en-US Mon, 12 May 2025 17:58:25 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 217388159 Two pairs of siblings, devotees of Jane Austen, find their lives transformed by a visit to England and Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother and keeper of a long-suppressed, secret legacy.

In Boston, 1865, Charlotte and Henrietta Stevenson, daughters of a Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice, have accomplished as much as women are allowed in those days. Chafing against those restrictions and inspired by the works of Jane Austen, they start a secret correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving brother, now in his nineties. He sends them an original letter from his sister and invites them to come visit him in England.

In Philadelphia, Nicholas & Haslett Nelson—bachelor brothers, veterans of the recent Civil War, and rare book dealers—are also in correspondence with Sir Francis Austen, who lures them, too, to England, with the promise of a never-before-seen, rare Austen artifact to be evaluated.

The Stevenson sisters sneak away without a chaperone to sail to England. On their ship are the Nelson brothers, writer Louisa May Alcott, Sara-Beth Gleason—wealthy daughter of a Pennsylvania state senator with her eye on the Nelsons—and, a would-be last-minute chaperone to the Stevenson sisters, Justice Thomas Nash.

It's a voyage and trip that will dramatically change each of their lives in ways that are unforeseen, with the transformative spirit of the love of literature and that of Jane Austen herself.]]> 320 Natalie Jenner 1250349591 0 currently-reading 3.92 2025
author: Natalie Jenner
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 223001257
Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has. A mother, grandmother, wife, divorcée, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.]]> 304 Virginia Evans 0593798430 0 to-read 4.64 2025
author: Virginia Evans
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 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 terrifying and controlling at home, expects 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 alternative and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.]]> 336 Florence Knapp 0593833902 0 to-read 4.29 2025
author: Florence Knapp
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/11
shelves: to-read
review:

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

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

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

Clever, layered, and subversive, Ariel Lawhon’s newest offering introduces an unsung heroine who refused to accept anything less than justice at a time when women were considered best seen and not heard. The Frozen River is a thrilling, tense, and tender story about a remarkable woman who left an unparalleled legacy yet remains nearly forgotten to this day.]]> 432 Ariel Lawhon 0385546874 0 currently-reading 4.37 2023
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 71872930
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire.ĚýA crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?]]> 372 Daniel Mason 0593597036 0 to-read 4.11 2023
author: Daniel Mason
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61294937 Shannon Chakraborty, the bestselling author of The City of Brass, spins a new trilogy of magic and mayhem on the high seas in this tale of pirates and sorcerers, forbidden artifacts and ancient mysteries, in one woman’s determined quest to seize a final chance at glory—and write her own legend.

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.]]> 483 Shannon Chakraborty 0 to-read 4.25 2023
author: Shannon Chakraborty
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 355862 We's Lives in Da Ghetto, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection.

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

But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk -- or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh -- is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems.]]> 280 Percival Everett 0786888156 0 to-read 4.17 2001
author: Percival Everett
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52639051 A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakota family's struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most.

Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakota people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn't return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato--where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they've inherited.

On a winter's day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband's farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron--women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.

Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.]]> 372 Diane Wilson 1571311378 0 to-read 4.26 2021
author: Diane Wilson
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52185490
The mysterious Domino Program has plans for Paige, but she has ambitions of her own in this new citadel. With Arcturus Mesarthim-her former enemy-at her side, she embarks on an adventure that will lead her from the catacombs of Paris to the glittering hallways of Versailles. Her risks promise high reward: the Parisian underworld could yield the means to escalate her rebellion to outright war.


As Scion widens its bounds and the free world trembles in its shadow, Paige must fight her own memories after her ordeal at the hands of Scion. Meanwhile, she strives to understand her bond with Arcturus, which grows stronger by the day. But there are those who know the revolution began with them-and could end with them...]]> 528 Samantha Shannon 1408865564 4 4.44 2021
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 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 4 3.48 2025
author: Katie Kitamura
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/05/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 217223460 From the author of the “delightfulâ€� (New York Times Book Review)ĚýMary Jane, a new novel of found family, growing up, and the best and worst of the 1980s, revolving around San Francisco’s most exclusive department store, I. Magnin.

Nineteen-year-old Zippy can hardly believe she’s the newest and youngest salesgirl at I. Magnin, “San Francisco’s Finest Department Store.� Every week, she rotates her three spruced-up Salvation Army outfits and Vaseline-shined pumps; still, she’s thrilled to walk those pumps through the employee entrance five days a week as she saves to buy something new. For a girl who grew up in a one-bedroom apartment above a liquor store with her mother and her mother’s madcap boyfriend, Howard; a girl who wanted to go to college but had no help in figuring out how; I. Magnin represents a real chance for a better and more elegant life. Or, at the very least, a more interesting one.

Zippy may not be in school, but she’s about to get an education that will stick with her for decades. Her fellow salesgirls (lifetime professionals) run the gamut from mean and indifferent to caring and helpful. The cosmetics ladies on the first floor share both samples and advice (“only date a man with a Rolex�); and her new roommate, Raquel, an ambitious lawyer, tells Zippy she can lose ten pounds easy if she joins Raquel in eating only every other day. Just when Zippy thinks she’s getting a handle on how to be an adult woman in 1985, two surprises threaten both her sense of self and her coveted position at I. Magnin.

Set in the Day-Glo colors of 1980s San Francisco,Ěýł§łó´Ç±č˛µľ±°ů±ô˛őĚýis an intoxicating novel of self-discovery, outrageous fashion, and family both biological and found.


]]> 272 Jessica Anya Blau 0063052350 0 to-read, dnf-did-not-finish 3.71 2025
author: Jessica Anya Blau
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves: to-read, dnf-did-not-finish
review:

]]> 220161224 The acclaimed author of the �lyrical coming-of-age novel� (Good Morning America) The People We Keep returns with a luminous new story of redemption, breaking generational curses, and the power of family in its truest form.

After an emergency leaves her short on rent, thirty-year-old Freya Arnalds bails on her lackluster life as bartender in Maine and returns to her suburban hometown of Somers, New York, to live in the house she inherited from her estranged parents. Despite attempts to lay low, Freya encounters childhood friends, familial enemies, and old flames—as well as her fifteen-year-old niece, Aubrey, who is secretly living in the derelict home. As they reconnect, Freya and Aubrey lean on each other, working to restore the house and come to terms with the devastating events that pulled them apart years ago.

Set in the birthplace of the American circus, this deeply moving novel is an exploration of broken families, the weight of the past, and the complicated journey of finding home.]]> 432 Allison Larkin 1668008416 4 4.29 2025
author: Allison Larkin
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 218153866 A charming story about romance, friendship, and a love of books, in which two women—a lonely remote worker and a widowed single mom—and a handsome local bookstore clerk find themselves in an unusual love triangle when an anonymous note left in a book finds the wrong recipient.

April, a smart and lonely tech worker, worries work from home has gotten out of hand: She’s left an anonymous note in a book for Westley, the clerk at her Seattle neighborhood bookstore who has a gentle smile and looks great in flannel. But thanks to fate, Laura—a busy single mom who had given up on love—buys the book, finds the note, and thinks Westley has left it for her. A handsome man who loves books seems like just the plot twist she has been looking for.

Meanwhile, Westley—not the most perceptive—is too distracted by the movie filming at the store and the ambition it’s unlocked in him to notice either of the two women. But as April and Laura’s anonymous correspondence continues back and forth, their mundane routines are challenged, sparking a glimmer of hope. Is a happy ending in the cards for them?

A hilarious and intricate web of mistaken identities and serendipitous encounters, Storybook Ending is a playful tribute to romance, friendship, and bookstores, and to the objects—from a forgotten slip of paper to someone’s heart—left between the pages of books we loved.]]> 320 Moira Macdonald 0593851293 4 3.56 2025
author: Moira Macdonald
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/03
date added: 2025/05/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 216522696 The Death of Us is the story of a marriage turned inside out by a violent encounter that sets fire to the hairline faults that were there from the start.

Late on a summer’s evening when they are thirty years old, husband and wife Edward and Isabel’s home is invaded by a serial killer.ĚýTheirs was a classic story of young love that moves into true partnership—but their solid foundation implodes in the wake of this violence.

At fifty-eight, they are reunited for their tormentor’s trial and forced to confront their lifelong love the secrets, passions, and encounter that bind them still.ĚýIsabel has waited years for the man who nearly ended her life to be caught. As she’s tracked news of his increasingly violent criminal life, she’s connected with other survivors and prepared for the moment that she’d get to read her victim impact statement aloud in court. She is sure she’ll speak her truth and finally let the past go. Edward has spent the years since the break-in—and the breakdown of his marriage—trying to figure out how a near-miss with death killed so much else in their shared life. Unlike Isabel, he’s not eager to relive these terrible memories. Even though he’s moved on—he’s remarried, his old life almost unrecognizable ​to him now—he can’t resist accompanying Isabel to their intruder’s sentencing. What would revenge or justice feel like? Can closure set Isabel free? And what might that freedom mean for Edward?]]> 336 Abigail Dean 0593831136 4 4.06 2025
author: Abigail Dean
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/30
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves:
review:

]]> 228578720 #1 New York Times Bestseller

�Careless People is darkly funny and genuinely shocking...Not only does [Sarah Wynn-Williams] have the storytelling chops to unspool a gripping narrative; she also delivers the goods." -Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

“When one of the world’s most powerful media companies tries to snuff out a book � amid other alarming attacks on free speech in America like this � it’s time to pull out all the stops.� –Ron Charles, The Washington Post

An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to “lean in.�

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the consequences this has for all of us.]]> 385 Sarah Wynn-Williams 1250391245 0 currently-reading 4.46 2025
author: Sarah Wynn-Williams
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 211025368 From bestselling author Martha Beck, a new path to overcoming anxiety by awakening the creativity within.

We live in an epidemic of anxiety. Most of us assume that the key to overcoming it is to think our way out. And for a while it works. But there is always something that sends us back into the anxious spiral we’ve been trying to climb out of.

In Beyond Anxiety, Dr. Martha Beck explains why anxiety is skyrocketing around you, and likely within you. She also tells you how to not only reduce your anxiety but use it to propel you into a life filled with peace, meaning, and joy.

Using a combination of the latest neuroscience as well as her background in sociology and coaching, Beck explains how our brains tend to get stuck in an “anxiety spiral,� a feedback system that can increase anxiety indefinitely. To climb out, we must engage different parts of our nervous system—the parts involved in creativity. Beck provides instructions for engaging the “creativity spiral,� in a process that not only shuts down anxiety but leads to innovative problem solving, a sense of meaning and purpose, and joyful, intimate connection with others—and with the world.

The opposite of anxiety, it turns out, is a wonderful new way of life—one that can calm and inspire us as individuals and help us become a source of healing for everything around us.]]> 496 Martha N. Beck 0593949080 0 4.12 2025
author: Martha N. Beck
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 217387838 The latest gripping serial killer thriller from the New York Times bestselling author Alex North.

Dan Garvie’s life has been haunted by the crime he witnessed as a child—narrowly escaping an encounter with a notorious serial killer. He has dedicated his life since to becoming a criminal profiler, eager to seek justice for innocent victims. So when his father passes away under suspicious circumstances, Dan revisits his small island community, determined to uncover the truth about his death. Is it possible that the monster he remembers from his childhood nightmares has returned after all these years?

With his signature shock and suspense, Alex North brings us The Man Made of Smoke. In turn emotional, introspective, and utterly terrifying, this is a story of fathers and sons, shadows and secrets, and the fight we all face to escape the trauma of the past.]]> 320 Alex North 4 4.09 2025
author: Alex North
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/26
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 217896260 A modern comedy of manners about two mothers, the best-laid plans, and one very memorable wedding

Penelope and Chase make a lovely couple. She’s a bubbly Southern Californian with a killer work ethic. He is smart and charming, with political aspirations. They are planning a spectacular California wedding, wrapped in peonies and thousands of little white lights. Everyone is excited about it­­­­­­—except their mothers.

The mother of the bride, suave, Greek-born Alexa Diamandis, was a single mother by choice and does not understand why any woman would ever get married. The mother of the groom, Abigail Blakeman, is a garden-club stalwart firmly planted in coastal Connecticut. She thinks the whole enterprise would be so much easier if the wedding were at the golf club. When a sudden twist of fate calls them into action, these two very different women are forced to take over the wedding planning.]]> 288 Lian Dolan 006327065X 5 4.33 2025
author: Lian Dolan
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 4 4.35 2025
author: Sarah Damoff
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 210488543 Olive Kitteridge in its richness, structure, and complexity, Anything Is Possible explores the whole range of human emotion through the intimate dramas of people struggling to understand themselves and others.

Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother’s happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author’s celebrated New York Times bestseller) returns to visit her siblings after seventeen years of absence.

Reverberating with the deep bonds of family, and the hope that comes with reconciliation, Anything Is Possible again underscores Elizabeth Strout’s place as one of America’s most respected and cherished authors.]]> 274 Elizabeth Strout 4 4.00 2017
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 218494525 From the pages of Vanity Fair to the red carpets of Hollywood, editor Graydon Carter’s memoir revives the glamorous heyday of print magazines when they were at the vanguard of American culture

When Graydon Carter was offered the editorship of Vanity Fair in 1992, he knew he faced an uphill battle—how to make the esteemed and long-established magazine his own. Not only was he confronted with a staff that he perceived to be loyal to the previous regime, but he arrived only a few years after launching Spy magazine, which gloried in skewering the celebrated and powerful—the very people Vanity Fair venerated. With curiosity, fearlessness, and a love of recent history and glamour that would come to define his storied career in magazines, Carter succeeded in endearing himself to his editors, contributors, and readers, as well as many of the faces that would come to appear in Vanity Fair’s pages. He went on to run the magazine with overwhelming success for the next two and a half decades.

Filled with colorful memories and intimate details, When the Going Was Good is Graydon Carter’s lively recounting of how he made his mark as one of the most talented editors in the business. Moving to New York from Canada, he worked at Time, Life, The New York Observer, and Spy, before catching the eye of Condé Nast chairman Si Newhouse, who pulled him in to run Vanity Fair. In Newhouse he found an unwavering champion, a loyal proprietor who gave Carter the editorial and financial freedom to thrive. Annie Leibovitz’s photographs would come to define the look of the magazine, as would the “New Establishment� and annual Hollywood issues. Carter further planted a flag in Los Angeles with the legendary Vanity Fair Oscar party.

With his inimitable voice and signature quip, he brings readers to lunches and dinners with the great and good of America, Britain, and Europe. He assembled one of the most formidable stables of writers and photographers under one roof, and here he re-creates in real time the steps he took to ensure Vanity Fair cemented its place as the epicenter of art, culture, business, and politics, even as digital media took hold. Charming, candid, and brimming with stories, When the Going Was Good perfectly captures the last golden age of print magazines from the inside out.]]> 432 Graydon Carter 0593655907 4 4.12
author: Graydon Carter
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 215570667
Years later Tom makes a decision that ripples through their families' lives in ways he could not have foreseen. As the consequences of that fateful choice unfold, two women's paths become irrevocably intertwined. But when old love clashes with new, who will be left standing? And what happens when your secrets come back to haunt you?]]> 336 Loretta Rothschild 1250381827 0 to-read 4.10 2025
author: Loretta Rothschild
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151924 An often hilarious, surprisingly moving portrait of a long-married couple, seen through the eyes of their wickedly observant daughter—for fans of A Man Called Ove and The Royal Tenenbaums.

Miranda’s parents live in a dilapidated house in rural France that they share with two llamas, eight ducks, five chickens, two cats, and a freezer full of food dating back to 1982.

Miranda’s father is a retired professor of philosophy who never loses an argument. Her mother likes to bring conversation back to the War, although she was born after it ended. Married for fifty years, they are uncommonly set in their ways. Miranda plays the role of translator when she visits, communicating the desires or complaints of one parent to the other and then venting her frustration to her sister and her daughter. At the end of each visit, she reports “the usual desire to kill.�

A wry, propulsive, exquisitely observed story of a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them. This is an extraordinary debut novel from a seasoned playwright with a flare for dialogue and, in the end, immense empathy.]]> 256 Camilla Barnes 1668062836 0 3.57 2025
author: Camilla Barnes
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves:
review:

]]> 176443690
Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies's intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us. Perfectly structured and surprising at every turn, Clear is a marvel of storytelling, an exquisite short novel by a master of the form.]]> 196 Carys Davies 1668030667 0 to-read 3.85
author: Carys Davies
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25893709 193 Elizabeth Strout 1400067693 4 3.56 2016
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 216325984
The Kenner siblings are at odds. Jenn is a harried mom struggling under the weight of family obligations. Fred is a novelist who can’t write, maybe because she’s lost faith in storytelling itself. Jude is a recovering corporate lawyer with her own story to tell, and a grudge against her former favorite sister, Fred. George, the baby, is estranged from his wife and harboring both a secret about his former employer and an ill-advised crush on one of his sisters� friends. Gathered after a major loss, each sibling needs the others more than ever—if only they could trust each other.

A family story is, of course, only as honest as the person telling it. This family story in particular is fraught with secrets about kids and sex and jobs and why the Kenner matriarch had a gun in her underwear drawer. The biggest secret of all though is the secret of what happened between Jude and Fred to create such a rift between the two once-close middle sisters. Over the course of a sweltering Florida summer, the Kenner siblings will revisit what it means to be a family and, if they are smart and kind and lucky, come out on the other side better for having each other.

A rich exploration of family, ambition, secrets, and love, The Float Test is an elegant and gripping testament to the power that family has to both nurture and destroy us from a critically acclaimed writer working at the top of her craft.]]> 272 Lynn Steger Strong 0063390736 0 to-read 3.30
author: Lynn Steger Strong
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.30
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213243949 A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life,ĚýThree Days in JuneĚýis a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers

]]> 165 Anne Tyler 0593803485 4 3.60 2025
author: Anne Tyler
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 200987258
Beverly Underwood and her arch enemy, Lula Dean, live in the tiny town of Troy, Georgia, where they were born and raised. Now Beverly is on the school board, and Lula has become a local celebrity by embarking on mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read. To replace the “pornographic� books she’s challenged at the local public library, Lula starts her own lending library in front of her home: a cute wooden hutch with glass doors and neat rows of the worthy literature that she’s sure the town’s readers need.

But Beverly’s daughter Lindsay sneaks in by night and secretly fills Lula Dean’s little free library with banned books wrapped in “wholesome� dust jackets. The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution is wrapped in the cover of The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. A jacket that belongs to Our Confederate Heroes ends up on Beloved. One by one, neighbors who borrow books from Lula Dean’s library find their lives changed in unexpected ways. Finally, one of Lula Dean’s enemies discovers the library and decides to turn the tables on her, just as Lula and Beverly are running against each other to replace the town’s disgraced mayor.

That’s when all the townspeople who’ve been borrowing from Lula’s library begin to reveal themselves. It’s a diverse and surprising bunch—including the local postman, the prom queen, housewives, a farmer, and the former DA—all of whom have been changed by what they’ve read. When Lindsay is forced to own up to what she’s done, the showdown that’s been brewing between Beverly and Lula will roil the whole town...and change it forever.]]> 298 Kirsten Miller 0063348691 0 to-read 4.06 2024
author: Kirsten Miller
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 209302431 A once-famous ballerina faces a final choice—to return to the world of Russian dance that nearly broke her, or to walk away forever—in this incandescent novel of redemption and love

On a White Night in 2019, prima ballerina Natalia Leonova returns to St. Petersburg two years after a devastating accident stalled her career. Once the most celebrated dancer of her generation, she now turns to pills and alcohol to numb the pain of her past.

She is unmoored in her old city as the ghosts of her former life begin to her loving but difficult mother, her absentee father, and the two gifted dancers who led to her downfall.

One of those dancers, Alexander, is the love of her life, who transformed both Natalia and her art. The other is Dmitri, a dark and treacherous genius. When the latter offers her a chance to return to the stage in her signature role, Natalia must decide whether she can again face the people responsible for both her soaring highs and darkest hours.

Painting a vivid portrait of the Russian ballet world, where cutthroat ambition, ever-shifting politics, and sublime artistry collide, City of Night Birds unveils the making of a dancer with both profound intimacy and breathtaking scope. Mysterious and alluring, passionate and virtuosic, Juhea Kim’s second novel is an affecting meditation on love, forgiveness, and the making of an artist in a turbulent world.]]> 319 Juhea Kim 0063394782 4 3.97 2024
author: Juhea Kim
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 29603176 Be aware, my good Reader, that this Pamphlet, no matter how controversial its content, must never fall into enemy Hands.

The most important piece of clairvoyant literature written in the twenty-first century, On the Merits of Unnaturalness is a pamphlet first published anonymously in 2031 by Jaxon Hall, the voyant who would later become the mime-lord known as the White Binder.

Hall was the first to index both known and supposed forms of Unnaturalness, resulting in the classification of the Seven Orders. This controversial piece of literature spread across the voyant underworld like a plague, revolutionising the syndicate but also creating discord in the form of brutal gang wars between the newly-divided categories, the scars of which can still be seen today.

Revelatory and subversive, On the Merits of Unnaturalness is a must-read for any reader with a desire to further immerse themselves in the incredible world of Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season.]]> 50 Samantha Shannon 0 to-read 3.87 2015
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211399784 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER � An epic love story set in the sparkling, savage sphere of elite figure skating, starring a woman determined to carve her own path on and off the ice

“P˛ą°ůłŮ Wuthering Heights and part Daisy Jones & The Six, this novel is as brilliantly choreographed as a gold medal performance and will keep you guessing until its last page.”—Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name

She might not have a famous name, funding, or her family’s support, but Katarina Shaw has always known that she was destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating—and each other—to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating the world with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style, and roller-coaster relationship.

Until a shocking incident at the Olympic Games brings their partnership to a sudden end.

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real story� through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary, but she can’t stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy. So, after a decade of silence, she’s telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.]]> 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 2 to-read 4.16 2025
author: Layne Fargo
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 44009968 Grappling with motherhood, economic anxiety, rage, and the limits of language, Want is a fiercely personal novel that vibrates with anger, insight, and love.

Elizabeth is tired. Years after coming to New York to try to build a life, she has found herself with two kids, a husband, two jobs, a PhD―and now they’re filing for bankruptcy. As she tries to balance her dream and the impossibility of striving toward it while her work and home lives feel poised to fall apart, she wakes at ungodly hours to run miles by the icy river, struggling to quiet her thoughts.

When she reaches out to Sasha, her long-lost childhood friend, it feels almost harmless―one of those innocuous ruptures that exist online, in texts. But her timing is uncanny. Sasha is facing a crisis, too, and perhaps after years apart, their shared moments of crux can bring them back into each other’s lives.

In Want, Lynn Steger Strong explores the subtle violences enacted on a certain type of woman when she dares to want things―and all the various violences in which she implicates herself as she tries to survive.]]> 209 Lynn Steger Strong 1250247543 4 3.33 2020
author: Lynn Steger Strong
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/07
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves:
review:

]]> 215259612 Darkly funny and provocative, this edge-of-your-seat thrill ride follows two unlikely fugitives—an SAT tutor who finds her rich employers brutally murdered and the bound woman she frees from their mansion—an irresistible debut novel perfect for fans ofĚýThe GuestĚý˛ą˛Ô»ĺĚýMy Sister, the Serial Killer

A scholarship kid with straight As and big dreams, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone. But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as an SAT tutor for the super-rich of Los Angeles.

Everything changes one Sunday, when she arrives for her weekly lesson at the Victors� Beverly Hills estate and, in lieu of a bored teenager, finds the bloody remains of the parents strewn through their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help within a closet. As Evie works to free her, the two are spotted—and within moments, they go from bystanders to suspects to fugitives.

Suddenly at the heart of a manhunt and accompanied by a mysterious woman who refuses to speak, Evie knows the only way to clear her name is to find the real killer. But first she’ll have to break down the barriers of her companion, who is quickly becoming the most important person in Evie’s upside-down life. Their breathless spree takes them across the U.S. as developments in the case shock the nation and the press runs wild with Evie’s a gifted kid turned killer. She's now on the cover of every magazine and newspaper—anointed the new Charles Manson, a bloodthirsty ninety-nine percenter looking to start a class war. Evie is finallyĚýsomeone.

By turns cuttingly hilarious and deeply insightful,ĚýKiller PotentialĚýis a strikingly original debut. A literary novel with the page-turning intensity of a thriller that asks timely questions about our belief in the romance of social mobility, and how the stories we’re sold about our potential can shape the course of our lives.]]> 316 Hannah Deitch 006335649X 4 3.43 2025
author: Hannah Deitch
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:

]]> 28260402 The third book in the New York Times bestselling Bone Season series.

Following a fierce battle for the Rose Crown, Paige Mahoney has risen to the dangerous position of Underqueen, ruling over the clairvoyant syndicate of London. But with vengeful enemies still at large, the task of stabilizing the fractured underworld has never seemed so challenging.

As Paige rallies her army of criminals, she continues to meet in secret with her former enemy, Arcturus Mesarthim. Should they be discovered, the fragile alliance with the Ranthen will fail.

But all bets are off when Scion introduces Senshield, a deadly technology that spells doom for clairvoyants. Now Paige must race against the clock to stop her reign ending in blood.]]> 384 Samantha Shannon 1632866242 4
Author Samantha Shannon brings back virtually all of the original cast in The Song Rising but ratchets up the tension by tightening Scion’s noose around London and the voyant population. They’ve produced new technology that, out of the seven levels of supernatural powers, can detect humans with voyant capabilities up to level four. This pushes all voyants deeper into the underground and limits their ability to survive. Paige must work with the Ranthen, immortals who have long been their enemy, to find where Scion’s new weapons are being produced and what fuels their technology. There is no trust between any of the factions meaning every decision made comes at the risk of betrayal and destruction.

The rest of this review is at: ]]> 4.15 2017
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves:
review:
Oh, happy day, Paige Mahoney is back in book three of the Bone Season saga! At the end of The Mime Order she had wrested control of the London clairvoyant syndicate from her boss and mentor, Jaxon, and was now the new Underground Queen. Unfortunately, she had not killed Jaxon in the process and when the novel ended she learned that he was working with their greatest enemy, the Scion. In The Song Rising Paige needs to manage her new role as leader while fighting the increased pressure from Scion to destroy her and everyone like her.

Author Samantha Shannon brings back virtually all of the original cast in The Song Rising but ratchets up the tension by tightening Scion’s noose around London and the voyant population. They’ve produced new technology that, out of the seven levels of supernatural powers, can detect humans with voyant capabilities up to level four. This pushes all voyants deeper into the underground and limits their ability to survive. Paige must work with the Ranthen, immortals who have long been their enemy, to find where Scion’s new weapons are being produced and what fuels their technology. There is no trust between any of the factions meaning every decision made comes at the risk of betrayal and destruction.

The rest of this review is at:
]]> 55298324 Who is Mrs. March?

A twenty-first-century Highsmith, Virginia Feito conjures the unforgettable Mrs. March, an Upper East Side housewife whose life is shattered by her husband’s latest novel.

In this astonishing debut, the venerable but gossipy New York literary scene is twisted into a claustrophobic fun house of paranoia, horror, and wickedly dark humor. George March’s latest novel is a smash. No one is prouder than Mrs. March, his doting wife. But one morning, the shopkeeper of her favorite patisserie suggests that his protagonist is based on Mrs. March herself: “But . . . ―isn't she . . .� Mrs. March leaned in and in almost a whisper said, �a whore?� Clutching her ostrich-leather pocketbook, she flees, that one casual remark destroying her belief that she knew everything about her husband―as well as herself. Suddenly, Mrs. March is hurled into a harrowing journey that builds to near psychosis, one that begins merely within the pages of a book but may uncover both a killer and the long-buried secrets of her past.]]> 304 Virginia Feito 1631498614 0 to-read 3.23 2021
author: Virginia Feito
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 213395480
Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning.

Wielding her signature sardonic wit and a penchant for the gorgeously macabre, Virginia Feito returns with a vengeance in Victorian Psycho.]]> 208 Virginia Feito 1631498630 4 3.61 2025
author: Virginia Feito
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 204593617
In September of 1892, Oscar Wilde and his family retreated to the idyllic Norfolk countryside for a holiday. His wife, Constance, has every reason to be happy: two beautiful sons, a stellar reputation as an advocate for progressive causes, and a delightfully charming and affectionate husband and father, who is perhaps the most famous man in England. But as an assortment of houseguests arrive, including an aristocratic young wannabe poet named Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance gradually—and then all at once—comes to see that her husband's heart is elsewhere and that the growing intensity between the two men threatens the whole foundation of their lives.

The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts revolves around that fateful summer: what happened, and what might have been. When it was exposed, Oscar's affair with Lord Alfred Douglas—Bosie, as he was known—led to Wilde's imprisonment for homosexuality, and the financial and emotional ruin of his family. In Act Two, Bayard reveals Constance and their sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, in exile, forced to sell their possessions, leave England, and hide their identities. Act Three, from the perspective of Cyril, brings readers into the French trenches of World War I, where Cyril must grapple with the kind of man he wants to become, while Act Four reveals Vyvyan in London, years after the war, searching for answers from those who knew his parents. And in a brilliant act of the imagination, Act Five brings the entire cast back together in a surprising, poignant, and tremendously satisfying tableau.

With Louis Bayard's trademark sparkling dialogue, paired with his deep insight into the lives and longings of all his characters—and based on real events—The Wildes could almost have been created by Oscar Wilde himself: lightly told but with hidden depths, it is an entertaining and dramatic story about the human condition.]]> 304 Louis Bayard 1643755307 4 3.60 2024
author: Louis Bayard
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/02
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 13057939
For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.

Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.]]> 322 Vaddey Ratner 1451657706 4 4.04 2012
author: Vaddey Ratner
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/30
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves:
review:

]]> 214269374 Remember—words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power from a "powerful new voice in British Literature� (The Sunday Times).

Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, in the midst of an illegal rave, a young man is nearly bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar.

An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement that has taken up residence on the farm. She solves the mystery, but her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers, Who wrote it? Why? And how much of it is true? Through a voyeuristic lens, and with a simmering power, the book focuses in on what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean.

The thrilling novel from one of the most acclaimed and incisive young novelists working today, Universality is a compelling, unsettling celebration of the spectacular, appalling force of language. It dares you to look away.]]> 176 Natasha Brown 0593977300 0 dnf-did-not-finish, to-read 3.42 2025
author: Natasha Brown
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: dnf-did-not-finish, to-read
review:

]]> 30278946
It's not long before he's summoned to the palatial Grosse Pointe Estates home of business magnate Eleanore Paget. Powerful and manipulative, Paget wants August to investigate the increasingly unusual happenings at her private wealth management bank. But detective work is no longer August's beat, and he declines. A day later, Paget is dead of an apparent suicide which August isn't buying for a minute.

What begins as an inquiry into Eleanore Paget's death soon drags August into a rat's nest of Detroit's most dangerous criminals, from corporate embezzlers to tattooed mercenaries. From the wealthy suburbs to the near-post-apocalyptic remains of the bankrupt city's factory districts, August Snow is a fast-paced tale of murder, greed, sex, economic cyber-terrorism, race and urban decay in modern Detroit.]]> 313 Stephen Mack Jones 1616957182 0 dnf-did-not-finish, to-read 3.74 2017
author: Stephen Mack Jones
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: dnf-did-not-finish, to-read
review:

]]> 199531902
The women of the Cohen family are in crisis. Triggered by the death of their patriarch, Rudy, the glue that held them all together, everyone’s lives soon take a dramatic turn.

Shelly, the younger of the two Cohen sisters, runs off to the West Coast to immerse herself in the emerging (and lucrative) world of technology. Her sister, Nancy, gets married at the age of twenty-one to a traveling salesman with a shadowy lifestyle, while their mother, Frieda, hurls herself into a boozy, troubled existence in Miami, trying to forget the past even as it haunts her.

But they each learn in different ways that running from the past can’t save you—and then must make life-altering decisions about what they want their family to be and what they need to move forward.

Beginning in the 1970s and spanning forty years, A Reason to See You Again takes the reader on a kaleidoscopic journey through motherhood, the American workforce, the tech industry, the self-help movement, inherited trauma, the ever-evolving ways we communicate with one another, and the many unexpected forms that love can take.]]> 240 Jami Attenberg 0063039842 0 dnf-did-not-finish, to-read 3.20 2024
author: Jami Attenberg
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: dnf-did-not-finish, to-read
review:

]]> 215805897 A stray cat brings together five strangers over the course of one fateful summer in this heartwarming novel about love, found family, and the power of connection.

Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a resentment for the “crazy cat lady� label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On one of her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-It notes from a secret admirer at the spot where her favorite stray lives—a black cat named Cat. Like most cats, he is rather curious and sly, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.

Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half-sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early mid-life crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns her favorite bodega? When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves connected in their desire to care for him and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they've been searching for.]]> 304 Tanya Guerrero 059387384X 3 4.23 2025
author: Tanya Guerrero
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 17901125
As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on the dreamwalker, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take centre stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner.

Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided.]]> 510 Samantha Shannon 1408857391 5 4.19 2015
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 220259184 Heartwood takes you on a journey as a search and rescue team race against time when an experienced hiker mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine.

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

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. Roving between these compelling narratives, a puzzle emerges, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.]]> 320 Amity Gaige 1668063603 5 3.92 2025
author: Amity Gaige
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves:
review:

]]> 211004176 Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.�

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters� bond but also their lives will be at risk…]]> 133 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341086 0 to-read 4.18 2025
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216971219 A group of friends investigates the mystery of a strange staircase in the woods in this mesmerizing horror novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Accidents.

Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what.

Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something a mysterious staircase to nowhere.

One friend walks up—and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears.

Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods. . . .]]> 388 Chuck Wendig 0593156560 5 3.78 2025
author: Chuck Wendig
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 213793809
After more than seventy years of fighting to live her life on her own terms, Cher finally reveals her true story in intimate detail, in a two-part memoir.

Her remarkable career is unique and unparalleled. The only woman to top Billboard charts in seven consecutive decades, she is the winner of an Academy Award, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Cannes Film Festival Award, and an inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who has been lauded by the Kennedy Center.

She is a longtime activist and philanthropist.

As a dyslexic child who dreamed of becoming famous, Cher was raised in often-chaotic circumstances, surrounded by singers, actors, and a mother who inspired her in spite of their difficult relationship.

With her trademark honesty and humor, The Memoir traces how this diamond in the rough succeeded with no plan and little confidence to become the trailblazing superstar the world has been unable to ignore for more than half a century.

The Memoir, Part One follows her extraordinary beginnings through childhood to meeting and marrying Sonny Bono—and reveals the highly complicated relationship that made them world-famous, but eventually drove them apart.

The Memoir reveals the daughter, the sister, the wife, the lover, the mother, and the superstar.

It is a life too immense for only one book.]]> 432 Cher 0062863126 0 to-read 4.41 2024
author: Cher
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199897944 A “razor-sharp, perfectly plotted� (The Sunday Times) tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.

A house is a precious thing...

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

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

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is “a brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history, and to one’s own desires� (The Guardian).]]> 272 Yael van der Wouden 1668034360 5 4.25 2024
author: Yael van der Wouden
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 59428226 From the bestselling and award-winning author comes a wickedly clever and fast-paced novel of greed, revenge, obsession--and quite possibly the perfect murder.

Simon and Vicky couldn't seem more normal: a wealthy Chicago couple, he a respected law professor, she an advocate for domestic violence victims. A stable, if unexciting marriage. But one thing's for sure ... absolutely nothing is what it seems. The pair are far from normal, and one of them just may be a killer.

When the body of a beautiful socialite is found hanging in a mansion in a nearby suburb, Simon and Vicky's secrets begin to unravel. A secret whirlwind affair. A twenty-million-dollar trust fund about to come due. A decades-long grudge and obsession with revenge. These are just a few of the lies that make up the complex web...and they will have devastating consequences. And while both Vicky and Simon are liars, just who exactly is conning who?

Part Gone Girl, part Strangers on a Train, Look Closer is a wild rollercoaster of a read that will have you questioning everything you think you know.]]> 464 David Ellis 0698161998 4 4.23 2022
author: David Ellis
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves:
review:

]]> 219319489 480 Wally Lamb 1668006391 0 to-read 4.37 2025
author: Wally Lamb
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214151202 “The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.�

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

A sweeping love story with the pace and twists of a thriller, Broken Country is a novel of simmering passion, impossible choices, and explosive consequences that toggles between the past and present to explore the far-reaching legacy of first love.]]> 320 Clare Leslie Hall 166807818X 4 4.39 2025
author: Clare Leslie Hall
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 215361877 A propulsive novel of rupture and repair in the digital age, delving into a hidden world deep under the ocean—from the New York Times bestselling author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin

“Everything gets fixed, and we all stay broken.�

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at unfathomable depths.

Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London.

When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts? Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair?

Resoundingly simple and turbulent at the same time, Twist is a meditation on the nature of narrative and truth from one of the great storytellers of our times.]]> 239 Colum McCann 0593241738 4 3.76 2025
author: Colum McCann
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:

]]> 219833252 Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.

When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.

Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his himself, and his own particular set of skills.

Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.

Because everything burns.]]> 352 S.A. Cosby 1250832063 0 to-read 4.55 2025
author: S.A. Cosby
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219848315 Oprah’s Book Club Pick � Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive

“Stunning . . . A heartfelt and powerful examination of those living on the fringes of society, and the unique challenges they face to survive and thrive.� —Oprah Winfrey

“Magnificent . . . In writing this book, Vuong may have joined the ranks of an elite few great novelists.� —Leigh Haber, Los Angeles Times

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once�

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing � formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness � are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.]]> 416 Ocean Vuong 059383187X 0 to-read 4.36 2025
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25588634
“Richard Wagamese is a born storyteller.”—Louise Erdrich

When Franklin Starlight is called to visit his father, he has mixed emotions. Raised by the old man he was entrusted to soon after his birth, Frank is haunted by the brief and troubling moments he has shared with his father, Eldon. When he finally travels by horseback to town, he finds Eldon on the edge of death, decimated from years of drinking.

The two undertake a difficult journey into the mountainous backcountry, in search of a place for Eldon to die and be buried in the warrior way. As they travel, Eldon tells his son the story of his own life—from an impoverished childhood to combat in the Korean War and his shell-shocked return. Through the fog of pain, Eldon relates to his son these desolate moments, as well as his life’s fleeting but nonetheless crucial moments of happiness and hope, the sacrifices made in the name of love. And in telling his story, Eldon offers his son a world the boy has never seen, a history he has never known.

“Deeply felt and profoundly moving…written in the kind of sure, clear prose that brings to mind the work of the great North American masters; Steinbeck among them.”—Jane Urquhart, award-winning author of The Night Stages

“A novel about the role of stories in our lives, those we tell ourselves about ourselves and those we agree to live by.”� Globe and Mail]]> 258 Richard Wagamese 0 to-read 4.51 2014
author: Richard Wagamese
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.51
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 13636400
It is raining the day her life changes for ever. Attacked, drugged and kidnapped, Paige is transported to Oxford � a city kept secret for two hundred years, controlled by a powerful, otherworldly race. Paige is assigned to Warden, a Rephaite with mysterious motives. He is her master. Her trainer. Her natural enemy. But if Paige wants to regain her freedom she must allow herself to be nurtured in this prison where she is meant to die.

The Bone Season introduces a compelling heroine into the world of fiction. It also introduces Samantha Shannon, an extraordinary young writer with huge ambition and a teeming imagination, who has created a bold new reality in this riveting debut.]]> 466 Samantha Shannon 1408836424 5 3.63 2013
author: Samantha Shannon
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 210331628 A suspenseful, satirical dark comedy about a struggling writer who wakes up to find his date from the night before dead—and must then decide how far he’s willing to go to spin the misadventure into his next big book.

A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a six-figure book deal, a loving boyfriend, and an exciting writing career. His debut novel was a resounding success, which made the publication of his second book—a total flop—all the more devastating. Now, David is single, lonely, and desperately trying to come up with the next great idea for his third manuscript, one that will redeem him in the eyes of readers, reviewers…and maybe even his ex-boyfriend.

The issue is, good ideas are hard to come by, and the mounting pressure of a near-empty bank account isn’t helping. But when David connects with a sexy stranger on a dating app, he figures a wild night out in New York City may be just what he needs to find inspiration. Lucky for him, his date turns out to be handsome, confident, and wealthy, not to mention the perfect distraction from yet another evening staring at a blank screen.

After one of the best nights of his life, David wakes up hungover but giddy—only to find prince charming dead next to him in bed. Horrified, completely confused, and suddenly faced with the implausible-but-somehow-plausible idea that he may have actually killed his date, David calls the only person he can trust in a moment of crisis: his literary agent, Stacey.

Together, David and Stacey must untangle the events of the previous night, cover their tracks, and spin the entire misadventure into David’s career-defining novel—if only they can figure out what to do with the body first.]]> 329 Daniel Aleman 1538766345 4 3.60 2024
author: Daniel Aleman
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves:
review:

]]> 214151565 A read-in-one-night suspense thriller narrated by a compulsive liar whose little white lies allow her to enter into the life and comfort of a wealthy married couple who are harboring much darker secrets themselves. For the millions of us still chasing those gone girls, this is perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Lucy Foley, and Laura Dave.

Sloane Caraway is a liar.

Harmless lies, mostly, to make her self-proclaimed sad, little life a bit more interesting.

So when Sloane sees a young girl in tears at a park one afternoon, she can't help herself—she tells the girl's (very attractive) dad she's a nurse and helps him pull a bee stinger from the girl's foot.

With this lie, and chance encounter, Sloane becomes the nanny for the wealthy, and privileged Jay and Violet Lockhart. The perfect New York couple, with a brownstone, a daughter in private school, and summers on Block Island.

But maybe Sloane isn't the only one lying, and all that's picture-perfect harbors a much more dangerous truth. To say anything more is to spoil the most exciting, twisty, and bitingly smart suspense novel to come out in years.

The thing about lies is that they add up, form their own truth and a twisted prison of a world. And in Count My Lies, Sophie Stava spins a breakneck, unputdownable thriller about the secrets we keep, and the terrifying dangers that lurk just under the images we spend so much time trying to maintain.

Careful what you lie for.]]> 336 Sophie Stava 1668079348 4 3.72 2025
author: Sophie Stava
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 5 4.25 2025
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 0 to-read 3.63 2025
author: Laila Lalami
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214537798 From the author of instant national bestseller Love & Saffron, this bright and comforting novel follows the surprising friendship between two young women in 1990s Seattle and Paris, illuminating the power of books to change our lives.

A buoyant, mouth-watering oasis of a novel, Kate & Frida is a love letter to bookshops and booksellers, to the way stories shape how we perceive ourselves, to the passion we bring to life in our twenties, and to the last precious years before the internet changed everything.

Twenty-something Frida Rodriguez comes to Paris in 1991, relishing the city’s butter-soaked cuisine and seeking her future as a war correspondent. But when she writes to a bookshop in Seattle, she receives more than just the book she requests. A friendship begins that will redefine the person she thought she wanted to become.Ěý

Seattle bookseller Kate Fair is transformed by Frida’s free spirit, spurred to kiss her handsome coworker, to believe in herself as a writer, and to find beauty even in loss.ĚýThrough the most tumultuous years of their young lives—personally and globally—Kate and Frida’s friendship sustains and nourishes them as they show each other how to overcome self-doubt and the necessity of embracing joy even through our darkest hours.]]> 288 Kim Fay 0593852389 4 4.03 2025
author: Kim Fay
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 214152415 This riveting psychological thriller from master of twists Steve Cavanagh, author of the �unguessable and unputdownable� (Alex Michaelides, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Kill For Me, Kill for You, What if the witness was more twisted than the killer?

Something is wrong with Ruby Johnson.

A former resident of the ultra-elite Manhattan upper class, Ruby now works as a maid in the type of houses she used to live in. Unassuming, she sees everyone’s dirty secrets from the inside of their beautiful, renovated brownstones. But when Ruby witnesses a murder, she has wicked plans in mind that don’t involve telling the authorities the truth.

Eddie Flynn, streetwise ex con-artist-turned-defense attorney, is the only lawyer in New York City willing to take on hopeless cases. And none is more hopeless than John Jackson’s—the gun that killed his neighbor found, with Jackson’s DNA, in his own home. Flynn and his unconventional team will need to use every trick they know to keep an innocent man from being locked up. But to save his client’s life, Eddie must first protect his own, as the scariest organized criminals in the city are out for his head.

Perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell and Megan Miranda, Witness 8 is a fresh knockout page-turner from an author who is “the real deal� (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author).]]> 406 Steve Cavanagh 1668049376 5 4.10 2024
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:

]]> 208894426
Columnist Anna Appleby has left her love life behind after a painful divorce. Who needs a man when she has two kids, a cat, and uncontested control of the TV remote? Besides, she’d rather be single than subject herself to the hell of online dating. But her office rival is vying for her column, and no column means no stable source of income. In a desperate attempt to keep her job, Anna finds herself pitching a unique angle: seven dates, all found offline, chosen by her children.

From awkward encounters to unexpected connections, Anna gamely begins to put herself out there, asking out waiters, the mailman, and even her celebrity crush. But when a romantic connection appears where she least expected it, will she be brave enough to take another chance on love?]]> 367 Sophie Cousens 4 4.23 2024
author: Sophie Cousens
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 58535961
In Denton, Arkansas, the fate of the high school football team rests on the shoulders of Billy Lowe, a volatile but talented running back. Billy comes from an extremely troubled home: a trailer park where he is terrorized by his unstable mother’s abusive boyfriend. Billy takes out his anger on the field, but when his savagery crosses a line, he faces suspension.

Without Billy Lowe, the Denton Pirates can kiss their playoff bid goodbye. But the head coach, Trent Powers, who just moved from California with his wife and two children for this job, has more than just his paycheck riding on Billy’s bad behavior. As a born-again Christian, Trent feels a divine calling to save Billy—save him from his circumstances, and save his soul.

Then Billy’s abuser is found murdered in the Lowe family trailer, and all evidence points toward Billy. Now nothing can stop an explosive chain of violence that could tear the whole town apart on the eve of the playoffs.

WINNER OF THE PETER LOVESEY FIRST CRIME NOVEL CONTEST]]> 336 Eli Cranor 1641293462 0 to-read 3.77 2022
author: Eli Cranor
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 49379738 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today � A “dazzling� novel that “will break your heart and put it back together again� (J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Saints for All Occasions) about a young boy who must learn to go on after surviving tragedy

“A reading experience that leaves you profoundly altered for the better . . . Don’t miss this one.”—Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light

What does it mean not just to survive, but to truly live?

One summer morning, twelve-year-old Edward Adler, his beloved older brother, his parents, and 183 other passengers board a flight in Newark headed for Los Angeles. Among them are a Wall Street wunderkind, a young woman coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy, an injured veteran returning from Afghanistan, a business tycoon, and a free-spirited woman running away from her controlling husband. Halfway across the country, the plane crashes. Edward is the sole survivor.

Edward’s story captures the attention of the nation, but he struggles to find a place in a world without his family. He continues to feel that a part of himself has been left in the sky, forever tied to the plane and all of his fellow passengers. But then he makes an unexpected discovery—one that will lead him to the answers of some of life’s most profound When you’ve lost everything, how do you find the strength to put one foot in front of the other? How do you learn to feel safe again? How do you find meaning in your life?

Dear Edward is at once a transcendent coming-of-age story, a multidimensional portrait of an unforgettable cast of characters, and a breathtaking illustration of all the ways a broken heart learns to love again.
--penguinrandomhouse.com]]> 352 Ann Napolitano 1984854798 5 4.32 2020
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 213243955 An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.]]> 306 Eowyn Ivey 0593231023 4 3.68 2025
author: Eowyn Ivey
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves:
review:

]]> 211004155 The Last Thing He Told Me meets Fleishman Is in Trouble in this page-turning story of a couple who flee winter in the Midwest for Palm Springs, where they find their relationship at a crossroads.

Kim and Grant are at a turning point. A couple for thirty years, their "separate but together" partnership is running up against the realities of late middle age: Grant’s mother has died, the college where he taught philosophy was shuttered, and their twin girls are grown and gone. Escaping the bitter cold of a Midwestern winter for the hot desert sun of Palm Springs seems as good a solution as any to the more intractable problems they face.

When they arrive at Le Desert, a quirky condo community where everyone knows everyone’s business, Kim immediately embraces the opportunity to make new friends and explore a more adventurous side of her personality. Meanwhile, Grant struggles to find his footing in this unfamiliar landscape, leaving Kim to wonder if their relationship can survive the snowbird season. But when Grant goes missing on a hike in the Palm Springs mountains, Kim is forced to consider two terrifying outcomes: either Grant is truly lost, or this time he’s really left her.

Is it ever too late to become the person we wanted to be—and is there still time to change into someone better? The exhilarating, but often confusing transitions of midlife are pitched against the promise and glamour of Palm Springs in this tender, honest story of what it takes to commit to someone for a lifetime. With compassion and humor, Clancy explores the redemptive power of finding ourselves, and of being found.]]> 304 Christina Clancy 1250284953 0 to-read 3.48 2025
author: Christina Clancy
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211025516 The extraordinary new novel by Jonathan Evison, about a married couple in their golden years, from when they met across big ups, deep downs, and survive-it-all, opposites-attract love

Abe Winter and Ruth Warneke were never meant to be together—at least if you ask Ruth. Yet their catastrophic blind date in college evolved into a seventy-year marriage and a life on a farm on Bainbridge Island with their hens and beloved Labrador, Megs. Through the years, the Winters have fallen in and out of lockstep, and from their haunting losses and guarded secrets, a dependable partnership has been forged.
Ěý
But when Ruth’s loose tooth turns out to be something much more malicious, the beautiful, reliable life they’ve created together comes to a crisis. As Ruth struggles with her crumbling independence, Abe must learn how to take care of her while their three living children question his ability to look after his wife. And once again, the couple has to reconfigure how to be there for each other.
Ěý
In this bighearted and profound portrait of a marriage, Jonathan Evison explores seventy years of big moments in subtle ways, elegantly braiding the Winters� turbulent history with their present-day battles, showing us how the oddly paired college kids became parents, fell apart and back together, and grew into the Abe and Ruth of today. Endlessly heartwarming and moving, The Heart of Winter is a reminder that true love lives in small, everyday moments.]]> 367 Jonathan Evison 0593473566 5 4.32 2025
author: Jonathan Evison
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 198563641 From the New York Times bestselling author of Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo, a podcast producer agrees to host a new series about modern dating—but will the show jeopardize her chance at finding real love?

Cecily Foster loves to make podcasts. She fiercely protects her colleagues, dearly adores her friends, and never misses dinner with her sister. But after a disastrous relationship with a colleague who stole her heart and her ideas, she’s put romantic love on hold.

When the boss who’s disappointed her again and again finally offers her the chance to host her own show, she wants to be thrilled. But there’s a catch—actually, two catches. First, the show will be about Cecily’s dating life. And second, she has to follow the guidance of influencer and newly minted relationship coach Eliza Cassidy, whose relentlessly upbeat attitude seems ready-made for social media, not real life.

Cecily would rather do anything other than put her singledom on display (ugh) or take advice from the internet (UGH). But when her boss hints that doing the show is the only way to protect a friend’s job, she realizes she has no choice.

To make matters more complicated, once she’s committed to twenty blind dates of Eliza’s choosing, Cecily finds herself unable to stop thinking about Will, a photographer she helped to rescue a very big and very lovable lost dog. Even though there are sparks between the two, Will’s own path is uncertain, and Eliza’s skeptical comments about Cecily’s decision-making aren’t helping. On the one hand, Will seems great. But on the other hand . . . don’t they all?

As Cecily struggles to balance the life she truly desires and the one Eliza wants to create for her, she finds herself at a crossroads. Can Cecily sort through all the advice and find a way to do what she loves without losing herself in the process?]]> 320 Linda Holmes 059359925X 4 3.77 2025
author: Linda Holmes
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/12
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 211671383 She was only eleven-and-a-half inches tall, but she would change the world. Barbie is born in this bold new novel by USA Today bestselling author Renée Rosen.

When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll unlike any other, she knows what she’s setting in motion. It might just take the world a moment to catch up.

In 1956, the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. Ruth’s vision for a doll shaped like a grown woman and outfitted in an enviable wardrobe will let them dream they can be anything.

As Ruth assembles her team of creative rebels—head engineer Jack Ryan who hides his deepest secrets behind his genius and designers Charlotte Johnson and Stevie Klein, whose hopes and dreams rest on the success of Barbie’s fashion—she knows they’re working against a ticking clock to get this wild idea off the ground.

In the decades to come—through soaring heights and devastating personal lows, public scandals and private tensions� each of them will have to decide how tightly to hold on to their creation. Because Barbie has never been just a doll—she’s a legacy.]]> 432 Renée Rosen 0593335686 4 4.04 2025
author: Renée Rosen
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves:
review:

]]> 214152102
Meet Relebogile Naledi Mpho Moruakgomo. Or, for short, Eddie: an aspiring playwright who dreams of making it big in London’s theater world. But after repeated rejections from white talent agents, Eddie suspects her non-white sounding name might be the problem.

Enter Hugo Lawrence Smith: good looking, well-connected, charismatic and…very white. Stifled by his law degree and looking for a way out of the corporate world, he finds a kindred spirit in Eddie after a chance encounter at a cafe.

Together they devise a plan, one which will see Eddie’s play on stage and Hugo’s name in lights. They send out her script under his name and vow to keep the play’s origins a secret until it reaches critical levels of success. Then they can expose the theater world for its racism and hollow clout-chasing. But as their plan spins wildly out of control, Eddie and Hugo find themselves wondering if their reputations, and their friendship, can survive.]]> 288 Warona Jay 1668062364 0 to-read 3.74 2024
author: Warona Jay
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 216426697 An intimate and lyrical celebration of great love, great art, and the sacrifices we make for both

For fifty years Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now.

Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park itself, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.]]> 304 Jessica Soffer 0593851269 5 3.20
author: Jessica Soffer
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.20
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 216247502
Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she’ll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father’s—now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox—lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox’s centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents� secret, just as she’s falling in love for the first time . . .

As Pen experiences the sharp shock of adulthood, she comes to rely on herself for the first time in her life. A rich and rewarding novel of campus life, of sexual awakening, and ultimately, of the many ways women can become mothers in this world, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus asks to what extent we need to look back in order to move forward.]]> 384 Emma Knight 0593830458 4 3.39
author: Emma Knight
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.39
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/07
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves:
review:

]]> 211004023 A spine-tingling thriller by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about a 10-year-old girl with an impossible power, her father, and an unlikely stranger, who come together to confront the dangerous forces that want her at all costs. A strange story of family, love, comets, and bacon. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother wants nothing to do with him, and he's been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington DC. With nothing left to lose, he returns to his family's summer cabin outside the small mountain town of Roseland, Oregon to try and find some sense of direction. The cabin should be empty. It's not. Inside is a man named Alex. And with him is an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader. Artemis, who isn't exactly as she appears.

Soon it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: let himself drown in the memories of his past, or fight for a future he never thought possible. Because the girl is special. And forces are descending upon them who want nothing more than to control her.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 1250890438 4 4.10 2018
author: T.J. Klune
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:

]]> 211004158 From the national bestselling author of Oona Out of Order, a novel about two best friends and aspiring actresses who join The Dollhouse Academy, where stars are made and dangerous secrets are hidden

Ivy Gordon is living a borrowed life on borrowed time. For the past eighteen years, she has been the most famous star at the Dollhouse Academy, the ultra-secretive, elite boarding school and talent incubator that every aspiring performer dreams of attending. But now, at age thirty-four, she is tired of pretending everything is fine. In secret diary entries, Ivy begins to reveal the sordid truth of her life at the strange medical exams, mysterious supplements, and something unspeakable that’s left Ivy terrified and feeling like a prisoner. As she forces herself to confront the most painful parts of her past, she begins to realize that something truly sinister might be powering the Dollhouse’s success.

Ramona Halloway and her best friend, Grace Ludlow, grew up idolizing Ivy. Now both twenty-two, neither has made much headway in showbiz, until a lucky break grants them entry to the Dollhouse. They’re enchanted by the picturesque campus and the chance to perform alongside their idols—though nothing prepares them for the fiercely competitive training bootcamp. When Ramona begins to receive anonymous, threatening messages, it’s easy to dismiss them as a prank from a rival. Her bigger concern is Grace’s skyrocketing success, while Ramona falls ever further behind. But the messages grow more unsettling, as does life at the Dollhouse. Can Ramona overcome her jealousy and resentment to figure out what’s really going on? And can Ivy finally find her voice, before another young performer follows her catastrophic path to stardom?

With dark academia twists and enormous heart, The Dollhouse Academy is a novel about the complexities of friendship, our desire to be seen and understood, and the true cost of making our dreams a reality.]]> 320 Margarita Montimore 1250320658 3 3.54 2025
author: Margarita Montimore
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 214152335
Arabella and Aziz’s instant connection reminds Zoya of the passion she once felt for Aziz’s grandfather, a man she desired desperately, even after her father arranged another husband for her. In turn, Zoya would later marry off her youngest daughter, Naya, who aspired to date the Jackson 5 and wasn’t ready to be a wife or mother to Arabella at sixteen. Now that Naya’s children are grown and she’s arrived at an abrupt midlife crossroads, it’s time to settle old scores…]]> 336 Betty Shamieh 1668046547 0 to-read 3.89 2025
author: Betty Shamieh
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 214152160 A sweeping family saga following one woman’s struggle to protect her culture and her family amidst the backdrop of a military occupation.

In the foothills of the Himalayas, the picturesque mountain village of Poshkarbal is home to lush cherry and apple orchards and a thriving community. Yet Aisha and her mother Noorjahan live on the outskirts. A social pariah ever since her husband left, Noorjahan remains the only trusted healer and midwife and teaches Aisha about her special herbs and remedies. Isolated but content, Aisha is shocked when Noorjahan decides it’s time for her to attend the village school. From there, Aisha reconnects with her cousins from her father’s side of the family and excels in academics under the watchful eye of her teacher.

When Aisha is promised to the teacher’s son, Alim, in marriage, she is forced to abandon her dreams of college and become a wife. Their marriage is happy and fulfilling, but Aisha is also the keeper of her mother’s secrets, including the hidden poppy field that may have been the cause of her parent’s separation. As life in Poskarbal becomes increasingly difficult to navigate, Aisha and Alim eventually have children of their own, but the growing military presence forces Aisha to make impossible choices in order to save her family and preserve the independence Noorjahan fought so hard for. What follows is a family chronicle brimming with life, love, and humor, about sacrifice and honor, and fighting for your home and culture in the face of occupation.

Call Her Freedom is a lyrical, beautifully written novel about one woman’s love for her family. It is a sprawling investigation into colonialism’s relationship with loss and innocence spanning from 1969 to 2022. It is brimming with the violence of militarism, family secrets, and generational trauma announcing Tara Dorabji as a thrilling new voice in fiction.]]> 320 Tara Dorabji 1668051656 4 3.85 2025
author: Tara Dorabji
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/28
date added: 2025/02/03
shelves:
review:

]]> 46041465
When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly Alderton has seen and tried it all. In her memoir, she vividly recounts falling in love, finding a job, getting drunk, getting dumped, realizing that Ivan from the corner shop might just be the only reliable man in her life, and that absolutely no one can ever compare to her best girlfriends. Everything I Know About Love is about bad dates, good friends and—above all else� realizing that you are enough.

Glittering with wit and insight, heart and humor, Dolly Alderton’s unforgettable debut weaves together personal stories, satirical observations, a series of lists, recipes, and other vignettes that will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age—making you want to pick up the phone and tell your best friends all about it. Like Bridget Jones� Diary but all true, Everything I Know About Love is about the struggles of early adulthood in all its terrifying and hopeful uncertainty.]]> 368 Dolly Alderton 0062968785 4 3.97 2018
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 214152244 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781668076217.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets First Lie Wins in this electric, voice-driven debut novel about an elusive bestselling author who decides to finally confess her true identity after years of hiding from her past.

Cate Kay knows how to craft a story. As the creator of a bestselling book trilogy that struck box office gold as a film series, she’s one of the most successful authors of her generation. The thing is, Cate Kay doesn’t really exist. She’s never attended author events or granted any interviews. Her real identity had been a closely guarded secret, until now.

As a young adult, she and her best friend Amanda dreamed of escaping their difficult homes and moving to California to become movie stars. But the day before their grand adventure, a tragedy shattered their dreams and Cate has been on the run ever since, taking on different names and charting a new future. But after a shocking revelation, Cate understands that returning home is the only way she’ll be a whole person again.]]> 304 Kate Fagan 0 to-read 3.74 2025
author: Kate Fagan
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211025496 An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.

A single choice can define an entire life.

Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years. To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.

Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.

Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.

At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.]]> 512 Karissa Chen 0593713001 0 to-read 4.31 2025
author: Karissa Chen
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 211003837 For readers of Ann Patchett and Celeste Ng, Penitence is a poignant exploration of love and forgiveness. It’s a suspenseful, addictive page-turner filled with literary insight that compels readers to consider whether each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.

When a shocking murder occurs in the home of Angie and David Sheehan, their lives are shattered. Desperate to defend their family, they turn to small-town lawyer Martine Dumont for help, but Martine isn’t just legal counsel—she’s also the mother of Angie’s first love, Julian, a now-successful New York City criminal defense attorney. As Julian and Angie confront their shared past and long-buried guilt from a tragic accident years ago, they must navigate their own culpability and the unresolved feelings between them.

Spanning decades, from the ski slopes of rural Colorado to the streets of post-9/11 New York City and back again, Kristin Koval’s debut novel Penitence is an examination of the complexities of familial loyalty, the journey of redemption, and the profound experience of true forgiveness.]]> 320 Kristin Koval 1250342996 4 3.68 2025
author: Kristin Koval
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/25
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 211051568 From New York Times bestselling author Fiona Davis, an utterly addictive new novel that will transport you from New York City’s most glamorous party to the labyrinth streets of Cairo and back.

Egypt, 1936: When anthropology student Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, she leaps at the opportunity. But after an unbearable tragedy strikes, Charlotte knows her future will never be the same.

New York City, 1978: Eighteen-year-old Annie Jenkins is thrilled when she lands an opportunity to work for iconic former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who’s in the midst of organizing the famous Met Gala, hosted at the museum and known across the city as the “party of the year.� Though Annie soon realizes she’ll have her work cut out for her, scrambling to meet Diana’s capricious demands and exacting standards.

Meanwhile, Charlotte, now leading a quiet life as the associate curator of the Met’s celebrated Department of Egyptian Art, wants little to do with the upcoming gala. She’s consumed with her research on Hathorkare—a rare female pharaoh dismissed by most other Egyptologists as unimportant.

That is, until the night of the gala. When one of the Egyptian art collection’s most valuable artifacts goes missing . . . and there are signs Hathorkare’s legendary curse might be reawakening.

As Annie and Charlotte team up to search for the missing antiquity, a desperate hunch leads the unlikely duo to one place Charlotte swore she’d never return: Egypt. But if they’re to have any hope of finding the artifact, Charlotte will need to confront the demons of her past—which may mean leading them both directly into danger.]]> 349 Fiona Davis 0593474295 4 4.19 2025
author: Fiona Davis
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 217643704 An enthralling sapphic retelling of Swan Lake, for fans of Allison Saft and V.E Schwab.

Magic has long been outlawed in Auréal . Odile has always known she’d be the one to restore it.

Raised by a sorcerer, Odile has spent years preparing for the heist of a lifetime. It’s perfectly simple. Impersonate a princess, infiltrate the palace, steal the king's enchanted crown and restore magic to the kingdom.

But when the King is unexpectedly murdered, she’s forced to recruit the help of Marie d'Odette, the real princess, and the two begin to unravel a web of lies and deceit that leaves Odile uncertain of who to trust.

Soon though Odile must decide � her mission or the girl she’s falling for?

The fate of the Kingdom depends on her making the right choice. . .]]> 352 A.B. Poranek 0 to-read 4.10 2025
author: A.B. Poranek
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 222914134 � Jennifer Saint, bestselling author of Hera and Ariadne
Ěý
â€�In aĚýwholly original, incandescent take on the myth of Hekate, Nikita Gill captures the beauty, brutality and otherworldly strangeness of the ancient world like no other writer... This poem is pure magic.’ĚýĚ�â€� Elodie Harper, bestselling author ofĚýThe Wolf DenĚýtrilogy
Ěý
'A magical journey of survival and discovery through the Greek Underworld. Populated with unforgettable gods and titans and narrated in dream-like poetry, Hekate is a unique creationĚýand the most original addition to the retelling genre I have read in a while.'Ěý–Ě�Costanza Casati, bestselling author of Clytemnestra

A propulsive, electrifying and enraging retelling in verse of the life ofĚýGreek goddess Hekate, child of war turned all-powerful goddess of witchcraft and necromancy, by internationally bestselling poet Nikita Gill.

Born into a world on fire, Godling Hekate has never known safety. After her parents are on the losing side of the war between the ruling Titans and new Olympian Gods, Hekate is taken by her mother Asteria to the Underworld, where Styx and Hades agree to raise her. Meanwhile, Asteria is pursued across the world by Zeus and Poseidon and, to escape their clutches, transforms herself into an island in a stormy sea.

Orphaned and alone, Hekate grows up amongst the horrors and beauties of the Underworld, desperate to find her divine purpose and a sense of belonging in the land of the dead.Ěý

When Hekate finally uncovers her powers and ascends to Goddess status, she realises that even the most powerful Olympians are terrified of her. But when immortal war breaks out again, threatening to destroy everything from Mount Olympus to the Underworld itself, the Goddess of witchcraft and necromancy is the only one who can bring the deadly conflict to an end. . .]]> 416 Nikita Gill 1398537160 0 to-read 4.82 2025
author: Nikita Gill
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.82
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210204151
When kings fall, queens rise.

Nothing about Semiramis's upbringing could have foretold her legacy or the power she would come to wield. A female ruler, once an orphan raised on the outskirts of an empire - certainly no one in Ancient Assyria would bend to her command willingly. Semiramis was a woman who knew if she wanted power, she would have to claim it.

There are whispers of her fame in Mesopotamian myth- Semiramis was a queen, an ambitious warrior, a commander whose reputation reaches the majestic proportions of Alexander the Great. Historical record, on the other hand, falls eerily quiet.

In her second novel, Costanza Casati brilliantly weaves myth and ancient history together to give Semiramis a voice, charting her captivating ascent to a throne no one promised her. The world Casati expertly builds is rich with dazzling detail and will transport her readers to the heat of the Assyrian Empire and a world long gone.]]> 448 Costanza Casati 1464228213 4 4.07 2024
author: Costanza Casati
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 16054217 The #1 New York Times bestselling series finale and sequel to A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night

Bringing the magic and suspense of the All Souls Trilogy to a deeply satisfying conclusion, this highly anticipated finale went straight to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In The Book of Life, Diana and Matthew time-travel back from Elizabethan London to make a dramatic return to the present—facing new crises and old enemies. At Matthew’s ancestral home, Sept-Tours, they reunite with the beloved cast of characters from A Discovery of Witches—with one significant exception. But the real threat to their future has yet to be revealed, and when it is, the search for Ashmole 782 and its missing pages takes on even more urgency.]]> 561 Deborah Harkness 0670025593 4 4.15 2014
author: Deborah Harkness
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2014/07/11
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves:
review:

]]> 203927997 From the acclaimed author ofĚýWahala,Ěýa “vibrantâ€� (Charmaine Wilkerson) retelling of Mansfield Park, exploring identity, culture, race, and love.

Quiet Funke is happy in Nigeria. She loves her art teacher mother, her professor father, and even her annoying little brother (most of the time). But when tragedy strikes, she’s sent to England, a place she knows only from her mother’s stories. To her dismay, she finds the much-lauded estate dilapidated, the food tasteless, the weather grey. Worse still, her mother’s family are cold and distant. With one exception: her cousin Liv.

Free-spirited Liv has always wanted to break free of her joyless family. She becomes fiercely protective of her little cousin, and her warmth and kindness give Funke a place to heal. The two girls grow into adulthood the closest of friends.

But the choices their mothers made haunt Funke and Liv, and when a second tragedy occurs their friendship is torn apart. Against the long shadow of their shared family history, each woman will struggle to chart a path forward, separated by country, misunderstanding, and ambition.

Moving between Somerset and Lagos over the course of two decades,ĚýThis Motherless LandĚýis a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.]]> 352 Nikki May 0063084317 5 4.41 2024
author: Nikki May
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves:
review:

]]> 54627213
In the middle of the night, Creusa wakes to find her beloved Troy engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of brutal conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over, and the Greeks are victorious. Over the next few hours, the only life she has ever known will turn to ash . . .

The devastating consequences of the fall of Troy stretch from Mount Olympus to Mount Ida, from the citadel of Troy to the distant Greek islands, and across oceans and sky in between. These are the stories of the women embroiled in that legendary war and its terrible aftermath, as well as the feud and the fatal decisions that started it all�

Powerfully told from an all-female perspective, A Thousand Ships gives voices to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.

In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective.]]> 366 Natalie Haynes 5 4.09 2019
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2021/02/20
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 211003759 In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city’s flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson. They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most � love and work, community and knowledge � will survive.]]> 304 Eiren Caffall 1250353521 4 3.55 2025
author: Eiren Caffall
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 205064664 Greco-Roman mythology and the mystery of the vanished Roanoke colony collide in this epic adventure filled with sapphic longing and female rage—a debut novel for fans of Madeline Miller, Jennifer Saint, and Natalie Haynes.Before, Scopuli. It has been centuries since Thelia made the mistake that cost her the woman she loved. As the handmaidens charged with protecting Proserpina, the goddess of spring, Thelia and her sisters are banished to the island of Scopuli, cursed to live as sirens—winged half-woman, half-bird creatures. In luring men to their death, they hope to gain favor from the gods who could free them. But then ships stop coming and Thelia fears a fate worse than the underworld. Just as time begins to run out, a voice emerges, Proserpina’s voice; and what she asks of Thelia will spark a daring and dangerous quest for freedom.Now, Roanoke. Thelia can't bear to reflect on her last moments in Scopuli, where she left behind her sisters.ĚýAfter weeks drifting at sea, Thelia’s renewed human body is close to death. Luckily, an unfamiliar island appears on the horizon—Roanoke. Posing as a princess arriving on a sailboat filled with riches, Thelia infiltrates the small English colony. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that this place is dangerous, especially for women. As she grows closer to a beautiful settler who mysteriously resembles her former love, Thelia formulates a plan to save her sisters and enact revenge on the violent men she’s come to hate. ButĚýis she willing to go back to Scopuli and face the decisions of her past? And will Proserpina forgive her for all that she’s done?Told in alternating timelines, Those Fatal Flowers is a powerful, passionate, and wildly cathartic love letter to femininity and the monstrous power within us all.]]> 384 Shannon Ives 0593725301 4 3.57 2025
author: Shannon Ives
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/06
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves:
review:

]]> 33998348 333 Ariel Lawhon 0385541694 3
I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon achieves quite a feat-taking a subject about which there is no longer any mystery and making it mysterious. Thanks to DNA testing, it is now known that Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia died with the rest of her family in the summer of 1918, slaughtered by the Communists in the basement of a house in the town of Ekaterinburg. But, for decades afterwards a woman called Anna Anderson claimed to be Anastasia, saying she was saved by a soldier and escaped the USSR. It was sensational news right up until the time of her death. Lawhon makes no pretense of writing a what-if novel, but neither does she dwell on who Anna really was. Instead, using history, research and the same charisma and mystery that Anna herself exuded, she writes an entire novel that beckons and seduces.

The rest of this review is at The Gilmore Guide to Books: ]]> 3.72 2018
author: Ariel Lawhon
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2018/03/08
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
review:
(3.5)

I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon achieves quite a feat-taking a subject about which there is no longer any mystery and making it mysterious. Thanks to DNA testing, it is now known that Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia died with the rest of her family in the summer of 1918, slaughtered by the Communists in the basement of a house in the town of Ekaterinburg. But, for decades afterwards a woman called Anna Anderson claimed to be Anastasia, saying she was saved by a soldier and escaped the USSR. It was sensational news right up until the time of her death. Lawhon makes no pretense of writing a what-if novel, but neither does she dwell on who Anna really was. Instead, using history, research and the same charisma and mystery that Anna herself exuded, she writes an entire novel that beckons and seduces.

The rest of this review is at The Gilmore Guide to Books:
]]> 207611482 From New York Times bestselling historian and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Charles King, the moving untold story of the eighteenth-century men and women behind the making of Handel’s Messiah

George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones.

But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope.

Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience’s attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.]]> 352 Charles King 0385548265 0 to-read 3.92 2024
author: Charles King
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 74891539
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader. He gives her the name Mary, and they set off on the long trip to his trading post in the Cypress Hills of Saskatchewan, Canada. Along the way, she finds a fast friend in a Métis named Jeannie; makes a lifelong enemy in a wolfer named Stiller; and despite learning a dark secret of Farwell’s past, falls in love with her husband.

The winter trading season passes peacefully. Then, on the eve of their return to Montana, a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters forty Nakota—despite Farwell’s efforts to stop them. Mary, hiding from the hail of bullets, sees the murderers, including Stiller, take five Nakota women back to their fort. She begs Farwell to save them, and when he refuses, Mary takes two guns, creeps into the fort, and saves the women from certain death. Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that brings out the worst and best in the cast of unforgettable characters and pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.

Crow Mary sweeps across decades and the landscape of the upper West and Canada, showcasing the beauty of the natural world, while at the same time probing the intimacies of a marriage and one woman’s heart.]]> 364 Kathleen Grissom 5 4.49 2023
author: Kathleen Grissom
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/29
date added: 2024/12/29
shelves:
review:

]]> 203767605 A thrilling tick-tock recounting one of the most harrowing hostage situations and daring rescue attempts of our time—from true-life espionage master and New York Times bestselling author of Operation Mincemeat and The Spy and the Traitor Ben Macintyre.

As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff, one that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath.

Policeman Trevor Lock was supposed to have gone to the theater that night. Instead, he found himself overpowered and whisked into the embassy. The terrorists never noticed the gun hidden in his jacket. The drama that ensued would force him to find reserves of courage he didn’t know he had. The gunmen themselves were hardly one-dimensional—all Arabs, some highly educated, who hoped to force Britain to take their side in their independence battle against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. Behind the scenes lurked the brutal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who had bankrolled the whole affair as a salvo against Iran.

As police negotiators pressed the gunmen, rival protestors clashed violently outside the embassy, and as MI6 and the CIA scrambled for intelligence, Britain’s special forces strike team, the SAS, laid plans for a dangerous rescue mission. Inside, Lock and his fellow hostages used all the cunning they possessed to outwit and outflank their captors. Finally, on the sixth day, after the terrorists executed the embassy press attaché and dumped his body on the front doorstep, the SAS raid began, sparking a deadly high-stakes climax.

A story of ordinary men and women under immense pressure, The Siege takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades and provide a direct historical link to the tragedy on 9/11. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Macintyre brilliantly reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.]]> 400 Ben Macintyre 0593728092 0 to-read 4.35 2024
author: Ben Macintyre
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 204905217
A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.]]> 304 Lisa Marie Presley 0593733878 4 4.26 2024
author: Lisa Marie Presley
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 208584952 From the award-winning author of Chemistry, a sharp-witted, insightful novel about a marriage as seen through the lens of two family vacations.

Keru and Nate are college sweethearts who marry despite their family differences: Keru’s strict, Chinese, immigrant parents demand perfection (“To use a dishwasher is to admit defeat,� says her father), while Nate’s rural, white, working-class family distrusts his intellectual ambitions and his “foreign� wife.

Some years into their marriage, the couple invites their families on vacation. At a Cape Cod beach house, and later at a luxury Catskills bungalow, Keru, Nate, and their giant sheepdog navigate visits from in-laws and unexpected guests, all while wondering if they have what it takes to answer the big questions: How do you cope when your spouse and your family of origin clash? How many people (and dogs) make a family? And when the pack starts to disintegrate, what can you do to shepherd everyone back together?]]> 224 Weike Wang 0593545540 4 3.30 2024
author: Weike Wang
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 204174589
Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.

That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF, the nineteenth novel in Louise Penny's #1 New York Times-bestselling series. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you", a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list—and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.

Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Québec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail the devastating consequences would reach into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages.

Including Three Pines.]]> 432 Louise Penny 1250328144 4 4.41 2024
author: Louise Penny
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 61266073 An unexpected act of violence brings together a Chinese-American family and a wealthy white lawyer in this propulsive and sweeping story of family, identity and the American experience—for fans of Jean Kwok, Mary Beth Keane and Naima Coster.

Set in New York and China over three decades, Paper Names explores what it means to be American from three different perspectives. There’s Tony, a Chinese-born engineer turned Manhattan doorman, who immigrated to the United States to give his family a better life. His daughter, Tammy, who we meet at age nine and follow through adulthood, grapples with the expectations of a first generation American and her own personal desires. Finally, there’s Oliver, a handsome white lawyer with a dark family secret and who lives in the building where Tony works. A violent attack causes their lives to intertwine in ways that will change them forever.

Taut, panoramic and powerful, debut novelist Susie Luo's Paper Names is an unforgettable story about the long shadows of our parents, the ripple effect of our decisions and the ways in which our love transcends difference.]]> 258 Susie Luo 3 3.89 2023
author: Susie Luo
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves:
review:

]]> 28940 332 Kate Atkinson 0312150601 4 3.96 1995
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves:
review:

]]> 18889555 The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.]]> 264 Octavia E. Butler 0807083704 0 to-read 4.37 1979
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Catherine (The Gilmore Guide to Books)
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>