E.R.'s bookshelf: all en-US Thu, 12 Jun 2025 05:37:57 -0700 60 E.R.'s bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction]]> 49449926 The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, visionary author Ursula K. Le Guin retells the story of human origin by redefining technology as a cultural carrier bag rather than a weapon of domination.

Hacking the linear, progressive mode of the Techno-Heroic, the Carrier Bag Theory of human evolution proposes: 'before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.' Prior to the preeminence of sticks, swords and the Hero's long, hard, killing tools, our ancestors' greatest invention was the container: the basket of wild oats, the medicine bundle, the net made of your own hair, the home, the shrine, the place that contains whatever is sacred. The recipient, the holder, the story. The bag of stars.

This influential essay opens a portal to terra ignota: unknown lands where the possibilities of human experience and knowledge can be discovered anew.

With a new introduction by Donna Haraway, the eminent cyberfeminist, author of the revolutionary A Cyborg Manifesto and most recently, Staying with the Trouble and Manifestly Haraway. With images by Lee Bul, a leading South Korean feminist artist who had a retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery in 2018.]]> 5 Ursula K. Le Guin E.R. 4 2025 4.65 1986 The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.65
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/12
date added: 2025/06/12
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Burnout Society 25490360
]]> 60 Byung-Chul Han 0804795096 E.R. 0 currently-reading 3.87 2010 The Burnout Society
author: Byung-Chul Han
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #3)]]> 130957
As the book opens, Maya, in order to support herself and her young son, gets a job in a record shop run by a white woman. Suspicious of almost any kindness shown her, she is particularly confused by the special attentions of a young white customer. Soon the relationship grows into love and then marriage, and Maya believes a permanent relationship is finally possible. But it is not to be, and she is again forced to look for work.

This time she finds a job as a dancer in a sleazy San Francisco bar. Her remarkable talent, however, soon brings her attention of a different kind, and before long she is singing in one of the most popular nightclubs on the coast. From there, she is called to New York to join the cast of Porgy and Bess, which is just about to begin another tour abroad.

The troupe's joyous and dramatic adventure through Italy, France, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Egypt becomes the centerpiece of Singin' and Swingin'. This remarkable portrayal of one of the most exciting and talented casts ever put together, and of the encounters between these larger-than-life personalities and audiences who had rarely seen black people before, makes a hilarious and poignant story. The excitement of the journey -- full of camaraderie, love affairs, and memorable personalities -- is dampened only by Maya's nagging guilt that she has once again abandoned the person she loves most in life, her son.

Back home, and driven close to suicide by her guilt and concern, she takes her son with her to Hawaii, where she discovers that devotion and love, in spite of forced absence, have the power to heal and sustain.

As always, Maya Angelou's writing is charged with that remarkable sense of life and love and unique celebration of the human condition that have won her such a loyal following.]]> 288 Maya Angelou 0679457771 E.R. 4 2025 4.27 1976 Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #3)
author: Maya Angelou
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1976
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/06/10
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Gather Together in My Name 130200

From the Paperback edition.]]> 224 Maya Angelou 0553379976 E.R. 4 2025 4.32 1974 Gather Together in My Name
author: Maya Angelou
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1974
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/06/06
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)]]> 13214
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.� At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare�) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.]]> 289 Maya Angelou 0553279378 E.R. 4 2025 4.30 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
author: Maya Angelou
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1969
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/06/05
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Golden Gate 768496
John Brown, a successful yuppie living in 1980s San Francisco meets a romantic interest in Liz, after placing a personal ad in the newspaper. From this interaction, John meets a variety of characters, each with their own values and ideas of "self-actualization." However, Liz begins to fall in love with John's best friend, and John realizes his journey of self-discovery has only just begun.]]> 307 Vikram Seth 0679734570 E.R. 4 2025 4.02 1986 The Golden Gate
author: Vikram Seth
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1986
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/06/05
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Bones Beneath My Skin 211004023 A spine-tingling thriller by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about a 10-year-old girl with an impossible power, her father, and an unlikely stranger, who come together to confront the dangerous forces that want her at all costs. A strange story of family, love, comets, and bacon. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother wants nothing to do with him, and he's been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington DC. With nothing left to lose, he returns to his family's summer cabin outside the small mountain town of Roseland, Oregon to try and find some sense of direction. The cabin should be empty. It's not. Inside is a man named Alex. And with him is an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader. Artemis, who isn't exactly as she appears.

Soon it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: let himself drown in the memories of his past, or fight for a future he never thought possible. Because the girl is special. And forces are descending upon them who want nothing more than to control her.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 1250890438 E.R. 4 2025 4.08 2018 The Bones Beneath My Skin
author: T.J. Klune
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/06/04
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Letters of Note: Mothers 49530235 A fascinating new volume of messages about motherhood, from the author of the bestselling Letters of Note collections

TK]]> 144 Shaun Usher 0143134728 E.R. 3 2022 3.85 Letters of Note: Mothers
author: Shaun Usher
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/15
date added: 2025/06/03
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Water in the Desert Fire in the Night]]> 232660247 Gethan Dick 1915290163 E.R. 4 2025 3.85 Water in the Desert Fire in the Night
author: Gethan Dick
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/05/29
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Rembrandt's Promise 223072661 Stunning historical immersion into the world of Rembrandt with a gripping plot of a promise turned sour. For fans of Stacey Halls, Maggie O'Farrell and Tracy Chevalier.

Hanging beside the door is a painting of a wedding feast. ­ The light is centred on the bride; the guests are banished to the shade. ­ That is how it is when he looks at all others fade away.

1642. ­The Dutch Golden Age is underway, with Amsterdam at the height of its powers. Geertje, an impoverished widow from Edam, enters a melting pot of wealth and culture when she becomes nursemaid in the house of renowned painter Rembrandt.
After Rembrandt's wife dies, Geertje grows close to him. Despite her friends' warnings she begins a passionate affair with the master of light and shadow, with devastating results.
Based on the true story of a wronged woman who demanded justice, with themes of feminism, loss, ambition and redemption, Rembrandt's Promise is a remarkable debut, perfect for fans of sumptuous historical fiction.]]> 368 Barbara Leahy 1804186384 E.R. 5 2025 3.92 Rembrandt's Promise
author: Barbara Leahy
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.92
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/05/19
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Sisters (The Seven Sisters, #1)]]> 22609358
Eighty years earlier in Rio’s Belle Epoque of the 1920s, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into the aristocracy. Meanwhile, architect Heitor da Silva Costa is devising plans for an enormous statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela—passionate and longing to see the world—convinces her father to allow her to accompany him and his family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s studio and in the heady, vibrant cafes of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.

In this sweeping, epic tale of love and loss—the first in a unique, spellbinding series of seven novels—Lucinda Riley showcases her storytelling talent like never before.]]> 460 Lucinda Riley 1476759901 E.R. 3 2025 4.15 2014 The Seven Sisters (The Seven Sisters, #1)
author: Lucinda Riley
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Oh Miriam!: Stories from an Extraordinary Life]]> 75479352 'Oh Miriam! risks the curse of the sequel, and pulls it off . . . A force of nature, a tour de farce. Bold, brave and bright, but also revealing, shocking and touching. Miriam is an icon, a cocksucker - and the star of her show' ROBERT McCRUM, Independent

'Our naughtiest national treasure . . . famously filthy, funny and phlegmatic . . . Oh Miriam! is Margolyes's manifesto for a fulfilled life . . . She loves to tell it straight. And the older she gets, the straighter she tells it' SIMON HATTENSTONE, Guardian

'Irrepressible . . . A life-enhancing rollercoaster of a ride . . . this book is like Margolyes herself - outspoken, ebullient and unexpectedly wise' EMMA LEE-POTTER, Daily Express

'Snortingly funny . . . deliciously unbridled . . . There is something heroic in her unruliness. Let Miriam take the lead and enjoy the show' RHIK SAMADDER, Observer

'Insanely interesting, full of profanity and profundity, Oh Miriam!'s title comes from all the people who have ever exclaimed her name in every tone from horror to hilarity; and her unfiltered personality leaps off the page - honesty, kindness, generosity, sanity, erudition, outspokenness' SUZANNE HARRINGTON, Irish Examiner

'Endearingly eccentric' WOMEN'S WEEKLY

From declaring my love to Vanessa Redgrave to being fed cockroaches by Steve Buscemi, from turnip-based comedy with Blackadder to being farted on by Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Graham Norton's sofa to Alan Cumming's camper van, my life has been (and continues to be) an uproarious adventure.

Oh Miriam! has been such a constant refrain in my life, said in all kinds of tones - laughs, surprised gasps and orgasmic sighs (I'm hoping for all of those from you as you read on!) - that it had to be the title of this book. And with a cast list that stretches from Churchill to DiCaprio, Dahl to Dietrich, Princess Margaret to Maggie Smith, I've so much more to tell you and so much more to say.

My chapters range from 'How to Stay Married' to 'Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down'. Discover how to break the thickest conversational ice; why swearing is actually good for you (though not on the Today programme); the unexpected things I learned at school and what my Spice Girl name would be. Not to mention my Tale of the Unexpected and my very own Vagina Monologue.

Buckle up and join me on another unforgettable adventure, but this time through my heart and head . . .]]> 321 Miriam Margolyes 1399803387 E.R. 4 2025 4.03 2023 Oh Miriam!: Stories from an Extraordinary Life
author: Miriam Margolyes
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/05/05
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Lady MacBethad 63070795
Daughter of an ousted king, descendant of ancient druids, as a child it is prophesied that one day Gruoch will be queen of Alba.

When she is betrothed to Duncan, heir elect, this appears to confirm the prophecy. She leaves behind her home, her family and her close friend MacBethad, and travels to the royal seat at Scone to embrace her new position.

But nothing is as Gruoch anticipates. Duncan's court is filled with sly words and unfriendly faces, women desperate to usurp her position, and others whose motives are shrouded in mystery. As her coronation approaches, a deadly turn of events forces Gruoch to flee Duncan and the capital, finding herself alone, vulnerable and at the mercy of an old enemy. Her hope of becoming Queen all but lost, Gruoch does what she must to survive, vowing that one day she will fulfill her destiny and take up the future owed to her. Whatever it may take.

A suspenseful, sweeping historical epic, Lady MacBethad is the origin story of the woman who inspired one of Shakespeare's most iconic characters.]]> 363 Isabelle Schuler 1526647257 E.R. 5 2025 4.04 2023 Lady MacBethad
author: Isabelle Schuler
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Arabella Pepper The Wild Detective]]> 230310576
Faced with losing everyone she loves, can Arabella use her Wild Detective skills to solve her toughest mystery yet, keep Blue, and reunite her parents before it’s too late?

A story of friendship and bravery, the adventures of Arabella and Blue will keep you on the edge of your seat and steal your heart.]]> 272 E.R. Murray 1739813340 E.R. 5 5.00 2025 Arabella Pepper The Wild Detective
author: E.R. Murray
name: E.R.
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves:
review:

]]> Frog Music 18295858
The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice--if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts.

In thrilling, cinematic style, FROG MUSIC digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other.]]> 405 Emma Donoghue 031632468X E.R. 3 2025 3.18 2014 Frog Music
author: Emma Donoghue
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> One of Our Kind 200287110 #1 New York Times bestselling author Nicola Yoon’s daring new work of dystopian horror is a propulsive satire set in an all-Black gated community. For fans of The Sellout and Erasure, with a shocking ending you’ll never see coming, One of Our Kind has been celebrated with rave reviews from The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Time, Seth Meyers, and more.

�One of Our Kind [has]...a freight-train feel. Yoon reminds us...of the richness and intimacy of Black culture, and underlines how much more we are than our trauma."
—Kashana Cauley, The New York Times

"Brilliant...Your book club will be discussing this one for DAYS.� —Jodi Picoult

“With haunting and powerful prose, Nicola Yoon brilliantly imagines a world with much to tell us about our own.�
—John Green, New York Times best-selling author of Turtles All the Way Down

"For readers who want to be taken to the edge of expectation, and solidly dropped into the middle of a new nightmare. I still have goosebumps.�
—Ashley C. Ford, New York Times best-selling author of Somebody’s Daughter

“Masterful. . . . Yoon maintains taut, nerve-shattering suspense throughout as she delves into societal fault lines and cultural anxieties" � Publishers Weekly, STARRED

Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive. King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality, but Liberty residents seem more focused on booking spa treatments and ignoring the world’s troubles.

Jasmyn’s only friends in the community are equally perplexed and frustrated by most residents' outlook. Then Jasmyn discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders. Frustration turns to dread as their loved ones start embracing the Liberty way of life.

Will the truth destroy her world in ways she never could have imagined?

Thrilling with insightful social commentary, One of Our Kind explores the ways in which freedom is complicated by the presumptions we make about ourselves and each other.]]> 272 Nicola Yoon 0593470672 E.R. 5 2025 3.24 2024 One of Our Kind
author: Nicola Yoon
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Sparks of Bright Matter 200631129 400 Leeanne O'Donnell 1804185078 E.R. 4 2025 3.20 Sparks of Bright Matter
author: Leeanne O'Donnell
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.20
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Ten Planets: Stories 60784737 A collection of fanciful, philosophical science fictions by “one of Mexico’s finest novelists� (Vulture).

The characters that populate Yuri Herrera’s surprising new story collection inhabit imagined futures that reveal the strangeness and instability of the present. Drawing on science fiction, noir, and the philosophical parables of Jorge Luis Borges’s Fictions and Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, these very short stories are an inspired extension of this significant writer’s work.

In Ten Planets, objects can be sentient and might rebel against the unhappy human family to which they are attached. A detective of sorts finds clues to buried secrets by studying the noses of his clients, which he insists are covert maps. A meager bacterium in a human intestine gains consciousness when a psychotropic drug is ingested. Monsters and aliens abound, but in the fiction of Yuri Herrera, knowing who is the monster and who the alien is a tricky proposition.

In Ten Planets, Herrera’s consistent themes—the mutability of borders, the wounds and legacy of colonial violence, and a deep love of storytelling in all its forms—are explored with evident brilliance and delight.]]> 112 Yuri Herrera 1644452235 E.R. 4 2025 3.58 2019 Ten Planets: Stories
author: Yuri Herrera
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Poor: Grit, courage, and the life-changing value of self-belief]]> 86547006 320 Katriona O'Sullivan 1844886212 E.R. 4 2025 4.58 Poor: Grit, courage, and the life-changing value of self-belief
author: Katriona O'Sullivan
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.58
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Animals Eat Each Other 32073130
As Lilith grows closer to Matt, she begins to recognize the dark undertow of obsession and jealousy that her presence has created between Matt and Frances, and finds herself balancing on a knife’s edge between pain and pleasure, the promise of the future and the crushing isolation of the present. With stripped-down prose and unflinching clarity, Nash examines madness in the wreckage of love, and the loss of self that accompanies it. Nash's work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Elle, Marie Claire and others.
]]> 121 Elle Nash 1938604431 E.R. 4 2025 3.46 2017 Animals Eat Each Other
author: Elle Nash
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Betty 48564330 A stunning, lyrical novel set in the rolling foothills of the Appalachians in which a young girl discovers stark truths that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

"A girl comes of age against the knife."

So begins the story of Betty Carpenter. Born in a bathtub in 1954 to a Cherokee father and white mother, Betty is the sixth of eight siblings. The world they inhabit is one of poverty and violence--both from outside the family, and also, devastatingly, from within. The lush landscape, rich with birdsong, wild fruit, and blazing stars, becomes a kind of refuge for Betty, but when her family's darkest secrets are brought to light, she has no choice but to reckon with the brutal history hiding in the hills, as well as the heart-wrenching cruelties and incredible characters she encounters in her rural town of Breathed, Ohio.

But despite the hardship she faces, Betty is resilient. Her curiosity about the natural world, her fierce love for her sisters, and her father's brilliant stories are kindling for the fire of her own imagination, and in the face of all she bears witness to, Betty discovers an escape: she begins to write. She recounts the horrors of her family's past and present with pen and paper and buries them deep in the dirt--moments that has stung her so deeply, she could not tell them, until now.

Inspired by the life of her own mother, Tiffany McDaniel sets out to free the past by telling this heartbreaking yet magical story--a remarkable novel that establishes her as one of the freshest and most important voices in American fiction.]]> 480 Tiffany McDaniel 052565707X E.R. 5 2025 4.40 2020 Betty
author: Tiffany McDaniel
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> The Glass Lake 34310 704 Maeve Binchy 0752876872 E.R. 4 2025 3.95 1994 The Glass Lake
author: Maeve Binchy
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Crudo 43811235 The Lonely City.

"She had no idea what to do with love, she experienced it as invasion, as the prelude to loss and pain, she really didn’t have a clue."

Kathy is a writer. Kathy is getting married. It’s the summer of 2017 and the whole world is falling apart. Fast-paced and frantic, Crudo unfolds in real time from the full-throttle perspective of a commitment-phobic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker.

From a Tuscan hotel for the superrich to a Brexit-paralyzed United Kingdom, Kathy spends the first summer of her forties adjusting to the idea of a lifelong commitment. But it’s not only Kathy who’s changing. Fascism is on the rise, truth is dead, the planet is heating up, and Trump is tweeting the world ever-closer to nuclear war. How do you make art, let alone a life, when one rogue tweet could end it all?

In Crudo, her first work of fiction, Olivia Laing radically rewires the novel with a fierce, compassionate account of learning to love when the end of the world seems near.]]> 160 Olivia Laing 0393357414 E.R. 4 2025 3.10 2018 Crudo
author: Olivia Laing
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> 'Salem's Lot 5413 Also contains: One For the Road, Jerusalem's Lot. For standalone novel see ISBN 9780450031069.

Stephen King's second novel, the classic vampire bestseller 'Salem's Lot, tells the story of evil in small-town America. For the first time in a major trade edition, this terrifying novel is accompanied by previously unpublished material from King's archive, two short stories, and eerie photographs that bring King's fictional darkness and evil to vivid life.

When Stephen King’s classic thriller 'Salem's Lot hit the stands in 1975, it thrilled and terrified millions of readers with tales of demonic evil in small-town America. Now, thirty years later and still scaring readers witless, 'Salem's Lot reemerges in a brilliant new edition, complete with photographs, fifty pages of deleted and alternate scenes, and two short stories related to the events of the novel.

While the original edition of 'Salem's Lot will forever be a premier horror classic, 'Salem's Lot: Illustrated Edition, with the inclusion of material from King’s archive, is destined to become a classic in its own right and a must-have for all Stephen King fans. In this edition, the hair-raising story of Jerusalem’s Lot, a small town in Maine whose inhabitants succumb to the evil allure of a new resident, is told as the author envisioned it, complete with fifty pages of alternate and deleted scenes. With a new introduction by the author, two short stories related to the events and residents of Jerusalem’s Lot, the lavishly creepy photographs of Jerry Uelsmann, and a stunning new page design, this edition brings the story to life in words and pictures as never before.

No library will be complete without this ideal collector’s item for any King aficionado, the definitive illustrated edition of the great 'Salem's Lot.]]> 594 Stephen King 0385516487 E.R. 4 2018-reads 4.28 1975 'Salem's Lot
author: Stephen King
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1975
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: 2018-reads
review:

]]> The Library Thief 200153487 A strikingly original and absorbing mystery about a white-passing bookbinder in Victorian England and the secrets lurking on the estate where we she works, for fans of Fingersmith and The Confessions of Frannie Langton

The library is under lock and key. But its secrets can't be contained.

1896. After he brought her home from Jamaica as a baby, Florence's father had her hair hot-combed to make her look like the other girls. But as a young woman, Florence is not so easy to tame—and when she brings scandal to his door, the bookbinder throws her onto the streets of Manchester.

Intercepting her father's latest commission, Florence talks her way into the remote, forbidding Rose Hall to restore its collection of rare books. Lord Francis Belfield's library is old and full of secrets—but none so intriguing as the whispers about his late wife.

Then one night, the library is broken into. Strangely, all the priceless tomes remain untouched. Florence is puzzled, until she discovers a half-burned book in the fireplace. She realizes with horror that someone has found and set fire to the secret diary of Lord Belfield's wife–which may hold the clue to her fate�

Evocative, arresting and tightly plotted, The Library Thief is at once a propulsive Gothic mystery and a striking exploration of race, gender and self-discovery in Victorian England.]]> 368 Kuchenga Shenjé 1335909699 E.R. 0 to-read 3.26 2024 The Library Thief
author: Kuchenga Shenjé
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Heart in Winter 199795387 Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romantic tale of young lovers on the lam in 1890s Montana.

October 1891. A hard winter approaches across the Rocky Mountains. The city of Butte, Montana is rich on copper mines and rampant with vice and debauchery among a hard-living crowd of immigrant Irish workers. Here we find Tom Rourke, a young poet and ballad-maker of the town, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington. A thunderbolt love affair takes spark between Tom and Polly and they strike out west on a stolen horse, moving through the badlands of Montana and Idaho, and briefly an idyll of wild romance perfects itself. But a posse of deranged Cornish gunmen are soon in hot pursuit and closing in fast. With everything to lose and the safety and anonymity of San Francisco still a distant speck on their horizon, the choices they make will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

In this love story for the ages—lyrical, profane and propulsive—Kevin Barry has once again demonstrated himself to be a master stylist, an unrivalled humourist, and a true poet of the human heart.]]> 256 Kevin Barry 0385550596 E.R. 5 2025 3.78 2024 The Heart in Winter
author: Kevin Barry
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Whale Fall 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 E.R. 4 2025 3.80 2024 Whale Fall
author: Elizabeth O'Connor
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> Fall on Your Knees 5174 Fall on Your Knees follows four remarkable sisters whose lives are filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love. Their experiences will take them from their stormswept homeland, across the battlefields of World War I, to the freedom and independence of Jazz-era New York City.

Compellingly written, running the literary gamut from menacingly dark to hilariously funny, this is an epic saga of one family’s trials and triumphs in a world of sin, guilt, and redemption.]]> 672 Ann-Marie MacDonald 0743466527 E.R. 5 2025 3.97 1996 Fall on Your Knees
author: Ann-Marie MacDonald
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves: 2025
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash]]> 35658247 Vivid, bawdy, comic, and arresting: the exciting new novel by the Indonesian phenomenon

Ajo Kawir is one of the toughest fighters in the Javanese underworld, his fearlessness matched only by his unquenchable thirst for brawling. But the young thug is driven by a painful secret � he is impotent. When he finally meets his match in the shape of the fearsomely beautiful bodyguard Iteung, Ajo is left bruised, battered and overjoyed � he has fallen in love. But will he ever be able to make Iteung happy if he can’t get it up?

Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash is a gloriously pulpy tale of bloody fists, broken hearts and dueling Jakarta truckers, from the Man Booker International-longlisted author of Beauty is a Wound.

Eka Kurniawan was born in Tasikmalaya, Indonesia in 1975. He studied philosophy at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta and has since published several novels and short stories. He was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016 and his books have been translated into 33 languages. His highly acclaimed, epic work of magical realism Beauty is a Wound is also available from Pushkin Press.

]]> 233 Eka Kurniawan 1782272763 E.R. 4 2024 3.56 2014 Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash
author: Eka Kurniawan
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Man Tiger 23012658
Lyrical and bawdy, experimental and political, this extraordinary novel announces the arrival of a powerful new voice on the global literary stage.]]> 172 Eka Kurniawan 1781688591 E.R. 4 2024 3.99 2004 Man Tiger
author: Eka Kurniawan
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Maralinga 7155678 The power to love, the power to hate, the power to destroy human existence ... MARALINGA has them all!

During the darkest days of the Cold War, in the remote wilderness of a South Australian desert, the future of an infant nation is being decided . . . without its people's knowledge.

A British airbase in the middle of nowhere; an atomic weapons testing ground; an army of raw youth led by powerful, ambitious men - a cocktail for disaster. Such is Maralinga in the spring of 1956.

MARALINGA is a story of British Lieutenant Daniel Gardiner, who accepts a twelve-month posting to the wilds of South Australia on a promise of rapid promotion; Harold Dartleigh, Deputy Director of MI-6 and his undercover operative Gideon Melbray; Australian Army Colonel Nick Stratton and the enigmatic Petraeus Mitchell, bushman and anthropologist. They all find themselves in a violent and unforgiving landscape, infected with the unique madness and excitement that only nuclear testing creates.

MARALINGA is also a story of love; a love so strong that it draws the adventurous young English journalist Elizabeth Hoffmann halfway around the world in search of the truth. And MARALINGA is a story of heartbreak; heartbreak brought to the innocent First Australians who had walked their land unhindered for 40,000 years.

Maralinga . . . a desolate place where history demands an emerging nation choose between hell and reason.]]> 512 Judy Nunn 1741666783 E.R. 4 2024 3.89 2009 Maralinga
author: Judy Nunn
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Deleted (Love and the Village #1)]]> 51054620 A young adult romance with a hint of mystery.]]> 198 Sylvia Hehir 1913510034 E.R. 4 2024 4.00 Deleted (Love and the Village #1)
author: Sylvia Hehir
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life / The Little Book of Hygge / Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living]]> 40534545 3 Books Collection Set:

Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

The people of Japan believe that everyone has an ikigai � a reason to jump out of bed each morning. And according to the residents of the Japanese island of Okinawa � the world’s longest-living people � finding it is the key to a longer and more fulfilled life. Inspiring and comforting, this book will give you the life-changing tools to uncover your personal ikigai. It will show you how to leave urgency behind, find your purpose, nurture friendships and throw yourself into your passions.

The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well

The Danish word hygge is one of those beautiful words that doesn't directly translate into English, but it more or less means comfort, warmth or togetherness. Hygge is the feeling you get when you are cuddled up on a sofa with a loved one, in warm knitted socks, in front of the fire, when it is dark, cold and stormy outside. It that feeling when you are sharing good, comfort food with your closest friends, by candle light and exchanging easy conversation. It is those cold, crisp blue sky mornings when the light through your window is just right.

Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living

Step aside Hygge. Lagom is the new Scandi lifestyle trend taking the world by storm. This delightfully illustrated book gives you the lowdown on this transformative approach to life and examines how the lagom ethos has helped boost Sweden to the No.10 ranking in 2017's World Happiness Report. Lagom (pronounced 'lah-gom') has no equivalent in the English language but is loosely translated as 'not too little, not too much, just right'. It is widely believed that the word comes from the Viking term 'laget om', for when a mug of mead was passed around a circle and there was just enough for everyone to get a sip.]]> Héctor García 9123672609 E.R. 3 2024 3.85 2018 Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life / The Little Book of Hygge / Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living
author: Héctor García
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Birth Canal 75660876 160 Dias Novita Wuri 1957363622 E.R. 4 2024 3.56 Birth Canal
author: Dias Novita Wuri
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.56
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Little House 16187
It was easy for Elizabeth. She married the man she loved, bore him two children and made a home for him which was the envy of their friends.

It was harder for Ruth. She married Elizabeth’s son and then found that, somehow, she could never quite measure up�

Isolation, deceit and betrayal fill the gaps between the two individual women and between their different worlds. In this complex thriller, Philippa Gregory deploys all her insight into what women want and what women fear, as Ruth confronts the shifting borders of her own sanity. Laying bare the comfortable conventions of rural England, this spine-tingling novel pulses with suspense until the whiplash double-twist of the denouement.]]> 368 Philippa Gregory 0006496431 E.R. 3 2024 3.65 1996 The Little House
author: Philippa Gregory
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.65
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The White Castle 11693 In the 17th century, a young Italian scholar sailing from Venice to Naples is taken prisoner and delivered to Constantinople. There he falls into the custody of a scholar known as Hoja--"master"--a man who is his exact double. In the years that follow, the slave instructs his master in Western science and technology, from medicine to pyrotechnics. But Hoja wants to know more: why he and his captive are the persons they are and whether, given knowledge of each other's most intimate secrets, they could actually exchange identities.
Set in a world of magnificent scholarship and terrifying savagery, The White Castle is a colorful and intricately patterned triumph of the imagination.]]> 145 Orhan Pamuk 0571164668 E.R. 3 2024 3.53 1985 The White Castle
author: Orhan Pamuk
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.53
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)]]> 154488299 The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

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

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

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

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.]]> 201 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717716 E.R. 3 2024 3.70 2013 The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Breakdown 63237765
She travels first by car and then train to Rosslare, from where she takes a ferry to Fishguard in Wales. Along the way, she finds herself in service stations, shopping centres, train stations, ferry terminals; recalling her youth, earlier fantasies of suicide and reminiscing about those people who have come in and out of her life.

Finally, 48 hours later, alone and isolated in a cottage in Wales, in a strange and eerie landscape, the woman reaches her nadir.

Breakdown is a novel about the rage and reckoning of a middle aged, educated woman who has lived her life in accordance with the expectations of society.]]> 218 Cathy Sweeney 1474618510 E.R. 4 2024 3.67 2023 Breakdown
author: Cathy Sweeney
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> A Fix of Light 216350026 A trans love story with a dark magical twist, from an astonishing new Irish voice.

Be careful. The dark is listening.


Hanan is supposed to be dead.

The forest outside Skenashogue sent him home alive - but changed. A strange new magic makes every emotion a physical force he can't control.

Bright and gentle, fox-like Pax is everything Hanan is not. And when he touches Hanan he mutes his secret power, quiets the curse.

To survive their own darknesses they'll need to be honest with each other. But Hanan isn't sure Pax will like what he finds out...

Can their love help them find their way back to the light?]]> 280 Kel Menton 191507164X E.R. 5 2024 4.50 A Fix of Light
author: Kel Menton
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Firmin 24824613 165 Sam Savage 8432290459 E.R. 5 3.67 2006 Firmin
author: Sam Savage
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:

]]> Confrontations 133939077 A bold, unsettling, surprisingly tender debut novel for readers of Nightcrawling and fans of I May Destroy You.

Salomé Atabong is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Cameroonian father and a Dutch mother, living in the Netherlands. She arrives at a juvenile detention center to start a six-month sentence for a violent crime, which she did commit but does not regret. Expected to visit with a racist psychologist and perform her apologies, Salomé refuses to atone. But even if Salomé could get home, it would be no refuge: her father has recently been diagnosed with liver cancer, and her elder sister Miriam’s main preoccupation is to get out of the village as soon as possible.

After months in the prison system, she realizes she must come to terms with her anger, sorrow, and guilt, as well as the crime she has committed and the real reason behind her rage.

Raw, unsentimental, but lyrically written, Confrontations captures the paradoxical demands society makes on Black women, the way communities, schools, and the prison system perpetuate racism, and the cost of Black female defiance.]]> 192 Simone Atangana Bekono 1639730915 E.R. 5 2024 3.46 2020 Confrontations
author: Simone Atangana Bekono
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> More Than This 21969786
As he struggles to understand what is happening, the boy dares to hope. Might this not be the end? Might there be more to this life, or perhaps this afterlife?

From multi-award-winning Patrick Ness comes one of the most provocative and moving novels of our time.]]> 480 Patrick Ness 1406350486 E.R. 4 2024 3.94 2013 More Than This
author: Patrick Ness
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/08/31
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Wilder Girls 42505366
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.]]> 357 Rory Power 0525645586 E.R. 5 2024 3.46 2019 Wilder Girls
author: Rory Power
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/14
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Catfish Rolling 61900207
There's a catfish under the islands of Japan and when it rolls the land rises and falls.

Sora hates the catfish whose rolling caused an earthquake so powerful it cracked time itself. It destroyed her home and took her mother. Now Sora and her scientist father live close to the zones � the wild and abandoned places where time runs faster or slower than normal. Sora is sensitive to the shifts, and her father recruits her help in exploring these liminal spaces.

But it's dangerous there � and as she strays further inside in search of her mother, she finds that time distorts, memories fracture and shadows, a glimmer of things not entirely human, linger. After Sora's father goes missing, she has no choice but to venture into uncharted spaces within the time zones to find him, her mother and perhaps even the catfish itself...]]> 432 Clara Kumagai 1803288043 E.R. 5 2024 3.64 2023 Catfish Rolling
author: Clara Kumagai
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend 25728101
Sheils is very pleased with her perfectly controlled life (controlling others while she’s at it). She’s smart, powerful, the Student Body Chair, and she even has a loving boyfriend. What more could a girl ask for?

But everything changes when the first-ever interspecies transfer student, a pterodactyl named Pyke, enrolls at her school. There’s something about him—something primal—that causes the students to lose control whenever he’s around. Even Sheils, the seemingly perfect self-confident girl that she is, can’t keep her mind off of him, despite her doting boyfriend and despite the fact that Pyke immediately starts dating Jocelyn, the school’s fastest runner who Sheils has always discounted as a nobody.

Pyke, hugely popular in a school whose motto is to embrace differences, is asked to join a band, and when his band plays at the Autumn Whirl dance, his preternatural shrieking music sends everyone into a literal frenzy. No one can remember what happened the next day, but Shiels learns that she danced far too long with Pyke, her nose has turned purple, and she may have done something with her boyfriend that she shouldn’t have. Who’s in control now?

Hilarious and relatable (despite the dinosaur), Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend is about a teen who must come to terms with not being in control of all things at all times, break free of her mundane life, discover who her true self is, and, oh, finding out that going primal isn’t always a bad thing]]> 408 Alan Cumyn 1481439804 E.R. 3 2024 2.09 2016 Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend
author: Alan Cumyn
name: E.R.
average rating: 2.09
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Bearmouth 51003661

An utterly distinctive voice, propulsive and page-turning storytelling, high stakes, heart-stopping twists, and a sense of moral purpose make Bearmouth an unforgettable and unparalleled debut.


ձ> 256 Liz Hyder 1324015861 E.R. 5 2024 3.73 2019 Bearmouth
author: Liz Hyder
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Girl who Fell to Earth 123387684 288 Patricia Forde 1915071437 E.R. 5 2024 3.74 The Girl who Fell to Earth
author: Patricia Forde
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.74
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/27
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Seaborne 207599750
When their secrets are exposed, the family emigrates to the new colony of Carolina, but this fresh start will bring devastating loss and stifling responsibilities. Lonely and transgressive, Anne finds comfort only with Bedelia, servant and intimate friend. But her craving for the sea-wandering life and a misjudged marriage to young Gabriel Bonny will compel Anne to take to the sea again, this time around the islands of the Caribbean, famous for plunder and piracy.

Adventure, passion and freedom await, but so do violence and disappointment. And, as she tries to stay true to herself, her hopes and her few precious friendships, Anne Bonny must also face her own privilege and the sacrifices required for enduring love.

Seaborne is the thrilling and sensuous portrait of a young woman out of step with her time and place, but never her heart.]]> 326 Nuala O'Connor 1848408935 E.R. 5 2024 3.65 2024 Seaborne
author: Nuala O'Connor
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Hagstone 198133381
On a wild and rugged island cut off and isolated to some, artist Nell feels the island is her home. It is the source of inspiration for her art, rooted in landscape, folklore and the feminine. The mysterious Inions, a commune of women who have travelled there from all over the world, consider it a place of refuge and safety, of solace in nature.

All the islanders live alongside the strange murmurings that seem to emanate from within the depths of the island, a sound that is almost supernatural � a Summoning as the Inions call it. One day, a letter arrives at Nell’s door from the reclusive Inions who invite Nell into the commune for a commission to produce a magnificent art piece to celebrate their long history. In its creation, Nell will discover things about the community and about herself that will challenge everything she thought she knew.

Beautifully written, prescient and eerily haunting, Sinéad Gleeson’s fiction debut takes in the darker side of human nature and the mysteries of faith and the natural world. A novel from one of our most beloved literary voices, this is perfect for fans of Margaret Atwood and Sarah Moss.]]> 307 Sinéad Gleeson 0008626669 E.R. 5 2024 3.54 2024 Hagstone
author: Sinéad Gleeson
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Raptures 59573884
It is late June in Ballylack. Hannah Adger anticipates eight long weeks' reprieve from school, but when her classmate Ross succumbs to a violent and mysterious illness, it marks the beginning of a summer like no other.

As others fall ill, questions about what - or who - is responsible pitch the village into conflict and fearful disarray. Hannah, ever the outsider, is haunted by guilt as she remains healthy while her friends are struck down. Isolated and afraid, she prays for help. What happens next will force her to question everything she believes.

Bursting with Carson's trademark wit, profound empathy and soaring imagination, The Raptures explores how tragedy can unite a small community - and tear it apart. At its heart is the extraordinary resilience of one young girl. As the world crumbles around her, she must find the courage to be different in a place where conforming feels like the only option available.]]> 336 Jan Carson E.R. 5 2024 3.84 2022 The Raptures
author: Jan Carson
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Death in Her Hands 52878453
While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body". Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to area, having moved her from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home.

A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, 'Death in Her Hands' asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both guide us closer to the truth and keep us at bay from it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, only this time the stakes have never been higher.]]> 259 Ottessa Moshfegh 1984879359 E.R. 3 2024 3.25 2020 Death in Her Hands
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/05/04
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> The Island 922991
Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone's throw from the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga - Greece's former leper colony. Then she finds Fotini, and at last hears the story that Sofia has buried all her life: the tale of her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters and a family rent by tragedy, war and passion. She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island, and how secrecy holds them all in its powerful grip...]]> 473 Victoria Hislop 0755309510 E.R. 3 2024 4.09 2005 The Island
author: Victoria Hislop
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/04/29
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Neverwhere (London Below, #1) 14497
"Neverwhere" is the London of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Strange destinies lie in wait in London below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train.

Now a single act of kindness has catapulted young businessman Richard Mayhew out of his safe and predictable life - and into the realms of "Neverwhere." Richard is about to find out more than he ever wanted to know about this other London. Which is a pity. Because Richard just wants to go home...]]> 370 Neil Gaiman 0060557818 E.R. 4 2024 4.17 1996 Neverwhere (London Below, #1)
author: Neil Gaiman
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/16
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Bewilderment 56404444 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.

A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.

The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain�

With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?]]> 278 Richard Powers 0393881148 E.R. 4 2024 3.87 2021 Bewilderment
author: Richard Powers
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/04/01
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Our father 41448981 A moving testimonial of a woman who, for the first time after forty–three years, meets up with her father.
She carries her memories along with her.
With him is his daughter from his second marriage.
What will this encounter bring them?
What can the meeting of two strangers � to whom someone had said that they are father and daughter � bring?

OUR FATHER
A painful, dramatic and sincere confession of experiences that leave their traces on the soul just like stains on silk.
About family. About fathers and daughters. About emotional blackmail. Negligence and indifference. About the feeling of guilt, real and imposed.

OUR FATHER
A novel of warning � what you must never do to your children

OUR FATHER
The third book from the author’s cycle dealing with the family
A sequel to the novels Ana Maria did not love me and Feminine genealogy.]]> 132 Ljiljana Habjanović Đurović 8679000663 E.R. 5 2022 4.56 2014 Our father
author: Ljiljana Habjanović Đurović
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/30
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> Ana Maria did not love me 50514465 Iva decided to go for this bitter self confession to get the venom out of herself, in order to survive. She has to be trusted, even when she is speaking about the most fearful and incredible. For children remember the truth. Children sense injustice best.
ANA MARIA DIDN'T LOVE ME is a story about (un)love of brotherhood and unity of all south Slavic nations, about fear and hope of ‘Yugoslavian�, about the abysses of inhumanity and nonsense in which a human is hurled by hate of the ones who are different, about the abuse of God and man’s need to believe, for doing everything that is opposite to any of the ten commandment.
ANA MARIA DIDN'T LOVE ME is a reminder, and at the same time, a book of proofs that only love can save us.]]> 156 Ljiljana Habjanović Đurović E.R. 0 to-read 0.0 1991 Ana Maria did not love me
author: Ljiljana Habjanović Đurović
name: E.R.
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> When Light Is Like Water 60441204 'A triumph' Joseph O'Connor
'Fresh and raw and completely entrancing' Sara Baume
'Powerful' Edmund White

Alice, a young American on her travels, arrives in the West of Ireland with no plans and no strong attachments - except to her beloved mother, who raised her on her own. She falls in love with an Irishman, marries him, and settles down in a place whose codes she struggles to crack. And then, in the course of a single hot summer, she embarks on an affair that breaks her marriage and sets her life on a new course.

After years working in war zones around the world, and in the immediate aftermath of her mother's death, Alice finds herself back in Ireland and contemplating the forces that led her to put down roots and then tear them up again. What drew her to her husband, and what pulled her away? Was her husband strangely complicit in the affair? Was she always under surveillance by friends and neighbours who knew more than they let on?

When Light is Like Water is at once a gripping story of passion and ambivalence and a profound meditation on the things that matter the definition of love, the value of family and the meaning of home.

'Adultery is often sentimentalised in fiction, but in her ferociously well written second novel Molly McCloskey gives it to us straight ... Each brilliant vignette offers a new angle on Alice's ballooning sense of disorientation ... In spite of its lyrical title and exquisite prose, When Light Is Like Water is a brutal examination of sexual self-delusion. But it also has much that's memorable to say about love - not the affair kind, but the real thing... McCloskey writes with shattering insight on loss and the way that it can make us feel tender towards the world' Guardian

'Powerful ... When Light Is Like Water is a tender depiction of love and loss that combines the personal pull of a memoir with the precision of a short story ... McCloskey's novel is packed with wisdom, and never heavy-handed with it. The details of the affair and the tawdry aspect of forbidden desire are brilliantly related' Sunday Times

'Written with brilliant precision and insight' Sunday Business Post Books of the Year

'McCloskey describes everything with a luminous exactitude ... It's entirely beguiling' Mail on Sunday

'A thoughtful meditation on connection set against the backdrop of a world on the move ... Though McCloskey has no shortage of ideas, she also engages the she's particularly good on the contrariness of our desires ... Fans of Anne Enright will find much to admire and enjoy. ' Daily Mail

'Luminous' Irish Times

'McCloskey has the observational eye of the outsider, able to pinpoint the intricacies and mannerisms of the Irish people and landscape. ... But the writing's the thing. Oh, the writing. McCloskey is the master of the metaphor, the doyenne of the deceptively simple sentence. ... Hers is a wondrous turn of phrase, and yet somehow it makes Alice's life and interiority seem all the more real' Sunday Business Post

'A delightful fish-out-of-water account stitched together with gentle yet wondrous prose' Irish Independent Books of the Year

' When Light is Like Water is as gripping as a memoir and as intimate as a poem. Molly McCloskey has written a novel that is both urgent and reflective, a tender and unsentimental exploration of love's dark corners. It is her finest book yet .' Anne Enright

'Molly McCloskey's prose has such immense authority, precision and seriousness. This shimmering, beautiful, restless work will stir recognitions without seeming to try. If you've ever fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with - as who hasn't, once or twice - be prepared to encounter the novel as mirror, her finest book to date, a triumph .' Joseph O'Connor

'McCloskey writes with such care and craft; every description of the landscape of the west and the life of her captivating narrator is imbued with poetry and truth. When Light is Like Water is fresh and raw and completely entrancing .' Sara Baume

'I loved When Light is Like Water . It is absorbing, tense, and beautifully written . Molly McCloskey has written a wonderful novel.' Roddy Doyle

'This is a short but powerful novel about love - love for a mother, love for a husband, love for a lover. When Light Is Like Water will be read for many years to come for its wisdom and precision.' Edmund White

'A powerful and deeply affecting novel ... In writing that sparkles with intelligence and insight, the ordinary moments of everyday existence are charged with a beauty and tenderness that render them only just bearable' Mary Costello

Praise for Molly
'An extravagantly gifted writer' Rachel Cusk, Daily Telegraph
'One of our finest writers' Colum McCann
'Every once in a while, a writer's voice hits such a clear note, the resulting book has the kind of sweetness that makes you hold it in your hands a moment before finding a place for it on your shelves. Circles around the...]]> 0 Molly McCloskey 0241978211 E.R. 5 2024 3.60 When Light Is Like Water
author: Molly McCloskey
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.60
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/02/24
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> A Spool of Blue Thread 22501028 From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author--now in the fiftieth year of her remarkable career--a brilliantly observed, joyful and wrenching, funny and true new novel that reveals, as only she can, the very nature of a family's life.
"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon." This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family--their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog--is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father. Brimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler's hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family.]]> 358 Anne Tyler 0385683421 E.R. 4 2024 3.39 2015 A Spool of Blue Thread
author: Anne Tyler
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/02/08
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Three Stripes South 58612525
She'd never done anything like it before and the experience changed her life, building back her confidence and self-esteem.

Three Stripes South tells the story of this transformative adventure - battling heat, exhaustion, self-doubt and prejudice - and the new life Bex built for herself when she got home, founding the Love Her Wild women's adventure community.

'Lacking confidence is something that a lot of women can relate to' says Bex. 'For me personally, it began at school with undiagnosed dyslexia and bullying. This fed into my adult years where I found myself in a vicious cycle of unhappy jobs and bouts of depression. I had low self-esteem and a belief that I really wasn't capable of achieving much in life.'

Fast forward to today and Bex has transformed her life, tackling gender inequality in adventure travel, and championing women in the outdoors through regular talks, blogging and leading women on adventures all over the world. Nominated for multiple awards for her work advocating women in adventure, her story is an inspiration.]]> 192 Bex Band 1784778389 E.R. 3 2024 4.41 Three Stripes South
author: Bex Band
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.41
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/01/28
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Juno Loves Legs 58090794 304 Karl Geary 1646221133 E.R. 4 2024 4.12 2023 Juno Loves Legs
author: Karl Geary
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/01/16
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> Fayne 60510110 A beloved writer returns with a tale of science, magyk, love and identity.

In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery. Her idyllic existence is shadowed by the magnificent portrait on the landing in Fayne House which depicts her mother, a beautiful Irish-American heiress, holding Charlotte's brother, Charles Bell. Charlotte has grown up with the knowledge that her mother died in giving birth to her, and that her older brother, Charles, the long-awaited heir, died soon afterwards at the age of two. When Charlotte's appetite for learning threatens to exceed the bounds of the estate, her father breaks with tradition and hires a tutor to teach his daughter "as you would my son, had I one." But when Charlotte and her tutor's explorations of the bog turn up an unexpected artefact, her father announces he has arranged for her to be cured of her condition, and her world is upended. Charlotte's passion for knowledge and adventure will take her to the bottom of family secrets and to the heart of her own identity.]]> 736 Ann-Marie MacDonald 0735276633 E.R. 5 2024 4.23 2022 Fayne
author: Ann-Marie MacDonald
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/01/06
shelves: 2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[These Are the Words: Fearless Verse to Find Your Voice]]> 60605817 From international poetry sensation Nikita Gill comes her highly anticipated YA debut These Are the Words: an empowering, feminist and beautifully illustrated poetry collection exploring all the things Nikita wished someone had told her when she was younger.

Reclaim your agency. Discover your power. Find the words.

Taking you on a journey through the seasons of the soul, in this collection Nikita gives you the words to help heal from your first breakup, to celebrate finding your family, to understand first love, to express your anger and your joy, to fight for what you believe in and to help you break some rules to be your truest self.

Gorgeously illustrated throughout by Nikita herself and featuring seasonal astrological poetry, this collection is an achingly beautiful, stunningly warm and fearless expression of truth from one of the most influential and well-known voices in modern poetry.

REMINDER FOR HEALING
You do not owe anyone your forgiveness.
The trees do not apologize to the wind that uproots them.
The rocks do not apologize to the erosion by the sea.
The stars do not apologize to the universe
when they are writhing and dying out.
And you are not obligated to forgive anyone
but yourself.]]> 192 Nikita Gill 1529083605 E.R. 4 2023 3.94 2022 These Are the Words: Fearless Verse to Find Your Voice
author: Nikita Gill
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/28
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Firefly Summer 40611380

From the Paperback edition.]]> 674 Maeve Binchy 0440337593 E.R. 5 2023 4.16 1987 Firefly Summer
author: Maeve Binchy
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1987
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/12/20
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> The Last White Man 58885796 From the New York Times -bestselling author of Exit West , a story of love, loss, and rediscovery in a time of unsettling change.

One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them. Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different a chance at a kind of rebirth--an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.

In Mohsin Hamid’s lyrical and urgent prose, The Last White Man powerfully uplifts our capacity for empathy and the transcendence over bigotry, fear, and anger it can achieve.]]> 192 Mohsin Hamid 0593538811 E.R. 4 2023 3.43 2022 The Last White Man
author: Mohsin Hamid
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/14
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Africa Junction 11793248 272 Ginny Baily 1846554608 E.R. 4 2023 3.51 2011 Africa Junction
author: Ginny Baily
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/12/02
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> They: A Sequence of Unease 1714747 They is a dream, a surreal nightmare which sends a shock right to the heart of our cultural complacency.

As you read it you should remember that the men and women who live and die in it might easily be you. (They could be snatched out of your hand, quite suddenly, and pulped. No reason would be given, except pure destructive savagery.)

Those who struggle in its pages to maintain their reason, their sanity, their capacity to love and hope, are not so far removed (nor are the forces that menace them) from our own and, as we fondly imagine, unruffled lives.

As bureaucracy and governmental control proliferate, Kay Dick pleads for the individual and intellectual freedoms which are so rapidly being eroded. Her book is both a poignant celebration of these values and an anguished caveat.]]> 112 Kay Dick E.R. 4 2022, 2023 3.39 1977 They: A Sequence of Unease
author: Kay Dick
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.39
book published: 1977
rating: 4
read at: 2022/10/02
date added: 2023/11/30
shelves: 2022, 2023
review:

]]> Pew 51542370
As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origins. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of their true nature—as a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths.

Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters� true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.]]> 224 Catherine Lacey 0374230927 E.R. 4 2023 3.71 2020 Pew
author: Catherine Lacey
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/20
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> The Secret River 347698 334 Kate Grenville 1841959146 E.R. 4 2023 3.79 2005 The Secret River
author: Kate Grenville
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/14
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants]]> 17465709 Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.]]> 408 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1571313354 E.R. 4 2023 4.52 2013 Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/11/14
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> A Run in the Park 48734313 113 David Park 1526619989 E.R. 4 2023 3.95 A Run in the Park
author: David Park
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Us Against You (Beartown, #2) 36373463
Soon a new team starts to take shape around Amat, the fastest player you’ll ever see; Benji, the intense lone wolf; and Vidar, a born-to-be-bad troublemaker. But bringing this team together proves to be a challenge as old bonds are broken, new ones are formed, and the enmity with Hed grows more and more acute.

As the big match approaches, the not-so-innocent pranks and incidents between the communities pile up and their mutual contempt grows deeper. By the time the last game is finally played, a resident of Beartown will be dead, and the people of both towns will be forced to wonder if, after all they’ve been through, the game they love can ever return to something simple and innocent.
]]> 448 Fredrik Backman 1501160796 E.R. 4 2023 4.34 2017 Us Against You (Beartown, #2)
author: Fredrik Backman
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/10/26
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Lessons in Chemistry 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus E.R. 5 2023 4.23 2022 Lessons in Chemistry
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/24
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Several Short Sentences About Writing]]> 13155290 you write.

Several Short Sentences About Writing is a book of first steps and experiments. They will revolutionize the way you think and perceive, and they will change forever the sense of your own authority as a writer. This is a book full of learning, but it’s also a book full of unlearning—a way to recover the vivid, rhythmic, poetic sense of language you once possessed.

An indispensable and unique book that will give you a clear understanding of how to think about what you do when you write and how to improve the quality of your writing.]]> 224 Verlyn Klinkenborg 0307266346 E.R. 3 2023 4.13 2012 Several Short Sentences About Writing
author: Verlyn Klinkenborg
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/09/08
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus]]> 43816103 616 Brian W. Aldiss E.R. 3 2023 3.86 The Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus
author: Brian W. Aldiss
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/28
date added: 2023/08/28
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

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

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

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

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

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

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 E.R. 4 2023 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/25
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Beartown (Beartown, #1) 33413128
People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.

Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.]]> 432 Fredrik Backman E.R. 4 2023 4.27 2016 Beartown (Beartown, #1)
author: Fredrik Backman
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/19
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Collected Ghost Stories 650775 M. R. James is widely regarded as the father of the modern ghost story, and his tales have influenced horror writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King. First published in the early 1900s, they have never been out of print, and are recognized as classics of the genre. This collection contains some of his most chilling tales, including A View from a Hill, Rats, A School Story, The Ash Tree, and The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance. Read by BAFTA and Emmy-award winning actor Derek Jacobi, and with haunting and evocative music, these tales cannot fail to send a shiver down your spine.

]]> 568 M.R. James 1853268399 E.R. 4 2023 4.18 1931 Collected Ghost Stories
author: M.R. James
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1931
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/14
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Nature Remedy: A Restorative Guide to the Natural World]]> 53181360
A beautiful, illustrated modern guide to nature for a new generation (including city-dwellers) and how it can impact our mental and physical wellbeing.
Reconnect with nature and learn everything about the wonderful wild.

Curator of the Thorp Perrow arboretum, Faith Douglas takes us on an adventure, and spans across all areas of nature to show how trees, birds, insects, seasons, the weather can impact us for the better, how they can heal and improve our mental and physical wellbeing.

Modern day life puts pressures on us all. For city dwellers, getting to the great outdoors is never an easy feat. Faith shows you how to embrace it from right where you are, whether it’s making the most of your garden or creating your own inner sanctum in a tiny flat.

From foraging for herbs and nutritious pick-me-ups, outdoor meditation, growing your own therapeutic urban garden to making simple remedies and recipes, this practical and inspiring guide will take you back to nature wherever you are.

Filled with beautiful photography and line drawings, this is a book for those who want to discover more about the natural world and want to bring a little piece of the outdoors into their own home.]]> Faith Douglas E.R. 3 2023 3.74 The Nature Remedy: A Restorative Guide to the Natural World
author: Faith Douglas
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.74
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/08/09
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> The Memory Police 37004370
When a young woman who is struggling to maintain her career as a novelist discovers that her editor is in danger from the Memory Police, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards. As fear and loss close in around them, they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past.

A surreal, provocative fable about the power of memory and the trauma of loss, The Memory Police is a stunning new work from one of the most exciting contemporary authors writing in any language.]]> 274 Yōko Ogawa 1101870605 E.R. 4 2023 3.72 1994 The Memory Police
author: Yōko Ogawa
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/08/09
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Inner Side of the Wind, or The Novel of Hero and Leander]]> 223322 188 Milorad Pavić 0679420851 E.R. 3 2023 4.01 1991 The Inner Side of the Wind, or The Novel of Hero and Leander
author: Milorad Pavić
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1991
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/30
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> On Seeing and Noticing 292583 56 Alain de Botton 0141023074 E.R. 3 2023 3.74 2005 On Seeing and Noticing
author: Alain de Botton
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/30
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future]]> 53916142 See the world. Then make it better.

I am 94. I've had an extraordinary life. It's only now that I appreciate how extraordinary.

As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day - the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity.

I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet is my witness statement, and my vision for the future. It is the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake - and how, if we act now, we can yet put it right.

We have one final chance to create the perfect home for ourselves and restore the wonderful world we inherited.

All we need is the will to do so.]]> 272 David Attenborough 1538719983 E.R. 5 2023 4.51 2020 A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future
author: David Attenborough
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/22
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding]]> 62678715 384 Eoghan Daltun 139970527X E.R. 4 2023 4.22 2022 An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding
author: Eoghan Daltun
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/18
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gazelle-Boy: A Child Brought Up by Gazelles in the Sahara Desert]]> 1462591 English, French (translation) 127 Jean-Claude Armen 087663174X E.R. 5 2023 4.53 1971 Gazelle-Boy: A Child Brought Up by Gazelles in the Sahara Desert
author: Jean-Claude Armen
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1971
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/18
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> All We Shall Know 29752909 ‘Martin Toppy is the son of a famous Traveller and the father of my unborn child. He’s seventeen, I'm thirty-three. I was his teacher. I’d have killed myself by now if I was brave enough. I don’t think it would hurt the baby. His little heart would stop with mine. He wouldn't feel himself leaving one world of darkness for another, his spirit untangling itself from me.�

Melody Shee is alone and in trouble. Her husband doesn't take her news too well. She doesn't want to tell her father yet because he’s a good man and this could break him. She’s trying to stay in the moment, but the future is looming � larger by the day � while the past won’t let her go. What she did to Breedie Flynn all those years ago still haunts her.

It’s a good thing that she meets Mary Crothery when she does. Mary is a young Traveller woman, and she knows more about Melody than she lets on. She might just save Melody’s life.

Donal Ryan’s new novel is breathtaking, vivid, moving and redemptive.]]> 192 Donal Ryan 0857524372 E.R. 5 2023 3.84 2016 All We Shall Know
author: Donal Ryan
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Way of the Fearless Writer: Ancient Eastern wisdom for a flourishing writing life]]> 62627898
Join author and Japanologist Beth Kempton on a sacred journey to uncover the secrets of fearless writing which have lain buried in Eastern philosophy for two thousand years.

In a radical departure from standard advice and widely-held assumptions about the effort and suffering required for creative success, The Way of the Fearless Writer will show you there is another way to thrive - a path of trust, ease, freedom and joy.

Learn how to free your mind so your body can create, transform your relationship with fear, dissolve self-doubt, shift writer's block, access your true voice and bravely share your words with the world.

This profound book reveals the deep connections between mind, body, spirit, breath and words. Offering a rare insight into the writing life and a host of fresh and original exercises, it will open your eyes to writing as a direct connection to life itself.

Welcome to The Way of the Fearless Writer.]]> 266 Beth Kempton 0349433046 E.R. 0 currently-reading 4.65 The Way of the Fearless Writer: Ancient Eastern wisdom for a flourishing writing life
author: Beth Kempton
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.65
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/13
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Echoes 34301 Clare and David--divided as children by a rigid social code that branded her as shanty Irish and him as gentry...brought together as adults by a desire that knew no class, no barriers, only the urgent hunger of two people destined to love--and ready to defy a world determined to keep them apart.

Even at fifteen, David Power knew the echo would answer eleven-year-old Clare O'Brien's dearest wish, to win a school prize. But it was years before Dr. Power's cherished only son saw in the huckster's daughter the answer to his own heart's desire.

Here in Castlebay, perched precariously on the seaside cliffs, the lines between them were clearly drawn. Clare's only hope is to leave the town where time stopped, propelled by scholarships to Dublin, fueled by her own drive and brilliance, far from the insular, gossipy world of Castlebay and those in its thrall... Angela O'Hara, beautiful, isolated, a teacher trapped in the convent school, who risks everything to help Clare escape... Gerry Doyle, the town charmer who finds in Clare the woman he vows to have at any price... Caroline Nolan, the beautiful, rich outsider who comes to plunder...

For Clare, that was before the wild freedom of Dublin, and love. And David.Before fate drove them back to Castlebay, and the past...]]> 496 Maeve Binchy 0440122090 E.R. 4 2023 3.79 1985 Echoes
author: Maeve Binchy
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/07/12
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> The Road to Wigan Pier 30553 215 George Orwell E.R. 5 2023 3.92 1937 The Road to Wigan Pier
author: George Orwell
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1937
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/12
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ebb and Flow: How to Connect with the Patterns and Power of Water]]> 97560510 An exploration of water's power to heal us, inspire us and offer us spiritual meaning. This is a feminist reimagining of the meaning of power through the lens of water. Easkey offers a range of wellness practices to encourage the reader to connect with water as healer, restoring a relationship of care.

Our strength lies in being soft like water. This book is about the power we gain by connecting to water. It’s about how we can restore our relationship with the world's different bodies of water, and by doing so, restore both the water and ourselves. By sharing Easkey's own experiences as surfer and marine scientist, as well as those of many of her mentors who are at the forefront of water protection and activism around the world, it guides readers into reimagining the spirituality of water and restoring our innate connection with this lifeblood of the planet.

The book also provides the reader with water-inspired strategies to restore calm, reduce stress and soothe anxiety. These range from simple breathing and visualization exercises to undertaking a journey from a water source to the ocean in order to forge a deep connection with the water. The emphasis is as much on the benefit to water as it is to the individual, and on creating a culture of reciprocity and care. By regaining this lost connection with water, we learn to develop an empathic connection with the force of all life and in the process restore our own hearts and minds.]]> 230 Easkey Britton 1786786680 E.R. 5 2023 4.04 Ebb and Flow: How to Connect with the Patterns and Power of Water
author: Easkey Britton
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/05
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rachel's Holiday (Walsh Family, #2)]]> 9301
But what Rachel doesn’t count on are the toe-curling embarrassments heaped on her by family and group therapy, the dearth of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll � and missing Luke, her ex. What kind of a new start in life is this?]]> 578 Marian Keyes 0060090383 E.R. 4 2023 3.99 1997 Rachel's Holiday (Walsh Family, #2)
author: Marian Keyes
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/06/12
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> The Refugees 30358505 209 Viet Thanh Nguyen 0802126391 E.R. 4 2023 3.87 2017 The Refugees
author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/06/08
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Never Mind (Patrick Melrose, #1)]]> 13514899 Never Mind, the first installment in Edward St. Aubyn's wonderful, wry, and profound Patrick Melrose Cycle, follows five-year-old Patrick through a single day, as the Melrose family awaits the arrival of guests. Bright and imaginative, young Patrick struggles daily to contend with the searing cruelty of his father and the resignation of his embattled mother. But on this day he must endure an unprecedented horror—one that splits his world in two. In Never Mind, St. Aubyn renders this vivid tragedy with profound grace and precision, and introduces us to the unforgettable, complex figure of Patrick Melrose.]]> 181 Edward St. Aubyn 0434734527 E.R. 3 2023 3.79 1992 Never Mind (Patrick Melrose, #1)
author: Edward St. Aubyn
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/06/04
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> The Son 16240761
Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, The Son is an utterly transporting novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American West through the lives of the McCulloughs, an ambitious family as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim.

Spring, 1849. The first male child born in the newly established Republic of Texas, Eli McCullough is thirteen years old when a marauding band of Comanche storm his homestead and brutally murder his mother and sister, taking him captive. Brave and clever, Eli quickly adapts to Comanche life, learning their ways and language, answering to a new name, carving a place as the chief's adopted son, and waging war against their enemies, including white men-complicating his sense of loyalty and understanding of who he is. But when disease, starvation, and overwhelming numbers of armed Americans decimate the tribe, Eli finds himself alone. Neither white nor Indian, civilized or fully wild, he must carve a place for himself in a world in which he does not fully belong-a journey of adventure, tragedy, hardship, grit, and luck that reverberates in the lives of his progeny.

Intertwined with Eli's story are those of his son, Peter, a man who bears the emotional cost of his father's drive for power, and JA, Eli's great-granddaughter, a woman who must fight hardened rivals to succeed in a man's world.

Phillipp Meyer deftly explores how Eli's ruthlessness and steely pragmatism transform subsequent generations of McCulloughs. Love, honor, children are sacrificed in the name of ambition, as the family becomes one of the richest powers in Texas, a ranching-and-oil dynasty of unsurpassed wealth and privilege. Yet, like all empires, the McCoulloughs must eventually face the consequences of their choices.

Harrowing, panoramic, and vividly drawn, The Son is a masterful achievement from a sublime young talent.]]> 561 Philipp Meyer 0062120395 E.R. 4 2023 4.01 2013 The Son
author: Philipp Meyer
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/05/30
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase]]> 17415726 The idiosyncratic, erudite and brilliantly funny new book from Mark Forsyth, bestselling author of The Etymologicon and The Horologicon.

In an age unhealthily obsessed with substance, this is a book on the importance of pure style.

From classic poetry to pop lyrics and from the King James Bible to advertising slogans, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase - such as ‘Tiger, tiger, burning bright� or ‘To be or not to be� - memorable.

In his inimitably entertaining and witty style he takes apart famous lines and shows how you too can write like Shakespeare or Oscar Wilde. Whether you’re aiming for literary immortality or just an unforgettable one-liner, The Elements of Eloquence proves that you don't need to have anything to say - you simply need to say it well.]]> 205 Mark Forsyth 1848316216 E.R. 5 2023 4.35 2013 The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
author: Mark Forsyth
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/05/16
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers]]> 34220644
Literary Witches draws a connection between witches and visionary writers: both are figures of formidable creativity, empowerment, and general badassery. Through poetic portraits, Taisia Kitaiskaia and Katy Horan honor the witchy qualities of well-known and obscure authors alike, including Virginia Woolf, Mira Bai, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, Octavia E. Butler, Sandra Cisneros, and many more.

Perfect for both book lovers and coven members, Literary Witches is a treasure and a source of inspiration. Kitaiskaia and Horan bring fresh insights on your most beloved authors, suggest enchanting new writers, and invite you to rediscover the magic of literature.]]> 166 Taisia Kitaiskaia 1580056733 E.R. 4 2023 3.98 2017 Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers
author: Taisia Kitaiskaia
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/05/16
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Flotsam 45453408
Trine and her mother live in a cottage on the German coast. The mudflats that surround them disappear and reappear with the North Sea tides. The family leads a lonely existence, but each person has adapted in their own way. Anna roams the beaches collecting flotsam and jetsam to make art, while Trine loves playing on a wartime shipwreck. That is, until she loses her brother.

In her taut style, Meike Ziervogel tells a coming-of-age story from 1950s Germany � a place still haunted by war. A place where people pretend not to notice the ghosts.]]> 128 Meike Ziervogel 1784631787 E.R. 3 2023 3.42 Flotsam
author: Meike Ziervogel
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.42
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/05/14
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 E.R. 3 2023 3.66 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/05/11
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Goan Adventure Starfish Pickle]]> 59252437 A skilled commercial diver in Goa, Tara Salgaonkar is a mystery to everyone around her. A strong girl who defies social conventions, she is trying to come to terms with her dark past.
Her life takes an unpredictable turn when she visits Bholenath Guruji at one of his trance parties. What happens when she enters his realm? How does that fateful encounter change her life?
Set in the vibrant locales of Goa, Starfish Pickle is an adventurous story which revolves around the impact of past secrets and unconventional life choices.]]> 270 Bina Nayak 9390441641 E.R. 3 2023 3.35 A Goan Adventure Starfish Pickle
author: Bina Nayak
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.35
book published:
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/05/11
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Lily 57089634
Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter's night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood's Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret...

Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness - but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?]]> 288 Rose Tremain 1784744565 E.R. 3 2023 3.69 2021 Lily
author: Rose Tremain
name: E.R.
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/05/07
shelves: 2023
review:

]]> Circle of Friends 41977
On their first day at University College, Dublin, the inseparable pair are thrown together with fellow students Nan Mahon, beautiful but selfish, and handsome Jack Foley. But trouble is brewing for Benny and Eve's new circle of friends, and before long, they find passion, tragedy - and the independence they yearned for.]]> 722 Maeve Binchy 0099498596 E.R. 5 2023 4.06 1990 Circle of Friends
author: Maeve Binchy
name: E.R.
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/04/30
shelves: 2023
review:

]]>