en-US Tue, 15 Apr 2025 09:38:22 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 209770415 On the Galápagos Islands, the lives of two women—a century apart—converge in the most startling ways in a historical novel of desperate love, secrets, and deception by the author of My Last Continent.

After ten years away to build a family, Mallory returns to Floreana Island in the Galápagos, and to Gavin, the mentor with whom she had a long-ago affair. Their project is to build nests to revive the vulnerable penguin population. But Mallory doesn’t dare tell Gavin why she’s really come back. Then she discovers old journals hidden in a lava cave—confessions of another woman who needed to disappear.

In 1929, Dore Strauch left the life she knew to create a new one with the man she loved. On remote Floreana they’re beholden to no one but each other. Until the arrival of strangers, settlers in their paradise. Suddenly, Dore realizes that it’s no longer the refuge she imagined. And that amid the island’s fragile beauty, people can do the most terrible things.

A gripping reimagining of a true story, Floreana intertwines the emotional journeys of two women bound by dark secrets, the want of escape, and the lengths to which they’ll go to find their place in the world.]]> 287 Midge Raymond 1662525125 Tara 5 historical-fiction, history 3.80 2024
author: Midge Raymond
name: Tara
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: historical-fiction, history
review:

]]> 214960926 In Roswell, New Mexico, the mystery of the unknown grips a sheltered novitiate in a haunting historical novel about fate, agency, and faith by the bestselling author of October in the Earth.

It’s 1947 when Sister Mary Agnes arrives in New Mexico. Her mission is to establish a monastery in the town of Roswell, where weeks before rumors of the crash landing of an unidentified craft have triggered a crisis of faith. Residents are drifting away from the divine, awed no longer by the heavens but rather the stars.

In service to the frightened and confused, Sister Mary Agnes soon befriends Betty Campbell, a teenager marked both physically and psychically by the inexplicable event. Mary Agnes is also unsettlingly drawn to Harvey, an attentive handyman refurbishing the monastery—and a firsthand witness to the crash. But as Mary Agnes tries to guide her wayward friends back to the church, it’s the fantastic and the forbidden that begin to loom large in her imagination.

Thrown into her own crisis of doubt, Mary Agnes must choose whether to uphold the order in which she came of age or embrace the truth she feels in her heart, despite its terrifying complexity.]]> 381 Olivia Hawker 166251106X Tara 5 historical-fiction, history One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow. I appreciate how she pushes the envelope on historical fiction, particularly with this new novel.

I've been to Roswell, New Mexico, and loved touring that quirky town. I had the same feeling there as I had when touring Salem, Massachusetts. There is just something in both of their atmospheres that you can feel, like weather. So I was very interested in this topic, a well-researched examination of the crash landing in 1947 of "something" the army was determined to report as a weather balloon.

I'll leave it to other readers to decide where they stand on the history issue, but Hawker will make you think hard about spirituality and science and the unknown. A great book club read (if you are in a book club that can discuss these issues with an open mind to the opinions of all group members).

There are a range of deep characters in this novel, but my favorite was army radar tech Harvey Day, who has the burden of seeing the inside of the "craft" and living with that changed experience. In those sections especially, Hawker's prose just sings with emotion and beauty.]]> 3.88
author: Olivia Hawker
name: Tara
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: historical-fiction, history
review:
I discovered Olivia Hawker's creative talent through her acclaimed book, One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow. I appreciate how she pushes the envelope on historical fiction, particularly with this new novel.

I've been to Roswell, New Mexico, and loved touring that quirky town. I had the same feeling there as I had when touring Salem, Massachusetts. There is just something in both of their atmospheres that you can feel, like weather. So I was very interested in this topic, a well-researched examination of the crash landing in 1947 of "something" the army was determined to report as a weather balloon.

I'll leave it to other readers to decide where they stand on the history issue, but Hawker will make you think hard about spirituality and science and the unknown. A great book club read (if you are in a book club that can discuss these issues with an open mind to the opinions of all group members).

There are a range of deep characters in this novel, but my favorite was army radar tech Harvey Day, who has the burden of seeing the inside of the "craft" and living with that changed experience. In those sections especially, Hawker's prose just sings with emotion and beauty.
]]> 217453585 An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

“An astonishing work of art…This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake.�� —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.]]> 320 Susanna Kwan 0593701402 Tara 0 to-read 3.92 2025
author: Susanna Kwan
name: Tara
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 196128017 350 Imogen Martin 180508173X Tara 0 to-read 4.00 2023
author: Imogen Martin
name: Tara
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 218460339
Nastia and her sister Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother—a flamboyant protestor who vanished after years of fierce activism against the romance tours. So begins a journey of a lifetime across hundreds of miles: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. But their plans come to a screeching halt as Russia invades.]]> 352 Maria Reva 0385545312 Tara 0 to-read 4.52 2025
author: Maria Reva
name: Tara
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212378278
When renouned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that's where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira's stories of her travels, and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she's left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona, seeing in her something bigger than the small life she's living with her mother. Mira is released from the hospital just in time to attend a lavish engagement party where all of Bombay society. But the next day, Mira is readmitted to the hospital in worse condition than before, and when she dies under mysterious circumstances, Sona immediately falls under suspicion.

Before leaving the hospital in disgrace, Sona is given a note Mira left for her, along with her four favorite paintings. But how could she have known to leave a note if she didn't know she was going to die? The note sends Sona on a mission to deliver three of the paintings—the first to Petra, Mira's childhood friend and first love in Prague; the second to her art dealer Josephine in Paris; the third to her first painting tutor, Paolo, with whom both Mira and her mother had affairs. As Sona uncovers Mira's history, she learns that the charming facade she'd come to know was only one part of a complicated and sometimes cruel woman. But can she discover what really happened to Mira and exonerate herself?

Along the way, Sona also comes to terms with her own complex history and the English father who deserted her and her mother in India so many years ago. In the end, she'll discover that we are all made up of pieces, and only by seeing the world do we learn to see ourselves.]]> 352 Alka Joshi 077836853X Tara 0 to-read 3.75 2025
author: Alka Joshi
name: Tara
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222175354 A housemaid with a dangerous family secret conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia.

The rebel . . . the socialite . . . and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this “beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom�� (Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends).

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives.

Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.]]> 384 Ashton Lattimore 0593600177 Tara 0 to-read 4.12 2024
author: Ashton Lattimore
name: Tara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212974444 Based on the true story of a Dutch sea captain who traveled with an Indian rhinoceros called Clara across 18th century Europe, THE RHINO KEEPER evokes both the thrill of discovery in the archives and the wonder felt by a world in which no European had seen a living rhinoceros.

2022 - College student Andrea Clarkson uncovers a historical mystery while studying abroad in Holland. From hidden desk drawers come unusual historical documents featuring a rhinoceros. On a lichen-covered eighteenth-century grave, the same animal is carved. When an expanding river forces exhumation, what she finds buried there is life-changing. Andrea faces her nightmares to retrieve what a grave robber steals: valuable proof of a long-forgotten history.

1740 - Ship captain Douwemout van der Meer has something not seen in two hundred the only rhino in Europe, called Clara. Douwemout and Clara tour Europe, enthralling peasants and queens, hoping to change popular views that rhinos are man-eating beasts. Absolute wonder follows, but when a priest sees idol worship and becomes hell-bent on destroying her, Clara, Douwe, and the lives of her bonded caretakers are at risk.

As Douwe becomes protectively dedicated to adventuring with Clara, unexpected love finds him, and his heart starts to tear. Will he choose a life with a traveling wonder-beast forever, or can love exist in many forms for the rhino keeper?


]]> 270 Jillian Forsberg 1963452038 Tara 5 historical-fiction, history 4.08
author: Jillian Forsberg
name: Tara
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: historical-fiction, history
review:
A wonderful debut novel. Enchanting, inventive, and original, I look forward to Forsberg's future novels! Animal lovers will especially love the rich history within these carefully written pages.
]]> 220815164 Letting In Air and Light, Secret Keepers expands the question of whether we can ever truly know our loved ones. This collection of character-driven short stories delves intimately into romantic and family relationships—some fractured, some fragile, all troubled by mysteries for which there may be no clear answers. One woman convinces herself of a husband’s affair that may or may not be imagined; other families struggle to rebuild amidst the wreckage of hurricanes and severed family ties. Compelling stories of betrayal and regret intertwine with thoughtful depictions of strong women seeking more authentic lives. Within the familiar world of South Louisiana, Brader’s characters navigate obsession, loss, and a tentative hope that some connections are still worth trying to keep.]]> 160 Teresa Tumminello Brader 1960215345 Tara 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: Teresa Tumminello Brader
name: Tara
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220259184 Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.]]> 320 Amity Gaige 1668063603 Tara 0 to-read 3.95 2025
author: Amity Gaige
name: Tara
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Tara 0 currently-reading 3.56 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Tara
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 195458052
In Nottingham, England, widow Emma Taylor finds herself in desperate need of a job to provide for herself and her beloved daughter, Olivia. But with the legal restrictions prohibiting widows with children from most employment opportunities, she’s left with only one option: persuading the manageress at Boots�� Booklover’s Library to take a chance on her.

When the threat of war becomes a reality, Olivia must be evacuated to the countryside. In her daughter’s absence, Emma seeks solace in the unlikely friendships she forms with her neighbors and coworkers, as well as the recommendations she provides to the library’s quirky regulars. But the job doesn’t come without its difficulties. Books are mysteriously misshelved and disappearing, and her work forces her to confront the memories of her late father and the bookstore they once owned together before a terrible accident.

As the Blitz intensifies in Nottingham and Emma fights to reunite with her daughter, she must learn to depend on her community and the power of literature more than ever to find hope in the darkest of times.]]> 432 Madeline Martin 1335000399 Tara 5 wwii 3.96 2024
author: Madeline Martin
name: Tara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/14
shelves: wwii
review:
Having been a single mother for some years, I could definitely relate to the mother in this wonderful, warm historical novel. I always learn about some interesting nugget of history in a Madeline Martin book. I look forward to her next one!
]]> 197239453 As the girls come of age, and the strictures of the community shift but never wane, their rebellions twist and sharpen. Ever capable Ulrika shoulders the burden of keeping house, while Bea, alone with unsettling visions and impulses, hungers for companionship and attention. When an enigmatic outsider arrives at their door, his presence threatens their family bond and unearths �� piece by piece �� a buried history to shocking ends. All the while Berggrund’s neighboring island The Blue Maiden beckons, storied home of the Witches�� Sabbath and Satan’s realm, its misted shore veiling truths the sisters have spent their lives searching for.
A Nordic Gothic laced with the horrors of life in a patriarchy both hostile to and reliant on its women, The Blue Maiden is a starkly beautiful depiction of lost lineage and resilience.����]]> 240 Anna Noyes 0802162800 Tara 0 to-read 3.35
author: Anna Noyes
name: Tara
average rating: 3.35
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214363081
In Satellite , Simmons Buntin delves into the idea of belonging—in place, time, family, and community—in sixteen essays written over nearly two decades. The pieces range throughout the desert Southwest, on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and as far afield as Mount Saint Helens, eastern Montana, northern Vermont, Sweden, and even the moon (if a telescope atop Kitt Peak counts). Buntin examines the beauty and challenges of raising a family and creating more sustainable communities in the Sonoran Desert—and, more broadly, in any of America’s diverse cultural and ecological landscapes. How should community be defined? How do we protect heritage in an age of globalization? How do we find renewal following personal and place-based trauma? What forms may grace take, and how can parents pass that dignity on to their children?

Fortunately, it is a responsibility both shared and rewarding, funny and phenomenal, for at every turn there is a new discovery, a new insight, a new integration between ourselves and the world that culminates, when we succeed, in a vibrant sense of place. Buntin searches for a balance between the built and natural environments and the beings that inhabit them in a way that enables us not only to survive but to thrive together.

]]> 267 Simmons Buntin 1595343121 Tara 0 to-read 5.00
author: Simmons Buntin
name: Tara
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208703096 166 Tara Deal 1646034902 Tara 5 hybrid, novella
It's about art, about memory, but mostly, its about the complexity of a collage artist and a musician trying to carve out a life together. There is subtle competition, and perhaps a darker force. What appears to be a beautiful, loving relationship at times reveals what is possibly a sinister undertone.

We only get the voice of the narrator, who may be unreliable. Deal eventually leaves that to the reader to decide. But it adds to the mystery and almost thriller aspect, as the book consists of the female narrator "speaking" to her partner, who is paralyzed and in a coma after falling down stairs in Venice.

Deal understands being an artist as she's one herself. This is a book of prose fragments that mirror the collages the narrator creates herself.

It's about the permanence of art. Is music permanent or does it "evaporate" like cotton candy? What of the narrator's art, when the glue holding it all together starts to fail?

And what about art's importance? What good is it, she asks, "If you can't cling to it in an emergency, like a cushion for flotation?"

This all parallels their relationship, and even their very lives.

It's also about the impermanence of memory, which constantly shifts in her narration.

I loved the travel memories, so evocative and rich, and this messy love story.

Highly rec to lit lovers and lovers of briefer works.

I want a novel from Deal now!]]> 4.00
author: Tara Deal
name: Tara
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: hybrid, novella
review:
I'm a fan of Deal's work, so am not surprised that I absolutely loved this brief novel. Lit fiction at its best. It's hard to describe and hard to get across the precision and originality and intelligent questions this author asks.

It's about art, about memory, but mostly, its about the complexity of a collage artist and a musician trying to carve out a life together. There is subtle competition, and perhaps a darker force. What appears to be a beautiful, loving relationship at times reveals what is possibly a sinister undertone.

We only get the voice of the narrator, who may be unreliable. Deal eventually leaves that to the reader to decide. But it adds to the mystery and almost thriller aspect, as the book consists of the female narrator "speaking" to her partner, who is paralyzed and in a coma after falling down stairs in Venice.

Deal understands being an artist as she's one herself. This is a book of prose fragments that mirror the collages the narrator creates herself.

It's about the permanence of art. Is music permanent or does it "evaporate" like cotton candy? What of the narrator's art, when the glue holding it all together starts to fail?

And what about art's importance? What good is it, she asks, "If you can't cling to it in an emergency, like a cushion for flotation?"

This all parallels their relationship, and even their very lives.

It's also about the impermanence of memory, which constantly shifts in her narration.

I loved the travel memories, so evocative and rich, and this messy love story.

Highly rec to lit lovers and lovers of briefer works.

I want a novel from Deal now!
]]> 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Tara 0 to-read 4.28 2025
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Tara
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222925690 A young man is haunted by a mythological specter bent on stealing everything he loves in this unsettling horror from the author of Indian Burial Ground and Sisters of the Lost Nation.

For fear of summoning evil spirits, Native superstition says you should never, ever whistle at night.

Henry Hotard was on the verge of fame, gaining a following and traction with his eerie ghost-hunting videos. Then his dreams came to a screeching halt. Now, he's learning to navigate a new life in a wheelchair, back on the reservation where he grew up, relying on his grandparents�� care while he recovers.

And he’s being haunted.

His girlfriend, Jade, insists he just needs time to adjust to his new reality as a quadriplegic, that it’s his traumatized mind playing tricks on him, but Henry knows better. As the specter haunting him creeps closer each night, Henry battles to find a way to endure, to rid himself of the horror stalking him. Worried that this dread might plague him forever, he realizes the only way to exile his phantom is by confronting his troubled past and going back to the events that led to his injury.

It all started when he whistled at night....]]> 368 Nick Medina 0593820401 Tara 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: Nick Medina
name: Tara
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57429914 An enchanting novel about fate, second chances, and hope, lost and found, by the Amazon Charts bestselling author of The Last of the Moon Girls.

Soline Roussel is well schooled in the business of happy endings. For generations her family has kept an exclusive bridal salon in Paris, where magic is worked with needle and thread. It’s said that the bride who wears a Roussel gown is guaranteed a lifetime of joy. But devastating losses during World War II leave Soline’s world and heart in ruins and her faith in love shaken. She boxes up her memories, stowing them away, along with her broken dreams, determined to forget.

Decades later, while coping with her own tragic loss, aspiring gallery owner Rory Grant leases Soline’s old property and discovers a box containing letters and a vintage wedding dress, never worn. When Rory returns the mementos, an unlikely friendship develops, and eerie parallels in Rory’s and Soline’s lives begin to surface. It’s clear that they were destined to meet—and that Rory may hold the key to righting a forty-year wrong and opening the door to shared healing and, perhaps, a little magic.]]> 415 Barbara Davis 1542021480 Tara 0 to-read 4.47 2021
author: Barbara Davis
name: Tara
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213568974 A mother and daughter try desperately to reconcile just as a decades-old secret threatens to shatter their relationship forever in this powerful story from the bestselling author of The Echo of Old Books.

For social worker Mallory Ward, working with at-risk youth is a calling. But when one of her clients is tragically killed, she finds herself at a crossroads. Despite long-held resentments toward her distant mother, Mallory retreats to her childhood home on the Rhode Island coast to contemplate her future. Instead, she’s confronted by her past, not only in the renewed tensions with her mother but in the unexpected appearance of a familiar face―and the wrenching losses that drove her away a decade ago.

Helen Ward’s home is filled with precious keepsakes from her patients, a testament to decades spent caring for the terminally ill. Her work has always come first, though, leaving little time to connect with her daughter. Over the years, the rift between them has become a chasm, so when Mallory appears unannounced, Helen sees it as an opportunity to repair their broken relationship.

But hidden among Helen’s mementos are the keys to her past…and a terrible secret that threatens to destroy the fragile new trust between them forever.]]> 404 Barbara Davis 1662514484 Tara 0 to-read 4.37 2025
author: Barbara Davis
name: Tara
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151202 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.��

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 320 Clare Leslie Hall 166807818X Tara 0 to-read 4.42 2025
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Tara
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214537772 In this Civil War love story, inspired by a real-life friendship across enemy lines, the wife of a missing Confederate soldier discovers a wounded Yankee officer and must decide what she’s willing to risk for the life of a stranger, from the New York Times bestselling author of such acclaimed historical fiction as Hour of the Witch and The Sandcastle Girls.

��������Virginia, 1864—Libby Steadman’s husband has been away for so long that she can barely conjure his voice in her dreams. While she longs for him in the night, fearing him dead in a Union prison camp, her days are spent running a gristmill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, all the grain they can produce requisitioned by the Confederate Army. It’s an uneasy life in the Shenandoah Valley, the territory frequently changing hands, control swinging back and forth like a pendulum between North and South, and Libby awakens every morning expecting to see her land a battlefield.��
��������And then she finds a gravely injured Union officer left for dead in a neighbor’s house, the bones of his hand and leg shattered. Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade is her enemy �� but he’s also a human being, and Libby must make a terrible Does she leave him to die alone? Or does she risk treason and try to nurse him back to health? And if she succeeds, does she try to secretly bring him across Union lines, where she might negotiate a trade for news of her own husband?��
��������A vivid and sweeping story of two people navigating the boundaries of love and humanity in a landscape of brutal violence, The Jackal’s Mistress is a heart-stopping new novel, based on a largely unknown piece of American history, from one of our greatest storytellers.]]> 336 Chris Bohjalian 0385547641 Tara 0 to-read 4.11 2025
author: Chris Bohjalian
name: Tara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213360912
Some said the Van Laars deserved it. That they never even thanked the searchers who stayed out for five nights in the freezing forest trying to help find their missing son.

Some said there was a reason it took the family so long to call for help. That they knew what happened to the boy.

Now, fifteen years later, the daughter the family had in their grief has gone missing in the same wilderness as her brother. Some say the two disappearances aren’t connected.

Some say they are.]]> 448 Liz Moore 0008663815 Tara 4 4.11 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Tara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:
I think this book has the most reviews I've ever seen, but for Crawdads! Not sure it needs more, but....Really enjoyed the mystery, the setting, the experimental structure, and the ending.
]]> 210454786 What Walks This Way explores the joys of learning to recognize the traces of the creatures with whom we share our world.

The nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. With wit and compassion, she guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks left by browsing deer, predatory weasels, and inquisitive bears, skunks, and raccoons. Closely observing these traces, Russell also finds community, a sense of place, and a renewed connection with the nonhuman world. She explores the health of mammal populations in North America and questions common wildlife-management practices, calling for new approaches that better reflect current understandings of ecology. Above all, What Walks This Way is a celebration of all the wild animals secretly, stubbornly, and triumphantly roving through our cities, suburbs, and countryside.]]> 224 Sharman Apt Russell 0231215983 Tara 0 to-read 4.75
author: Sharman Apt Russell
name: Tara
average rating: 4.75
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 195790759 Winner of the Southern Book Prize for Fiction

A historical drama based on the Battle of Blair Mountain, pitting a multi-ethnic army of 10,000 coal miners against mine owners, state militia, and the United States government in the largest labor uprising in American history.

Rednecks is a tour de force, big canvas historical novel that dramatizes the 1920 to 1921 events of the West Virginia Mine Wars—from the Matewan Massacre through the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed conflict on American soil since the Civil War, when some one million rounds were fired, bombs were dropped on Appalachia, and the term “redneck�� would come to have an unexpected origin story.

Brimming with the high stakes drama of America’s buried history, Rednecks tells a powerful story of rebellion against oppression. In a land where the coal companies use violence and intimidation to keep miners from organizing, “Doc Moo" Muhanna, a Lebanese-American doctor (inspired by the author’s own great-grandfather), toils amid the blood and injustice of the mining camps. When Frank Hugham, a Black World War One veteran and coal miner, takes dramatic steps to lead a miners' revolt with a band of fellow veterans, Doc Moo risks his life and career to treat sick and wounded miners, while Frank's grandmother, Beulah, fights her own battle to save her home and grandson.

Real-life historical figures burn bright among the hills: the fiery Mother Jones, an Irish-born labor organizer once known as "The Most Dangerous Woman in America," struggles to maintain the ear of the miners ("her boys") amid the tide of rebellion, while the sharp-shooting police chief "Smilin" Sid Hatfield dares to stand up to the "gun thugs" of the coal companies, becoming a folk hero of the mine wars.

Award-winning novelist Taylor Brown brings to life one of the most compelling events in 20th century American history, reminding us of the hard-won origins of today's unions. Rednecks is a propulsive, character-driven tale that’s both a century old and blisteringly contemporary: a story of unexpected friendship, heroism in the face of injustice, and the power of love and community against all odds.]]> 310 Taylor Brown 1250329337 Tara 0 to-read 3.80 2024
author: Taylor Brown
name: Tara
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43706732 From the bestselling author of The Ragged Edge of Night comes a powerful and poetic novel of survival and sacrifice on the American frontier.

Wyoming, 1870. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.

Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.]]> 496 Olivia Hawker 1542006910 Tara 5
This is one seriously talented author. Her ability to paint a natural scene is almost unparalleled and cinematic:

Each time a sheep called out in protest, a plume of silver steam rose from its muzzle to hang above the fold, and the early-morning light refracted within that cloud, so the air just above the animals' backs glowed in the rising sun.

Metaphors are original and deep:

Nettie Mae knew something inside of her had broken, or would soon break. Not the way a stick breaks, or a bone, snapping into pieces that may be thrown in opposite directions, a permanent and emphatic separation. Rather, the break was a pot or a jug dropped to the floor. A heavy vessel, full, full to overflowing. Too heavy to be borne any longer...

Beulah is the standout character, who "sees and knows, even when everyone else had blinded themselves to the truth."

She quietly steers the Bemis and Webber families to the emotional landscapes they need to be in. It's a special thing to witness her getting them there.]]> 4.04 2019
author: Olivia Hawker
name: Tara
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: animal-stories, ecolit, ghost-story, historical-fiction, history, rural
review:
Stunning prose, beautiful place descriptions, well-drawn characters, and a twist of a plot that is based on the author's own family history make this quietly powerful novel a historical, rural stand out for me. I have not heard of Olivia Hawker before but am glad to have discovered her and plan to find time to read all her other books.

This is one seriously talented author. Her ability to paint a natural scene is almost unparalleled and cinematic:

Each time a sheep called out in protest, a plume of silver steam rose from its muzzle to hang above the fold, and the early-morning light refracted within that cloud, so the air just above the animals' backs glowed in the rising sun.

Metaphors are original and deep:

Nettie Mae knew something inside of her had broken, or would soon break. Not the way a stick breaks, or a bone, snapping into pieces that may be thrown in opposite directions, a permanent and emphatic separation. Rather, the break was a pot or a jug dropped to the floor. A heavy vessel, full, full to overflowing. Too heavy to be borne any longer...

Beulah is the standout character, who "sees and knows, even when everyone else had blinded themselves to the truth."

She quietly steers the Bemis and Webber families to the emotional landscapes they need to be in. It's a special thing to witness her getting them there.
]]> 212806636 A young woman and her lover are marooned on an island in this epic saga of love, faith, and defiance from the bestselling author of Sam.

Heir to a fortune, Marguerite is destined for a life of prosperity and gentility. Then she is orphaned, and her guardian—an enigmatic and volatile man—spends her inheritance and insists she accompany him on an expedition to New France. Isolated and afraid, Marguerite befriends her guardian’s servant and the two develop an intense attraction. But when their relationship is discovered, they are brutally punished and abandoned on a small island with no hope for rescue.

Once a child of privilege who dressed in gowns and laced pearls in her hair, Marguerite finds herself at the mercy of nature. As the weather turns, blanketing the island in ice, she discovers a faith she’d never before needed.

Inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine, Isola is the timeless story of a woman fighting for survival.]]> 368 Allegra Goodman 0593730089 Tara 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Allegra Goodman
name: Tara
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222664732 California, 1848. She was warned not to go after him. That no woman could survive alone in gold rush California. That her missing husband was surely dead.

But Grace Randolph knows James isn’t just missing, he’s being held captive by one of the most powerful men in the territory. And her marriage �� forged on the perilous Oregon trail, tested by her husband’s war service and the lawlessness of the gold fields �� is worth fighting for.

As she saddles up her horse and frets over the plan a final time, she reminds herself she has shot a man before, survived the hardship of the trail, and rebuilt their life after a fire destroyed everything they had. She has never stopped loving her husband, even on those nights when he lay beside her, inches away but somehow unreachably distant.

Now she must cross mountains to rescue him �� and save her marriage.

A story of courage, redemption and the unbreakable strength of a woman’s heart. Fans of The Paper Palace, Where the Crawdads Sing and A Girl Called Samson will be captivated by this breathtaking love story.]]> 408 Imogen Martin 180508741X Tara 0 to-read 4.42
author: Imogen Martin
name: Tara
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 220817706
1990. Law enforcement ranger Valerie Boren-Odell arrives at Horsethief Trail National Park seeking a quiet place to raise her son. But no sooner has Valerie reported for duty than a teenage hiker goes missing and the long-hidden burial site of three children is discovered in a cave. Val’s quest to uncover the truth wins an ally among the Choctaw Nation’s Tribal Police but soon collides with the deadly legacy of the land itself.

1909. Eleven-year-old Olive Radley knows that her stepfather is a threat to the two Choctaw girls boarded in their home. When the older girl disappears, Ollie flees, taking six-year-old Nessa with her. Together they begin a perilous journey to the remote Winding Stair Mountains, the territory of outlaws, treasure hunters, and desperate men. Along the way, they form an unlikely band with other children struggling to get by on their own.

In this gripping novel, Lisa Wingate traces the story of children abandoned by the law and the battle to see justice done. Amid times of deep conflict over who owns the land and its riches, Ollie and Val each leave behind one life in search of another.]]> 384 Lisa Wingate 0593726529 Tara 0 to-read 3.91 2024
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Tara
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217328621 227 Scott Gould 1646036077 Tara 0 to-read 4.50
author: Scott Gould
name: Tara
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 217328495
For help, Gamble turns to African American Studies scholar Tolliver Jackson�� a former foster kid with secrets of his own. But as Gamble' s memories resurface, the pair discover a connection which may endanger more than one life... in more than one lifetime.

1804: Miniature portraitist and fallen-away Quaker Daniel Petigru paints for Charleston' s high society. Daniel and his sister live with a free Black family, their connection long and complicated. When Gamble arrives from the future and her presence puts them all at risk, Daniel must decide if he loves her enough to let her go.

THE MINIATURIST' S ASSISTANT explores the mystery of time, how our choices ripple throughout history, and what it means to be a fully-realized woman�� in any century.

"What a lush, bold novel ... a story that is as suspenseful as it is wildly romantic. An astounding journey through the Charleston of the present and the very long past which transcends genre and takes the reader places entirely new." ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard, bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean]]> 377 Katherine Scott Crawford 1646035933 Tara 0 to-read 4.62
author: Katherine Scott Crawford
name: Tara
average rating: 4.62
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 202655910 117 Nicole Yurcaba Tara 5 poetry
Most readers will be able to relate in a strong way to these poems of displacement, loneliness, and a need to be seen for who we are. These are deeply felt and deeply executed.

One favorite: "The Pale Goth Attends Faculty Swim," in which the Goth recalls having to remind herself to breathe when floating face down in the water. A powerful ending to a very visual poem with shades of Ophelia.

Her Ukrainian parents are well drawn, and the country Ukraine is featured now and then, and I loved how she captured the current situation with these simple lines:

my / ancestors leave / the sky / enter / fertile / soil where / sunflowers / watch planes / die

This is a super talented poet who achieves what the best writers seek, to "find the shards" that most people "wouldn't bother searching for." But the reader is rewarded when she does.]]> 5.00
author: Nicole Yurcaba
name: Tara
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: poetry
review:
I had the pleasure of doing an event with Ukrainian American poet Nicole Yurcaba. I listened to her read, and was so impressed. She's a poet to watch for sure. This, her first autobiographical poetry collection, is stunning in honesty and inventiveness and eloquence. The Pale Goth becomes a theme that runs throughout most of the poems, headed by "The Pale Goth Reads..." or "The Pale Goth Attends..." This device of referring to herself as the named Goth achieves some distance from her personal feelings and allows for the poem to be more universal.

Most readers will be able to relate in a strong way to these poems of displacement, loneliness, and a need to be seen for who we are. These are deeply felt and deeply executed.

One favorite: "The Pale Goth Attends Faculty Swim," in which the Goth recalls having to remind herself to breathe when floating face down in the water. A powerful ending to a very visual poem with shades of Ophelia.

Her Ukrainian parents are well drawn, and the country Ukraine is featured now and then, and I loved how she captured the current situation with these simple lines:

my / ancestors leave / the sky / enter / fertile / soil where / sunflowers / watch planes / die

This is a super talented poet who achieves what the best writers seek, to "find the shards" that most people "wouldn't bother searching for." But the reader is rewarded when she does.
]]> 205901070 Elaine Neil Orr, born in Nigeria to expat parents, brings us an indelible portrait of a young female artist, torn between two men and two cultures, struggling to find her passion and her purpose.��

It’s 1963 and Isabel Hammond is an expat who has accompanied her agriculture aid worker husband to Nigeria, where she is hoping to find inspiration for her art and for her life. Then she meets charismatic local singer Bobby Tunde, and they share a night of passion that could upend everything. Seeking solace and distraction, she returns to her painting and her home in a rural village where she plants a lemon tree and unearths an ancient statue buried in her garden. She knows that the dancing female figure is not hers to keep, yet she is reluctant to give it up, and soon, she notices other changes that make her wonder what the dancing woman might portend.��

Against the backdrop of political unrest in Nigeria, Isabel’s personal situation also becomes precarious. She finds herself in the center of a tide of suspicion, leaving her torn between the confines of her domestic life and the desire to immerse herself in her art and in the culture that surrounds her. The expat society, the ancient Nigerian culture, her beautiful family, and even the statue hidden in a back room—each trouble and beguile Isabel. Amid all of this, can she finally become who she wants to be?]]> 304 Elaine Neil Orr 1958888338 Tara 0 to-read 4.05
author: Elaine Neil Orr
name: Tara
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219099417 From the author of THERE WAS A PERANAKAN WOMAN WHO LIVED IN A SHOE comes a story of an orphan girl who rises above discrimination to find love. Fans of Grace Lin and Avi will surely be delighted by this tale that takes inspiration from both eastern and western storytelling traditions.


Twelve-year-old Elven has eleven fingers, no parents, and a skin tone that hints at murky origins. One day, she receives a wooden Puzzle Box belonging to her late mother, and an intriguing letter promising her love—if she solves it.


Thus begins Elven’s long journey, in which she runs away to the town of Armora to find the Puzzle Box maker. There, she encounters its quirky residents and makes a new friend—the mysterious Madam Green who may not be what she seems. Ignoring signs of danger, Elven moves into Madam Green’s cottage on Mount Armora where she helps rehabilitate the town’s abandoned pets. Soon, their idyllic life is shattered with the arrival of miners intent on extracting gold from the mountain at all costs. Elven teams up with Madam Green to stop them, drawing both of them into a sinister scheme with tentacles deeper than anyone can imagine.


When the townsfolk accuse Madam Green of being a witch, it will take all of Elven's ingenuity to not just to unravel the shocking truth, but ultimately reveal the secret of the Puzzle Box.]]> 225 Gwen Lee 9815280988 Tara 5
"It struck her that she was not unlike a Puzzle Box, a unique work of art created by different types of wood interlocked together."

This story will resonate with all youths who feel different in some way.]]> 4.25
author: Gwen Lee
name: Tara
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:
A touching story about finding self and love from the talented children's author of LITTLE CLOUD WANTS SNOW.

"It struck her that she was not unlike a Puzzle Box, a unique work of art created by different types of wood interlocked together."

This story will resonate with all youths who feel different in some way.
]]> 208840291 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.

As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love.

Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”]]> 112 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1668072246 Tara 4 ecolit, essays
I loved her comment that plants offer themselves to us, whether we are saints or sinners.

And the idea that gift economies often rise up during times of crises, as we can see right now in California with all the donations and volunteerism springing up.

Would that humans lived this way in times of noncrisis.]]> 4.39 2024
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Tara
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: ecolit, essays
review:
A very interesting and eye-opening look at how our economy works, as opposed to the more give and share economy ("gift" economy) of the indigenous tribes. The author centers this long essay around the serviceberry bush (which now I have to find and try!) and how it can teach us to live in tandem with nature in a way that does not exploit it to its eventual demise.

I loved her comment that plants offer themselves to us, whether we are saints or sinners.

And the idea that gift economies often rise up during times of crises, as we can see right now in California with all the donations and volunteerism springing up.

Would that humans lived this way in times of noncrisis.
]]> 61136147
“I’m wondering if we can be friends again.��

When fifty-eight-year-old Helen Spencer reviews her life, what she sees are the mistakes. Over the years, things seemed to go sideways incrementally, one little wrong decision at a time. She can even pinpoint where it all started to go awry: a wonderous, romantic night in the woods her senior year of high school with a boy named Cal Crosby. A night she would soon work hard to forget.

Forty years, one marriage, three children, and one grandbaby later, suddenly there he is—Cal (expletive) Crosby!—right in front of her with grandchildren of his own in tow. The chance to finally get some answers and sort out what happened is within reach. But Helen would much prefer to keep that night and all the fury, hurt, and sorrow that followed tightly locked away where she doesn’t have to face it.

Cal Crosby, however, is ready to talk. He has no idea of the can of worms he’s about to open. In fact, he doesn’t know the half of it.

A warm, poignant, propulsive novel about settling the past, rekindling lost friendships, and rediscovering love when you least expect it.]]> 400 Juliette Fay 006323596X Tara 5 3.90 2023
author: Juliette Fay
name: Tara
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 220161428 Juliette Fay—known for her “well-drawn characters and vibrant historical backdrops�� (Library Journal)—transports us to 1920s America with this big-hearted tale of two very different women who must learn to trust each other as one tries to save her family and the other to save herself. Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah and Kristina McMorris.

1926: Charlotte Crowninshield was born into one of the finest Boston society families. Now she’s on the run from a brutal husband, desperate to disappear into the wilds of the Southwest. Billie MacTavish is the oldest of nine children born to Scottish immigrants in Nebraska. She quit school in the sixth grade to help with her mother’s washing and mending business, but even that isn’t enough to keep the family afloat.

Desperate, both women join the ranks of the Harvey Girls, waitresses who serve in America’s first hospitality chain on the Santa Fe railroad. Hired on the same day, they share three things: a room, a heartfelt dislike of each other…and each has a secret that will certainly get them fired.

Through twelve-hour days of training in Topeka, Kansas, they learn the fine art of service, perfecting their skills despite bouts of homesickness, fear of being discovered, and a run-in with the KKK. When they’re sent to work at the luxurious El Tovar hotel at the Grand Canyon, the challenges only grow, as Billie struggles to hide her young age from would-be suitors, and Charlotte discovers the little-known dark side of the national park’s history.

“Juliette Fay’s gift for creating complex, exquisitely human characters�� (Marisa de los Santos, New York Times bestselling author) is on full display in this deeply moving and joyous celebration of female empowerment, loyalty, and friendship.]]> 384 Juliette Fay 1668095068 Tara 0 to-read 4.16
author: Juliette Fay
name: Tara
average rating: 4.16
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213245186 A captivating, multigenerational debut novel of a young woman navigating the personal trauma that ties herself, her nomadic mother, and her alcoholic grandmother together, perfect for fans of Ask Again, Yes and What the Fireflies Knew.

1979. Fifteen-year-old Aurora Taylor’s single mother prefers to leave when things get hard. She’s spent years abandoning bad boyfriends and dead-end jobs, without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror. After fifteen years in the passenger seat, Aurora needs more than two hands to count the towns she’s lived in. She’s learned to live small—it’s easier to leave when you don’t need to say goodbye. So when her mother Laine shows up at school with the car loaded, Aurora assumes her latest fling has run its course. Instead, it’s her grandpa Jay’s death calling them back to the town Laine has spent fifteen years running from.

Every visit to Monroe, Indiana ends in an explosive fight. Her mother and her Gran are oil and water, and it doesn’t take Aurora long to realize Gran has fallen off the wagon—again. With Gran drinking, and Laine’s discomfort in the little blue house, Aurora gives their visit a week, tops. But when Laine begins an affair with the town’s married mailman, everything changes. While her mom falls in love with a man she can’t have, Aurora has time to fall in love with the town. Her life begins to feel full—she has a friend to call her own, a gran who loves her, and a picture-perfect pastor’s son who sees Aurora as more than “Laine’s daughter.�� It’s everything she never let herself dream about.

As the summer months march on, and her mom’s happiness becomes even more dependent on her unstable new relationship, Aurora worries the dream she allowed herself will end in heartbreak. This isn’t just another map dot on their endless journey, and Laine won’t just burn a bridge this time. Her choices threaten to light the town on fire, burning Gran’s hope, Aurora’s future, and her own chance at redemption to the ground with it.]]> 320 Paige Dinneny Tara 0 to-read 3.89 2025
author: Paige Dinneny
name: Tara
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219301091 The fierce debut memoir of a female firefighter, Hotshot navigates the personal and environmental dangers of wildland firefighting

From 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life—of Ana, the struggles she encountered, and the contours of what it meant to be female-bodied in a male-dominated profession.��

By the time they were 19, Selby had been homeless, addicted to drugs, and sexually assaulted more than once. In a last-ditch effort to find direction, they applied to be a wildland firefighter. Soon immersed in the world of firefighting and its arcana—from specialized tools named for the fire pioneers who invented them, to the back-breaking labor of racing against time to create firebreaks—Selby began to find an internal balance. Then, after two years of ragtag contract firefighting, Selby joined an elite class of specially trained wildland firefighters known as hotshots.��

Over the course of five fire seasons, Selby delves into the world of the people—almost entirely men—who risk their lives to fight and sometimes prevent wildfires. Marked out in a sea of machismo, Selby was simultaneously hyper visible and invisible, and Hotshot deftly parses the odd mix of camaraderie and rampant sexism she experienced on her fire crews, and how, when challenged, it resulted in a violent closing of ranks that excluded her from the work she’d come to love. Drawing on years of firsthand experience on the frontlines of fire, followed by years of research into the science and history of fire, Hotshot also reckons with our fraught stewardship of the land—how federal fire policy is maladapted to the realities of fire-prone landscapes and how it has led to ever more severe fire seasons.

Hotshot is a work of intimacy and authority, nimbly merging a personal journey of reinvention and self-acceptance with expert insight into the textured history of ecological systems and Indigenous land tending, the modern practices that have led to their imbalance, and the people who fight fire.]]> 304 River Selby 0802149499 Tara 0 to-read 5.00
author: River Selby
name: Tara
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197036048
1926. Washington, D.C.

The Coast Guard is losing the Prohibition Rum War, but they have a new, secret weapon to crack smuggler codes, intercept traffic, and destroy the rum trade one skiff at a time. That secret weapon is a 5'2" mastermind in heels, who also happens to be a wife and mother: Mrs. Elizebeth Smith Friedman, one half of the husband-and-wife pair who invented cryptanalysis.

Bahamas

Cleo Lythogoe, The Bahama Queen, announces her retirement while regaling the thugs at the bar with tales of murder and mayhem on the high seas. Marie Waite, listening in, knows an opportunity when she hears it, and she wants the crown for herself so badly she can taste it. So begins Marie's plan to rise as rumrunner royalty long enough to get her family in the black. But the more sophisticated her operation grows, the more she appears on the radar of the feds.

Meanwhile, Elizebeth is the only codebreaker battling scores of smugglers. Despite the strain of solving thousands of intercepted messages, traveling the country, and testifying in court, Elizabeth’s work becomes personal—especially when she discovers the identity of her premier adversary is the notorious Marie Waite.

From the glamorous world of D.C. Intelligence to the sultry shores of the Straits of Florida, The Last Twelve Miles is based on the true story of two women masterminds trying to outwit each other in a dangerous and fascinating high stakes game.]]> 368 Erika Robuck 1728299837 Tara 4 3.71 2024
author: Erika Robuck
name: Tara
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 205086340
New Brunswick, 1934. When a cook in a logging camp finds an orphaned baby bear, he brings it home to his wife, who names the cub Bruno and raises him alongside her newborn daughter, Pearly Everlasting.

During the Great Depression, amidst severe poverty and dangerous work conditions, Pearly’s family and the woodsmen form a close-knit community that embraces the tame, young bear in their camp.

But when a new camp supervisor—who increasingly endangers the lives of the loggers for profit—arrives, he is less accepting of Bruno. When the supervisor is found dead, Bruno is blamed, and soon after is kidnapped and sold to an animal trader. Pearly, now a teenager, has no choice but to find Bruno and sets off on a hazardous solo journey through the forest—her first trip to “the Outside”—to rescue him.

To make her way home again, Pearly will have to tramp more than fifty miles through ice and snow, elude the malevolent spirit of Jack in the Dark and confront the modern-day cruelty of villagers fearful of her family’s way of life. Over those harrowing miles, Pearly will discover what it really means to be family to a bear.]]> 352 Tammy Armstrong 0063396149 Tara 5 "Some might say a baby and a bear cub have no business living together, but I can assure you: seeing the world through our eyes might change your mind."

Gosh, this book. I reveled in the poetic language, even when it slowed down my reading. What an incredible talent Tammy Armstrong is! I love Canadian women writers and this just adds another one to my list of favorite writers and books.

My favorite book of the year! Perfect for winter reading. Curl up with Pearly and Bruno with a cup of hot chocolate or tea or coffee. Get lost in the snowy Canadian woods of New Brunswick in 1934. The land and its surroundings ooze out of Armstrong's pores and on to the paper. A land of folklore and myth, where Jack in the Dark is always waiting to bring death or destruction. But a land that also heals and holds magic.

"So Bruno and I grew up together on shoveled land, cut land, sawed land, and burnt land. Land griddled and hollowed, stumped, surveyed, and pulped as companies tried and failed to tame the place--forcing on it little resurrections."

This is the kind of description you'll be treated to, page after page. She is also very strong at capturing characters in unique and surprising ways, using names and mannerisms and brilliant descriptions. Rarely have I enjoyed the side characters as much as the main ones. This story is based on a real photo the author was gifted by her mother, and if the lore and descriptions of the logging camp and woods ring so true, it's because it's Armstrong's own family history.

Highly, highly rec for lovers of nature, history, and lyrical prose at its best. Sharing time with this girl and bear might just change your mind about how you see our human and animal world.]]> 3.89 2024
author: Tammy Armstrong
name: Tara
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves: animal-stories, canadian-literature, ecolit, historical-fiction, history, rural, strong-women
review:
"Some might say a baby and a bear cub have no business living together, but I can assure you: seeing the world through our eyes might change your mind."

Gosh, this book. I reveled in the poetic language, even when it slowed down my reading. What an incredible talent Tammy Armstrong is! I love Canadian women writers and this just adds another one to my list of favorite writers and books.

My favorite book of the year! Perfect for winter reading. Curl up with Pearly and Bruno with a cup of hot chocolate or tea or coffee. Get lost in the snowy Canadian woods of New Brunswick in 1934. The land and its surroundings ooze out of Armstrong's pores and on to the paper. A land of folklore and myth, where Jack in the Dark is always waiting to bring death or destruction. But a land that also heals and holds magic.

"So Bruno and I grew up together on shoveled land, cut land, sawed land, and burnt land. Land griddled and hollowed, stumped, surveyed, and pulped as companies tried and failed to tame the place--forcing on it little resurrections."

This is the kind of description you'll be treated to, page after page. She is also very strong at capturing characters in unique and surprising ways, using names and mannerisms and brilliant descriptions. Rarely have I enjoyed the side characters as much as the main ones. This story is based on a real photo the author was gifted by her mother, and if the lore and descriptions of the logging camp and woods ring so true, it's because it's Armstrong's own family history.

Highly, highly rec for lovers of nature, history, and lyrical prose at its best. Sharing time with this girl and bear might just change your mind about how you see our human and animal world.
]]> 199614313 184 Heather Swan 0271096950 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.38
author: Heather Swan
name: Tara
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: currently-reading
review:
I need to get lost in the wild for a while...
]]> 1374816 288 Mary McKay Maynard 1585742619 Tara 5
The author as I said is a wonderful writer, but even more so, her mother was an undiscovered talent. The highlights were her sprinkled diary entries throughout. Magical, poetic. She alludes to the jungle as "dreamlike."

There was constant fear of the Japanese finding them for good reason. They even feared they could be taken to the major cities and imprisoned and have their own American bombs rain down on them.

It's a survival story in many ways (trigger warning: Mary is abused by one other child resident and the book ends with a more graphic description of what happened to her brother who was imprisoned by the Japanese)--physical and sexual and emotional. But what stood our for me was the family's constant wonder and appreciation for the country, the natural environment (wonderfully captured and described), and its resilient people. And I am always in awe of how humans make do. Loved the description of the copper Christmas tree her father makes. 4.5 stars rounded up as I did lose some interest near the end once they leave the jungle.

Highly rec for lovers of memoir or WWII history. ]]> 3.81 2001
author: Mary McKay Maynard
name: Tara
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/11
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves: animal-stories, history, memoir, wwii
review:
One of the best memoirs I've ever read (but know I do not read a ton of memoir). This is an intensive look at WWII in the Philippines by an adept writer who hid from the invading Japanese in a jungle along a river for two years. The story of how she and her parents survived is remarkable, intense, and beautifully rendered.

The author as I said is a wonderful writer, but even more so, her mother was an undiscovered talent. The highlights were her sprinkled diary entries throughout. Magical, poetic. She alludes to the jungle as "dreamlike."

There was constant fear of the Japanese finding them for good reason. They even feared they could be taken to the major cities and imprisoned and have their own American bombs rain down on them.

It's a survival story in many ways (trigger warning: Mary is abused by one other child resident and the book ends with a more graphic description of what happened to her brother who was imprisoned by the Japanese)--physical and sexual and emotional. But what stood our for me was the family's constant wonder and appreciation for the country, the natural environment (wonderfully captured and described), and its resilient people. And I am always in awe of how humans make do. Loved the description of the copper Christmas tree her father makes. 4.5 stars rounded up as I did lose some interest near the end once they leave the jungle.

Highly rec for lovers of memoir or WWII history.
]]> 209302431 A once-famous ballerina faces a final choice—to return to the world of Russian dance that nearly broke her, or to walk away forever—in this incandescent novel of redemption and love

On a White Night in 2019, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St. Petersburg two years after a devastating accident stalled her career. Once the most celebrated dancer of her generation, she now turns to pills and alcohol to numb the pain of her past.

She is unmoored in her old city as the ghosts of her former life begin to her loving but difficult mother, her absentee father, and the two gifted dancers who led to her downfall.

One of those dancers, Alexander, is the love of her life, who transformed both Natalia and her art. The other is Dmitri, a dark and treacherous genius. When the latter offers her a chance to return to the stage in her signature role, Natalia must decide whether she can again face the people responsible for both her soaring highs and darkest hours.

Painting a vivid portrait of the Russian ballet world, where cutthroat ambition, ever-shifting politics, and sublime artistry collide, City of Night Birds unveils the making of a dancer with both profound intimacy and breathtaking scope. Mysterious and alluring, passionate and virtuosic, Juhea Kim’s second novel is an affecting meditation on love, forgiveness, and the making of an artist in a turbulent world.]]> 319 Juhea Kim 0063394782 Tara 0 to-read 3.96 2024
author: Juhea Kim
name: Tara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18114114 The seductive and chilling debut novel from the critically acclaimed author of The King of Limbo

In isolated British Columbia, girls, mostly native, are vanishing from the sides of a notorious highway. Leo Kreutzer and his four friends are barely touched by these disappearances—until a series of mysterious and troublesome outsiders come to town. Then it seems as if the devil himself has appeared among them.

In this intoxicatingly lush debut novel, Adrianne Harun weaves together folklore, mythology, and elements of magical realism to create a compelling and unsettling portrait of life in a dead-end town. A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is atmospheric and evocative of place and a group of people, much in the way that Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones conjures the South, or Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children provides a glimpse of the Las Vegas underworld: kids left to fend for themselves in a broken world—rendered with grit and poetry in equal measure.]]> 256 Adrianne Harun 0670786101 Tara 0 to-read 3.20 2014
author: Adrianne Harun
name: Tara
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123180176
As the Cuban Missile Crisis eases, President Kennedy is casting around for a demonstration of American prowess when one of his Cabinet unearths an old mandate that US Marines be fit enough to walk fifty miles in twenty hours. Perfect! Kennedy decides to throw down the gauntlet to “today’s Marines,�� but before he knows it, he’s sparked a wild fad. The entire country has answered the call, it seems, and for a few crazed winter weeks, masses of Americans will embark on their own arduous Big Walks—the “JFK 50-Milers.��

Yet in tiny Humtown—an isolated mill town in the Pacific Northwest—not everyone who shows up for a hastily organized Big Walk is motivated by patriotism. Not Helen Hubka, an inveterate gossip; not the suicidal Caroline, who months earlier lost her beloved husband during the Storm of the Century. Not ex-soldier/fisherman Jaspar Goode, nor the unknown man in their midst, a collared priest who seems to shift identities at will. Certainly not Avis, a battered teenager running from her terrifying brother . . . with a stolen town treasure. And when the walkers stumble upon the abandoned car of a missing young mother, they rekindle a mystery that soon reverberates among them, exposing hidden truths, talents, and alliances.

Splendidly imagined, with prose that sings on the page, On the Way to the End of the World is an adventure story riven with secrets, a national fairy tale twisted into a whodunit.]]> 248 Adrianne Harun 1946724653 Tara 0 to-read 3.78
author: Adrianne Harun
name: Tara
average rating: 3.78
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 129399192 Beth Gutcheon Tara 0 to-read 3.75 2000
author: Beth Gutcheon
name: Tara
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216522147 Fifty-Three 53-Word Story Contest Winners, Plus Tips on Writing Remarkably Brief Fiction

In 2011, Press 53 challenged their email subscribers to write a 53-word story in response to a prompt. Fewer than twenty people responded. In 2020, the contest received 13,906 entries from writers around the world. One winning story was selected for inclusion in W. W. Norton's New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, and in 2023, the 53-Word Story Contest was featured in the UK's Breathe magazine. Today, in 2024, this free and monthly 53-Word Story Contest, is used by teachers from grade school to college. WHAT DWELLS BETWEEN THE LINES celebrates the 53-Word Story Contest by sharing fifty-three of the editors' favorite winning stories, while also sharing tips on how to write remarkably brief fiction.“What dwells between the lines is essential in very short fiction.��

—Robert Scotellaro, author of What Are the Chances?: Flash Fictions (Press 53) and co-editor of New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (W.W. Norton)]]> 82 Kevin Morgan Watson 1950413810 Tara 5
Especially loved Theresa Wyatt's "Gettysburg, July, 1863," one of my favorite micros of all time, "Leaving Kyiv" by Carrie Keyes for its final, resonant image, "Buy a Donkey" by Jean-Luke Swanepoel for making me LOL, and "Autumn Heir" by Keith Padraic for making me teary eyed. But really I enjoyed them all.

Also a nice addition are the tips from authors and editors (mine included). David Jauss compares flash to a helicopter that has to take off without a long runway, Katey Schultz boils down a story to just 4 words in structure, and Christopher Allen debunks the myth of writing what you know.]]> 5.00
author: Kevin Morgan Watson
name: Tara
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/08
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: micro-fiction, short-short-fiction
review:
Very much enjoyed this micro book of micro-winning tales. It's always astonishing to me how just 53 words can be rearranged by authors to create completely different stories and emotions in the reader. From serious to comical, from insightful to surprising, these authors manage to pack a resonant punch into a tiny space.

Especially loved Theresa Wyatt's "Gettysburg, July, 1863," one of my favorite micros of all time, "Leaving Kyiv" by Carrie Keyes for its final, resonant image, "Buy a Donkey" by Jean-Luke Swanepoel for making me LOL, and "Autumn Heir" by Keith Padraic for making me teary eyed. But really I enjoyed them all.

Also a nice addition are the tips from authors and editors (mine included). David Jauss compares flash to a helicopter that has to take off without a long runway, Katey Schultz boils down a story to just 4 words in structure, and Christopher Allen debunks the myth of writing what you know.
]]> 203579258
You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.

American women—American wives—have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a beauty and a bully. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets�� to their ambitious husbands with their own, inchoate impulse to “do good�� for the people of Vietnam.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering as they do how their own lives as women on the periphery—of politics, of history, of war, of their husbands�� convictions—have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

A virtuosic new novel from Alice McDermott, one of our most observant, most affecting writers—about folly and grace, obligation, sacrifice, and, finally, the quest for absolution in a broken world.]]> 336 Alice McDermott 1250337992 Tara 0 to-read 3.87 2023
author: Alice McDermott
name: Tara
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 207252770
Once home to Vanessa: A famous artist whose notoriously unfaithful husband disappeared twenty years ago.

Now home to Grace: A solitary creature of the tides, content in her own isolation.

But when a shocking discovery is made in an art gallery far away in London, a visitor comes calling.

And the secrets of Eris threaten to emerge . . .

A masterful novel that is as page-turning as it is unsettling, The Blue Hour recalls the sophisticated suspense of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith, and cements Hawkins’s place among the very best of our most nuanced and stylish storytellers.]]> 320 Paula Hawkins 0063396521 Tara 0 to-read 3.27 2024
author: Paula Hawkins
name: Tara
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199593962 320 Eric Jay Dolin 1324093080 Tara 5 history, war, maritime The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was first published in 1719. When American Captain Barnard is deserted in 1813 on an island in the Falklands not once, but twice, he was well aware that he was following in the footsteps of the fictional Crusoe and even mentions it in his memoir.

Dolin has written another fascinating, meticulously researched maritime historical book based on the experiences of 5 castaways on the Falkland Islands during the War in 1812, which compounds many of the problems they faced. This is an intricate, complex book that weaves in politics, maritime history, and cultural history. What I particularly enjoyed were the survivor details, such as ink being made from soot and plant juice, and the use of the landscape to create shelter and utensils. I also loved that the captain taught one of the young castaways how to read using scraps of newspaper articles, and the seaman was so proud of his learning that he would have private, imaginative conversations with his mother about surprising her with his new skill (overheard by Barnard).

My takeaway: there are reasons certain people become leaders/captains, and reasons why some manage to survive and others don't.

Be aware there are many hunting scenes.

Highly rec for lovers of history, especially maritime and survivor stories. ]]> 3.88 2024
author: Eric Jay Dolin
name: Tara
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: history, war, maritime
review:
The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was first published in 1719. When American Captain Barnard is deserted in 1813 on an island in the Falklands not once, but twice, he was well aware that he was following in the footsteps of the fictional Crusoe and even mentions it in his memoir.

Dolin has written another fascinating, meticulously researched maritime historical book based on the experiences of 5 castaways on the Falkland Islands during the War in 1812, which compounds many of the problems they faced. This is an intricate, complex book that weaves in politics, maritime history, and cultural history. What I particularly enjoyed were the survivor details, such as ink being made from soot and plant juice, and the use of the landscape to create shelter and utensils. I also loved that the captain taught one of the young castaways how to read using scraps of newspaper articles, and the seaman was so proud of his learning that he would have private, imaginative conversations with his mother about surprising her with his new skill (overheard by Barnard).

My takeaway: there are reasons certain people become leaders/captains, and reasons why some manage to survive and others don't.

Be aware there are many hunting scenes.

Highly rec for lovers of history, especially maritime and survivor stories.
]]> 83063220
With elegant prose, deep readings of other writers, and scaffolded writing exercises, The Art of Brevity takes the reader on a lyrical exploration of compact storytelling, guiding readers to heighten their awareness of not only what appears on the page but also what doesn't.

ACCLAIM
"Absolutely essential reading on the power and craft of very short stories. Worth it for the brilliant analysis of narrative and poetics, worth it for Faulkner's playfulness and obvious joy on the page, worth it for the string of fascinating quotations at the end. A generous book, packed full, it is bound to be a classic."--Deb Olin Unferth, author of The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War

"Grant Faulkner, one of our finest practitioners of the very short story, gifts us with this creative, dynamic craft book. The Art of Brevity is absorbing, whimsical, and filled with the eclectic wisdom of writers, artists, and musicians who have created with an aesthetic of brevity and omission. But finally, it is Faulkner's unique, personal view on the subject of condensing short prose--as he telescopes into the fascinating 'cracks and crevices' of brevity--that makes this book a must-have for every writer's shelf."--Tara Lynn Masih, editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field

"What a what wonderful book for writers and readers of short stories! Part craft, part meditation on form, it's entirely delightful, practical, and will leave any reader with a deeper appreciation of flash fiction."--Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive Stories and Other Revenges

"In this manic world of noise and delirium, our ability to comprehend reality bends toward chaos. In brief cracks of lucidity, we scramble, hungry to purchase happiness or at least consciousness. This text is a mighty testament to the zeitgeist, an important recognition of flash as art, and a needle into our self-awareness, reflection, and clarity."--Venita Blackburn, author of How to Wrestle a Stories

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grant Faulkner is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the cofounder of 100 Word Story. His work has been widely anthologized in flash-fiction collections, and he is the author of several books, including All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, Fissures, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story.]]> 0 Grant Faulkner 0826364748 Tara 5
Grant Faulkner, one of our finest practitioners of the very short story, gifts us with this creative, dynamic craft book. The Art of Brevity is absorbing, whimsical, and filled with the eclectic wisdom of writers, artists, and musicians who have created with an aesthetic of brevity and omission. But finally, it is Faulkner’s unique, personal view on the subject of condensing short prose—as he telescopes into the fascinating “cracks and crevices�� of brevity—that makes this book a must for every writer’s shelf.]]> 4.36
author: Grant Faulkner
name: Tara
average rating: 4.36
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/26
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: flash-fiction, essays, craft-book
review:
My blurb for this wonderful craft/essay book:

Grant Faulkner, one of our finest practitioners of the very short story, gifts us with this creative, dynamic craft book. The Art of Brevity is absorbing, whimsical, and filled with the eclectic wisdom of writers, artists, and musicians who have created with an aesthetic of brevity and omission. But finally, it is Faulkner’s unique, personal view on the subject of condensing short prose—as he telescopes into the fascinating “cracks and crevices�� of brevity—that makes this book a must for every writer’s shelf.
]]> 11362971
Whether it's the dusty prairie tying together two centuries in "Ghost Dance," the fears that accompany pregnancy that are further inflamed by the heat of a Mexico border town in "The Dark Sun" or a future as dark as the coal mine the narrator seeks to distance himself from in "Where the Dog Star Never Glows," Masih deftly creates living, breathing characters from the places she describes.

This anthology of 17 short stories showcases Masih's superb talents at creating lush, lyrical and detailed worlds for her narrators to inhabit. Included here are nine award-nominated stories, two of which were nominated for literature's high honor of the Pushcart Prize for short fiction. In 2010, WHERE THE DOG STAR NEVER GLOWS achieved a further accolade for the sum of its parts by becoming a Best Books Award finalist from USA Book News.

Of Masih's writing, Publisher's Weekly ". . . Masih's stories are minimally but skillfully detailed-no last names, vague settings-giving extra weight to simple, recurring phenomena like water and color ("the evening's August melon light"). Striking and resonant, this collection should prove memorable for any fan of New Yorker-style literary short fiction."

San Francisco Book Review "It can be quite hard for one to find a collection of refreshingly diverse short stories by a single author. Readers will find Tara Masih's collection of short stories to be wonderfully engaging. Her stories break the mold. . . ."

And carp(e) libris reviews "That beautiful spirit that permeates Masih's short stories is nothing short of extraordinary. Truly written from the heart of a poet, her ability to turn a phrase is more than appealing to this particular reviewer. . . . Throughout the book there permeates an unexpected sense of peace, even as characters battle against tough life decisions. Settings and people alike are brought to life with well-chosen words handled like paint on a canvas, leaving the reader with lucid imagery and a sense of deep reflection. . . ."

Delve into a world of imagery and high literary prose. A place where mystery and emotion both run high in exotic lands. Into a world...WHERE THE DOG STAR NEVER GLOWS.]]> 110 Tara Lynn Masih 1611870569 Tara 5 4.29 2010
author: Tara Lynn Masih
name: Tara
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 203708569
After three grievous losses, Puritan woman Silence Marsh dares to question God aloud in the church, and that blasphemy lands her in trouble—she is silenced for a year by the powers that be. Broken in heart and spirit, Silence learns to mime and sign, but it isn’t until a new Boston doctor, the dashing Daniel Greenleaf, comes to her backward Cape Cod village that she begins to hope again. Rather than treating Silence with bleeding or leeches, Dr. Greenleaf prescribes fresh air, St. John’s Wort, long walks—and reading.

Silence has half a hope of getting through her year of punishment when the cry of witchcraft poisons the village. Colonial Massachusetts is still reeling from the Salem Witch Trials just 20 years before. Now, after demanding her silence, she is called to witness at a witchcraft trial—or be accused herself.

A whiff of sulfur and witchcraft shadows this literary Puritan tale of loss and redemption, based on the author's own ancestor, her seventh great-grandmother.]]> 272 Julia Park Tracey 173679549X Tara 0 to-read 4.44
author: Julia Park Tracey
name: Tara
average rating: 4.44
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210367324 A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.

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

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

For readers of The Vanishing Half and Woman of Light, this showstopping debut by a vibrant new voice in fiction is a riveting novel about the search for truth, the shadow of trauma, and the persistence of love across time.]]> 307 Amanda Peters 1646222385 Tara 0 to-read 4.11 2023
author: Amanda Peters
name: Tara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 208579990 A searing memoir about growing up in a fiercely loving, abusive rabbinical family in which the author’s father, the charismatic head of a splinter Orthodox religious community, demands unswerving loyalty—and a commitment to guarding terrible secrets. Sara Sherbill was raised by a father who was both a representative of God and a broken man harboring an intricate set of secrets. Her riveting story explores what happens when a daughter is tasked with keeping those secrets, and the cost of keeping them. It How do we live with suffering? What does it mean to heal? In the face of unspeakable harm, what can be reclaimed? Sherbill’s tale, written with grace and brutal honesty, reveals her struggle to reclaim her identity as a daughter, woman, and now mother. Most of all, it’s a story about learning to live alongside our traumas without letting them consume us—what some might call redemption.]]> 272 Sara Sherbill 1454955317 Tara 0 to-read 4.22 2024
author: Sara Sherbill
name: Tara
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203578885 For fans of “The Lottery�� and The Hunger Games, this novel set in a small town with a sinister tradition is chilling in the best possible way.

��Curdle Creek is a thoughtful, sinister tour-de-force.��
―Tananarive Due, L.A. Times Book Prize-winning author of The Reformatory


Welcome to Curdle Creek, a place just dying to make you feel at home. Osira, a forty-five-year-old widow, is an obedient follower of the strict conventions of Curdle Creek, an all-Black town in rural America stuck in the past and governed by a tradition of ominous rituals. Osira is considered blessed, but her luck changes when her children flee, she comes second to last in the Running of the Widows and her father flees when his name is called in the annual Moving On ceremony.

Forced into a test of allegiance, Osira finds herself transported back in time, then into another realm where she must answer for crimes committed by Curdle Creek. Exile forces her to jump realms again, landing Osira even farther away from home, in rural England. Safe as long as she sticks to the rules, she quickly learns there are consequences for every kindness. Each jump could lead Osira anywhere but back home.

Curdle Creek is a unique, inventive novel exploring themes of home, belonging, motherhood and what we inherit from society. This American gothic offers a mash-up of the surreal and literary horror that will appeal to fans of Ring Shout, The Underground Railroad and Lovecraft Country. Yvonne Battle-Felton’s fever dream of a tale is enthralling, layered and quite unlike anything else.]]> 304 Yvonne Battle-Felton 1250362016 Tara 0 to-read 2.83 2024
author: Yvonne Battle-Felton
name: Tara
average rating: 2.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216227714
1932. Cumberland Island off the coast of Southern Georgia is a strange place to encounter the opulence of the Gilded Age, but the last vestiges of the famed philanthropic Carnegie family still take up brief seasonal residence in their grand mansions there. This year's party at Plum Orchard is a lively young men from some of America's finest families come to experience the area's hunting beside a local guide; a beautiful debutante expecting to be engaged by the week's end, and a promising female artist who believes she has meaningful ties to her wealthy hosts. But when temptations arise and passions flare, an evening of revelry and storytelling goes horribly awry. Lives are both lost and ruined.

1959. Reclusive painter Cleo Woodbine has lived alone for decades on Kingdom Come, a tiny strip of land once occupied by the servants for the great houses on nearby Cumberland. When she is visited by the man who saved her life nearly thirty years earlier, a tempest is unleashed as the stories of the past gather and begin to regain their strength. Frances Flood is a folklorist come to Cumberland Island seeking the source of a legend - and also information about her mother, who was among the guests at a long-ago hunting party. Audrey Howell, briefly a newlywed and now newly widowed, is running a local inn. When she develops an eerie double exposure photograph, some believe she's raised a ghost--someone who hasn't been seen since that fateful night in 1932.

As a once-in-a-century storm threatens the natural landscape and shifting tides reveal what Cumberland Island has hidden all along, two timelines and the perspectives of three women intersect to illuminate the life-changing power of finding truth in a folktale.

The Fabled

Is great for book clubs with its included discussion questionsMakes a great gift for readers of Alice Hoffman, Kate Morton, and Sarah Addison AllenFeatures a gentle thread of no spice, clean romance]]> 400 Kimberly Brock 1400347548 Tara 0 to-read 3.65 2024
author: Kimberly Brock
name: Tara
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 195790694 When her mother goes missing, a young woman uncovers the secrets beneath her protected community.

The women asked: How are they safe?

And Tamsen Nightingale said: In this red grove, no woman can be harmed. No violence may come upon her. No injury to her flesh from the flesh of another.

―The Story of the Sisters, Welcoming Incantation

The Red Grove is a special place, protected. Some say a spell was cast by the community’s founder, Tamsen Nightingale. Some say the mountain lions who stalk the nearby hills guard its mysteries and its people. Some say the mighty redwoods keep them safe.

Yet Luce’s mother, Gloria, has gone missing. A man came seeking answers among the Red Grove’s mysteries―a connection to the beyond―and died. And then Gloria vanished. The Red Grove is Luce’s whole world. She is devoted to its mission, its rituals and myths. But she knows that her mother, frustrated free spirit though she might be, wouldn’t just leave without a word, wouldn’t leave her little brother, Roo, and especially their aunt Gem, whose care in that suspended state of everdream depends on Gloria in every way. But as Luce tries to figure out what has happened to her mother, she discovers that this special place is not what it seems and that protection comes at a cost.

The debut novel by the acclaimed author of The Electric Woman, Tessa Fontaine's The Red Grove is an exploration of the legacies of violence, the price of safety, and the choices we make to protect what we love.]]> 336 Tessa Fontaine 0374605815 Tara 5 Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. I love books that defy categories and authors who experiment with form and ideas. This is a dark story. Set in a grove of redwood trees, trees that are characters in the book, along with the women who live amongst them. It's about our connection to nature, the clash of myth and reality, and the novel flips back and forth between the 1990s and 1800s. The grove protects women from violence, which always hovers just outside the perimeter. It's also a love story between a daughter, Luce, and her adoptive mother, Gem. And the growing bond between brother and sister.

Fontaine's prose is as magical and creepy as her story:

"It works, Una had said, in the same way our earth spins slowly on its axis without careening off into space, and a migratory bird flies to the same spot each winter, halfway around the world. With the unknowable force of Mother Earth."

"The eyes of unseen things tracked people all the time."

Invested with the supernatural and with wild beasts and wild men and women who commit violent acts. This novel tries to find a safe place to land for all of us. And shimmers with what can lead us out of that darkness. Highly rec for readers who like mystery and magical realism and can handle rural violence that is never gratuitous nor too graphic. I'm not a fan of graphic violence but managed to read this and appreciate it and am now a fan of Fontaine's fiction.]]> 3.53 2024
author: Tessa Fontaine
name: Tara
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: crime, ecolit, ghost-story, historical-fiction, magical-realism, speculative, strong-women
review:
Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. I love books that defy categories and authors who experiment with form and ideas. This is a dark story. Set in a grove of redwood trees, trees that are characters in the book, along with the women who live amongst them. It's about our connection to nature, the clash of myth and reality, and the novel flips back and forth between the 1990s and 1800s. The grove protects women from violence, which always hovers just outside the perimeter. It's also a love story between a daughter, Luce, and her adoptive mother, Gem. And the growing bond between brother and sister.

Fontaine's prose is as magical and creepy as her story:

"It works, Una had said, in the same way our earth spins slowly on its axis without careening off into space, and a migratory bird flies to the same spot each winter, halfway around the world. With the unknowable force of Mother Earth."

"The eyes of unseen things tracked people all the time."

Invested with the supernatural and with wild beasts and wild men and women who commit violent acts. This novel tries to find a safe place to land for all of us. And shimmers with what can lead us out of that darkness. Highly rec for readers who like mystery and magical realism and can handle rural violence that is never gratuitous nor too graphic. I'm not a fan of graphic violence but managed to read this and appreciate it and am now a fan of Fontaine's fiction.
]]> 185107859
Salt River Road is a poignant exploration of healing and resilience, small-town racism and the power of human connection.]]> 288 Molly Schmidt 1760992623 Tara 0 to-read 4.12 2023
author: Molly Schmidt
name: Tara
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 198563674 A sweeping novel inspired by the untold history of women pioneers who fought to protect children caught in the storm of land barons hungry for power and oil wealth.

Oklahoma, 1909. Eleven-year-old Olive Augusta Radley knows that her stepfather doesn’t have good intentions toward the two Choctaw girls boarded in their home as wards. When the older girl disappears, Ollie flees to the woods, taking six-year-old Nessa with her. Together they begin a perilous journey to the rugged Winding Stair Mountains, the notorious territory of outlaws, treasure hunters, and desperate men. Along the way, Ollie and Nessa form an unlikely band with others like themselves, struggling to stay one step ahead of those who seek to exploit them . . . or worse.

Oklahoma, 1990. Law Enforcement Ranger Valerie Boren O’dell arrives at Horsethief Trail National Park seeking a quiet place to balance a career and single parenthood. But no sooner has Valerie reported for duty than she’s faced with local controversy over the park’s opening, a teenage hiker gone missing from one of the trails, and the long-hidden burial site of three children deep in a cave. Val’s quest to uncover the truth wins an ally among the neighboring Choctaw Tribal Police but soon collides with old secrets and the tragic and deadly history of the land itself.

In this emotional and enveloping novel, Lisa Wingate traces the story of children abandoned by the law and the battle to see justice done. Amid times of deep conflict over who owns the land and its riches, Ollie and Val traverse the wild and beautiful terrain, each leaving behind one life in search of another.]]> 368 Lisa Wingate 0593726502 Tara 0 to-read 3.81 2024
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Tara
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 204249649
When acclaimed naturalist Sy Montgomery and wildlife artist Matt Patterson arrive at Turtle Rescue League, they are greeted by hundreds of turtles recovering from injury and illness. Endangered by cars and highways, pollution and poachers, these turtles—with wounds so severe that even veterinarians would have dismissed them as fatal—are given a second chance at life. The League’s founders, Natasha and Alexxia, live by one creed. Never give up on a turtle.

But why turtles? What is it about them that inspires such devotion? Ancient and unhurried, long-lived and majestic, their lineage stretches back to the time of the dinosaurs. Some live to two hundred years, or longer.��Others spend months buried under cold winter water.

Montgomery turns to these little understood yet endlessly surprising creatures to probe the eternal question�� How can we make peace with our time? In pursuit of the answer, Sy and Matt immerse themselves in the delicate work of protecting turtle nests, incubating eggs, rescuing sea turtles, and releasing hatchlings to their homes in the wild.��We follow the snapping turtle Fire Chief on his astonishing journey as he battles against injuries incurred by a truck.

Hopeful and optimistic,�� Of Time and Turtles�� is an antidote to the instability of our frenzied world.��Elegantly blending science, memoir, philosophy, and drawing on cultures from across the globe, this compassionate portrait of injured turtles and their determined rescuers invites us all to slow down and slip into turtle time.]]> 304 Sy Montgomery 0063394235 Tara 0 to-read 4.16 2023
author: Sy Montgomery
name: Tara
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25430670 In this absorbing and suspenseful debut novel—reminiscent of Revolutionary Road and inspired by a little-known piece of history—a young couple must fight to save both their marriage and the town they live in.

In 1959, Nat Collier moves with her husband, Paul, and their two young daughters to Idaho Falls, a remote military town. An Army Specialist, Paul is stationed there to help oversee one of the country’s first nuclear reactors—an assignment that seems full of opportunity.

Then, on his rounds, Paul discovers that the reactor is compromised, placing his family and the entire community in danger. Worse, his superiors set out to cover up the problem rather than fix it. Paul can’t bring himself to tell Nat the truth, but his lies only widen a growing gulf between them.

Lonely and restless, Nat is having trouble adjusting to their new life. She struggles to fit into her role as a housewife and longs for a real friend. When she meets a rancher, Esrom, she finds herself drawn to him, comforted by his kindness and company. But as rumors spread, the secrets between Nat and Paul build and threaten to reach a breaking point.

Based on a true story of the only fatal nuclear accident to occur in America, The Longest Night is a deeply moving novel that explores the intricate makeup of a marriage, the shifting nature of trust, and the ways we try to protect the ones we love.]]> 383 Andria Williams 0812997743 Tara 0 to-read 3.63 2016
author: Andria Williams
name: Tara
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 17978193
And while the bomb was being invented, babies were born, friendships were forged, children grew up, and Los Alamos gradually transformed from an abandoned school on a hill into a real community: one that was strained by the words they couldn’t say out loud, the letters they couldn’t send home, the freedom they didn’t have. But the end of the war would bring even bigger challenges to the people of Los Alamos, as the scientists and their families struggled with the burden of their contribution to the most destructive force in the history of mankind.

The Wives of Los Alamos is a novel that sheds light onto one of the strangest and most monumental research projects in modern history, and a testament to a remarkable group of women who carved out a life for themselves, in spite of the chaos of the war and the shroud of intense secrecy.]]> 240 TaraShea Nesbit 1620405032 Tara 5 3.24 2014
author: TaraShea Nesbit
name: Tara
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves:
review:
I'm now in awe of TaraShea Nesbit and her writing. I can't wait to read her second novel. With my background in flash fiction and prose poetry, I gobbled up each exquisitely crafted paragraph. I also appreciate authors experimenting and taking chances on structure and pov. I admire the huge task of pulling this together by using a universal "we" and her being able to condense so much information from a short period of time. She leaves the reader with an artful and radiant impressionistic painting of what life was like for Los Alamos wives. And I can verify her impeccable research as well. Highly rec for lovers of literary fiction.
]]> 205673382 This illuminating book weaves personal stories of a multilingual upbringing with the latest scientific breakthroughs in inter-species communication to show how the skill of deep listening enhances our curiosity and empathy toward the world around us. Third Ear braids together personal narrative with scholarly inquiry to examine the power of listening to build interpersonal empathy and social transformation. A child of Holocaust survivors, Rosner shares stories from growing up in a home where six languages were spoken to interrogate how diverse areas of scholarship such as psychotherapy, neurolinguistics, and creativity can illuminate the complex ways we are impacted by the sounds and silences of others.��Drawing on expertise from journalists, podcasters, performers, translators, acoustic biologists, spiritual leaders, composers, and educators, this hybrid text moves fluidly along a spectrum from molecular to global to reveal how third ear listening can be a collective means for increased understanding and connection to the natural world.]]> 240 Elizabeth Rosner 1640095519 Tara 0 to-read 3.86
author: Elizabeth Rosner
name: Tara
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 44453031 The Wives of Los Alamos comes the riveting story of a stranger’s arrival in the fledgling colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts―and a crime that shakes the divided community to its core.

Ten years after the Mayflower pilgrims arrived on rocky, unfamiliar soil, Plymouth is not the land its residents had imagined. Seemingly established on a dream of religious freedom, in reality the town is led by fervent puritans who prohibit the residents from living, trading, and worshipping as they choose. By the time an unfamiliar ship, bearing new colonists, appears on the horizon one summer morning, Anglican outsiders have had enough.

With gripping, immersive details and exquisite prose, TaraShea Nesbit reframes the story of the pilgrims in the previously unheard voices of two women of very different status and means. She evokes a vivid, ominous Plymouth, populated by famous and unknown characters alike, each with conflicting desires and questionable behavior.

Suspenseful and beautifully wrought, Beheld is about a murder and a trial, and the motivations―personal and political―that cause people to act in unsavory ways. It is also an intimate portrait of love, motherhood, and friendship that asks: Whose stories get told over time, who gets believed―and subsequently, who gets punished?]]> 288 TaraShea Nesbit 163557322X Tara 0 to-read 3.38 2020
author: TaraShea Nesbit
name: Tara
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 49348747 A wildly original, cross-country novel that subverts a long tradition of family narratives and casts new light on the mythologies--national, individual, and collective--that drive and define us.

On the day of their estranged father's wedding, half sisters Cheyenne and Livy set off to claim their inheritance. It's been years since the two have seen each other. Cheyenne is newly back in Seattle, crashing with Livy after a failed marriage and a series of dead ends. Livy works refinishing boats, her resentment against her freeloading sister growing as she tamps down dreams of fishing off the coast of Alaska. But the promise of a shot at financial security brings the two together to claim what's theirs. Except, instead of money, what their father gives them is information--a name--which both reveals a stunning family secret and compels them to come to grips with it. In the face of their new reality, the sisters and their adopted brother each set out on journeys that will test their faith in one another, as well as their definitions of freedom.

Moving from Seattle's underground to the docks of the Far North, from the hideaways of the southern swamps to the storied reaches of the Great Offshore Grounds, Vanessa Veselka spins a tale with boundless verve, linguistic vitality, and undeniable tenderness.]]> 448 Vanessa Veselka 0525658076 Tara 0 to-read 3.60 2020
author: Vanessa Veselka
name: Tara
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61145046 When a severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, the lives of two women—a lonely writer obsessed with the unsolved murder of her mother’s best friend and a panicked wife whose husband has disappeared with their children—collide as the world shutters in the pandemic lockdown of 2020.

A young woman’s life seems perfect until her family goes missing. A writer lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them.

In a nod to the true crime that inspired it, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road probes unhealed generational scars in a wrenching and original work of fiction. It is both stunning and sexy and, like a bystander surprised by a curtain left open, you won’t be able to look away.]]> 320 Deborah Goodrich Royce 1637584962 Tara 4 3.49 2023
author: Deborah Goodrich Royce
name: Tara
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
An intelligent, fast-paced, intricately plotted mystery/thriller. It asks more questions than it solves.
]]> 193390623 283 Michael Parker 1958888222 Tara 0 to-read 4.50 1993
author: Michael Parker
name: Tara
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6164298 272 Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina 0060510749 Tara 0 to-read 3.81 2008
author: Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
name: Tara
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201335511 1808 Agnes Banks, NSW

Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist Charles Winton, on his groundbreaking study of the platypus. Not only does she love him with all her heart, but the discoveries they have made could turn the scientific world on its head. When Charles is unable to make the long sea journey to present his findings to the prestigious Royal Society in England, Rosie must venture forth in his stead. What she discovers there will change the lives of future generations.

1908 Sydney, NSW

Tamsin Alleyn has been given a mission: travel to the Hunter Valley and retrieve an old sketchbook of debatable value, gifted to the Public Library by a recluse. But when she gets there, she finds there is more to the book than meets the eye, and more than one interested party. Shaw Everdene, a young antiquarian bookseller and lawyer seems to have his own agenda when it comes to the book �� and Tamsin. In an attempt to discover the book's true provenance Tamsin decides to work with him.

The deeper they delve, the more intricate the mystery becomes. As the lives of two women a century apart converge, discoveries rise up from the past and reach into the future, with irrevocable consequences...]]> 368 Tea Cooper 1400344719 Tara 0 to-read 4.00 2017
author: Tea Cooper
name: Tara
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 43866638
As Sarah faces challenges in her new job--made complicated by complex local politics and a forbidden love--Quinn copes with their mother's refusal to talk about the past, her son's life-threatening illness, and her own increasingly troubled marriage. When Sarah asks Quinn to join her in India, Quinn realizes that the only way to overcome the past is to return to it, and it is in this place of stunning natural beauty and hidden danger that the sisters can finally understand the ways in which their family has disappeared--from their shared history, from one another--and recognize that they may need to risk everything to find themselves again.

With dramatic urgency, a powerful sense of place, and a beautifully rendered cast of characters revealing a deep understanding of human nature in all its flawed glory, Katy Yocom has created an unforgettable novel about saving all that is precious, from endangered species to the indelible bonds among family.]]> 316 Katy Yocom 1618220837 Tara 4 4.24 2019
author: Katy Yocom
name: Tara
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/26
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 192724951 A man lunges in front of a car. An elderly woman silently drowns herself. A corpse sits up in its coffin and speaks. On this reservation, not all is what it seems, in this new spine-chilling mythological horror from the author of Sisters of the Lost Nation.

All Noemi Broussard wanted was a fresh start. With a new boyfriend who actually treats her right and a plan to move from the reservation she grew up on—just like her beloved Uncle Louie before her—things are finally looking up for Noemi. Until the news of her boyfriend’s apparent suicide brings her world crumbling down.

But the facts about Roddy’s death just don’t add up, and Noemi isn’t the only one who suspects that something menacing might be lurking within their tribal lands.

After over a decade away, Uncle Louie has returned to the reservation, bringing with him a past full of secrets, horror, and what might be the key to determining Roddy’s true cause of death. Together, Noemi and Louie set out to find answers…but as they get closer to the truth, Noemi begins to wonder whether it might be best for some secrets to remain buried.]]> 370 Nick Medina 0593546881 Tara 4 Sisters of the Lost Nation, this 2nd novel in the series can be read as a follow up or as a stand-alone story. Both are set in the same fictional reservation of the "Takoda" tribe that was featured in Book 1 and there are crossover characters. In this book, Medina speaks from two points of view, and swings between past and present, weaving a tapestry of myth and lore and horror and tragedy. It's a sad song of the Takoda people and the ravages that have occurred to their culture and families and social structures. But it's also a song of hope and resilience.

What makes Medina's work stand above the usual horror books is his psychological wisdom and ability to put his insight on to the page: "Some people--the lucky ones--can fulfill their needs themselves. Others require a little help." "We come into this world crying, and though the tears dry up from time to time, there's no such thing as a forever drought."

And perhaps this could be the theme of this novel and the wider world: "Evil never really goes away. It just searches for its next opportunity to spread and posses and steal all our light. It relocates."

Medina will continue to ferret out those evil corners and provide us with an important glimpse into the Native world and the worlds of our own making.]]> 3.58 2024
author: Nick Medina
name: Tara
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/16
date added: 2024/07/21
shelves:
review:
On the heels of Medina's hugely popular Sisters of the Lost Nation, this 2nd novel in the series can be read as a follow up or as a stand-alone story. Both are set in the same fictional reservation of the "Takoda" tribe that was featured in Book 1 and there are crossover characters. In this book, Medina speaks from two points of view, and swings between past and present, weaving a tapestry of myth and lore and horror and tragedy. It's a sad song of the Takoda people and the ravages that have occurred to their culture and families and social structures. But it's also a song of hope and resilience.

What makes Medina's work stand above the usual horror books is his psychological wisdom and ability to put his insight on to the page: "Some people--the lucky ones--can fulfill their needs themselves. Others require a little help." "We come into this world crying, and though the tears dry up from time to time, there's no such thing as a forever drought."

And perhaps this could be the theme of this novel and the wider world: "Evil never really goes away. It just searches for its next opportunity to spread and posses and steal all our light. It relocates."

Medina will continue to ferret out those evil corners and provide us with an important glimpse into the Native world and the worlds of our own making.
]]> 40378238 In Search of Lost Time to life for an audience of prison inmates. In a series of lectures, Czapski described the arc and import of Proust’s masterpiece, sketched major and minor characters in striking detail, and movingly evoked the work’s originality, depth, and beauty. Eric Karpeles has translated this brilliant and ­altogether unparalleled feat of the critical imagination into English for the first time, and in a thoughtful introduction he brings out how, in reckoning with Proust’s great meditation on memory, Czapski helped his fellow officers to remember that there was a world apart from the world of the camp. Proust had staked the art of the novelist against the losses of a lifetime and the imminence of death. Recalling that triumphant wager, unfolding, like Sheherazade, the intricacies of Proust’s world night after night, Czapski showed to men at the end of their tether that the past remained present and there was a future in which to hope.

Includes an 8-page color insert of Czapski’s lecture notes.]]> 107 Józef Czapski 1681372592 Tara 0 to-read 4.13 1948
author: Józef Czapski
name: Tara
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 195790688
Along with her husband, a ghostwriter for a famous thriller author returns to her mother's house in the Florida town where she grew up. As the summer heat sets in, she wrestles with family secrets and memories of her own troubled youth. Her mercurial sister, who lives next door, spends a growing amount of time using MIND’S EYE, a virtual reality device provided to citizens of the town by ELECTRA, a tech company in South Florida, during the doldrums of a recent pandemic. But it’s not just the ominous cats, her mother’s burgeoning cult, or the fact that her belly button has become an increasingly deep cavern―something is off in the town, and it probably has to do with the posters of missing citizens spread throughout the streets.

During a violent rainstorm, the writer’s sister goes missing for several days. When she returns, sprawled on their mother’s lawn and speaking of another dimension, the writer is forced to investigate not only what happened to her sister and the other missing people but also the uncanny connections between ELECTRA, the famous author, and reality itself.

A sticky, rain-soaked reckoning with the elusive nature of storytelling, Laura van den Berg’s Florida Diary is an interlocking and page-turning whirlwind. With inimitable control and thrilling style, she reaches deep into the void and returns with a story far stranger than either reality or fiction.]]> 224 Laura van den Berg 037461220X Tara 0 to-read 3.41 2024
author: Laura van den Berg
name: Tara
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 212806648 A young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost, navigating truths about love, friendship, and power as the Civil War looms.

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.

When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests�� coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.

With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?]]> 368 Erin Crosby Eckstine 0593725115 Tara 0 to-read 4.21 2025
author: Erin Crosby Eckstine
name: Tara
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199534540 Set in a foreboding Gothic mansion and infused with the heightened paranoia and creeping horror of novels like Catherine House and Crimson Peak, a spine-chilling debut historical thriller from a fresh voice in the genre that will leave you questioning who, or what, you can trust . . . including your own sanity.

England, 1840. Orabella Mumthrope spies an unexpected visitor in her uncle’s parlor. Scruffy in appearance yet claiming to be the scion of a fabulously wealthy family, Elias Blakersby declares a deep desire to make Orabella his wife. The orphaned daughter of a white man and a Black woman—an outsider with no fortune or connections—Orabella never expected to marry. But her uncle has many debts, and Orabella, curious about the seeming devotion Elias bestows upon her, agrees.

The new bride is quickly whisked away to Korringhill Manor, the Blakersby family estate, and far from everything she knows. Expecting splendor, Orabella is shocked to find decay, skittish servants, and curt elders. But her kind new husband’s loving touch, promises of a happy life together, and his assurances she’ll never want for anything soothe her concerns.

Yet there is a darkness deep within this house. Rooms are locked or hidden away, and the walls seem to thrum with secrets. Orabella can never venture outside unattended; she spends her days having tea with a catatonic sister-in-law and evenings at Elias’s side, dutifully hosting lavish dinners. The darkness soon begins to engulf her, too. Becoming dizzy and drowsy after dinner, she falls into a fitful sleep filled with macabre dreams, and is awakened by blood-curdling screams in the night. In the morning she rises from her bed covered in mysterious bruises. Confused and terrified, she begins to question where her dreams end and reality begins. The longer Orabella stays in this place, the more she loses parts of herself . . . how long until she no longer exists?

Midnight Rooms is a sweeping saga with supernatural undertones set in Victorian England. Vibrating with tension, richly atmospheric—haunted by ghosts, guilt, and familial bonds—it is an electrifying story that will linger in your dreams.]]> 336 Donyae Coles 0063228092 Tara 0 to-read 3.35 2024
author: Donyae Coles
name: Tara
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 182598343
When a severed hand washes ashore in the wealthy enclave of Palm Beach, Florida, the lives of two women—a lonely writer obsessed with the unsolved murder of her mother’s best friend and a panicked wife whose husband has disappeared with their children—collide as the world shutters in the pandemic lockdown of 2020.

�� Reef Road is magnificent. It feels utterly real, a novel of deeply personal context. It swerves between truth and lies—the lies that lead to an even deeper—and more devastating—truth. Though pure fiction, it reads as compellingly as a mixture of memoir and exposé. It has left me shaken to the core. Deborah Goodrich Royce writes with brilliant understanding of the mystery and occasional grace of trauma.�� —Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author

A young woman’s life seems perfect until her family goes missing. A writer lives alone with her dog and collects arcane murder statistics. What each of them stands to lose as they sneak around the do-not-enter tape blocking Reef Road beach is exposed by the steady tightening of the cincture encircling them.

In a nod to the true crime that inspired it, Deborah Goodrich Royce’s Reef Road probes unhealed generational scars in a wrenching and original work of fiction. It is both stunning and sexy and, like a bystander surprised by a curtain left open, you won’t be able to look away.]]> 320 Deborah Goodrich Royce Tara 0 to-read 3.00 2023
author: Deborah Goodrich Royce
name: Tara
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 131067678
Anneke hopes to convince the charismatic de Groot to use his influence to persuade Blaeu to include her map in the Atlas Maior , which will be the largest and most expensive publication of the century. But family secrets, infidelity, and murder endanger her dream. Will her map withstand these threats, or will it be forever lost?]]> 312 Rebecca D’Harlingue 1647425476 Tara 0 to-read 3.70 2023
author: Rebecca D’Harlingue
name: Tara
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 182484361 A housemaid with a dangerous family secret conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia.

The rebel . . . the socialite . . . and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this “beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom�� (Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends).

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives.

Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.]]> 368 Ashton Lattimore 0593600150 Tara 0 to-read 3.79 2024
author: Ashton Lattimore
name: Tara
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61686006 A young Native girl's hunt for answers about the women mysteriously disappearing from her tribe's reservation lead her to delve into the myths and stories of her people, all while being haunted herself, in this atmospheric and stunningly poignant debut.

Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation's casino...and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step--an ancient tribal myth come-to-life, one that's intent on devouring her whole.

With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she's sure lies in the legends of her tribe's past.

When Anna's own little sister also disappears, she'll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation--both ancient and new--are strong, and sometimes, it's the stories that never get told that are the most important.

Part gripping thriller and part mythological horror, author Nick Medina spins an incisive and timely novel of life as an outcast, the cost of forgetting tradition, and the courage it takes to become who you were always meant to be.]]> 338 Nick Medina 0593546857 Tara 5 indigenous, magical-realism 3.85 2023
author: Nick Medina
name: Tara
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: indigenous, magical-realism
review:
I'm not a huge fan of horror or fantasy, so this took me by surprise. I loved the main character Anna Horn, who is a member of the "Takoda" tribe (fictionalized by Medina, who is himself part of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe). Loved spending time with her thoughts, her spunk, her refusal to be labeled and her desire to just be herself, her ability to tune in to nature and myth. The plot has been done before, but the characters make you care. Bullying is a factor, and Medina takes it on with deep empathy. I admired how he opens chapters and creates fresh metaphors. Infused with Native American mythology that sometimes borders on horror, this was a great, fast-paced, absorbing read, and focuses on how one can only reach one's full potential through change. 4.5 stars.
]]> 196056205 A mesmerising novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor �� a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth.

They were sisters and they would last past the end of time.

Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive. Sam works long days on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can’t earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence.

Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want? When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it’s time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the plan to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger.

A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us �� and within us �� Bear is a propulsive, mythical, rich novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.]]> 304 Julia Phillips 0525520430 Tara 0 to-read 3.21 2024
author: Julia Phillips
name: Tara
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199757490 A chilling horror novel about a haunting told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,�� from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
��
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s��Mommy,��Daddo,��and Grandma Ruth.��But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”����
��
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay.��
��
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents' marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.����
��
But Other Mommy needs an answer.��
��
Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror told by the child Bela. A story about a family as haunted as their home.]]> 367 Josh Malerman 0593723120 Tara 0 to-read 3.61 2024
author: Josh Malerman
name: Tara
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 173955779 The Son and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko and inspired by a true story, this stunning US literary debut captures the never-before-told journey of the Baleine Brides: a ship full of young women plucked from a Paris asylum and sent to marry settlers in North America's rough Louisiana Territory.

Paris, 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in crisis: too many occupants, not enough beds. Halfway across the world, France's colony in the wilds of North America has space to spare and needs families to fill it. So the director of the hospital rounds up nearly a hundred female “volunteers�� of childbearing age—orphans, prisoners, and mental patients—to be shipped to New Orleans.

Among this group are three unlikely friends: a sharp-tongued twelve-year old orphan, a mute ‘madwoman,�� and an accused abortionist. Charlotte, Pétronille, and Geneviève, along with the dozens of other women aboard La Baleine, have no knowledge of what lies ahead and no control over their futures. Strangers brought together by fate, these brave and fierce young women will face extraordinary adversity—pirates, slavedrivers, sickness, war—but also the private trauma of heartbreak and unrequited love, children born and lost, cruelty and unexpected pleasure, and a friendship forged in fire that will sustain through the years.

At once a gorgeously written work of startling depth and emotion and a gripping drama marrying high-seas adventure with pioneer grit, Pelican Girls is a powerful, thought-provoking novel about female friendship and desire and the daunting compromises women are forced to make to survive.]]> 368 Julia Malye 0063299755 Tara 0
Overall, I'm glad I read it. Malye has touches of brilliance and there was a lot to learn about this time in history.]]> 3.17 2024
author: Julia Malye
name: Tara
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves: historical-fiction, history, lgbtq, southern-fiction, strong-women
review:
It took me eons to get into this book and have interest in the characters. I struggled through the first half, then it seemed to smooth out and the characters grew into themselves and I became more invested. Some wonderful historical details of a difficult time for both the women who were basically conscripted to marry white pioneer men in Louisiana (who, warning to men, mostly come off as barbaric and violent and misogynistic) with some acknowledgment of the plight of the indigenous tribes that were betrayed and pushed out. The issue of slavery is barely confronted.

Overall, I'm glad I read it. Malye has touches of brilliance and there was a lot to learn about this time in history.
]]> 195888522 A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community

In 1938, a dead whale washes up on the shores of remote Welsh island. For Manod, who has spent her whole life on the island, it feels like both a portent of doom and a symbol of what may lie beyond the island's shores. A young woman living with her father and her sister (to whom she has reluctantly but devotedly become a mother following the death of their own mother years prior), Manod can't shake her welling desire to explore life beyond the beautiful yet blisteringly harsh islands that her hardscrabble family has called home for generations.

The arrival of two English ethnographers who hope to study the island culture, then, feels like a boon to her—both a glimpse of life outside her community and a means of escape. The longer the ethnographers stay, the more she feels herself pulled towards them, reckoning with a sensual awakening inside herself, despite her misgivings that her community is being misconstrued and exoticized.

With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person's ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O'Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.]]> 224 Elizabeth O'Connor 0593700910 Tara 0 to-read 3.80 2024
author: Elizabeth O'Connor
name: Tara
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 125636554 233 Karen Holmberg 1646034376 Tara 5
In a timeless tale that is part magical myth, part wilderness story, a mysterious “Being�� pens and carves the fate of several remote island villagers, just as the author, Karen Holmberg, deftly uses her poetic ability to craft a riveting coming-of-age journey of “closings and openings.�� The Collagist will appeal to readers of all ages, and Romilly’s quest for independence and answers to family secrets will resonate with many young people. An absolutely stunning debut.
]]> 4.09
author: Karen Holmberg
name: Tara
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/24
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves: animal-stories, ecolit, fantasy, ghost-story, magical-realism, rural, speculative, surreal, young-adult
review:
My book blurb for this wonderful, award-winning debut:

In a timeless tale that is part magical myth, part wilderness story, a mysterious “Being�� pens and carves the fate of several remote island villagers, just as the author, Karen Holmberg, deftly uses her poetic ability to craft a riveting coming-of-age journey of “closings and openings.�� The Collagist will appeal to readers of all ages, and Romilly’s quest for independence and answers to family secrets will resonate with many young people. An absolutely stunning debut.

]]> 190108419 FINALIST, FOREWORD INDIES 2024 BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD

Fleeing death by the Spanish Inquisition, a Jewish doctor makes an impossible choice between home and faith, then struggles to lead his family on a journey for a new life.

GRANADA, SPAIN, 1492. Vidal ha-Rofeh is a Jewish physician devoted to his faith, his family, and his patients. When Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand conquer Granada they sign the Alhambra Decree, an edict ordering all Jews convert to Catholicism or depart Spain in three months' time under penalty of death.

Against his wife's belief that converting is safer than exile, Vidal insists they flee. Unwillingly leaving behind their oldest daughter with her Catholic husband, Vidal's family joins a caravan of 200 Jews journeying to start their lives anew across the sea in Fez. On the caravan, Vidal struggles to balance his physician duties of caring for the sick while struggling to mend strained relationships with his family. At the same time, his daughter back home finds herself exposed to the Spanish Inquisition living as a converso in a Christian empire.

Presenting readers with a painful but important part of Jewish history, South of Sepharad is a heroic, heart-breaking story of a father who holds tightly to his faith, his family, and his integrity all while confronting the grief of the past and the harsh realities of forced exile.]]> 334 Eric Z. Weintraub Tara 5
Trigger warnings: some graphic medical scenes (the main character is a doctor) and one brief torture scene, but easy to skim over these]]> 4.22
author: Eric Z. Weintraub
name: Tara
average rating: 4.22
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/04/15
shelves: historical-fiction, history, war
review:
A strong debut from author Eric Weintraub, who did intensive research on the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. While there have been some fiction books on the theme, this one is more immersive in terms of history and culture and landscape. Beautiful prose and well-executed descriptions of place make the reader feel they are there, at each point of the journey, from city to caravan to beach to Africa. Weintraub cares deeply for his characters, and it shows. Emotionally charged and tragic, but with a message of hope. An important contribution to Sephardic history.

Trigger warnings: some graphic medical scenes (the main character is a doctor) and one brief torture scene, but easy to skim over these
]]> 69722
Reading Jamaica Kincaid is to plunge, gently, into another way of seeing both the physical world and its elusive inhabitants. Her voice is, by turns, naively whimsical and biblical in its assurance, and it speaks of what is partially remembered partly divined. The memories often concern a childhood in the Caribbean--family, manners, and landscape--as distilled and transformed by Kincaid's special style and vision.

Kincaid leads her readers to consider, as if for the first time, the powerful ties between mother and child; the beauty and destructiveness of nature; the gulf between the masculine and the feminine; the significance of familiar things--a house, a cup, a pen. Transfiguring our human form and our surroundings--shedding skin, darkening an afternoon, painting a perfect place--these stories tell us something we didn't know, in a way we hadn't expected.]]> 82 Jamaica Kincaid 0374527342 Tara 0 to-read 3.81 1983
author: Jamaica Kincaid
name: Tara
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 184808202 232 Adrian Van Young 1625570600 Tara 0 to-read 5.00
author: Adrian Van Young
name: Tara
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127282570
Περνώντας απαρατήρητοι, οι ακτιβιστές κηπουροί, με αρχηγό τη Μίρα Μπάντινγκ, φυτεύουν λαχανικά, συχνά παραβιάζοντας μεγάλες ιδιοκτησίες. Δεν έχουν όμως υπολογίσει τον αινιγματικό Ρόμπερτ Λεμόιν, μεγιστάνα βιομηχανίας ντρόουν, που ενδιαφέρεται επίσης για το ίδιο κομμάτι γης. Μπορούν να τον εμπιστευτούν; Και, εν τέλει, καθώς μέσα από μια απροσδόκητη διαδικασία δοκιμάζονται βάναυσα οι αρχές και η ιδεολογία τους, μπορούν να εμπιστευτούν ο ένας τον άλλον;

Ένα συναρπαστικό λογοτεχνικό θρίλερ από τη βραβευμένη με Booker Έλενορ Κάττον, σαιξπηρικό ως προς το πνεύμα, τη δραματική πλοκή και την ολοκληρωμένη σκιαγράφηση των χαρακτήρων. Μια έξοχα δομημένη αφήγηση για τις προθέσεις, τις πράξεις και τις συνέπειές τους, και κυρίως για αυτό το ακατανίκητο ένστικτο του ανθρώπου για επιβίωση.]]> 423 Eleanor Catton 1250321719 Tara 0 to-read 3.89 2023
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Tara
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 198276006 I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.]]> 336 Leif Enger 0802162932 Tara 0 to-read 3.96 2024
author: Leif Enger
name: Tara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 154462576 New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.]]> 325 Katherine Arden 0593128257 Tara 0 to-read 3.97 2024
author: Katherine Arden
name: Tara
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 149793013
NEVER TELL A SOUL.

In the fall of 1961, while deer hunting in a North Florida pine forest, Winston Taylor stumbles upon a young colored man lying dead in the dirt, Winston, who is white, is a well-respected life insurance agent from the small town of Pineville. Since the man appears to be the victim of a hunting accident, Winston resolves to do the right thing and take the body to the Sheriff’s Department. He can’t just leave it for the already-circling buzzards. Once he discovers the dead man’s identity, however, he realizes that the deceased has the ability to incriminate him in his own unethical and illegal insurance practices. In the horror of the moment, insanity ensues and Winston dumps the corpse into a wet sinkhole, vowing to clean up his transgressions and keep the whole event a lifelong secret. Two years later, Winston unwittingly hires a new insurance agent with the power to blow that sinkhole secret straight out of the water.]]> 323 Terresa Cooper Haskew Tara 0 to-read 4.33 2024
author: Terresa Cooper Haskew
name: Tara
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 154527508 During the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale

January 1918. Laura Iven was a revered field nurse until she was wounded and discharged from the medical corps, leaving behind a brother still fighting in Flanders. Now home in Halifax, Canada, she receives word of Freddie’s death in combat, along with his personal effects—but something doesn’t make sense. Determined to uncover the truth, Laura returns to Belgium as a volunteer at a private hospital. Soon after arriving, she hears whispers about haunted trenches, and a strange hotelier whose wine gives soldiers the gift of oblivion. Could Freddie have escaped the battlefield, only to fall prey to something—or someone—else?

November 1917. Freddie Iven awakens after an explosion to find himself trapped in an overturned pillbox with a wounded enemy soldier, a German by the name of Hans Winter. Against all odds, the two men form an alliance and succeed in clawing their way out. Unable to bear the thought of returning to the killing fields, especially on opposite sides, they take refuge with a mysterious man who seems to have the power to make the hellscape of the trenches disappear.

As shells rain down on Flanders, and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging—or better left behind entirely.]]> 327 Katherine Arden 0593128265 Tara 0 to-read 4.10 2024
author: Katherine Arden
name: Tara
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127976148
The Funeral Cryer long ago accepted the mundane realities of her life: avoided by fellow villagers because of the stigma attached to her job and under-appreciated by her husband, whose fecklessness has pushed the couple close to the brink of break-up. But just when things couldn't be bleaker, she takes a leap of faith—and in so doing things start to take a surprising turn for the better.

Dark, moving and wry, The Funeral Cryer is both an illuminating depiction of a “left behind�� society—and proof that it's never too late to change your life.]]> 336 Wenyan Lu 1335016937 Tara 0 to-read 3.34
author: Wenyan Lu
name: Tara
average rating: 3.34
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 203994965 A woman is accused of killing her husband, but is she actually guilty? Inspired by a true historical case.

Liverpool, England, 1889: In the shadowy streets, the air is thick with secrets and the line between guilt and innocence blurs. Twenty-six-year-old Constance Sullivan is brought to trial charged with poisoning her husband, William. But William was no ordinary victim��

As Constance's barrister fights to prove her innocence, a sinister web of deception unravels, exposing the dark underbelly of their seemingly idyllic marriage. One by one, witnesses emerge with incriminating testimony and facts about the dark side of Constance and William’s marriage are revealed. For many, the widow’s guilt seems clear. But is someone holding the key to the whole truth?]]> 334 Tonya Mitchell 1504093607 Tara 0 to-read 3.85 2024
author: Tonya Mitchell
name: Tara
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1423967 257 Shouhua Qi 1592650414 Tara 0 to-read 3.50 2000
author: Shouhua Qi
name: Tara
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 174146851
The American Daughters follows Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl who is enslaved alongside her mother, Sanite to��a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans.��Sanite and her mother Ady are an inseparable duo—taking walks along the river,��working together in the fields and spending nights looking up at the stars, dreaming. Ady’s favorite pastime is listening to Sanite's stories of her families' origins, their fierce and rebellious nature, and the everlasting love that strengthens their bond.

When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and unmoored, until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called The Daughters. With the courage instilled in her by Sanite—and��help from these strong women—Ady learns how to choose herself. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.��The American Daughters is a novel of hope and triumph that reminds us what is possible when a community bands together to fight for their right to live free.]]> 304 Maurice Carlos Ruffin 0593729390 Tara 0 to-read 3.56 2024
author: Maurice Carlos Ruffin
name: Tara
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62054146 A heartwarming story about the power of books to bring us together, inspired by the true story of the underground library in WWII Warsaw, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London.

All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship: books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also in need of saving.

With the death count rising and persecution intensifying, Zofia jumps to action to save her friend and salvage whatever books she can from the wreckage, hiding them away, and even starting a clandestine book club. She and her dearest friend never surrender their love of reading, even when Janina is forced into the newly formed ghetto.

But the closer Warsaw creeps toward liberation, the more dangerous life becomes for the women and their families—and escape may not be possible for everyone. As the destruction rages around them, Zofia must fight to save her friend and preserve her culture and community using the only weapon they have left—literature.]]> 416 Madeline Martin 1335455027 Tara 5
Besides being a WWII novel, this is also a timely novel about book banning. It shows the power of books and what they mean to a whole city. Martin's descriptions of the ghetto are especially poignant, and she highlights the historical fact that people used suitcases to secretly transport books, as mobile libraries, to residents. Books served as a lifeline, literally, to the Polish and Jewish community, and it's wonderful to have a book that depicts the bravery of librarians and volunteers who risked their lives to save these books. Martin brings to life in seamless prose their sacrifices and actions so they aren't forgotten, along with the sacrifices made in the Jewish community to save their libraries and the centuries of knowledge contained within the covers.

Underlying the book theme is the greater theme of sacrifice for fellow friends and neighbors, as many in Poland risked their lives and their families lives to save Jewish citizens, and the nation of Poland itself. As important as books are, they pale in comparison to a person's life and their freedom, and Martin takes great pains to remind us of this. I look forward to her next book!]]> 4.07 2023
author: Madeline Martin
name: Tara
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
shelves: historical-fiction, history, holocaust, strong-women, wwii, war
review:
I have a high bar for historical fiction, and this book met that bar. I could not help but be a bit in awe of Martin's ability to do deep research and weave it all into a complex plot that does not feel forced in any way. Loved the many small details, such as using the water in the backs of toilets to put out fires in the home due to incendiary bombs. I'm a history nerd who lives for that kind of info!

Besides being a WWII novel, this is also a timely novel about book banning. It shows the power of books and what they mean to a whole city. Martin's descriptions of the ghetto are especially poignant, and she highlights the historical fact that people used suitcases to secretly transport books, as mobile libraries, to residents. Books served as a lifeline, literally, to the Polish and Jewish community, and it's wonderful to have a book that depicts the bravery of librarians and volunteers who risked their lives to save these books. Martin brings to life in seamless prose their sacrifices and actions so they aren't forgotten, along with the sacrifices made in the Jewish community to save their libraries and the centuries of knowledge contained within the covers.

Underlying the book theme is the greater theme of sacrifice for fellow friends and neighbors, as many in Poland risked their lives and their families lives to save Jewish citizens, and the nation of Poland itself. As important as books are, they pale in comparison to a person's life and their freedom, and Martin takes great pains to remind us of this. I look forward to her next book!
]]> 149882641
The book is available for purchase online through Barnes & Noble

and

Main Street Rag Publishing Company]]> 37 Terresa Cooper Haskew 1599484560 Tara 5 5.00
author: Terresa Cooper Haskew
name: Tara
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/02/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 48929825 How do you forgive yourself—and the people you love—when a shocking discovery leads to a huge mistake? Acclaimed author Christine Heppermann’s novel-in-verse tackles betrayals and redemption among family and friends with her signature unflinching—but always sharply witty—style. For fans of Elana K. Arnold, Laura Ruby, and A. S. King.

When Jorie wakes up in the loft bed of a college boy she doesn’t recognize, she’s instantly filled with regret. What happened the night before? What led her to this place? Was it her father’s infidelity? Her mother’s seemingly weak acceptance? Her recent breakup with Ian, the boy who loved her art and supported her through the hardest time of her life?

As Jorie tries to reconstruct the events that led her to this point, free verse poems lead the reader through the current morning, as well as flashbacks to her relationships with her parents, her friends, her boyfriend, and the previous night.

With��Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty��and��Ask Me How I Got Here,��Christine Heppermann established herself as a vital voice in thought-provoking and powerful feminist writing for teens. Her��poetry is surprising, wry, emotional, and searing.��What Goes Up��is by turns a scorchingly funny and a deeply emotional story that asks whether it’s possible to support and love someone despite the risk of being hurt. Readers of Laura Ruby, E. K. Johnston, Elana K. Arnold, and Laurie Halse Anderson will find a complicated heroine they won’t soon forget.]]> 176 Christine Heppermann 0062387987 Tara 0 to-read 3.06 2020
author: Christine Heppermann
name: Tara
average rating: 3.06
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>