en-US Sat, 17 May 2025 10:20:37 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 217245618
In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.]]> 336 Florence Knapp 0593833902 Michael 0 to-read 4.27 2025
author: Florence Knapp
name: Michael
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/17
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]]> 54246153
For years, Sgt Wayne Jenkins and his team of plain-clothed officers - the Gun Trace Task Force - were the city's lauded and decorated heroes. But all the while they had been skimming from the drug busts they made, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Because who would believe the dealers, the smugglers or people who had simply been going about their daily business over the word of the city's elite task force?

Now, in light of their spectacular trial of late 2018, and in a work of astounding reportage and painstaking self-discovery, Justin Fenton has pieced together a shocking story of systemic corruption.]]> 352 Justin Fenton 0571356613 Michael 0 to-read 4.24 2021
author: Justin Fenton
name: Michael
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> 229116061 A senior citizens� center and a daycare collide with hilarious results in the new ensemble comedy from New York Times-bestselling author Clare Pooley

When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens� Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards.

The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.

When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door—as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog—to save the building. Together, this group’s unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don’t catch up with them first.]]> 352 Clare Pooley 0143137948 Michael 0 to-read 3.85 2024
author: Clare Pooley
name: Michael
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/17
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]]> 222419255
It’s the winter of 1975, and Duane Minor, back home in Portland, Oregon, after a tour in Vietnam, is struggling to quell his anger and keep his drinking in check, keep his young marriage intact, and keep the nightmares away. Things get even more complicated when his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia, is sent across the country to live with Duane and his wife Heidi. But slowly, carefully, guided by Heidi’s love and patience, the three of them are building a family.

Then Minor crosses the wrong man: John Varley, a criminal with a bloody history and a trail of bodies behind him. Varley, who sleeps during the day beneath loose drifts of earth and grows teeth in the light of the moon. In an act of brutal retaliation, Varley kills Heidi, leaving Minor broken with guilt and Julia filled with rage. The two of them are left united by only one thing: the desire for vengeance.

As their quest brings them into the dark orbit of immortal, undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men drawn to Varley’s ferocity, Minor and Julia follow his path of destruction from the gritty alleyways of 1970s Portland to the desolate highways of the Northwest and the snow-lashed plains of North Dakota—only to have Varley turn his vicious power back on them. Who will prevail, who will survive, and what remains of our humanity when our thirst for revenge trumps everything else?]]> 320 Keith Rosson 0593733401 Michael 0 to-read 4.55
author: Keith Rosson
name: Michael
average rating: 4.55
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]]> 228357156 A serial killer terrorizes Northern Virginia, his ability to come and go baffling those pursuing him with zero success.

He disables the victims' WIFI, attacking them in bed, the cause of death exsanguination due to sharp force injuries.

This has been going on for six months when Dr. Kay Scarpetta is awakened by her phone in the early morning hours of June 12, her birthday. She's informed that the Phantom Slasher has struck again, only this time there are two victims, and one of them has survived, the scene Mercy Island and its notorious old psychiatric hospital. This is a modern ghost story, a ghastly apparition seen around the time the Slasher strikes in each case. The same figure in black is spotted levitating through the fog, and the technical explanation is one that's of keen interest to the CIA, even the White House.

It's up to Scarpetta to stop the Phantom Slasher before they strike again and vanish, leaving another trail of blood in their wake.]]> 400 Patricia Cornwell 1538773961 Michael 0 to-read 5.00
author: Patricia Cornwell
name: Michael
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> 229116043
Caught up in the siege of Calais, in the midst of a brutal eleven-month blockade of a small port on the French coast, they are no longer blindly walking into the unknown. But the men still have more questions than answers about what faces them � and why.

What are they really fighting for? And why does the king care so much about taking such a small French town? The Dogs aren't paid to ask questions but in their work, they have the means to make people talk.

Soon, their journey will reveal who really wants this war to last for a hundred years. And as the battle rages, they hear the first, faint, chesty rattle of a natural disaster that is sweeping towards the Dogs and their world . . .

Spanning the siege city built outside Calais' walls, to the pirate ships patrolling the harbour, and into the dark corners of oligarchs' houses, where the deals that shape � and end � lives are made, this captivating and brutal story brings the 1300s effortlessly to life. About money, merchants and the mediaeval 'deep state', this is a must-read for fans of Bernard Cornwell and Conn Iggulden .

Praise for Essex Dogs :
'Oddly joyous � rolling action, fast-paced, a book that draws you in page by page. The way Dan Jones writes enemies reminds me of Cornwell at his best, turning up tension click by click.' CONN IGGULDEN
'A testosterone fulled, blood soaked rampage across the Middle Ages, this is the Hundred Years' War as directed by Oliver Stone with a historian's eye for detail' ELODIE HARPER
'A new champion has entered the front line of historical fiction to stand shoulder to shoulder with Bernard Cornwell.' JANE JOHNSON
'Battle-bloody, brutal and perfectly pitched.' DAILY MAIL
'With a cast of unforgettable characters, written with irrepressible verve.' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE]]> 416 Dan Jones 0143137646 Michael 0 to-read 4.00 2023
author: Dan Jones
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> 222850723 A captivating new historical novel from Madeline Martin, set in Victorian London aboutĚýa forbidden book club, dangerous secrets, and the women who dare to break free.
Ěý
You are cordially invited to the Secret Book Society�
Ěý
London, 1895: Trapped by oppressive marriages and societal expectations, three women receive a mysterious invitation to an afternoon tea at the home of the reclusive Lady Duxbury. Beneath the genteel facade of the gathering lies a secret book club—a sanctuary where they can discover freedom, sisterhood, and the courage to rewrite their stories.
Ěý
Eleanor Clarke, a devoted mother suffocating under the tyranny of her husband. Rose Wharton, a transplanted American dollar princess struggling to fit the mold of an aristocratic wife. Lavinia Cavendish, an artistic young woman haunted by a dangerous family secret. All are drawn to the enigmatic Lady Duxbury, a thrice-widowed countess whose husbands� untimely deaths have sparked whispers of murder.
Ěý
As the women form deep, heartwarming friendships, they uncover secrets about their marriages, their pasts, and the risks they face. Their courage is their only weapon in the oppressive world that has kept them silent, but when secrets are deadly, one misstep could cost them everything.
Ěý]]> 336 Madeline Martin 1335016287 Michael 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: Madeline Martin
name: Michael
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 223736238 The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Will in the World reveals the daring and subversive life of Christopher Marlowe—Shakespeare’s contemporary, inspiration, and rival.


In brutally repressive sixteenth-century England, artists had been frightened into dull conventionality; foreigners were suspect; popular entertainment largely consisted of coarse spectacles, animal fights, and hangings. Into this crude world came an ambitious cobbler’s son with an uncanny ear for Latin poetry—a torment for most schoolboys, yet for a few, a secret portal to beauty, visionary imagination, transgressive desire, and dangerous skepticism. What Christopher Marlowe found on the other side of that door, and what he did with it, brought about a spectacular explosion of English literature, language, and culture, enabling the success of his collaborator and rival, William Shakespeare.


With propulsive narrative flair and brilliant literary criticism, Stephen Greenblatt reconstructs the youthful involvement with the queen’s spy service that shaped Marlowe’s brief, troubling life and gave us his Tamburlaine and Faustus—dramatic masterpieces on power and its costs. And with detailed historical insight, Greenblatt explores how the people Marlowe knew, and the transformations they wrought, birthed the economic, scientific, and cultural power of the modern world—involving Faustian bargains with which we reckon still.]]> 352 Stephen Greenblatt 0393882276 Michael 0 to-read 0.0
author: Stephen Greenblatt
name: Michael
average rating: 0.0
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]]> 221254271 Edgar-winning author Eli Cranor throws a glorious Hail Mary in this series debut starring an FBI agent whose very first case lands her in a college football empire in Mississippi—where not everything goes according to the playbooks.

Compson, Mississippi, 2014: Newly-minted FBI Special Agent Rae Johnson knows a thing or two about the gridiron. She practically grew up on the football field, alongside her father, a legendary national-championship-winning college coach. Which is why she’s perfect for her first assignment out of to investigate illicit money flows in a booming football town in central Mississippi. White-collar crime.

Rae brings fresh knowledge to the sting, but her mission to bust the so-called bagmen—diehard fans who effect recruiting decisions and game outcomes through under-the-table cash bonuses to players—has been unsuccessful. Things get complicated when the star quarterback of the University of Central Mississippi team is flung off a roof to his death, a money-filled gym bag beside him. Rae isn’t there to investigate murder, it’s not in her jurisdiction—but try as she may to push it away, something’s going on in Compson, Mississippi. Something not quite right.

To get to the bottom of it, Rae must ingratiate herself with the people of Compson—the players, and gridiron girls, and coaches, and politicians, who comprise the complex social machinery of the small-town football empire. A heart-pounding noir thriller, Edgar-winning author Eli Cranor’s latest is an ambitious and well-researched dive into the crooked corners, the tenuous alliances, and the power-hungry sideliners of America’s most popular game.]]> 384 Eli Cranor 1641296976 Michael 0 to-read 4.67
author: Eli Cranor
name: Michael
average rating: 4.67
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]]> 58939763 322 Steve Weidenkopf 1683572491 Michael 0 to-read 4.56
author: Steve Weidenkopf
name: Michael
average rating: 4.56
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/15
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]]> 131177 Hangsaman is Miss Jackson's second novel. The story is a simple one but the overtones are immediately present. "Natalie Waite who was seventeen years old but who felt that she had been truly conscious only since she was about fifteen lived in an odd corner of a world of sound and sight, past the daily voices of her father and mother and their incomprehensible actions." In a few graphic pages, the family is before us—Arnold Waite, a writer, egotistical and embittered; his wife, the complaining martyr; Bud, the younger brother who has not yet felt the need to establish his independence; and Natalie, in the nightmare of being seventeen.

The Sunday afternoon cocktail party, to which Arnold Waite has invited his literary friends and neighbors, serves to etch in the details of this family's life, and to draw Natalie into the vortex. The story concentrates on the next few critical months in Natalie's life, away at college, where each experience reproduces on a larger scale the crucial failure of her emotional life at home. With a mounting tension rising from character and situation as well as the particular magic of which Miss Jackson is master, the novel proceeds inexorably to the stinging melodrama of its conclusion. The bitter cruelty of the passage from adolescence to womanhood, of a sensitive and lonely girl caught in a world not of her own devising, is a theme well suited to Miss Jackson's brilliant talent.]]> 191 Shirley Jackson 0445031174 Michael 0 to-read 3.78 1951
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Michael
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1951
rating: 0
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]]> 25074755 Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano has said that his many fictions are all variations of the same story. Pedigree, his memoir, is the theme.

In this rare glimpse into the life of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, the author takes up his pen to tell his personal story. He addresses his early years—shadowy times in postwar Paris that haunt his memory and have inspired his world-cherished body of fiction. In the spare, absorbing, and sometimes dreamlike prose that translator Mark Polizzotti captures unerringly, Modiano offers a memoir of his first twenty-one years. Termed one of his “finest books� by the Guardian, Pedigree is both a personal exploration and a luminous portrait of a world gone by.

Pedigree sheds light on the childhood and adolescence that Modiano explores in Suspended Sentences, Dora Bruder, and other novels. In this work he re-creates the louche, unstable, colorful world of his parents under the German Occupation; his childhood in a household of circus performers and gangsters; and his formative friendship with the writer Raymond Queneau. While acknowledging that memory is never assured, Modiano recalls with painful clarity the most haunting moments of his early life, such as the death of his ten-year-old brother. Pedigree, Modiano’s only memoir, is a gift to his readers, and a master key to the themes that have inspired his writing life.]]> 144 Patrick Modiano 0300215339 Michael 0 to-read 3.58 2005
author: Patrick Modiano
name: Michael
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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]]> 61455455
It’s 1973, the town of Baths, cozy middle-of-nowhere American heartland. Traveling musician Wegg rolls in, content to busk for a beat and be on his merry way once more. That is, until he meets Mr. Neighbor, the disarmingly sweet man made of cloth who offers him company and a place to stay. As the two grow closer, they click together just right, each harmonizing with the other's most secret self. Yet their growing romance is haunted by uncertainty and mystery...

There's the town itself, plagued by repeated, ritualistic murders by the elusive Baths Heartbreaker. Then there's Neighbor, whose cheerful demeanor never falters, but who disappears like clockwork every month. And Wegg, who lives as though he's on borrowed time―what exactly is he afraid will catch up to him?

A twisting graphic novel of love and deceit, all threaded together with lush psychedelia, folk horror, and a heaping helping of mirth. Turns out, sometimes the best way to conquer your past is to find a future.]]> 496 Yugo Limbo 1945509929 Michael 0 to-read 4.27 2022
author: Yugo Limbo
name: Michael
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/14
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]]> 209317897
Much of the present discourse about the pro-democracy Arab uprisings of 2011 paints a bleak picture of their defeat. But the truth is more complicated, and moments of struggle and inspiration still recur despite the overwhelming odds against the movements� success.

This collection of short comics documents the political and social unrest in the Middle East during the 2010s in such places as Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, and Bahrain. A collaboration between writer and journalist Yazan Al-Saadi and a lineup of stellar cartoonists from the region―including Tracy Chahwan, Ganzeer, Ghadi Ghosn, Omar Khouri, Sirène Moukheiber, Hicham Rahma, and Enas Satir―this graphic reportage serves as a witness to an era of counterrevolutionary resurgence in which entrenched powers clashed with the people’s struggle for self-determination.]]> 160 Yazan Al-Saadi 1637790783 Michael 0 to-read 4.55 2024
author: Yazan Al-Saadi
name: Michael
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/14
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]]> 32189660 Lars Walker 0988297671 Michael 0 to-read 4.50
author: Lars Walker
name: Michael
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/12
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]]> 40129114 424 Torgrim Titlestad 1718871449 Michael 0 to-read 3.50
author: Torgrim Titlestad
name: Michael
average rating: 3.50
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rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/12
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]]> 681385 320 Lars Walker 0671578154 Michael 0 to-read 3.43 1999
author: Lars Walker
name: Michael
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/12
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]]> 154476
“A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth,� Fussell writes in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind of sentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and human emotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows of war, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, and resentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature on World War II, The Boys� Crusade stands wholly apart. Fussell’s profoundly honest portrayal of these boy soldiers underscores their bravery even as it deepens our awareness of their experiences. This book is both a tribute to their noble service and a valuable lesson for future generations.]]> 184 Paul Fussell 0812974883 Michael 4 We don't have time to get into it here, but if you come across a more in-depth review, or deeply researched story about this please let me know.
It's a bit misleading at first. It's well-known that plenty of underage American teenagers falsified papers to join up to fight in WWII. This, however, is not the in-depth investigative book on that many history readers hunger for. So, there's some degree of bait-and-switch here. It worked, getting me to buy it with no regrets.
There's an obviously young man's face on the center of the cover on a landing craft, and the title served to make me think I'd finally found a copy of that elusive book about all the underage warriors in that colossal meat grinder of a war. However, what it is possibly the most honest public picture of war, in print, since the movie Saving Private Ryan first showed in theaters.
P. 95, Replacements and Infantry Morale finally addresses that nagging WWII youth movement directly. It was only touched in passages and paragraphs, previously.
Yes, I was suckered into buying the book, and most likely would have, anyway. And I would really like to hear the behind scenes story, here. I might learn some things.]]> 3.87 2003
author: Paul Fussell
name: Michael
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/09
date added: 2025/05/11
shelves:
review:
There's bound to be a very interesting story behind the publication of Paul Fussell's The Boys' Crusade.
We don't have time to get into it here, but if you come across a more in-depth review, or deeply researched story about this please let me know.
It's a bit misleading at first. It's well-known that plenty of underage American teenagers falsified papers to join up to fight in WWII. This, however, is not the in-depth investigative book on that many history readers hunger for. So, there's some degree of bait-and-switch here. It worked, getting me to buy it with no regrets.
There's an obviously young man's face on the center of the cover on a landing craft, and the title served to make me think I'd finally found a copy of that elusive book about all the underage warriors in that colossal meat grinder of a war. However, what it is possibly the most honest public picture of war, in print, since the movie Saving Private Ryan first showed in theaters.
P. 95, Replacements and Infantry Morale finally addresses that nagging WWII youth movement directly. It was only touched in passages and paragraphs, previously.
Yes, I was suckered into buying the book, and most likely would have, anyway. And I would really like to hear the behind scenes story, here. I might learn some things.
]]> 228098533 Wren in the Holly Library, there wasĚýThe Monster and the Last Blood Match―the enthralling beginning to a world of passion, power, and secrets. When a human ventures into the world of vampires, she discovers that not all is what it seems.

For Reyna Carpenter, giving up her body isn’t a choice―it’s survival.
In a world where humans are currency and vampires rule from the shadows, Reyna accepts a high-paying position among the wealthy and ruthless elite. Her new job: a live-in blood escort for the enigmatic and dangerously powerful Beckham Anderson. She expects cruelty. She expects hunger. She expects to become his next meal.

But Beckham won’t drink from her.

He keeps his distance, his unreadable gaze shadowed by something far more dangerous than just desire. As the nights pass, Reyna begins to sense it―an invisible war being waged around her, secrets that twist through the corridors of Visage, and whispers of something far more valuable than power.

Because Reyna isn’t just rare―she’s the key to something bigger than she ever imagined. And the reason Beckham refuses to taste her blood?

It might not just change them―it might destroy everything.]]> 368 K.A. Linde 1649379706 Michael 0 to-read 3.40 2018
author: K.A. Linde
name: Michael
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/09
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]]> 222376682 A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington.

In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor, drinking his nights away with friends at a gay bar. He’s entangled in a sexual relationship with a married man, and while he has built a chosen family in Japan, he is estranged from his family in Houston, particularly his mother, whose preference for the son’s oft-troubled homophobic brother, Chris, pushed him to leave home. Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, ten years since they’ve last seen each other, the mother arrives uninvited on his doorstep.

Separated only by the son’s cat, Taro, the two of them bristle against each other immediately. The mother, wrestling with memories of her youth in Jamaica and her own complicated brother, works to reconcile her good intentions with her missteps. The son struggles to forgive. But as life begins to steer them in unexpected directions� the mother to a tentative friendship with a local bistro owner, and the son to cautiously getting to know a new patron of the bar—the two of them begin to see each other more clearly. Sharing meals and conversations and an eventful trip to Nara, both mother and son try the best they can to define where “home� really is—and whether they can find it even in each other.

Written with understated humor and an open heart, moving through past and present and across Houston, Jamaica, and Japan, Bryan Washington’s Palaver is an intricate story of family, love, and the beauty of a life among others.]]> 336 Bryan Washington 0374609071 Michael 0 to-read 3.67
author: Bryan Washington
name: Michael
average rating: 3.67
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]]> 220165542
The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.]]> 112 Stephen Graham Jones 1250406021 Michael 0 to-read 3.43 2017
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Michael
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> 222376733 A gripping high-stakes thriller by three-time Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker ("A marvel...hits the high-water mark for crime fiction every time out." —Gregg Hurwitz)

Lew Gale, a former Marine sniper, now an Orange County California Sheriff’s detective, is assigned to track and shoot a mountain lion that has killed a man in Caspers Park, located in the rugged country east of Laguna Beach, California. The victim is Bennet Tarlow, a rich developer and man-about-town in upscale coastal Orange County.

The investigation takes an unexpected—and chilling—turn when Lew and his deputy sheriff arrive at the kill site in the Santa Ana mountains, only to discover that Bennet was dead before the lion got to him. And while Bennet might have been the first to die, he certainly will not be the last.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 336 T. Jefferson Parker 1250907918 Michael 0 to-read 5.00
author: T. Jefferson Parker
name: Michael
average rating: 5.00
book published:
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]]> 10099407
The exhibition � �Professions�, a series of portraits of ordinary and extraordinary people at work � brings Jed new levels of global fame. Yet his boiler is still broken, his ailing father flirts with oblivion and, worse still, he is contacted by one Inspector Jasselin, who requests his assistance in solving an unspeakable, atrocious and gruesome crime.

Art, money, fathers, sons, death, love and the transformation of France into a tourist paradise come together to create a daringly playful and original twist on the contemporary novel from a modern master of the form.]]> 291 Michel Houellebecq 0434021407 Michael 0 to-read 3.94 2010
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Michael
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/09
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]]> 222725795 Two women—separated by decades and continents, and united by a mysterious family heirloom—discover second chances at love in this sweeping novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives.

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams� one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.]]> 384 Beatriz Williams 0593724240 Michael 0 to-read 3.97 2024
author: Beatriz Williams
name: Michael
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 231250160
It’s hard to stay in the friend zone when the attraction is this hot�

Going into my senior year of university at war with a member of the British royal family wasn’t in my carefully laid plans. Sebastian Thorne might be the grandson of a princess, but it’ll take more than a royal pardon to get me to forgive him for pretending to be someone he’s not.
Ěý
But Sebastian is determined to be my friend. Even if it means signing up to a psych experiment just to get me to talk to him. Who knew a sincere apology and him saying my name in that posh English accent would make me weak in the knees?
Ěý
This year was supposed to be about my dissertation and graduate school. Only, Sebastian has thrown my ordered world off kilter. He makes me bolder, more confident. A braver version of me.
Ěý
Yet every lingering glance and stolen touch has me realizing one thing�
Ěý
I’m falling for my best friend.
Ěý
There’s just one problem. Sebastian has demons, ones that make him determined to keep me in the friend zone no matter the cost.
Ěý
And even when temptation sends his walls tumbling down, the beauty we’ve found might not survive against the will of powerful outside forces…]]> 440 Samantha Young 1915243351 Michael 0 to-read 5.00 2025
author: Samantha Young
name: Michael
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/09
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]]> 232704593 Where’s Dana? And why doesn’t anyone care?

Dana Broderick is a celebrity author—bold, glamorous, and always in the spotlight. But behind the scenes, it’s Courtney Hart who helps to keep Dana’s high-maintenance life on track. As Dana’s quiet, dependable best friend and assistant, Courtney has always been content staying in the background. Until Dana vanishes without a trace.

At first, Courtney assumes everyone will be frantic to find her. But to her shock, no one seems to care, not Dana’s family, not her staff, not even her agent. When a ransom demand finally surfaces, it's dismissed as nothing more than a publicity stunt.

As Courtney delves deeper into the mystery, she encounters people who seem to be deliberately leading her in circles. The more she uncovers, the more she realizes that the bigger concern may not be where Dana went but why no one wants her found.]]> 280 Karen McQuestion Michael 0 to-read 4.20
author: Karen McQuestion
name: Michael
average rating: 4.20
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]]> 30164694
Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was born in Liege, Belgium. He went to work as a reporter at the age of fifteen and in 1923 moved to Paris, where under various pseudonyms he became a highly successful and prolific author of pulp fiction while leading a dazzling social life. In the early 1930s, Simenon emerged as a writer under his own name, gaining renown for his detective stories featuring Inspector Maigret. He also began to write his psychological novels, or romans durs - books in which he displays a sympathetic awareness of the emotional and spiritual pain underlying the routines of daily life. Having written nearly two hundred books under his own name and become the best-selling author in the world, Simenon retired as a novelist in 1973, devoting himself instead to dictating memoirs that filled thousands of pages.]]> 251 Georges Simenon 0241258553 Michael 0 to-read 3.91 1938
author: Georges Simenon
name: Michael
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1938
rating: 0
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]]> 10068074
When it first appeared in English in 1964, British novelist and critic Brigid Brophy declared The Train to be “the novel his admirers had been expecting all along from Simenon.� Until The Train, she wrote, the dazzlingly prolific novelist had been “a master without a masterpiece.”]]> 144 Georges Simenon 1935554468 Michael 0 to-read 3.82 1961
author: Georges Simenon
name: Michael
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1961
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]]> 26156471 A spellbinding and darkly humorous coming-of-age story about an unusual boy whose family lives on the fringes of society and struggles to survive in a hostile world that shuns and fears them.

He was born an outsider, like the rest of his family. Poor yet resilient, he lives in the shadows with his Aunt Libby and Uncle Darren, folk who stubbornly make their way in a society that does not understand or want them. They are mongrels, mixedblood, neither this nor that. The boy at the center of Mongrels must decide if he belongs on the road with his aunt and uncle, or if he fits with the people on the other side of the tracks.

For ten years, he and his family have lived a life of late-night exits and close calls—always on the move across the South to stay one step ahead of the law. But the time is drawing near when Darren and Libby will know if their nephew is like them or not. And the close calls they’ve been running from for so long are catching up fast, now. Everything is about to change.

A compelling and fascinating journey, Mongrels alternates between past and present to create an unforgettable portrait of a boy trying to understand his family and his place in a complex and unforgiving world. A smart and innovative story—funny, bloody, raw, and real—told in a rhythmic voice full of heart, Mongrels is a deeply moving, sometimes grisly novel that illuminates the challenges and tender joys of a life beyond the ordinary in a bold and imaginative new way.]]> 302 Stephen Graham Jones 0062412698 Michael 0 to-read 3.90 2016
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Michael
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2016
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]]> 31189134
The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.]]> 131 Stephen Graham Jones Michael 0 to-read 3.76 2017
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Michael
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> 228742743 As Emily spills sacrifice into the soil, Struan’s voice grows wrong, twisted with something ancient and starving. By the time she realizes the truth, the trees are already reaching. Black Hollow doesn’t resurrect the dead. It feeds on them. And now, it wants her too.]]> Y.M. Miller Michael 0 to-read 4.42
author: Y.M. Miller
name: Michael
average rating: 4.42
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 228594061
Her tumor mocks her sex life, belittles every man she fucks, and worse—feeds on them. Every lover she takes rots from the inside out, their flesh liquefying as the monster inside her grows stronger.

Chemo won’t kill it. Surgery can’t cut it out.

Because Mara was never meant to survive. She was just a host.

And as the tumor finally crawls free, laughing in her face�

She realizes the real horror.

It left something behind.

And it’s still hungry.]]> 30 Y.M. Miller Michael 0 to-read 4.86
author: Y.M. Miller
name: Michael
average rating: 4.86
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> 62315742
National Geographic Explorer and best-selling author Dan Buettner has traveled the globe to uncover the best strategies for longevity, which he found in the blue places around the world where higher percentages of people enjoy remarkably long, full lives.

In The Blue Zones Secrets for Living Longer, Buettner returns to Sardinia, Italy; Ikaria, Greece; Okinawa, Japan; Costa Rica's Nicoya Peninsula; and Loma Linda, California to check in on the super-agers living in the blue zones and interprets the not-so-secret sauce of purpose, faith, community, down-time, natural movement, and plant-based eating that has powered as many as 10 additional years of healthy living in these regions. And Buettner reveals an all-new blue zone—the first man-made blue zone yet explored.

Throughout his two decades of research, Buettner has worked with some of National Geographic's top photographers—including David McLain and Gianluca Cola—to document the healthy habits of the world's longest living communities. In this informative collection, their work punctuates Buettner's lively text, offering a beautiful tour of the blue zones.]]> 288 Dan Buettner 1426223471 Michael 0 to-read 4.17
author: Dan Buettner
name: Michael
average rating: 4.17
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]]> 34736004
In this inspiring book, Buettner offers game-changing tools for setting up your life to be the happiest it can be. In these illuminating pages, you'll:
� Meet the world's Happiness All-Stars—inspiring individuals born in places around the world that nurture happiness as well as Americans boosting well-being in their own communities.
� Discover how the three strands of happiness—joy, purpose, and satisfaction—weave together in different ways to make Denmark, Costa Rica, and Singapore some of the world's happiest places.
� Use the Blue Zones Happiness Test to pinpoint areas in your life where change could bring more happiness—and then find practical steps to make those changes.
� Learn the Top 10 ways to create happiness, as revealed by a panel of the world's leading experts convened specifically for this project.
� Boost your own happiness by applying the lessons of Blue Zones Project communities—America's largest preventive health care project, which has already improved the health and happiness of millions of people across the United States.]]> Dan Buettner Michael 0 to-read 3.94
author: Dan Buettner
name: Michael
average rating: 3.94
book published:
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]]> 22822903 Ěý
With the audacious belief that the lifestyles of the world's Blue Zones could be adapted and replicated in towns across North America, Buettner launched the largest preventive health care project in the United States, The Blue Zones City Makeovers, which has impacted the health of millions of Americans since 2009. In The Blue Zones Solution , readers can be inspired by the specific stories of the people, foods, and routines of our healthy elders; understand the role community, family, and naturally healthy habits can play in improving our diet and health; and learn the exact foods—including the 50 superfoods of longevity and dozens of recipes adapted for Western tastes and markets—that offer delicious ways to eat your way to optimum health. Throughout the book are lifestyle recommendations, checklists, and stories to help you create your own personal Blue Zones solution. Readers will learn and apply the 80/20 rule, the plant slant diet, social aspects of eating that lead to weight loss and great health naturally, cultivating your "tribe" of friends and family, and your greater purpose as part of your daily routine.
Ěý
Filled with moving personal stories, delicious recipes, checklists, and useful tips that will transform any home into a miniature blue zone, The Blue Zones Solution is the ultimate blueprint for a healthy, happy life.]]> 320 Dan Buettner 1426211929 Michael 0 to-read 3.93 2014
author: Dan Buettner
name: Michael
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2014
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]]> 2669088 235 Cioma Schönhaus 0786720581 Michael 0 to-read 3.75 2004
author: Cioma Schönhaus
name: Michael
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2004
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 211004893
As they attempt to evade the boy's increasingly desperate father, horrifying incidents of butchery follow them. At first, Jess thinks she understands what they're up against, but she's about to learn there's more to these surreal and grisly events than she could've ever imagined.

And that when the wolf finally comes home, none will be spared.]]> 304 Nat Cassidy 125035434X Michael 0 to-read 4.37 2025
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Michael
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 220517405
Lucy’s brother, Mikey, is dead. Two years ago, when he left their small Eastern Colorado town and moved west to Denver, he’d intended to bring Lucy along. But Lucy has only just arrived, and too late. She arrives in search of Helen, a woman Mikey loved. But when Lucy moves in across the hall, she finds nothing is as she expected: the city is crumbling; the weather is tempestuous; a predator is on the loose; the old woman in the attic needs company; desire is being compressed into pills and distributed like candy; and, most distressing of all, she finds herself becoming obsessed with Helen, who is nothing like she expected―and who has no idea who Lucy really is.

As Helen’s and Lucy’s lives become more entwined, Lucy begins to realize the real reasons she came to Denver are deeper and stranger than a simple desire to understand what happened to her brother. As a storm builds and the city falls apart, Lucy finds herself drawn further to Helen, and farther from her brother, questioning what makes a family and if love can ever really be found.

There Are Reasons for This is a modern love song about the fallibility of love―in all its iterations―about the denial and tethering of desire, about the family we are given and the one we find for ourselves, and to what comes next, whatever that may be.]]> 240 Nini Berndt 1963108264 Michael 0 to-read 3.96
author: Nini Berndt
name: Michael
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> 12617
Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy� versus “unworthy� victims, “legitimizing� and “meaningless� Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.]]> 412 Edward S. Herman 0375714499 Michael 0 to-read 4.25 1988
author: Edward S. Herman
name: Michael
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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]]> 2794 The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover's estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness, and marriage combine to leave Oedipa in isolation on the threshold of revelation, awaiting the Crying of Lot 49.]]> 152 Thomas Pynchon 006091307X Michael 0 to-read 3.70 1966
author: Thomas Pynchon
name: Michael
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1966
rating: 0
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]]> 20949736 ĚýSebastian Bach

“Mark is the real deal. He may not play the guitar, but that camera is his guitar. He’s a rockstar.� � Gene Simmons

"Mark’s energy, his creativity, his drive, his positive attitude and his enthusiasm that make him one of the legends of rock photography. It’s why his work—both old and new—is still so in demand today. Mark Weiss inspires greatness in all he turns his camera lens on. But don’t take my word for it. Just look at the pictures in this book."Ěý–Ě�Dee Snider

“His pictures say as much as the music”Ěýâ€� Rob HalfordĚý

“He was one of the guys. He wasn’t one of the 18 photographers you’d work with that day.”Ěýâ€� Alice CooperĚý

“He had that instinct, to recognize our energy and use his technical talent to capture it.”Ěýâ€� Joe PerryĚý

Mark “Weissguyâ€� Weiss set an unmatched standard for rock photography. Starting out as a teenager by sneaking into concerts with a neighbor’s 35mm camera, he embarked on a legendary career that took him around the globe and onto some of the most memorable album and magazine covers in rock historyâ€� featuring the likes of Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, and Mötley CrĂĽe to Metallica, Guns Nâ€� Roses, Bon Jovi, and KISS, and so many more. With 700+ photos, brand new interviews, and stories from Mark himself, Decade that Rocked is a monument to the photography, friendships, and legacy of an artist that helped define one of rock’s most iconic eras.Ěý

This career-spanning collection features:Ěý
Ěý
A unique lens on the golden age of rock: Never-before or rarely seen photos of legends like Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Aerosmith, and Mötley CrĂĽe to Metallica, Guns Nâ€� Roses, Bon Jovi, and KISS, as well as countless others whose sound and image defined the era.Ěý Exclusive interviews: Ozzy Osbourne, Dee Snider, Nikki Sixx, Joe Perry, Rob Halford, and many more recall their memories of this era-defining decade.Ěý Untold Stories: Relive Mark’s unbelievable journey through rock history, from getting arrested for selling photos outside of Kiss concert to touring with legends like Van Halen, to photographing Bon Jovi’s infamous “Slippery When Wetâ€� shoot, shooting backstage at Live Aid with Black Sabbath, and so many more.Ěý Definitive Lens: Creem magazine readers ranked Mark Weiss as rock’s top photographer of the 80s. His work has appeared on some of the most iconic album and magazine covers of all time.Ěý
Ěý

Captured from the unique vantage point of a photographer who lived and breathed the �80s in all its grit and glory, The Decade That Rocked brings to life the no-holds-barred sounds and sights that changed the world of hard rock and metal forever.

Ěý
Ěý

Ěý

Ěý]]> 378 Mark Weiss 1608871444 Michael 0 to-read 4.75 2020
author: Mark Weiss
name: Michael
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> 18467680 160 Richard Bienstock 0760345473 Michael 0 to-read 4.00 2014
author: Richard Bienstock
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> 216247518 One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. A mesmerizing Mobius strip of a novel that asks who we are to the people we love.

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an elegant and accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, and young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In Audition, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day—partner, parent, creator, muse—and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us best.]]> 208 Katie Kitamura 059385232X Michael 0 to-read 3.46 2025
author: Katie Kitamura
name: Michael
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 220160382
It's a nerve-wracking ordeal for Sivon, who, given her uncanny ability to win every chess match, already suspects her soul isn’t normal. Turns out, she was right to worry. Sivon’s results stun not only her, but the entire world, making her the object of public scrutiny and anonymous threats.

Saddled with an infuriating and off-limits bodyguard, Sivon is thrust into a high-stakes game where souls are pawns and rules don’t exist. As deaths mount, Sivon must decipher friend from foe while protecting her heart against impossible odds. One wrong move could destroy the future lives of everyone Sivon loves, and she can’t let that happen, even if they’ll never love her back.]]> 496 Rebecca Danzenbaker 1665963700 Michael 0 to-read 4.20 2025
author: Rebecca Danzenbaker
name: Michael
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> 201741146
See what happens when twelve spectacular authors rise to the challenge to combine the worst natural disasters imaginable with something evil and nightmarish hidden at its core.

Curated and edited by Candace Nola, with a foreword by Patrick R. McDonough, Dark Disasters features stories by Kristopher Rufty, Tim Meyer, Caitlin Marceau, Lucas Mangum, Rebecca Rowland, Andre Duza, Brennan LaFaro, Judith Sonnet, Bridgett Nelson, Michael Moore, Tony Evans, and Kate Kingston.

"This anthology is every weatherman's nightmare and every reader's dream. Each story is its own forecast for countless sleepless nights." - Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters

"Dark Disasters is a book like no other. Twelve gripping tales of fire, flood, storm and other tragedies. Fear, destruction, and death abound in these stories of humanity under siege. Sometimes it's the storm that gets you. Sometimes it's the supernatural. And sometimes, the people you're locked inside with are the most terrifying of all..."-Jill Giradi, author of Hantu Macabre]]> Candace Nola Michael 0 to-read 5.00 2023
author: Candace Nola
name: Michael
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/28
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]]> 223163724
Includes the bonus story, Rebirth.]]> Candace Nola Michael 0 to-read 4.31
author: Candace Nola
name: Michael
average rating: 4.31
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]]> 57991307 Alternate cover edition can be found here

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?]]> 361 Richard Osman 1984880985 Michael 0 to-read 3.84 2020
author: Richard Osman
name: Michael
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
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]]> 221132650
When her life crashes and burns in a flurry of secrets and redacted information, Addie Atwater-Elwyn hightails it home to the tiny mountain town of Adelaide Springs, Colorado--back to living with her dad, back to working a low-paying job, back to a life of disappointments. Growing up, nobody expected their local girl to become a high-ranking CIA analyst, married to a gorgeous CIA operative. But that was Addie's life until she lost . . . well, everything.

Now she's trying to pick up the pieces of her broken life with a little help from old friends. But there's one old friend she knows her life is better without--Wesley Hobbes, her childhood sweetheart who left her standing at the altar when they were eighteen years old. Truth be told, Addie would be perfectly content never seeing Wes's stupid face ever again--which makes it very inconvenient that he's now a beloved senator and presidential frontrunner, his face everywhere she looks. But that has nothing to do with Addie personally. He might make history, but in her book, he is history.

So, when the unwelcome Wes appears back in their hometown, no one rolls out the red carpet--not Addie and not an entire town that was forced to pick sides (and unanimously chose Addie) decades ago. Senator Hobbes certainly won't win the popular vote in Adelaide Springs.

Wes, meanwhile, is sitting on a few secrets of his own, including the political scoop of the decade: he'd seriously rather gouge his eyes out than spend another minute in politics, much less ever go anywhere near the White House. Addie knows there has to be more to the story, and her curiosity is clouding her judgment. You can take the girl out of the CIA, but it's not so easy to shake the CIA out of the girl. Of course, it's not just curiosity (and the acknowledgement that his face isn't so stupid after all) that's been reawakened inside her. But after more than two decades, it's too late. Wes and Addie already had their chance. Right?]]> 320 Bethany Turner 1400345898 Michael 0 to-read 3.52 2025
author: Bethany Turner
name: Michael
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
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]]> 63882440
IRA HAYES tells the story of Ira Hamilton Hayes from the perspective of a Native American combat veteran of the Vietnam generation. Hayes, along with five other Marines, was captured in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photograph of raising the stars and stripes on Mount Suribachi during the battle for the Japanese Island of Iwo Jima. The photograph was the inspiration and model for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington.Ěý

Between the time he helped raise that flag and his death—and beyond—he was the subject of more newspaper columns than any other Native person. He was hailed as a hero and maligned as a chronic alcoholic unable to take care of himself. IRA HAYES explores these fluctuating views of Ira Hayes. It reveals that they were primarily the product of American misconceptions about Native people, the nature of combat, and even alcoholism. Like most surviving veterans of combat, Ira did not think of himself as a heroic figure. There can be no doubt that Ira suffered from PTSD, which is a compound of survivor’s guilt, the shock of seeing death, especially of one’s friends, and the isolation brought on by feeling that no one could understand what he had been through. Ira’s life has been a subject of two motion pictures and a television drama. All these dramas sympathize with him, but ultimately fail to see his binge drinking as his way of temporarily escaping the melancholy, the rage he felt, his sense of betrayal, and the sheer boredom of peacetime.Ěý

IRA HAYES breaks apart the complexities of Ira’s short life in honor of all Native veterans who have been to war in the service of the United States. This is equally their story.]]> 320 Tom Holm 1538709503 Michael 5 The retired professor from the University of Arizona thoroughly showed his training for this book, dating to his childhood with his family on the Oklahoma Cherokee Reservation. Holm demonstrated a strong ability to research the various related newspaper articles, get what interviews he could, and write it all very well. These pages, words, paragraphs didn't want to let me go.
Fascinating hardly covers it. If you have any interest in this Pima-Marine warrior, Native Americans, and all the forces around them: read the book. Holm is a former Vietnam Marine, and that experience added further depth to this book.
Tony Curtis and Adam Beach played Ira Hayes in movie versions, and Johnny Cash's The Ballad of Ira Hayes caught the attention of young people, including me at the time, to feed an interest in learning about this man. Hayes was also one of the Marines helping to raise the flag atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima in WWII. He is the last one on the left, with empty hands that helped push the flag, and its pole, skyward. There was a lot of controversy in correctly naming those six for the famous photograph, and Hayes was right in the thick of all of that, too. That Rosenthal Associated Press photo is permanently enshrined in the Marines Memorial statue in Washington, D.C.
Sorry, but there's too many events, and not enough time or space here to nail it all down. You should seek out the book if any curiosity has a grip on you.
]]> 3.91
author: Tom Holm
name: Michael
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves:
review:
A simple review does Author Tom Holm's Ira Hayes no justice.
The retired professor from the University of Arizona thoroughly showed his training for this book, dating to his childhood with his family on the Oklahoma Cherokee Reservation. Holm demonstrated a strong ability to research the various related newspaper articles, get what interviews he could, and write it all very well. These pages, words, paragraphs didn't want to let me go.
Fascinating hardly covers it. If you have any interest in this Pima-Marine warrior, Native Americans, and all the forces around them: read the book. Holm is a former Vietnam Marine, and that experience added further depth to this book.
Tony Curtis and Adam Beach played Ira Hayes in movie versions, and Johnny Cash's The Ballad of Ira Hayes caught the attention of young people, including me at the time, to feed an interest in learning about this man. Hayes was also one of the Marines helping to raise the flag atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima in WWII. He is the last one on the left, with empty hands that helped push the flag, and its pole, skyward. There was a lot of controversy in correctly naming those six for the famous photograph, and Hayes was right in the thick of all of that, too. That Rosenthal Associated Press photo is permanently enshrined in the Marines Memorial statue in Washington, D.C.
Sorry, but there's too many events, and not enough time or space here to nail it all down. You should seek out the book if any curiosity has a grip on you.

]]> 222376732 In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn Street. Now he’s a journalist, working from behind bars, trying to make sense of it all.

The Tragedy of True Crime is a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of 28 years to life but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cell block and the prison yard, Lennon challenges our obsession with true crime by telling the full life stories of men now serving time for the lives they took.

These men have completely different backgrounds � Robert Chambers, a preppy Manhattanite turned true crime celebrity; Milton E. Jones, a seventeen-year-old coaxed from burglary into something far darker; and Michael Shane Hale, a gay man caught in a crime of passion � and all are searching to find meaning and redemption behind bars. Lennon’s reporting is intertwined with his own story, from a young man seduced by the infamous gangster culture of New York City to a celebrated prison journalist. The same desire echoes throughout the lives of these four to become more than murderers.

A first-of-its-kind book of immersive prison journalism, The Tragedy of True Crime poses fundamental questions about the stories we tell and who gets to tell them. What essential truth do we lose when we don’t consider all that comes before an act of unthinkable violence? And what happens to the convicted after the cell gate locks?]]> 368 John J. Lennon 1250858240 Michael 0 to-read 4.75
author: John J. Lennon
name: Michael
average rating: 4.75
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]]> 222631674 From bestselling author John Boyne, a gripping and profound exploration of guilt, blame, trauma, and the human capacity for redemption.

In The Elements, acclaimed Irish novelist John Boyne has created an epic saga that weaves together four interconnected narratives, each representing a different perspective on the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator, and the victim.

The narrative follows a mother on the run from her past, a young soccer star facing a trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and a father on a transformative journey with his son. Each is somehow connected to the next, and as the story unfolds, their lives intersect in unimaginable ways.

Boyne’s most ambitious work yet, The Elements is both an engrossing drama and a moving investigation of why and how we allow crime to occur. With masterful, spellbinding prose, he navigates this complex subject with extraordinary empathy and unflinching honesty. The story resonates on a deeply emotional level, challenging readers to confront their own conceptions of guilt and innocence at every step. Amid the wildly engrossing storytelling, the book ultimately What would you do when faced with the unthinkable?]]> 496 John Boyne 1250410363 Michael 0 to-read 4.74 2025
author: John Boyne
name: Michael
average rating: 4.74
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> 33828876 Ěý
From behind a computer screen, Autumn watches Grace's every memory, from birthdays to holidays to bedtime snuggles. But what starts as an innocent fascination spirals into an addictive obsession met with a screeching halt the day the McMullen family closes their Instaface account without so much as a warning.Ěý
Ěý
Frantic and desperate to reconnect with her daughter, Autumn applies for a nanny position with the McMullens, manipulating herself into Grace's life under false pretenses. And it's only then that Autumn discovers pictures lie, the perfect family doesn't exist, and beautiful people? They have the ugliest secrets.]]> 338 Minka Kent Michael 0 to-read 3.95 2016
author: Minka Kent
name: Michael
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18144590 The Alchemist has become a modern classic, selling millions of copies around the world and transforming the lives of countless readers across generations.

Paulo Coelho's masterpiece tells the mystical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure. His quest will lead him to riches far different—and far more satisfying—than he ever imagined. Santiago's journey teaches us about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, recognizing opportunity and learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, most importantly, following our dreams.]]> 182 Paulo Coelho 0062315005 Michael 0 to-read 4.01 1988
author: Paulo Coelho
name: Michael
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12112009 348 Stan Steiner Michael 0 to-read 3.79 1968
author: Stan Steiner
name: Michael
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 230930652 Miracles do happen, but at what cost?

Lucas Walker's sudden recovery from a terminal illness leaves everyone in awe, except for his girlfriend Emma, who never gave up hope. As they bask in the joy of his miraculous healing, Emma notices something off about Lucas. His speech is slow, and he struggles to remember important events. Even his own dog doesn't seem to recognize him. Has the Lucas she loved changed? And could the strange light that fell into his backyard on the night of his recovery be the cause?

Determined to uncover the truth, Emma and Lucas embark on a road trip, but their journey takes a dangerous turn when they are targeted by unknown enemies. As they encounter unexpected allies and face dangerous obstacles, Emma and Lucas find themselves in a race against time to set things right.

With a perfect blend of suspense and emotion, From a Distant Star will keep readers on the edge of their seats.]]> 290 Karen McQuestion Michael 0 to-read 4.00 2015
author: Karen McQuestion
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 123246732
Debbie has been terrified of lakes ever since her son tragically drowned in one. So when her husband and some friends decide to take a lakeside vacation, Debbie is reluctant to go. But hoping that the holiday will help cure her fear, she eventually agrees to join them.

Things start to go wrong very quickly. A local fisherman seems to be stalking them. And then George, a member of their group, goes missing. His body is discovered a day later, his injuries suggesting a struggle.

All the while, Debbie is being haunted by the sinister presence of the lake. More than anything, she wants to leave this dark foreboding place, but the group has been told to stay in place while George’s death is being investigated.

Which means Debbie has only one choice. If she wants to escape the terror of the lake, she must first solve the mystery of George's murder.

What she discovers will not only shock her to the core, it will also put her own life in grave danger. Can she escape in time to expose the terrifying truth?]]> 242 Kevin Lynch 1837561001 Michael 0 to-read 3.88 2023
author: Kevin Lynch
name: Michael
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 36505403 An Alabama boy’s innocence is shaken by murder and madness in the 1960s South in this novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of Swan Song.

It’s 1964 in idyllic Zephyr, Alabama. People either work for the paper mill up the Tecumseh River, or for the local dairy. It’s a simple life, but it stirs the impressionable imagination of twelve-year-old aspiring writer Cory Mackenson. He’s certain he’s sensed spirits whispering in the churchyard. He’s heard of the weird bootleggers who lurk in the dark outside of town. He’s seen a flood leave Main Street crawling with snakes. Cory thrills to all of it as only a young boy can.
Ěý
Then one morning, while accompanying his father on his milk route, he sees a car careen off the road and slowly sink into fathomless Saxon’s Lake. His father dives into the icy water to rescue the driver, and finds a beaten corpse, naked and handcuffed to the steering wheel—a copper wire tightened around the stranger’s neck. In time, the townsfolk seem to forget all about the unsolved murder. But Cory and his father can’t.
Ěý
Their search for the truth is a journey into a world where innocence and evil collide. What lies before them is the stuff of fear and awe, magic and madness, fantasy and reality. As Cory wades into the deep end of Zephyr and all its mysteries, he’ll discover that while the pleasures of childish things fade away, growing up can be a strange and beautiful ride.
Ěý
“Strongly echoing the childhood-elegies of King and Bradbury, and every bit their equal,� Boy’s Life, a winner of both the Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Awards, represents a brilliant blend of mystery and rich atmosphere, the finest work of one of today’s most accomplished writers (Kirkus Reviews).]]> 625 Robert McCammon Michael 0 to-read 4.47 1991
author: Robert McCammon
name: Michael
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 225378582 EXPERIENCE A TAPESTRY OF TERROR

From lengths of muscle and vein, ground bones, endless ropes of sinew...it is with our bodies folk horror is woven.

Edited by Bram Stoker Award-nominee Kristy Park Kulski, this stunning anthology features contributions from some of the most acclaimed authors of the Asian Diaspora.

With Stories and Poetry By

Ai Jiang, Nadia Bulkin, Christina Sng, Rena Mason, Lee Murray, J.A.W. McCarthy, Geneve Flynn, Bryan Thao Worra, Ayida Shonibar, Yi Izzy Yu, Angela Yuriko Smith, Kanishk Tantia, Robert Nazar Arjoyan, Saba Syed Razvi, Christopher Hann, Audrey Zhou, Seoung Kim, Rowan Cardosa, Gabriela Lee, Shawna Yang Ryan, Priya Sridhar, Jess Cho, and Saheli Khastagir

And a Foreword by Monika Kim.]]> 361 Kristy Park Kulski Michael 0 to-read 4.40
author: Kristy Park Kulski
name: Michael
average rating: 4.40
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58730549 320 Wensley Clarkson 1787396177 Michael 0 to-read 5.00
author: Wensley Clarkson
name: Michael
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 31137840 290 Wensley Clarkson 178418487X Michael 0 to-read 3.67
author: Wensley Clarkson
name: Michael
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 643161 289 Wensley Clarkson 1857821971 Michael 0 to-read 4.00 1998
author: Wensley Clarkson
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 1499829 288 Wensley Clarkson 1844541703 Michael 0 to-read 3.61 2005
author: Wensley Clarkson
name: Michael
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 22635858 The Bookseller follows a woman in the 1960s who must reconcile her reality with the tantalizing alternate world of her dreams

Nothing is as permanent as it appears . . .

Denver, 1962: Kitty Miller has come to terms with her unconventional single life. She loves the bookshop she runs with her best friend, Frieda, and enjoys complete control over her day-to-day existence. She can come and go as she pleases, answering to no one. There was a man once, a doctor named Kevin, but it didn’t quite work out the way Kitty had hoped.

Then the dreams begin.

Denver, 1963: Katharyn Andersson is married to Lars, the love of her life. They have beautiful children, an elegant home, and good friends. It's everything Kitty Miller once believed she wanted—but it only exists when she sleeps.

Convinced that these dreams are simply due to her overactive imagination, Kitty enjoys her nighttime forays into this alternate world. But with each visit, the more irresistibly real Katharyn’s life becomes. Can she choose which life she wants? If so, what is the cost of staying Kitty, or becoming Katharyn?

As the lines between her worlds begin to blur, Kitty must figure out what is real and what is imagined. And how do we know where that boundary lies in our own lives?]]> 339 Cynthia Swanson 0062333003 Michael 0 to-read 3.62 2015
author: Cynthia Swanson
name: Michael
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 236809
NOTE: Blumberg's "Commodore Perry in the land of the Shogun" is a companion volume.]]> 80 Rhoda Blumberg 068817485X Michael 5
I think I’ll hand this to my daughter. She turns 8 next month, but it’s probably a YA book. I think this doesn’t shoot over her head.

Blumberg connects with easily understood content and a collection of good, and stunning artwork done by this non-fiction’s main character, Majiro Nakahama. Other Japanese and American artists contributed, too.

His true and incredible journey from poor fisherman, as a boy, to eventual samurai and college English professor is the stuff of fantasies, but his story is known throughout Japan. It deserves much more attention in the U.S., and other countries.

Majiro spent several years in New England thanks to his good fortune to have been rescued, with his boat mates, by a whaler. He went to school, learned English, and things went his way.

This is not a long book. It’s under 100 pages, but well worth your time, especially if this is all new to you. There are other books about Majiro out there, too. Blumberg professionally lists her sources.

Similar to Majiro’s real storybook-type life, it was just in the right place at the right time for me.]]> 3.94 2001
author: Rhoda Blumberg
name: Michael
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:
Rhoda Blumberg’s Shipwrecked! was found for 50 cents at the local library here in Metter, Georgia. I’m glad I had the dimes.

I think I’ll hand this to my daughter. She turns 8 next month, but it’s probably a YA book. I think this doesn’t shoot over her head.

Blumberg connects with easily understood content and a collection of good, and stunning artwork done by this non-fiction’s main character, Majiro Nakahama. Other Japanese and American artists contributed, too.

His true and incredible journey from poor fisherman, as a boy, to eventual samurai and college English professor is the stuff of fantasies, but his story is known throughout Japan. It deserves much more attention in the U.S., and other countries.

Majiro spent several years in New England thanks to his good fortune to have been rescued, with his boat mates, by a whaler. He went to school, learned English, and things went his way.

This is not a long book. It’s under 100 pages, but well worth your time, especially if this is all new to you. There are other books about Majiro out there, too. Blumberg professionally lists her sources.

Similar to Majiro’s real storybook-type life, it was just in the right place at the right time for me.
]]> 1207983 304 Roscoe C. Blunt Jr. 0306810905 Michael 5 i-read-it I knew of these battles, and soldiering processes Blunt wrote so well about. My first stepfather, who became a psychiatrist after the war. Over time I have learned why, and Foot Soldier marched right into my mind here. My stepfather, and Author Roscoe "Rockie" Blunt both served in the 84th Division in Europe. My stepfather was a medic, and unnamed medics were noted four times. I had to wonder if that stepdad was, at least, one of them.
They were also both musicians. From reading, I doubt if they were ever in the same foxhole for even a brief drum and trumpet stanza talk. So many things are probed in my mind here.
These battles The "Railsplitters" had against the SS, and other atrocity-committing Nazis were real. So is PTSD. I grew up with it under the same roof. Each day I have enhanced understanding of what they went through over there. We hear about the murder of the Jews by the thousands, but not the systematic execution of unarmed Belgian civilians directly outside of small rural churches, and there were many that the 84th discovered in their grizzly job. They also helped liberate two slave and concentration camps. I had heard that Bob was so enraged when in one of them that he picked up a gun and shot a female guard who was machine-gunning prisoners.
I am so glad that I never had to go to war.
Unfortunately, I doubt that Bob ever mentally survived that war. Physically, he only lost the top of a finger to a grenade that disfigured some friends.
I will verify that Blunt's Foot Soldier gets as close to the real thing as a print book can.
Also, his description of the 84th's Atlantic crossing was superb, and easily the best I have ever read.
My dates read here is a mere estimate. I was spinning off into my imagination of the European Theater of Operations, Bob, and the 84th every time I thought about what I would say in my review.






]]> 3.97 2000
author: Roscoe C. Blunt Jr.
name: Michael
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: i-read-it
review:
This one literally hit home, and very hard. I will be sorting this one out for a very long time.
I knew of these battles, and soldiering processes Blunt wrote so well about. My first stepfather, who became a psychiatrist after the war. Over time I have learned why, and Foot Soldier marched right into my mind here. My stepfather, and Author Roscoe "Rockie" Blunt both served in the 84th Division in Europe. My stepfather was a medic, and unnamed medics were noted four times. I had to wonder if that stepdad was, at least, one of them.
They were also both musicians. From reading, I doubt if they were ever in the same foxhole for even a brief drum and trumpet stanza talk. So many things are probed in my mind here.
These battles The "Railsplitters" had against the SS, and other atrocity-committing Nazis were real. So is PTSD. I grew up with it under the same roof. Each day I have enhanced understanding of what they went through over there. We hear about the murder of the Jews by the thousands, but not the systematic execution of unarmed Belgian civilians directly outside of small rural churches, and there were many that the 84th discovered in their grizzly job. They also helped liberate two slave and concentration camps. I had heard that Bob was so enraged when in one of them that he picked up a gun and shot a female guard who was machine-gunning prisoners.
I am so glad that I never had to go to war.
Unfortunately, I doubt that Bob ever mentally survived that war. Physically, he only lost the top of a finger to a grenade that disfigured some friends.
I will verify that Blunt's Foot Soldier gets as close to the real thing as a print book can.
Also, his description of the 84th's Atlantic crossing was superb, and easily the best I have ever read.
My dates read here is a mere estimate. I was spinning off into my imagination of the European Theater of Operations, Bob, and the 84th every time I thought about what I would say in my review.







]]> 208678400 352 David Leaf 1915841313 Michael 0 to-read 4.00
author: David Leaf
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> 60822013 The Beach Boys and the California Myth, this groundbreaking study was both the first full-length book on the band and the first to recognize Brian Wilson as one of the most significant and influential artists of the twentieth century. It takes an intimate look at Wilson's rollercoaster of a life and career, told through the eyes of those who were there, including Brian's mother, his best friends and many of his collaborators, such as Tony Asher and Van Dyke Parks - who worked with him on the legendary productions Pet Sounds and SMiLE.

Extensively updated to also cover the last four decades of Brian's career, this indispensable book features unique contributions by Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Barry Gibb, Jimmy Webb, and Melinda Wilson.]]> 469 David Leaf 1913172759 Michael 0 to-read 3.97
author: David Leaf
name: Michael
average rating: 3.97
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 217388182 A time-traveling, end-of-the-world police procedural, Extremity is True Detective if written by Philip K. Dick.

When once-renowned police detective Julia Torgrimsen is brought out of forced retirement to investigate the murder of Bruno Donaldson, a billionaire she worked with whilst undercover, she doesn't expect to find two bodies. Both are Bruno--identical down to the fingerprints--and both have been shot.

As the investigation sucks her back into the macabre world of London's rich elite, she finds herself on the hunt for a mysterious assassin who has been taking out the wealthy one by one. But when she finally catches up with her quarry, she unveils an entire world of secrets: impossible documents about future stock market crashes, photographs of dead clones, and a clandestine time-travelling conspiracy so insidious it might just mean the extinction of the entire human race.

If Julia is to have any chance of preventing this terrible future, she'll have to revisit her own past, the terrible choices she made undercover, and the brutal act that destroyed her once legendary career.]]> 176 Nicholas Binge 1250373840 Michael 0 to-read 4.00 2025
author: Nicholas Binge
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 52494467
As her obsession with the Professor grows, she’s plunged into an otherworldly chess game of linguistics and etymology. But the deeper she falls into his academic labyrinth, the more she begins to realise that someone, or something, is hunting them both.

Perfect for fans of Ted Chiang, Susanna Clarke and Sylvain Neuvel, Professor Everywhere is a sci-fi mystery that explores the liminal spaces between language and memory, and the dangers of making heroes out of people who are only human.]]> 282 Nicholas Binge 9888491849 Michael 0 to-read 3.87 2020
author: Nicholas Binge
name: Michael
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 59954774 A 2020 Shamus Award finalist
Short Story
Saulkrasti, Latvia
Crime, Suspense
Originally published in the September/October 2019 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Cover illustration by Christoffer Petersen]]> 25 William Burton McCormick Michael 0 to-read 4.00
author: William Burton McCormick
name: Michael
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
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]]> 220239019 A poignant, sharp-eyed, and bitterly funny tale of a family struggling to stay together in a country that's rapidly coming apart, told through the eyes of their wondrous ten-year-old daughter, by the bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Our Country Friends

"In its swirls of emotion, its humor and its pathos, the unsparing humanity of its vision, Vera, or Faith is like some fabulous, hitherto-unknown creature that’s been let out of its bottle and set free. It begins to seem that there’s nothing Gary Shteyngart can’t do."—Michael Cunningham

The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love each other deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of twenty-first-century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage give him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.

Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.

Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and tender eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Vera, or Faith demonstrates why Shteyngart is, in the words of The New York Times, "one of his generation's most exhilarating writers."]]> 256 Gary Shteyngart 0593595092 Michael 0 to-read 4.48 2025
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Michael
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/14
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]]> 219301718 A spellbinding novel of literary and psychological suspense about the dark secrets that surface after the shocking disappearance of a charismatic, mercurial teacher at an elite boarding school—by the legendary author 'who is surely on any shortlist of America’s greatest living writers' (New York Times Magazine)

'Eerie, shocking, provoking, and beautifully written, Fox is yet further proof Oates is one of the greatest writers among us today' Gillian Flynn

Who is Francis Fox? A charming English teacher new to the idyllic Langhorne Academy, Fox beguiles many of his students, their parents, and his colleagues at the elite boarding school, while leaving others wondering where he came from and why his biography is so enigmatic. When two brothers discover Fox’s car half-submerged in a pond in a local nature preserve and parts of an unidentified body strewn about the nearby woods, the entire community, including Detective Horace Zwender and his deputy, begins to ask disturbing questions about Francis Fox and who he might really be.

A hypnotic, galloping tale of crime and complicity, revenge and restitution, victim vs. predator, Joyce Carol Oates’s Fox illuminates the darkest corners of the human psyche while asking profound moral questions about justice and the response evil demands. A character as magnetically diabolical as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley and Vladimir Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, Francis Fox enchants and manipulates nearly everyone around him, until at last he meets someone he can’t outfox. Written in Oates’s trademark intimate, sweeping style, and interweaving multiple points of view, Fox is a triumph of craftsmanship and artistry, a novel as profound as it is propulsive, as moving as it is full of mystery.]]> 672 Joyce Carol Oates 0593978080 Michael 0 to-read 4.10 2025
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Michael
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/14
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]]> 218372405 A dark Southern tale of desperate souls who've wound up on the road of poor choices, a messianic child with untold powers, and those out hunting her for their own reward, all drawn together by Michael Farris Smith's trademark mournful, spirit-gnawing prose.

An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, one young and one old, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose. The two men have a job to do. They are hunting something precious but have only been told: you’ll know it when you see it. When they arrive at the place, an abandoned church cellar in the burned-out countryside, they find an answer they never could have predicted. Now, the job feels dubious, one that’ll surely bring them to ruin. Yet if they’re to go against orders, no step can be undone, and nothing can be taken back.

In spare, Beckett-like prose, Lay Your Armor Down reduces the epic to its most elemental. It charts the course of several broken people, all outrunning danger’s dark fingers, and all brought together for one last chance at redemption.]]> 272 Michael Farris Smith 031657337X Michael 0 to-read 4.50
author: Michael Farris Smith
name: Michael
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> 217927679 The hard-boiled world of Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s iconic private eye, comes to vivid life in this brilliant graphic novel adaptation of the classic noir tale.

In 1940s Los Angeles, a sour-faced millionaire hires Philip Marlowe, a hard-boiled, harder-drinking detective, to scare off a suspected gold digger who has got her claws into his even wealthier stepson. Marlowe takes the case but quickly discovers that Harriett Huntress isn’t just after she’s playing a long, cold game of revenge…ĚýĚ�

Marlowe forms an alliance with George, the client's chauffeur-cum-bodyguard-cum-fixer. George is a black, Dartmouth educated veteran with a sniper’s skills and his own agenda, and the two uneasy allies find themselves on the wrong end of a brace of hired killers and an enigmatic casino boss. . . It rapidly becomes clear that Marlowe, sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, is just asking for trouble. But that’s the thing. Trouble is his business.]]> 128 Raymond Chandler 0553387596 Michael 0 to-read 3.31
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Michael
average rating: 3.31
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 59058228

Reviews “If you love a suspenseful story, told with great skill, then you’re definitely going to want to read this one.� Steve Berry, New York Times and #1 Internationally Bestselling Author of THE AMBER ROOM and THE ROMANOV PROPHECY “KGB BANKER is the espionage thriller at its finest. Timely and suspenseful, McCormick and Christmas use their wealth of experience in Eastern Europe to craft a pulse-pounding tale of spies, assassins and financial corruption ripped straight from today’s headlines. Santa Ezeriņa may be the best action heroine in years. A must read,. Destined to be a bestseller.� Robert Dugoni. New York Times Bestselling author of THE EIGHTH SISTER and THE LAST AGENT
"Dark crimes, cool twists, and an even cooler reporter who just can't resist danger." -Antony Johnston, New York Times Bestselling Writer and Creator of ATOMIC BLONDE
"KGB Banker weaves a complex web of deception and double-dealing. William Burton McCormick's and John Christmas's sterling pairing manages to achieve a delicate balance between financial thriller in the vein of Christopher Reich or Joe Finder and all-out chase novel reminiscent of David Morrell at his best. The notion of an American working at a corruption-riddled Russian bank that's part of a plan to reclaim Soviet hegemony is pure literary magic. Not to be missed." Jon Land, USA Today Bestselling Author of the MURDER, SHE WROTE and CAITLIN STRONG novels
"A deftly written thriller with an insider’s view into Eastern Europe. This book lands a death grip on the reader from the first paragraph that doesn’t ease up until the last man has fallen. McCormick and Christmas open doors to the world of international banking and political intrigue, with a cast of characters so real you’ll swear you’ve met them and a setting that comes to life. This just might be the international thriller of the year! A definite must read!" Chris Goff, Author of DARK WATERS and RED SKY
“From exciting start to finish, KGB Banker delivers high suspense, thrilling action, and political intrigue in a fascinating tale of financial corruption and Russia’s tightening grip on the Baltic republics. Highly recommended.� V.S. Kemanis, Award-winning Author of YOUR SELECTED STORIES and the legal thriller SEVEN SHADOWS "KGB Banker is a terrific thriller, set in the world of finance, and with fast action and great plot twists." Sarah Rayne, Author of the PHINEAS FOX series]]> 316 William Burton McCormick Michael 0 to-read 4.19
author: William Burton McCormick
name: Michael
average rating: 4.19
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> 221444992 578 William Burton McCormick 1685127908 Michael 0 to-read 0.0
author: William Burton McCormick
name: Michael
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> 59344004
One family, the Karadopoulinas, run a boarding house. Sisters Tasia and Eleni feel certain the killer is a scarred, shambling Londoner who took lodging with them one night during a thunderstorm. Furtive and threatening, Henry Humble, stalks Odessa’s labyrinth of interlocking courtyards and foggy docks at night, armed with weapons and skeleton keys.

As the body count rises, so do the questions...
Who is the mysterious figure haunting the catacombs below the streets of Odessa?
Why won’t Eleni’s police constable sweetheart investigate?
Who will be the next to die?

A Victorian-style murder mystery with elements of horror, adventure, and Hitchcockian black humor. "A Stranger From the Storm" by William Burton McCormick is a novella published by Mannison Press, LLC.]]> 110 William Burton McCormick Michael 0 to-read 4.39
author: William Burton McCormick
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]]> 13415999 Lenin’s Harem is a story of nationhood, brotherhood, and love throughout the most turbulent years of the twentieth century.]]> 276 William Burton McCormick 190848344X Michael 0 to-read 3.89 2012
author: William Burton McCormick
name: Michael
average rating: 3.89
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]]> 24960132 378 John Anthony Miller Michael 0 to-read 4.31
author: John Anthony Miller
name: Michael
average rating: 4.31
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date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> 117310 The Norton Shakespeare, Based on the Oxford Edition invites readers to rediscover Shakespeare—the working man of the theater, not the universal bard-and to rediscover his plays as scripts to be performed, not works to be immortalized. Combining the freshly edited texts of the Oxford Edition with lively introductions by Stephen Greenblatt and his co-editors, glossaries and annotations, and an elegant single-column page (that of the Norton Anthologies), this edition of Shakespeare invites contemporary readers to see and read Shakespeare afresh. Greenblatt's full introduction creates a window into Shakespeare world-the culture, demographics, commerce, politics, and religion of early-modern England—Shakespeare's family background and professional life, the Elizabethan industries of theater and printing, and the subsequent centuries of Shakespeare textual editing.

]]> 1068 Stephen Greenblatt 0393976718 Michael 0 to-read 4.45 1621
author: Stephen Greenblatt
name: Michael
average rating: 4.45
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]]> 17740625 384 Roger Bennett 0761169199 Michael 0 to-read 3.85 2013
author: Roger Bennett
name: Michael
average rating: 3.85
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]]> 228871 Seriously Funny Writing By Today's Most Celebrated AuthorsAt last, a premier showcase of fifty-four great literary humorists and masters of the journalistic jab, the social spoof, the parodic proof, the satire, the tirade, and the send-up. Here are those "last laughs" and "wit's end" pieces everyone turns to first but then loses in back issues of favorite magazines and newspapers, including:




Merrill Markoeon Networking with angels
Garry Trudeau on re-retranslating Madonna
David Sedaris on reviewing school Christmas Plays
John Updike on cross-dressing with J. Edgar Hoover
Also included are riotous contributions from Henry Alford, Jon Stewart, and David Ives, as well as millennial maxims by Mark O'Donnell, gardening advice by Mertensia Corydalis, and highlights from Randy Cohen's savvy "News Quiz."

Brought to you by The Thurber House]]> 640 Michael J. Rosen 0060953217 Michael 0 to-read 3.30 2000
author: Michael J. Rosen
name: Michael
average rating: 3.30
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]]> 217387932 An investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Jennifer Dulos and the aftershocks that shook a wealthy suburb

One morning, suburban mother Jennifer Dulos dropped off her kids at the New Canaan Country School and then vanished. Her body has never been found.

Dulos was in the middle of an ugly divorce—one of the most contentious in Connecticut state history. The Duloses, a beautiful, highly connected pair, met at Brown University, had five children, and led what appeared to be a charmed life. In the wake of her disappearance, Dulos’s husband and his girlfriend were arrested. He killed himself on the day he was supposed to report to court; she was tried and convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. A gripping story of status, wealth, love, and hate, Murder in the Dollhouse peers beneath the sparkling veneer of propriety that surrounded the Duloses to uncover the origins and motivations of a crime that became a national obsession.]]> 352 Rich Cohen 0374608067 Michael 0 to-read 3.92 2025
author: Rich Cohen
name: Michael
average rating: 3.92
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]]> 235976
On the south side of Chicago in the late 1940s, two immigrants; one a Jew born in Russia, the other a black blues singer from Mississippi; met and changed the course of musical history. Muddy Waters electrified the blues, and Leonard Chess recorded it. Soon Bo Diddly and Chuck Berry added a dose of pulsating rhythm, and Chess Records captured that, too. Rock & Roll had arrived, and an industry was born. In a book as vibrantly and exuberantly written as the music and people it portrays, Rich Cohen tells the engrossing story of how Leonard Chess, with the other record men, made this new sound into a multi-billion-dollar business; aggressively acquiring artists, hard-selling distributors, riding the crest of a wave that would crash over a whole generation. Originally published in hardcover as Machers and Rockers.

About the series: Enterprise pairs distinguished writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the modern worlds; the institutions, the entrepreneurs, the ideas. Enterprise introduces a new genre; the business book as literature. 12 illustrations]]> 222 Rich Cohen 0393327507 Michael 0 to-read 3.94 2005
author: Rich Cohen
name: Michael
average rating: 3.94
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]]> 58772758
Meet Herbie Cohen, World’s Greatest Negotiator, dealmaker, risk taker, raconteur, adviser to presidents and corporations, hostage and arms negotiator, lesson giver and justice seeker, author of the how-to business classic You Can Negotiate Anything. And, of course, Rich Cohen’s father.

The Adventures of Herbie Cohen follows our hero from his youth spent running around Brooklyn with his pals Sandy Koufax, Larry King, Who Ha, Inky, and Ben the Worrier (many of them members of his Bensonhurst gang, “the Warriors�); to his days coaching basketball in the army in Europe; to his years as a devoted and unconventional husband, father, and freelance guru crossing the country to give lectures, settle disputes, and hone the art of success while finding meaning in this strange, funny world.

This book is an ode to a remarkable man by an adoring but not undiscerning son, and a treasure trove of hilarious antics and counterintuitive wisdom. (Some of this stuff you can use at home.) It’s a bildungsroman, a collection of tall tales, the unfolding of a unique biography coiled around Herbie’s great insight and guiding The secret of life is to care, but not that much.

Includes black-and-white photographs]]> 240 Rich Cohen 0374169616 Michael 0 to-read 4.00 2022
author: Rich Cohen
name: Michael
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]]> 6130968
In AD 70, when the Second Temple was destroyed, a handful of visionaries saved Judaism by reinventing it—by taking what had been a national religion, identified with a particular place, and turning it into an idea. Jews no longer needed Jerusalem to be Jews. Whenever a Jew studied—wherever he was—he would be in the holy city. In this way, a few rabbis turned a real city into a city of the mind; in this way, they turned the Temple into a book and preserved their faith. Though you can burn a city, you cannot sack an idea or kill a book. But in our own time, Zionists have turned the book back into a temple. And unlike an idea, a temple can be destroyed. The creation of Israel has made Jews vulnerable in a way they have not been for two thousand years.

In Israel Is Real, Rich Cohen’s superb new history of the Zionist idea and the Jewish state—the history of a nation chronicled as if it were the biography of a person—he brings to life dozens of fascinating figures, each driven by the same impulse: to reach Jerusalem. From false messiahs such as David Alroy (Cohen calls him the first superhero, with his tallis as a cape) and Sabbatai Zevi, who led thousands on a mad spiritual journey, to the early Zionists (many of them failed journalists), to the iconic figures of modern Jewish Sparta, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, and Ariel Sharon, Cohen shows how all these lives together form a single story, a single life. In this unique book, Cohen examines the myth of the wandering Jew, the paradox of Jewish power (how can you be both holy and nuclear?), and the triumph and tragedy of the Jewish state—how the creation of modern Israel has changed what it means to be a Jew anywhere.]]> 400 Rich Cohen 0374177783 Michael 0 to-read 3.92 2009
author: Rich Cohen
name: Michael
average rating: 3.92
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]]> 73370
Tracing a generation of Jewish gangsters from the candy stores of Brownsville to the clubhouses of the Lower East Side--and, occasionally, to suites at the Waldorf--Cohen creates a densely anecdotal and gruesomely funny history of muscle, moxie, and money. Filled with fixers and schlammers, the squeal of tires and the rattle of gunfire, his book shatters stereotypes as deftly as its subjects once shattered kneecaps.]]> 304 Rich Cohen 0375705473 Michael 0 to-read 3.84 1998
author: Rich Cohen
name: Michael
average rating: 3.84
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]]> 17834830 The gripping account of a once-in-a-lifetime football team and their lone championship season


For Rich Cohen and millions of other fans, the 1985 Chicago Bears were more than a football team: they were the greatest football team ever--a gang of colorful nuts, dancing and pounding their way to victory. They won a Super Bowl and saved a city.

It was not just that the Monsters of the Midway won, but how they did it. On offense, there was high-stepping running back Walter Payton and Punky QB Jim McMahon, who had a knack for pissing off Coach Mike Ditka as he made his way to the end zone. On defense, there was the 46: a revolutionary, quarterback-concussing scheme cooked up by Buddy Ryan and ruthlessly implemented by Hall of Famers such as Dan "Danimal" Hampton and "Samurai" Mike Singletary. On the sidelines, in the locker rooms, and in bars, there was the never-ending soap opera: the coach and the quarterback bickering on TV, Ditka and Ryan nearly coming to blows in the Orange Bowl, the players recording the "Super Bowl Shuffle" video the morning after the season's only loss.

Cohen tracked down the coaches and players from this iconic team and asked them everything he has always wanted to know: What's it like to win? What's it like to lose? Do you really hate the guys on the other side? Were you ever scared? What do you think as you lie broken on the field? How do you go on after you have lived your dream but life has not ended?

The result is Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, a portrait not merely of a team but of a city and a game: its history, its future, its fallen men, its immortal heroes. But mostly it's about being a fan--about loving too much. This is a book about America at its most nonsensical, delirious, and joyful.]]> 338 Rich Cohen 0374298688 Michael 0 to-read 4.16 2013
author: Rich Cohen
name: Michael
average rating: 4.16
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]]> 55464139 114 Kevin O'Brien Michael 0 to-read 4.00
author: Kevin O'Brien
name: Michael
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]]> 54149332 Encompassing the hard-earned cultural lessons regarding etiquette, traditions, customs, rituals and history that is involved in everyday life through the eyes of an expat. The author endeavours to understand how things really work and experiences life changing moments in a quest to gain enlightenment. Nothing is what it seems.
It is the perfect companion for those who want a unique perspective of what life and work is like behind the scenes in Tokyo.]]> 70 Kevin O'Brien Michael 0 to-read 0.0
author: Kevin O'Brien
name: Michael
average rating: 0.0
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]]> 53890510 Encompassing an introduction to grass roots stand up comedy in the north west of England, through the eyes of a novice comedian, including the reasoning behind choosing a comedy identity, setting comedy goals as well as dealing with criticism, the challenges associated with difficult audiences and techniques involved in learning how to write and perform comedy material in the pursuit of progression to the next level. It is the perfect companion for those who want a unique perspective of what really goes on behind the scenes in stand-up comedy.]]> 69 Kevin O'Brien Michael 0 to-read 5.00
author: Kevin O'Brien
name: Michael
average rating: 5.00
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]]> 27393549 But when McGuire’s estranged wife contacts him with the news of their teenaged daughter’s vicious rape and murder over the water in England, he becomes a loose cannon hell-bent on revenge. His masters in the Provisional IRA forbid him to go to England—only they can prime him for he kills for them and no-one else—but McGuire is now loyal to none but himself and suddenly he’s wanted by everyone! With no friends, only enemies, he searches for his daughter’s killer in England—leaving a trail of bodies for the IRA’s hit squads to follow as they pursue him relentlessly at the behest of Belfast . . .]]> 291 Kevin O'Brien Michael 0 to-read 5.00
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]]> 14967763 122 Kevin O'Brien 0956963803 Michael 0 to-read 4.75
author: Kevin O'Brien
name: Michael
average rating: 4.75
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]]> 6345415 The Mindful Path to Freedom from the Emotions That Cause Suffering

A life without stress or fear may seem like an impossible dream—yet Thich Nhat Hanh has spent a lifetime proving that it is not only possible, it is also within our grasp. On Living Without Stress or Fear, this treasured Zen master shares a message of hope: that we can, through the practice of mindfulness, find freedom from the grip of emotions like anxiety, anger, and despair.

“Suffering persists because we nourish the feelings that cause it,� reveals Thich Nhat Hanh. “Through mindful living, we learn to nourish our compassionate nature instead.�

Discovering Your “True Home� in the Present Moment

We do not find happiness by suppressing emotions like stress or fear. As Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, you can develop a capacity to deal with such emotions by building a sanctuary—your “true home”—in the present moment.

Through techniques such as “mindful breathing� and the “begin anew� practice, you purposefully expand your ability to dwell in a state of peaceful clarity, and develop the insight to see through to the underlying causes of negative emotions. By facing your inner darkness with awakened compassion, you can transform toxic energies within you—and radiate the energy of lovingkindness to everyone around you.

Essential Teachings from a Legendary Voice for Peace

Thich Nhat Hanh has lived and taught the path of peace in the most challenging situations—carrying the light of compassion into places stricken by war, famine, and despair. Refined throughout a lifetime of mindfulness in action, he now shares his most transformative teachings and practices to guide you in your own journey to the source of happiness on Living Without Stress or Fear.

Highlights

Foundational mindfulness practices: being fully present while walking, breathing, and eating
� Seeds of happiness, seeds of suffering—how we choose which emotions to nourish with our attention
� The four-pebble meditation for openness, clarity, and grounding
� “No death and no birth, neither being nor non-being”—embracing the central paradox at the heart of fearless living
� The role of community in supporting your practice
� “We are all one organism”—perspective-shifting meditations on compassion
� Practices for bringing mindfulness into your family and your relationships
� Six sessions of Thich Nhat Hanh's core teachings and guided practices on mindfulness, compassion, and finding freedom from suffering
Thich Nhat Hanh is a Zen master in the Vietnamese tradition, scholar, poet, and peace activist who was nominated for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King, Jr. He is the author of more than 40 books in English, including Peace Is Every Step and Living Buddha, Living Christ.]]> 6 Thich Nhat Hanh 159179725X Michael 0 to-read 4.35 2009
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name: Michael
average rating: 4.35
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]]> 221179266
For decades Southern Republic has invested heavily in Concord, building a paper mill and creating a thriving community, one where its employees live, work, and retire. Unlike countless other mills that have closed Southern Republic survived, becoming a model for the paper industry. But Southern Republic’s success is based largely on something called the Priority program, a highly unorthodox way to secretly control costs, one that provides a huge edge over its competition. Only the three owners of the company are aware of the program’s existence, but one of them, Christopher Bozin, has had a change of heart. Brent’s return to Concord, a move Bozin personally orchestrated, provides a chance at redemption that Bozin desperately wants before cancer takes his life. So a plan is set into motion—one that will not only criminally implicate Bozin’s two partners—it will also place Brent Walker right in the crosshairs of men who want him dead.

With only one course left Find and reveal the shocking secret of the list.Ěý]]> 384 Steve Berry 1538770873 Michael 0 to-read 4.34 2025
author: Steve Berry
name: Michael
average rating: 4.34
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]]> 229004506 #1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham is the acclaimed master of the legal thriller. Now, he’s back with his first-ever whodunit, even more suspenseful than his courtroom dramas, as a small-time lawyer accused of murder races to find the real killer to clear his name.

Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it.

Once he hooks the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar. But soon her story begins to crack. When she is hospitalized after a car accident, Simon realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t murder.

Simon knows he’s innocent. But he also knows the circumstantial evidence is against him, and he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. To save himself, he must find the real killer�.]]> 416 John Grisham 0385548982 Michael 0 to-read 4.58 2025
author: John Grisham
name: Michael
average rating: 4.58
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]]> 227759007 From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories set in New York and Los Angeles. The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood� describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age. Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next. Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting historical fiction.]]> 464 Amor Towles 0593296397 Michael 0 to-read 4.24 2024
author: Amor Towles
name: Michael
average rating: 4.24
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]]> 30893019 The Impossible Fortress will make you remember what it feels like to love someone—or something—for the first time.

Billy Marvin’s first love was his computer.

Then he met Mary Zelinsky.

Do you remember your first love?

It’s May 1987. Fourteen-year-old Billy Marvin of Wetbridge, New Jersey, is a nerd, but a decidedly happy nerd. Afternoons are spent with his buddies, watching copious amounts of television, gorging on Pop-Tarts, debating who would win in a brawl (Rocky Balboa or Freddy Krueger? Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel? Magnum P.I. or T.J. Hooker?), and programming video games on his Commodore 64 late into the night. Then Playboy magazine publishes photos of their idol, Wheel of Fortune hostess Vanna White, Billy meets expert computer programmer Mary Zelinsky, and everything changes.
]]> 320 Jason Rekulak 1501144421 Michael 0 to-read 3.83 2017
author: Jason Rekulak
name: Michael
average rating: 3.83
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]]> 217387986 A stolen dinosaur skull is at the center of a complex mystery laid at the feet of unofficial P.I. Rushmore McKenzie.

There are two things that Rushmore McKenzie hates to turn down—a request from a friend and a challenge. Both of them show up in his wife's nightclub in the person of Angela Bjork, who has come to request McKenzie's help. McKenzie, once a homicide detective, now through a series of unlikely events, is a retired millionaire. But occasionally, for friends, he will do some unofficial private detective work. Over the years, he's hunted down a stolen Stradivarius, the hoard of 1930's gangster, and recovered a stolen, apparently cursed, artifact but McKenzie never imagined a case like this. An exceedingly rare dinosaur skull has been stolen.

Angela, a doctoral candidate, was out on a dig site in Southeastern Montana, when she found a skeleton of an Ankylosaurus. And no sooner than when the skull was removed and placed on a truck then they were attacked, the truck and skull stolen. Worried that nothing is being done to find the stolen skull, she turns to McKenzie. Worth millions on the black market, the chance to recover it becomes fainter by the day. And the people behind the theft are likely willing to do anything, to anyone, to hold onto it.]]> 320 David Housewright 125036051X Michael 0 to-read 4.11
author: David Housewright
name: Michael
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]]> 218266471
A beautiful keepsake edition of the revered spiritual classic from one of the greatest writers and thinkers of the twentieth century whose insights continue to influence us today.

Our moral consciousness and moral judgements are proof to the human race that a moral being exists—God.

Mere Christianity makes available to both believers and nonbelievers C. S. Lewis’s powerful and rational argument for the Christian faith. Recognized as one of the most important Christian books of the twentieth century, Mere Christianity brings together Lewis� legendary broadcast talks during World War II, in which he explored the core beliefs of Christianity—timeless topics that continue to engage us—right and wrong, human nature, morality, marriage, sin, forgiveness, faith, hope, generosity, and kindness.

Now in a deluxe edition featuring gilded pages, C. S. Lewis’s brilliant and enduring work remains fresh and vital for readers today.]]> 256 C.S. Lewis 006344397X Michael 0 to-read 4.57 1952
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Michael
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1952
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]]>