en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 17:16:35 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 66086834 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525558965.

From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believed.

It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.

Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.

Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.

The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.”]]> 464 Zadie Smith Ellen 4 currently-reading 3.25 2023
author: Zadie Smith
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:
Good read. Didn't resemble any other Smith books I've read.
]]> 57071863 Part Name of the Rose, part Silence of the Lambs, a rip-snorting new thriller set in Restoration London that introduces two new investigators, Hooke and Hunt of the Royal Society

The City of London, 1678. New Year's Day. Twelve years have passed since the Great Fire ripped through the City. Eighteen since the fall of Oliver Cromwell's Republic and the restoration of a King. London is gripped by hysteria, where rumors of Catholic plots and sinister foreign assassins abound.

The body of a young boy, drained of his blood and with a sequence of numbers inscribed on his skin, is discovered on the snowy bank of the Fleet River.

Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, the powerful Justice of Peace for Westminster, is certain of Catholic guilt in the crime. He enlists Robert Hooke, the Curator of Experiments of the Royal Society, and his assistant, Harry Hunt, to help his enquiry. Demanding discretion from them, he also entrusts to them to preserve the body, which they store inside Hooke's Air-pump. Sir Edmund confides to Hooke that the bloodless boy is not the first to have been discovered. He also presents Hooke with a cipher that was left on the body.

That same morning Henry Oldenburg, the Secretary of the Royal Society, blows his brains out. A disgraced Earl is released from the Tower of London, bent on revenge against the King, Charles II.

Wary of the political hornet's nest they are walking into - and using evidence rather than paranoia in their pursuit of truth - Hooke and Hunt must discover why the boy was murdered, and why his blood was taken. Moreover, what does the cipher mean?

Harry, wanting to prove himself as a natural philosopher and to break free from the shadow of Hooke's brilliance, takes the lead in investigating the death of the boy. He is pulled into the darkest corners of Restoration London, where the Court and the underworld seem to merge.

Harry has to face the terrible consequences of experiments done in the name of Science, but also reckon with a sinister tale with its roots in the traumas of the Civil Wars.

The Bloodless Boy is a beguiling thriller that introduces two new indelible heroes to mystery fiction. It is also a powerfully atmospheric recreation of Restoration London.]]> 416 Robert J. Lloyd 1612199399 Ellen 3 3.26 2014
author: Robert J. Lloyd
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
shelves:
review:
Convoluted and too long, but still had some fun in it. Probably won't read the sequel, but you never know.
]]> 211004927 What is the difference between men and women? Jennifer Finney Boylan, bestselling author of She’s Not There and co-author of Mad Honey with Jodi Picoult, examines the divisions—as well as the common ground—between the genders, and reflects on her own experiences, both difficult and joyful, as a transgender American.

Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There was the first bestselling work written by a transgender American. Since its publication twenty years ago, she has become the go-to person for insight into the impact of gender on our lives, from the food we eat to the dreams we dream, both for ourselves and for our children. But Cleavage is more than a deep dive into gender identity; it’s also a look at the difference between coming out as trans in 2000—when many people reacted to Boylan’s transition with love—and the present era of blowback and fear.

How does gender affect our sense of self? Our body image? The passage of time? The friends we lose—and keep? Boylan considers her womanhood, reflects on the boys and men who shaped her, and reconceives of herself as a writer, activist, parent, and spouse. With heart-wrenching honesty, she illustrates the feeling of liminality that followed her to adulthood, but demonstrates the redemptive power of love through it all.

With Boylan’s trademark humor and poignancy, Cleavage is a sharp, witty, and captivating look at the triumphs and losses of a life lived in two genders. Cleavage provides hope for a future in which we all have the freedom to live joyfully as men, as women, and in the space between us.]]> 256 Jennifer Finney Boylan 1250261880 Ellen 3 OK, but pretty repetitive. 3.76 2025
author: Jennifer Finney Boylan
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/23
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
review:
OK, but pretty repetitive.
]]> 127306444
IĂ°unn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same � have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.

Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .

What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?]]> 197 Hildur Knútsdóttir 1250322049 Ellen 3 Very. Weird. 3.5. 3.30 2021
author: Hildur KnĂştsdĂłttir
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves:
review:
Very. Weird. 3.5.
]]> 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 Ellen 4 3.94 2024
author: Lev Grossman
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 62365896 A charming, deeply moving novel about second chances, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.

Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle�

Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.

When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.

How to Read a Book Ěýis an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.Ěý .Ěý]]> 288 Monica Wood 0063243679 Ellen 3
Anyway, the 3 stars are for the saving grace of the parrots and the book club.]]> 4.21 2024
author: Monica Wood
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves:
review:
Sigh. I really don't know how to process how I feel about this book. There were things I really liked -- like the parrots, and the book club, which felt surprisingly not faux, but it also reminded me of the worst of this genre, the disparate-lonely-lost-curmudgeonly-people-meeting-in-a-book-store-and-creating-a-family genre. Definitely too heart-warmingly positive, and weirdly hetero-normative -- every single relationship, good or bad, was heterosexual right out of the 50s. And I don't do well with wish-fulfillment plotlines; I am a 65-year-old woman who is alone, and I resent how easy it is in wish-fulfillment books for such women to find satisfying relationships. I sneer at this.

Anyway, the 3 stars are for the saving grace of the parrots and the book club.
]]> 175678711
The new book censor hasn’t slept soundly in weeks. By day he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish―allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams, and pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter. As the siren song of forbidden reading continues to beckon, he descends into a netherworld of resistance fighters, undercover booksellers, and outlaw librarians trying to save their history and culture.

Reckoning with the global threat to free speech and the bleak future it all but guarantees, Bothayna Al-Essa marries the steely dystopia of Orwell’s 1984 with the madcap absurdity of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, resulting in a dreadful twist worthy of Kafka. The Book Censor’s Library is a warning call and a love letter to stories and the delicious act of losing oneself in them.]]> 272 Bothayna Al-Essa 1632063344 Ellen 5

But really, well done.]]> 3.93 2019
author: Bothayna Al-Essa
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
review:
If Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 met and had a love child....


But really, well done.
]]> 154486930 “Reading this book is a joy...Ěýmuch to say about the trans journey and will undoubtedly become a standard for those in need of guidance. â€� â€� The Washington Post

"Sante’s bold devotion to complexity and clarity makes this an exemplary memoir. It is a clarion call to live one’s most authentic life.� � The Boston Globe

“Not to be missed, I Heard Her Call My Name is a powerful example of self-reflection and a vibrant exploration of the modern dynamics of gender and identity.”Ěýâ€� Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024

An iconic writer’s lapidary memoir of a life spent pursuing a dream of artistic truth while evading the truth of her own gender identity, until, finally, she turned to face who she really was

For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, to drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates, on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life a performance. She was presenting a façade, even to herself.

Sante’s memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. Sante brings a loving irony to her account of her unsteady first steps; there was much she found she still needed to learn about being a woman after some sixty years cloaked in a man’s identity, in a man’s world. A marvel of grace and empathy, I Heard Her Call My Name parses with great sensitivity many issues that touch our lives deeply, of gender identity and far beyond.]]> 235 Lucy Sante 059349377X Ellen 3 3.56 2024
author: Lucy Sante
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves:
review:
Another memoir of the self-obsessed, although I guess to write a memoir you have to be self-obsessed. Really, an article in Vanity Fair would have been enough.
]]> 177185877 When the Blitz imperils the heart of a London neighborhood, three young women must use their fighting spirit to save the community’s beloved library in this heartwarming novel from the author of The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

When new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn't the bustling hub she's expecting, she becomes determined to breathe life back into it. But can she show the men in charge that a woman is up to the task of running it, especially when a confrontation with her past threatens to derail her?

Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she's only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front line and amid tumultuous family strife, she finds herself harboring a life-changing secret with no one to turn to for help.

Sofie Baumann, a young Jewish refugee, came to London on a domestic service visa only to find herself working as a maid for a man who treats her abominably. She escapes to the library every chance she can, finding friendship in the literary community and aid in finding her sister, who is still trying to flee occupied Europe.

When a slew of bombs destroy the library, Juliet relocates the stacks to the local Underground station where the city's residents shelter nightly, determined to lend out stories that will keep spirits up. But tragedy after tragedy threatens to unmoor the women and sever the ties of their community. Will Juliet, Kate, and Sofie be able to overcome their own troubles to save the library? Or will the beating heart of their neighborhood be lost forever?]]> 368 Jennifer Ryan 0593500385 Ellen 2
Bad writing, ridiculous wish-fulfillment plot, idiotic anachronisms, actual mistakes -- there's no such thing as "matzo soup" and if you're so ignorant you don't know that, you shouldn't be writing about what you don't know about, and the fact that no editor caught that is personally offensive -- and mostly, it cheapens the time period and the reality of the time it's attempting to portray by fashioning it into a romance for three young women who all get their man while becoming independent and strong-minded! Grrr.

I never choose books on spec, but this one passed through my hands at work just after I'd returned from a personal odyssey in Bethnal Green and the fact that it took place in Bethnal Green during the war made me take it home. More fool me. I need to remind myself -- frequently -- why I don't read books on spec.]]> 4.10 2024
author: Jennifer Ryan
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/09
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves:
review:
Bleah.

Bad writing, ridiculous wish-fulfillment plot, idiotic anachronisms, actual mistakes -- there's no such thing as "matzo soup" and if you're so ignorant you don't know that, you shouldn't be writing about what you don't know about, and the fact that no editor caught that is personally offensive -- and mostly, it cheapens the time period and the reality of the time it's attempting to portray by fashioning it into a romance for three young women who all get their man while becoming independent and strong-minded! Grrr.

I never choose books on spec, but this one passed through my hands at work just after I'd returned from a personal odyssey in Bethnal Green and the fact that it took place in Bethnal Green during the war made me take it home. More fool me. I need to remind myself -- frequently -- why I don't read books on spec.
]]> 212806926 Psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis become embroiled in an all-out race against time to find a twisted assassin in this riveting thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling “master of suspense� (Los Angeles Times).

Los Angeles is a city of stars, a city of strivers and wannabes. Not everyone can shine bright, but they’ll burn themselves up for a glimpse of the high life. LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis knows it all too The best dreamers often make the worst monsters.

The body of an aspiring actress has been found—and she’d been drugged. The main suspect is a stunt double with the ego of an action star. He’s more brawn than brains, it seems, with few boundaries when it comes to women. But he’s offed before Milo and Alex can get to him. Worse yet, the rifle that killed him was used in a prior case . . . and another case before that. And then it's fired again and again, taking victims right under their noses.

They begin to think that someone is avenging the victims of men without boundaries—but is this a slick, efficient assassin with their own corrupt code of justice, or a knight errant, one who doesn’t want to be seen, but still wants to be known?

Alex and Milo soon find themselves in the thick of a truly complicated and twisted case—one with no shortage of suspects or victims that takes them on a wild ride through the surreal underbelly of Los Angeles.]]> 288 Jonathan Kellerman 0593497694 Ellen 4 3.86 2025
author: Jonathan Kellerman
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/06
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves:
review:
Well, I'm just laughing and laughing. I read this perfectly ordinary murder mystery in one day -- admittedly, I'm sick and gave myself permission to do nothing today -- and it turns out that the entire solution to the mystery revolves around, of all places, my alma mater. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who might read it, so I won't go into any detail, but you don't see that in a pedestrian police procedural murder mystery every day. Dr. Kellerman, I award you an extra star just for that.
]]> 209455837
On the day after Christmas, head of Department Q, Detective Carl Mørck, finds himself handcuffed in a police car headed for Copenhagen's Vestre prison. After fifteen years, a violent case from his past has caught up with him. Charges of drug trafficking and murder threaten to destroy his life and career. But he is being framed. Someone has a million-dollar bounty on his head to make sure he doesn't talk, putting him in grave danger among the prison's incarcerated criminals and corrupt officers. The question that remains is, Why?

Carl's colleagues at the Copenhagen Police Department instantly turn their backs on him, leaving the ever-loyal Department Q team as his only hope. In search of answers, Rose, Assad, and Gordon must disobey direct orders from way up the chain to try to unravel case. With only one another to trust and Carl's battle against the unknown mastermind's henchmen worsening by the day, they must work faster than ever before if they are to clear his name—and save his life.]]> 512 Jussi Adler-Olsen 0593475690 Ellen 3 4.17 2023
author: Jussi Adler-Olsen
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:
3.5. Far-fetched but fun as always.
]]> 168632462 A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winning author of The Natural Way of Things and The Weekend.

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident.

As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past.

With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished? A meditative and deeply moving novel from one of Australia's most acclaimed and best loved writers.

"Wood joins the ranks of writers such as Nora Ephron, Penelope Lively and Elizabeth Strout." THE GUARDIAN UK]]> 320 Charlotte Wood Ellen 4
Anyway, once again, I'm totally puzzled by Orbital's win of the Booker when books like this were on the shortlist. ]]> 3.73 2023
author: Charlotte Wood
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/29
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves:
review:
Very good, very evocative. Raised more questions than it answered -- like, how was the unnamed protagonist allowed/able to just move into the convent without becoming a nun?

Anyway, once again, I'm totally puzzled by Orbital's win of the Booker when books like this were on the shortlist.
]]> 155685403
Caleb Carr has had special relationships with cats since he was a young boy in a turbulent household, famously peopled by the founding members of the Beat Generation, where his steadiest companions were the adopted cats that lived with him both in the city and the country. As an adult, he has had many close feline companions, with relationships that have outlasted most of his human ones. But only after building a three-story home in rural, upstate New York did he enter into the most extraordinary of all of his cat Masha, a Siberian Forest cat who had been abandoned as a kitten, and was languishing in a shelter when Caleb met her. She had hissed and fought off all previous carers and potential adopters, but somehow, she chose Caleb as her savior.
Ěý
For the seventeen years that followed, Caleb and Masha were inseparable. Masha ruled the house and the extensive, dangerous surrounding fields and forests. When she was hurt, only Caleb could help her. When he suffered long-standing physical ailments, Masha knew what to do. Caleb’s life-long study of the literature of cat behavior, and his years of experience with previous cats, helped him decode much of Masha’s inner life. But their bond went far beyond academic studies and experience. The story of Caleb and Masha is an inspiring and life-affirming relationship for readers of all backgrounds and interests—a love story like no other.
Ěý]]> 344 Caleb Carr 0316503606 Ellen 4 4.11 2024
author: Caleb Carr
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves:
review:
Well, I gulped it down, despite the -- I have to acknowledge it -- bad writing and wild anthropomorphism. He really did project an awful lot onto that cat. I don't know the exact dates, but I would suspect he outlived Masha by less than a year.
]]> 220259184 Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

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

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.]]> 320 Amity Gaige 1668063603 Ellen 0 to-read 3.96 2025
author: Amity Gaige
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199793431
Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his.

Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker.

Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels, and worries for the future, her daughter’s and her own.

Human time, deep time, Red River time, the half-life of herbicides and pesticides, and the elegance of time represented in fracking core samples from unimaginable depths, is set against the speed of climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the sudden economic meltdown of 2008-2009. How much does a dress cost? A used car? A package of cinnamon rolls? Can you see the shape of your soul in the everchanging clouds? Your personal salvation in the giant expanse of sky? These are the questions the people of the Red River Valley of the North wrestle with every day.

The Mighty Red is a novel of tender humor, disturbance, and hallucinatory mourning. It is about on-the-job pains and immeasurable satisfactions, a turbulent landscape, and eating the native weeds growing in your backyard. It is about ordinary people who dream, grow up, fall in love, struggle, endure tragedy, carry bitter secrets; men and women both complicated and contradictory, flawed and decent, lonely and hopeful. It is about a starkly beautiful prairie community whose members must cope with devastating consequences as powerful forces upend them. As with every book this great modern master writes, The Mighty Red is about our tattered bond with the earth, and about love in all of its absurdity and splendor.

A new novel by Louise Erdrich is a major literary event; gorgeous and heartrending, The Mighty Red is a triumph.]]> 384 Louise Erdrich 0063277050 Ellen 3 3.78 2024
author: Louise Erdrich
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
review:
Boy, that book took me the longest time to finish. It wasn't bad -- it just didn't keep my attention. Don't know why.
]]> 208516656 If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate?

Aside from a delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed.

Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.

How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight (the bride and groom, the jittery, possibly famous woman, the giant Hemsworth-esque guy who looks like an off-duty superhero, the frazzled, gorgeous flight attendant) but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.�

Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.

A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one is thinking this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.

If you were told you only had a certain amount of time left to live, would you do things differently? Would you try to dodge your destiny?

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment is a brilliantly constructed tale that looks at free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, Moriarty asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel.]]> 512 Liane Moriarty 0593798600 Ellen 4 3.99 2024
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves:
review:
I do like her books and I do like her writing. Not the deepest or the most literary in the world, but I always enjoy the characters. So sue me.
]]> 1297985 400 Oliver Sacks Ellen 4 3.95 2007
author: Oliver Sacks
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 112975658 A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history.

Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community. Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.

Over the course of one winter, as the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546874 Ellen 3
The story was pretty gripping, I'll grant that, but the anachronisms got on my nerves.]]> 4.37 2023
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves:
review:
This book puzzled me greatly. I've just finished reading the author's afterward, in which she -- kind of -- brags about her reputation for historical accuracy in her "biographical novels", such as this one, and goes on to tell how she heard of her main character, 18th c. midwife Martha Ballard, and researched deeply from source materials, and went on to describe what was fiction and what was not in the book -- like any historical novel. And I do not question her historical accuracy in that context -- I'm sure she read all the source material and researched the place and the time and midwifery in the 18th c. and the legal aspects and all that stuff. But the book itself -- the way the people spoke and interacted -- was littered with anachronisms and anachronistic language (I lost count, for example, of the number of times various people said "okay"). And there were the kinds of anachronisms that you wouldn't know unless you knew -- for example, there are two descriptions of "Frolics", which were dancing parties, that clearly described couples dancing together, like -- in each other's arms, twirling around, couple dancing. The thing is, no dances in Massachusetts in 1789 would have featured that kind of dancing. It literally had not been invented yet. They would have done set dances or country dances -- lines facing each other and doing steps in and out (not unlike what you might see in a Jane Austen adaptation). So while she may have meticulously researched the actual incidents told in Martha's diary, there was tons of other stuff that was totally wrong.

The story was pretty gripping, I'll grant that, but the anachronisms got on my nerves.
]]> 16217648
Bennie Griessel has to reopen the Sloet dossier. The case is 40 days old, the trail has gone cold. No motive, no leads, just a set of nude photographs, a very complicated business transaction, and immense pressure from the brass, the media, and the relentless, unfathomable sniper.

And through it all, Griessel has to keep his love interest, the alcoholic, former singing sensation Alexa Barnard, sober for her comeback concert, cope with his daughter’s Neanderthal boyfriend, his son’s shenanigans, and his new partner’s idiosyncrasies � and try to tame his own all-consuming lust for the soothing powers of the bottle.

Seven days of hell.]]> 353 Deon Meyer Ellen 3 4.14 2011
author: Deon Meyer
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/27
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 195888522 A stunning debut from an award-winning writer, about loss, isolation, folklore, and the joy and dissonance of finding oneself by exploring life outside one’s community

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

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

With shimmering prose tempered by sharp wit, Whale Fall tells the story of what happens when one person's ambitions threaten the fabric of a community, and what can happen when they are realized. O'Connor paints a portrait of a community and a woman on the precipice, forced to confront an outside world that seems to be closing in on them.]]> 224 Elizabeth O'Connor 0593700910 Ellen 4 3.80 2024
author: Elizabeth O'Connor
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
review:
Why are there so many books all of a sudden about remote islands with tiny inbred or disappearing populations? The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars is that I feel like I've read the same book 3 or 4 times in the past few years. But this one should get extra points for being about Wales...
]]> 60916808
In the days leading up to Christmas, Dómhildur delivers her 1,922nd baby. Beginnings and endings are her family trade; she comes from a long line of midwives on her mother’s side and a long line of undertakers on her father’s. She even lives in the apartment that she inherited from her grandaunt, a midwife with a unique reputation for her unconventional methods.

As a terrible storm races towards Reykjavík, Dómhildur discovers decades worth of letters and manuscripts hidden amongst her grandaunt’s clutter. Fielding calls from her anxious meteorologist sister and visits from her curious new neighbour, Dómhildur escapes into her grandaunt’s archive and discovers strange and beautiful reflections on birth, death, and human nature.

With her singular warmth and humor, in Animal Life Ă“lafsdĂłttir gives us a beguiling novel that comes direct from the depths of an Icelandic winter, full of hope for spring.]]> 192 AuĂ°ur Ava Ă“lafsdĂłttir 0802160166 Ellen 5 3.61 2020
author: AuĂ°ur Ava Ă“lafsdĂłttir
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/22
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves:
review:
Wow. I'm not sure what it all meant, but I loved it. Of course, it's Iceland, so that helped.
]]> 171793386
From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Murder Rule comes an emotional novel of suspense about two families at war.

Nina and Simon are the perfect couple. Young, fun and deeply in love. Until they leave for a weekend at his family’s cabin in Vermont, and only Simon comes home.

WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA?

Nobody knows. Simon’s explanation about what happened in their last hours together doesn’t add up. Nina’s parents push the police for answers, and Simon’s parents rush to protect him. They hire expensive lawyers and a PR firm that quickly ramps up a vicious, nothing-is-off-limits media campaign.

HOW FAR WILL HIS FAMILY GO TO KEEP HIM SAFE?

Soon, facts are lost in a swirl of accusation and counter-accusation. Everyone chooses a side, and the story goes viral, fueled by armchair investigators and wild conspiracy theories and illustrated with pretty pictures taken from Nina’s social media accounts. Journalists descend on their small Vermont town, followed by a few obsessive "fans."

HOW FAR WILL HER FAMILY GO TO GET TO THE TRUTH?

Nina’s family is under siege, but they never lose sight of the only thing that really matters—finding their daughter. Out-gunned by Simon’s wealthy, powerful family, Nina’s parents recognize that if playing by the rules won’t get them anywhere, it’s time to break them.]]> 328 Dervla McTiernan Ellen 4 4.05 2024
author: Dervla McTiernan
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:
Well written. The story of Gabby Pettito, with different names.
]]> 363204 44 Tom Stoppard 0573614679 Ellen 5 3.92 1968
author: Tom Stoppard
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1968
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/16
date added: 2025/02/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 200555235 A searing novel about being a wife, a mother, and an artist, and how marriage makes liars out of us all, from the author of Very Cold People and 300 Arguments.

“Painful and brilliant—I loved it.”—Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or

A nuclear family can destroy a woman artist. I’d always known that. But I’d never suspected how easily I’d fall into one anyway.

When Jane, an aspiring writer, meets filmmaker John Bridges, they both want the same things: to be in love, to live a successful creative life, and to be happy. When they marry, Jane believes she has found everything she was looking for, including—a few years later—all the attendant joy and labor of motherhood. But it’s not long until Jane finds herself subsumed by John’s ambitions, whims, and ego; in short, she becomes a wife.

As Jane’s career flourishes, their marriage starts to falter. Throughout the upheavals of family life, Jane tries to hold it all together. That is, until John leaves her.

Combining the intensity of Elena Ferrante’s Days of Abandonment and the pithy wisdom of Jenny Offill’s Dept of Speculation, Liars is a tour de force of wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.]]> 272 Sarah Manguso 0593241258 Ellen 5 The Book of Love again, my last and I consider myself a completist.)

Raw, emotionally true, bitter, and gutting -- and, in my personal case, WAAAAY too close to the bone. *shudder* Our circumstances and experiences were not exactly identical -- but the similarities were creepily stunning. Again, *shudder*. I will acknowledge that the saccharine depiction of "the child" were a little off-putting. But generally -- wow.]]> 3.67 2024
author: Sarah Manguso
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves:
review:
Jeez. I have to award 5 stars -- the third ToB book this year! (Also, unless I force myself to pick up The Book of Love again, my last and I consider myself a completist.)

Raw, emotionally true, bitter, and gutting -- and, in my personal case, WAAAAY too close to the bone. *shudder* Our circumstances and experiences were not exactly identical -- but the similarities were creepily stunning. Again, *shudder*. I will acknowledge that the saccharine depiction of "the child" were a little off-putting. But generally -- wow.
]]> 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Ellen 5 4.15 1817
author: Jane Austen
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 195790713
The second in a charming and hilarious mystery series by Kat Ailes, Dead Tired follows a group of new moms who didn’t think their maternity leave would involve so much murder.

"Full of charming characters, including Alice’s goofy dog, this fast-paced, original cozy is great fun."�Publishers Weekly

Being a new mom is murder.

Alice didn’t think her maternity leave would involve so much, well, murder. Before becoming proud new moms, she and her friends bonded more than members of a prenatal group usually would, as they became accidental amateur sleuths and solved a crime together. Now, with all this behind them and Alice’s son Jack somehow already a year old, Alice is keen to finally catch up on some sleep. So when an opportunity presents itself in the unlikely form of an eco-protest, Alice and her friends willingly chain themselves to trees and settle in as an excuse to get some overdue rest. Not the most comfortable arrangement ever, but at this point, they’ll take what they can get.

However, the next morning one of their fellow protesters is found strangled, and any hope of a peaceful interlude is suddenly swept away. Soon Alice and her friends become entangled in a plot involving rogue artists, an enigmatic local entrepreneur, and nude (optional) protesting, offering an unexpected—but not necessarily unwelcome—break from changing diapers and wrestling baby toys away from Helen the dog.

Alice, whose success rate in solving countryside murder is at an all-time high (one out of one), cannot resist the chance to demonstrate her detective skills once more, and assembles her gang of new moms to investigate this latest mystery in their not-so-sleepy English countryside village.]]> 320 Kat Ailes 1250322731 Ellen 3 3.79 2024
author: Kat Ailes
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:
Not as much fun as the first one, but still kind of fun. Have to decide if I'll bother with the third.
]]> 123136728 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Ellen 3 3.56 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/03
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:
*shrug* Beautifully written and all, but...ultimately, I just didn't care. Not invested at all. YMMV.
]]> 50398 Northanger Abbey is often referred to as Jane Austen's "Gothic parody." Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers give the story an uncanny air, but one with a decidedly satirical twist.

The story's unlikely heroine is Catherine Morland, a remarkably innocent seventeen-year-old woman from a country parsonage. While spending a few weeks in Bath with a family friend, Catherine meets and falls in love with Henry Tilney, who invites her to visit his family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Catherine, a great reader of Gothic thrillers, lets the shadowy atmosphere of the old mansion fill her mind with terrible suspicions. What is the mystery surrounding the death of Henry's mother? Is the family concealing a terrible secret within the elegant rooms of the Abbey? Can she trust Henry, or is he part of an evil conspiracy? Catherine finds dreadful portents in the most prosaic events, until Henry persuades her to see the peril in confusing life with art.

Executed with high-spirited gusto, Northanger Abbey is a lighthearted, yet unsentimental commentary on love and marriage.]]> 260 Jane Austen 1593082649 Ellen 4 3.85 1817
author: Jane Austen
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1817
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
Re-read following a trip to Bath.
]]> 172979818 From the International Booker Prize–winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, a propulsive, beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest.

Eight translators arrive at a house in a forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.

The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore this ancient wooded refuge with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens, and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets � and deceptions � of Irena Rey's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in this fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.

This hilarious, thought-provoking second outing by award-winning translator and author Jennifer Croft is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe’s last great wildernesses.]]> 320 Jennifer Croft 1639731709 Ellen 4 3.18 2024
author: Jennifer Croft
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
Really interesting, if confusing. Not sure if I got it.
]]> 199796715
Margo braucht Geld. Seit sie ungewollt von ihrem Collegeprofessor, der sie jetzt mit dem Kind alleinlässt, schwanger wurde, mehr denn je. Wie Margo es auch dreht und wendet, kein Job scheint passend zu sein, oder könnte auch nur ansatzweise ihr Leben mit einem Baby finanzieren. Durch einen Zufall wird sie auf die Plattform OnlyFans aufmerksam, und Margo ist fasziniert von dieser Welt, in der Frauen mit sich und ihrem Körper experimentieren, und offenbar gut dabei verdienen. Also beginnt auch sie, Inhalte zu produzieren. Dabei erhält sie Unterstützung von ihrer Mitbewohnerin Suzie, einem großen Cosplay-Fan, und auch von ihrem Vater Jinx, einem Ex-Wrestlingprofi. Ehe sie sich versieht, ist Margo ein Online-Phänomen. Könnte dies die Antwort auf all ihre Probleme sein, oder hat der Internet-Ruhm einen zu hohen Preis?]]> 368 Rufi Thorpe 0063356600 Ellen 3 3.93 2024
author: Rufi Thorpe
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
Read for the ToB. Wondering why exactly it's in the ToB. It was enjoyable and went fast, but ultimately it felt like I was reading Bridget Jones again.
]]> 145625252 Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist’s defining work and a breakout bestseller when published in France in 2008.

The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6 decades of diaries.

Local dialect, words of the times, slogans, brands and names for the ever-proliferating objects, are given voice here. The voice we recognize as the author’s continually dissolves and re-emerges. Ernaux makes the passage of time palpable. Time itself, inexorable, narrates its own course, consigning all other narrators to anonymity. A new kind of autobiography emerges, at once subjective and impersonal, private and collective.

On its 2008 publication in France, The Years came as a surprise. Though Ernaux had for years been hailed as a beloved, bestselling and award-winning author, The Years was in many ways a departure: both an intimate memoir “written� by entire generations, and a story of generations telling a very personal story. Like the generation before hers, the narrator eschews the “I� for the “we� (or “they�, or “one�) as if collective life were inextricably intertwined with a private life that in her parents� generation ceased to exist. She writes of her parents� generation (and could be writing of her own book): “From a common fund of hunger and fear, everything was told in the “we� and impersonal pronouns.”]]> 240 Annie Ernaux 1609807871 Ellen 4 4.22 2008
author: Annie Ernaux
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
Read in preparation for seeing the play in London.
]]> 203956647 A brand new series. An iconic new detective duo. And a puzzling new murder to solve...

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job...

Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 059365322X.]]> 400 Richard Osman Ellen 3 4.06 2024
author: Richard Osman
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves:
review:
OK, but not as good as the Thursday Murder Club books. I don't know if I'll read the second one when it comes out -- but I probably will.
]]> 199373354
In twelve luminous stories set across three centuries, The History of Sound examines the unexpected ways the past returns to us and how love and loss are entwined and transformed over generations. In Ben Shattuck's ingenious collection, each story has a companion story, which contains a revelation about the previous, paired story. Mysteries and murders are revealed, history is refracted, and deep emotional connections are woven through characters and families.

The haunting title story recalls the journey of two men who meet around a piano in a smoky, dim bar, only to spend a summer walking the Maine woods collecting folk songs in the shadow of the First World War, forever marked by the odyssey. Decades later, in another story, a woman discovers the wax cylinders recorded that fateful summer while cleaning out her new house in Maine. Shattuck’s inventive, exquisite stories transport readers from 1700s Nantucket to the contemporary woods of New Hampshire and beyond—into landscapes both enduring and unmistakably modern. Memories, artifacts, paintings, and journals resurface in surprising and poignant ways among evocative beaches, forests, and orchards, revealing the secrets, misunderstandings, and love that linger across centuries.

Written with breathtaking humanity and humor, The History of Sound is a love letter to New England, a radiant conversation between past and present, and a moving meditation on the abiding search for home.]]> 320 Ben Shattuck 059349038X Ellen 5 Cloud Atlas and North Woods. A beautiful book.

ETA: Reading others' comments -- I have never heard of his wife, and I didn't listen on audio so I had no idea who narrated it! I came to this book totally unknowing of anything about him. I sure hope it wins.]]> 4.36 2024
author: Ben Shattuck
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:
THIS is why I participate in the ToB year after year, on the hopeful chance that I will be exposed to a book I would never choose on my own and will fall in love. It's interconnected short stories and has hints of at least two of my favorite books, Cloud Atlas and North Woods. A beautiful book.

ETA: Reading others' comments -- I have never heard of his wife, and I didn't listen on audio so I had no idea who narrated it! I came to this book totally unknowing of anything about him. I sure hope it wins.
]]> 203579186 From the author of the critically acclaimed Laura & Emma comes a The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. for our times: Kate Greathead's razor-sharp but big-hearted excavation of millennial masculinity, The Book of George.

If you haven’t had the misfortune of dating a George, you know someone who has. He’s a young man brimming with potential but incapable of following through; noncommittal to his long-suffering girlfriend, Jenny; distant from but still reliant on his mother; funny one minute, sullenly brooding the next. Here, Kate Greathead paints one particular, unforgettable George in a series of droll and surprisingly poignant snapshots of his life over two decades.

And yet, it’s hard not to root for George at least a little. Beneath his cynicism is a reservoir of fondness for Jenny’s valiant willingness to put up with him. Each demonstration of his flaws is paired with a self-eviscerating comment. No one is more disappointed in him than himself (except maybe Jenny and his mother). As hilarious as it is astute and singular as it is universal, The Book of George is a deft, unexpectedly moving portrait of one man � but also countless others.]]> 288 Kate Greathead 1250351022 Ellen 3 3.43 2024
author: Kate Greathead
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:
I'm puzzled by why this book exists. I mean, it was fine, it kept my attention (it's fairly short), it's fairly well written, but I just can't see the point. It's definitely a WMFU etc. novel, but George is such a sad sack that even his peccadillos kind of ... evaporate.
]]> 201187765
Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters� rich interior lives amid the social an]]> 448 Claire Messud 039363504X Ellen 4 The Woman Upstairs, until the 11th hour -- pretty much the last page -- I thought I was reading one book, when it turned out I was reading something completely different. What I thought was a somewhat self-indulgent -- and way too long, and, frankly, often pretty dull -- fictionalization of Messud's family history, from her grandparents' generation to her own, turns out to be... something yet again, which made me gasp (what I call a "Eureka!" book, like, for example, The Hours, or, as I said, Messud's ownThe Woman Upstairs) and recast the entire book in my head. Brava. OTOH, it really was achingly dull in many parts, particularly when plodding through the grandfather's and father's professional lives. YMMV. ]]> 3.50
author: Claire Messud
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.50
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
review:
OK, Claire Messud got me again. Just like in her book The Woman Upstairs, until the 11th hour -- pretty much the last page -- I thought I was reading one book, when it turned out I was reading something completely different. What I thought was a somewhat self-indulgent -- and way too long, and, frankly, often pretty dull -- fictionalization of Messud's family history, from her grandparents' generation to her own, turns out to be... something yet again, which made me gasp (what I call a "Eureka!" book, like, for example, The Hours, or, as I said, Messud's ownThe Woman Upstairs) and recast the entire book in my head. Brava. OTOH, it really was achingly dull in many parts, particularly when plodding through the grandfather's and father's professional lives. YMMV.
]]> 139400711
I’d seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his, but the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.

When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator’s idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he’ll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States� first Black president.

Great Expectations is about David’s eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions—questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood—that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.

Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, Great Expectations is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.]]> 272 Vinson Cunningham 0593448235 Ellen 3
I gave it 3 stars because it was ok, and well enough written, and not awful, but again, I have no idea why this book was written or published. It tells us nothing new, and I, for one, was not itching for a blow-by-blow description of the Obama campaign through the eyes of a self-absorbed 20-something. YMMV.

ETA: Also, why on earth use the title "Great Expectations"? Were there supposed to be Dickensian overtones? ]]> 3.24 2024
author: Vinson Cunningham
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.24
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
review:
This book mystified me. Why was it written, and why now? I could see it maybe 10 years ago. And why all the coy references to "the candidate" when other real life people's names are peppered through the book?

I gave it 3 stars because it was ok, and well enough written, and not awful, but again, I have no idea why this book was written or published. It tells us nothing new, and I, for one, was not itching for a blow-by-blow description of the Obama campaign through the eyes of a self-absorbed 20-something. YMMV.

ETA: Also, why on earth use the title "Great Expectations"? Were there supposed to be Dickensian overtones?
]]> 174156218 An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer� (Lorrie Moore) about the radical intimacy of physical competition

An unexpected tragedy at a community pool. A family’s unrelenting expectation of victory. The desire to gain or lose control; to make time speed up or stop; to be frighteningly, undeniably good at something. Each of the eight teenage girl boxers in this blistering debut novel has her own reasons for the sacrifices she has made to come to Reno, Nevada, to compete to be named the best in the country. Through a series of face-offs that are raw, ecstatic, and punctuated by flashes of humor and tenderness, prizewinning writer Rita Bullwinkel animates the competitors� pasts and futures as they summon the emotion, imagination, and force of will required to win.

Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivates young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.]]> 224 Rita Bullwinkel 0593654102 Ellen 4 3.49 2024
author: Rita Bullwinkel
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves:
review:
I liked this. A lot, surprisingly. Every year in the ToB it seems we get a random book about a random sport, maybe even usually girls' or women's -- was it last year or the year before that we read a whole book about squash or racquet ball or something? And then there was the Chain Gang one? Anyway, they usually leave me cold. But I loved the writing of this one and the way it got inside the girls' heads. I have no idea if it realistically portrays boxing tournaments, either men's or women's, but it certainly realistically portrayed inner lives. Yup. I liked it.
]]> 92112
Born into a third generation of Montana homesteaders, Judy Blunt learned early how to "rope and ride and jockey a John Deere," but also to "bake bread and can vegetables and reserve my opinion when the men were talking." The lessons carried her through thirty-six-hour blizzards, devastating prairie fires and a period of extreme isolation that once threatened the life of her infant daughter. But though she strengthened her survival skills in what was--and is--essentially a man's world, Blunt's story is ultimately that of a woman who must redefine herself in order to stay in the place she loves.

Breaking Clean is at once informed by the myths of the West and powerful enough to break them down. Against formidable odds, Blunt has found a voice original enough to be called classic.]]> 320 Judy Blunt 0375701303 Ellen 4 3.86 2002
author: Judy Blunt
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves:
review:
Very well written, and somewhat heartbreaking. I wish there had been more about her actual decision to leave and how it came about.
]]> 6194 J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between oppressor and oppressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.]]> 152 J.M. Coetzee 0140283358 Ellen 3 3.94 1980
author: J.M. Coetzee
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/03
shelves:
review:
Read for a book club. Looking forward to the discussion because I really don't know what to think.
]]> 199635125
Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.

In “The Feminist,� a young man’s passionate allyship turns to furious nihilism as he realizes, over thirty lonely years, that it isn’t getting him laid. A young woman’s unrequited crush in “Pics� spirals into borderline obsession and the systematic destruction of her sense of self. And in “Ahegao; or, The Ballad of Sexual Repression,� a shy late bloomer’s flailing efforts at a first relationship leads to a life-upending mistake. As the characters pop up in each other’s dating apps and social media feeds, or meet in dimly lit bars and bedrooms, they reveal the ways our delusions can warp our desire for connection.

These brilliant satires explore the underrated sorrows of rejection with the authority of a modern classic and the manic intensity of a manifesto. Audacious and unforgettable, Rejection is a stunning mosaic that redefines what it means to be rejected by lovers, friends, society, and oneself.]]> 272 Tony Tulathimutte 0063337878 Ellen 3
I...don't really know what to say. 3.5, really, because I think the writing was really good. But I just didn't understand most of the computer/internet-age speak, and at my advanced age, I'm puzzled and a little repelled by the portrayal of sex and people's sex lives as portrayed in the book. And I cringed (and I think this was the point) at all of the characters' ghastly lack of social skills. I've never liked cringe tv and cringe literature is not any better.

Also, as a person who does not lack social skills, but has experienced more rejection in my life than I can be comfortable with, I don't much like reading about the rejection in these very difficult people's lives.

But well written! And even an occasional laugh!]]> 3.87 2024
author: Tony Tulathimutte
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:
A book I definitely would never have read if not for the ToB.

I...don't really know what to say. 3.5, really, because I think the writing was really good. But I just didn't understand most of the computer/internet-age speak, and at my advanced age, I'm puzzled and a little repelled by the portrayal of sex and people's sex lives as portrayed in the book. And I cringed (and I think this was the point) at all of the characters' ghastly lack of social skills. I've never liked cringe tv and cringe literature is not any better.

Also, as a person who does not lack social skills, but has experienced more rejection in my life than I can be comfortable with, I don't much like reading about the rejection in these very difficult people's lives.

But well written! And even an occasional laugh!
]]> 201102398 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593544372

A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex

Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she; her painter husband, Lenny; and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,� she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp.

But things don’t work out quite as hoped. In search of a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her desperate gaze to Hollywood. After she meets with a hot young producer to create “diverse content� for a streaming network, he seems excited to work with a “real writer.� She can create what he envisions as the greatest biracial comedy to ever hit the small screen. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane—until they go terribly wrong.]]> 277 Danzy Senna Ellen 4
I really liked it, although there were a few moments where I felt bogged down in the hopelessness of Jane's multiplicity of issues. I'm glad she included the "19 years later" pages at the end, although they do seem a little unlikely in light of the rest of the book. But -- well written. ]]> 3.53 2024
author: Danzy Senna
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves:
review:
Just slipped it in before midnight.

I really liked it, although there were a few moments where I felt bogged down in the hopelessness of Jane's multiplicity of issues. I'm glad she included the "19 years later" pages at the end, although they do seem a little unlikely in light of the rest of the book. But -- well written.
]]> 195608683 The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a slow-burning crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two.

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the fluky victor in a tight race for president. The country was bitterly at odds; Southern extremists were moving ever closer to destroying the Union, with one state after another seceding and Lincoln powerless to stop them. Slavery fueled the conflict, but somehow the passions of North and South came to focus on a lonely federal fortress in Charleston: Fort Sumter.
Ěý
Master storyteller Erik Larson offers a gripping account of the chaotic months between Lincoln’s election and the Confederacy’s shelling of Sumter—a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were “so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.�
Ěý
At the heart of this suspense-filled narrative are Major Robert Anderson, Sumter’s commander and a former slave owner sympathetic to the South but loyal to the Union; Edmund Ruffin, a vain and bloodthirsty radical who stirs secessionist ardor at every opportunity; and Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a prominent planter, conflicted over both marriage and slavery and seeing parallels between both. In the middle of it all is the overwhelmed Lincoln, battling with his duplicitous Secretary of State, William Seward, as he tries desperately to avert a war that he fears is inevitable—one that will eventually kill 750,000 Americans.
Ěý
Drawing on diaries, secret communiques, slave ledgers, and plantation records, Larson gives us a political horror story that captures the forces that led America to the brink—a dark reminder that we often don’t see a cataclysm coming until it’s too late.]]> 565 Erik Larson 0385348746 Ellen 4 4.13 2024
author: Erik Larson
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
review:
Well researched and well-written, if a little TOO detailed.
]]> 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 Ellen 3
But then. Then.

Who is this woman's editor? Who allowed, over and over, and without irony -- which means that no one through whose hands this book passed knew it was wrong -- the term "palette cleanser" to be used, without it meaning the rag with which you would clean off your PALETTE before you started your next painting? And not just once -- as I said, OVER. and OVER.

Once that got in my brain, all the other little things about the book -- the female fantasy wish fulfillment of the damned thing, an ordinary woman who is clinically depressed suddenly being the object of EVERY MAN'S DESIRE (no fewer than 4 men fall in love with her and ask her if she wants to, er, sleep with them)! A new haircut changing her entire view on life! Her eclipsing the bride at her wedding! Her dream job just magically appearing (and in such a way that ultimately, you know she'll Get the Guy)! just got stuck.in.my.craw.

Now I'm regretting even giving it 3 stars. But there were some genuinely funny moments, so I'll give it that.]]> 4.11 2024
author: Alison Espach
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
review:
Ok, you ALMOST had me. I ALMOST gave it 4 stars and grudgingly said that I enjoyed it, for a quirky romcom, better written than most and with a few unusual twists.

But then. Then.

Who is this woman's editor? Who allowed, over and over, and without irony -- which means that no one through whose hands this book passed knew it was wrong -- the term "palette cleanser" to be used, without it meaning the rag with which you would clean off your PALETTE before you started your next painting? And not just once -- as I said, OVER. and OVER.

Once that got in my brain, all the other little things about the book -- the female fantasy wish fulfillment of the damned thing, an ordinary woman who is clinically depressed suddenly being the object of EVERY MAN'S DESIRE (no fewer than 4 men fall in love with her and ask her if she wants to, er, sleep with them)! A new haircut changing her entire view on life! Her eclipsing the bride at her wedding! Her dream job just magically appearing (and in such a way that ultimately, you know she'll Get the Guy)! just got stuck.in.my.craw.

Now I'm regretting even giving it 3 stars. But there were some genuinely funny moments, so I'll give it that.
]]> 201102290
With Hannah and their two-year old son back in Paris, Mamush sets out on an unexpected journey across America in search of answers to questions he'd been told never to ask. As he does so, he begins to understand that perhaps the only chance he has of saving his family and making it back home is to confront not only the unresolved mystery around Samuel's life and death, but his own troubled memories, and the years spent masking them. Breath-taking, commanding, unforgettable work from one of America's most prodigiously gifted novelists.]]> 272 Dinaw Mengestu 0385350007 Ellen 5 3.53 2024
author: Dinaw Mengestu
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves:
review:
Really a beautiful, beautiful book, and one I'd somehow heard nothing about previous to it ending up on the ToB shorlist. I did get confused as to where we were and when occasionally, but I think it was kind of explained by the end. I'm afraid it might be too quiet for the ToB and will be swallowed up by some of the other noisier books. We shall see.
]]> 218537468
When Detective Stark, Molly’s old foe, investigates the author’s unexpected demise, it becomes clear that this death was murder most foul. Suspects abound, and everyone wants to know: Who killed J. D. Grimthorpe? Was it Lily, the new Maid-in-Training? Or was it Serena, the author’s secretary? Could Mr. Preston, the hotel’s beloved doorman, be hiding something? And is Molly really as innocent as she seems?

As the high-profile death threatens the hotel’s pristine reputation, Molly knows she alone holds the key to unlocking the killer’s identity. But that key is buried deep in her past, as long ago, she knew J. D. Grimthorpe. Molly begins to comb her memory for clues, revisiting her childhood and the mysterious Grimthorpe mansion where she and her dearly departed Gran once worked side by side. With the entire hotel under investigation, Molly must solve the mystery posthaste. Because if there’s one thing she knows for sure, it’s that secrets don’t stay buried forever.]]> 336 Nita Prose 0593356209 Ellen 0 to-read 3.82 2023
author: Nita Prose
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.]]> 327 Marie-Helene Bertino 0374109281 Ellen 4
A very encouraging start to my ToB reading for this year.]]> 4.08 2024
author: Marie-Helene Bertino
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves:
review:
I liked it! The writing was good, I enjoyed the wistful humor, and it had an elegiac quality that appealed to me. I will say that I do think its classification as SF is ... questionable at best (2/3 of my library systems classed it as such).

A very encouraging start to my ToB reading for this year.
]]> 776407 180 A.A. Milne 0525444440 Ellen 5 4.37 1928
author: A.A. Milne
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1928
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 217388429 Scream meets The Guest List in this wickedly compelling and compulsively page-turning thriller of friendship and murder from the author of The Lost Village, Camilla Sten.

On a remote, craggy island nestled off the coast of Sweden, four friends—Tilly, Anna, Linnea and Evelina—meet every year. Best friends since childhood, the idea is to drink beer, dance by the water, and shake off the weight of life's expectations. The location of the island is a secret to everyone but them. One night of reckless fun and secret-sharing, and then they return to their normal lives.

Ten years later. Ever since she was a teenager, Tessa Nilsson has been consumed by the story of four friends who disappeared on their annual trip to a remote island together. As her true crime fervor turned into a wildly popular podcast, Tessa urgently covered Sweden’s most gruesome cases, but could never find the answers behind what happened to these women who disappeared, leaving a few maddening clues but no concrete answers. Now Tessa’s podcast has crashed and burned, any chance she had at uncovering the truth vanishing with it.

Anneliese is Tessa’s best friend, and before she walks down the aisle, she wants to have a bachelorette party. The Baltic Vinyasa, a sleek, sophisticated yoga retreat on a small island off the coast—one with such similar characteristics to the tragedy years ago that it raises the hair on Tessa’s neck. The idea is to drink gallons of cava, do sunrise yoga, and get in their last chance to bond with the bride. Tessa will not pass this up. It’s her last chance to find out what happened to the four women, once and for all.

And it’s someone else’s last chance to get revenge.]]> 304 Camilla Sten 1250868505 Ellen 0 to-read 3.59 2025
author: Camilla Sten
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 196774352 The Essex Serpent, a story of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends.

Thomas Hart and Grace Macaulay have lived all their lives in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits—torn between their commitment to religion and their desire to explore the world beyond their small Baptist community. It is two romantic relationships that will rend their friendship, and in the wake of this rupture, Thomas develops an obsession with a vanished nineteenth-century astronomer said to haunt a nearby manor, and Grace flees Aldleigh entirely for London.

Over the course of twenty years, by coincidence and design, Thomas and Grace will find their lives brought back into orbit as the mystery of the vanished astronomer unfolds into a devastating tale of love and scientific pursuit. Thomas and Grace will ask themselves what it means to love and be loved, what is fixed and what is mutable, how much of our fate is predestined and written in the stars, and whether they can find their way back to each other.

A thrillingly ambitious novel of friendship, faith, and unrequited love, rich in symmetry and symbolism, Enlightenment is a shimmering wonder of a book and Sarah Perry’s finest work to date.Ěý]]> 384 Sarah Perry 0063352613 Ellen 4 The Essex Serpent, but I liked it a lot. The tone was similar.]]> 3.54 2024
author: Sarah Perry
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves:
review:
Not as revelatory as The Essex Serpent, but I liked it a lot. The tone was similar.
]]> 2956 327 Mark Twain 0142437174 Ellen 3 James, as I suspect 8 billion other book clubs are doing as well.]]> 3.82 1884
author: Mark Twain
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1884
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves:
review:
Well, apparently I've read it before, and my rating hasn't changed. Frankly, I found it rather tiresome. I read it this time for a book club, as a companion volume to James, as I suspect 8 billion other book clubs are doing as well.
]]> 203536755 Fresh, funny and heartfelt, The Expectant Detectives is a charming debut mystery about a group of soon-to-be moms-turned-detectives.

“A darkly witty debut. Archly funny and highly recommended!”—Deanna Raybourn

Can they solve the mother of all murders?

For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their first child. He can take up woodwork; maybe she’ll learn to make jam? But the rural idyll they’d hoped for doesn’t quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local prenatal class, and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation.

With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice and her new-found pregnant friends set out to solve the mystery and clear their names, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen. However, there are more secrets and tensions in the heart of Penton than first meet the eye. Between the discovery of a shady commune up in the woods, the unearthing of a mysterious death years earlier, and the near-tragic poisoning of Helen, Alice is soon in way over her head.]]> 384 Kat Ailes 1250322715 Ellen 4 3.69 2023
author: Kat Ailes
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/09
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed it. Not the deepest, nor the best written, but fun, and we all need some fun in our lives. Definitely in the Thursday Murder Club genre, with an occasional laugh-out-loud moment.
]]> 201242757 From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new collection of twelve short stories, many never-before-published, and some of his best EVER.

“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,� writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to read. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,� and in You Like It Darker, readers will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.

“Two Talented Bastids� explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,� a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,� a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,� a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man� asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

King’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.]]> 512 Stephen King 1668037718 Ellen 4 4.16 2024
author: Stephen King
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/07
date added: 2024/12/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Ellen 3 The Mars Room, either. And it took me FOREVER to get through; completely destroyed any possibility of me reaching my Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reading goal for this year. Harumph.]]> 3.34 2024
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/04
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves:
review:
Not my kind of thing at all. I don't think I care for Rachel Kushner; I wasn't crazy about The Mars Room, either. And it took me FOREVER to get through; completely destroyed any possibility of me reaching my Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ reading goal for this year. Harumph.
]]> 45032 488 Jane Austen Ellen 5 3.86 1814
author: Jane Austen
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 39030 464 Douglas Preston 0765354950 Ellen 2 Old Bones, this book disintegrated into farce. The villain, just like in Old Bones, was ridiculously cliched, practically twirling his mustache while chortling, "Ha ha! now I have you in my power!" But still some fun to listen to in the car.]]> 4.03 1997
author: Douglas Preston
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1997
rating: 2
read at: 2022/10/07
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:
Like Old Bones, this book disintegrated into farce. The villain, just like in Old Bones, was ridiculously cliched, practically twirling his mustache while chortling, "Ha ha! now I have you in my power!" But still some fun to listen to in the car.
]]> 242397 528 Emily Eden 014016233X Ellen 5 3.82 1860
author: Emily Eden
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1860
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/23
date added: 2024/11/23
shelves:
review:
Re-read for book club. As charmed as ever.
]]> 199798201
A house is a precious thing...

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.]]> 272 Yael van der Wouden 1668034344 Ellen 3
So far the Booker list is kind of a bust for me. We'll see how I do with Creation Lake and Orbital.]]> 4.05 2024
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/22
date added: 2024/11/22
shelves:
review:
Ooh, I wanted to like this much more than I did. I figured out where it was going pretty early on and was very eager to see how it got there...and then found the journey really tiresome.

So far the Booker list is kind of a bust for me. We'll see how I do with Creation Lake and Orbital.
]]> 200241802
1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast—as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his ghosts whose messages he cannot understand .

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. This resonance through time—not only of actions but also of feelings and perceptions—desire in its many forms—are at the heart of this novel’s profound investigation.

Held is a deeply affecting and intensely beautiful novel, full of unforgettable characters and imagery, wisdom and compassion. It explores the deepest mysteries, and the ways in which desire in its many forms—andĚýperhaps the deepest desire, to find meaning—manifests itself. Held moves through history to light upon Darwin, Sir Ernest Rutherford, North Sea ganseys, early photography, Ella Mary Leather, modern field hospitals…while lovers find each other and snow drifts down across the centuries. From the WW1 battlefield where the novel begins, and its opening lines, Held is alive with "We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?”]]> 240 Anne Michaels 0771005458 Ellen 3
Sigh. Again, I seem just not to be smart enough to get it. ]]> 3.50 2023
author: Anne Michaels
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves:
review:
Sigh. Another one of those books that I fear I am just not smart enough -- or smart enough in the right way -- to understand. Beautiful, elegiac writing -- but the kind of writing that obscures the story line, which is then too convoluted for me to understand, and, from what I can tell, very, very earnest, and since there's one very well-known person who is featured at the end, perhaps several of the characters are from real life? I don't know? and that's why this book was written? fictionalization of some real people? Maybe?

Sigh. Again, I seem just not to be smart enough to get it.
]]> 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

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

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Ellen 4 4.15 2024
author: Liz Moore
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves:
review:
Certainly well written and well set up, but for some reason it didn't grab me as much as it should have, or as much as it seems to have grabbed many other people.
]]> 200101541 A chilling twist on the “cursed filmâ€� genre from the bestselling author ofĚýThe Pallbearers Club andĚýThe Cabin at the End of the World.

In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.

The weird part?ĚýOnly three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.

The man who played “The Thin Kid� is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions � demons of the past be damned.

But at what cost?Ěý

Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful twist on the “cursed film� that breathlessly builds to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.]]> 277 Paul Tremblay 0063070014 Ellen 3 3.31 2024
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves:
review:
Ooh, I really don't know what to say about this book except -- I sure wouldn't want to meet Paul Tremblay in a dark alley.
]]> 63249468
It's been almost a year since Clay Edison was forced out of his job at the coroner's bureau. Now he's on his own, working as a private eye. When a client brings him a fraud case, Clay dives into a decades-old scheme targeting the vulnerable. His investigation leads him to a bizarre town buried in the remote California wilderness. The residents don't care much for outsiders. They certainly don't like Clay asking questions. And they'll do just about anything to shut him up.]]> 368 Jonathan Kellerman 0525620141 Ellen 3 3.75
author: Jonathan Kellerman
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.75
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 207294238
Gela Nathaniel, head of Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course, must find six students from all walks of life across the United Kingdom for her new master’s program before the university cuts her funding. The students are nothing but trouble from day one.

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

With her trademark “unique and exhilarating� (Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot) voice, Janice Hallett weaves a fresh and mind-bending mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end.]]> 480 Janice Hallett 1668023423 Ellen 5 3.71 2024
author: Janice Hallett
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves:
review:
Wow. Each one of her books gets a little darker and wilder. She's got me by the short hairs.
]]> 3801 358 Rumer Godden 0688117228 Ellen 5
But I do love the book immeasurably.]]> 4.01 1961
author: Rumer Godden
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1961
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/03
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
Re-read for book club. I still love it, but expect much sturm und drang about the admittedly totally unacceptable actions on the last couple of pages of the book. Even in 1960, it had to have been completely shocking and inappropriate.

But I do love the book immeasurably.
]]> 112975135 Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post–Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the World.

Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John’s beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered.

Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John knows as A. J. Dodd is little more than a rabid animal, slaughtering without reason or remorse, needing to be put down.

Traveling through the unforgiving landscape of a shattered nation in the midst of Reconstruction, John braves winter storms and confronts desperate people in pursuit of his quarry. Untethered, single-minded in purpose, he will not be deterred. Not by the U.S. Marshal who threatens to arrest him for murder should he succeed. And not by Victoria Reavis, the telegraphist aiding him in his death-driven quest, yet hoping he’ll choose to embrace a life with her instead.

And as he trails Dodd deep into Texas, John accepts that this final reckoning between them may cost him more than all he’s already lost…]]> 307 Paulette Jiles 0063252686 Ellen 4 Red Rabbit and, weirdly, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).]]> 3.96 2023
author: Paulette Jiles
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/03
shelves:
review:
Very good. 4.5, really. But it suffers a little from the fact that I somehow have ended up reading 3 books at once that are journey novels set in the American West (sort of) (this one along with Red Rabbit and, weirdly, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).
]]> 219449299 A brand new series. An iconic new detective duo. And a puzzling new murder to solve...

Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favorite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home. His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.

Amy Wheeler thinks adrenaline is good for the soul. As a private security officer, she doesn’t stay still long enough for habits or routines. She’s currently on a remote island keeping world-famous author Rosie D’Antonio alive. Which was meant to be an easy job...

Then a dead body, a bag of money, and a killer with their sights on Amy have her sending an SOS to the only person she trusts. A breakneck race around the world begins, but can Amy and Steve stay one step ahead of a lethal enemy?]]> 387 Richard Osman 059365322X Ellen 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Richard Osman
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 65212070 A folk horror epic about a ragtag posse that must track down a witch through a wild west beset by demons and ghosts―and where death is always just around the bend.

Sadie Grace is wanted for witchcraft, dead (or alive). And every hired gun in Kansas is out to collect the bounty on her head, including bona fide witch hunter Old Tom and his mysterious, mute ward, Rabbit.

On the road to Burden County, they’re joined by two vagabond cowboys with a strong sense of adventure � but no sense of purpose � and a recently widowed school teacher with nothing left to lose. As their posse grows, so too does the danger.

Racing along the drought-stricken plains in a stolen red stagecoach, they encounter monsters more wicked than witches lurking along the dusty trail. But the crew is determined to get that bounty, or die trying.

Written with the devilish cadence of Stephen Graham Jones and the pulse-pounding brutality of Nick Cutter, Red Rabbit is a supernatural adventure of luck and misfortune.]]> 455 Alex Grecian 1250874688 Ellen 4 4.16 2023
author: Alex Grecian
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/29
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves:
review:
Um, wow. I don't know what I expected of this book, but it wasn't what it was. Really a horror book, set in the American West in the 19th c., with the oddest mix of characters -- I don't know what it meant, but it was compulsively readable. Really a 4.5, close to a 5. I'm sure I've read other books by this author and they were nothing like this one...
]]> 59856893 #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A serial killer in a small Swedish town commits his first murder the same night the prime minister is assassinated—a “thrilling and profoundly poignant� (Angie Kim) novel by one of the country’s top criminologists, hailed as “the finest crime writer we have in Sweden� (David Lagercrantz, author of The Girl in the Spider’s Web and other novels in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series)

“Christoffer Carlsson is to the police procedural what Cormac McCarthy is to the Western.”—Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

A CRIMEREADS AND KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

In February 1986, the Halland police receive a call from a man who claims to have attacked his first victim. I’m going to do it again, he says before the line cuts off. By the time police officer Sven Jörgensson reaches the crime scene, the woman is taking her last breath. For Sven, this will prove a decisive moment. On the same night, Sweden plunges into a state of shock after the murder of the prime minister. Could there possibly be a connection?

As Sven becomes obsessed with the case, two more fall victim. For years, Sven remains haunted by the murders he cannot solve, fearing the killer will strike again. Having failed to catch him, Sven retires from the police, passing his obsession to his son, who has joined the force to be closer to his father.

Decades later, the case unexpectedly resurfaces when a novelist returns home to Halland amid a failed marriage and a sputtering career. The writer befriends the retired police officer, who helps the novelist—our narrator—unspool the many strands of this engrossing tale about a community confronting its shames and legacies.

A #1 bestseller in Sweden, Blaze Me a Sun marks the American debut of the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year award, the top prize for Swedish crime writers whose past winners include Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell.]]> 439 Christoffer Carlsson 0593449355 Ellen 4 3.85 2021
author: Christoffer Carlsson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves:
review:
Definitely better than average Scandinavian Noir -- maybe even 4.5. New author to me, but I'll read more of his now that they're being translated into English.
]]> 214932061 From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI

Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Times� Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.

A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.

The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.

A work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.]]> 368 BenjamĂ­n Labatut 0593654498 Ellen 0 to-read 4.42 2023
author: BenjamĂ­n Labatut
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61272711 New York Times Bestseller | New York Times 10 Best Books of 2023

The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled White man and William posing as “his� slave.

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.

Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.

But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher.

With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, Master Slave Husband Wife is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.]]> 416 Ilyon Woo 1501191055 Ellen 4 3.95 2023
author: Ilyon Woo
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves:
review:
A little bit too florid, but very well researched and told. I knew of the Crafts through the writings of William Still and it was interesting to get a more thorough picture.
]]> 203578851 Fresh off his career-changing standalone co-written with Icelandic PM, Reykjavík, #1 Icelandic bestseller Jonasson presents a riveting new thriller spinoff from The Darkness, soon to be a TV series. 1983 At a former sanatorium in the north of Iceland, now a hospital ward, an old nurse, Yrsa, is found murdered. Detective Hulda Hermannsdottir and her boss, Sverrir, are sent to investigate her death. There, they discover five the chief physician, two junior nurses, a young doctor, and the caretaker, who is arrested following false testimony from one of the nurses, but subsequently released. Less than a week after the murder, the chief physician, is also found dead, having apparently fallen from a balcony. Sverrir, rules his death as suicide and assumes that he was guilty of the murder as well. The case is closed. 2012 Almost thirty years later, Helgi Reykdal, a young police officer, has been studying criminology in the UK, but decides to return to Iceland when he is offered a job at the Reykjavik police department—the job which detective Hulda Hermannsdottir is about to retire from. He is also a collector of golden age detective stories, and is writing his thesis on the 1983 murders in the north. As Helgi delves deeper into the past, and starts his new job, he decides to try to meet with the original suspects. But soon he finds silence and suspicion at every turn, as he tries to finally solve the mystery from years before.]]> 320 Ragnar Jónasson 1250770769 Ellen 3 3.5. 3.57 2019
author: Ragnar JĂłnasson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/17
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves:
review:
3.5.
]]> 63546538 #1 New York Times bestselling authors Preston & Child return in the latest installment of the bestselling series featuring renowned archaeologist Nora Kelly and FBI Agent Corrie Swanson, where a fateful trip to New Mexico uncovers a case that may prove impossible to solve.

In 2008, nine mountaineers failed to return from a winter backpacking trip in the New Mexico mountains. At their last campsite, searchers found a bizarre scene: something had appeared at the door of their tent so terrifying that it impelled them to slash their way out and flee barefoot to certain death in a blizzard. Despite a diligent search, only six bodies were found, two violently crushed and inexplicably missing body parts. The case, given the code name “Dead Mountain� by the FBI, was never solved.

Now, two more bodies from the lost expedition are unexpectedly discovered in a cave, one a grisly suicide. Young FBI Agent Corrie Swanson teams up with archaeologist Nora Kelly to investigate what really happened on that fateful trip fifteen years ago—and to find the ninth victim. But their search awakens a long-slumbering evil, which pursues Corrie and Nora with a vengeance, determined to prevent the final missing corpse from ever coming to light.]]> 388 Douglas Preston 1538736829 Ellen 3
ETA: No, wait! I hear #5 is coming out next year! Yay!]]> 4.07 2023
author: Douglas Preston
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves:
review:
This series is ridiculous, but still, I totally enjoy reading it. The villains are so...laughably villainous; they practically tie the women to the railroad track and twirl their mustaches. But I'm sorry this one is the last one currently written. I look forward to more.

ETA: No, wait! I hear #5 is coming out next year! Yay!
]]> 80977 672 Rumer Godden 0829421289 Ellen 5 4.35 1969
author: Rumer Godden
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1969
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves:
review:
Reread for 2 book clubs. Weird how much I love this book, when I so dislike fundamentalist religion -- and what could be more fundamentalist than an enclosed convent?
]]> 62929342 Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.

In 2021, fifteen-year-old Nick Chen has never felt like he belonged on the isolated Washington island where he lives with his single mother, Lily. He can't shake the sense she's hiding something. When Nick sets out to find his biological father, the journey threatens to raise more questions than answers.

In immersive, moving prose, Rachel Khong weaves a profound tale of class and striving, race and visibility, and family and inheritance—a story of trust, forgiveness, and finally coming home.

Exuberant and explosive, Real Americans is a social novel par excellence that asks: Are we destined, or made, and if so, who gets to do the making? Can our genetic past be overcome?

From the award-winning author of Goodbye, Vitamin: How far would you go to shape your own destiny? An exhilarating novel of American identity that spans three generations in one family, and asks: What makes us who we are? And how inevitable are our futures? ]]> 399 Rachel Khong 0593537254 Ellen 3
Anyway, I liked it more than I thought I would, but it was kind of disappointing generally after the deep charm of Goodbye, Vitamin.]]> 3.94 2024
author: Rachel Khong
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/11
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves:
review:
3.5. Better than I thought it would be in the first section; I got bogged down in what seemed a sort of Sally Rooney-esque setting and characterization. It took me way too long to pick it up and get on with it. I will say that a lot of it seemed...rushed, in a weird way, that it would suddenly be some time later and there was no explanation of how it got there. I wonder if this was intentional, since the lead characters all had some kind of ... disorder? facility? regarding time?

Anyway, I liked it more than I thought I would, but it was kind of disappointing generally after the deep charm of Goodbye, Vitamin.
]]> 179311283 In New York Times–bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s ingenious fifth literary whodunit in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, Detective Hawthorne is once again called upon to solve an unsolvable case—a gruesome murder in an idyllic gated community in which suspects abound

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

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

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

Because how do you solve a murder when everyone is a suspect?]]> 432 Anthony Horowitz 006330564X Ellen 4 4.06 2024
author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/01
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves:
review:
Maybe needs a little editing, but I do love this series.
]]> 355862 We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.

Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by We's Lives in Da Ghetto.

But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.]]> 280 Percival Everett 0786888156 Ellen 5 The Trees, which I don't think can ever be surpassed -- but Everett can do anything, so you never know. ]]> 4.17 2001
author: Percival Everett
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves:
review:
4.5 rounded up. Possibly my second favorite Everett, after The Trees, which I don't think can ever be surpassed -- but Everett can do anything, so you never know.
]]> 19808276 The #1 internationally bestselling thriller, and ingenious book within a book, about the disappearance of a 15-year-old New Hampshire girl and, thirty years later, a young American writer’s determination to clear his mentor’s name—and find the inspiration for his next bestseller

August 30, 1975: the day fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan is glimpsed fleeing through the woods before she disappears; the day Aurora, New Hampshire, lost its innocence.

Thirty-three years later, Marcus Goldman, a successful young novelist, visits Aurora to see his mentor, Harry Quebert, one of America’s most respected writers, and to find a cure for his writer’s block as his publisher’s deadline looms. But Marcus’s plans are violently upended when Harry is suddenly and sensationally implicated in the cold-case murder of Nola Kellergan—whom, he admits, he had an affair with. As the national media convicts Harry, Marcus launches his own investigation, following a trail of clues through his mentor’s books, the backwoods and isolated beaches of New Hampshire, and the hidden history of Aurora’s citizens and the man they hold most dear. To save Harry, his writing career, and eventually even himself, Marcus must answer three questions, all of which are mysteriously connected: Who killed Nola Kellergan? What happened one misty morning in Aurora in the summer of 1975? And how do you write a successful and true novel?

A global phenomenon, with sales approaching a million copies in France alone and rights sold in more than thirty countries, The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is a fast-paced, tightly plotted, cinematic literary thriller, and an ingenious book within a book, by a dazzling young writer.
]]> 463 Joël Dicker 0698171128 Ellen 4 4.03 2012
author: Joël Dicker
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 203164357 The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize � a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the �sidekick� is DC Reggie Chase.

The crumbling house - Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton - suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.

Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace.

All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.

A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers.]]> 320 Kate Atkinson 0385547994 Ellen 5 Big Sky, but this one was so charming and I so enjoyed all the allusions and all of the sly nods to so many sources. I actually laughed out loud several times. Yup. It was great.]]> 3.69 2024
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/25
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves:
review:
I cannot say how much I enjoyed this book. I had thought the Jackson Brodie series had jumped the shark with Big Sky, but this one was so charming and I so enjoyed all the allusions and all of the sly nods to so many sources. I actually laughed out loud several times. Yup. It was great.
]]> 61385538 "Deeply complex and carefully crafted, this novel is a thrilling question mark all the way to the end, and it puts North’s storytelling skills on full display.� The Angel Maker, his best so far, is a superb addition to his already impressive oeuvre."
–n±č°ů

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Whisper Man and The Shadows comes a dark, suspenseful new thriller about the mysteries of fate, the unbreakable bond of siblings, and a notorious serial killer who was said to know the future.

Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever.

Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.

Meanwhile, Detective Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime. A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff. All the leads point back to two old the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future.]]> 288 Alex North 1250757886 Ellen 3 3.63 2023
author: Alex North
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/07
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 17167084
When Gamache receives a message from Myrna Landers, in the village of Three Pines, he welcomes the chance to get away from the city for a few hours. Myrna's longtime friend, who was due to spend Christmas in the village, has failed to arrive. When Chief Inspector Gamache presses for information, Myrna is reluctant to reveal her friend's name. Mystified, Gamache soon discovers the missing woman was once one of the most famous people not just in North America but in the world, and now goes unrecognized by virtually everyone except the mad, brilliant poet Ruth Zardo.

As events come to a head at the Sûreté, Gamache is drawn ever deeper into the world of Three Pines. Increasingly, he is not only investigating the disappearance of Myrna's friend but also seeking a safe place for himself and his still-loyal colleagues—if such a refuge exists amid mounting danger. Is there peace to be found even in Three Pines, and at what cost to Gamache and the people he holds dear?]]> 405 Louise Penny 0312655479 Ellen 3 4.43 2013
author: Louise Penny
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:
Still not a huge fan of Louise Penny, but I had to read this one once someone told me it was -- more or less -- about the Dionne quintuplets. I enjoyed all the quintuplet stuff and was just bored with the stock characters and police shenanigans that made up half the book. Glad I read it, though, because of the quintuplets!
]]> 62951865
The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee’s father, who left for the War and never returned. Meanwhile, in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother’s maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility—the mysterious man they call the Night Watch; the orphan child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution.]]> 276 Jayne Anne Phillips 0451493338 Ellen 3 3.55 2023
author: Jayne Anne Phillips
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:
It's the kind of book that frustrates me -- more attention paid to style than substance. The story was fascinating, when I could find it, but -- for my taste -- so imbued with carefully styled writing that it was a bit hard to find.
]]> 77265006 An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, full of verve and wit, twenty-two-year-old Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry—and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet� with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother.

The Wren, the Wren brings to life three generations of women who contend with inheritances—of abandonment and of sustaining love that is “more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.� In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.]]> 278 Anne Enright 1324005696 Ellen 4 3.51 2023
author: Anne Enright
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/14
date added: 2024/09/14
shelves:
review:
She's such a good writer -- but I'm afraid it's the type of book I enjoy while I'm reading it and then will have completely forgotten within a month.
]]> 59808430 Alternative cover edition of ISBN 9781644452080

A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from an American novelist whose star keeps rising

The protagonist of Percival Everett’s puckish new novel is a brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means “nothing� in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for “nothing.�) He is an expert on nothing. That is to say, he is an expert, and his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. This makes him the perfect partner for the aspiring villain John Sill, who wants to break into Fort Knox to steal, well, not gold bars but a shoebox containing nothing. Once he controls nothing he’ll proceed with a dastardly plan to turn a Massachusetts town into nothing. Or so he thinks.

With the help of the brainy and brainwashed astrophysicist-turned-henchwoman Eigen Vector, our professor tries to foil the villain while remaining in his employ. In the process, Wala Kitu learns that Sill’s desire to become a literal Bond villain originated in some real all-American villainy related to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. As Sill says, “Professor, think of it this way. This country has never given anything to us and it never will. We have given everything to it. I think it’s time we gave nothing back.�

Dr. No is a caper with teeth, a wildly mischievous novel from one of our most inventive, provocative, and productive writers. That it is about nothing isn’t to say that it’s not about anything. In fact, it’s about villains. Bond villains. And that’s not nothing.]]> 262 Percival Everett Ellen 4 The Trees. It also reminded me weirdly of a book by John Scalzi, Starter Villain...]]> 3.67 2022
author: Percival Everett
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves:
review:
Not necessarily his best, but no one can make me laugh out loud while reading like Everett. For once, one of his books actually reminded me of another one of his books -- this had a few of the comic elements of The Trees. It also reminded me weirdly of a book by John Scalzi, Starter Villain...
]]> 209330212 A novel of money and morality from the New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind.

Brooke wants. She isn’t in need, but there are things she wants. A sense of purpose, for instance. She wants to make a difference in the world, to impress her mother along the way, to spend time with friends and secure her independence. Her job assisting an octogenarian billionaire in his quest to give away a vast fortune could help her achieve many of these goals. It may inspire new desires as well: proximity to wealth turns out to be nothing less than transformative. What is money, really, but a kind of belief?

Taut, unsettling, and alive to the seductive distortions of money, Entitlement is a riveting tale for our new gilded age, a story that confidently considers questions about need and worth, race and privilege, philanthropy and generosity, passion and obsession. It is a provocative, propulsive novel about the American imagination.]]> 284 Rumaan Alam 0593718488 Ellen 0 to-read 3.09 2024
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.09
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58340961
Lucas Tappan, a wealthy and eccentric billionaire and founder of Icarus Space Systems, approaches the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute with an outlandish proposal—to finance a careful, scientific excavation of the Roswell Incident site, where a UFO is alleged to have crashed in 1947. A skeptical Nora Kelly, to her great annoyance, is tasked with the job.Ěý

Nora's excavation immediately uncovers two murder victims buried at the site, faces and hands obliterated with acid to erase their identities. Special Agent Corrie Swanson is assigned to the case. As Nora’s excavation proceeds, uncovering things both bizarre and seemingly inexplicable, Corrie’s homicide investigation throws open a Pandora's box of espionage and violence, uncovering bloody traces of a powerful forceĚýthat will stop at nothing to protect its secrets—and that threatens to engulf them all in an unimaginable fate.]]> 385 Douglas Preston 1538736756 Ellen 3 3.86 2022
author: Douglas Preston
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/05
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves:
review:
Ridiculous. Far-fetched. But I'm still hooked on the series.
]]> 61884835
Perfect for fans of Jacqueline Woodson’s Red at The Bone , Netflix’s Atypical , and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society .

Victor Chin’s life is turned upside down at the tender age of 15. Diagnosed with Hansen’s disease, otherwise known as leprosy, he’s forced to leave the familiar confines of his father’s laundry business in the Bronx � the only home he’s known since emigrating from China with his older brother � to quarantine alongside patients from all over the country at a federal institution in Carville.

At first, Victor is scared not only of the disease, but of the confinement, and wants nothing more than to flee. Between treatments he dreams of escape and imagines his life as a fugitive. But soon he finds a new sense of freedom far from home � one without the pull of obligations to his family, or the laundry business, or his mother back in China. Here, in the company of an unforgettable cast of characters, Victor finds refuge in music and experiences first love, jealousy, betrayal, and even tragedy. But with the promise of a life-changing cure on the horizon, Victor’s time at Carville is running out, and he has some difficult choices to make.

A groundbreaking work of historical fiction, King of the Armadillos announces Wendy Chin-Tanner as an extraordinary new voice. Inspired by her father’s experience as a young patient at Carville, this tender coming-of-age novel is a captivating look at a forgotten radical community and a lyrical exploration of the power of art.]]> 336 Wendy Chin-Tanner 1250843006 Ellen 3 3.84 2023
author: Wendy Chin-Tanner
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/04
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves:
review:
3.5. Extra half point just for writing a book about leprosy. But the story was weirdly formulaic and the dialog unconvincing.
]]> 176443770 The dark underbelly of an idyllic Midwestern resort town is revealed in the aftermath of a murder with ties to America’s opioid epidemic in this unputdownable and thrilling debut that is perfect for fans of James Lee Burke, William Kent Krueger, and Mindy Mejia.

Eli North is not okay.

His drinking is getting worse by the day, his emotional wounds after a deployment to Afghanistan are as raw as ever, his marriage and career are over, and the only job he can hold down is with the local sheriff’s department. And that’s only because the sheriff is his mother—and she’s overwhelmed with small town Shaky Lake’s dwindling budget and the fallout from the opioid epidemic. The Northwoods of Wisconsin may be a vacationer’s paradise, but amidst the fishing trips and campfires and Paul Bunyan festivals, something sinister is taking shape.

When the body of a teenage boy is found in the lake, it sets in motion an investigation that leads Eli to a wealthy enclave with a violent past, a pharmaceutical salesman, and a missing teenage girl. Soon, Eli and his mother, along with a young FBI agent, are on the hunt for more than just a killer.

If Eli solves the case, could he finally get the shot at redemption he so desperately needs? Or will answers to this dark case elude him and continue to bring destruction to the Northwoods?]]> 288 Amy Pease 1668017261 Ellen 3 3.5. 3.55 2024
author: Amy Pease
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves:
review:
3.5.
]]> 199793571 The next thrilling suspense featuring Will Trent and Sara Linton from Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Girls and After That Night!

Everyone here is a liar, but only one of us is a killer�

A secluded cabin retreat

For GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton, McAlpine Lodge seems like the ideal getaway to celebrate their honeymoon. Set on a gorgeous, off-the-grid mountaintop property, it’s the perfect place to unplug and reconnect. Until a bone-chilling scream cuts through the night.

A murderer in their midst

Mercy McAlpine, the manager of the Lodge, is dead. With a vicious storm raging and the one access road to the property washed out, the murderer must be someone on the mountain. But as Will and Sara investigate the McAlpine family and the other guests, they realize that everyone here is lying�.Lying about their past. Lying to their family. Lying to themselves.

Who killed Mercy McAlpine?

It soon becomes clear that normal rules don’t apply at McAlpine Lodge, and Will and Sara are going to have to watch their step at every turn. Trapped on the resort, they must untangle a decades-old web of secrets to discover what happened to Mercy. And with the killer poised to strike again, the trip of a lifetime becomes a race against the clock…]]> 464 Karin Slaughter 0063336723 Ellen 4 4.18 2024
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2024/08/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 64000639 Bridge, a wildly entertaining, reality-bending new thriller from Lauren Beukes, author of the AppleTV+ smash hit The Shining Girls.

It was a game they played; the other worlds, the other lives. It was part of her mom’s grand delusions. It wasn’t real. Unless it was…�

Bridget Kittinger has always been paralyzed by choices. It has a lot to do with growing up in the long shadow of her mother, Jo, a troubled neuroscientist. Jo’s obsession with one mythical object, the “dreamworm”—which she believed enabled travel to other worlds—led to their estrangement.

Now, suddenly, Jo is dead. And in packing up her home, Bridge finds a strange device buried deep in Jo’s freezer: the dreamworm. Against all odds, it actually can open the door—to all other realities, and to all other versions of herself, too.ĚýCould Bridge find who she should be in this world, by visiting the others? And could her Jo still be alive somewhere? But there’s a sinister cost to trading places, and others hunting the dreamworm who would kill to get their hands on it . . .

Across a thousand possible lives, from Portland to Haiti, from Argentina to the alligator-infested riverways of North Carolina, Bridge takes readers on a highly original thrill ride, pushing the boundaries of what we know about mothers and daughters, hunters and seekers, and who we each choose to be.]]> 432 Lauren Beukes 0316267880 Ellen 4 3.61 2023
author: Lauren Beukes
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/24
date added: 2024/08/24
shelves:
review:
Thought it wasn't my kind of thing, but it grew on me as it went on.
]]> 212806569 A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey toĚýpeace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofâ€�Horse

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz � just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy � collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lambert’s Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied waysĚýthose ofĚýother cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between soulsĚýthat exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.]]> 224 Geraldine Brooks 059365398X Ellen 0 to-read 4.34 2025
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 209523725 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN 9781668030998 can be found here

The mystery of Evie Cormac’s background has followed her into adulthood. As a child, she was discovered hiding in a secret room where a man had been tortured to death. Many of her captors and abusers escaped justice, unseen but not forgotten. Now, on a hot summer’s day, the past drags Evie back as she watches the bodies of seventeen migrants wash up on a Lincolnshire beach.

There is only one survivor, a teenage boy, who tells police their small boat was deliberately rammed and sunk. Psychologist Cyrus Haven is recruited by the police to investigate the murders—but recognizes immediately that Evie has some link to the tragedy. By solving this crime, he could finally unlock the secrets of her past. But what dark forces will he set loose? And who will pay the price?]]> 336 Michael Robotham 1668030993 Ellen 3 4.12 2024
author: Michael Robotham
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 27248849
Dark, chilling and complex, Nightblind is an extraordinary thriller from an undeniable new talent.]]> 283 Ragnar JĂłnasson Ellen 4 3.74 2014
author: Ragnar JĂłnasson
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2018/05/06
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 6570431 Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Old Filth was Eddie's story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.

They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s.

As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, the novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power. It will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and so thoroughly satisfying.]]> 233 Jane Gardam 1933372893 Ellen 4 4.04
author: Jane Gardam
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/24
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
For a book club; I'm going to have to re-read Old Filth now. I do love her writing, found this book so deeply sad, and was not prepared for a shocking twist at the end.
]]> 10955239 No Great Mischief, the story of a fiercely loyal family and the tradition that drives it.

Generations after their forebears went into exile, the MacDonalds still face seemingly unmitigated hardships and cruelties of life. Alexander, orphaned as a child by a horrific tragedy, has nevertheless gained some success in the world. Even his older brother, Calum, a nearly destitute alcoholic living on Toronto's skid row, has been scarred by another tragedy. But, like all his clansman, Alexander is sustained by a family history that seems to run through his veins. And through these lovingly recounted stories-wildly comic or heartbreakingly tragic-we discover the hope against hope upon which every family must sometimes rely.]]> 304 Alistair MacLeod 0393341194 Ellen 5 4.06 1999
author: Alistair MacLeod
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/06
date added: 2024/08/06
shelves:
review:
A beautiful book. Re-Read for a choir tour book club (we're on the overnight ferry to Nova Scotia from Newfoundland right now!). Beautifully written and elegiac.
]]> 59660319 In this gripping historical novel, the internationally bestselling author of The Mercies weaves a spellbinding tale of fear, transformation, courage, and love in sixteenth-century France.

Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and when hundreds of other women join her, the men running the city declare a state of emergency and hire musicians to play the Devil out of the mob. Outside the city, pregnant Lisbet lives with her husband and mother-in-law, tending the bees that are the family's livelihood. Though Lisbet is removed from the frenzy of the dancing plague afflicting the city's women, her own quiet life is upended by the arrival of her sister-in-law. Nethe has been away for seven years, serving a penance in the mountains for a crime no one will name.

It is a secret Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand feet, Lisbet becomes caught in a dangerous web of deceit and clandestine passion. Like the women of Strasbourg, she too, is dancing to a dangerous tune. . . .

Set in an era of superstition, hysteria, and extraordinary change, and inspired by true events, The Dance Tree is an impassioned story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge.]]> 304 Kiran Millwood Hargrave Ellen 3 3.89 2022
author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/01
shelves:
review:
Disappointing in its anachronisms and interjections of modern thought into 16th c. sensibilities. Some good material. Could have been better.
]]> 52933779 #1 bestselling authors Preston & Child return with the next book in a series featuring archaeologist Nora Kelly and FBI Agent Corrie Swanson.

Following OLD BONES, the second "happily anticipated" new thriller in Preston & Child's new series will once again feature Nora Kelly, archaeologist at the Santa Fe Archeological Institute, and FBI Agent Corrie Swanson investigating a new case that requires both their skills (Booklist).

After a shoot-out Swanson is involved in leaves a senior FBI agent gravely wounded, Corrie finds herself under investigation. Her supervisor assures her she's not to blame and the black mark on her record will be cleared in short order. But Corrie finds herself shake her overwhelming guilt.

As a distraction, she takes on a new case involving a fifty-year-old, mummified corpse discovered in a hidden enclave at High Lonesome, a long-abandoned New Mexico ghost town. Quickly out of her depth, she quickly realizes she needs the help of her foe-turned-ally, archaeologist Nora Kelly, who soon uncovers a startling truth: the deceased had been poisoned, and died clutching a priceless artifact from outside High Lonesome.]]> 401 Douglas Preston 1538747278 Ellen 3 4.05 2021
author: Douglas Preston
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:
The plot was ridiculous, the writing questionable, the villains laughable -- and I loved it. Will continue with the series.
]]> 62039324 A novel about guilt, rage, imagination, and boyhood, about being lost in the dark and learning you’re not alone


This is the story of a few strange hours in the life of a troubled teenage boy.

You mustn’t do that to yourself Shy. You mustn’t hurt yourself like that.

He is wandering into the night listening to the voices in his head: his teachers, his parents, the people he has hurt and the people who are trying to love him.

Got your special meds, nutcase?

He is escaping Last Chance, a home for “very disturbed young men,� and walking into the haunted space between his night terrors, his past, and the heavy question of his future.

The night is huge and it hurts.

In Shy, Max Porter extends the excavation of boyhood that began with Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and continued with Lanny. But here he asks: How does mischievous wonder and anarchic energy curdle into something more disturbing and violent? Shy is a bravura, lyric, music-besotted performance by one of the great writers of his generation.]]> 136 Max Porter 1644452294 Ellen 3 3.5 3.62 2023
author: Max Porter
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/29
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves:
review:
3.5
]]> 61273340
Louise Erdrich meets Jo Nesbø in this spellbinding Swedish novel that follows a young indigenous woman as she struggles to defend her family’s reindeer herd and culture amidst xenophobia, climate change, and a devious hunter whose targeted kills are considered mere theft in the eyes of the law.

On a winter day north of the Arctic Circle, nine-year-old Elsa—daughter of Sámi reindeer herders—sees a man brutally kill her beloved reindeer calf and threaten her into silence. When her father takes her to report the crime, local police tell them that there is nothing they can do about these “stolen� animals. Killings like these are classified as theft in the reports that continue to pile up, uninvestigated. But reindeer are not just the Sámi’s livelihood, they also hold spiritual significance; attacking a reindeer is an attack on the culture itself.

Ten years later, hatred and threats against the Sámi keep escalating, and more reindeer are tortured and killed in Elsa’s community. Finally, she’s had enough and decides to push back on the apathetic police force. The hunter comes after her this time, leading to a catastrophic final confrontation.

Based on real events, Ann-Helén Laestadius’s award-winning novel Stolen is part coming-of-age story, part love song to a disappearing natural world, and part electrifying countdown to a dramatic resolution—a searing depiction of a forgotten part of Sweden.]]> 400 Ann-Helén Laestadius 1668007169 Ellen 5 3.96 2021
author: Ann-Helén Laestadius
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/27
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves:
review:
Really good, although the ending was kind of anti-climactic. I got the feeling she didn't really know how to end it and just threw something together. But I read two books about the Sami within a month, and it means two books were published about them in one year! I also understand there's an adaptation on Netflix. Looking forward to watching it.
]]> 8578293 No one liked CC de Poitiers. Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter—and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines. CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone, right up until the moment of her death.
When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté du Québec, is called to investigate, he quickly realizes he's dealing with someone quite extraordinary. CC de Poitiers was electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake, in front of the entire village, as she watched the annual curling tournament. And yet no one saw anything. Who could have been insane enough to try such a macabre method of murder—or brilliant enough to succeed?
With his trademark compassion and courage, Gamache digs beneath the idyllic surface of village life to find the dangerous secrets long buried there. For a Quebec winter is not only staggeringly beautiful but deadly, and the people of Three Pines know better than to reveal too much of themselves. But other dangers are becoming clear to Gamache. As a bitter wind blows into the village, something even more chilling is coming for Gamache himself.]]> 418 Louise Penny Ellen 2 4.33 2006
author: Louise Penny
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2006
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 196056205 A mesmerising novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor � a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth.

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

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

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

A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us � and within us � Bear is a propulsive, mythical, rich novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.]]> 304 Julia Phillips 0525520430 Ellen 3 3.21 2024
author: Julia Phillips
name: Ellen
average rating: 3.21
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/22
date added: 2024/07/22
shelves:
review:
She's an excellent writer, but the book was a bit disappointing. The story disturbed me, but not in a good way.
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Bern Hendricks has just received the call of a lifetime. As one of the world’s preeminent experts on the famed twentieth-century composer Frederick Delaney, Bern knows everything there is to know about the man behind the music. When Mallory Roberts, a board member of the distinguished Delaney Foundation and direct descendant of the man himself, asks for Bern’s help authenticating a newly discovered piece, which may be his famous lost opera, RED, he jumps at the chance. With the help of his tech-savvy acquaintance Eboni, Bern soon discovers that the truth is far more complicated than history would have them believe.

In 1920s Manhattan, Josephine Reed is living on the streets and frequenting jazz clubs when she meets the struggling musician Fred Delaney. But where young Delaney struggles, Josephine soars. She’s a natural prodigy who hears beautiful music in the sounds of the world around her. With Josephine as his silent partner, Delaney’s career takes off—but who is the real genius here?

In the present day, Bern and Eboni begin to uncover more clues that indicate Delaney may have had help in composing his most successful work. Armed with more questions than answers and caught in the crosshairs of a powerful organization who will stop at nothing to keep their secret hidden, Bern and Eboni will move heaven and earth in their dogged quest to right history’s wrongs.]]> 448 Brendan Slocumb 0593315448 Ellen 3 The Violin Conspiracy. Not that either of them are BAD books, exactly -- but they're both relatively simplistic, far-fetched, a bit jingoistic, and not particularly well-written. I'd like to think that when his next book comes out, I'll be able to resist -- but how can you resist a musical mystery? They're like art historical mysteries, promising intellectual satisfaction along with the puzzle. I just wish these were better written and deeper and didn't have such a simplistic axe to grind. That said -- a total page-turner. I read about 350 of its 430 pp. in two one-hour train rides.]]> 4.22 2023
author: Brendan Slocumb
name: Ellen
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/20
date added: 2024/07/20
shelves:
review:
Well, I got kind of suckered in again, after The Violin Conspiracy. Not that either of them are BAD books, exactly -- but they're both relatively simplistic, far-fetched, a bit jingoistic, and not particularly well-written. I'd like to think that when his next book comes out, I'll be able to resist -- but how can you resist a musical mystery? They're like art historical mysteries, promising intellectual satisfaction along with the puzzle. I just wish these were better written and deeper and didn't have such a simplistic axe to grind. That said -- a total page-turner. I read about 350 of its 430 pp. in two one-hour train rides.
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