Andrew's bookshelf: read en-US Tue, 29 Apr 2025 15:47:57 -0700 60 Andrew's bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3) 209439446
Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything. They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth. But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.]]> 527 Rebecca Yarros 1649374186 Andrew 0 currently-reading 4.17 2025 Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)]]> 203578847 The long-awaited explosive climax to the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive―the iconic epic fantasy masterpiece that has sold more than 10 million copies, from acclaimed bestselling author Brandon Sanderson.

Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare―and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray.

Desperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide―Adolin in Azimir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah at Thaylen City. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade. He is accompanied by Kaladin, who faces a new battle helping Szeth fight his own demons . . . and who must do the same for the insane Herald of the Almighty, Ishar.

At the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance.]]> 1344 Brandon Sanderson 1250319188 Andrew 0 currently-reading 4.35 2024 Wind and Truth (The Stormlight Archive, #5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Book of Elsewhere 202950650
There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.�

And he wants to be able to die.

In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.

A mind-blowing epic of ancient powers, modern war, and an outcast who cannot die. Combines Miéville’s singular style and creativity with Reeves’s haunting and soul-stirring narrative, unlike anything these two genre-bending pioneers have created before, inspired by the world of the BRZRKR comic books.]]> 352 Keanu Reeves 0593446593 Andrew 5 3.26 2024 The Book of Elsewhere
author: Keanu Reeves
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1)]]> 6043781 The New York Times bestselling series that inspired the international hit video game: The Witcher.
For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over, and now the races are fighting once again. The only good elf, it seems, is a dead elf.

Geralt of Rivia, the cunning assassin known as The Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child. This child has the power to change the world - for good, or for evil.

As the threat of war hangs over the land and the child is hunted for her extraordinary powers, it will become Geralt's responsibility to protect them all - and the Witcher never accepts defeat.

The Witcher returns in this sequel to The Last Wish, as the inhabitants of his world become embroiled in a state of total war.]]> 398 Andrzej Sapkowski Andrew 0 4.05 1994 Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1)
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2) 90202302 “The first year is when some of us lose our lives. The second year is when the rest of us lose our humanity.� —Xaden Riorson

Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College—Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.

Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders� capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is–unless she betrays the man she loves.

Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits—and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.

But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.

Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College—and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.]]> 623 Rebecca Yarros 1649374178 Andrew 0 4.33 2023 Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/08
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]]> The Familiar 133286777 From the New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House, Hell Bent, and creator of the Grishaverse series comes a highly anticipated historical fantasy set during the Spanish Golden Age

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family's social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain's king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England's heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king's favor.

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition's wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.]]> 387 Leigh Bardugo 125088425X Andrew 3 3.74 2024 The Familiar
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Time of Contempt (The Witcher, #4)]]> 17883464
The Elves and other non-humans are still suffering under decades of repression, and growing numbers join the commando units hidden deep in the forest, striking at will and then dissolving into the trees. The Magicians are fighting amongst themselves, some in the pay of the kings, some sympathetic to the elves.

And against this backdrop of fear and contempt Geralt and his lover Yennefer must protect Ciri, orphaned heir and sought by all sides. For the prophecy rests on her, and whether she lives or dies she has the power to save the world - or perhaps end it.]]> 337 Andrzej Sapkowski Andrew 0 4.16 1995 Time of Contempt (The Witcher, #4)
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
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]]> Service Model 195790861 To fix the world they first must break it further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into their core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then discovers they can also do something else they never did before: run away. After fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is finding a new purpose.]]> 376 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1250290287 Andrew 4 3.99 2024 Service Model
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> Franny and Zooey 5113 ‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.�

First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny� and ‘Zooey� offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey�, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.

Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.]]> 201 J.D. Salinger 0316769029 Andrew 0 reading-queue 3.97 1957 Franny and Zooey
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: reading-queue
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Murder at the End of the World]]> 136276877
Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.

On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.

And the clock is ticking.

From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.]]> 368 Stuart Turton Andrew 3 3.63 2024 The Last Murder at the End of the World
author: Stuart Turton
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Murder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman, #1)]]> 211004175
A mind is a terrible thing to erase...

Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.

Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.

Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes…]]> 112 Olivia Waite 1250342244 Andrew 0 to-read 3.73 2025 Murder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman, #1)
author: Olivia Waite
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 528 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Andrew 3 4.56 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
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]]> <![CDATA[What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2)]]> 127306440
Retired soldier Alex Easton returns in a horrifying new adventure.

After their terrifying ordeal at the Usher manor, Alex Easton feels as if they just survived another war. All they crave is rest, routine, and sunshine, but instead, as a favor to Angus and Miss Potter, they find themself heading to their family hunting lodge, deep in the cold, damp forests of their home country, Gallacia.

In theory, one can find relaxation in even the coldest and dampest of Gallacian autumns, but when Easton arrives, they find the caretaker dead, the lodge in disarray, and the grounds troubled by a strange, uncanny silence. The villagers whisper that a breath-stealing monster from folklore has taken up residence in Easton’s home. Easton knows better than to put too much stock in local superstitions, but they can tell that something is not quite right in their home. . . or in their dreams.]]> 151 T. Kingfisher 1250830850 Andrew 3 3.78 2024 What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/22
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]]> <![CDATA[What Stalks the Deep (Sworn Soldier, #3)]]> 222615926 The next novella in the New York Times bestselling Sworn Soldier series, featuring Alex Easton investigating the dark, mysterious depths of a coal mine in America

Alex Easton does not want to visit America.

They particularly do not want to visit an abandoned coal mine in West Virginia with a reputation for being haunted.

But when their old friend Dr. Denton summons them to help find his lost cousin—who went missing in that very mine—well, sometimes a sworn soldier has to do what a sworn soldier has to do...

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> T. Kingfisher 1250354935 Andrew 0 to-read 4.67 2025 What Stalks the Deep (Sworn Soldier, #3)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> <![CDATA[What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)]]> 58724626
What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.]]> 165 T. Kingfisher 1250830753 Andrew 4 3.86 2022 What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/05
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]]> Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3) 209668781 Discover the instant #1 New York Times bestseller! TV series now in development at MGM Amazon Studios with Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society.

Accolades for Fourth Wing
Amazon Best Books of the Year, #4 � Apple Best Books of the Year 2023 � Barnes & Noble Best Fantasy Book of 2023 � NPR "Books We Love" 2023 � Audible Best Books of 2023 � Hudson Book of the Year � Google Play Best Books of 2023 � Indigo Best Books of 2023 � Waterstones Book of the Year finalist � ŷ Choice Award Winner � Newsweek Staffers� Favorite Books of 2023 � Paste Magazine’s Best Books of 2023 � TikTok Book Awards UK and Ireland Book of the Year (International) 2024

After nearly eighteen months at Basgiath War College, Violet Sorrengail knows there’s no more time for lessons. No more time for uncertainty.

Because the battle has truly begun, and with enemies closing in from outside their walls and within their ranks, it’s impossible to know who to trust.

Now Violet must journey beyond the failing Aretian wards to seek allies from unfamiliar lands to stand with Navarre. The trip will test every bit of her wit, luck, and strength, but she will do anything to save what she loves—her dragons, her family, her home, and him.

Even if it means keeping a secret so big, it could destroy everything.

They need an army. They need power. They need magic. And they need the one thing only Violet can find—the truth.

But a storm is coming...and not everyone can survive its wrath.

The Empyrean series is best enjoyed in order.
Reading Order:
Book #1 Fourth Wing
Book #2 Iron Flame
Book #3 Onyx Storm]]> 758 Rebecca Yarros 1649376944 Andrew 0 to-read 4.42 2025 Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Brigands & Breadknives (Legends & Lattes, #2)]]> 222376572 Return to the cozy fantasy world of the #1 New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes series with a new adventure featuring fan-favorite, foul-mouthed bookseller, Fern.

Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!

If only things were so simple�

It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint.

A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior surviving on inertia, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover.

As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when there isn’t a job to get in the way.]]> 336 Travis Baldree 1250334888 Andrew 0 to-read 4.14 2025 Brigands & Breadknives (Legends & Lattes, #2)
author: Travis Baldree
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Wedding People 198902277 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250899576.

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.]]> 384 Alison Espach Andrew 0 to-read 4.11 2024 The Wedding People
author: Alison Espach
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/02/03
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]]> Asunder 195791081 We choose our own gods here.

Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch entity—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.

Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.

And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.]]> 432 Kerstin Hall 1250625432 Andrew 0 to-read 4.14 2024 Asunder
author: Kerstin Hall
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1)]]> 213075476 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN-13: 9781595148049.

Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.

Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.

It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.

But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.

There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.]]> 480 Sabaa Tahir 1595148043 Andrew 0 to-read 4.18 2015 An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes, #1)
author: Sabaa Tahir
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> Nettle & Bone 56179377
Seeking help from a powerful gravewitch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a prince—if she can complete three impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of princes, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.

On her quest, Marra is joined by the gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother, a strapping former knight, and a chicken possessed by a demon. Together, the five of them intend to be the hand that closes around the throat of the prince and frees Marra's family and their kingdom from its tyrannous ruler at last.]]> 243 T. Kingfisher 1250244048 Andrew 4 4.07 2022 Nettle & Bone
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Winter of the Witch (The Winternight Trilogy, #3)]]> 36621586 Following their adventures in The Bear and the Nightingale and The Girl in the Tower, Vasya and Morozko return in this stunning conclusion to the bestselling Winternight Trilogy, battling enemies mortal and magical to save both Russias, the seen and the unseen.


Now Moscow has been struck by disaster. Its people are searching for answers—and for someone to blame. Vasya finds herself alone, beset on all sides. The Grand Prince is in a rage, choosing allies that will lead him on a path to war and ruin. A wicked demon returns, stronger than ever and determined to spread chaos. Caught at the center of the conflict is Vasya, who finds the fate of two worlds resting on her shoulders. Her destiny uncertain, Vasya will uncover surprising truths about herself and her history as she desperately tries to save Russia, Morozko, and the magical world she treasures. But she may not be able to save them all.

Advance praise for The Winter of the Witch

“Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy isn’t just good—it’s hug-to-your-chest, straight-to-the-favorites-shelf, reread-immediately good, and each book just gets better. The Winter of the Witch plunges us back to fourteenth-century Moscow, where old gods and new vie for the soul of Russia and fate rests on a witch girl’s slender shoulders. Prepare to have your heart ripped out, loaned back to you full of snow and magic, and ripped out some more.”�Laini Taylor]]> 400 Katherine Arden 1101886005 Andrew 5 4.48 2019 The Winter of the Witch (The Winternight Trilogy, #3)
author: Katherine Arden
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl in the Tower (The Winternight Trilogy, #2)]]> 34050917 The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden’s enchanting first novel, introduced readers to an irresistible heroine. Vasilisa has grown up at the edge of a Russian wilderness, where snowdrifts reach the eaves of her family’s wooden house and there is truth in the fairy tales told around the fire. Vasilisa’s gift for seeing what others do not won her the attention of Morozko—Frost, the winter demon from the stories—and together they saved her people from destruction. But Frost’s aid comes at a cost, and her people have condemned her as a witch.

In The Girl in the Tower, Vasilisa faces an impossible choice. Driven from her home by frightened villagers, she has only two options left: marriage or the convent. She cannot bring herself to accept either fate and instead chooses adventure, dressing herself as a boy and setting off astride her magnificent stallion Solovey.

But after she prevails in a skirmish with bandits, everything changes. The Grand Prince of Moscow anoints her a hero for her exploits, and she is reunited with her beloved sister and brother, who are now part of the Grand Prince’s inner circle. She dares not reveal to the court that she is a girl, for if her deception were discovered it would have terrible consequences for herself and her family. Before she can untangle herself from Moscow’s intrigues—and as Frost provides counsel that may or may not be trustworthy—she will also confront an even graver threat lying in wait for all of Moscow itself.]]> 360 Katherine Arden 1101885963 Andrew 5 4.34 2017 The Girl in the Tower (The Winternight Trilogy, #2)
author: Katherine Arden
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
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]]> <![CDATA[What You Are Looking For Is in the Library]]> 91274427 For fans of The Midnight Library and Before the Coffee Gets Cold, this charming Japanese novel shows how the perfect book recommendation can change a reader's life.

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.]]> 304 Michiko Aoyama 1335005625 Andrew 4 4.07 2020 What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
author: Michiko Aoyama
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Night in the Lonesome October]]> 62005
In the murky London gloom, a knife-wielding gentleman named Jack prowls the midnight streets with his faithful watchdog Snuff � gathering together the grisly ingredients they will need for an upcoming ancient and unearthly rite. For soon after the death of the moon, black magic will summon the Elder Gods back into the world. And all manner of Players, both human and undead, are preparing to participate.

Some have come to open the gates. Some have come to slam them shut.

And now the dread night approaches � so let the Game begin.]]> 280 Roger Zelazny 0380771411 Andrew 5 4.16 1993 A Night in the Lonesome October
author: Roger Zelazny
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/11
date added: 2024/12/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Nine Princes in Amber (The Chronicles of Amber, #1)]]> 92121 175 Roger Zelazny 0380014300 Andrew 0 to-read 4.07 1970 Nine Princes in Amber (The Chronicles of Amber, #1)
author: Roger Zelazny
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1970
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Minority Report and Other Stories]]> 534004 Viewed by many as the greatest science fiction writer on any planet, Philip K. Dick has written some of the most intriguing, original and thought-provoking fiction of our time. This collection includes stories that will make you laugh, cringe...and stop and think.

The Minority Report: a special unit that employs those with the power of precognition to prevent crimes proves itself less than reliable...
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale: an everyguy's yearning for more exciting "memories" places him in a danger he never could have imagined (basis of the feature film Total Recall)...
Paycheck: a mechanic who has no memory of the previous two years of his life finds that a bag of seemingly worthless and unrelated objects can actually unlock the secret of his recent past � and insure that he has a future...
Second Variety: the UN's technological advances to win a global war veer out of control, threatening to destroy all of humankind (basis of the movie Screamers)...
The Eyes Have It: a whimsical, laugh-out-loud play on the words of the title.

]]> 6 Philip K. Dick 0060095261 Andrew 0 3.94 1987 Minority Report and Other Stories
author: Philip K. Dick
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at: 2017/07/18
date added: 2024/12/11
shelves:
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]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Andrew 3 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures
author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)]]> 61242426
The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success � not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

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

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.]]> 296 Travis Baldree Andrew 3 4.04 2022 Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)
author: Travis Baldree
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/05
date added: 2024/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking]]> 54369251
But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…]]> 306 T. Kingfisher 1614505241 Andrew 4 4.02 2020 A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves:
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]]> Ink Blood Sister Scribe 62854842 In this spellbinding debut novel, two estranged half-sisters tasked with guarding their family's library of magical books must work together to unravel a deadly secret at the heart of their collection--a tale of familial loyalty and betrayal, and the pursuit of magic and power.

For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements--books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.

All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna's isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they'll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries . . .]]> 416 Emma Törzs 0063253461 Andrew 4 3.98 2023 Ink Blood Sister Scribe
author: Emma Törzs
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves:
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]]> The Complete Tales and Poems 132314 Collected here is the ultimate Kindle edition of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe—all of his tales and poems in one convenient, easy-to-use volume at a fantastic price.

Included in Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Tales and Poems are:

The complete text of all of the tales and poems written by Edgar Allan Poe (over 125 works), each elegantly formatted for ease of use and enjoyment on your Kindle reader.
Links to free, full-length audio recordings of the poems and tales in this collection.
An individual, active Table of Contents for each section accessible from the Kindle “go to� feature.
Perfect formatting in rich text compatible with Kindle’s Text-to-Speech features.
A low, can't-say-no price!
The Complete Tales and Poems
All of Poe's tales, poems, and essays are included—over 125 works. Some of the most notable are:

Tales:
"The Fall of the House of Usher"
"The Masque of the Red Death"
"The Pit and the Pendulum"
"The Premature Burial"
"The Purloined Letter"
"The Tell-Tale Heart"
Poems:
"Annabel Lee"
"The Bells"
"The City in the Sea"
"A Dream Within a Dream"
"To Helen"
"Lenore"
"The Raven"
"Ulalume"
Other Works:
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket—Poe's only complete novel
Collected Essays
Additional Fan Resources
Also included are special features for any Poe enthusiast, including:

A list of films and television series, both directly and indirectly inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
A Reading Guide to fictional works that feature the historical Edgar Allan Poe as a character.
Links to free, full-length audio recordings of the major poems and short stories in this collection.]]> 1040 Edgar Allan Poe 040405109X Andrew 0 to-read 4.51 1849 The Complete Tales and Poems
author: Edgar Allan Poe
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1849
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Someone You Can Build a Nest In]]> 182506390 Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.]]> 310 John Wiswell 0756418852 Andrew 5 3.97 2024 Someone You Can Build a Nest In
author: John Wiswell
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
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]]> <![CDATA[It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over]]> 177148776 128 Anne de Marcken 0811237850 Andrew 0 to-read 3.69 2024 It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over
author: Anne de Marcken
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Pines (Wayward Pines, #1) 15096164
WHY CAN'T HE MAKE CONTACT WITH HIS FAMILY IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD? WHY DOESN'T ANYONE BELIEVE HE IS WHO HE SAYS HE IS? AND WHAT'S THE PURPOSE OF THE ELECTRIFIED FENCES ENCIRCLING THE TOWN? ARE THEY KEEPING THE RESIDENTS IN? OR SOMETHING ELSE OUT?

Each step toward the truth takes Ethan further from the world he knows, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.....]]> 307 Blake Crouch 1612183956 Andrew 3 3.93 2012 Pines (Wayward Pines, #1)
author: Blake Crouch
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lords of Uncreation (The Final Architecture, #3)]]> 62315578 The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us the third and final novel in an extraordinary space opera trilogy about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all.


Lords of Uncreation is the final high-octane installment in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Final Architecture space opera trilogy.


The Final Architecture
Shards of Earth
Eyes of the Void
Lords of Uncreation ]]> 608 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1668628104 Andrew 5 4.21 2023 Lords of Uncreation (The Final Architecture, #3)
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2024/10/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Eyes of the Void (The Final Architecture, #2)]]> 58950674 The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us the second novel in an extraordinary space opera trilogy about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all.

After eighty years of fragile peace, the Architects are back, wreaking havoc as they consume entire planets. In the past, Originator artefacts � vestiges of a long-vanished civilization � could save a world from annihilation. This time, the Architects have discovered a way to circumvent these protective relics. Suddenly, no planet is safe.

Facing impending extinction, the Human Colonies are in turmoil. While some believe a unified front is the only way to stop the Architects, others insist humanity should fight alone. And there are those who would seek to benefit from the fractured politics of war � even as the Architects loom ever closer.

Idris, who has spent decades running from the horrors of his past, finds himself thrust back onto the battlefront. As an Intermediary, he could be one of the few to turn the tide of war. With a handful of allies, he searches for a weapon that could push back the Architects and save the galaxy. But to do so, he must return to the nightmarish unspace, where his mind was broken and remade.

What Idris discovers there will change everything.]]> 596 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1668604906 Andrew 4 4.12 2022 Eyes of the Void (The Final Architecture, #2)
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)]]> 25499718
WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?]]> 608 Adrian Tchaikovsky 1447273281 Andrew 4 4.29 2015 Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/22
date added: 2024/10/03
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]]> <![CDATA[Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler]]> 44671147 Tor.com Publishing is proud to present a sneak peak at its 2019 debut authors.

Read free sample chapters from the most exciting new voices in science fiction and fantasy today, including C. S. E. Cooney, Katharine Duckett, Jennifer Giesbrecht, Kerstin Hall, Vylar Kaftan, Scotto Moore, Tamsyn Muir, Lina Rather, Priya Sharma, and Emily Tes.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.



Some of the Most Exciting New Voices in Science Fiction and Fantasy.]]> 178 Tor Books 1250260396 Andrew 0 3.37 2019 Tor.com Publishing 2019 Debut Sampler
author: Tor Books
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2019/06/14
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Tumtum & Nutmeg: The Adventure Begins: Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall]]> 19207863 Tumtum & Nutmeg: The Adventure Begins is the first of three short stories from Tumtum & Nutmeg: Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall. Tumtum and Nutmeg lead cozy and quiet lives, secretly looking after Arthur and Lucy, the disheveled human children of Rose Cottage, never dreaming that so many exciting adventures will soon find them. But when evil Aunt Ivy, a squeamish schoolteacher named Miss Short, and pirating pond rats threaten the safety of those they hold dear, the courageous pair will stop at nothing to save the day.

In this thrilling tale of daring and wit, Tumtum and Nutmeg -- along with veteran hero General Marchmouse, Ms. Tiptoe's bouncing ballerina army, and a team of caged gerbils -- prove that small mice can have big hearts.]]> 512 Emily Bearn 0316232106 Andrew 3 4.22 2008 Tumtum & Nutmeg: The Adventure Begins: Adventures Beyond Nutmouse Hall
author: Emily Bearn
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2015/11/23
date added: 2024/09/12
shelves:
review:

]]> The Book of Doors 156008269 If you could open a door to anywhere, where would you go?

In New York City, bookseller Cassie Andrews is living an unassuming life when she is given a gift by a favourite customer. It's a book - an unusual book, full of strange writing and mysterious drawings. And at the very front there is a handwritten message to Cassie, telling her that this is the Book of Doors, and that any door is every door.

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

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

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

Because some doors should never be opened. ]]> 418 Gareth Brown 0063324008 Andrew 0 to-read 4.12 2024 The Book of Doors
author: Gareth Brown
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard, #3)]]> 2890090
Magi political elections are imminent, and the factions are in need of a pawn. If Locke agrees to play the role, sorcery will be used to purge the venom from his body - though the process will be so excruciating he may well wish for death. Locke is opposed, but two factors cause his will to crumble: Jean's imploring - and the Bondsmage's mention of a woman from Locke's past: Sabetha. She is the love of his life, his equal in skill and wit, and now, his greatest rival.

Locke was smitten with Sabetha from his first glimpse of her as a young fellow orphan and thief-in-training. But after a tumultuous courtship, Sabetha broke away. Now they will reunite in yet another clash of wills. For faced with his one and only match in both love and trickery, Locke must choose whether to fight Sabetha - or to woo her. It is a decision on which both their lives may depend.

]]> 650 Scott Lynch 0553804693 Andrew 4 4.21 2013 The Republic of Thieves (Gentleman Bastard, #3)
author: Scott Lynch
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Around the World in Eighty Days]]> 54479 252 Jules Verne 014044906X Andrew 0 kids 3.95 1872 Around the World in Eighty Days
author: Jules Verne
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1872
rating: 0
read at: 2016/05/11
date added: 2024/08/29
shelves: kids
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Thorn of Emberlain (Gentleman Bastard, #4)]]> 8074907
A new chapter for Locke and Jean and finally the war that has been brewing in the Kingdom of the Marrows flares up and threatens to capture all in its flames.

And all the while Locke must try to deal with the disturbing rumours about his past revealed in The Republic of Thieves. Fighting a war when you don't know the truth of right and wrong is one thing. Fighting a war when you don't know the truth of yourself is quite another. Particularly when you've never been that good with a sword anyway...]]> 512 Scott Lynch 0575079584 Andrew 0 to-read 4.32 The Thorn of Emberlain (Gentleman Bastard, #4)
author: Scott Lynch
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 34066798 The mega-bestseller with more than 2 million readers—Now a Paramount+ with Showtime series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov

From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility, a beautifully transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Andrew 0 4.28 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves: reading-queue, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Narrow Road Between Desires (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #0.6)]]> 157265081
From dawn to midnight over the course of a single day, follow the Kingkiller Chronicle's most charming fae as he schemes and sneaks, dancing into trouble and back out again with uncanny grace.

The Narrow Road Between Desires is Bast's story. In it he traces the old ways of making and breaking, following his heart even when doing so goes against his better judgement.

After all, what good is caution if it keeps him from danger and delight?]]> 240 Patrick Rothfuss 0756419182 Andrew 4 4.01 2023 The Narrow Road Between Desires (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #0.6)
author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/02
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentleman Bastard, #2)]]> 40604556 Librarian note: An older cover for this edition can be found here: 31-Jul-2007.

After a brutal battle with the underworld that nearly destroyed him, Locke Lamora and his trusted sidekick, Jean, fled the island city of their birth and landed on the exotic shores of Tal Verrar to nurse their wounds. But even at this westernmost edge of civilization, they can't rest for long---and they are soon back doing what they do best: stealing from the undeserving rich and pocketing the proceeds for themselves.

This time, however, they have targeted the grandest prize of all: the Sinspire, the most exclusive and heavily guarded gambling house in the world. Its nine floors attract the wealthiest clientele - and to rise to the top, one must impress with good credit, amusing behavior...and excruciatingly impeccable play. For there is one cardinal rule, enforced by Requin, the house's cold-blooded master: it is death to cheat at any game at the Sinspire.Brazenly undeterred, Locke and Jean have orchestrated an elaborate plan to lie, trick, and swindle their way up the nine floors...straight to Requin's teeming vault. Under the cloak of false identities, they meticulously make their climb - until they are closer to the spoils than ever.

But someone in Tal Verrar has uncovered the duo's secret. Someone from their past who has every intention of making the impudent criminals pay for their sins. Now it will take every ounce of cunning to save their mercenary souls. And even that may not be enough.]]> 578 Scott Lynch Andrew 4 4.26 2007 Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentleman Bastard, #2)
author: Scott Lynch
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/24
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Rakesfall 195791063 Rakesfall is a groundbreaking, standalone science fiction epic about two souls bound together from here until the ends of time, from the author of The Saint of Bright Doors

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.

Annelid and Leveret met after the war, but before the peace. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind. But their journey will not be easy. In every lifetime, oppressors narrow the walls of possibility, shaping reality to fit their own needs. And behind the walls of history, the witches of the red web swear that every throne will fall.

Tracing two souls through endless lifetimes, Rakesfall is a virtuosic exploration of what stories can be. As Annelid and Leveret reincarnate ever deeper into the future, they will chase the edge of human possibility, in a dark science fiction epic unlike anything you've read before.]]> 304 Vajra Chandrasekera 1250847680 Andrew 0 to-read 3.33 2024 Rakesfall
author: Vajra Chandrasekera
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Library of Broken Worlds 63240903 A girl matches wits with a war god in this kaleidoscopic, epic tale of oppression and the cost of peace, where stories hide within other stories, and narrative has the power to heal� or to burn everything in its path.

In the winding underground tunnels of the Library, the great celestial peacekeeper of the three systems, a terrible secret lies buried.

As the daughter of a Library god, Freida has spent her whole life exploring the Library's ever-changing tunnels and communing with the gods. Her unparalleled access makes her unique � and dangerous.

When Freida meets Joshua, a mortal boy desperate to save his people, and Nergüi, a Disciple from a persecuted religious minority, Freida is compelled to break ranks with the gods and help them. But in order to do so, she will have to venture deeper into the Library than she has ever known. There she will discover the atrocities of the past, the truth of her origins, and the impossibility of her future�

With the world at the brink of war, Freida embarks on a journey to fulfill her destiny, one that pits her against an ancient war god. Her mission is straightforward: Destroy the god before he can rain hellfire upon thousands of innocent lives � if he doesn't destroy her first.]]> 448 Alaya Dawn Johnson 1338290622 Andrew 0 to-read 3.14 2023 The Library of Broken Worlds
author: Alaya Dawn Johnson
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Devil and the Dark Water 51854625 A murder on the high seas. A detective duo. A demon who may or may not exist.

It's 1634 and Samuel Pipps, the world's greatest detective, is being transported to Amsterdam to be executed for a crime he may, or may not, have committed. Traveling with him is his loyal bodyguard, Arent Hayes, who is determined to prove his friend innocent.

But no sooner are they out to sea than devilry begins to blight the voyage. A twice-dead leper stalks the decks. Strange symbols appear on the sails. Livestock is slaughtered.

And then three passengers are marked for death, including Samuel.

Could a demon be responsible for their misfortunes?

With Pipps imprisoned, only Arent can solve a mystery that connects every passenger onboard. A mystery that stretches back into their past and now threatens to sink the ship, killing everybody on board.

The breathtaking new novel from Stuart Turton, author of the The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, winner of the Costa Best First Novel Award.]]> 463 Stuart Turton Andrew 4 3.82 2020 The Devil and the Dark Water
author: Stuart Turton
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/01
date added: 2024/07/03
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]]> The Bright Sword 201750794
They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Tables, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.

But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords are laying siege to Camelot, and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past.]]> 673 Lev Grossman 0735224048 Andrew 0 to-read 3.94 2024 The Bright Sword
author: Lev Grossman
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Sunlit Man 60531420 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson―creator of The Stormlight Archive, the Mistborn Saga, and countless bestselling works of science fiction and fantasy―comes this standalone novel showing a rare glimpse of a future Cosmere universe.

Running. Putting distance between himself and the relentless Night Brigade has been Nomad’s strategy for years. Staying one or two steps ahead of his pursuers by skipping through the Cosmere from one world to the next.

But now, his powers too depleted to escape, Nomad finds himself trapped on Canticle, a planet that will kill anyone who doesn’t keep moving. Fleeing the fires of a sunrise that melts the very stones, he is instantly caught up in the struggle between a heartless tyrant and the brave rebels who defy him.

Failure means a quick death, incinerated by the sun� or a lifetime as a mindless slave. Tormented by the consequences of his past, Nomad must fight not only for his survival―but also for his very soul.]]> 447 Brandon Sanderson 1938570391 Andrew 4 4.28 2023 The Sunlit Man
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Sword of Destiny (The Witcher, #0.7)]]> 25454056
This is a collection of short stories, following the adventures of the hit collection THE LAST WISH. Join Geralt as he battles monsters, demons and prejudices alike...]]> 405 Andrzej Sapkowski Andrew 4 4.25 1992 Sword of Destiny (The Witcher, #0.7)
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/13
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves:
review:

]]> The Deep 42201962 Yetu holds the memories for her people.

Her people, the wajinru � water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slavers � live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one. Save the historian.

Yetu remembers for all the wajinru, and the memories � painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so she flees to the surface, escaping the memories and the expectations and the responsibilities � and discovers a world the wajinru left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past � and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identities � and own who they really are.

Inspired by the hit song by clipping. (comprised of Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes), The Deep will resonate long after the last page is turned.]]> 166 Rivers Solomon 1534439862 Andrew 0 to-read 3.78 2019 The Deep
author: Rivers Solomon
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 Andrew 0 to-read 4.28 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, #3)]]> 55858638 New York Times bestselling trilogy that began with A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate.

The one thing you never talk about while you're in the Scholomance is what you'll do when you get out. Not even the richest enclaver would tempt fate that way. But it's all we dream about, the hideously slim chance we'll survive to make it out the gates and improbably find ourselves with a life ahead of us, a life outside the Scholomance halls.

And now the impossible dream has come true. I'm out, we're all out--and I didn't even have to turn into a monstrous dark witch to make it happen. So much for my great-grandmother's prophecy of doom and destruction. I didn't kill enclavers, I saved them. Me, and Orion, and our allies. Our graduation plan worked to perfection: we saved everyone and made the world safe for all wizards and brought peace and harmony to all the enclaves of the world.

Ha, only joking! Actually it's gone all wrong. Someone else has picked up the project of destroying enclaves in my stead, and probably everyone we saved is about to get killed in the brewing enclave war on the horizon. And the first thing I've got to do now, having miraculously got out of the Scholomance, is turn straight around and find a way back in.]]> 407 Naomi Novik 0593158369 Andrew 4 4.08 2022 The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, #3)
author: Naomi Novik
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/06
date added: 2024/06/06
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]]> Tress of the Emerald Sea 60531406 #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson expands his Cosmere universe shared by The Stormlight Archive and Mistborn with a new standalone novel for everyone who loved The Princess Bride.

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Amid the spore oceans where pirates abound, can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?]]> 443 Brandon Sanderson Andrew 4 reading-queue 4.35 2023 Tress of the Emerald Sea
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: reading-queue
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]]> The Book of Love 157981682 The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.]]> 628 Kelly Link 0812996585 Andrew 4 3.45 2024 The Book of Love
author: Kelly Link
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/14
date added: 2024/05/14
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]]> Utopia Avenue 52597312 The long-awaited new novel from the bestselling, prize-winning author of Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks.

Utopia Avenue is the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Emerging from London’s psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folk singer Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet, and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief, blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and drafty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, and on to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome, and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968.

David Mitchell’s captivating new novel tells the unexpurgated story of Utopia Avenue; of riots in the streets and revolutions in the head; of drugs, thugs, madness, love, sex, death, art; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of fame’s Faustian pact and stardom’s wobbly ladder. Can we change the world in turbulent times, or does the world change us?]]> 574 David Mitchell 0812997433 Andrew 5 3.94 2020 Utopia Avenue
author: David Mitchell
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/29
date added: 2024/04/29
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]]> Slade House 40611069 Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

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

Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.]]> 241 David Mitchell 0812998693 Andrew 4 3.79 2015 Slade House
author: David Mitchell
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/15
date added: 2024/04/15
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]]> <![CDATA[The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet]]> 7141642
But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?�

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.]]> 479 David Mitchell 1400065453 Andrew 5 4.01 2010 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
author: David Mitchell
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/11
date added: 2024/04/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England (Secret Projects, #2)]]> 60531410 399 Brandon Sanderson 1938570332 Andrew 3 3.75 2023 The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England (Secret Projects, #2)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/01
date added: 2024/04/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5)]]> 40603587
But not everything monstrous-looking is evil and not everything fair is good... and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth.

Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ASIN B0010SIPT4]]> 400 Andrzej Sapkowski Andrew 0 audio-queue 4.12 1993 The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5)
author: Andrzej Sapkowski
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/23
date added: 2024/03/23
shelves: audio-queue
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]]> Ghostwritten 6819
A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut novel of a writer with astonishing gifts.]]> 426 David Mitchell 0375724508 Andrew 5 4.06 1999 Ghostwritten
author: David Mitchell
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/19
date added: 2024/03/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Yumi and the Nightmare Painter]]> 60531416 #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson brings us a gripping story set in the Cosmere universe told by Hoid, where two people from incredibly different worlds must compromise and work together to save their worlds from ruin.

Yumi comes from a land of gardens, meditation, and spirits, while Painter lives in a world of darkness, technology, and nightmares. When their lives suddenly become intertwined in strange ways, can they put aside their differences and work together to uncover the mysteries of their situation and save each other’s communities from certain disaster?]]> 480 Brandon Sanderson 1938570375 Andrew 0 4.45 2023 Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/14
date added: 2024/03/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Normal Rules Don't Apply: Stories]]> 63934847 Shrines of Gaiety and Life After Life, with everything that readers love about her novels—the inventiveness, the verbal felicity, the sharp observations on human nature, and the deeply satisfying emotional wallop.

Nothing is quite as it seems in this collection of eleven dazzling stories. We meet a queen who makes a bargain she cannot keep; a secretary who watches over the life she has just left; a man who bets on a horse that may—or may not—have spoken to him.

A startling and funny feast for the imagination, these stories conjure a multiverse of subtly connected worlds while illuminating the webs of chance and connection among us all.]]> 212 Kate Atkinson 0385688237 Andrew 3 3.67 2023 Normal Rules Don't Apply: Stories
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/06
date added: 2024/03/06
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]]> Translation State 62873999
Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn't "optimal behavior". I's the type of behavior that results in elimination.

But Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with those of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots--or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him.

As a Conclave of the various species approaches--and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line--the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars.

Masterfully merging space adventure and mystery, and a poignant exploration about relationships and belonging, Translation State is a standalone story set in Leckie's celebrated Imperial Radch universe.]]> 422 Ann Leckie 031628971X Andrew 5 3.96 2023 Translation State
author: Ann Leckie
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/03
date added: 2024/03/03
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]]> Black Swan Green 14316
Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys� games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping� through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.

Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s most subtlest and effective achievement to date.]]> 296 David Mitchell 0812974018 Andrew 5 reading-queue 3.97 2006 Black Swan Green
author: David Mitchell
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/02/23
shelves: reading-queue
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]]> <![CDATA[Charmed Life (Chrestomanci, #1)]]> 244572 252 Diana Wynne Jones 000710653X Andrew 3 3.96 1977 Charmed Life (Chrestomanci, #1)
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1977
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/21
date added: 2024/02/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2)]]> 55559887 A budding dark sorceress determined not to use her formidable powers uncovers yet more secrets about the workings of her world in the stunning sequel to A Deadly Education, the start of Naomi Novik’s groundbreaking crossover series.

At the Scholomance, El, Orion, and the other students are faced with their final year—and the looming specter of graduation, a deadly ritual that leaves few students alive in its wake. El is determined that her chosen group will survive, but it is a prospect that is looking harder by the day as the savagery of the school ramps up. Until El realizes that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules . . .]]> 388 Naomi Novik 0593128869 Andrew 5 4.20 2021 The Last Graduate (The Scholomance, #2)
author: Naomi Novik
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/18
date added: 2024/02/20
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]]> <![CDATA[A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)]]> 50548197
A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) � until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets.

There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate� or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.

El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.]]> 320 Naomi Novik 0593128486 Andrew 5 3.93 2020 A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1)
author: Naomi Novik
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/10
date added: 2024/02/12
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]]> Never Let Me Go 6334 288 Kazuo Ishiguro 1400078776 Andrew 3 3.85 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/02
date added: 2024/02/02
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]]> Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2) 60652997 Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. Alex Stern is back and the Ivy League is going straight to hell.

Find a gateway to the underworld. Steal a soul out of hell. A simple plan, except people who make this particular journey rarely come back. But Galaxy “Alex� Stern is determined to break Darlington out of purgatory―even if it costs her a future at Lethe and at Yale.

Forbidden from attempting a rescue, Alex and Dawes can’t call on the Ninth House for help, so they assemble a team of dubious allies to save the gentleman of Lethe. Together, they will have to navigate a maze of arcane texts and bizarre artifacts to uncover the societies� most closely guarded secrets, and break every rule doing it. But when faculty members begin to die off, Alex knows these aren’t just accidents. Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if she is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls.

Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world full of magic, violence, and all too real monsters.]]> 481 Leigh Bardugo 1250313104 Andrew 4 4.09 2023 Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2024/01/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)]]> 60784546 After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again�

All eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow wants to do is hold her family together. With a brother on the frontline forced to fight on behalf of the Gods now missing from the frontline and a mother drowning her sorrows, Iris’s best bet is winning the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.

But when Iris’s letters to her brother fall into the wrong hands � that of the handsome but cold Roman Kitt, her rival at the paper � an unlikely magical connection forms.

Expelled into the middle of a mystical war, magical typewriters in tow, can their bond withstand the fight for the fate of mankind and, most importantly, love?

An epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.]]> 357 Rebecca Ross 1250857430 Andrew 0 to-read 4.14 2023 Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/22
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]]> Blood Over Bright Haven 57915993 Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia, but magic has a cost—and the collectors have come calling.

An orphan since the age of four, Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, she finds that her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant.

What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was once more than a janitor; before he mopped floors for the mages, Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier. Ten years have passed since he survived the perilous crossing that killed his family. But working for a highmage, he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the Tiranish in power.

Through their fractious relationship, mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first. Sciona has defined her life by the pursuit of truth, but how much is one truth worth with the fate of civilization in the balance?

A standalone dark academia brimming with mystery, tragedy, and the damning echoes of the past. For fans of Leigh Bardugo, V. E. Schwab, and Fullmetal Alchemist.

(Content warnings for gore, sexual assault, and suicidal ideation)]]> 527 M.L. Wang Andrew 0 to-read 4.44 2023 Blood Over Bright Haven
author: M.L. Wang
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)]]> 53205854 No, I didn’t kill the dead human. If I had, I wouldn’t dump the body in the station mall.

When Murderbot discovers a dead body on Preservation Station, it knows it is going to have to assist station security to determine who the body is (was), how they were killed (that should be relatively straightforward, at least), and why (because apparently that matters to a lot of people—who knew?)

Yes, the unthinkable is about to happen: Murderbot must voluntarily speak to humans!

Again!]]> 168 Martha Wells 1250765374 Andrew 4 4.25 2021 Fugitive Telemetry (The Murderbot Diaries, #6)
author: Martha Wells
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/08
date added: 2024/01/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)]]> 52381770
It worries about the fragile human crew who've grown to trust it, but only where no one can see.

It tells itself that they're only a professional obligation, but when they're captured and an old friend from the past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.

Drastic action it is, then.

]]> 350 Martha Wells 1250229863 Andrew 5 4.44 2020 Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)
author: Martha Wells
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2024/01/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)]]> 35519109
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?

And what will become of it when it’s caught?]]> 163 Martha Wells Andrew 5 4.38 2018 Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)
author: Martha Wells
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/03
date added: 2024/01/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)]]> 35519101
And Murderbot would rather those questions went away. For good.

]]> 158 Martha Wells 1250191785 Andrew 5 4.21 2018 Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)
author: Martha Wells
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/28
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)]]> 36223860 alternate cover for ISBN 9781250186928

It has a dark past � one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A� stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.]]> 158 Martha Wells Andrew 4 4.23 2018 Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)
author: Martha Wells
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/19
date added: 2024/01/22
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)]]> 32758901 "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.� Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 144 Martha Wells Andrew 4 4.11 2017 All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)
author: Martha Wells
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/18
date added: 2024/01/22
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]]> <![CDATA[System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)]]> 65211701 Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.]]> 245 Martha Wells 1250826977 Andrew 4 4.19 2023 System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
author: Martha Wells
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/19
date added: 2024/01/19
shelves:
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]]> Frostbitten 198124609 When the warmth that has kept Lahar alive for hundreds of years begins to vanish, Greenleaf must set forth on a doomed mission to save those who most want him gone. Across a grueling and dead land, Greenleaf will face the implacable bitter cold of the arctic night to dig into the forbidden past of his Empire and face the creatures that claim the ice as their own. The ordeal will test his every limit, forcing him to battle not just the terrifying nightmares released from the ice, but the ugly truth at the core of all he believes.]]> 350 Dietrich Stogner 1088276741 Andrew 5 4.81 Frostbitten
author: Dietrich Stogner
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.81
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/01/16
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]]> The Book Eaters 58724745
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.

But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.]]> 298 Sunyi Dean 1250810183 Andrew 0 to-read 3.60 2022 The Book Eaters
author: Sunyi Dean
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> Spinning Silver 36896898 Spinning Silver draws readers deeper into a glittering realm of fantasy, where the boundary between wonder and terror is thinner than a breath, and safety can be stolen as quickly as a kiss.

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty—until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk—grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh—Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar.

But Tsar Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love.

Channeling the vibrant heart of myth and fairy tale, Spinning Silver weaves a multilayered, magical tapestry that readers will want to return to again and again.]]> 465 Naomi Novik Andrew 5 4.20 2018 Spinning Silver
author: Naomi Novik
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/15
date added: 2023/12/15
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]]> The Death of Vivek Oji 48595550
But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens—and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis—the mystery gives way to a heart-stopping act of violence in a moment of exhilarating freedom.

Propulsively readable, teeming with unforgettable characters, The Death of Vivek Oji is a novel of family and friendship that challenges expectations—a dramatic story of loss and transcendence that will move every reader.]]> 248 Akwaeke Emezi 0525541608 Andrew 4 4.12 2020 The Death of Vivek Oji
author: Akwaeke Emezi
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/30
date added: 2023/11/30
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]]> White Cat, Black Dog: Stories 61391802 Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers--characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.

In "The White Cat's Divorce," an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which will become his heir. In "The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear," a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In "Skinder's Veil," a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers--or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.

Twisting and winding in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable--these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the art of short fiction.]]> 272 Kelly Link 0593449959 Andrew 4 3.79 2023 White Cat, Black Dog: Stories
author: Kelly Link
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/20
date added: 2023/11/20
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]]> The Bone Clocks 20819685
For Holly has caught the attention of a cabal of dangerous mystics—and their enemies. But her lost weekend is merely the prelude to a shocking disappearance that leaves her family irrevocably scarred. This unsolved mystery will echo through every decade of Holly’s life, affecting all the people Holly loves—even the ones who are not yet born.

A Cambridge scholarship boy grooming himself for wealth and influence, a conflicted father who feels alive only while reporting from occupied Iraq, a middle-aged writer mourning his exile from the bestseller list—all have a part to play in this surreal, invisible war on the margins of our world. From the medieval Swiss Alps to the nineteenth-century Australian bush, from a hotel in Shanghai to a Manhattan townhouse in the near future, their stories come together in moments of everyday grace and extraordinary wonder.]]> 624 David Mitchell 1400065674 Andrew 4 3.82 2014 The Bone Clocks
author: David Mitchell
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/13
date added: 2023/11/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 63219094 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from #1 New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros.

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.]]> 665 Rebecca Yarros Andrew 0 to-read 4.74 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Shipping News 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Andrew 0 3.88 1993 The Shipping News
author: Annie Proulx
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at: 2013/04/05
date added: 2023/10/31
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]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2)]]> 19034943 La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.

It is seven years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.

Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . .

The second volume of Sir Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed.

Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.

Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.]]> 784 Philip Pullman Andrew 3 3.99 2019 The Secret Commonwealth (The Book of Dust, #2)
author: Philip Pullman
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/25
date added: 2023/10/25
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]]> The Rathbones 17261100
Moses, the revered patriarch of the Rathbone family, possessed an otherworldly instinct for spotting the whale. But years of bad decisions by the heirs to his fortune have whittled his formerly robust family down to just one surviving member: a young girl, left to live in the broken-down ancestral mansion that at one time had glowed golden with the spoils of the hunt.

Mercy, fifteen years old, is the diminutive scion of the Rathbone clan. Her father, the last in the dynasty of New England whalers, has been lost at sea for seven years-ever since the last sperm whale was seen off the coast of Naiwayonk, Connecticut. Mercy's memories of her father and of the time before he left grow dimmer each day, and she spends most of her time in the attic hideaway of her reclusive Uncle Mordecai, who teaches her the secrets of Greek history and navigation through his collection of moldering books. But when a strange, violent visitor turns up one night on the widow's walk, Mercy and Mordecai are forced to flee the house and set sail on a journey that will bring them deep into the haunted history of the Rathbone family.

Inspired by The Odyssey and infused with beautifully detailed descriptions of the realities of coastal and ship life reminiscent of Moby Dick, Janice Clark's magnificent debut is a spellbinding literary adventure.]]> 384 Janice Clark 0385536933 Andrew 3 audio-queue 3.22 2013 The Rathbones
author: Janice Clark
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.22
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/12
date added: 2023/10/19
shelves: audio-queue
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]]> Our Wives Under the Sea 58659343
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.]]> 240 Julia Armfield 152901722X Andrew 0 to-read 3.75 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> Uprooted 22544764 “Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.�

Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.

The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows�everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.

But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.]]> 438 Naomi Novik 0804179034 Andrew 4 4.02 2015 Uprooted
author: Naomi Novik
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/26
date added: 2023/09/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Morning Star (Red Rising Saga, #3)]]> 18966806
Finally, the time has come.

But devotion to honor and hunger for vengeance run deep on both sides. Darrow and his comrades-in-arms face powerful enemies without scruple or mercy. Among them are some Darrow once considered friends. To win, Darrow will need to inspire those shackled in darkness to break their chains, unmake the world their cruel masters have built, and claim a destiny too long denied—and too glorious to surrender.]]> 525 Pierce Brown 0345539842 Andrew 4 4.52 2016 Morning Star (Red Rising Saga, #3)
author: Pierce Brown
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/15
date added: 2023/09/15
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]]> <![CDATA[Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2)]]> 18966819
A lamb among wolves in a cruel world, Darrow finds friendship, respect, and even love—but also the wrath of powerful rivals. To wage and win the war that will change humankind’s destiny, Darrow must confront the treachery arrayed against him, overcome his all-too-human desire for retribution—and strive not for violent revolt but a hopeful rebirth. Though the road ahead is fraught with danger and deceit, Darrow must choose to follow Eo’s principles of love and justice to free his people.

He must live for more.]]> 466 Pierce Brown 0345539826 Andrew 4 4.48 2015 Golden Son (Red Rising Saga, #2)
author: Pierce Brown
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/07
date added: 2023/09/08
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]]> The Bone Houses 36524503 stay dead.

The risen corpses are known as "bone houses," and legend says that they're the result of a decades-old curse. When Ellis, an apprentice mapmaker with a mysterious past, arrives in town, the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good?

Together, Ellis and Ryn embark on a journey that will take them deep into the heart of the mountains, where they will have to face both the curse and the long-hidden truths about themselves.]]> 335 Emily Lloyd-Jones 0316418412 Andrew 4 3.99 2019 The Bone Houses
author: Emily Lloyd-Jones
name: Andrew
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/31
date added: 2023/08/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)]]> 25451264
Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death's End. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?]]> 604 Liu Cixin 0765377101 Andrew 5 4.40 2010 Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2023/08/26
date added: 2023/08/26
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)]]> 60222807 A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes.

After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success—not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

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

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.]]> 296 Travis Baldree Andrew 0 to-read 4.33 2022 Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)
author: Travis Baldree
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture, #1)]]> 55278507 The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us an extraordinary space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all.

The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .

Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.

After earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared—and Idris and his kind became obsolete.

Now, fifty years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It's clearly the work of the Architects—but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.]]> Adrian Tchaikovsky 1549106392 Andrew 0 to-read 4.09 2021 Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture, #1)
author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
name: Andrew
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>