence and murder, raising a whole lot more questions than it answers.

Who was Kaitlyn and why did she only appear at night? Did she really exist or was she a figment of a disturbed mind? What were the illicit rituals taking place at the school? And just what did happen at Elmbridge in the events leading up to ‘the Johnson Incident�?]]> 440 Dawn Kurtagich 1780622341 Lauren 0 to-read 3.68 2015 The Dead House (The Dead House, #1)
author: Dawn Kurtagich
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Persuasive Encounters: Case Studies in Constructive Confrontation]]> 28225406


The text is comprised of five instances of persuasion advocacy combined with six shorter case studies. Each chapter includes background information on the immediate and secondary audiences, a summary of significant events that surrounded the situation, and contemporary accounts of public reaction. In addition, a transcript of the remarks or exchanges that actually took place and an analysis of the persuasion are provided. Students of persuasion, communication theory, and discourse analysis will find this work a valuable resource.]]> 216 Gary C. Woodward 031301826X Lauren 0 to-read 0.0 1990 Persuasive Encounters: Case Studies in Constructive Confrontation
author: Gary C. Woodward
name: Lauren
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/07/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Harrow County #1 26933793 31 Cullen Bunn Lauren 0 to-read 4.11 2015 Harrow County #1
author: Cullen Bunn
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Truly Madly Guilty 27831371 The electrifying new novel from the international bestselling author, Liane Moriarty

Despite their differences, Erika and Clementine have been best friends since they were children. So when Erika needs help, Clementine should be the obvious person to turn to. Or so you'd think.

For Clementine, as a mother of a two desperately trying to practise for the audition of a lifetime, the last thing she needs is Erika asking for something, again.

But the barbecue should be the perfect way to forget their problems for a while. Especially when their hosts, Vid and Tiffany, are only too happy to distract them.

Which is how it all spirals out of control...

]]> 517 Liane Moriarty 1250069815 Lauren 4 3.59 2016 Truly Madly Guilty
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/03/20
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review:
As always, Liane Moriarty delves into the intense emotions that underlie regular life and relationships with empathy and humor. Like her other books, the story is told from multiple points of view, and the full truth of an event unfolds over the course of the book. This book deals with guilt (duh) but also coping with a mentally ill parent, the odd nature of childhood friendships, and the intense blame that arises when catastrophe strikes. I enjoyed it quite a bit, although I felt like there were some loose ends that could have been wrapped up. Still -- a very good read.
]]> <![CDATA[The Failure of Governance in Bell, California: Big-Time Corruption in a Small Town]]> 29458036
Even discounting the enormous sums involved—the top administrator paid himself nearly $800,000 a year in a town with a $35,000 average income—this was no ordinary failure of governance. The picture that emerges from years of federal, state, and local investigations, trials, depositions, and media accounts is of an elaborate culture of corruption and deceit created and sustained by top city administrators, councilmembers, police officers, numerous municipal employees, and consultants.

The Failure of Governance in Bell Big-Time Corruption in a Small Town details how Bell was rendered vulnerable to such massive malfeasance by a disengaged public, lack of established ethical norms, absence of effective checks and balances, and minimal coverage by an overextended area news media. It is a grim and nearly unbelievable story.

Yet even these factors fail to fully explain how such large-scale corruption could have arisen. More specifically, how did it occur within a structure—the council-manager form of government—that had been deliberately designed to promote good governance? Why were so many officials and employees prepared to participate in or overlook the ongoing corruption? To what degree can theories of governance, such as contagion theory or the “rover bandit� theme, explain the success of such blatant wrongdoing?

The Failure of Governance, by Arizona State University Professor Thom Reilly—himself former county manager of Clark County, Nevada—pursues answers to these and related questions through an analysis of municipal operations that will afford the reader deeper insight into the inner workings of city governments—corrupt and otherwise. By considering factors arising from both theory and practice, Reilly makes clear, in other words, why the sad saga of Bell, California represents both a case study and a warning.]]> 228 Thom Reilly 1498512127 Lauren 0 to-read 4.00 The Failure of Governance in Bell, California: Big-Time Corruption in a Small Town
author: Thom Reilly
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/29
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]]> The Black Phone 7241271 27 Joe Hill 0061843598 Lauren 4 3.64 2009 The Black Phone
author: Joe Hill
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/04
date added: 2022/07/26
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]]> A Christmas Story 5319 A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana—the book that inspired the equally classic Yuletide film and the live musical on Fox. The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family’s typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker’s shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father’s pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie’s duel in the show with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie’s unstoppable campaign to get Santa—or anyone else—to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid�? The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.]]> 144 Jean Shepherd 0767916220 Lauren 0 to-read 4.04 1983 A Christmas Story
author: Jean Shepherd
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/07/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Save the Bankers?: And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis]]> 25897770
Thomas Piketty's work has proved that unfettered markets lead to increasing inequality. Without meaningful regulation, capitalist economies will concentrate wealth in an ever smaller number of hands. Armed with this knowledge, democratic societies face a defining fending off a new aristocracy.

For years, Piketty has wrestled with this problem in his monthly newspaper column, which pierces the surface of current events to reveal the economic forces underneath. Why Save the Bankers? brings together selected columns, now translated and annotated, from the period book-ended by the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Paris attacks of November 2015. In between, writing from the vantage point of his native France, Piketty brilliantly decodes the European sovereign debt crisis, an urgent struggle against the tyranny of markets that bears lessons for the world at large. And along the way, he weighs in on oligarchy in the United States, wonders whether debts actually need to be paid back, and discovers surprising lessons about inequality by examining the career of Steve Jobs.

Coursing with insight and flashes of wit, these brief essays offer a view of recent history through the eyes of one of the most influential economic thinkers of our time.]]> 224 Thomas Piketty 0544663322 Lauren 0 to-read 3.50 2016 Why Save the Bankers?: And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis
author: Thomas Piketty
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health]]> 129564
The Financial Peace Planner may be the most valuable purchase you ever make.Dave Ramey's practical regimen, based on his own personal experience with debt, offers hard-won advice and much needed hope to people who find themselves in serious debt and desperate for a way out. This book comes in a workbook format, allowing you to frequently monitor your progress and, most importantly, to face your situation honestly. Loaded with inspirational insights that come from personal experience, this set of books will be life changing for any debt-ridden readers.

You'll find help on how
� Assess the urgency of your situation
� Understand where your money's going
� Create a realistic budget
� Dump your debt
� Clean up your credit rating]]> 288 Dave Ramsey 014026468X Lauren 4 4.27 1992 The Financial Peace Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Restoring Your Family's Financial Health
author: Dave Ramsey
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2008/06/30
date added: 2022/04/11
shelves:
review:
This book goes baby step by baby step from your initial budget making to progressing through getting out of debt to what to do with all that cash once you ARE out of debt. Easy to read, with lots of helpful charts and explanations, I really liked this and think it will be extremely helpful to me as my family and I work to get out of debt (a LOT of it - thanks, grad school!). This is the one I'll keep going back to for answers to questions as they arise. And it avoids a lot of the religiosity of the talk show -- so it's a more secular, neutral, pragmatic read.
]]> <![CDATA[I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year]]> 58411199 The definitive behind-the-scenes story of Trump’s final year in office, by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, the Pulitzer-Prize winning reporters and authors of the #1 New York Times bestseller, A Very Stable Genius

The true story of what took place in Donald Trump’s White House during a disastrous 2020 has never before been told in full. What was really going on around the president, as the government failed to contain the coronavirus and over half a million Americans perished? Who was influencing Trump after he refused to concede an election he had clearly lost and spread lies about election fraud? To answer these questions, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig reveal a dysfunctional and bumbling presidency’s inner workings in unprecedented, stunning detail.

Focused on Trump and the key players around him—the doctors, generals, senior advisers, and Trump family members� Rucker and Leonnig provide a forensic account of the most devastating year in a presidency like no other. Their sources were in the room as time and time again Trump put his personal gain ahead of the good of the country. These witnesses to history tell the story of him longing to deploy the military to the streets of American cities to crush the protest movement in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, all to bolster his image of strength ahead of the election. These sources saw firsthand his refusal to take the threat of the coronavirus seriously—even to the point of allowing himself and those around him to be infected. This is a story of a nation sabotaged—economically, medically, and politically—by its own leader, culminating with a groundbreaking, minute-by-minute account of exactly what went on in the Capitol building on January 6, as Trump’s supporters so easily breached the most sacred halls of American democracy, and how the president reacted. With unparalleled access, Rucker and Leonnig explain and expose exactly who enabled—and who foiled—Trump as he sought desperately to cling to power.

A classic and heart-racing work of investigative reporting, this book is destined to be read and studied by citizens and historians alike for decades to come.]]> 592 Carol Leonnig 0593298942 Lauren 3 4.33 2021 I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year
author: Carol Leonnig
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2021
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/07/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile Home Parks and Americans� Tenuous Right to Place]]> 38796268 Manufactured Insecurityis the first book of its kind to provide an in-depth investigation of the social, legal, geospatial, and market forces that intersect to create housing insecurity for an entire class of low-income residents. Drawing on rich ethnographic data collected before, during, and after mobile home park closures and community-wide evictions in Florida and Texas—the two states with the largest mobile home populations�Manufactured Insecurity forces social scientists and policymakers to respond to a fundamental question: how do the poor access and retain secure housing in the face of widespread poverty, deepening inequality, and scarce legal protection? With important contributions to urban sociology, housing studies, planning, and public policy, the book provides a broader understanding of inequality and social welfare in the United States today.]]> 264 Esther Sullivan 0520295641 Lauren 0 to-read 0.0 Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile Home Parks and Americans’ Tenuous Right to Place
author: Esther Sullivan
name: Lauren
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Love in a Time of Monsters (Golden Age of Monsters #1)]]> 25237235 He has a monster problem

Scotland, 1867. When Rob Stevenson’s brother is killed—and eaten—in the forest outside their estate, Rob’s sheltered world is shattered by a monster infestation. Determined to keep his village safe, Rob's first duty as laird involves hiring a professional hunter.

She kills monsters

The sole survivor of a massacre in the Congo, Catriona Mornay is rumored to have lost her mind in the jungle. In Edinburgh’s gas-lit streets, Cat’s skill as a hunter is unmatched. Her reputation as a killer of unnatural creatures, legendary.

Two worlds collide

Faced with a rising body count, Rob takes a chance on Cat, hoping that somewhere inside this tortured yet charismatic girl is the hero he’s been searching for. But in this shadow realm of secrets, lies, and underworld crime, their lives overlap in more ways than one. And in an age where harpies flock the sky and serpents rule the sea, it’s even possible for a boy and his hunter to fall in love.

But can their love survive in a time of monsters?]]> Teresa Yea Lauren 0 to-read 5.00 2015 Love in a Time of Monsters (Golden Age of Monsters #1)
author: Teresa Yea
name: Lauren
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Last House Guest 42201386 REESE’S BOOK CLUB x HELLO SUNSHINE AUGUST 2019 PICK!

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Littleport, Maine, has always felt like two separate towns: an ideal vacation enclave for the wealthy, whose summer homes line the coastline; and a simple harbor community for the year-round residents whose livelihoods rely on service to the visitors.

Typically, fierce friendships never develop between a local and a summer girl—but that’s just what happens with visitor Sadie Loman and Littleport resident Avery Greer. Each summer for almost a decade, the girls are inseparable—until Sadie is found dead. While the police rule the death a suicide, Avery can’t help but feel there are those in the community, including a local detective and Sadie’s brother, Parker, who blame her. Someone knows more than they’re saying, and Avery is intent on clearing her name, before the facts get twisted against her.

Another thrilling novel from the bestselling author of All the Missing Girls and The Perfect Stranger, Megan Miranda’s The Last House Guest is a smart, twisty read with a strong female protagonist determined to make her own way in the world.]]> 345 Megan Miranda 1501165372 Lauren 0 to-read 3.65 2019 The Last House Guest
author: Megan Miranda
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/03/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[One-Punch Man Box Set (One-Punch Man #1-5)]]> 36475001 This BAM Exclusive box set of volumes 1-5 showcases the hilarious early days of Saitama’s quest to find an opponent he won’t vanquish with just one punch! Experience the brilliance of ONE’s comedic writing and the stunning art of Yusuke Murata as Saitama battles against future disciple Genos, self-proclaimed nemesis Sonic and a host of other crazy baddies in this super-powered box set collection!
Manga creator ONE began One-Punch Man as a webcomic, which quickly went viral, garnering over 10 million hits. In addition to One-Punch Man, ONE writes and draws the series Mob Psycho 100 and Makai no Ossan.
Yusuke Murata, a highly decorated and skilled artist best known for his work on Eyeshield 21, won the 122nd Hop Step Award (1995) for Partner and placed second in the 51st Akatsuka Award (1998) for Samui Hanashi.]]> ONE 1421599376 Lauren 0 to-read 4.73 One-Punch Man Box Set (One-Punch Man #1-5)
author: ONE
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.73
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Evil Has a Name: The Untold Story of the Golden State Killer Investigation]]> 41836110
The monster who preyed on Californians from 1976 to 1986 was known by many aliases. And while numerous police sketches tried to capture his often-masked visage, the Golden State Killer spent more than 40 years not only faceless, but nameless.

For his victims, for their families and for the investigators tasked with finding him, the senselessness and brutality of the Golden State Killer's acts were matched only by the powerlessness they felt at failing to uncover his identity. To be sure, the chances of obtaining closure—or any form of justice—after so many years were slim to none, at best.

Then, on April 24, 2018, authorities arrested 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo at his home in Citrus Heights, Calif., based on DNA evidence linked to the crimes. After a decades-long hunt, a suspect was behind bars. Could it be that evil finally had a name?

Delivering all-new details about the investigation and a stunning final act to the events of Michelle McNamara's haunting bestseller, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, this is the true story of how the suspected Golden State Killer was captured, as told, first-hand, by those closest to the case:

Paul Holes—the forensic criminologist and retired Costa County detective who spent 20 years trying to crack the Golden State Killer case, and finally did.

Jim Clemente (Host)—a retired FBI profiler and former New York City prosecutor who has investigated some of the highest profile criminal cases in U.S. history, including the Unabomber.

Please note: This work contains descriptions of violent crime and sexual assault and may not be suitable for all listeners.]]> 6 Paul Holes Lauren 0 currently-reading 4.44 2018 Evil Has a Name: The Untold Story of the Golden State Killer Investigation
author: Paul Holes
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/09/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church]]> 44658832 The activist and TED speaker Megan Phelps-Roper reveals her life growing up in the most hated family in America

At the age of five, Megan Phelps-Roper began protesting homosexuality and other alleged vices alongside fellow members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Founded by her grandfather and consisting almost entirely of her extended family, the tiny group would gain worldwide notoriety for its pickets at military funerals and celebrations of death and tragedy. As Phelps-Roper grew up, she saw that church members were close companions and accomplished debaters, applying the logic of predestination and the language of the King James Bible to everyday life with aplomb—which, as the church’s Twitter spokeswoman, she learned to do with great skill. Soon, however, dialogue on Twitter caused her to begin doubting the church’s leaders and message: If humans were sinful and fallible, how could the church itself be so confident about its beliefs? As she digitally jousted with critics, she started to wonder if sometimes they had a point—and then she began exchanging messages with a man who would help change her life.

A gripping memoir of escaping extremism and falling in love, Unfollow relates Phelps-Roper’s moral awakening, her departure from the church, and how she exchanged the absolutes she grew up with for new forms of warmth and community. Rich with suspense and thoughtful reflection, Phelps-Roper’s life story exposes the dangers of black-and-white thinking and the need for true humility in a time of angry polarization.

]]> 305 Megan Phelps-Roper 0374715815 Lauren 0 to-read 4.22 2019 Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church
author: Megan Phelps-Roper
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/06/07
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]]> The Orchid Thief 228345 The Orchid Thief is Susan Orlean’s tale of an amazing obsession. Determined to clone an endangered flower—the rare ghost orchid Polyrrhiza lindenii�a deeply eccentric and oddly attractive man named John Laroche leads Orlean on an unforgettable tour of America’s strange flower-selling subculture, through Florida’s swamps and beyond, along with the Seminoles who help him and the forces of justice who fight him. In the end, Orlean—and the reader—will have more respect for underdog determination and a powerful new definition of passion.

In this new edition, coming fifteen years after its initial publication and twenty years after she first met the “orchid thief,� Orlean revisits this unforgettable world, and the route by which it was brought to the screen in the film Adaptation, in a new retrospective essay.]]> 300 Susan Orlean 044900371X Lauren 0 to-read 3.66 1998 The Orchid Thief
author: Susan Orlean
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)]]> 49116
Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black's downfall as well. And the Azkaban guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, "He's at Hogwarts...he's at Hogwarts."

Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

(front flap)]]> 435 J.K. Rowling Lauren 5 favorites 4.57 1999 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1999
rating: 5
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date added: 2020/04/25
shelves: favorites
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]]> The Institute 43798285
In this most sinister of institutions, the director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are ruthlessly dedicated to extracting from these children the force of their extranormal gifts. There are no scruples here. If you go along, you get tokens for the vending machines. If you don’t, punishment is brutal. As each new victim disappears to Back Half, Luke becomes more and more desperate to get out and get help. But no one has ever escaped from the Institute.

As psychically terrifying as Firestarter, and with the spectacular kid power of It, The Institute is Stephen King's gut-wrenchingly dramatic story of good versus evil in a world where the good guys don't always win.
--front flap]]> 561 Stephen King Lauren 0 to-read 4.17 2019 The Institute
author: Stephen King
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/04/07
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]]> Navigate Your Stars 50825882 A revelatory, uplifting, and gorgeously illustrated meditation on dedication, hard work, and the power of perseverance from the beloved, New York Times bestselling, and two-time National Book Award–winning Jesmyn Ward.

For Tulane University’s 2018 commencement, Jesmyn Ward delivered a stirring speech about the value of hard work and the importance of respect for oneself and others. Speaking about the challenges she and her family overcame, Ward inspired everyone in the audience with her meditation on tenacity in the face of hardship. Now, in book form, Ward’s moving words will inspire readers as they prepare for the next chapter in their lives, whether, like Ward, they are the first in their families to graduate from college or are preceded by generations, or whether they are embarking on a different kind of journey later in life.

Beautifully illustrated in full color by Gina Triplett, this gorgeous and profound book will charm a generation of students—and their parents. Ward’s inimitable voice shines through as she shares her experience as a Southern black woman and addresses the themes of grit, adversity, and the importance of family bonds. Navigate Your Stars is a perfect gift for anyone in need of inspiration from the author of Salvage the Bones, Men We Reaped, and Sing, Unburied, Sing.]]> 64 Jesmyn Ward 1982131322 Lauren 0 to-read 4.17 2020 Navigate Your Stars
author: Jesmyn Ward
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/04/01
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]]> Rodham 50253429 New York Times bestselling author of American Wife and Eligible, a novel that imagines a deeply compelling what-might-have-been: What if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton?

In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise: Life magazine has covered her Wellesley commencement speech, she’s attending Yale Law School, and she’s on the forefront of student activism and the women’s rights movement. And then she meets Bill Clinton. A handsome, charismatic southerner and fellow law student, Bill is already planning his political career. In each other, the two find a profound intellectual, emotional, and physical connection that neither has previously experienced.

In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he proposed several times; although she said no more than once, as we all know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton.

But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s powerfully imagined tour-de-force of fiction, Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas. Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail—one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all of us must make in building a life.

Brilliantly weaving a riveting fictional tale into actual historical events, Curtis Sittenfeld delivers an uncannily astute and witty story for our times. In exploring the loneliness, moral ambivalence, and iron determination that characterize the quest for political power, as well as both the exhilaration and painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world still run mostly by men, Rodham is a singular and unforgettable novel.]]> 420 Curtis Sittenfeld 0399590919 Lauren 0 to-read 3.81 2020 Rodham
author: Curtis Sittenfeld
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time]]> 4806 Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest. The "longitude problem" was the thorniest dilemma of the eighteenth century. Lacking the ability to measure longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea.

At the heart of Dava Sobel's fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation and horology stands the figure of John Harrison, self-taught Yorkshire clockmaker, and his forty-year obsession with building the perfect timekeeper. Battling against the establishment, Harrison stood alone in pursuit of his solution and the £20,000 reward offered by Parliament.]]> 184 Dava Sobel 0802714625 Lauren 0 to-read 3.97 1995 Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
author: Dava Sobel
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1995
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/04/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity]]> 43452877 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Peggy Orenstein’s Girls & Sexbroke ground, shattered taboos, and launched conversations about young women’s right to pleasure and agency in sexual encounters. It also had an unexpected effect on its author: Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation. Boys are subject to the same cultural forces as girls—steeped in the same distorted media images and binary stereotypes of female sexiness and toxic masculinity—which equally affect how they navigate sexual and emotional relationships. InBoys & Sex,Peggy Orenstein dives back into the lives of young people to once again give voice to the unspoken, revealing how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy.

Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists, academics, and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects so-called locker room talk; how the word “hilarious� robs boys of empathy; pornography as the new sex education; boys� understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. By surfacing young men’s experience in all its complexity, Orenstein is able to unravel the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important realities of young male sexuality in today’s world. The result is a provocative and paradigm-shifting work that offers a much-needed vision of how boys can truly move forward as better men.]]> 304 Peggy Orenstein 0062666991 Lauren 0 to-read 4.23 2020 Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity
author: Peggy Orenstein
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/04/01
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]]> Afterland 37946417 Most of the men are dead. Three years after the pandemic known as The Manfall, governments still hold and life continues -- but a world run by women isn't always a better place.

Twelve-year-old Miles is one of the last boys alive, and his mother, Cole, will protect him at all costs. On the run after a horrific act of violence-and pursued by Cole's own ruthless sister, Billie -- all Cole wants is to raise her kid somewhere he won't be preyed on as a reproductive resource or a sex object or a stand-in son. Someplace like home.

To get there, Cole and Miles must journey across a changed America in disguise as mother and daughter. From a military base in Seattle to a luxury bunker, from an anarchist commune in Salt Lake City to a roaming cult that's all too ready to see Miles as the answer to their prayers, the two race to stay ahead at every step . . . even as Billie and her sinister crew draw closer.

A sharply feminist, high-stakes thriller from award-winning author Lauren Beukes, Afterland brilliantly blends psychological suspense, American noir, and science fiction into an adventure all its own -- and perfect for our times.]]> 411 Lauren Beukes 031626783X Lauren 0 to-read 3.21 2020 Afterland
author: Lauren Beukes
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Little Fires Everywhere 34273236
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned � from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren � an enigmatic artist and single mother � who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother–daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town � and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost . . .]]> 338 Celeste Ng 0735224293 Lauren 0 4.05 2017 Little Fires Everywhere
author: Celeste Ng
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2020/03/26
date added: 2020/03/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Snug: A Collection of Comics about Dating Your Best Friend]]> 52278999 Little Moments of Love comes Snug, a collection of comics that perfectly captures the honest, playful, and relatable snapshots of romantic life.

Catana Chetwynd’s second book has the same charming and inviting style as her first and includes 50 percent new, never-before-shared comics. Snug is a celebration of the quirks and peculiarities of every one of us—and the magic that happens when we find our matching puzzle piece.]]> 136 Catana Chetwynd 1524854638 Lauren 0 to-read 4.37 2020 Snug: A Collection of Comics about Dating Your Best Friend
author: Catana Chetwynd
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/03/10
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]]> Heavy 29430746 In this powerful and provocative memoir, genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon explores what the weight of a lifetime of secrets, lies, and deception does to a black body, a black family, and a nation teetering on the brink of moral collapse.

Kiese Laymon is a fearless writer. In his essays, personal stories combine with piercing intellect to reflect both on the state of American society and on his experiences with abuse, which conjure conflicted feelings of shame, joy, confusion and humiliation. Laymon invites us to consider the consequences of growing up in a nation wholly obsessed with progress yet wholly disinterested in the messy work of reckoning with where we’ve been.

In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to his trek to New York as a young college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, Laymon asks himself, his mother, his nation, and us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free.

A personal narrative that illuminates national failures, Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family that begins with a confusing childhood—and continues through twenty-five years of haunting implosions and long reverberations.]]> 241 Kiese Laymon 1501125656 Lauren 4 4.48 2018 Heavy
author: Kiese Laymon
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/04
date added: 2020/03/04
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]]> <![CDATA[Ramona's World (Ramona Quimby, #8)]]> 91245
Or is it? When Ramona's spelling is atrocious, her teacher, Mrs. Meacham, is firm about her needing to improve. Then a scary incident at a friend's house leaves Ramona feeling at fault. Who knew growing up could be filled with such complicated situations?

Newbery Medal winning author Beverly Cleary's final book in the Ramona series has all of the warmth, realism, and humor of its predecessors.

Supports the Common Core State Standards]]> 208 Beverly Cleary 0380732726 Lauren 5 4.15 1999 Ramona's World (Ramona Quimby, #8)
author: Beverly Cleary
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2020/02/27
date added: 2020/02/27
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]]> Such a Fun Age 43923951 Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

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

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

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.]]> 310 Kiley Reid 052554190X Lauren 0 to-read 3.76 2019 Such a Fun Age
author: Kiley Reid
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Smart but Scattered: The Revolutionary "Executive Skills" Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential]]> 6053700
See also the authors' Smart but Scattered Teens and their self-help guide for adults. Plus, an academic planner for middle and high school students and related titles for professionals.]]> 314 Peg Dawson 1593859872 Lauren 0 to-read 3.96 Smart but Scattered: The Revolutionary "Executive Skills" Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential
author: Peg Dawson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/02/13
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]]> Terminus (Threshold, #4) 49122653
Chase has spent the past year just trying to get away. Trying to escape the memories that won’t stop following him, the moment when his life collapsed. He’s traveled around the world trying to stay ahead of it all, but those final moments may be catching up with him at last.

Anne is tired of living in the past. She’s finally looking to the future and embracing her destiny. She’s going to lead the Family forward on their greatest, final crusade to destroy the hated Machine of their long-time adversary.

Their paths will intersect in the middle of nowhere, on an uncharted island where the walls of reality are thin... and an apocalyptic threat is tearing its way through.

Listening Length: 11 hours and 21 minutes.]]> Peter Clines Lauren 0 currently-reading 3.82 2020 Terminus (Threshold, #4)
author: Peter Clines
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America]]> 46349 Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas's wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple melting pot.]]> 240 Firoozeh Dumas 0812968379 Lauren 0 to-read 3.84 2003 Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America
author: Firoozeh Dumas
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America]]> 290242 311 Keith Boykin 0786717041 Lauren 0 to-read 3.83 2004 Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America
author: Keith Boykin
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hand on the Wall (Truly Devious, #3)]]> 45240918
She knows who Truly Devious is. She’s solved it. The greatest case of the century.

At least, she thinks she has. With this latest tragedy, it’s hard to concentrate on the past. Not only has someone died in town, but David disappeared of his own free will and is up to something. Stevie is sure that somehow—somehow—all these things connect. The three deaths in the present. The deaths in the past. The missing Alice Ellingham and the missing David Eastman. Somewhere in this place of riddles and puzzles there must be answers.

Then another accident occurs as a massive storm heads toward Vermont. This is too much for the parents and administrators. Ellingham Academy is evacuated. Obviously, it’s time for Stevie to do something stupid. It’s time to stay on the mountain and face the storm—and a murderer.

In the tantalizing finale to the Truly Devious trilogy, New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson expertly tangles her dual narrative threads and ignites an explosive end for all who’ve walked through Ellingham Academy.

New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson delivers the witty and pulse-pounding conclusion to the Truly Devious series as Stevie Bell solves the mystery that has haunted Ellingham Academy for over 75 years.]]> 369 Maureen Johnson 0062338110 Lauren 0 to-read 4.12 2020 The Hand on the Wall (Truly Devious, #3)
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2020/01/08
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]]> The Witches 6327 Note: This edition shares ISBN 0590032496 with another edition.

This is not a fairy-tale. This is about real witches. Real witches don't ride around on broomsticks. They don't even wear black cloaks and hats. They are vile, cunning, detestable creatures who disguise themselves as nice, ordinary ladies. So how can you tell when you're face to face with one? Well, if you don't know yet you'd better find out quickly-because there's nothing a witch loathes quite as much as children and she'll wield all kinds of terrifying powers to get rid of them.]]> 208 Roald Dahl 0590032496 Lauren 5 4.18 1981 The Witches
author: Roald Dahl
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1981
rating: 5
read at: 2019/12/31
date added: 2019/12/31
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]]> Toil & Trouble 43263491 From the number one New York Times bestselling author comes another stunning memoir that is tender, touching...and just a little spooky.

"Here’s a partial list of things I don’t believe in: God. The Devil. Heaven. Hell. Bigfoot. Ancient Aliens. Past lives. Life after death. Vampires. Zombies. Reiki. Homeopathy. Rolfing. Reflexology. Note that 'witches' and 'witchcraft' are absent from this list. The thing is, I wouldn’t believe in them, and I would privately ridicule any idiot who did, except for one thing: I am a witch."

For as long as Augusten Burroughs could remember, he knew things he shouldn't have known. He manifested things that shouldn't have come to pass. And he told exactly no one about this, save one person: his mother. His mother reassured him that it was all perfectly normal, that he was descended from a long line of witches, going back to the days of the early American colonies. And that this family tree was filled with witches. It was a bond that he and his mother shared--until the day she left him in the care of her psychiatrist to be raised in his family (but that's a whole other story). After that, Augusten was on his own. On his own to navigate the world of this tricky power; on his own to either use or misuse this gift.

From the hilarious to the terrifying, Toil & Trouble is a chronicle of one man's journey to understand himself, to reconcile the powers he can wield with things with which he is helpless. There are very few things that are coincidences, as you will learn in Toil & Trouble. Ghosts are real, trees can want to kill you, beavers are the spawn of Satan, houses are alive, and in the end, love is the most powerful magic of all.]]> 320 Augusten Burroughs 1250019958 Lauren 0 to-read 3.91 2019 Toil & Trouble
author: Augusten Burroughs
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/12/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town]]> 6215979
Crystal methamphetamine is widely considered to be the most dangerous drug in the world, and nowhere is that more true than in the small towns of the American heartland. Methland tells the story of Oelwein, Iowa (pop. 6,159), which, like thousands of other small towns across the country, has been left in the dust by the consolidation of the agricultural industry, a depressed local economy, and an out-migration of people. As if this weren t enough to deal with, an incredibly cheap, longlasting, and highly addictive drug has rolled into town.

Over a period of four years, journalist Nick Reding brings us into the heart of Oelwein through a cast of intimately drawn characters, including: Clay Hallburg, the town doctor, who fights meth even as he struggles with his own alcoholism; Nathan Lein, the town prosecutor, whose caseload is filled almost exclusively with meth-related crime; and Jeff Rohrick, a meth addict, still trying to kick the habit after twenty years. Tracing the connections between the lives touched by the drug and the global forces that set the stage for the epidemic, Methland offers a vital and unique perspective on a pressing contemporary tragedy.]]> 272 Nick Reding 1596916508 Lauren 4 3.68 2009 Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town
author: Nick Reding
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/21
date added: 2019/12/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Unfit: The Tale of One Pregnant Teen in the Bible Belt Before Women Had Choice]]> 48853486 It was the Age of Aquarius and a time of sexual freedom, but in Oklahoma sex, drugs and rock & roll were still the devil’s handiwork. In the repressed fundamentalist culture of her small hometown, 16-year-old Lani Jo struggled with the “sin� of her sexuality. When she learned that she was pregnant, she was given one option—banishment to a maternity home in New Orleans. While most girls were sent away for the third trimester, Lani Jo spent six months at Sellers Baptist Home for Unwed Mothers. Unfit tells the story of her time there—a time of despair, rage, betrayal, and abandonment. With twenty-four high school and college age girls residing at the Home at any one time, it is also the story of friendship and genuine caring written with humor and pathos.

Lani Jo always imagined a different ending to her story—a way she could keep her baby—but Hollywood endings are hard to come by. A week after giving birth, she relinquished her son, Bo, for adoption and returned home alone. With no emotional support, she was told to act as if “nothing had ever happened.� But that was an impossible ask. The agonizing pain she felt from losing her son and the longing to find and know him never left her heart, mind or spirit. It sapped much of the color out of everything that followed.

In the decades between World War II and Roe v. Wade, an astounding 1.5 million girls and young women were sent to maternity homes and coerced into relinquishing their babies. Now that women’s reproductive rights are once again fueling a divisive national debate, Unfit provides a poignant, heartbreaking and personal look into our nation’s grim history when abortion was illegal, sex education was almost non-existent, and birth control was tightly restricted.

]]> 310 Lani Jo Leigh 1734265914 Lauren 0 to-read 5.00 Unfit: The Tale of One Pregnant Teen in the Bible Belt Before Women Had Choice
author: Lani Jo Leigh
name: Lauren
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> Ghosted 36464087
Sarah's friends tell her to forget about him, but she can't. She knows something's happened--there must be an explanation.

Minutes, days, weeks go by as Sarah becomes increasingly worried. But then she discovers she's right. There is a reason for Eddie's disappearance, and it's the one thing they didn't share with each other: the truth.]]> 337 Rosie Walsh 0525522778 Lauren 2 3.64 2018 Ghosted
author: Rosie Walsh
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2018
rating: 2
read at: 2019/11/22
date added: 2019/11/22
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]]> The Phantom Tollbooth 378 Librarian's Note: For an alternate cover edition of the same ISBN, click here.

This beloved story -first published more than fifty years ago- introduces readers to Milo and his adventures in the Lands Beyond.

For Milo, everything’s a bore. When a tollbooth mysteriously appears in his room, he drives through only because he’s got nothing better to do. But on the other side, things seem different. Milo visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and even embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason! Somewhere along the way, Milo realizes something astonishing. Life is far from dull. In fact, it’s exciting beyond his wildest dreams. . . .]]> 248 Norton Juster 0394820371 Lauren 5 favorites 4.19 1961 The Phantom Tollbooth
author: Norton Juster
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at: 2019/11/22
date added: 2019/11/22
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]]> The Turn of the Key 42080142
What she doesn’t know is that she’s stepping into a nightmare—one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the unravelling events that led to her incarceration. It wasn’t just the constant surveillance from the cameras installed around the house, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn’t just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn’t even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman, Jack Grant.

It was everything.

She knows she’s made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn’t always ideal. She’s not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she’s not guilty—at least not of murder. Which means someone else is.

Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware’s signature suspenseful style, The Turn of the Key is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time.]]> 337 Ruth Ware 1501188771 Lauren 0 to-read 3.91 2019 The Turn of the Key
author: Ruth Ware
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/11/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[I Funny: A Middle School Story (I Funny, #1)]]> 14781201
Following the bestselling success of the hilarious Middle School, The Worst Years of My Life, James Patterson continues to dish out the funnies in another highly-illustrated, heartfelt middle school story. (Includes more than 175 black-and-white illustrations.)

]]> 320 James Patterson 0316206938 Lauren 3 4.13 2012 I Funny: A Middle School Story (I Funny, #1)
author: James Patterson
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/28
date added: 2019/10/28
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]]> American Reader May/June 2013 48586960
+ Four portfolios of new poetry: Jacqueline Waters, Matthew Rohrer, Liam Hysjulien, and Jameson Fitzpatrick.

+ Short stories by Otto Jaffe, Joyce Carol Oates, Ramon Isao, as well as Carmen Maria Machado’s incantatory novella, Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU.

+ The final chapter of Aisthesis, Jacques Rancière’s magnum opus on aesthetics and politics, with an introduction by Jonathon Kyle Sturgeon.

+ New literature from South Korea: poetry by Hwang Byeong-seung and Moon Tae-jun, and fiction by Park Min-gyu and Kim Aeran, with an introduction by Jenny Wang Medina.

+ Book Reviews: on Francesco Pacifico’s The Story of My Purity, Anne Carson’s Red Doc>, A. G. Porta’s The No World Concerto, Ray Amorisi’s Lazarus, Charles Bernstein’s Recalculating, and Nicolas Hundley’s The Revolver in the Hive.]]> Uzoamaka Maduka Lauren 0 to-read 4.09 2013 American Reader May/June 2013
author: Uzoamaka Maduka
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Female Persuasion 35480518 New York Times-bestselling author of The Interestings, comes an electric novel not just about who we want to be with, but who we want to be.

To be admired by someone we admire—we all yearn for this: the private, electrifying pleasure of being singled out by someone of esteem. But sometimes it can also mean entry to a new kind of life, a bigger world.

Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets the woman she hopes will change her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant at sixty-three, has been a central pillar of the women’s movement for decades, a figure who inspires others to influence the world. Upon hearing Faith speak for the first time, Greer—madly in love with her boyfriend, Cory, but still full of longing for an ambition that she can’t quite place—feels her inner world light up. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites Greer to make something out of that sense of purpose, leading Greer down the most exciting path of her life as it winds toward and away from her meant-to-be love story with Cory and the future she’d always imagined.

Charming and wise, knowing and witty, Meg Wolitzer delivers a novel about power and influence, ego and loyalty, womanhood and ambition. At its heart, The Female Persuasion is about the flame we all believe is flickering inside of us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time. It’s a story about the people who guide and the people who follow (and how those roles evolve over time), and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light.]]> 454 Meg Wolitzer 1594488401 Lauren 0 to-read 3.55 2018 The Female Persuasion
author: Meg Wolitzer
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Creeping Shadow (Lockwood & Co., #4)]]> 23922381 The Hollow Boy, Lucy is a freelance operative, hiring herself out to agencies that value her ever-improving skills. One day she is pleasantly surprised by a visit from Lockwood, who tells her he needs a good Listener for a tough assignment. Penelope Fittes, the leader of the giant Fittes Agency wants them--and only them--to locate and remove the Source for the legendary Brixton Cannibal. They succeed in their very dangerous task, but tensions remain high between Lucy and the other agents. Even the skull in the jar talks to her like a jilted lover. What will it take to reunite the team? Black marketeers, an informant ghost, a Spirit Cape that transports the wearer, and mysteries involving Steve Rotwell and Penelope Fittes just may do the trick. But, in a shocking cliffhanger ending, the team learns that someone has been manipulating them all along. . . .]]> 445 Jonathan Stroud 1484709675 Lauren 4 4.51 2016 The Creeping Shadow (Lockwood & Co., #4)
author: Jonathan Stroud
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/25
date added: 2019/10/25
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]]> <![CDATA[The Twits, the Minpins & the Magic Finger]]> 17465486 THE TWITS

How do you outwit a Twit?

Mr. and Mrs. Twit are the smelliest, nastiest, ugliest people in the world. They hate everything—except playing mean jokes on each other, catching innocent birds to put in their Bird Pies, and making their caged monkeys, the Muggle-Wumps, stand on their heads all day. But the Muggle-Wumps have had enough. They don't just want out, they want revenge.


THE MINPINS

Little Billy strays into the forest, where he meets the Minpins?tiny people who live within the trees. The Minpins tell Billy about The Gruncher, who preys on them. So Billy embarks on a mission to rid the Minpins of their foe once and for all, and sets off?on the back of a swan?to confront The Gruncher.


THE MAGIC FINGER

What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted?

To the Gregg family, hunting is just plain fun. To the girl who lives next door, it's just plain horrible. She tries to be polite. She tries to talk them out of it, but the Greggs only laugh at her. Then one day the Greggs go too far, and the little girl turns her Magic Finger on them. When she's very, very angry, the little girl's Magic Finger takes over. She really can’t control it, and now it's turned the Greggs into birds! Before they know it, the Greggs are living in a nest, and that's just the beginning of their problems�.]]> 0 Roald Dahl 1611761875 Lauren 4 3.86 2013 The Twits, the Minpins & the Magic Finger
author: Roald Dahl
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/21
date added: 2019/10/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hollow Boy (Lockwood & Co., #3)]]> 24397043
Meanwhile, there are reports of many new hauntings, including a house where bloody footprints are appearing, and a department store full of strange sounds and shadowy figures. But ghosts seem to be the least of Lockwood & Co.'s concerns when assassins attack during a carnival in the center of the city. Can the team get past their personal issues to save the day on all fronts, or will bad feelings attract yet more trouble?

Danger abounds, tensions escalate, and new loyalties form in this third delightfully terrifying adventure in the critically acclaimed Lockwood & Co. series.]]> 374 Jonathan Stroud 1484709683 Lauren 4 4.36 2015 The Hollow Boy (Lockwood & Co., #3)
author: Jonathan Stroud
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/16
date added: 2019/10/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know]]> 43848929 Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true?

While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you'll hear the voices of people he interviewed--scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road in Texas. As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There's even a theme song - Janelle Monae's "Hell You Talmbout."

Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don't know. And because we don't know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world.]]> 388 Malcolm Gladwell 0316478520 Lauren 0 to-read 4.00 2019 Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/15
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]]> In the Tall Grass 16079936 Now a major motion picture streaming on Netflix!

Mile 81 meets “N.� in this novella collaboration between Stephen King and Joe Hill.

As USA TODAY said of Stephen King’s Mile 81: “Park and scream. Could there be any better place to set a horror story than an abandoned rest stop?� In the Tall Grass begins with a sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they’ve lost one another. The boy’s cries are more and more desperate. What follows is a terrifying, entertaining, and masterfully told tale, as only Stephen King and Joe Hill can deliver.]]> 62 Stephen King 1476710821 Lauren 0 to-read 3.68 2012 In the Tall Grass
author: Stephen King
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/10/15
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]]> The Silent Companions 35458733 When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting . . .

When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But with her husband dead just weeks after their marriage, her new servants resentful, and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her husband's awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure —a silent companion �-that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself. The residents of The Bridge are terrified of the figure, but Elsie tries to shrug this off as simple superstition--that is, until she notices the figure's eyes following her.

A Victorian ghost story that evokes a most unsettling kind of fear, this is a tale that creeps its way through the consciousness in ways you least expect--much like the silent companions themselves.]]> 305 Laura Purcell 014313163X Lauren 0 to-read 3.86 2017 The Silent Companions
author: Laura Purcell
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Witches Are Coming 38362811 In this wickedly funny cultural critique, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir and Hulu series Shrill exposes misogyny in the #MeToo era.

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

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

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

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

We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact—checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.]]> 260 Lindy West 0316449881 Lauren 0 to-read 4.10 2019 The Witches Are Coming
author: Lindy West
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity]]> 33413909
The news of Burke Harris’s research is just how deeply our bodies can be imprinted by ACEs—adverse childhood experiences like abuse, neglect,parental addiction, mental illness, and divorce. Childhoodadversitychanges ourbiologicalsystems, and lasts a lifetime. For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the scientific insight and innovative, acclaimed health interventions inThe Deepest Wellrepresent hope for preventinglifelong illness for those we love and for generations to come�.]]> 251 Nadine Burke Harris 0544828704 Lauren 0 to-read 4.42 2018 The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity
author: Nadine Burke Harris
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[All Summer Long (Eagle Rock, #1)]]> 35791910 New York Times–bestselling Hope Larson.
Thirteen-year-old Bina has a long summer ahead of her. She and her best friend, Austin, usually do everything together, but he's off to soccer camp for a month, and he's been acting kind of weird lately anyway. So it's up to Bina to see how much fun she can have on her own. At first it's a lot of guitar playing, boredom, and bad TV, but things look up when she finds an unlikely companion in Austin's older sister, who enjoys music just as much as Bina. But then Austin comes home from camp, and he's acting even weirder than when he left. How Bina and Austin rise above their growing pains and reestablish their friendship and respect for their differences makes for a touching and funny coming-of-age story.]]> 176 Hope Larson 0374304858 Lauren 0 to-read 3.86 2018 All Summer Long (Eagle Rock, #1)
author: Hope Larson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/10/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Devil in the White City 21996
Erik Larson's gifts as a storyteller are magnificently displayed in this rich narrative of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both.

Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America's rush toward the twentieth century. The architect was Daniel Hudson Burnham, the fair's brilliant director of works and the builder of many of the country's most important structures, including the Flatiron Building in New York and Union Station in Washington, D.C. The murderer was Henry H. Holmes, a young doctor who, in a malign parody of the White City, built his "World's Fair Hotel" just west of the fairgrounds—a torture palace complete with dissection table, gas chamber, and 3,000-degree crematorium. Burnham overcame tremendous obstacles and tragedies as he organized the talents of Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles McKim, Louis Sullivan, and others to transform swampy Jackson Park into the White City, while Holmes used the attraction of the great fair and his own satanic charms to lure scores of young women to their deaths. What makes the story all the more chilling is that Holmes really lived, walking the grounds of that dream city by the lake.

The Devil in the White City draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before.]]> 496 Erik Larson 0739303406 Lauren 5 favorites 3.99 2003 The Devil in the White City
author: Erik Larson
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2017/05/31
date added: 2019/10/15
shelves: favorites
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]]> George's Marvelous Medicine 265750 89 Roald Dahl 0141301112 Lauren 4 favorites 3.78 1981 George's Marvelous Medicine
author: Roald Dahl
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1981
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/15
date added: 2019/10/15
shelves: favorites
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]]> Landline 18081809
Maybe that was always beside the point.

Two days before they’re supposed to visit Neal’s family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can’t go. She’s a TV writer, and something’s come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles. She knows that Neal will be upset with her � Neal is always a little upset with Georgie � but she doesn't expect him to pack up the kids and go home without her.

When her husband and the kids leave for the airport, Georgie wonders if she’s finally done it. If she’s ruined everything.

That night, Georgie discovers a way to communicate with Neal in the past. It’s not time travel, not exactly, but she feels like she’s been given an opportunity to fix her marriage before it starts...

Is that what she’s supposed to do?

Or would Georgie and Neal be better off if their marriage never happened?]]> 320 Rainbow Rowell 1250049377 Lauren 4 3.54 2014 Landline
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/14
date added: 2019/10/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3)]]> 7864437 It’s the end of the line.

WICKED has taken everything from Thomas: his life, his memories, and now his only friends—the Gladers. But it’s finally over. The trials are complete, after one final test.

Will anyone survive?

What WICKED doesn’t know is that Thomas remembers far more than they think. And it’s enough to prove that he can’t believe a word of what they say.

The truth will be terrifying.

Thomas beat the Maze. He survived the Scorch. He’ll risk anything to save his friends. But the truth might be what ends it all.

The time for lies is over.]]> 325 James Dashner 0385738773 Lauren 4 3.78 2011 The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3)
author: James Dashner
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/09
date added: 2019/10/09
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]]> Beverly, Right Here 43584741 This was what Beverly wanted � what she always wanted. To get away. To get away as fast as she could. To stay away.

Beverly Tapinski has run away from home plenty of times, but that was when she was just a kid. By now, she figures, it’s not running away. It’s leaving. Determined to make it on her own, Beverly finds a job and a place to live and tries to forget about her dog, Buddy, now buried underneath the orange trees back home; her friend Raymie, whom she left without a word; and her mom, Rhonda, who has never cared about anyone but herself. Beverly doesn’t want to depend on anyone, and she definitely doesn’t want anyone to depend on her. But despite her best efforts, she can’t help forming connections with the people around her � and gradually, she learns to see herself through their eyes.]]> 241 Kate DiCamillo 0763694649 Lauren 3 4.12 2019 Beverly, Right Here
author: Kate DiCamillo
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/09
date added: 2019/10/09
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]]> <![CDATA[The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2)]]> 7631105 Solving the Maze was supposed to be the end.

Thomas was sure that escape from the Maze would mean freedom for him and the Gladers. But WICKED isn’t done yet. Phase Two has just begun. The Scorch.

There are no rules. There is no help. You either make it or you die.

The Gladers have two weeks to cross through the Scorch—the most burned-out section of the world. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them.

Friendships will be tested. Loyalties will be broken. All bets are off.

There are others now. Their survival depends on the Gladers� destruction—and they’re determined to survive.]]> 362 James Dashner 0385738757 Lauren 4 3.90 2010 The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2)
author: James Dashner
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/08
date added: 2019/10/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1)]]> 6186357 There are alternate cover editions for this ASIN here and here.

If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human.

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.

Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.

Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive.

Everything is going to change.

Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.

Remember. Survive. Run.]]> 384 James Dashner 0385737947 Lauren 4 4.05 2009 The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1)
author: James Dashner
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/04
date added: 2019/10/04
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]]> Matilda 39988 “The Trunchbull� is no match for Matilda!

Matilda is a little girl who is far too good to be true. At age five-and-a-half she's knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she's a super-nerd and the teacher's pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda's world...

For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. Then there's the large, busty nightmare of a school principal, Miss ("The") Trunchbull, a former hammer-throwing champion who flings children at will, and is approximately as sympathetic as a bulldozer. Fortunately for Matilda, she has the inner resources to deal with such annoyances: astonishing intelligence, saintly patience, and an innate predilection for revenge.

Roald Dahl was a spy, ace fighter-pilot, chocolate historian, and medical inventor. He was also the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The BFG, and many more brilliant stories. He remains the World's No. 1 Storyteller.]]> 240 Roald Dahl 043512398X Lauren 5 4.33 1988 Matilda
author: Roald Dahl
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2019/10/03
date added: 2019/10/03
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America]]> 35805861 Unbelievable: The Story of Two Detectives' Relentless Search for the Truth in 2019.

Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists tell the riveting true crime story of a teenager charged with lying about having been raped--and the detectives who followed a winding path to arrive at the truth.

On August 11, 2008, eighteen-year-old Marie reported that a masked man broke into her apartment near Seattle, Washington, and raped her. Within days police, and even those closest to Marie, became suspicious of her story. The police swiftly pivoted and began investigating Marie. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie--a bid for attention. Police charged Marie with false reporting, and she was branded a liar.

More than two years later, Colorado detective Stacy Galbraith was assigned to investigate a case of sexual assault. Describing the crime to her husband that night, Galbraith learned that the case bore an eerie resemblance to a rape that had taken place months earlier in a nearby town. She joined forces with the detective on that case, Edna Hendershot, and the two soon discovered they were dealing with a serial rapist: a man who photographed his victims, threatening to release the images online, and whose calculated steps to erase all physical evidence suggested he might be a soldier or a cop. Through meticulous police work the detectives would eventually connect the rapist to other attacks in Colorado--and beyond.

Based on investigative files and extensive interviews with the principals, A False Report/i>is a serpentine tale of doubt, lies, and a hunt for justice, unveiling the disturbing truth of how sexual assault is investigated today - and the long history of skepticism toward rape victims.]]> 263 T. Christian Miller 1524759937 Lauren 0 4.26 2018 A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America
author: T. Christian Miller
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2019/09/26
date added: 2019/09/26
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron]]> 113576 All the President's Men gave readers the full story, with all the drama and nuance and exclusive reporting. And thirty years later, if you're going to read only one book on Watergate, that's still the one. Today, Enron is the biggest business story of our time, and Fortune senior writers Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind are the new Woodward and Bernstein.

Remarkably, it was just two years ago that Enron was thought to epitomize a great New Economy company, with its skyrocketing profits and share price. But that was before Fortune published an article by McLean that asked a seemingly innocent question: How exactly does Enron make money? From that point on, Enron's house of cards began to crumble. Now, McLean and Elkind have investigated much deeper, to offer the definitive book about the Enron scandal and the fascinating people behind it.

Meticulously researched and character driven, Smartest Guys in the Room takes the reader deep into Enron's past—and behind the closed doors of private meetings. Drawing on a wide range of unique sources, the book follows Enron's rise from obscurity to the top of the business world to its disastrous demise. It reveals as never before major characters such as Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling, and Andy Fastow, as well as lesser known players like Cliff Baxter and Rebecca Mark. Smartest Guys in the Room is a story of greed, arrogance, and deceit—a microcosm of all that is wrong with American business today. Above all, it's a fascinating human drama that will prove to be the authoritative account of the Enron scandal.]]> 440 Bethany McLean 1591840538 Lauren 4 4.20 2003 The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
author: Bethany McLean
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/26
date added: 2019/09/26
shelves:
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Obviously a long book detailing Enron is a bit dry at times. That said, if you want to know when reality started unraveling, this is a good starting place. Listen to rich men lie and get caught.
]]> <![CDATA[The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth]]> 6922896 288 Brian Ross 140131029X Lauren 3 3.57 2009 The Madoff Chronicles: Inside the Secret World of Bernie and Ruth
author: Brian Ross
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2019/09/26
date added: 2019/09/26
shelves:
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]]> The Asylum 15814529 The Ghost Writer and The Seance.

Confused and disoriented, Georgina Ferrars awakens in a small room in Tregannon House, a private asylum in a remote corner of England. She has no memory of the past few weeks. The doctor, Maynard Straker, tells her that she admitted herself under the name Lucy Ashton the day before, then suffered a seizure. When she insists he has mistaken her for someone else, Dr. Straker sends a telegram to her uncle, who replies that Georgina Ferrars is at home with him in “Your patient must be an imposter.�

Suddenly her voluntary confinement becomes involuntary. Who is the woman in her uncle’s house? And what has become of her two most precious possessions, a dragonfly pin left to her by her mother and a writing case containing her journal, the only record of those missing weeks? Georgina’s perilous quest to free herself takes us from a cliffside cottage on the Isle of Wight to the secret passages of Tregannon House and into a web of hidden family ties on which her survival depends.

Another delicious read from the author praised by Ruth Rendell as having “a gift for creating suspense, apparently effortlessly, as if it belongs in the nature of fiction.”]]> 257 John Harwood 0544003470 Lauren 0 to-read 3.36 2013 The Asylum
author: John Harwood
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/09/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Sleep Room 17654679
As Richardson settles into his new life, he begins to sense something uncanny about the sleeping patients—six women, forsaken by society. Why is Maitland unwilling to discuss their past lives? Why is the trainee nurse so on edge when she spends nights alone with them? And what can it mean when all the sleepers start dreaming at the same time? In this atmospheric reinvention of the ghost story, Richardson finds himself questioning everything he knows about the human mind, as he attempts to uncover the shocking secrets of The Sleep Room . . .]]> 384 F.R. Tallis 1605984760 Lauren 0 to-read 3.21 2013 The Sleep Room
author: F.R. Tallis
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/09/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Devil in Gray 17659 355 Graham Masterton 0843953616 Lauren 0 to-read 3.77 2004 The Devil in Gray
author: Graham Masterton
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/09/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> Great Tales of Horror 20130720 608 H.P. Lovecraft 1435140370 Lauren 0 to-read 3.97 1991 Great Tales of Horror
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/09/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine]]> 26889576 The #1 New York Times bestseller: "It is the work of our greatest financial journalist, at the top of his game. And it's essential reading."—Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair

The real story of the crash began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking.




Michael Lewis creates a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his #1 bestseller Liar's Poker. Out of a handful of unlikely-really unlikely-heroes, Lewis fashions a story as compelling and unusual as any of his earlier bestsellers, proving yet again that he is the finest and funniest chronicler of our time.]]> 291 Michael Lewis 039335315X Lauren 5 4.34 2010 The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
author: Michael Lewis
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2019/09/18
date added: 2019/09/18
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Essential reading! This is the only way to make sense of the insanity of the stock market crash in 08.
]]> <![CDATA[The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family]]> 776763
Written by two research psychologists specializing in adoption and attachment, "The Connected Child" will help you: Build bonds of affection and trust with your adopted child Effectively deal with any learning or behavioral disorders Discipline your child with love without making him or her feel threatened]]> 264 Karyn Purvis 0071475001 Lauren 0 to-read 4.45 2007 The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family
author: Karyn Purvis
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/09/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing In Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third Party Reproduction]]> 45011620 472 Sharon Roszia 1785928236 Lauren 0 to-read 4.60 Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing In Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third Party Reproduction
author: Sharon Roszia
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.60
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/09/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens]]> 25187985 Critically acclaimed, award-winning British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard details his childhood, his first performances on the streets of London, his ascent to worldwide success on stage and screen, and his comedy shows which have won over audiences around the world.

Over the course of a thirty-year career, Eddie Izzard has proved himself to be a creative chameleon, inhabiting the stage and film and television screen with an unbelievable fervor. Born in Yemen and raised in Northern Ireland, Wales, and England, he lost his mother at the age of six and that has affected the rest of his life. In his teens, he dropped out of university and took to the streets of London as part of a comedy double act. When his partner went on vacation, Izzard kept busy by inventing a one-man escape act, and thus a solo career was ignited. As a stand-up comedian, Izzard has captivated audiences with his surreal, stream-of-consciousness comedy—lines such as “Cake or Death?� “Death Star Canteen,� and “Do You Have a Flag?� have the status of great rock lyrics. As a self-proclaimed “action transvestite,� Izzard broke a mold performing in makeup and heels, and has become as famous for his “total clothing� rights as he has for his art. In Believe Me, he recounts the dizzying rise he made from the streets of London to West End theaters, to Wembley Arena, Madison Square Garden, and the Hollywood Bowl.

Izzard is arguably one of today’s top comedians. At the time of publication, he is still performing his Force Majeure show—so far in more than forty countries worldwide and in four languages: English, French, German and Spanish. With his brand of keenly intelligent humor that ranges from world history to historical politics, sexual politics, mad ancient kings, and chickens with guns, he has built an extraordinary fan base that transcends age, gender, and race. Writing with the same candor and insight evident in his comedy, he reflects on a childhood marked by the loss of his mother, boarding school, and alternative sexuality, as well as a life in comedy, film, politics, running, and philanthropy. Honest and generous, Izzard’s Believe Me is an inspired account of a very singular life thus far.]]> 368 Eddie Izzard 0698405668 Lauren 0 to-read 3.85 2017 Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens
author: Eddie Izzard
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/09/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up]]> 42627518 “If Sapiens was a testament to human sophistication, this history of failure cheerfully reminds us that humans are mostly idiots.� —Greg Jenner, author of A Million Years in a DayNow an International BestsellerA Toronto Star–Bestselling Book of the YearModern humans have come a long way in the seventy thousand years they’ve walked the earth. Art, science, culture, trade—on the evolutionary food chain, we’re true winners. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and sometimes—just occasionally—we’ve managed to truly f*ck things up.Weaving together history, science, politics and pop culture, Humans offers a panoramic exploration of humankind in all its glory, or lack thereof. From Lucy, our first ancestor, who fell out of a tree and died, to General Zhou Shou of China, who stored gunpowder in his palace before a lantern festival, to the Austrian army attacking itself one drunken night, to the most spectacular fails of the present day, Humans reveals how even the most mundane mistakes can shift the course of civilization as we know it. Lively, wry and brimming with brilliant insight, this unique compendium offers a fresh take on world history and is one of the most entertaining reads of the year.“It’s hard to imagine someone other than Phillips pulling off a 250+ page roast of mankind, but his perfect blend of brilliance and goofiness makes it a joy to read.� —Buzzfeed“With the delicate touch of a scholar and the laugh-out-loud chops of a comedian, Tom Phillips shows us how our species has been messing things up... [for] four million years.� —Steve Brusatte, New York Times–bestselling author]]> 270 Tom Phillips 1488051135 Lauren 0 to-read 4.23 2018 Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up
author: Tom Phillips
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/09/09
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]]> Ellen Foster 277397 126 Kaye Gibbons 0375703055 Lauren 0 to-read 3.78 1987 Ellen Foster
author: Kaye Gibbons
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/09/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> Pop Art 8248411
Imogene is young and beautiful. She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945. . . .

Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town. . . .

Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing. . . .

John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .

]]> 38 Joe Hill 0061845043 Lauren 4 4.19 2007 Pop Art
author: Joe Hill
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/05
date added: 2019/09/05
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]]> In the Rundown 7507350 336 Joe Hill 0061843989 Lauren 3 3.41 2007 In the Rundown
author: Joe Hill
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2019/09/04
date added: 2019/09/04
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]]> Best New Horror 7241269
Eddie Carroll is sick to death of editing the collection America's Best New Horror, sick of reading through second-rate stories in order to find the few "best new." But one afternoon he stumbles across a new story so remarkable that he soon embarks on a quixotic quest to find its author - a quest he may not live to regret.]]> 336 Joe Hill 006184327X Lauren 4 3.89 2007 Best New Horror
author: Joe Hill
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/04
date added: 2019/09/04
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]]> The Chalk Man 35356382
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he's put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.

That's when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.]]> 280 C.J. Tudor 1524760986 Lauren 3 3.68 2018 The Chalk Man
author: C.J. Tudor
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2019/09/03
date added: 2019/09/03
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]]> The Nanny 40863437 The New York Times bestselling author of What She Knew conjures a dark and unpredictable tale of family secrets that explores the lengths people will go to hurt one another.

When her beloved nanny, Hannah, left without a trace in the summer of 1988, seven-year-old Jocelyn Holt was devastated. Haunted by the loss, Jo grew up bitter and distant, and eventually left her parents and Lake Hall, their faded aristocratic home, behind.

Thirty years later, Jo returns to the house and is forced to confront her troubled relationship with her mother. But when human remains are accidentally uncovered in a lake on the estate, Jo begins to question everything she thought she knew.

Then an unexpected visitor knocks on the door and Jo’s world is destroyed again. Desperate to piece together the gaping holes in her memory, Jo must uncover who her nanny really was, why she left, and if she can trust her own mother�

In this compulsively readable tale of secrets, lies, and deception, Gilly Macmillan explores the darkest impulses and desires of the human heart. Diabolically clever, The Nanny reminds us that sometimes the truth hurts so much you’d rather hear the lie.]]> 464 Gilly Macmillan 0062875574 Lauren 0 to-read 3.64 2019 The Nanny
author: Gilly Macmillan
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/09/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> Pumpkinheads 40864790 In Pumpkinheads author Rainbow Rowell and artist Faith Erin Hicks have teamed up to create this tender and hilarious story about two irresistible teens discovering what it means to leave behind a place―and a person―with no regrets.

Deja and Josiah are seasonal best friends.

Every autumn, all through high school, they’ve worked together at the best pumpkin patch in the whole wide world. (Not many people know that the best pumpkin patch in the whole wide world is in Omaha, Nebraska, but it definitely is.) They say good-bye every Halloween, and they’re reunited every September 1.

But this Halloween is different—Josiah and Deja are finally seniors, and this is their last season at the pumpkin patch. Their last shift together. Their last good-bye.

Josiah’s ready to spend the whole night feeling melancholy about it. Deja isn’t ready to let him. She’s got a plan: What if—instead of moping and the usual slinging lima beans down at the Succotash Hut—they went out with a bang? They could see all the sights! Taste all the snacks! And Josiah could finally talk to that cute girl he’s been mooning over for three years . . .

What if their last shift was an adventure?]]> 209 Rainbow Rowell 125031285X Lauren 0 to-read 4.01 2019 Pumpkinheads
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/08/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber]]> 44573628
A New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic story of Uber, the Silicon Valley startup at the center of one of the great venture capital power struggles of our time. In June 2017, Travis Kalanick, the hard-charging CEO of Uber, was ousted in a boardroom coup that capped a brutal year for the transportation giant. Uber had catapulted to the top of the tech world, yet for many came to symbolize everything wrong with Silicon Valley. Award-winning New York Times technology correspondent Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against an era of rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley. Backed by billions in venture capital dollars and led by a brash and ambitious founder, Uber promised to revolutionize the way we move people and goods through the world. A near instant “unicorn,� Uber seemed poised to take its place next to Amazon, Apple, and Google as a technology giant. What followed would become a corporate cautionary tale about the perils of startup culture and a vivid example of how blind worship of startup founders can go wildly wrong. Isaac recounts Uber’s pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company’s toxic internal culture, and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. With billions of dollars at stake, Isaac shows how venture capitalists asserted their power and seized control of the startup as it fought its way toward its fateful IPO. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a page-turning story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history.]]> 408 Mike Isaac 0393652246 Lauren 0 to-read 4.11 2019 Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber
author: Mike Isaac
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/08/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> Lock Every Door 41837243
As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.

Searching for the truth about Ingrid's disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew's dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building's hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.]]> 381 Riley Sager 1524745154 Lauren 4 3.88 2019 Lock Every Door
author: Riley Sager
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2019/08/29
date added: 2019/08/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Claire (Ghosts in the Burbs Book 1)]]> 41948015 189 Liz Sower Lauren 3 4.35 2018 Claire (Ghosts in the Burbs Book 1)
author: Liz Sower
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2019/08/28
date added: 2019/08/28
shelves:
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I looooove this podcast and was excited to finally get this on audio. I was hoping that Liz would flesh out Claire's story and give us an ending. Unfortch, this is a somewhat beefed up collection of her podcast stories that, IMO, didn't add much to what I already knew. Still a fan, I'm sure I will revisit it and I look forward to Liz's future writing.
]]> Someone We Know 43982433
"This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out."

In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses--and into the owners' computers as well--learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too.

Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets?

In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . .

You never really know what people are capable of.]]> 292 Shari Lapena 0525557652 Lauren 0 to-read 3.88 2019 Someone We Know
author: Shari Lapena
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe]]> 36204894
In Chernobyl, Serhii Plokhy draws on new sources to tell the dramatic stories of the firefighters, scientists, and soldiers who heroically extinguished the nuclear inferno. He lays bare the flaws of the Soviet nuclear industry, tracing the disaster to the authoritarian character of the Communist party rule, the regime's control over scientific information, and its emphasis on economic development over all else.

Today, the risk of another Chernobyl looms in the mismanagement of nuclear power in the developing world. A moving and definitive account, Chernobyl is also an urgent call to action.]]> 404 Serhii Plokhy 1541617096 Lauren 0 to-read 4.21 2018 Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe
author: Serhii Plokhy
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America]]> 43747492 The true crime story of bootlegger George Remus and the murder that shocked the nation.

In the early days of Prohibition, long before Al Capone became a household name, a German immigrant named George Remus quits practicing law and starts trafficking whiskey. Within two years he's a multimillionaire. The press calls him "King of the Bootleggers," writing breathless stories about the Gatsby-esque events he and his glamorous second wife, Imogene, host at their Cincinnati mansion, with party favors ranging from diamond jewelry for the men to brand new Pontiacs for the women. By the summer of 1921, Remus owns 35 percent of all the liquor in the United States.

Pioneering prosecutor Mabel Walker Willebrandt is determined to bring him down. Willebrandt's bosses at the U.S. Attorney's office hired her right out of law school, assuming she'd pose no real threat to the cozy relationship they maintain with Remus. Eager to prove them wrong, she dispatches her best investigator, Franklin Dodge, to look into his empire. It's a decision with deadly consequences: With Remus behind bars, Dodge and Imogene begin an affair and plot to ruin him, sparking a bitter feud that soon reaches the highest levels of government--and that can only end in murder.]]> 432 Karen Abbott 0451498623 Lauren 0 to-read 3.70 2019 The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America
author: Karen Abbott
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/08/01
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]]> The Whisper Man 41940236 In this dark, suspenseful thriller, Alex North weaves a multi-generational tale of a father and son caught in the crosshairs of an investigation to catch a serial killer preying on a small town.

After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy believes a fresh start will help him and his young son Jake heal. A new beginning, a new house, a new town: Featherbank.

But Featherbank has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed "The Whisper Man," for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night.

Just as Tom and Jake settle into their new home, a young boy vanishes. His disappearance bears an unnerving resemblance to Frank Carter's crimes, reigniting old rumors that he preyed with an accomplice. Now, detectives Amanda Beck and Pete Willis must find the boy before it is too late, even if that means Pete has to revisit his great foe in prison: The Whisper Man. And then Jake begins acting strangely. He hears a whispering at his window.]]> 355 Alex North 1250317991 Lauren 0 to-read 4.02 2019 The Whisper Man
author: Alex North
name: Lauren
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Templar Legacy (Cotton Malone, #1)]]> 75024
Cotton Malone, one-time top operative for the U.S. Justice Department, is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen when an unexpected call to action reawakens his hair-trigger instincts–and plunges him back into the cloak-and-dagger world he thought he’d left behind.

It begins with a violent robbery attempt on Cotton’s former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, who’s far from home on a mission that has nothing to do with national security. Armed with vital clues to a series of centuries-old puzzles scattered across Europe, she means to crack a mystery that has tantalized scholars and fortune-hunters through the ages by finding the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge thought to have been lost forever when the order of the Knights Templar was exterminated in the fourteenth century. But she’s not alone. Competing for the historic prize–and desperate for the crucial information Stephanie possesses–is Raymond de Roquefort, a shadowy zealot with an army of assassins at his command.

Welcome or not, Cotton seeks to even the odds in the perilous race. But the more he learns about the ancient conspiracy surrounding the Knights Templar, the more he realizes that even more than lives are at stake. At the end of a lethal game of conquest, rife with intrigue, treachery, and craven lust for power, lies a shattering discovery that could rock the civilized world–and, in the wrong hands, bring it to its knees.]]> 511 Steve Berry 0345476166 Lauren 0 to-read 3.84 2006 The Templar Legacy (Cotton Malone, #1)
author: Steve Berry
name: Lauren
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2019/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]>