Joan's bookshelf: all

Joan's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 25 Nov 2024 03:25:16 -0800 60 Joan's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Reliquary (Pendergast, #2) 39030 464 Douglas Preston 0765354950 Joan 4 4.03 1997

author: Douglas Preston
name: Joan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1997
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/11/25
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]]> Moloka'i (Moloka'i, #1) 8366378 400 Alan Brennert Joan 4 4.33 2003

author: Alan Brennert
name: Joan
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/08/15
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]]> The Shipping News 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Joan 4 3.88 1993

author: Annie Proulx
name: Joan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/10/31
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]]> The Lies We Told 7602266
After a devastating hurricane hits the coast of North Carolina, Rebecca and Adam urge Maya to join them in the relief effort. To please her husband, Maya finally agrees. She loses herself in the care and transport of victims, but when her helicopter crashes into raging floodwaters, there appear to be no survivors.

Forced to accept Maya is gone, Rebecca and Adam turn to one another—first for comfort, then in passion—unaware that, miles from civilization, Maya is injured and trapped with strangers she's not certain she can trust. Away from the sister who has always been there to save her, now Maya must find the courage to save herself—unaware that the life she knew has changed forever.]]> 374 Diane Chamberlain 0778328538 Joan 5 3.84 2010 The Lies We Told

author: Diane Chamberlain
name: Joan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/02/18
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]]> The Dream Daughter 37638145 From bestselling author Diane Chamberlain comes an irresistible new novel.

When Caroline Sears receives the news that her unborn baby girl has a heart defect, she is devastated. It is 1970 and there seems to be little that can be done. But her brother-in-law, a physicist, tells her that perhaps there is. Hunter appeared in their lives just a few years before—and his appearance was as mysterious as his past. With no family, no friends, and a background shrouded in secrets, Hunter embraced the Sears family and never looked back.

Now, Hunter is telling her that something can be done about her baby's heart. Something that will shatter every preconceived notion that Caroline has. Something that will require a kind of strength and courage that Caroline never knew existed. Something that will mean a mind-bending leap of faith on Caroline's part.

And all for the love of her unborn child.

A rich, genre-spanning, breathtaking novel about one mother's quest to save her child, unite her family, and believe in the unbelievable. Diane Chamberlain pushes the boundaries of faith and science to deliver a novel that you will never forget.]]> 384 Diane Chamberlain 1250087309 Joan 5 4.25 2018 The Dream Daughter

author: Diane Chamberlain
name: Joan
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/18
date added: 2021/02/18
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This author did not disappoint, I haven't read one of her books that I didn't love. Many twists and turns keeps one from putting the book down.
]]> Old Bones (Nora Kelly, #1) 43522585 The first in the groundbreaking Nora Kelly series from #1 bestselling authors Preston & Child blends the legend of the Donner party with a riveting suspense tale, taking the dynamic duo's work to new heights.

Nora Kelly, a young but successful curator with a series of important excavations already under her belt, is approached by the handsome Historian, Clive Benton, to lead an expedition unlike any other. Clive tells his story--one involving the ill-fated Donner Party, who became permanently lodged in the American consciousness in the winter of 1847, when the first skeletonized survivors of the party stumbled out of the California mountains, replete with tales of courage, resourcefulness, bad luck, murder, barbarism--and, finally, starvation and cannibalism.

Captivated by the Donner Party, Nora agrees and they venture into the Sierra Nevada in search of the camp. Quickly, they learn that the discovery of the missing starvation camp is just the tip of the iceberg--and that the real truth behind those long-dead pioneers is not only far more complex and surprising than they could have imagined...but it is one that puts them both in mortal danger from a very real, present-day threat in which the search for the lost party, and its fabled fortune in gold, are merely means to a horrifying end.
]]> 369 Douglas Preston 1538747227 Joan 4 3.92 2019 Old Bones (Nora Kelly, #1)

author: Douglas Preston
name: Joan
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/02/18
date added: 2021/02/18
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Preston & Child did not disappoint. The tale involving Donner party is rich and all the characters fit in the story. I grab every book these two authors write...for a good time ....read this and other P&C books.
]]> Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, learning for the first time about important world events like the Holocaust and the civil rights movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Joan 5 4.46 2018 Educated

author: Tara Westover
name: Joan
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/02/12
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]]> <![CDATA[Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail]]> 18527222 Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of “America, the Beautiful�� and proclaimed, “I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it.��

Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated. The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.

Author Ben Montgomery was given unprecedented access to Gatewood’s own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it? The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don’t know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering.]]> 288 Ben Montgomery 1613747187 Joan 4 4.03 2014 Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

author: Ben Montgomery
name: Joan
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/02/12
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]]> The Witch Elm 39720991
The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we're capable of, when we no longer know who we are.]]> 528 Tana French 0735224633 Joan 0 to-read 3.53 2018

author: Tana French
name: Joan
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/12
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]]> The Woman in White 5890 Librarian note: Alternate covers can be found here and here.

'In one moment, every drop of blood in my body was brought to a stop... There, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth, stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white'

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter becomes embroiled in the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons, and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

Matthew Sweet's introduction explores the phenomenon of Victorian 'sensation' fiction, and discusses Wilkie Collins's biographical and societal influences. Included in this edition are appendices on theatrical adaptations of the novel and its serialisation history.]]> 672 Wilkie Collins Joan 4 4.00 1859 The Woman in White

author: Wilkie Collins
name: Joan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1859
rating: 4
read at: 2021/02/07
date added: 2021/02/07
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]]> The Mirror Thief 26109004
One man, however—a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose—has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten. Meanwhile, in two other Venices—Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today—two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret.]]> 582 Martin Seay 1612195148 Joan 1 2.97 2016 The Mirror Thief

author: Martin Seay
name: Joan
average rating: 2.97
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at: 2021/02/07
date added: 2021/02/07
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]]> Anxious People 49127718 A poignant, charming novel about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined

Looking at real estate isn't usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the painful truth that they can't fix up their own marriage. There's a wealthy banker who has been too busy making money to care about anyone else and a young couple who are about to have their first child but can't seem to agree on anything, from where they want to live to how they met in the first place. Add to the mix an eighty-seven-year-old woman who has lived long enough not to be afraid of someone waving a gun in her face, a flustered but still-ready-to-make-a-deal real estate agent, and a mystery man who has locked himself in the apartment's only bathroom, and you've got the worst group of hostages in the world.

Each of them carries a lifetime of grievances, hurts, secrets, and passions that are ready to boil over. None of them is entirely who they appear to be. And all of them—the bank robber included—desperately crave some sort of rescue. As the authorities and the media surround the premises, these reluctant allies will reveal surprising truths about themselves and set in a motion a chain of events so unexpected that even they can hardly explain what happens next.

Humorous, compassionate, and wise, Anxious People is an ingeniously constructed story about the enduring power of friendship, forgiveness, and hope—the things that save us, even in the most anxious of times.

Includes short story - The Last Round of Golf]]> 336 Fredrik Backman 198216963X Joan 0 to-read 4.17 2019 Anxious People

author: Fredrik Backman
name: Joan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, #1)]]> 40914165 An alternate cover edition for ISBN 978-1492671527 can be found here.

In 1936, tucked deep into the woods of Troublesome Creek, KY, lives blue-skinned 19-year-old Cussy Carter, the last living female of the rare Blue People ancestry.

The lonely young Appalachian woman joins the historical Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her faithful mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky.

Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government's new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians, and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.]]> 309 Kim Michele Richardson Joan 5 4.17 2019 The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, #1)

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, #1)

author: Kim Michele Richardson
name: Joan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/02/02
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]]> Cartier's Hope 46221897 From the New York Times bestselling author of the “lush, romantic historical mystery�� (Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale) Tiffany Blues, a gorgeously wrought novel following an intrepid female journalist in Gilded Age New York as she chases the story of the Hope Diamond.

New York, 1910: A city of magnificent skyscrapers and winding subways, where poor immigrants are crammed into tenements while millionaires thrive in Fifth Avenue mansions. Vera Garland is a thirty-two-year-old journalist, fighting alongside hundreds of women for a place in society, only to meet hurdles around every turn. Most female journalists are delegated to the fashion and lifestyle pages but like her hero, Nellie Bly, Vera is a fighter.

When news of the Hope Diamond—a jewel whose infamous legends and curses have captured the world’s attention—arrives in the city, Vera is fast on its trail. She’s certain the fabulous jewel will help jumpstart her career but she’s determined to seek revenge against her current employer, a magazine owner whose greed and blackmailing schemes led to the death of her beloved father.

Set against the backdrop of New York’s glitter and grit, this enchanting historical novel explores the very human desire for truth, equality, and retribution.]]> 336 M.J. Rose 1501173634 Joan 4 3.62 2020 Cartier's Hope

author: M.J. Rose
name: Joan
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2020
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/02/02
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]]> The Sisters of Glass Ferry 34570041 Spanning several decades and written in an authentic voice both lyrical and wise, The Sisters of Glass Ferry is a haunting novel about small-town Southern secrets, loss and atonement, and the unbreakable bond between siblings.

Glass Ferry, Kentucky, is bourbon country. Whiskey has been a way of life for generations, enabling families to provide and survive even in the darkest times. Flannery Butler's daddy, Beauregard "Honey Bee" Butler, was known for making some of the best whiskey in the state, aged in barrels he'd take by boat up and down the Kentucky River until the rocking waters turned the spirits smooth and golden. Flannery is the only person Honey Bee ever entrusted with his recipes before he passed on, swearing her to secrecy as he did so.

But Flannery is harboring other secrets too, about her twin sister Patsy, older by eight minutes and pretty in a way Flannery knows she'll never be.

Then comes the prom night when Patsy--wearing a yellow chiffon dress and the family pearls--disappears along with her date. Every succeeding year on the twins' birthday, Flannery's mother bakes a strawberry cake, convinced that this is the day Patsy will finally come home. But it will be two tumultuous decades until the muddy river yields a clue about what happened that night, compelling Flannery to confront the truth about her sleepy town, her family's past, and the choices she and those closest to her have made in the name of love and retribution . . .]]> 262 Kim Michele Richardson 1496709551 Joan 4 3.45 2018 The Sisters of Glass Ferry

author: Kim Michele Richardson
name: Joan
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2018
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/02/02
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]]> Backseat Saints 7114381
Starring a minor character from Jackson's bestselling gods in Alabama, BACKSEAT SAINTS will dazzle readers with its stunning portrayal of the measures a mother will take to right the wrongs she's created, and how far a daughter will travel to satisfy the demands of forgiveness.]]> 352 Joshilyn Jackson 0446582344 Joan 5 3.81 2010 Backseat Saints

author: Joshilyn Jackson
name: Joan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/02/02
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]]> The Silent Patient 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]> 336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Joan 5 4.17 2019

author: Alex Michaelides
name: Joan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/02/02
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]]> The Shantyman 24833604 In 1870, on the clipper ship Alahmbra in Sydney, the new crew comes aboard more or less sober, except for the last man, who is hoisted aboard in a cargo sling, paralytic drunk. The drunken sailor, Jack Barlow, will prove to be an able shantyman. On a ship with a dying captain and a murderous mate, Barlow will literally keep the crew pulling together. As he struggles with a tragic past, a troubled present and an uncertain future, Barlow will guide the Alahmbra through Southern Ocean ice and the horror of an Atlantic hurricane. His one goal is bringing the ship and crew safely back to New York, where he hopes to start anew. Based on a true story, The Shantyman is a gripping tale of survival against all odds at sea and ashore, and the challenge of facing a past that can never be wholly left behind.]]> 239 Rick Spilman 0994115229 Joan 3 4.30 2015

author: Rick Spilman
name: Joan
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2015
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/02/02
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]]> Big Lies in a Small Town 45046808
North Carolina, 1940: Anna Dale, an artist from New Jersey, wins a national contest to paint a mural for the post office in Edenton, North Carolina. Alone in the world and desperate for work, she accepts. But what she doesn't expect is to find herself immersed in a town where prejudices run deep, where people are hiding secrets behind closed doors, and where the price of being different might just end in murder.

What happened to Anna Dale? Are the clues hidden in the decrepit mural? Can Morgan overcome her own demons to discover what exists beneath the layers of lies?]]> 391 Diane Chamberlain 1250087333 Joan 5 4.09 2020 Big Lies in a Small Town

author: Diane Chamberlain
name: Joan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 5
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date added: 2021/02/02
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]]> The Giver of Stars 43925876 From the author of Me Before You, set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond.

Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically.

The leader, and soon Alice’s greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who’s never asked a man’s permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Packhorse Librarians of Kentucky.

What happens to them–and to the men they love–becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity and passion. These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives.

Based on a true story rooted in America’s past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic–a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.]]> 390 Jojo Moyes 0399562486 Joan 4 4.27 2019 The Giver of Stars

author: Jojo Moyes
name: Joan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 4
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date added: 2021/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[The Gray Ghost (Fargo Adventure, #10)]]> 36230132 The search for a legendary automobile threatens the careers and lives of husband-and-wife team Sam and Remi Fargo in this thrilling new adventure in Clive Cussler's bestselling series.In 1906, a groundbreaking Rolls-Royce prototype known as the Gray Ghost vanishes from the streets of Manchester, England, and it is only the lucky intervention of an American detective named Isaac Bell that prevents it from being lost forever. Not even he can save the good name of Jonathan Payton, however, the man wrongly blamed for the theft, and more than a hundred years later, it is his grandson who turns to Sam and Remi Fargo to help prove his grandfather's innocence.But there is even more at stake than any of them know. For the car has vanished again, and in it is an object so rare that it has the capacity to change lives. Men with everything to gain and a great deal to lose have a desperate plan to find it--and if anybody gets in their way? They have a plan for that, too.]]> 409 Clive Cussler 0735218749 Joan 5 4.10 2018 The Gray Ghost (Fargo Adventure, #10)

author: Clive Cussler
name: Joan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2020/02/02
date added: 2021/02/02
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I like the Fargo adventures, I love archaeology, these books combine such with exciting twists.
]]> <![CDATA[Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)]]> 8684868 My name is Katniss Everdeen.
Why am I not dead?
I should be dead.

Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss’s family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.

It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plans—except Katniss.

The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss’s willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels�� Mockingjay—no matter what the personal cost.]]> 339 Suzanne Collins Joan 3 4.31 2010 Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

author: Suzanne Collins
name: Joan
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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date added: 2021/01/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491]]> 6415223 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, the groundbreaking bestseller by Charles C. Mann.]]> 128 Charles C. Mann 1416949003 Joan 5 4.00 2009 Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491

author: Charles C. Mann
name: Joan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/06/06
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]]> Where the Crawdads Sing 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery. Thought-provoking, wise, and deeply moving, Owens’s debut novel reminds us that we are forever shaped by the child within us, while also subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps.

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Joan 5 4.35 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing

author: Delia Owens
name: Joan
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/01/26
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]]> The Queen of the Big Time 108289 New York Times bestseller Lucia, Lucia, Adriana Trigiani returns to the charm and drama of small-town life with Queens of the Big Time. This heartfelt story of the limits and power of love chronicles the remarkable lives of the Castellucas, an Italian-American family, over the course of three generations.

In the late 1800s, the residents of a small village in the Bari region of Italy, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea, made a mass migration to the promised land of America. They settled in Roseto, Pennsylvania, and re-created their former lives in their new home–down to the very last detail of who lived next door to whom. The village’s annual celebration of Our Lady of Mount Carmel–or “the Big Time,�� as the occasion is called by the young women who compete to be the pageant’s Queen–is the centerpiece of Roseto’s colorful old-world tradition.

The industrious Castellucas farm the land outside Roseto. Nella, the middle daughter of five, aspires to a genteel life “in town,�� far from the rigors of farm life, which have taken a toll on her mother and forced her father to take extra work in the slate quarries to make ends meet. But Nella’s dreams of making her own fortune shift when she meets Renato Lanzara, the son of a prominent Roseto family. Renato is a worldly, handsome, devil-may-care poet who has a way with words that makes him irresistible. Their friendship ignites into a fiery romance that Nella is certain will lead to marriage. But Nella is not alone in her pursuit: every girl in town seems to want Renato. When he disappears without explanation, Nella is left with a shattered heart. Four years later, Renato’s sudden return to Roseto the night before Nella’s wedding to the steadfast Franco Zollerano leaves her and the Castelluca family shaken. For although Renato has chosen a path very different from Nella’s, they are fated to live and work in Roseto, where the past hangs over them like a brewing storm.

An epic of small-town life, etched in glorious detail in the trademark Trigiani style, The Queen of the Big Time is the story of a determined, passionate woman who can never forget her first love.

From the Hardcover edition.]]> 304 Adriana Trigiani 0812967801 Joan 4 3.90 2004

author: Adriana Trigiani
name: Joan
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2019/01/26
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]]> Nightwoods 10962765 Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons returns with a dazzling new novel of suspense and love set in small-town North Carolina in the early 1960s.

Charles Frazier puts his remarkable gifts in the service of a lean, taut narrative while losing none of the transcendent prose, virtuosic storytelling, and insight into human nature that have made him one of the most beloved and celebrated authors in the world. Now, with his brilliant portrait of Luce, a young woman who inherits her murdered sister's troubled twins, Frazier has created his most memorable heroine.

Before the children, Luce was content with the reimbursements of the rich Appalachian landscape, choosing to live apart from the small community around her. But the coming of the children changes everything, cracking open her solitary life in difficult, hopeful, dangerous ways.

Charles Frazier is known for his historical literary odysseys, and for making figures in the past come vividly to life. Set in the twentieth century, Nightwoods resonates with the timelessness of a great work of art.]]> 272 Charles Frazier 140006709X Joan 5 3.61 2011

author: Charles Frazier
name: Joan
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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date added: 2019/01/26
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]]> Varina 40389469
With her marriage prospects limited, teenage Varina Howell agrees to wed the much-older widower Jefferson Davis, with whom she expects a life of security as a Mississippi landowner. He instead pursues a career in politics and is eventually appointed president of the Confederacy, placing Varina at the white-hot center of one of the darkest moments in American history—culpable regardless of her intentions.

The Confederacy falling, her marriage in tatters, and the country divided, Varina and her children escape Richmond and travel south on their own, now fugitives with “bounties on their heads, an entire nation in pursuit.��

Intimate in its detailed observations of one woman’s tragic life and epic in its scope and power, Varina is a novel of an American war and its aftermath. Ultimately, the book is a portrait of a woman who comes to realize that complicity carries consequences.]]> 368 Charles Frazier Joan 4 3.66 2018 Varina

author: Charles Frazier
name: Joan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2019/01/26
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]]> The Great Alone 34912895 Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents�� passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if it means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights�� lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.]]> 435 Kristin Hannah Joan 5 4.44 2018

author: Kristin Hannah
name: Joan
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/01/26
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]]> Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1) 28009835 Inspired by the life of a real World War II heroine, this powerful debut novel reveals an incredible story of love, redemption, and terrible secrets that were hidden for decades.
��
On the eve of a fateful war, New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.
��
An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she sinks deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspect neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.
��
For ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. But, once hired, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.
��
The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious female-only Nazi concentration camp. The tragedy and triumph of their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, and Germany to Poland—capturing the indomitable pull of compassion to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.
��
In Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly has crafted a remarkable novel of unsung women and their quest for love, happiness, and second chances. It is a story that will keep readers bonded with the characters, searching for the truth, until the final pages.]]> 497 Martha Hall Kelly Joan 5 4.40 2016 Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1)

author: Martha Hall Kelly
name: Joan
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2019/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4) 17212231 ‘Seek and ye shall find.��

With these words echoing in his head, eminent Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon awakes in a hospital bed with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. Nor can he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings.

A threat to his life will propel him and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, into a breakneck chase across the city of Florence. Only Langdon’s knowledge of hidden passageways and ancient secrets that lie behind its historic facade can save them from the clutches of their unknown pursuers.

With only a few lines from Dante’s dark and epic masterpiece, The Inferno, to guide them, they must decipher a sequence of codes buried deep within some of the most celebrated artefacts of the Renaissance �� sculptures, paintings, buildings �� to find the answers to a puzzle which may, or may not, help them save the world from a terrifying threat��

Set against an extraordinary landscape inspired by one of history’s most ominous literary classics, Inferno is Dan Brown’s most compelling and thought-provoking novel yet, a breathless race-against-time thriller that will grab you from page one and not let you go until you close the book.]]> 463 Dan Brown 0385537859 Joan 2 3.88 2013 Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4)

author: Dan Brown
name: Joan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at:
date added: 2018/12/05
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]]> The Nightingale 21853621 Der Weltbestseller �� die Nr. 1 aus den USA.
Zwei Schwestern im von den Deutschen besetzten Während Vianne ums Überleben ihrer Familie kämpft, schließt sich die jüngere Isabelle der Résistance an und sucht die Freiheit auf dem Pfad der Nachtigall, einem geheimen Fluchtweg über die Pyrenäen. Doch wie weit darf man gehen, um zu überleben? Und wie kann man die schützen, die man liebt?
In diesem epischen, kraftvollen und zutiefst berührenden Roman erzählt Kristin Hannah die Geschichte zweier Frauen, die ihr Schicksal auf ganz eigene Weise meistern.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Joan 4 4.63 2015 The Nightingale

author: Kristin Hannah
name: Joan
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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]]> Allegiant (Divergent, #3) 18710190
But Tris's new reality is even more alarming than the one she left behind. Old discoveries are quickly rendered meaningless. Explosive new truths change the hearts of those she loves. And once again, Tris must battle to comprehend to complexities of human nature - and of herself - while facing impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.

Told from a riveting dual perspective, ALLEGIANT, by #1 New York Times best-selling author Veronica Roth, brings the DIVERGENT series to a powerful conclusion while revealing the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of readers in DIVERGENT and INSURGENT.]]> 531 Veronica Roth 0007524277 Joan 3 3.59 2013 Allegiant (Divergent, #3)

author: Veronica Roth
name: Joan
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/12/05
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]]> All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Joan 4 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See

author: Anthony Doerr
name: Joan
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/12/05
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]]> Divergent (Divergent, #1) 13335037
During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.]]> 487 Veronica Roth 0062024035 Joan 3 4.13 2011 Divergent (Divergent, #1)

author: Veronica Roth
name: Joan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2018/12/05
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]]> Gone Girl 8442457 What have we done to each other?

These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone.

So what did happen to Nick's beautiful wife?]]> 399 Gillian Flynn Joan 3 3.93 2012 Gone Girl

author: Gillian Flynn
name: Joan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2012
rating: 3
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date added: 2018/12/05
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]]> The Storyteller 15753740
Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite their differences, they see in each other the hidden scars that others can’t, and they become companions.

Everything changes on the day that Josef confesses a long-buried and shameful secret—one that nobody else in town would ever suspect—and asks Sage for an extraordinary favor. If she says yes, she faces not only moral repercussions, but potentially legal ones as well. With her own identity suddenly challenged, and the integrity of the closest friend she’s ever had clouded, Sage begins to question the assumptions and expectations she’s made about her life and her family. When does a moral choice become a moral imperative? And where does one draw the line between punishment and justice, forgiveness and mercy?

In this searingly honest novel, Jodi Picoult gracefully explores the lengths we will go in order to protect our families and to keep the past from dictating the future]]> 461 Jodi Picoult 1439102767 Joan 4 4.28 2013 The Storyteller

author: Jodi Picoult
name: Joan
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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date added: 2018/12/05
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]]> Circe 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Joan 4 4.22 2018 Circe

author: Madeline Miller
name: Joan
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/09/22
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]]> The Clockmaker's Daughter 37756654 A newer cover edition for ISBN 1509848215 (ISBN13: 9781509848218) is here

From the bestselling author of The House at Riverton and The Secret Keeper, Kate Morton brings us her dazzling sixth novel, The Clockmaker's Daughter.

My real name, no one remembers.
The truth about that summer, no one else knows.

In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor on the banks of the Upper Thames. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a haze of inspiration and creativity. But by the time their stay is over, one woman has been shot dead while another has disappeared; a priceless heirloom is missing, and Edward Radcliffe’s life is in ruins.

Over one hundred and fifty years later, Elodie Winslow, a young archivist in London, uncovers a leather satchel containing two seemingly unrelated items: a sepia photograph of an arresting-looking woman in Victorian clothing, and an artist’s sketchbook containing a drawing of a twin-gabled house on the bend of a river.

Why does Birchwood Manor feel so familiar to Elodie? And who is the beautiful woman in the photograph? Will she ever give up her secrets?

Told by multiple voices across time, The Clockmaker’s Daughter is a story of murder, mystery, and thievery, of art, love, and loss. And flowing through its pages like a river is the voice of a woman who stands outside time, whose name has been forgotten by history, but who has watched it all unfold: Birdie Bell, the clockmaker’s daughter.

This is an alternate cover edition for /book/show/4...]]> 608 Kate Morton Joan 4 3.73 2018 The Clockmaker's Daughter

author: Kate Morton
name: Joan
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/09/22
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]]> The One 40670312 How far would you go to find The One?

A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab and soon you’ll be matched with your perfect partner the one you are genetically made for.

That’s the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance and love.

Now five very different people have received the notification that they’ve been “Matched.�� They’re each about to meet their one true love. But “happily ever after�� isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking than others��

A word-of-mouth hit in the United Kingdom, The One is a fascinating novel that shows how even the simplest discoveries can have complicated consequences.]]> 418 John Marrs Joan 4 4.09 2016 The One

author: John Marrs
name: Joan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/09/21
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]]> Emily and Einstein 9316891 He was a man who didn’t deserve a second chance. But he needed one��

Emily and her husband Sandy Portman seemed to live a gracious if busy life in an old-world, Upper West Side apartment in the famous Dakota building.�� But one night on the way to meet Emily, Sandy dies in a tragic accident.�� The funeral isn't even over before Emily learns she is on the verge of being evicted from their apartment.�� But worse than the possibility of losing her home, Emily is stunned when she discovers that her marriage was made up of lies.��

Suddenly Emily is forced on a journey to find out who her husband really was . . . all the while feeling that somehow he isn't really gone.�� Angry, hurt, and sometimes betrayed by loving memories of the man she lost, Emily finds comfort in a scruffy dog named Einstein.�� But is Einstein's seemingly odd determination that she save herself enough to make Emily confront her own past?�� Can he help her find a future—even after she meets a new man?��

]]> 356 Linda Francis Lee 0312382189 Joan 4 3.77 2010 Emily and Einstein

author: Linda Francis Lee
name: Joan
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2018/09/21
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review:

]]> Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1) 25893693
On the eve of a fateful war, New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she sinks deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspect neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. But, once hired, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious female-only Nazi concentration camp. The tragedy and triumph of their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, and Germany to Poland—capturing the indomitable pull of compassion to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

In Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly has crafted a remarkable novel of unsung women and their quest for love, happiness, and second chances. It is a story that will keep readers bonded with the characters, searching for the truth, until the final pages.]]> 487 Martha Hall Kelly 1101883073 Joan 5 4.27 2016 Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1)

author: Martha Hall Kelly
name: Joan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2018/09/21
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review:

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

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

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world.]]> 432 Fredrik Backman Joan 3 4.27 2016 Beartown (Beartown, #1)

author: Fredrik Backman
name: Joan
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 3
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date added: 2017/09/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story]]> 30145126
Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location.

Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.

Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease.

Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.]]> 328 Douglas Preston 1455540005 Joan 5 3.84 2017

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

author: Douglas Preston
name: Joan
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 29430012 He can't leave. You won't want to.

With his breakout novel Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late-1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov.

When, in 1922, the thirty-year-old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

Unexpectedly, the Count's reduced circumstances provide him entry to a much larger world of emotional discovery as he forges friendships with the hotel's other denizens, including a willful actress, a shrewd Kremlinite, a gregarious American, and a temperamental chef. But when fate suddenly puts the life of a young girl in his hands, he must draw on all his ingenuity to protect the future she so deserves.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the Count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Joan 5 4.33 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow

author: Amor Towles
name: Joan
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/09/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Girl On Legare Street (Tradd Street, #2)]]> 6330979 Acclaimed author Karen White returns with the sequel to the national bestseller The House on Tradd Street.

Melanie has grown accustomed to renovating old houses, but she never imagined she'd have to renovate her own life to include her estranged mother. Ginnette Prioleau Middleton left Charleston thirty-five years ago. She's returned wanting to protect the daughter she's never really known after receiving an ominous premonition.

Melanie never wanted to see her mother again, but with some prodding from her partner, Jack Trenholm, she agrees-and begins to rebuild their relationship. Together Melanie and Ginnette buy back their old home. With their combined psychic abilities they expect to unearth some ghosts. But what they find is a vengeful dark spirit whose strength has been growing for decades. It will take unearthing long buried secrets to beat this demon and save what's left of Melanie's family...]]> 335 Karen White 0451227999 Joan 4 4.08 2009 The Girl On Legare Street (Tradd Street, #2)

The Girl On Legare Street (Tradd Street, #2)

author: Karen White
name: Joan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/09/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The House on Tradd Street (Tradd Street, #1)]]> 4505161
Enter Jack Trenholm, a gorgeous writer obsessed with unsolved mysteries. He has reason to believe that diamonds from the Confederate Treasury are hidden in the house. So he turns the charm on with Melanie, only to discover he's the smitten one...

It turns out Jack's search has caught the attention of a malevolent ghost. Now, Jack and Melanie must unravel a mystery of passion, heartbreak, and even murder.]]> 329 Karen White 0451225090 Joan 4 3.96 2008 The House on Tradd Street (Tradd Street, #1)

The House on Tradd Street (Tradd Street, #1)

author: Karen White
name: Joan
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/09/11
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]]> <![CDATA[The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto]]> 25142924
This is the epic story of Frankie Presto—the greatest guitar player who ever lived—and the six lives he changed with his six magical blue strings

Frankie, born in a burning church, abandoned as an infant, and raised by a music teacher in a small Spanish town, until war rips his life apart. At nine years old, he is sent to America in the bottom of a boat. His only possession is an old guitar and six precious strings. His amazing journey weaves him through the musical landscape of the 1940s, ��50s and ��60s, with his stunning playing and singing talent affecting numerous stars (Duke Ellington, Hank Williams, Elvis Presley) until, as if predestined, he becomes a pop star himself.

He makes records. He is adored. But Frankie Presto’s gift is also his burden, as he realizes the power of the strings his teacher gave him, and how, through his music, he can actually affect people’s lives. At the height of his popularity, tortured by his biggest mistake, he vanishes. His legend grows. Only decades later, having finally healed his heart, does Frankie reappearjust before his spectacular death—to change one last life. With the Spirit of Music as our guide, we glimpse into the lives that were changed by one man whose strings could touch the music—and the magic—in each of us.]]> 512 Mitch Albom 0062294415 Joan 4 4.29 2012 The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto

author: Mitch Albom
name: Joan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Gator A-Go-Go (Serge Storms, #12)]]> 6672751 Gator A-Go-Go, New York Times bestselling author Tim Dorsey’s latest outrageously funny and supremely twisted wild ride. The creator of Nuclear Jellyfish, Triggerfish Twist, and so many more delightfully, seriously insane Serge adventures brings the Sunshine State historian and unrepentant thrill killer back for a Florida Spring Break you’ll never forget.]]> 336 Tim Dorsey 0061432717 Joan 4 4.09 2010 Gator A-Go-Go (Serge Storms, #12)

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Tiger Shrimp Tango (Serge Storms, #17)]]> 18072897
Thanks to the growth of the Internet, America finds itself plagued by a noxious epidemic of ruthless scam artists. Where do they all come from? If you guessed 110 percent of them are spawned in Florida, you win the cigar. . . .

When a new digital scheme goes horribly awry�� causing innocents to die and a young woman to go missing—only one person can set things right: obsessive Florida trivia buff and reluctant serial killer Serge Storms.

Aided by his perpetually addled sidekick, Coleman, and latter-day noir private eye Mahoney, Serge launches a crusade to rid his beloved state of predators and save the girl.

But Serge's mission is hampered by one pesky little detail: he's being tracked by a hit man dis-patched from his murky past. And all bets are off when Serge learns the same assassin is responsible for killing the love of his life years ago. It's not long before the two begin tracking each other around Florida in a frenzied Möbius loop.

It's a dance only one can survive—it's the Tiger Shrimp Tango!]]> 306 Tim Dorsey 0062092812 Joan 4 3.88 2014 Tiger Shrimp Tango (Serge Storms, #17)

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Electric Barracuda (Serge Storms, #13)]]> 8586212 here.

Serge Storms, that loveable thermonuclear vigilante and one-stop-Florida-trivia-shop, has been leaving corpses strewn across the Sunshine State for more than a decade. The authorities—especially one tenacious state agent—have begun to notice the exponential body count, and send a police task force to track down Serge. Could his luck finally have run out?

Meanwhile, armed with his perpetually baked sidekick, Coleman, Serge decides to blitz the state and resurrect his Internet travel-advice website—which, of course, must be the finest and the final word on trekking the Sunshine State. To up the ante, Serge concocts a theme vacation for his cyberspace audience. And that theme? You, too, can experience Florida through the eyes of a fugitive.

Off they go blogging along a getaway route through the state's most remote bayous, back roads, and bars, where the number of cadavers begin stacking up like Serge's website hits. And in the middle of all his make-believe close brushes, Serge finally wises up to his pursuers and realizes that the manic gumball rally is genuinely on "in the tradition of the great American chase movie."

Clues and questions mount:

Who are all the women being photographed naked in the swamp?

What made Coleman draw on his face with magic markers?

Where is the cruise-to-nowhere taking its drunk prisoners?

When was the last time a Civil War reenactment involved a sports car?

But Serge also has some personal business to tidy up. His grandfather's old Miami Beach gang suddenly had their life savings wiped out, and there's a good bet it was no accident. Too much action for Serge to juggle? Not when it all dovetails nicely into his Secret Master Plan. And especially if it involves Serge's favorite new obsession: tracking Al Capone's little-known escapades in the Everglades.

So gas up the car, say good-bye to the relatives, and join Serge on the lam as he drives straight for the deepest bowels of Florida to unravel the final mysteries of Electric Barracuda.]]> 357 Tim Dorsey 0061876895 Joan 4 4.11 2011 Electric Barracuda (Serge Storms, #13)

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Big Bamboo (Serge Storms, #8)]]> 341402 367 Tim Dorsey 0060585633 Joan 4 4.05 2006

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Nuclear Jellyfish (Serge Storms, #11)]]> 3614101
That loveable collector of trivia, souvenirs, and murder methods is back with a new A‑Tour of Florida. And this time he's out to set the record straight!

Serge is upset that his beloved state isn't getting its proper recognition, so he signs on with the big Internet travel services. But his new employers aren't exactly sure they want to send their customers to Serge's favorite haunts--nor do they want to provide tips on how to keep from getting killed on vacation.

Serge couldn't disagree more, and he sets up his own wildcat site, hyper‑blogging his way down the coast with his perpetually hammered sidekick, Coleman.

Unfortunately Serge's Web presence catches the attention of his nemesis, Agent Mahoney, and the chase is on.

Meanwhile, professional robbery crews have begun targeting trade show exhibitors, who may or may not be what they seem. Bodies begin piling up, which is less than usual for the locale--except this time it involves rare postcards. Serge has had enough! He's forced into the only logical course of action--go shopping at the Home Depot.

And this only raises more questions:

Who is tutoring strippers through the community college?

What sparked the grudge match between coin and stamp enthusiasts?

How'd the astronaut in diapers get involved?

Why does Serge have to stop at the NASCAR superstore?

Where did all these diamonds come from? And does Lynyrd Skynyrd hold the key to everything?

It all starts with a tragic tattoo parlor mishap and soon nobody is safe, especially the person on the Robert De Niro stool, because, after all, Serge has to sit there or what's the point of life?

But wait! You say you want more? Serge says, You got it!

Guns, drugs, bloody crime scenes, historically relevant sex, library quiet time, glow‑in‑the dark deformities, hotel drink coupons, a naked woman in a shark cage, and John Travolta.

It's time to sign on with Serge and see where the twisting, sun‑splashed trail leads in . . . Nuclear Jellyfish!]]> 320 Tim Dorsey 0061432660 Joan 4 4.09 2009 Nuclear Jellyfish (Serge Storms, #11)

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Torpedo Juice (Serge Storms, #7)]]> 341396 368 Tim Dorsey 0060585617 Joan 4 4.17 2005

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Cadillac Beach (Serge Storms, #6)]]> 268767 301 Tim Dorsey 0709076991 Joan 4 4.15 2004

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Stingray Shuffle (Serge Storms, #5)]]> 341404 367 Tim Dorsey 0060556935 Joan 4 4.16 2003

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2003
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Triggerfish Twist (Serge Storms, #4)]]> 341403 Florida Roadkill, he killed off way too many people. Now he needs them back. So in Triggerfish Twist, Dorsey invites us to take a warped trip back in time as he reunites the living with the soon to be very dead. And for the uninitiated, what a perfect place to start!

Set during the summer before Roadkill's pyrotechnic climax, Dorsey's fourth novel is a fond and perverse antirhapsody to the typical Florida neighborhood as seen through the eyes of Jim Davenport, a mild-mannered Midwestern family man whose company transfers him to the Sunshine State. When he purchases a lovely tropical villa on the equally idyllic Triggerfish Lane, his family appears to have found paradise.

But it is a long, hot summer, and soon the layers are peeled back one by one to reveal that all is not right in utopia. Yuppies with pit bulls, hot-rodding pizza deliverymen, Machiavellian used-car salesmen, Rastafarians who refuse to smoke dope, floating pawn shops on Crack Street, neighborhood crimewatch teams running for their lives, after-midnight clientele at twenty-four-hour supermarkets that put zombie movies to shame, unnatural sex, casual violence, gore, blasphemy, and people who write checks at convenience stores.

It all becomes too much for Jim, and before this peaceful Indiana farm boy knows what's happened to him, he's gone and killed someone. Of course, the odds are, it was someone who richly deserved it, and police officially rule the homicide extremely justified. Unfortunately for Jim, he has killed the youngest of the infamous McGraw Brothers, who got released from prison near a NASCAR track in Alabama and are heading south, bent on revenge.

Not enough, you say? Okay, Serge Storms and his cohorts Coleman and Sharon are forced to move when the latter two burn down several blocks of Tampa's historic Latin Quarter during a wacky binge of freebasing high jinks. They naturally rent a house across the street from the Davenports, and Serge decides to take Jim under his wing, determined to teach him the local history and the secrets of satisfying a woman. The McGraw Brothers continue south. Sharon hallucinates on coke. Coleman refills his beer helmet. Serge becomes a Little League coach. And when the confluence of people and events is just about to boil over, everyone converges on Triggerfish Lane for the big Fourth of July block party, setting the stage for another knee-slapping bloodbath. It's just another day in Dorsey's paradise.

]]> 372 Tim Dorsey 0061031550 Joan 4 4.12 2002 Triggerfish Twist (Serge Storms, #4)

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2002
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Orange Crush (Serge Storms, #3)]]> 48260 354 Tim Dorsey 0061031542 Joan 4 4.05 2001

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2001
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane]]> 25150798
Slowly, Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, begins to reject the customs that shaped her early life. When she has a baby out of wedlock she rejects the tradition that would compel her to give the child over to be killed, and instead leaves her, wrapped in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city.

As Li-yan comes into herself, leaving her village for an education, a business, and city life, her daughter, Haley, is raised in California by loving adoptive parents. Despite her privileged childhood, Haley wonders about her origins. Across the ocean Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. Over the course of years, each searches for meaning in the study of Pu’er, the tea that has shaped their family’s destiny for centuries.]]> 384 Lisa See Joan 5 4.29 2017 The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

author: Lisa See
name: Joan
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Shark Skin Suite (Serge Storms, #18)]]> 22138379 322 Tim Dorsey 0062240013 Joan 4 3.93 2015

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2017/05/22
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]]> Razor Girl (Andrew Yancy, #2) 28185972 The new full-tilt, razor-sharp, unstoppably hilarious and entertaining novel from the best-selling author of Bad Monkey, Star Island, Nature Girl, et al.

When Lane Coolman's car is bashed from behind on the road to the Florida Keys, what appears to be an ordinary accident is anything but (this is Hiaasen!). Behind the wheel of the other car is Merry Mansfield--the eponymous Razor Girl--and the crash scam is only the beginning of events that spiral crazily out of control while unleashing some of the wildest characters Hiaasen has ever set loose on the page. There's Trebeaux, the owner of Sedimental Journeys--a company that steals sand from one beach to restore erosion on another . . . Dominick "Big Noogie" Aeola, a NYC mafia capo with a taste for tropic-wear . . . Buck Nance, a Wisconsin accordionist who has rebranded himself as the star of a redneck reality show called Bayou Brethren . . . a street psycho known as Blister who's more Buck Nance than Buck could ever be . . . Brock Richardson, a Miami product-liability lawyer who's getting dangerously--and deformingly--hooked on the very E.D. product he's litigating against . . . and Andrew Yancy--formerly Detective Yancy, busted down to the Key West roach patrol after accosting his then-lover's husband with a Dust Buster. Yancy believes that if he can singlehandedly solve a high-profile murder, he'll get his detective badge back. That the Razor Girl may be the key to Yancy's future will be as surprising as anything else he encounters along the way--including the giant Gambian rats that are livening up his restaurant inspections.]]> 335 Carl Hiaasen 0385349742 Joan 4 3.74 2016 Razor Girl (Andrew Yancy, #2)

author: Carl Hiaasen
name: Joan
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 4
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]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Joan 4 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove

author: Fredrik Backman
name: Joan
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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]]> Dark Matter 27833670 A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human--a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.]]> 342 Blake Crouch 1101904224 Joan 3 4.13 2016 Dark Matter

author: Blake Crouch
name: Joan
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 3
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]]> The Mermaid Chair 6976 An alternate cover edition exists here.

Sue Monk Kidd's phenomenal debut, The Secret Life of Bees, became a runaway bestseller that is still on the New York Times bestseller list more than two years after its paperback publication. Now, in her luminous new novel, Kidd has woven a transcendent tale that will thrill her legion of fans. Telling the story of Jessie Sullivan -- a love story between a woman and a monk, a woman and her husband, and ultimately a woman and her own soul -- Kidd charts a journey of awakening and self-discovery illuminated with a brilliance that only a writer of her ability could conjure.]]> 368 Sue Monk Kidd 0143036696 Joan 3 3.19 2004 The Mermaid Chair

author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Joan
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2004
rating: 3
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]]> The Invention of Wings 18079776
Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimké is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble. She also knows that she cannot accept. And so, indeed, the trouble begins ...

A powerful, sweeping novel, inspired by real events, and set in the American Deep South in the nineteenth century, The Invention of Wings evokes a world of shocking contrasts, of beauty and ugliness, of righteous people living daily with cruelty they fail to recognize; and celebrates the power of friendship and sisterhood against all the odds.]]> 384 Sue Monk Kidd 0670024783 Joan 3 4.24 2014 The Invention of Wings

author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Joan
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 3
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]]> The One-in-a-Million Boy 25862989 The story of your life never starts at the beginning. Don't they teach you anything at school?

So says 104-year-old Ona to the 11-year-old boy who's been sent to help her out every Saturday morning. As he refills the bird feeders and tidies the garden shed, Ona tells him about her long life, from first love to second chances. Soon she's confessing secrets she has kept hidden for decades.

One Saturday, the boy doesn't show up. Ona starts to think he's not so special after all, but then his father arrives on her doorstep, determined to finish his son's good deed. The boy's mother is not so far behind. Ona is set to discover that the world can surprise us at any age, and that sometimes sharing a loss is the only way to find ourselves again.]]> 416 Monica Wood 1472228359 Joan 5 4.04 2016 The One-in-a-Million Boy

author: Monica Wood
name: Joan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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]]> The Forgetting Time 29243722 “What if what you did mattered more because life happened again and again, consequences unfolding across decades and continents?…A relentlessly paced page-turner and a profound meditation on the meaning of life.��
―Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan Train

What happens to us after we die? What happens before we are born? At once a riveting mystery and a testament to the profound connection between a child and parent, The Forgetting Time will lead you to reevaluate everything you believe��

What would you do if your four-year-old son claimed he had lived another life and that he wants to go back to it? That he wants his other mother?

Single mom Janie is trying to figure out what is going on with her beloved son Noah. Noah has never been ordinary. He loves to make up stories, and he is constantly surprising her with random trivia someone his age has no right knowing. She always chalked it up to the fact that Noah was precocious―mature beyond his years. But Noah’s eccentricities are starting to become worrisome. One afternoon, Noah’s preschool teacher calls Janie: Noah has been talking about shooting guns and being held under water until he can’t breathe. Suddenly, Janie can’t pretend anymore. The school orders him to get a psychiatric evaluation. And life as she knows it stops for herself and her darling boy.

For Jerome Anderson, life as he knows it has already stopped. Diagnosed with aphasia, his first thought as he approaches the end of his life is, I’m not finished yet. Once an academic star, a graduate of Yale and Harvard, a professor of psychology, he threw everything away to pursue an obsession: the stories of children who remembered past lives. Anderson became the laughing stock of his peers, but he never stopped believing that there was something beyond what anyone could see or comprehend. He spent his life searching for a case that would finally prove it. And with Noah, he thinks he may have found it.

Soon, Noah, Janie, and Anderson will find themselves knocking on the door of a mother whose son has been missing for eight years. When that door opens, all of their questions will be answered.

Gorgeously written and fearlessly provocative, Sharon Guskin’s debut explores the lengths we will go for our children. It examines what we regret in the end of our lives and hope for in the beginning, and everything in between.]]> 368 Sharon Guskin 1250118719 Joan 5 3.78 2016 The Forgetting Time

author: Sharon Guskin
name: Joan
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2016
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Hollow City (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #2)]]> 23164983
But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom.]]> 412 Ransom Riggs 1594747350 Joan 4 4.07 2014 Hollow City (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #2)

Hollow City (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #2)

author: Ransom Riggs
name: Joan
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1)]]> 9460487 9781594744761

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow-impossible though it seems-they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.]]> 352 Ransom Riggs 1594744769 Joan 5 3.92 2011

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1)

author: Ransom Riggs
name: Joan
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2011
rating: 5
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]]> The Boston Girl 22450859
Addie Baum is The Boston Girl, born in 1900 to immigrant parents who were unprepared for and suspicious of America and its effect on their three daughters. Growing up in the North End, then a teeming multicultural neighborhood, Addie's intelligence and curiosity take her to a world her parents can't imagine - a world of short skirts, movies, celebrity culture and new opportunities for women. Addie wants to finish high school and dreams of going to college. She wants a career and to find true love.

Eighty-five-year-old Addie tells the story of her life to her twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who has asked her "How did you get to be the woman you are today?" She begins in 1915, the year she found her voice and made friends who would help shape the course of her life. From the one-room tenement apartment she shared with her parents and two sisters, to the library group for girls she joins at a neighborhood settlement house, to her first, disastrous love affair, Addie recalls her adventures with compassion for the naïve girl she was and a wicked sense of humor.

Written with the same attention to historical detail and emotional resonance that made Anita Diamant's previous novels bestsellers, The Boston Girl is a moving portrait of one woman’s complicated life in twentieth-century America, and a fascinating look at a generation of women finding their places in a changing world.]]> 320 Anita Diamant 1439199353 Joan 4 3.81 2014 The Boston Girl

author: Anita Diamant
name: Joan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/10/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry]]> 18293427
A. J. Fikry’s life is not at all what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is experiencing the worst sales in its history, and now his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. Slowly but surely, he is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island—from Lambiase, the well-intentioned police officer who’s always felt kindly toward Fikry; from Ismay, his sister-in-law who is hell-bent on saving him from his dreary self; from Amelia, the lovely and idealistic (if eccentric) Knightley Press sales rep who keeps on taking the ferry over to Alice Island, refusing to be deterred by A.J.’s bad attitude. Even the books in his store have stopped holding pleasure for him. These days, A.J. can only see them as a sign of a world that is changing too rapidly.

And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore. It’s a small package, but large in weight. It’s that unexpected arrival that gives A. J. Fikry the opportunity to make his life over, the ability to see everything anew. It doesn’t take long for the locals to notice the change overcoming A.J.; or for that determined sales rep, Amelia, to see her curmudgeonly client in a new light; or for the wisdom of all those books to become again the lifeblood of A.J.’s world; or for everything to twist again into a version of his life that he didn’t see coming. As surprising as it is moving, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is an unforgettable tale of transformation and second chances, an irresistible affirmation of why we read, and why we love.]]> 260 Gabrielle Zevin 1616203218 Joan 4 4.00 2014 The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Joan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> At the Water's Edge 23209927
To Maddie’s horror, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father’s favor is to succeed in a venture his father attempted and very publicly failed at: he will hunt the famous Loch Ness monster and when he finds it he will restore his father’s name and return to his father’s good graces (and pocketbook). Joined by their friend Hank, a wealthy socialite, the three make their way to Scotland in the midst of war.

Each day the two men go off to hunt the monster, while another monster, Hitler, is devastating Europe. And Maddie, now alone in a foreign country, must begin to figure out who she is and what she wants.

The novel tells of Maddie’s social awakening: to the harsh realities of life, to the beauties of nature, to a connection with forces larger than herself, to female friendship, and finally, to love.]]> 348 Sara Gruen 0385523238 Joan 4 3.63 2015 At the Water's Edge

author: Sara Gruen
name: Joan
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/10/28
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]]> <![CDATA[My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry]]> 23604559 A charming, warmhearted novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller A Man Called Ove.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy—as in standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-strangers crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas, where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s instructions lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and old crones but also to the truth about fairy tales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.]]> 372 Fredrik Backman 1501115065 Joan 5 4.04 2013 My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

author: Fredrik Backman
name: Joan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/10/28
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]]> Circling the Sun 23995231 366 Paula McLain 0345534182 Joan 4 3.88 2015

author: Paula McLain
name: Joan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/10/28
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]]> Angelology (Angelology, #1) 6691426 464 Danielle Trussoni 0670021474 Joan 5 3.45 2010

author: Danielle Trussoni
name: Joan
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/02/06
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]]> The Lake House 21104828 June 1933, and sixteen-year-old Alice Edevane is preparing for her family's Midsummer Eve party at their country home, Loeanneth. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night skies, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great that they leave Loeanneth forever.

A missing child...
Seventy years later, after a particularly troubling case, Detective Sadie Sparrow retreats to her beloved grandfather's cottage in Cornwall. Once there, she stumbles upon an abandoned house, and learns the story of a baby boy who disappeared without a trace.

An unsolved mystery...
Meanwhile, in her elegant Hampstead home, the formidable Alice Edevane, now an old lady, leads a life as neatly plotted as the bestselling detective novels she writes. Until a young police detective starts asking questions about her family's past, seeking to resurrect the complex tangle of secrets Alice has spent her life trying to escape...]]> 495 Kate Morton Joan 4 4.04 2015 The Lake House

author: Kate Morton
name: Joan
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/02/06
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]]> <![CDATA[The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2)]]> 28186
In this episode, The Sea of Monsters, Percy sets out to retrieve the Golden Fleece before his summer camp is destroyed, surpassing the first book's drama and setting the stage for more thrills to come.]]> 279 Rick Riordan 0786856866 Joan 4 4.25 2006 The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2)

The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2)

author: Rick Riordan
name: Joan
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2006
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)]]> 28187 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse - Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy's mom finds out, she knows it's time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he'll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island), where he learns that the father he never knew is Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends—one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena - Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods.]]> 377 Rick Riordan 0786838655 Joan 4 4.31 2005 The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)

The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)

author: Rick Riordan
name: Joan
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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]]> Follow the River 138872
With the rushing Ohio River as her guide, Mary Ingles walked one thousand miles through an untamed wilderness no white woman had ever seen. Her story lives on—extraordinary testimony to the indomitable strength of one pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her own people.]]> 406 James Alexander Thom 0345338545 Joan 5 4.20 1980 Follow the River

author: James Alexander Thom
name: Joan
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1980
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/02/06
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]]> South of Broad 6135237
Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. Leopold Bloom King, our narrator, is the son of an amiable, loving father who teaches science at the local high school. His mother, an ex-nun, is the high school principal and a well-known Joyce scholar. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades-from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

The ties among them endure for years, surviving marriages happy and troubled, unrequited loves and unspoken longings, hard-won successes and devastating breakdowns, and Charleston's dark legacy of racism and class divisions. But the final test of friendship that brings them to San Francisco is something no one is prepared for. South of Broad is Pat Conroy at his finest; a long-awaited work from a great American writer whose passion for life and language knows no bounds.]]> 514 Pat Conroy 038541305X Joan 4 3.83 2009

author: Pat Conroy
name: Joan
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2009
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge]]> 920649 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.]]> 36 Ambrose Bierce 0874068134 Joan 0 4.02 1890

author: Ambrose Bierce
name: Joan
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1890
rating: 0
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]]> Burial Rites 17333319
Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, Burial Rites evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?]]> 336 Hannah Kent 0316243914 Joan 3 4.00 2013 Burial Rites

author: Hannah Kent
name: Joan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 3
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date added: 2016/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Sycamore Row (Jake Brigance, #2)]]> 17288661
The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?]]> 447 John Grisham 0385537131 Joan 4 4.00 2013 Sycamore Row (Jake Brigance, #2)

author: John Grisham
name: Joan
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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date added: 2016/02/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)]]> 13538873
Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is.

A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out�� obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.

He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers�� behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward.]]> 288 Robin Sloan 0374214913 Joan 5 3.71 2012 Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

author: Robin Sloan
name: Joan
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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date added: 2016/02/02
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]]> The Wright Brothers 22609391 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize David McCullough tells the dramatic story-behind-the-story about the courageous brothers who taught the world how to fly: Wilbur and Orville Wright.

On a winter day in 1903, in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, two unknown brothers from Ohio changed history. But it would take the world some time to believe what had happened: the age of flight had begun, with the first heavier-than-air, powered machine carrying a pilot.

Who were these men and how was it that they achieved what they did?

David McCullough, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the surprising, profoundly American story of Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Far more than a couple of unschooled Dayton bicycle mechanics who happened to hit on success, they were men of exceptional courage and determination, and of far-ranging intellectual interests and ceaseless curiosity, much of which they attributed to their upbringing. The house they lived in had no electricity or indoor plumbing, but there were books aplenty, supplied mainly by their preacher father, and they never stopped reading.

When they worked together, no problem seemed to be insurmountable. Wilbur was unquestionably a genius. Orville had such mechanical ingenuity as few had ever seen. That they had no more than a public high school education, little money and no contacts in high places, never stopped them in their mission to take to the air. Nothing did, not even the self-evident reality that every time they took off in one of their contrivances, they risked being killed.

In this thrilling book, master historian David McCullough draws on the immense riches of the Wright Papers, including private diaries, notebooks, scrapbooks, and more than a thousand letters from private family correspondence to tell the human side of the Wright Brothers' story, including the little-known contributions of their sister, Katharine, without whom things might well have gone differently for them.]]> 320 David McCullough Joan 3 4.14 2015

author: David McCullough
name: Joan
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2015
rating: 3
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]]> <![CDATA[The Miniaturist (The Miniaturist, #1)]]> 18498569
"There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed . . ."

On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office--leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.

But Nella's world changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist--an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways . . .

Johannes' gift helps Nella to pierce the closed world of the Brandt household. But as she uncovers its unusual secrets, she begins to understand--and fear--the escalating dangers that await them all. In this repressively pious society where gold is worshipped second only to God, to be different is a threat to the moral fabric of society, and not even a man as rich as Johannes is safe. Only one person seems to see the fate that awaits them. Is the miniaturist the key to their salvation . . . or the architect of their destruction?

Enchanting, beautiful, and exquisitely suspenseful, The Miniaturist is a magnificent story of love and obsession, betrayal and retribution, appearance and truth.]]> 400 Jessie Burton 0062306812 Joan 5 3.59 2014 The Miniaturist (The Miniaturist, #1)

author: Jessie Burton
name: Joan
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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]]> Gray Mountain 24728478 John Grisham has a new hero . . . and she’s full of surprises

The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer’s career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track—until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building.��Samantha, though, is one of the “lucky�� associates. She’s offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she’d get her old job back.

In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about. Mattie Wyatt, lifelong Brady resident and head of the town’s legal aid clinic, is there to teach her how to “help real people with real problems.�� For the first time in her career, Samantha prepares a lawsuit, sees the inside of an actual courtroom, gets scolded by a judge, and receives threats from locals who aren’t so thrilled to have a big-city lawyer in town. And she learns that Brady, like most small towns, harbors some big secrets.

Her new job takes Samantha into the murky and dangerous world of coal mining, where laws are often broken, rules are ignored, regulations are flouted, communities are divided, and the land itself is under attack from Big Coal. Violence is always just around the corner, and within weeks Samantha finds herself engulfed in litigation that turns deadly.]]> 480 John Grisham 1101910763 Joan 4 3.43 2014 Gray Mountain

author: John Grisham
name: Joan
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Touching Spirit Bear (Spirit Bear, #1)]]> 147243
Author Ben Mikaelson delivers a poignant depiction of the vicious cycle of violence and one boy's journey to healing.]]> 289 Ben Mikaelsen 0060734000 Joan 5 3.83 2001 Touching Spirit Bear (Spirit Bear, #1)

author: Ben Mikaelsen
name: Joan
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2001
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/08/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania]]> 22551730
On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war.]]> 430 Erik Larson 0307408868 Joan 4 4.10 2015 Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

author: Erik Larson
name: Joan
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)]]> 18214414 Private investigator Cormoran Strike returns in a new mystery from Robert Galbraith, author of the #1 international bestseller The Cuckoo's Calling.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days—as he has done before—and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home.

But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine's disappearance than his wife realizes. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives—meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.

When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before...]]> 464 Robert Galbraith 0316206873 Joan 4 4.02 2014 The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike, #2)

author: Robert Galbraith
name: Joan
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)]]> 16160797 456 Robert Galbraith 0316206849 Joan 4 3.88 2013

The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike, #1)

author: Robert Galbraith
name: Joan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Lost Fragrances (Reincarnationist, #4)]]> 12147341 A sweeping and suspenseful tale of secrets, intrigue, and lovers separated by time, all connected through the mystical qualities of a perfume created in the days of Cleopatra—and lost for 2,000 years.

Jac L’Etoile has always been haunted by the past, her memories infused with the exotic scents that she grew up surrounded by as the heir to a storied French perfume company. In order to flee the pain of those remembrances—and of her mother’s suicide—she moves to America, leaving the company in the hands of her brother Robbie. But when Robbie hints at an earth-shattering discovery in the family archives and then suddenly goes missing—leaving a dead body in his wake—Jac is plunged into a world she thought she’d left behind.

Back in Paris to investigate her brother’s disappearance, Jac discovers a secret the House of L’Etoile has been hiding since 1799: a scent that unlocks the mysteries of reincarnation. The Book of Lost Fragrances fuses history, passion, and suspense, moving from Cleopatra’s Egypt and the terrors of revolutionary France to Tibet’s battle with China and the glamour of modern-day Paris. Jac’s quest for the ancient perfume someone is willing to kill for becomes the key to understanding her own troubled past.]]> 370 M.J. Rose 1451621302 Joan 5 3.69 2012 The Book of Lost Fragrances (Reincarnationist, #4)

The Book of Lost Fragrances (Reincarnationist, #4)

author: M.J. Rose
name: Joan
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2012
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Witch of Painted Sorrows (Daughters of La Lune, #1)]]> 22608277 New York Times bestselling novelist M. J. Rose creates her most provocative and magical spellbinder yet in this gothic novel set against the lavish spectacle of 1890s Belle Époque Paris.

Sandrine Salome flees New York for her grandmother’s Paris mansion to escape her dangerous husband, but what she finds there is even more menacing. The house, famous for its lavish art collection and elegant salons, is mysteriously closed up. Although her grandmother insists it’s dangerous for Sandrine to visit, she defies her and meets Julien Duplessi, a mesmerizing young architect. Together they explore the hidden night world of Paris, the forbidden occult underground and Sandrine’s deepest desires.

Among the bohemians and the demi-monde, Sandrine discovers her erotic nature as a lover and painter. Then darker influences threaten—her cold and cruel husband is tracking her down and something sinister is taking hold, changing Sandrine, altering her. She’s become possessed by La Lune: A witch, a legend, and a sixteenth-century courtesan, who opens up her life to a darkness that may become a gift or a curse.

This is Sandrine’s “wild night of the soul,�� her odyssey in the magnificent city of Paris, of art, love, and witchery.]]> 366 M.J. Rose 147677806X Joan 4 3.41 2015 The Witch of Painted Sorrows (Daughters of La Lune, #1)

The Witch of Painted Sorrows (Daughters of La Lune, #1)

author: M.J. Rose
name: Joan
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Collector of Dying Breaths (Reincarnationist, #6)]]> 18144112
Florence, Italy��1533: An orphan named René le Florentin is plucked from poverty to become Catherine de Medici’s perfumer. Traveling with the young duchessina from Italy to France, René brings with him a cache of secret documents from the monastery where he was trained: recipes for exotic fragrances and potent medicines—and a formula for an alchemic process said to have the potential to reanimate the dead. In France, René becomes not only the greatest perfumer in the country but the most dangerous, creating deadly poisons for his Queen to use against her rivals. But while mixing herbs and essences under the light of flickering candles, Rene doesn’t begin to imagine the tragic and personal consequences for which his lethal potions will be responsible.

Paris, France—The Present: A renowned mythologist, Jac L’Etoile, is trying to recover from personal heartache by throwing herself into her work, learns of the 16th century perfumer who may have been working on an elixir that would unlock the secret to immortality. She becomes obsessed with René le Florentin’s work—particularly when she discovers the dying breathes he had collected during his lifetime. Jac’s efforts put her in the path of her estranged lover, Griffin North, a linguist who has already begun translating René le Florentin’s mysterious formula. Together they confront an eccentric heiress in possession of a world-class art collection. A woman who has her own dark purpose for the elixir�� a purpose for which she believes the ends will justify her deadly means. This mesmerizing gothic tale of passion and obsession crisscrosses time, zigzagging from the violent days of Catherine de Medici’s court to twenty-first century France. Fiery and lush, set against deep, wild forests and dimly lit chateaus, The Collector of Dying Breaths illuminates the true path to immortality: the legacies we leave behind.]]> 384 M.J. Rose 1451621531 Joan 4 3.81 2014

The Collector of Dying Breaths (Reincarnationist, #6)

author: M.J. Rose
name: Joan
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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]]> After You (Me Before You, #2) 25020381
Louisa Clark is no longer just an ordinary girl living an ordinary life. After the transformative six months spent with Will Traynor, she is struggling without him. When an extraordinary accident forces Lou to return home to her family, she can’t help but feel she’s right back where she started.

Her body heals, but Lou herself knows that she needs to be kick-started back to life. Which is how she ends up in a church basement with the members of the Moving On support group, who share insights, laughter, frustrations, and terrible cookies. They will also lead her to the strong, capable Sam Fielding—the paramedic, whose business is life and death, and the one man who might be able to understand her. Then a figure from Will’s past appears and hijacks all her plans, propelling her into a very different future. . . .

For Lou Clark, life after Will Traynor means learning to fall in love again, with all the risks that brings. But here Jojo Moyes gives us two families, as real as our own, whose joys and sorrows will touch you deeply, and where both changes and surprises await.

After You is quintessential Jojo Moyes—a novel that will make you laugh, cry, and rejoice at being back in the world she creates. Here she does what few novelists can do—revisits beloved characters and takes them to places neither they nor we ever expected.]]> 12 Jojo Moyes 0698411412 Joan 4 3.66 2015 After You (Me Before You, #2)

author: Jojo Moyes
name: Joan
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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]]> One Plus One 18693716 One single mom. One chaotic family. One quirky stranger. One irresistible love story from the New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You

Suppose your life sucks. A lot. Your husband has done a vanishing act, your teenage stepson is being bullied and your math whiz daughter has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you can’t afford to pay for. That’s Jess’s life in a nutshell—until an unexpected knight-in-shining-armor offers to rescue them. Only Jess’s knight turns out to be Geeky Ed, the obnoxious tech millionaire whose vacation home she happens to clean. But Ed has big problems of his own, and driving the dysfunctional family to the Math Olympiad feels like his first unselfish act in ages... maybe ever.]]> 368 Jojo Moyes 0525426582 Joan 5 3.92 2014 One Plus One

author: Jojo Moyes
name: Joan
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2014
rating: 5
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]]> The Girl on the Train 22557272
An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.]]> 336 Paula Hawkins 1594633665 Joan 4 3.97 2015

author: Paula Hawkins
name: Joan
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2015
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/02/18
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]]> The Distant Hours 6746018
Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours�� of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.

Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring unforgettable characters beset by love and circumstance and haunted by memory, that reminds us of the rich power of storytelling.]]> 562 Kate Morton 1439152780 Joan 4 3.88 2010 The Distant Hours

author: Kate Morton
name: Joan
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/02/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Atomic Lobster (Serge Storms, #10)]]> 1286943 Why is everyone rushing to flee Tampa on a cruise ship to hell?

Serge is back with a bullet, torn between homicide and souvenirs. So is Coleman, torn between getting hammered and getting more hammered. Then there's good ol' Jim Davenport, the E-Team, the Diaz Brothers, and Johnny Vegas, the Accidental Virgin, cranking up the fevered action as the pot boils over on a street called Lobster Lane.

It's reunion time in the Sunshine State, and we're not just talking the family jamboree of that blood-soaked criminal clan, the McGraws, whose nastiest, meanest member is finally released from prison and heads south bent on revenge. On top of it all, the government is covering up a growing list of mysterious victims across Florida who may or may not be connected to a nefarious plot being hatched against national security.

But wait! There's more on the horizon! Who is the oddly familiar femme fatale named Rachael? Is Serge wrong that guns, drugs, and strippers don't mix? What sets the Non-Confrontationalists off on a rampage? What finally brings Coleman and Lenny together? Will they succeed in building the biggest bong ever? And can Serge surf a rogue wave to victory?

So batten the hatches, don the life jackets, and take cover as all these questions and more are answered in the latest adventure from the acclaimed author of Hurricane Punch.]]> 352 Tim Dorsey 0060829699 Joan 4 4.06 2008 Atomic Lobster (Serge Storms, #10)

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2008
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Hurricane Punch (Serge Storms, #9)]]> 138054 384 Tim Dorsey 0060829672 Joan 5 4.08 2007

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Florida Roadkill (Serge Storms, #1)]]> 255998 288 Tim Dorsey 006113922X Joan 4 3.70 1999

author: Tim Dorsey
name: Joan
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1999
rating: 4
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date added: 2015/02/18
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]]>