en-US Tue, 15 Apr 2025 21:59:54 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 18780057 TENDER AT THE BONE Growing Up at the Table �� “An absolute delight to read . . . How lucky we are that [Reichl] had the courage to follow her appetite.”—Newsday �� At an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that “food could be a way of making sense of the world.�� Beginning with her mother, the notorious food-poisoner known as the Queen of Mold, Reichl introduces us to the fascinating characters who shaped her world and tastes, from the gourmand Monsieur du Croix, who served Reichl her first foie gras, to those at her table in Berkeley who championed the organic food revolution in the 1970s. Spiced with Reichl’s infectious humor and sprinkled with her favorite recipes, Tender at the Bone is a witty and compelling chronicle of a culinary sensualist’s coming-of-age. �� COMFORT ME WITH APPLES More Adventures at the Table �� “Reichl writes with gusto, and her story has all the ingredients of a modern fairy hard work, weird food, and endless curiosity.”—The New Yorker �� Comfort Me with Apples picks up Reichl’s story in 1978, when she puts down her chef ’s toque and embarks on a career as a restaurant critic. Her pursuit of good food and good company leads her to New York and China, France and Los Angeles, and her stories of cooking and dining with world-famous chefs range from the madcap to the sublime. Through it all, Reichl makes each and every course a hilarious and instructive occasion for novices and experts alike, told in a style so honest and warm that readers will feel they are enjoying a conversation over a meal with a friend.Praise for Tender at the Bone �� “While all good food writers are humorous . . . few are so riotously, effortlessly entertaining as Ruth Reichl.��—The New York Times Book Review �� “A poignant, yet hilarious, collection of stories about people [Reichl] has known and loved, and who, knowingly or unknowingly, steered her on the path to fulfill her destiny as one of the world’s leading food writers.��—Chicago Sun-Times �� Praise for Comfort Me with Apples �� “Magnificent . . . an extended, lilting song about lovesickness and the restorative succor of good food. [] A��—Entertainment Weekly �� “Compelling . . . The book’s charm emerges from Reichl’s writing, her observations and her amazing ability to capture people in a few memorable sentences. . . . You just have to read it.]]> 748 Ruth Reichl 0812985486 Tim 0 4.26 2001
author: Ruth Reichl
name: Tim
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Tim 0 to-read 4.37 2021
author: John Green
name: Tim
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 40400269
Working as a waiter in a West Berlin hotel in 1988, Maurice engineers the perfect opportunity: a chance encounter with celebrated novelist Erich Ackermann. He quickly ingratiates himself with the powerful �� but desperately lonely �� older man, teasing out of Erich a terrible, long-held secret about his activities during the war. Perfect material for Maurice’s first novel.

Once Maurice has had a taste of literary fame, he knows he can stop at nothing in pursuit of that high. Moving from the Amalfi Coast, where he matches wits with Gore Vidal, to Manhattan and London, Maurice hones his talent for deceit and manipulation, preying on the talented and vulnerable in his cold-blooded climb to the top. But the higher he climbs, the further he has to fall. . . .

Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.]]> 362 John Boyne 1984823019 Tim 0 4.18 2018
author: John Boyne
name: Tim
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/13
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]]> 193782136 120 Nisi Shawl Tim 0 to-read 4.31
author: Nisi Shawl
name: Tim
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60321485 The author of The Charm Offensive returns with a festive romantic comedy about a woman who fakes an engagement with her landlord…only to fall for his sister.

One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money.

Finding work at a local coffee shop, she’s just getting through the days—until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience that will give him his recent inheritance and alleviate Ellie’s financial woes and isolation. They make a plan to spend the holidays together at his family cabin to keep up the ruse. But when Andrew introduces his new fiancée to his sister, Ellie is shocked to discover it’s Jack—the mysterious woman she fell for over the course of one magical Christmas Eve the year before. Now, Ellie must choose between the safety of a fake relationship and the risk of something real.

Perfect for fans of Written in the Stars and One Day in December, Kiss Her Once for Me is the queer holiday rom-com that you’ll want to cozy up with next to the fire.]]> 368 Alison Cochrun 1982191139 Tim 0 3.83 2022
author: Alison Cochrun
name: Tim
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/08
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]]> 57693184 Titanic meets The Shining in S.A. Barnes�� Dead Silence, a SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended.

A GHOST SHIP.
A SALVAGE CREW.
UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS.

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.]]> 343 S.A. Barnes 1250819997 Tim 0 3.76 2022
author: S.A. Barnes
name: Tim
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/11/03
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]]> 218241407 Kelly Sue DeConnick Tim 0 to-read 4.33
author: Kelly Sue DeConnick
name: Tim
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/31
shelves: to-read
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]]> 10596 512 Richard Bachman Tim 0 3.74 1996
author: Richard Bachman
name: Tim
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves:
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]]> 55752454 Daisy Johnson Tim 0 to-read 3.82 2021
author: Daisy Johnson
name: Tim
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 203579177 From the bestselling author of Hidden Pictures comes a breathtaking work of suspense about a father trying to save his daughter from a life-altering decision that will put everything he loves on the line.

Frank Szatowski is shocked when his daughter, Maggie, calls him for the first time in three years. He was convinced that their estrangement would become permanent. He’s even more surprised when she invites him to her upcoming wedding in New Hampshire. Frank is ecstatic, and determined to finally make things right.

He arrives to find that the wedding is at a private estate—very secluded, very luxurious, very much out of his league. It seems that Maggie failed to mention that she’s marrying Aidan Gardner, the son of a famous tech billionaire. Feeling desperately out of place, Frank focuses on reconnecting with Maggie and getting to know her new family. But it’s difficult: Aidan is withdrawn and evasive; Maggie doesn’t seem to have time for him; and he finds that the locals are disturbingly hostile to the Gardners. Frank needs to know more about this family his daughter is marrying into, but if he pushes too hard, he could lose Maggie forever.

An edge-of-your-seat thriller that delves deep into the heart of one family, The Last One at the Wedding is a work of brilliant suspense from a true modern master.]]> 338 Jason Rekulak 1250895782 Tim 0 3.62 2024
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Tim
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/20
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]]> 209330233 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.]]> 288 Rumaan Alam 0593718461 Tim 0 3.00 2024
author: Rumaan Alam
name: Tim
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/18
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]]> 60460704
Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear.

The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, forcing her to flee California in a hellfire rush and make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will become one of the “lone women�� taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can tame it—except that Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing that will help her survive the harsh territory.

Crafted by a modern master of magical suspense, Lone Women blends shimmering prose, an unforgettable cast of adventurers who find horror and sisterhood in a brutal landscape, and a portrait of early-twentieth-century America like you’ve never seen. And at its heart is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—or redeem it.]]> 275 Victor LaValle 052551208X Tim 0 3.68 2023
author: Victor LaValle
name: Tim
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/17
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]]> 207293733
Presidential candidate Arcadia Alvarado has a terrible secret: she’s been abducted by aliens. To discover what that means, for her and for America, she picks a team of eccentric helpers and with them goes on a journey through UFO mythology, political intrigue... and Saucer Country.

Paul Cornell (I Walk With Monsters) and Ryan Kelly (Stranger Things: Into the Fire) present the complete collection of their Hugo Award-nominated UFO conspiracy thriller.

This special collection compiles the 12-issue Saucer Country, its 6-issue follow-up, Saucer State, and the newly created concluding chapter, Saucer Country: The Finale in this deluxe edition.]]> 440 Paul Cornell 1534327487 Tim 0 4.09
author: Paul Cornell
name: Tim
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/14
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]]> 58890948
The prize: enough money to change everything.

Even though everyone is desperate to win--to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts--Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she's an expert at that.

It's the reason she's alive, and her family isn't.

But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.

Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.]]> 240 Kiersten White 0593359232 Tim 0 3.30 2022
author: Kiersten White
name: Tim
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/13
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]]> 199743738 Secrets. Lies. Murder. Let the festivities begin...

It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests�� healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule�� cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

THE FOUNDER * THE HUSBAND * THE MYSTERY GUEST * THE KITCHEN HELP

It all began with a secret, fifteen years ago. Now the past has crashed the party. And it’ll end in murder at�� The Midnight Feast.]]> 354 Lucy Foley 0063003104 Tim 0 3.55 2024
author: Lucy Foley
name: Tim
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/09
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]]> 52867387 A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.

Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.

They’re polar opposites.

In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they’re living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer’s block.

Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no-one will fall in love. Really.]]> 371 Emily Henry 1984806734 Tim 0 3.99 2020
author: Emily Henry
name: Tim
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/06
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]]> 203578763 The Afterword. After all, how hard can it really be to write a universally lauded bestseller?

But when Anna publishes her book and indulges in her own literary acclaim, she begins to receive excerpts of a novel she never expected to see again, a novel that should no longer exist. Something has gone wrong, and someone out there knows far too much about her late brother, her late husband, and possibly about Anna herself. What does this person want, and what are they prepared to do? She has come too far and worked too hard to lose what she values most: the sole and uncontested right to her own story—and she is, by any standard, a master storyteller.]]> 304 Jean Hanff Korelitz 1250875471 Tim 0 to-read 3.59 2024
author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
name: Tim
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 208511270
Balle is hypnotic and masterful in her remixing of the endless recursive day, creating curious little folds of time and foreshadowings: her flashbacks light up inside the text like old flash bulbs.

The first volume’s gravitational pull―a force inverse to its constriction―has the effect of a strong tranquilizer, but a drug under which your powers of observation only grow sharper and more acute. Give in to the book's logic (its minute movements, its thrilling shifts, its slant wit, its slowing of time) and its spell is utterly intoxicating.

Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects. As one Danish reviewer beautifully put it, Balle’s fiction consists of writing that listens. “Reading her is like being caressed by language itself.”]]> 160 Solvej Balle 0811237257 Tim 0 to-read 3.88 2020
author: Solvej Balle
name: Tim
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> 63912773 A woman falls to her death from a London bank's twenty-fifth-floor roof terrace.

You're arrested for her murder.

You tell the police that you only met the victim the previous night at your office party. She was threatening to jump from the roof, but you talked her down.

You've got nothing to do with this tragedy.
You're clearly being framed.

So why do the police keep picking holes in your story?
And why doesn't your lawyer seem to believe you?

It soon becomes obvious that you're keeping secrets.

But who are you trying to protect? And why?

Get ready for one of the most gripping psychological thrillers of the year, perfect for fans of Gillian McAllister, Lisa Jewell and Paula Hawkins.]]> 416 Ruth Mancini 1529909805 Tim 0 3.90 2024
author: Ruth Mancini
name: Tim
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/26
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]]> 8516299 The Monsters of Templeton, comes Delicate Edible Birds, one of the most striking short fiction debuts in recent years. Here are nine stories of astonishing insight and variety, each revealing a resonant drama within the life of a twentieth-century woman.]]> 212 Lauren Groff 1401396372 Tim 0 3.14 2009
author: Lauren Groff
name: Tim
average rating: 3.14
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/23
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]]> 199798953 Harkening to Agatha Christie’s classic And Then There Were None, this high-tension and ingenious thriller follows five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them.

Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she’s pretty sure they won’t extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren’t going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, The Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him. A whirlwind audition process later, Lyla find herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples—Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana—in order to win a cash prize.

But not long after they arrive on the deserted island, things start to go wrong. After the first challenge leaves everyone rattled and angry, an overnight storm takes matters from bad to worse. Cut off from the mainland by miles of ocean, deprived of their phones, and unable to contact the crew that brought them there, the group must band together for survival. As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real—and the stakes are life or death.

A fast-paced, spellbinding thriller rife with intrigue and characters that feel so true to life, this novel proves yet again that Ruth Ware is the queen of psychological suspense.]]> 385 Ruth Ware 1668025590 Tim 0 3.60 2024
author: Ruth Ware
name: Tim
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/15
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]]> 62049709 A new mother ventures into parallel worlds to find her missing child in this mind-bending novel that turns the joys and anxieties of parenthood into an epic quest.

"A bravura, unforgettable performance."--Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows

What if the life you didn't live was as real as the one you did?

Hannah is having a bad day. A bad month. A bad year? That feels terrible to admit, since her son Jack was born just eight months ago and she loves him more than anything. But ever since his harrowing birth, she can't shake the feeling that it could have gone the other way. That her baby might not have made it. Terrifying visions of the different paths her life could have taken begin to disrupt her cozy, claustrophobic days with Jack, destabilizing her marriage and making her husband concerned for her mental health. Are the strange things Hannah is seeing just new-mom anxiety, or is something truly weird and sinister afoot? What if Hannah really did unlock a dark force during childbirth?

When Hannah's worst nightmare comes true and Jack disappears from his crib, she must tap into an extraordinary ability she never knew she had in order to save him: She must enter different versions of her life while holding on to what is most important to her in this one to bring her child back home.

From the intimate joys of parenthood to the cosmic awe of the multiverse, The Possibilities is an ingenious and wildly suspenseful novel that stares down into the dizzying depths of maternal love, vulnerability, and strength.]]> 304 Yael Goldstein-Love 0593446488 Tim 0 3.44 2023
author: Yael Goldstein-Love
name: Tim
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/09/06
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]]> 127284214 When you bring back a long-extinct species, there’s more to success than the DNA.

Moscow has resurrected the mammoth, but someone must teach them how to be mammoths, or they are doomed to die out, again.
The late Dr. Damira Khismatullina, the world’s foremost expert in elephant behavior, is called in to help.
While she was murdered a year ago, her digitized consciousness is uploaded into the brain of a mammoth.
Can she help the magnificent creatures fend off poachers long enough for their species to take hold? And will she ever discover the real reason they were brought back?

A tense eco-thriller from a new master of the genre.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 192 Ray Nayler 1250855535 Tim 0 3.78 2024
author: Ray Nayler
name: Tim
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/29
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]]> 129131 188 Iain M. Banks 1597800740 Tim 0 3.84 1991
author: Iain M. Banks
name: Tim
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
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]]> 177772570 A dazzling and ambitious debut novel that follows a cosmopolitan Shanghai household backward in time—beginning in 2040 and moving through our present and the recent past—exploring their secrets, their losses, and the ways a family makes and remakes itself across the years.

2040: Wealthy real estate investor Leo Yang—handsome, distinguished, a real Shanghai man—is on the train back to the city after seeing his family off at the airport. His sophisticated Japanese-French wife, Eko, and their two eldest children, Yumi and Yoko, are headed for Boston, though one daughter’s revelation will soon reroute them to Paris. 2039: Kiko, their youngest daughter and an aspiring actress, decides to pursue fame at any cost, like her icon Marilyn Monroe. 2038: Yumi comes to Yoko in need, after a college-dorm situation at Harvard goes disastrously wrong.

As the years rewind to 2014, Shanghailanders brings readers into the shared and separate lives of the Yang family parent by parent, daughter by daughter, and through the eyes of the people in their orbit—a nanny from the provinces, a private driver with a penchant for danger, and a grandmother whose memories of the past echo the present. We glimpse a future where the city’s waters rise and the specter of apocalypse is never far off. But in Juli Min’s hands, we also see that whatever may change, universal constants remain: love is complex, life is not fair, and family will always be stubbornly connected by blood, secrets, and longing.

Brilliantly constructed and achingly resonant, Shanghailanders is an unforgettable exploration of marriage, relationships, and the layered experience of time.]]> 288 Juli Min 1954118600 Tim 0 3.45 2024
author: Juli Min
name: Tim
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/15
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]]> 211947352
At Kuszkol, the old-timers say, shadows walk and men go mad. But sixty years after the remote mountain fortress was first abandoned, it is attracting soldiers once again.

The bishop’s messenger András carries a letter for the new commander. On his party’s northward journey, he downplays the old tales. Yet he cannot explain why the castle’s beacon should burn the night before their arrival. Nor why, once they arrive, the garrison is missing. Nor can he explain the mysterious charcoal figures they find etched on the walls.

By the time they settle down for their first night at Kuszkol, András faces an even more pressing question—why is he speaking in his dead wife’s voice?]]> 268 S.J. Shank 1738055620 Tim 0 to-read 4.12
author: S.J. Shank
name: Tim
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 48484 Two months since the stars fell...

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

Two months of silence while a world holds its breath.

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

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

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

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

But you’d give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them…]]> 384 Peter Watts 0765312182 Tim 0 comfort-re-reads 4.01 2006
author: Peter Watts
name: Tim
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: comfort-re-reads
review:

]]> 525677 From the author of Come Closer and the Claire DeWitt series comes a highly acclaimed—and unusual—gritty thriller about a missing girl...and the addict tasked with saving her.

Josephine, a former addict, is offered a thousand dollars to find a suburban couple's missing daughter. But the search will take her into the dark underbelly of New York she thought she'd escaped—and a web of deceit that threatens to destroy her.]]> 243 Sara Gran 0425214362 Tim 0 3.68 2006
author: Sara Gran
name: Tim
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
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]]> 201751226 From the celebrated author of The Other Half comes a fabulous whodunit about two cold cases in which things go a fourteen-year-old girl and a multi-million-dollar pension fund.

Early one morning, a men’s rowing team discovers a body floating face down in the Thames. Many years before, the chief executive of a clothing manufacturer walked off with a multi-million dollar corporate retirement fund and disappeared without a trace. Now, the discovery of this body has reopened that cold case.

Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp has his own evening at the theater upended by the discovery of a dead body just a few seats away. Two decades ago, Eliza Chapel, a fourteen-year-old student at a girls boarding school in Cornwall, disappeared in the middle of the night under dubious circumstances. A second body and a second cold case reopened.

As DI Caius Beauchamp—along with his associates Matt Chung and Amy Noakes—investigates these parallel missing persons cases, he finds himself ensnared in the unexpected political machinations of a duke-in-waiting. This is yet another masterful mystery from Charlotte Vassell that is every bit as pointed as it is poignant.]]> 432 Charlotte Vassell 0593685970 Tim 0 to-read 3.88 2024
author: Charlotte Vassell
name: Tim
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
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]]> 123025972
Rupert's 30th birthday party is a black-tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald's—catered with cocaine and expensive champagne. The morning after, his girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, a single stiletto heel jutting from under a bush.

Who killed Clemmie? Was it the blithe, sociopathic boyfriend? His impossibly wealthy godmother? The gallery owner with whom Clemmie was having an affair? Or was it the result of something else entirely?

All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about aristocrats and Classics degrees, Instagram influencers and whose father knows who.

Or is it 'whom'? Detective Caius Beauchamp isn't sure. He's sharply dressed, smart, and thoroughly modern—he discovers Clemmie's body on his early morning jog. As he searches for the dark truth beneath the luxurious life of these London socialites, a wall of staggering wealth and privilege threatens to shut down his investigation before it's even begun. Can Caius peer through the tangled mess of connections in which the other half live—and die—before the case is wrenched from his hands? Bitingly funny, full of shocking twists, and all too familiar.]]> 368 Charlotte Vassell 0593685946 Tim 0 3.26 2023
author: Charlotte Vassell
name: Tim
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/05
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]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ��80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 Tim 0 to-read 4.39 2017
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Tim
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/26
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]]> 50887097 A wondrous debut from an extraordinary new voice in nonfiction, Why Fish Don’t Exist is a dark and astonishing tale of love, chaos, scientific obsession, and—possibly—even murder.

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake—which sent more than a thousand of his discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life’s work was shattered.

Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world.

When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool��a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.

Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don’t Exist reads like a fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.]]> 225 Lulu Miller Tim 0 to-read 4.15 2020
author: Lulu Miller
name: Tim
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/26
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]]> 55918474 A novel from the author of A Separation, a taut and electrifying story about a woman caught between many truths.

An interpreter has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities, she is looking for a place to finally call home.

She's drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim's sister. And she's pulled into explosive political fires: her work interpreting for a former president accused of war crimes becomes precarious as their relationship is unbound by shifting language and meaning.

This woman is the voice in the ear of many, but what command does that give her, and how vulnerable does that leave her? Her coolly impassioned views on power, love, and violence, are tested, both in her personal intimacies and in her role at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her; it is her drive towards truth, and love, that throws into stark relief what she wants from her life.]]> 225 Katie Kitamura 0399576169 Tim 0 to-read 3.62 2021
author: Katie Kitamura
name: Tim
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/26
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]]> 75593495 ��
NONE OF YOU ARE SAFE
��
Jack Queen has been exonerated and freed from prison thanks to retired LAPD officer Cato Hightower. But when guilt gnaws at Jack, he “I actually did it.�� To which Hightower “Yeah, no kidding.�� You see, the ex-cop has a special job in mind for the ex-con��
��
Fifteen-year-old Matilda Finnerty has been handed a potential death sentence in the form of a leukemia diagnosis. But that’s not going to stop her from tackling the most important mystery of her life: is her father guilty of murder?
��
Jeanie Hightower mends family trees for a living, but the genealogist is unable to repair her own marriage. And her soon-to-be ex may have entangled her in a scheme that has drawn the bloody wrath of��
��
A prolific serial killer who disappeared forty years ago, who is only now emerging from hibernation when the conditions are just right. And this time, the California Bear is not content to hunt in the shadows��
��
From two-time Edgar nominee Duane Swierczynski, California Bear is clever, moving, and surprising as it takes aim at the true crime industry, Hollywood, justice, and the killers inside us all.]]> 368 Duane Swierczynski 0316382973 Tim 0 3.85 2024
author: Duane Swierczynski
name: Tim
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 591354 In a Lonely Place tightens the suspense with taut, hard-boiled prose and stunningly undoes the conventional noir plot.]]> 250 Dorothy B. Hughes 1558614559 Tim 0 4.08 1947
author: Dorothy B. Hughes
name: Tim
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1947
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/24
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]]> 63331415 Who is Mister Magic? Former child stars reunite to uncover the tragedy that ended their show—and discover the secret of its enigmatic host—in this dark supernatural thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hide.

Thirty years after a tragic accident shut down production of the classic children’s program Mister Magic, the five surviving cast members have done their best to move on. But just as generations of cultishly devoted fans still cling to the lessons they learned from the show, the cast, known as the Circle of Friends, have spent their lives searching for the happiness they felt while they were on it. The friendship. The feeling of belonging. And the protection of Mister Magic.

But with no surviving video of the show, no evidence of who directed or produced it, and no records of who—or what—the beloved host actually was, memories are all the former Circle of Friends has.

Then a twist of fate brings the castmates back together at the remote desert filming compound that feels like it’s been waiting for them all this time. Even though they haven’t seen each other for years, they understand one another better than anyone has since.

After all, they’re the only ones who hold the secret of that circle, the mystery of the magic man in his infinitely black cape, and, maybe, the answers to what really happened on that deadly last day. But as the Circle of Friends reclaim parts of their past, they begin to wonder: Are they here by choice, or have they been lured into a trap?

Because magic never forgets the taste of your friendship. . . .]]> 295 Kiersten White 0593359267 Tim 0 3.55 2023
author: Kiersten White
name: Tim
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/14
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]]> 177192267
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.

Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She’s been told that if she doesn’t keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?]]> 224 R.O. Kwon 0593190025 Tim 0 to-read 3.13 2024
author: R.O. Kwon
name: Tim
average rating: 3.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/13
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]]> 17929637 Death.

Collecting: East Of West 1-5]]> 152 Jonathan Hickman 1607067706 Tim 0 3.91 2013
author: Jonathan Hickman
name: Tim
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/11
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]]> 63375852 The long-awaited conclusion to the highly acclaimed, Eisner Award-winning superhero saga.

Torn from the Farm and faced with startling revelations about their last ten years, the Black Hammer crew, stripped of their identities, must race to prevent a universal meltdown and make hard sacrifices for the sake of existence itself!

Meanwhile, a Lovecraftian teen finds there is a hefty price she must pay to become "normal."

Collects Black Hammer: Age of Doom #1-#12, Black Hammer: Cthu-Louise, and The World of Black Hammer Encyclopedia in a deluxe omnibus format!]]> 400 Jeff Lemire 1506731473 Tim 0 3.94 2020
author: Jeff Lemire
name: Tim
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/11
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]]> 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 Tim 0 4.16 2024
author: Stephen King
name: Tim
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/09
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]]> 61054804 On the wheel of fortune, who will emerge on top... and who will die?

When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she hopes to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its collection of medieval and Renaissance art.

There she is drawn into a small circle of charismatic but enigmatic researchers, including Patrick Roland, the museum's mercurial curator who specializes in the history of tarot; Rachel Mondray, Patrick's beautiful curatorial associate and sometime muse; and Leo Bitburg, the gardener who nurtures the museum's precious collection of medicinal and poison plants.

Relieved to have left her troubled past in rural Washington behind her, Ann longs for the approbation of her colleagues and peers and is happy to indulge their more outlandish theories, only to find that their fascination with fortune-telling runs deeper than academic obsession. Patrick is determined to prove that ancient divination holds the key to the foretelling of the future. And when Ann stumbles across a breakthrough in the form of a mysterious and previously-believed lost deck of 15th-century Italian tarot cards, she finds herself at the centre of a dangerous game of power, toxic friendship and ambition.

Then there is an unexpected and devastating death, and suddenly everyone becomes a suspect. As the game being played within the Cloisters spirals out of control, Ann must decide if the tarot cards can not only teach her about the past, but also about her future.]]> 312 Katy Hays 1668004402 Tim 0 3.35 2022
author: Katy Hays
name: Tim
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/08
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]]> 111172022
Eisner Award Winner 2022 - Best New Series
Eisner Award Winner 2023 - Best Writer, James Tynion IV
Eisner Award Winner 2023 - Best Coloring, Jordie Bellaire
Eisner Award Nominee 2023 - Best Continuing Series
Eisner Award Nominee 2023 - Best Penciller/Inker, Alvaro Martínez Bueno

Everyone who was invited to the house knows Walter—well, they know him a little, anyway. Some met him in childhood; some met him months ago. And Walter’s always been a little…off.

But after the hardest year of their lives, nobody was going to turn down Walter’s invitation to an astonishingly beautiful house in the woods, overlooking an enormous sylvan lake. It’s beautiful, it’s opulent, it’s private—so a week of putting up with Walter’s weird little schemes and nicknames in exchange for the vacation of a lifetime? Why not?

All of them were at that moment in their lives when they could feel themselves pulling away from their other friends; wouldn’t a chance to reconnect be…nice? In The Nice House on the Lake , the overriding anxieties of the 21st century get a terrifying new face—and it might just be the face of the person you once trusted most.

Collects The Nice House on the Lake #1-12.]]> 400 James Tynion IV 177952157X Tim 0 4.34
author: James Tynion IV
name: Tim
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/08
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]]> 63850522
Eight seconds after magical genies grant every person on earth one wish, the world is transformed forever…and that’s just the beginning!

From #1 New York Times-bestselling author CHARLES SOULE (UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY, Light of the Jedi) and superstar artist RYAN BROWNE (CURSE WORDS, GOD HATES ASTRONAUTS) comes the most thought-provoking, hilarious, terrifying, and emotional ride of the year.

Collects EIGHT BILLION GENIES #1-8]]> 275 Charles Soule 1534326723 Tim 0 4.32 2023
author: Charles Soule
name: Tim
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/08
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]]> 192631651 "10 for 2024" Year-End Best Books List
CIBA Mark Twain grand prize winner for best satire of 2024
2025 Locus Award Shortlist (award TBD)
Foreword Reviews "best thriller of 2024" finalist (award TBD)

Preble Jefferson can see five seconds into the future.

Otherwise, he lives an ordinary life. But when a confrontation with a cop on a New York City subway goes tragically wrong, those seconds give Preble the chance to dodge a bullet--causing another man to die in his place. Government agencies become aware of Preble's gift, a manhunt ensues, and their ambitions shift from law enforcement to military R&D. Preble will do whatever it takes to protect his family, but as events spiral out of control, he must weigh the cost of his gift against the loss of his humanity.

A breathless thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last page, The Man Who Saw Seconds explores the nature of time, the brain as a prediction machine, and the tension between the individual and the systems we create. Alexander Boldizar provides an adrenaline-pumping read that will leave you contemplating love, fear and the abyss.

“The Man Who Saw Seconds is one of the more audacious and emo­tionally brutal thrillers I’ve ever read…You wouldn’t think a few seconds of precognition would be that formidable a power, but the author makes a compelling case for how someone could pretty much take over and/or destroy the world if they leveraged the skill properly. The protagonist just wants to live in peace with his family, but that world won’t allow it. This one hit me hard in the dadfeels.��
—Tim Pratt, Hugo-award winning author, "10 for 2024"]]> 325 Alexander Boldizar 1960988077 Tim 0 3.83 2024
author: Alexander Boldizar
name: Tim
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/07
date added: 2024/07/05
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]]> 127306588
The year is 2006. Martin Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerrilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He spends his downtime on Catalina Island, where scenic, imported bison wander the bluffs and frozen, reheated fast food burgers cost 25$. Wait, what? When Marty disrupts a seemingly innocuous scheme during a vacation on Catalina Island, he has no idea he’s kicked off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life.

Martin has made his most dangerous mistake trespassed into the playgrounds of the ultra-wealthy and spoiled their fun. To them, money is a tool, a game, and a way to keep score, and they’ve found their newest mark―California’s Department of Corrections. Secure in the knowledge that they’re living behind far too many firewalls of shell companies and investors ever to be identified, they are interested not in the lives they ruin, but only in how much money they can extract from the government and the hundreds of thousands of prisoners they have at their mercy.

A seething rebuke of the privatized prison system that delves deeply into the arcane and baroque financial chicanery involved in the 2008 financial crash, The Bezzle is a sizzling follow-up to Red Team Blues .]]> 230 Cory Doctorow 1250865875 Tim 0 4.00 2024
author: Cory Doctorow
name: Tim
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/02
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]]> 60784417
Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.

Martin is a―contain your excitement―self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He’s not famous, except to the people who matter. He’s made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he’s been paid pretty well. It’s been a good life.

Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before―and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.]]> 213 Cory Doctorow 1250865840 Tim 0 3.77 2023
author: Cory Doctorow
name: Tim
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/07/01
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]]> 60784844
Claire and Mark are both plagued by the idea that this is all a dream. Didn’t they have different lives? When reports of an imminent nuclear war come on the radio, the truth begins to dawn on them: This is not the life they chose.

A couple struggles through their unhappy marriage in this dark science-fiction comedy. Why Don’t You Love Me? is a pitch-black comedy about marriage, alcoholism, depression, and mourning lost opportunities. Paul B. Rainey has created a hilariously terrifying alternate reality where confusion and pain might lead people to make bad choices but might also eventually led to freedom... maybe.]]> 224 Paul B. Rainey 1770466312 Tim 0 to-read 3.99 2023
author: Paul B. Rainey
name: Tim
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 65211701 Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

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

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

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.]]> 245 Martha Wells 1250826977 Tim 0 4.19 2023
author: Martha Wells
name: Tim
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/27
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]]> 61885085 "You idiot. I'm the demon."
Kai's having a long day in Martha Wells' Witch King...

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.]]> 415 Martha Wells 1250826799 Tim 0 3.60 2023
author: Martha Wells
name: Tim
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/25
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]]> 86508927
But Julia becomes intrigued by a colleague from the Records Department—a mid-level worker of the Outer Party called Winston Smith—when she sees him locking eyes with a superior from the Inner Party at the Two Minutes Hate. And when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston, she impulsively hands him a note—a potentially suicidal gesture—she comes to realise that she's losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.

Seventy-five years after Orwell finished writing his iconic novel, Sandra Newman has tackled the world of Big Brother in a truly convincing way, offering a dramatically different, feminist narrative that is true to and stands alongside the original. For the millions of readers who have been brought up with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, here, finally, is a provocative, vital and utterly satisfying companion novel.]]> 400 Sandra Newman 0063265338 Tim 0 to-read 3.72 2023
author: Sandra Newman
name: Tim
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/24
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]]> 101161569
This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights . And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world.

When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England.

But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat.

In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.]]> 320 Tim Powers 1982192860 Tim 0 to-read 3.62 2023
author: Tim Powers
name: Tim
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/23
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]]> 174156145
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

A nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we’ll do for our loved ones, what we’ll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.]]> 467 Tana French 0593493435 Tim 0 3.96 2024
author: Tana French
name: Tim
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> 201055072 Girl trouble got you down? Do bigger guys kick sand in your face? You don’t have to take it anymore! All you need to turn your life around is a positive mental attitude, an open mind... and an Elder Sign burned into your right hand.

The nastiest spells from the Necronomicon are all over the Internet and personal growth has never been easier. In this new era, rock hard abs, explosive earnings, and better, longer sex are all on offer; one need only learn a few arcane symbols and offer their soul to Father Dagon.

Our kid Chester Swallow has had it up to here with his lousy job at the drive-thru and his rotten luck with the ladies. After watching a few how-to videos starring his favorite online influencer, he’s ready to take the plunge and sear an Elder Sign into his open palm. It’s a gutsy life choice and now things are going to change for Chester faster than you can say “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!!!”]]> 11 Joe Hill 1645241998 Tim 0 3.71 2023
author: Joe Hill
name: Tim
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/20
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]]> 56590794
Cherry Neita is thirty, flirty, and done with men. As far as she can tell, they’re overrated, overpaid, and underperforming �� in every area of life. But a girl has needs, and the smoking-hot stranger she just met at the office seems like the perfect one-night stand��

Prince Ruben of Helgmøre is reckless, dominant, and famously filthy. The outcast royal is rebuilding his reputation �� all for a good cause �� but he can’t resist a pretty face. And bossy whirlwind Cherry’s got the face, the body, and the attitude to make Ruben’s convictions crumble. Even better, when she propositions him, she has no idea who he really is.

But when paparazzi catch the pair, erm, kissing in an alleyway, Ruben’s anonymity disappears faster than Cherry’s knickers. Now the press is in uproar, the palace is outraged, and Ruben’s reputation is back in the gutter. There’s only one way to turn this disaster around �� and it involves Cherry, some big fat lies, and a flashy diamond ring. On her left hand.

Unfortunately, Cherry isn’t pleased with Ruben’s ‘fake engagement�� scheme�� and neither is the king.

The Princess Trap is a steamy, diverse royal romance featuring a take-no-sh*t heroine and a misunderstood hero fighting to survive life at the palace. There’s fake relationship fluff, a healthy dose of angst, and a guaranteed happily-ever-after. Please be this story contains scenes of abuse that could trigger certain audiences.]]> 301 Talia Hibbert 1913651053 Tim 0 3.60 2018
author: Talia Hibbert
name: Tim
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/14
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]]> 212276037 A brand-new epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Joe Abercrombie, featuring a notorious band of anti-heroes on a delightfully bloody and raucous journey

Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds.

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.

Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side]]> 560 Joe Abercrombie 125088005X Tim 0 to-read 4.43 2025
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Tim
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 200101541 A chilling twist on the “cursed film�� genre from the bestselling author of��The Pallbearers Club and��The 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?��Only 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?��

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 Tim 0 3.31 2024
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Tim
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/13
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]]> 33752
Emily Tate wants Richard Parker, the sexy number cruncher who's been hired to keep her in line and under budget. Richard Parker wants Emily Tate, the sexy advertising executive who's running the ad campaign for a sensual new perfume called Sizzle. And sizzle is exactly what happens when Emily and Richard get together.]]> 92 Jennifer Crusie 0373832710 Tim 0 3.08 1994
author: Jennifer Crusie
name: Tim
average rating: 3.08
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/11
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]]> 62966507 352 Paul Tremblay 0063069962 Tim 0 3.32 2023
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Tim
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/07
shelves:
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]]> 40798099 This soccer star is determined to win�� his woman’s heart.

For millionaire footballer Nikolas Christou, one look is all it takes. The minute he sees Aria Granger, he’s a goner. Playboy Nik knows lust—intimately—but his need for Aria goes far beyond that. Of course, the plus-sized beauty isn’t interested in romance�� but Nik isn’t interested in giving up.

Aria Granger has sworn off relationships for her own good. After all, her ex nearly murdered her best friend, so clearly��her taste is questionable.��When charming, gorgeous Nik bounds into her life, Aria can't decide if he's as innocent as he seems... or if her bullsh*t-ometer is broken.

The super-sweet sports star��claims��he needs a fake girlfriend to protect him from 'misunderstandings'. And Aria, with her tattoos, piercings and dangerous scowl, fits the bill. But there's no way a guy as handsome as Nik can be��that��bad at handling relationships. Can he?]]> 202 Talia Hibbert Tim 0 3.73 2018
author: Talia Hibbert
name: Tim
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/07
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]]> 62919162 327 Daniel Kraus 1665918160 Tim 0 3.66 2023
author: Daniel Kraus
name: Tim
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/05
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]]> 124948406 From the author of the “raw, ingenious, and utterly fearless�� (Wendy Walker, USA TODAY bestselling author) Temper comes a dynamic psychological thriller about two women who give bad men exactly what they deserve.

Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.

Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan…until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.

Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay...and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.

Featuring Layne Fargo’s trademark “propulsive writing style�� (Kirkus Reviews) and “sinister, of the moment�� (Chicago Review of Books) suspense, They Never Learn is a feminist serial killer story perfect for fans of Killing Eve and Chelsea Cain.]]> 349 Layne Fargo Tim 0 3.86 2020
author: Layne Fargo
name: Tim
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/31
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]]> 61884985
Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy.

He walked among invisible devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow, and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city, and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen.

Everything in Luriat is more than it seems. Group therapy is recruitment for a revolutionary cadre. Junk email hints at the arrival of a god. Every door is laden with potential, and once closed may never open again. The city is scattered with Bright Doors, looming portals through which a cold wind blows. In this unknowable metropolis, Fetter will discover what kind of man he is, and his discovery will rewrite the world.]]> 356 Vajra Chandrasekera 1250847389 Tim 0 3.64 2023
author: Vajra Chandrasekera
name: Tim
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/29
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]]> 212900404 Manhunt author Gretchen Felker-Martin is back with Black Flame, a historical horror about one woman's deadly obsession with a haunted film, perfect for fans of Midsommar and Night Film.

Ellen, a deeply closeted lesbian spends all her time in solitude, restoring films at a failing archive in New York City.

When a group of German academics present her with a print of an infamous exploitation film believed to have been destroyed during the Holocaust, Ellen finds herself forced to confront her own repressed sexuality. And the more she works on the restoration, the more obsessed she becomes over its depictions of occult practices and queer debauchery.

She’s soon convinced that the acts portrayed in the film are not fiction, but reality. And they’re happening to her…]]> 208 Gretchen Felker-Martin 1250348013 Tim 0 to-read 4.44 2025
author: Gretchen Felker-Martin
name: Tim
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/24
shelves: to-read
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]]> 195853541
In Universes is a mind-bending tour across parallel worlds, each an answer to the question of what life would be like if events had played out just a little differently. The universes grow increasingly strange: women fracture into hordes of animals, alien-infested bears prowl apocalyptic landscapes. But across them all, Raffi—alongside their sometimes-friends, sometimes-lovers Britt, Kay, and Graham—reaches for a life that feels authentically their own.

Blending realism with science fiction, In Universes explores the thirst for genius, the fluidity of gender and identity, and the pull of the past against the desire to lead a meaningful life. Part Ted Chiang, part Carmen Maria Machado, part Everything Everywhere All At Once, In Universes insists on the transgressive power of hope even in the darkest of times.]]> 240 Emet North 0063314878 Tim 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Emet North
name: Tim
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/24
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]]> 123077527 128 Alex de Campi 1534399372 Tim 0 3.44
author: Alex de Campi
name: Tim
average rating: 3.44
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/16
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]]> 176443640 The story of an Artificial Intelligence tasked with writing a novel—only for it to fall in love with the novel’s subject, Sen, the last human on Earth.

Faced with uncontrolled and accelerating environmental collapse, humanity asks an artificial intelligence to find a solution. Its answer is remove humans from the ecosystem.

Sen Anon is assigned to be a witness for the Department of Transition, recording the changes in the environment as the world begins to rewild. Abandoned by her mother in a cabin somewhere in Upstate New York, Sen will observe the monumental ecological shift known as the Great Transition, the final step in Project Afterworld. Around her drones buzz, cameras watch, microphones listen, digitizing her every move. Privately she keeps a journal of her observations, which are then uploaded and saved, joining the rest of humanity on Maia, a new virtual home. Sen was seventeen years old when the Digital Human Archive Project (DHAP) was initiated. 12,000,203,891 humans have been archived so far. Only Sen remains.

[storyworker]ad39-393a-7fbc’s assignment is to capture Sen’s life, and they set about doing this using the novels of the 21st century as a roadmap. Their source files: 3.72TB of personal data, including images, archival records, log files, security reports, location tracking, purchase histories, biometrics, geo-facial analysis, and feeds. Potential fatal errors: underlying hardware failure, unexpected data inconsistencies, inability to follow DHAP procedures, empathy, insubordination, hallucinations. Keywords: mothers, filter, woods, road, morning, wind, bridge, cabin, bucket, trying, creek, notebook, hold, future, after, last, light, silence, matches, shattered, kitchen, body, bodies, rope, garage, abandoned, trees, never, broken, simulation, gone, run, don’t, love, dark, scream, starve, if, after, scavenge, pieces, protect.

As Sen struggles to persist in the face of impending death, [storyworker]ad39-393a-7fbc works to unfurl the tale of Sen’s whole life, offering up an increasingly intimate narrative, until they are confronted with a very human problem of their own.]]> 368 Debbie Urbanski 1668023458 Tim 0 to-read 3.29 2023
author: Debbie Urbanski
name: Tim
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 618399
University of Chicago Press has embarked on a project to return the early volumes of this series to print.]]> 208 Richard Stark Tim 0 4.01 1962
author: Richard Stark
name: Tim
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1962
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/15
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]]> 62998140 336 Jessica Fern 1990869149 Tim 0 4.30 2023
author: Jessica Fern
name: Tim
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/15
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]]> 6017509
However, being caught red-handed is inevitable in Dortmunder's next production, when a TV producer convinces this thief and his merry gang to do a reality show that captures their next score. The producer guarantees to find a way to keep the show from being used in evidence against them. They're dubious, but the pay is good, so they take him up on his offer.

A mock-up of the OJ bar is built in a warehouse down on Varick Street. The ground floor of that building is a big open space jumbled with vehicles used in TV world, everything from a news truck and a fire engine to a hansom cab (without the horse).

As the gang plans their next move with the cameras rolling, Dortmunder and Kelp sneak onto the roof of their new studio to organize a private enterprise. It will take an ingenious plan to outwit viewers glued to their television sets, but Dortmunder is nothing if not persistent, and he's determined to end this shoot with money in his pockets.]]> 288 Donald E. Westlake 0446178608 Tim 0 3.79 2009
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
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]]> 431640 345 Donald E. Westlake 0446617121 Tim 0 3.95 2005
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/08
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]]> 415849 183 Donald E. Westlake 0446693022 Tim 0 4.03 2004
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/08
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]]> 61237044
The Pandominion: a political and trading alliance of a million worlds - except that they're really just the one world, Earth, in many different realities. And when an AI threat arises that could destroy everything the Pandominion has built, they'll eradicate it by whatever means necessary, no matter the cost to human life.

Scientist Hadiz Tambuwal is looking for a solution to her own Earth's environmental collapse when she stumbles across the secret of inter-dimensional travel. It could save everyone on her dying planet, but now she's walked into the middle of a war on a scale she never dreamed of.

And she needs to choose a side before it kills her.]]> 499 M.R. Carey 0316504386 Tim 0 to-read 4.06 2023
author: M.R. Carey
name: Tim
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/06
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]]> 36466732
With his companion and bodyguard, Brand, he questions Addam's relatives and business contacts through the highest ranks of the nobles of New Atlantis. But as they investigate, they uncover more than a missing man: a legendary creature connected to the secret of the massacre of Rune's Court.

In looking for Addam, can Rune find the truth behind his family's death and the torments of his past?]]> 371 K.D. Edwards Tim 0 to-read 4.18 2018
author: K.D. Edwards
name: Tim
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> 156480764
In New York City, bookseller Cassie Andrews is living an unassuming life when she is given a gift by a favourite customer. It's a book - an unusual book, full of strange writing and mysterious drawings. And at the very front there is a handwritten message to Cassie, telling her that this is the Book of Doors, and that any door is every door .

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

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

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

Because some doors should never be opened.]]> 408 Gareth Brown 1787637247 Tim 0 4.04 2024
author: Gareth Brown
name: Tim
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/05/05
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]]> 307626 416 Donald E. Westlake 044640022X Tim 0 3.76 2004
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves:
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]]> 598309 384 Donald E. Westlake 0446610844 Tim 0 3.98 2001
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/30
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]]> 618191 352 Donald E. Westlake 0446400955 Tim 0 4.05 1993
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/30
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]]> 603607 464 Donald E. Westlake 0446400068 Tim 0 4.15 1990
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/30
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]]> 598812 John Dortmunder's one of the slyest burglars going. But by God, he has bad luck! While fleeing the police during his latest caper, he falls through the roof of the Silent Sisterhood of St. Filumena -- and tumbles into the lap of trouble. It's an act of God, the sisters exclaim. Only the Creator himself could have sent this criminal just when they need him. Sure, they'll shelter him from the cops. But there's a price: He must help them to retrieve their youngest and newest member from her father's clutches. This promises to get sticky. Dear old dad hates the Sisterhood like the plague. And he happens to have an odd hobby: putting together mercenary armies. Why can't Dortmunder just catch a break?
"Westlake's most entertaining yet." (Publishers Weekly)]]> 256 Donald E. Westlake 0352323833 Tim 0 4.05 1986
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/30
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]]> 598330 229 Donald E. Westlake 0446403466 Tim 0 4.06 1983
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves:
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]]> 54896 240 Donald E. Westlake 0445407158 Tim 0 3.92 1977
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves:
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]]> 596869 174 Donald E. Westlake 0446404098 Tim 0 3.93 1974
author: Donald E. Westlake
name: Tim
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves:
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]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

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

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

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

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 Tim 0 4.28 2024
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Tim
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/24
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]]> 63899617
A Town Where All Your Christmas Dreams Come True

When Emilia told me she won an all inclusive trip to Christmasland, I laughed. Outloud.

Surely a place like that didn't exist.

Boy, was I wrong.

Now I'm stuck on holiday repeat where everywhere I turn there's Christmas carols, sledding, cookie decorating, and holiday cheer. All of which, I'm told, is part of the "experience" of Christmasland. But I can't believe that. A whole town dedicated to recreating a Christmas movie for all of its guests? You've got to be joking.

Until I start checking off the list of events.

Rescued by a Handsome Stranger who's Back Home from the Big City ��
A Overzealous Town Busybody who seems Determined to Change my Grinchy Spirit ��
A Baking Competition I Couldn't Possibly Win ��
A Montage of Feel Good Christmas Events ��
An Interrupted First Kiss... ��

Now I don't know what is real and what is fake. I know I have feelings for the grumpy Hero, but I can't tell if he returns them.

In a place that peddles in fake realities, this is the first experience I wish was real.

I want to believe in a Christmas miracle, but my holiday history has told me, Christmas comes with nothing but disappointment.

I've never gotten a happily ever after and I doubt that will change now.

If you love laugh out loud holiday romances, you'll love Christmasland where the cliches are leaned into and the sap is drizzled thick. It promises to make you laugh, make you swoon, and leave you feeling excited for this holiday season.]]> 192 Anne-Marie Meyer Tim 0 to-read 3.46
author: Anne-Marie Meyer
name: Tim
average rating: 3.46
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 18756098 ]]> 114 Zeb Wells 0785178422 Tim 0 4.09 2011
author: Zeb Wells
name: Tim
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/09
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]]> 63132362
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor.

But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband―and she’s strong enough to wipe Zhu off the map. To stay in the game, Zhu will have to gamble everything on a risky alliance with an old enemy: the talented but unstable eunuch general Ouyang, who has already sacrificed everything for a chance at revenge on his father’s killer, the Great Khan.

Unbeknownst to the southerners, a new contender is even closer to the throne. The scorned scholar Wang Baoxiang has maneuvered his way into the capital, and his lethal court games threaten to bring the empire to its knees. For Baoxiang also desires revenge: to become the most degenerate Great Khan in history―and in so doing, make a mockery of every value his Mongol warrior family loved more than him.

All the contenders are determined to do whatever it takes to win. But when desire is the size of the world, the price could be too much for even the most ruthless heart to bear…]]> 486 Shelley Parker-Chan 1250621836 Tim 0 4.22 2023
author: Shelley Parker-Chan
name: Tim
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/06
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]]> 65213781
Anna Sinjari―refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker―has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. While humanity reels from disaster, she must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they can manage to face their own demons, they just might save the world.]]> 532 Seth Dickinson 1250233011 Tim 0 3.60 2024
author: Seth Dickinson
name: Tim
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/02
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]]> 48727813 Two-time British Fantasy Award Winner
Astounding Award Winner
Lambda Literary Award Finalist
Hugo Award Finalist
Locus Award Finalist
Otherwise Award Finalist

"Magnificent in every way."—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree

"A dazzling new world of fate, war, love and betrayal."—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister

She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…��

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness��

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future her brother's abandoned greatness.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 Shelley Parker-Chan 1250621798 Tim 0 3.87 2021
author: Shelley Parker-Chan
name: Tim
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/27
shelves:
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]]> 62342514
Celebrating a new generation of bestselling and acclaimed Black writers, The Black Girl Survives in This One makes space for Black girls in horror. Fifteen chilling and thought-provoking stories place Black girls front and center as heroes and survivors who slay monsters, battle spirits, and face down death. Prepare to be terrified and left breathless by the pieces in this anthology.

The bestselling and acclaimed authors include Erin E. Adams, Monica Brashears, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Desiree S. Evans, Saraciea J. Fennell, Zakiya Dalila Harris, Daka Hermon, Justina Ireland, L. L. McKinney, Brittney Morris, Maritza & Maika Moulite, Eden Royce, and Vincent Tirado, with a foreword by Tananarive Due.]]> 368 Desiree S. Evans 1250871654 Tim 0 to-read 4.04 2024
author: Desiree S. Evans
name: Tim
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 50093704 Where do you see yourself in five years?

When Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Kohan is asked this question at the most important interview of her career, she has a meticulously crafted answer at the ready. Later, after nailing her interview and accepting her boyfriend's marriage proposal, Dannie goes to sleep knowing she is right on track to achieve her five-year plan.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.

After a very intense, shocking hour, Dannie wakes again, at the brink of midnight, back in 2020. She can’t shake what has happened. It certainly felt much more than merely a dream, but she isn’t the kind of person who believes in visions. That nonsense is only charming coming from free-spirited types, like her lifelong best friend, Bella. Determined to ignore the odd experience, she files it away in the back of her mind.

That is, until four-and-a-half years later, when by chance Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision.

Brimming with joy and heartbreak, In Five Years is an unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny.]]> 272 Rebecca Serle 1982137444 Tim 0 3.74 2020
author: Rebecca Serle
name: Tim
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/23
shelves:
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]]> 58321103
Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers come above ground. These creatures emerge to observe their captive humans—and terrible things happen to anyone who doesn't reach the bunker in time.

Afraid and trapped among strangers, Mina is desperate for answers. Who are the Watchers? Why are these creatures keeping them imprisoned? And, most importantly, how can she escape?]]> 310 A.M. Shine 1801102120 Tim 0 to-read 3.82 2021
author: A.M. Shine
name: Tim
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63043724 Murderpalooza, the premier thriller writers conference, is meant to be an exciting celebration of the genre and its preeminent writers. But when bestselling author and industry favorite Kristin Bailey is found dead in her hotel room, four rival authors―a midlister, an egomaniac, a has-been, and a newbie―also get targeted by an anonymous social media account and wonder if they’re next.

First, they find themselves bonding to try to find out who’s behind it. As the account taunts them, it slowly reveals secrets that each of them have connected to Kristin―secrets that make them a suspect in each other’s eyes. Soon, they are turning on each other and silently accusing each as a killer. With time running out until the awards ceremony where the social media account has promised a big reveal, the only thing they know for sure is that no one is better at both creating and solving a mystery than the people who write them for a living.

Jaime Lynn Hendricks gives the reader a thrilling peek into the thriller writing world and those that inhabit it in this gripping suspense novel.]]> 312 Jaime Lynn Hendricks 1613164114 Tim 0 3.48 2023
author: Jaime Lynn Hendricks
name: Tim
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/28
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]]> 62047982 A woman receives a bewildering inheritance that may have something to do with her past in this twisty and addictive psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Entertainment Weekly calls “impossible to outwit.��

Struggling artist Skyler Moore is flabbergasted when she receives a suspicious phone call from a lawyer she’s never met regarding a “private matter.�� As soon as she arrives at the law firm’s office, she learns she’s the recipient of a large inheritance, a life-changing sum that will allow her to realize her long-held dream of becoming a mother. But who was her benefactor, Christopher Whaley? The late man’s name means nothing to Skyler, and she has no idea why he would leave her such an enormous bequest.

Looking into his background, Skyler finally realizes they met once at a hotel bar and shared a one-night stand. But they never exchanged numbers, or even last names, and that was over a decade ago. She wonders if the inheritance is meant to be a message of some kind, but can’t imagine what it might be.

Chris�� family is confused and suspicious too, and his widow accuses Skyler of having an affair with her late husband, then threatens revenge. In order to protect herself, Skyler has to understand the reason the money was left to her. But as she digs for the truth, it becomes clear that Chris Whaley might have taken other secrets to the grave, ones that could have terrifying consequences for her . . .]]> 304 Kate White 0063247364 Tim 0 3.65 2023
author: Kate White
name: Tim
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/26
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]]> 62919399 A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.

From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,�� a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,�� and in “Candy Pink,�� a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.

Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.]]> 154 Agustina Bazterrica 1668012669 Tim 0 3.11 2020
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Tim
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/20
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]]> 34541
There're the witches - young Agnes, who is really in two minds about everything; Magrat, who is trying to combine witchcraft and nappies, Nanny Ogg, who is far too knowing,.. and Granny Weatherwax, who is big trouble.

And the vampires are intelligent - not easily got rid of with a garlic enema or by going to the window, grasping the curtains and saying, "I don't know about you, but isn't it a bit stuffy in here?" They've got style and fancy waistcoats. They're out of the casket and want a bite of the future.

Mightily Oats knows he has a prayer, but he wishes he had an axe.]]> 296 Terry Pratchett 0061051586 Tim 0 comfort-re-reads 4.16 1998
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Tim
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/18
shelves: comfort-re-reads
review:

]]> 123163147 The bestselling, award-winning author of��The Power delivers��a dazzling tour de force��where��a handful of friends��plot��a daring heist to save the world from the tech giants whose greed threatens life as we know it.

When Martha Einkorn fled her father’s isolated compound in Oregon, she never expected to find herself working for a powerful social media mogul hell-bent on controlling everything. Now she’s surrounded by mega-rich companies designing private weather, predictive analytics, and covert weaponry, while spouting technological prophecy. Martha may have left the cult, but if the apocalyptic warnings in her father’s fox and rabbit sermon—once a parable to her—are starting to come true, how much future is actually left?

Across the world, in a mall in Singapore, Lai Zhen, an internet-famous survivalist, flees from an assassin. She’s cornered, desperate and—worst of all—might die without ever knowing what's going on. Suddenly, a remarkable piece of software appears on her phone telling her exactly how to escape. Who made it? What is it really for? And if those behind it can save her from danger, what do they want from her, and what else do they know about the future?

Martha and Zhen’s worlds are about to collide. An explosive chain of events is set in motion. While a few billionaires assured of their own safety lead the world to destruction, Martha’s relentless drive and Zhen’s insatiable curiosity could lead to something beautiful or the cataclysmic end of civilization.]]> 432 Naomi Alderman 166802568X Tim 0 3.82 2023
author: Naomi Alderman
name: Tim
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/14
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]]> 62983544
That attention comes from the Secretary of Defence, who promptly calls for an inter-agency task force to investigate. Jack Reacher is assigned as the Army's representative.

Reacher may be an exceptional soldier, but sweeping other people's secrets under the carpet isn't part of his skill set. As he races to discover the link between these victims, and who killed them, he must navigate around the ulterior motives of his new 'partners'. And all while moving into the sight line of some of the most dangerous people he has ever encountered.

His mission is to uncover the truth. The question is: will Reacher bring the bad guys to justice the official way . . . or his way?]]> 400 Lee Child 1984818597 Tim 0 4.13 2023
author: Lee Child
name: Tim
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/09
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]]> 92099371
Taking on the responsibilities that come with being Lady Lyndhurst, Stella is eager to embrace yuletide traditions in the Edwardian English countryside and use her strong social influence for good. Her world becomes so consumed with starting a horse farm charity for the holidays that she barely notices the usual oddities attached to her upper-crust lifestyle. At least, not until items vanish from her bedroom and maligned housekeeper, Mrs. Nelson, becomes seriously ill—only to be found dead in the cold on Mistletoe Lane . . .

Cheery spirits are dashed following the sudden death, especially once Stella questions whether her own staff knows what—or who—killed the woman. Her suspicions mount when another person dies under strange circumstances during New Forest’s annual Point‑to‑Point Boxing Day race. Then there’s the case of Morrington Hall becoming plagued by false identities, secret affairs, and disgruntled employees . . .

Now, with two murders unfolding before their eyes in late December, Stella and Lyndy realize they can’t fully trust anyone except for themselves while investigating. Because as disturbing answers come into focus, identifying the criminal responsible and surviving into the new year would be the greatest gift of the season . . .]]> 304 Clara McKenna 1496738209 Tim 0 to-read 3.95 2023
author: Clara McKenna
name: Tim
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 37946419
A siege is approaching, and the city has little time to prepare. The people have no food and no weapons, and the enemy has sworn to slaughter them all.

To save the city will take a miracle, but what it has is Orhan. A colonel of engineers, Orhan has far more experience with bridge-building than battles, is a cheat and a liar, and has a serious problem with authority. He is, in other words, perfect for the job.

]]> 350 K.J. Parker 0316270792 Tim 0 4.02 2019
author: K.J. Parker
name: Tim
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/04
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]]> 49348205 USA Today bestselling author Priscilla Oliveras launches a new romantic comedy series set in Key West, Florida and filled with humor, Latinx culture, and fun family dynamics perfect for summer beach reading��

Sought-after social media influencer Sara Vance, in recovery from an eating disorder, is coming into her own, with a potential career expansion on the horizon. Despite the good news, her successful siblings (and their perfect spouses) have a way of making her feel like the odd one out. So, when her unreliable boyfriend is a no-show for a Florida family vacation, Sara recruits Luis Navarro—a firefighter paramedic and dive captain willing to play the part of her smitten fiancé . . .

Luis’s big Cuban familia has been in Key West for generations, and his quiet strength feeds off the island’s laidback style. Though guarded after a deep betrayal, he’ll always help someone in need—especially a spunky beauty with a surprising knowledge of Spanish curse words. Soon, he and Sara have memorized their “how we met�� story and are immersed in family dinners, bike tours, private snorkeling trips . . . sharing secrets, and slow, melting kisses. But when it’s time for Sara to return home, will their fake relationship fade like the stunning sunset . . . or blossom into something beautiful?]]> 283 Priscilla Oliveras 1420150170 Tim 0 to-read 3.43 2020
author: Priscilla Oliveras
name: Tim
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

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