Doug's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 12 May 2025 23:40:30 -0700 60 Doug's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)]]> 25451264
Now this epic trilogy concludes with Death's End. Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?]]>
604 Liu Cixin 0765377101 Doug 0 to-read 4.40 2010 Death's End (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #3)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Doug
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/12
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)]]> 23168817 512 Liu Cixin Doug 0 currently-reading 4.39 2008 The Dark Forest (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Doug
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/12
shelves: currently-reading
review:

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The First Blade of Ostia 23627731
Bryn’s earliest memory is of watching duels in the arena. His earliest dream is of taking his place there.

Amero has no dreams. His life has been about fulfilling the expectations of others. In search of a path of his own, the dreams of others are too tempting to resist.

After years of sacrifice and hard work, Bryn is finally a professional duellist. Becoming the First Blade of Ostia no longer seems the childish fantasy it once did. To find the man standing in his way is also his best friend will test him in ways he would never have believed.

The First Blade of Ostia is a stand alone novel set in the Middle Sea World of the Society of the Sword Trilogy.]]>
313 Duncan M. Hamilton Doug 4 2025-rankings 4.28 2014 The First Blade of Ostia
author: Duncan M. Hamilton
name: Doug
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/12
date added: 2025/05/12
shelves: 2025-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Blood Lines (Scott Brodie & Maggie Taylor, #2)]]> 123024035
Army Criminal Investigation Agents Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor have been separated for five months following their last assignment, a dangerous mission in Venezuela to locate and detain an infamous Army deserter. Now, in Berlin, they are reunited and tasked with investigating the murder of one of their CID Special Agent Harry Vance of the 5th MP Battalion, an accomplished counterterrorism agent who had been stationed in western Germany, and whose body was discovered in a city park in the heart of Berlin’s Arab refugee community.

The authorities suspect this is an act of Islamic terrorism, but Brodie and Taylor soon believe there is more to this case. The reason for Vance’s presence in Berlin is unknown, and as Brodie and Taylor work to discover what the murder victim was doing in the days and weeks preceding his death, they become immersed in the many conflicts and contradictions of modern Germany—the Arab refugee crisis, the dark legacy of the Cold War and the Stasi secret police, and the imminent threats of a rising neo-Nazi movement. At the same time, they are butting heads with the authorities—both German and American—and facing a possible threat from American intelligence agents who fear that Brodie and Taylor might have learned too much about US clandestine operations during their mission in Venezuela.

Ultimately, Brodie and Taylor realize that the murder of Harry Vance was merely the prelude to a much more sinister future event—unless they can unravel the mystery in time to stop it.]]>
508 Nelson DeMille 1501101838 Doug 4 2025-rankings 4.41 2023 Blood Lines (Scott Brodie & Maggie Taylor, #2)
author: Nelson DeMille
name: Doug
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/29
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: 2025-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[For We Are Many (Bobiverse, #2)]]> 33395557
Bob and his copies have been spreading out from Earth for 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. But that's the only part of the plan that's still in one piece. A system-wide war has killed off 99.9 percent of the human race; nuclear winter is slowly making the Earth uninhabitable; a radical group wants to finish the job on the remnants of humanity; the Brazilian space probes are still out there, still trying to blow up the competition; and the Bobs have discovered a spacefaring species that sees all other life as food.

Bob left Earth anticipating a life of exploration and blissful solitude. Instead he's become a sky god to a primitive native species, the only hope for getting humanity to a new home, and possibly the only thing that can prevent every living thing in the local sphere from ending up as dinner.]]>
311 Dennis E. Taylor Doug 4 2025-rankings 4.37 2017 For We Are Many (Bobiverse, #2)
author: Dennis E. Taylor
name: Doug
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 2025-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[All These Worlds (Bobiverse, #3)]]> 35506021
They've created enough colonies so humanity shouldn't go extinct. But political squabbles have a bad habit of dying hard, and the Brazilian probes are still trying to take out the competition. And the Bobs have picked a fight with an older, more powerful species with a large appetite and a short temper.

Still stinging from getting their collective butts kicked in their first encounter with the Others, the Bobs now face the prospect of a decisive final battle to defend Earth and its colonies. But the Bobs are less disciplined than a herd of cats, and some of the younger copies are more concerned with their own local problems than defeating the Others.

Yet salvation may come from an unlikely source. A couple of eighth-generation Bobs have found something out in deep space. All it will take to save the Earth and perhaps all of humanity is for them to get it to Sol - unless the Others arrive first.]]>
336 Dennis E. Taylor Doug 0 to-read 4.41 2017 All These Worlds (Bobiverse, #3)
author: Dennis E. Taylor
name: Doug
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: to-read
review:

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Prodigal Son (Orphan X, #6) 57892342
As a boy, Evan Smoak was pulled out of a foster home and trained in an off-the-books operation known as the Orphan Program. He was a government assassin, perhaps the best, known to a few insiders as Orphan X. He eventually broke with the Program and adopted a new name―The Nowhere Man―and a new mission, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble. But the highest power in the country has made him a tempting offer―in exchange for an unofficial pardon, he must stop his clandestine activities as The Nowhere Man. Now Evan has to do the one thing he’s least equipped to do―live a normal life.

But then he gets a call for help from the one person he never expected. A woman claiming to have given him up for adoption, a woman he never knew―his mother. Her unlikely request: help Andrew Duran―a man whose life has gone off the rails, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, bringing him to the deadly attention of very powerful figures. Now a brutal brother & sister assassination team are after him and with no one to turn to, and no safe place to hide, Evan is Duran’s only option. But when the hidden cabal catches on to what Evan is doing, everything he’s fought for is on the line―including his own life.]]>
452 Gregg Hurwitz 1405942673 Doug 4 2025-rankings 4.20 2021 Prodigal Son (Orphan X, #6)
author: Gregg Hurwitz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: 2025-rankings
review:

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Dark Horse (Orphan X, #7) 57693476 Gregg Hurwitz's New York Times bestselling series returns when Orphan X faces his most challenging mission ever in Dark Horse.

Evan Smoak is a man with many identities and a challenging past. As Orphan X, he was a government assassin for the off-the-books Orphan Program. After he broke with the Program, he adopted a new name and a new mission—The Nowhere Man, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble. Having just survived an attack on his life and the complete devastation of his base of operations, as well as his complicated (and deepening) relationship with his neighbor Mia Hall, Evan isn't interested in taking on a new mission. But one finds him anyway.

Aragon Urrea is a kingpin of a major drug-dealing operation in South Texas. He's also the patron of the local area—supplying employment in legitimate operations, providing help to the helpless, rough justice to the downtrodden, and a future to a people normally with little hope. He's complicated—a not completely good man, who does bad things for often good reasons. However, for all his money and power, he is helpless when one of the most vicious cartels kidnaps his innocent eighteen year old daughter, spiriting her away into the armored complex that is their headquarters in Mexico. With no other way to rescue his daughter, he turns to The Nowhere Man.

Now not only must Evan figure out how to get into the impregnable fortress of a heavily armed, deeply paranoid cartel leader, but he must decide if he should help a very bad man—no matter how just the cause.]]>
432 Gregg Hurwitz 125025230X Doug 0 to-read 4.26 2022 Dark Horse (Orphan X, #7)
author: Gregg Hurwitz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)]]> 20518872 472 Liu Cixin Doug 4 2025-rankings 4.07 2006 The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1)
author: Liu Cixin
name: Doug
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: 2025-rankings
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Into the Fire (Orphan X, #5) 45046789 The New York Times bestselling Orphan X returns—facing his own uncertain future and undertaking one last mission.

Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was trained as an off-the-books government assassin: Orphan X. After breaking with the Program, he reinvented himself as The Nowhere Man, a figure shrouded in shadows who helps the truly desperate. But the government didn’t let go of him easily, sending their best to hunt him down and eliminate him. All of them failed. With his deadliest enemies behind him, Evan is facing a new challenge—what is he going to do now that no one is after him?

Max Merriweather is at the end of his rope. Separated from the woman he loves and barely scraping by, Max is a disappointment to everyone in his life. Then his very successful cousin Grant is brutally murdered. Two months before, Grant left Max an envelope with instructions to take it to a reporter if anything happened to him. Now the reporter is missing and Max’s apartment is ransacked. A man at the end of his rope, he calls The Nowhere Man.

With mixed feelings, Evan takes on this mission, easily finding the men who are after Max and executing a plan to keep him safe. But it isn’t as obvious as it seems—and Evan finds himself enmeshed in one of the most challenging missions of his life, one that he can’t survive on his own. With the help of Joey Morales, a genius-level hacker and the last Orphan recruited into the Program, and the brilliant, off-the-books gunsmith, Tommy Stojack, Orphan X once more heads
Into the Fire.]]>
400 Gregg Hurwitz 1250120454 Doug 5 2025-rankings 4.38 2020 Into the Fire (Orphan X, #5)
author: Gregg Hurwitz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: 2025-rankings
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The Lost Metal (Mistborn, #7) 23947089 Return to #1 New York Times bestseller Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn world of Scadrial as its second era, which began with The Alloy of Law, comes to its earth-shattering conclusion in The Lost Metal.

For years, frontier lawman turned big-city senator Waxillium Ladrian has hunted the shadowy organization the Set—with his late uncle and his sister among their leaders—since they started kidnapping people with the power of Allomancy in their bloodlines. When Detective Marasi Colms and her partner, Wayne, find stockpiled weapons bound for the Outer City of Bilming, this opens a new lead. Conflict between the capital, Elendel, and the Outer Cities only favors the Set, and their tendrils now reach to the Elendel Senate—whose corruption Wax and his wife, Steris, have sought to expose—and Bilming is even more entangled.

After Wax discovers a new type of explosive that can unleash unprecedented destruction and realizes that the Set must already have it, an immortal kandra serving Scadrial's god, Harmony, reveals that Bilming has fallen under the influence of another god: Trell, worshipped by the Set. And Trell isn't the only factor at play from the larger Cosmere—Marasi is recruited by offworlders with strange abilities who claim their goal is to protect Scadrial . . . at any cost.

Wax must choose whether to set aside his rocky relationship with God and once again become the Sword that Harmony has groomed him to be. If no one steps forward to be the hero Scadrial needs, the planet and its millions of people will come to a sudden and calamitous ruin.]]>
507 Brandon Sanderson 0765391198 Doug 4 2025-rankings 4.46 2022 The Lost Metal (Mistborn, #7)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/04
shelves: 2025-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn, #6)]]> 18739426
The Bands of Mourning are the mythical metal minds owned by the Lord Ruler, said to grant anyone who wears them the powers that the Lord Ruler had at his command. Hardly anyone thinks they really exist. A kandra researcher has returned to Elendel with images that seem to depict the Bands, as well as writings in a language that no one can read. Waxillium Ladrian is recruited to travel south to the city of New Seran to investigate. Along the way he discovers hints that point to the true goals of his uncle Edwarn and the shadowy organization known as The Set.]]>
455 Brandon Sanderson 146686267X Doug 4 2025-rankings 4.42 2016 The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn, #6)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: 2025-rankings
review:

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Wool - Holston (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]>
56 Hugh Howey Doug 0 to-read 4.14 2012 Wool - Holston (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Doug
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom]]> 35558933 The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love. The Four Agreements are: Be Impeccable With Your Word, Don't Take Anything Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, Always Do Your Best.]]> 153 Miguel Ruiz Doug 2 2024-rankings 4.26 1997 The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
author: Miguel Ruiz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1997
rating: 2
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Shadows of Self (Mistborn, #5)]]> 16065004
Three hundred years after the events of the Mistborn trilogy, Scadrial is now on the verge of modernity, with railroads to supplement the canals, electric lighting in the streets and the homes of the wealthy, and the first steel-framed skyscrapers racing for the clouds.

When family obligations forced Waxillium Ladrian to forsake the frontier lands and return to the metropolis of his birth to take his place as head of a noble House, he little imagined that the crime-fighting skills acquired during twenty years in the dusty plains would be just as applicable in the big city. He soon learned that there too, just being a talented Twinborn � one who can use both Allomancy and Feruchemy, the dominant magical modes on Scadrial � would not suffice.

This bustling, optimistic, but still shaky society will now face its first test by terrorism and assassination, crimes intended to stir up labor strife and religious conflict. Wax, his eccentric sidekick Wayne, and brilliant, beautiful young Marasi, now officially part of the constabulary, must unravel the conspiracy before civil strife can stop Scadrial’s progress in its tracks.]]>
376 Brandon Sanderson 0765378558 Doug 4 4.26 2015 Shadows of Self (Mistborn, #5)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[The Alloy of Law (Mistborn, #4)]]> 10803121
Kelsier, Vin, Elend, Sazed, Spook, and the rest are now part of history—or religion. Yet even as science and technology are reaching new heights, the old magics of Allomancy and Feruchemy continue to play a role in this reborn world. Out in the frontier lands known as the Roughs, they are crucial tools for the brave men and women attempting to establish order and justice.

One such is Waxillium Ladrian, a rare Twinborn who can Push on metals with his Allomancy and use Feruchemy to become lighter or heavier at will.

After twenty years in the Roughs, Wax has been forced by family tragedy to return to the metropolis of Elendel. Now he must reluctantly put away his guns and assume the duties and dignity incumbent upon the head of a noble house. Or so he thinks, until he learns the hard way that the mansions and elegant tree-lined streets of the city can be even more dangerous than the dusty plains of the Roughs.]]>
325 Brandon Sanderson 0765330423 Doug 4 2024-rankings 4.20 2011 The Alloy of Law (Mistborn, #4)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/27
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera, #6)]]> 8107253
Now the end of all he fought for is close at hand. The brutal, dreaded vord are on the march, using fear and chaos to turn the Alerans against one another, and forcing those who will not submit to flee to the outer reaches of the Realm.

Perhaps for the final time, Gaius Octavian and his Legions must stand against the enemies of his people. And it will take all of his intelligence, ingenuity, and furycraft to save their world from eternal darkness...





(Description for back cover of mass market paperback edition)]]>
759 Jim Butcher 0441019625 Doug 5 2011-rankings 4.39 2009 First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera, #6)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Doug
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2011/01/04
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves: 2011-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Captain's Fury (Codex Alera, #4)]]> 3503318
After two years of bitter conflict with the hordes of invading Canim warriors, Tavi of Calderon, now captain of the First Aleran Legion, realizes that a peril far greater than the Canim exists - the mysterious threat that drove the savage Canim to flee their homeland.

Tavi proposes attempting an alliance with the Canim against their common foe, but his warnings go unheeded. For the Senate's newly appointed military commander has long desired to wipe out the Canim "scourge" and their slave allies.

Now Tavi must find a way to overcome centuries-old animosities if an alliance is to be forged, and he must lead his Legion in defiance of the law, against friend and foe - or none will have a chance of survival...]]>
626 Jim Butcher 0441016553 Doug 5 2010-rankings 4.37 2007 Captain's Fury (Codex Alera, #4)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Doug
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2010/10/12
date added: 2024/11/24
shelves: 2010-rankings
review:

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Tell No One 43933
Everyone tells him it's time to move on, to forget the past once and for all. But for David Beck, there can be no closure. A message has appeared on his computer, a phrase only he and his dead wife know. Suddenly Beck is taunted with the impossible- that somewhere, somehow, Elizabeth is alive.

Beck has been warned to tell no one. And he doesn't. Instead, he runs from the people he trusts the most, plunging headlong into a search for the shadowy figure whose messages hold out a desperate hope.

But already Beck is being hunted down. He's headed straight into the heart of a dark and deadly secret- and someone intends to stop him before he gets there.]]>
370 Harlan Coben 0440236703 Doug 0 to-read 4.05 2001 Tell No One
author: Harlan Coben
name: Doug
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Out of the Dark (Orphan X, #4)]]> 39863167 When darkness closes in―he's your last, best hope. Evan Smoak returns in Gregg Hurwitz’s #1 international bestselling Orphan X series.

Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as part of the Orphan Program, an off-the-books operation designed to create deniable intelligence assets―i.e. assassins. Evan was Orphan X. He broke with the Program, using everything he learned to disappear and reinvent himself as the Nowhere Man, a man who helps the truly desperate when no one else can. But now Evan's past in the Orphan Program is reaching out to him.

Someone at the very highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Orphan Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers. After Evan's mentor and the only father he ever knew was killed, he decided to strike back. His target is the man who started the program and who is now the most heavily guarded person in the world: the President of the United States.

But President Bennett knows that Orphan X is after him and, using weapons of his own, he's decided to counter-attack. Bennett activates the one man who has the skills and experience to track down and take out Orphan X―the first recruit of the program, Orphan A.

With Evan devoting all his skills, resources, and intelligence to find a way through the layers of security that surround the President, suddenly he also has to protect himself against the deadliest of opponents. It's Orphan vs. Orphan with the future of the country―even the world―on the line.]]>
388 Gregg Hurwitz 125012042X Doug 5 2024-rankings 4.36 2019 Out of the Dark (Orphan X, #4)
author: Gregg Hurwitz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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Best Served Cold 5961140
There have been nineteen years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. Armies march, heads roll and cities burn, while behind the scenes bankers, priests and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

War may be hell but for Monza Murcatto, the Snake of Talins, the most feared and famous mercenary in Duke Orso's employ, it's a damn good way of making money too. Her victories have made her popular - a shade too popular for her employer's taste. Betrayed and left for dead, Murcatto's reward is a broken body and a burning hunger for vengeance. Whatever the cost, seven men must die.

Her allies include Styria's least reliable drunkard, Styria's most treacherous poisoner, a mass-murderer obsessed with numbers and a Northman who just wants to do the right thing. Her enemies number the better half of the nation. And that's all before the most dangerous man in the world is dispatched to hunt her down and finish the job Duke Orso started...

Springtime in Styria. And that means revenge.

BEST SERVED COLD is the new standalone novel set in the world of Joe Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy.]]>
632 Joe Abercrombie 0316044962 Doug 3 2024-rankings 4.10 2009 Best Served Cold
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Doug
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1)]]> 32109569 Alternate Cover Edition can be found here.

Bob Johansson has just sold his software company and is looking forward to a life of leisure. There are places to go, books to read, and movies to watch. So it's a little unfair when he gets himself killed crossing the street.

Bob wakes up a century later to find that corpsicles have been declared to be without rights, and he is now the property of the state. He has been uploaded into computer hardware and is slated to be the controlling AI in an interstellar probe looking for habitable planets. The stakes are high: no less than the first claim to entire worlds. If he declines the honor, he'll be switched off, and they'll try again with someone else. If he accepts, he becomes a prime target. There are at least three other countries trying to get their own probes launched first, and they play dirty.

The safest place for Bob is in space, heading away from Earth at top speed. Or so he thinks. Because the universe is full of nasties, and trespassers make them mad - very mad.]]>
383 Dennis E. Taylor Doug 4 2024-rankings 4.29 2016 We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1)
author: Dennis E. Taylor
name: Doug
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/04
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Aeronaut's Windlass (The Cinder Spires, #1)]]> 136342745 Ìę
Since time immemorial, the Spires have sheltered humanity. Within their halls, the ruling aristocratic houses develop scientific marvels, foster trade alliances, and maintain fleets of airships to keep the peace.
Ìę
Captain Grimm commands the merchant ship Predator. Loyal to Spire Albion, he has taken their side in the cold war with Spire Aurora, disrupting the enemy’s shipping lines by attacking their cargo vessels. But when the Predator is damaged in combat, Grimm joins a team of Albion agents on a vital mission in exchange for fully restoring his ship.
Ìę
And as Grimm undertakes this task, he learns that the conflict between the Spires is merely a premonition of things to come. Humanity’s ancient enemy, silent for more than ten thousand years, has begun to stir once more. And death will follow in its wake...]]>
656 Jim Butcher 0593642058 Doug 0 to-read 4.15 2015 The Aeronaut's Windlass (The Cinder Spires, #1)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Doug
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/06
shelves: to-read
review:

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Hellbent (Orphan X, #3) 40996328
But Jack knew too much about a programme that had gone rotten - he was a loose end that needed to be dealt with. But if you go after the only person who ever treated him like a human being, you can guarantee that the Nowhere Man will be coming for you. Hellbent on making things right . . .

With Hellbent, Gregg Hurwitz raises the bar again with a masterclass in hi-octane thriller writing.]]>
412 Gregg Hurwitz 1250119189 Doug 4 2024-rankings 4.42 2018 Hellbent (Orphan X, #3)
author: Gregg Hurwitz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/24
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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Tripwire (Jack Reacher, #3) 220970 432 Lee Child 0515128635 Doug 3 2024-rankings 4.08 1999 Tripwire  (Jack Reacher, #3)
author: Lee Child
name: Doug
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/06
date added: 2024/09/06
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Running Blind (Jack Reacher, #4)]]> 455925 512 Lee Child 0515130974 Doug 0 to-read 4.09 2000 Running Blind (Jack Reacher, #4)
author: Lee Child
name: Doug
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: to-read
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The Sword of Kaigen 41886271 A son struggling to grasp his violent future,
A father blind to the danger that threatens them all.

When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?

High on a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire’s enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name ‘The Sword of Kaigen.â€�

Born into Kusanagi’s legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family’s fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen’s alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.

Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.]]>
651 M.L. Wang Doug 3 2024-rankings 4.46 2019 The Sword of Kaigen
author: M.L. Wang
name: Doug
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/22
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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Shield of Thunder (Troy, #2) 44011
The war in Troy is looming, and all the kings of the Great Green are gathering, friends and enemies, with their own dark plans of conquest and plunder.

Into this maelstrom of treachery and deceit come three travellers � Piria, a runaway priestess nursing a terrible secret, Kalliades, a warrior with a legendary sword, and Banokles who will carve his own legend in the battles to come.

Shield of Thunder takes the reader back into the glories and tragedies of Bronze Age Greece, reuniting the characters from Lord of the Silver Bow � the dread Helikaon and his great love, the fiery Andromache, the mighty Hektor, and the fabled storyteller, Odysseus.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]>
480 David Gemmell 0593052226 Doug 0 to-read 4.37 2006 Shield of Thunder (Troy, #2)
author: David Gemmell
name: Doug
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Lord of the Silver Bow (Troy, #1)]]> 257149 Helikaon. Strong, fast, quick of mind, he is a bold warrior, hated by his enemies, feared even by his Trojan allies. For there is a darkness at the heart of the Golden One, a savagery that, once awakened, can be appeased only with blood.

Argurios the Mykene is a peerless fighter, a man of unbending principles and unbreakable will. Like all of the Mykene warriors, he lives to conquer and to kill. Dispatched by King Agamemnon to scout the defenses of the golden city of Troy, he is Helikaon's sworn enemy.

Andromache is a priestess of Thera betrothed against her will to Hektor, prince of Troy. Scornful of tradition, skilled in the arts of war, and passionate in the ways of her order, Andromache vows to love whom she pleases and to live as she desires.

Now fate is about to thrust these three together; and, from the sparks of passionate love and hate, ignite a fire that will engulf the world.

Readers who know the works of David Gemmell expect nothing less than excellence from this author, whose taut prose, driving plots, and full-bodied characters have won him legions of fans the world over. Now, with this first masterly volume in an epic reimagining of the Trojan War, Gemmell has written an ageless drama of brave deeds and fierce battles, of honor and treachery, of love won and lost.

From the Hardcover edition.]]>
483 David Gemmell 0345494571 Doug 4 2024-rankings 4.32 2005 Lord of the Silver Bow (Troy, #1)
author: David Gemmell
name: Doug
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/25
date added: 2024/07/25
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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Food: A Love Story 20697471
Bacon. McDonalds. Cinnabon. Hot Pockets. Kale. Stand-up comedian and author Jim Gaffigan has made his career rhapsodizing over the most treasured dishes of the American diet (“choking on bacon is like getting murdered by your loverâ€�) and decrying the worst offenders (“kale is the early morning of foodsâ€�). Fans flocked to his New York Times bestselling book Dad is Fat to hear him riff on fatherhood but now, in his second book, he will give them what they really crave—hundreds of pages of his thoughts on all things culinary(ish). Insights such as: why he believes coconut water was invented to get people to stop drinking coconut water, why pretzel bread is #3 on his most important inventions of humankind (behind the wheel and the computer), and the answer to the age-old question “which animal is more delicious: the pig, the cow, or the bacon cheeseburger?”]]>
340 Jim Gaffigan 0804140413 Doug 4 2024-rankings 3.71 2014 Food: A Love Story
author: Jim Gaffigan
name: Doug
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Nowhere Man (Orphan X, #2)]]> 40996287 He was once called Orphan X.

As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children's home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative buried so deep that virtually no one knows it exists. But he broke with the programme, choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help those unable to protect themselves.

One day, though, Evan's luck ran out . . .

Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no idea where he is or who has captured him. As he tries to piece together what's happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help.

With time running out, he will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of whom he's never encountered to have any chance of escape. He's got to save himself to protect those whose lives depend on him. Or die trying . . .]]>
369 Gregg Hurwitz Doug 5 2024-rankings 4.17 2017 The Nowhere Man (Orphan X, #2)
author: Gregg Hurwitz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/29
date added: 2024/06/29
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Deadhouse Gates (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)]]> 541867
In the vast dominion of Seven Cities, in the Holy Desert Raraku, the seer Sha'ik and her followers prepare for the long-prophesied uprising known as the Whirlwind. Unprecedented in size and savagery, this maelstrom of fanaticism and bloodlust will embroil the Malazan Empire in one of the bloodiest conflicts it has ever known, shaping destinies and giving birth to legends . . .

Set in a brilliantly realized world ravaged by dark, uncontrollable magic, Deadhouse Gates is a novel of war, intrigue and betrayal confirms Steven Eirkson as a storyteller of breathtaking skill, imagination and originality--a new master of epic fantasy.]]>
843 Steven Erikson 0765348799 Doug 4 2012-rankings 4.27 2000 Deadhouse Gates (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)
author: Steven Erikson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2012/08/23
date added: 2024/06/15
shelves: 2012-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea]]> 56978100
Many believe that Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village—and the beloved of Mina’s older brother Joon—may be the legendary true bride. But on the night Cheong is to be sacrificed, Joon follows Cheong out to sea, even knowing that to interfere is a death sentence. To save her brother, Mina throws herself into the water in Cheong’s stead.

Swept away to the Spirit Realm, a magical city of lesser gods and mythical beasts, Mina seeks out the Sea God, only to find him caught in an enchanted sleep. With the help of a mysterious young man named Shin—as well as a motley crew of demons, gods and spirits—Mina sets out to wake the Sea God and bring an end to the killer storms once and for all.

But she doesn’t have much time: A human cannot live long in the land of the spirits. And there are those who would do anything to keep the Sea God from waking
]]>
325 Axie Oh 1250780861 Doug 2 2024-rankings 4.09 2022 The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea
author: Axie Oh
name: Doug
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/15
shelves: 2024-rankings
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Die Trying (Jack Reacher, #2) 220969 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

In a Chicago suburb, a dentist is met in his office parking lot by three men and ordered into the trunk of his Lexus. On a downtown sidewalk, Jack Reacher and an unknown woman are abducted in broad daylight by two men - practiced and confident - who stop them at gunpoint and hustle them into the same sedan. Then Reacher and the woman are switched into a second vehicle and hauled away, leaving the dentist bound and gagged inside his car with the woman's abandoned possessions, two gallons of gasoline. . . and a burning match. The FBI is desperate to rescue the woman, a Special Agent from the Chicago office, because the FBI always - always - takes care of its own, and because this woman is not just another agent. Reacher and the woman join forces, against seemingly hopeless odds, to outwit their captors and escape. But the FBI thinks Jack is one of the kidnappers - and when they close in, the Bureau snipers will be shooting to kill.]]>
567 Lee Child 0515142247 Doug 4 2024-rankings 4.04 1998 Die Trying (Jack Reacher, #2)
author: Lee Child
name: Doug
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/01
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Deceivers (John Wells, #12)]]> 35099144 It was supposed to be a terrorist sting. The guns were supposed to be disabled. Then why was there so much blood?

The target was the American Airlines Center, the home of the Dallas Mavericks. The FBI had told Ahmed Shakir that his drug bust would go away if he helped them, and they'd supply all the weaponry, carefully removing the firing pins before the main event. It never occurred to Sami to doubt them, until it was too late.

When John Wells is called to Washington, he's sure it's to investigate the carnage in Dallas, but it isn't. The former CIA director, now president, Vinnie Duto has plenty of people working in Texas. He wants Wells to go to Colombia. An old asset there has information to share--and it will lead Wells to the deadliest mission of his life, an extraordinary confluence of sleeper cells, sniper teams, false flag operations, double agents high in the U.S. government--and a Russian plot to take over the government itself. If it succeeds, what happened in Texas will only be a prelude.

]]>
432 Alex Berenson Doug 4 2024-rankings 4.23 2018 The Deceivers (John Wells, #12)
author: Alex Berenson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/02
date added: 2024/05/02
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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Origin (Robert Langdon, #5) 32307358 This an alternate cover for B01LY7FD0D

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the ultramodern Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend a major announcement--the unveiling of a discovery that "will change the face of science forever." The evening's host is Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old billionaire and futurist whose dazzling high-tech inventions and audacious predictions have made him a renowned global figure. Kirsch, who was one of Langdon's first students at Harvard two decades earlier, is about to reveal an astonishing breakthrough . . . one that will answer two of the fundamental questions of human existence.

As the event begins, Langdon and several hundred guests find themselves captivated by an utterly original presentation, which Langdon realizes will be far more controversial than he ever imagined. But the meticulously orchestrated evening suddenly erupts into chaos, and Kirsch's precious discovery teeters on the brink of being lost forever. Reeling and facing an imminent threat, Langdon is forced into a desperate bid to escape Bilbao. With him is Ambra Vidal, the elegant museum director who worked with Kirsch to stage the provocative event. Together they flee to Barcelona on a perilous quest to locate a cryptic password that will unlock Kirsch's secret.

Navigating the dark corridors of hidden history and extreme religion, Langdon and Vidal must evade a tormented enemy whose all-knowing power seems to emanate from Spain's Royal Palace itself . . . and who will stop at nothing to silence Edmond Kirsch. On a trail marked by modern art and enigmatic symbols, Langdon and Vidal uncover clues that ultimately bring them face-to-face with Kirsch's shocking discovery . . . and the breathtaking truth that has long eluded us. Origin is stunningly inventive--Dan Brown's most brilliant and entertaining novel to date]]>
482 Dan Brown Doug 0 to-read 3.87 2017 Origin (Robert Langdon, #5)
author: Dan Brown
name: Doug
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/24
shelves: to-read
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Klara and the Sun 54120408
In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing modern world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?]]>
303 Kazuo Ishiguro 059331817X Doug 1 2024-rankings 3.71 2021 Klara and the Sun
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Doug
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 1
read at: 2024/04/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: 2024-rankings
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Lightning 32424
The second time it strikes the terror starts... though eight-year-old Laura is saved by a mysterious stranger from the perverted and deadly intentions of a drug-crazed robber. Throughout her childhood she is plagued by ever more terrifying troubles, and with increasing courage she finds the strength to prevail - even without the intervention of her strange guardian. But, despite her success as a novelist and her happy family life, Laura cannot shake the certainty that powerful and malignant forces are controlling her destiny.

Then the lightning strikes once more and shatters her world. The adventure - and the terror - have only just begun...]]>
528 Dean Koontz 0425192032 Doug 0 to-read 4.08 1988 Lightning
author: Dean Koontz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/14
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<![CDATA[To Kill a Shadow (Mistlands, #1)]]> 70020893
The other Knights may fear their lethal commander, with his hard, merciless demeanor. Outcast Kiara Frey sees only a leader, a man who knows how to survive. Someone like her. But wanting him is as treacherous as the shadows themselves� and just as seductive.

With a kingdom on the verge of collapse, the Knights must now venture into the darkest heart of the land and uncover the secrets of the misted shadows, where evil will prey upon their minds and feast on their flesh.

It will betray their senses.
It will surpass their nightmares.
Most of them will die.

But they have no other choice. Because the only way to fight the darkness
is to become it.]]>
448 Katherine Quinn 1649374313 Doug 0 to-read 3.78 2023 To Kill a Shadow (Mistlands, #1)
author: Katherine Quinn
name: Doug
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/14
shelves: to-read
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The Salt Grows Heavy 61884779 USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a razor-sharp and bewitching fairytale of discovering the darkness in the world, and the darkness within oneself.

You may think you know how the fairytale goes: a mermaid comes to shore and weds the prince. But what the fables forget is that mermaids have teeth. And now, her daughters have devoured the kingdom and burned it to ashes.

On the run, the mermaid is joined by a mysterious plague doctor with a darkness of their own. Deep in the eerie, snow-crusted forest, the pair stumble upon a village of ageless children who thirst for blood, and the three 'saints' who control them.

The mermaid and her doctor must embrace the cruelest parts of their true nature if they hope to survive.

Includes the bonus short story, "And In Our Daughters, We Find a Voice", set in the same universe.]]>
106 Cassandra Khaw 1250830915 Doug 0 to-read 3.55 2023 The Salt Grows Heavy
author: Cassandra Khaw
name: Doug
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/14
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[The Darkness Before Them (The Soulfire Saga, #1)]]> 123204363 The first in an exciting, action-packed new trilogy from epic fantasy author Matthew Ward,Ìę The Darkness Before ThemÌęintroduces readers to a world ruled by a dangerous immortal king, where souls fuel magic, and a supernatural mist known as the Veil threatens to engulf the land.

These are dark times for the Kingdom of Khalad. As the magical mists of the Veil devour the land, the populace struggles beneath the rule of ruthless noble houses and their uncaring immortal king.

Kat doesn’t care about any of that. A talented thief, she’s pursuing one big score that will settle the debt that destroyed her family. No easy feat in a realm where indentured spirits hold vigil over every vault and treasure room. However, Kat has a unique she can speak to those spirits, and even command them. And she has no qualms using her power to her advantage.

Kat’s not a hero. She just wants to be free. To have her old life back. But as rebellion rekindles and the war for Khalad’s future begins, everyone—Kat included—will have to pick a side.]]>
576 Matthew Ward 0316476609 Doug 0 to-read 3.41 2023 The Darkness Before Them (The Soulfire Saga, #1)
author: Matthew Ward
name: Doug
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/14
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Legacy of Ash (Legacy Trilogy, #1)]]> 44287627 Legacy of Ash is an unmissable fantasy debut--an epic tale of intrigue and revolution, soldiers and assassins, ancient magic and the eternal clash of empires.

A shadow has fallen over the Tressian Republic.

Ruling families -- once protectors of justice and democracy -- now plot against one another with sharp words and sharper knives. Blinded by ambition, they remain heedless of the threat posed by the invading armies of the Hadari Empire.

Yet as Tressia falls, heroes rise.

Viktor Akadra is the Republic's champion. A warrior without equal, he hides a secret that would see him burned as a heretic.

Josiri Trelan is Viktor's sworn enemy. A political prisoner, he dreams of reigniting his mother's failed rebellion.

And yet Calenne Trelan, Josiri's sister, seeks only to break free of their tarnished legacy; to escape the expectation and prejudice that haunts the family name.

As war spreads across the Republic, these three must set aside their differences in order to save their home. Yet decades of bad blood are not easily set aside. And victory -- if it comes at all -- will demand a darker price than any of them could have imagined.]]>
800 Matthew Ward 0356513343 Doug 0 to-read 3.94 2019 Legacy of Ash (Legacy Trilogy, #1)
author: Matthew Ward
name: Doug
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/14
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1)]]> 58340706
Elspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom of Blunder—she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head. He protects her. He keeps her secrets.

But nothing comes for free, especially magic.

When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure Blunder from the dark magic infecting it. And the highwayman? He just so happens to be the King’s nephew, Captain of the most dangerous men in Blunder
and guilty of high treason.

Together they must gather twelve Providence Cards—the keys to the cure. But as the stakes heighten and their undeniable attraction intensifies, Elspeth is forced to face her darkest secret yet: the Nightmare is slowly taking over her mind. And she might not be able to stop him.]]>
399 Rachel Gillig 0316312487 Doug 0 to-read 4.25 2022 One Dark Window (The Shepherd King, #1)
author: Rachel Gillig
name: Doug
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/14
shelves: to-read
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The Lost War (Eidyn, #1) 69709682
With a ragged peace in place, demons burn farmlands, violent Reivers roam the wilds and plague has spread beyond the Black Meadows. The country is on its knees.

In a society that fears and shuns him, Aranok is the first magically-skilled draoidh to be named King’s Envoy.

Now, charged with restoring an exiled foreign queen to her throne, he leads a group of strangers across the ravaged country. But at every step, a new mystery complicates their mission.

As bodies drop around them, new threats emerge and lies are revealed, can Aranok bring his companions together and uncover the conspiracy that threatens the kingdom?

Strap in for this twisted fantasy road trip from award-winning author Justin Lee Anderson.]]>
529 Justin Lee Anderson 0316454176 Doug 0 to-read 4.12 2019 The Lost War (Eidyn, #1)
author: Justin Lee Anderson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/14
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Gods of the Wyrdwood (Forsaken, #1)]]> 62874007 In a world locked in eternal winter and haunted by prophecy, a young boy trains for years to become the Chosen One, only for another to rise and claim his place in the start of an unmissable epic from a rising star in fantasy.Ìę

The northlands of Crua are locked in eternal winter, but prophecy tells of the chosen child � who will rule in the name of their God, and take warmth back from the South. Cahal du Nahere was raised to be this person: the Cowl-Rai, the saviour. Taken from his parents and prepared for his destiny.

But his time never came

When he was fifteen he ceased to matter. Another Cowl-Rai had risen, another chosen one, raised in the name of a different God. The years of vicious physical and mental training he had endured, the sacrifice, all for nothing. He became nothing.

Twenty years later, and Cahal lives a life of secrecy on the edges of Crua’s giant forests â€� hiding what he is, running from what he can do. But when he is forced to reveal his true nature, he sets off a sequence of events that will reveal secrets that will shake the bedrock of his entire world, and expose lies that have persisted for generations.]]>
640 R.J. Barker 0316401587 Doug 0 to-read 3.99 2023 Gods of the Wyrdwood (Forsaken, #1)
author: R.J. Barker
name: Doug
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/14
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None of This Is True 62334530
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?]]>
390 Lisa Jewell 1982179007 Doug 0 to-read 4.08 2023 None of This Is True
author: Lisa Jewell
name: Doug
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/02
shelves: to-read
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Orphan X (Orphan X, #1) 40874079 Who is Orphan X?

The Nowhere Man is a legendary figure spoken about only in whispers. It’s said that when he’s reached by the truly desperate and deserving, the Nowhere Man can and will do anything to protect and save them. But he’s not merely a legend.

Evan Smoak is a man with skills, resources, and a personal mission to help those with nowhere else to turn. He’s also a man with a dangerous past. Chosen as a child, he was raised and trained as an Orphan, an off-the-books black box program designed to create the perfect deniable intelligence asset: An assassin. Evan was Orphan X—until he broke with the program and used everything he learned to disappear. But now someone is on his tail. Someone with similar skills and training who will exploit Evan’s secret new identity as the Nowhere Man to eliminate him.]]>
367 Gregg Hurwitz Doug 4 2024-rankings 4.17 2016 Orphan X (Orphan X, #1)
author: Gregg Hurwitz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/02
date added: 2024/04/02
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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Project Hail Mary 54493401
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.

All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.

And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.

Or does he?]]>
476 Andy Weir 0593135202 Doug 5 2024-rankings 4.49 2021 Project Hail Mary
author: Andy Weir
name: Doug
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/29
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: 2024-rankings
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<![CDATA[Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham, #1)]]> 60879779
I'm Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I'd killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it's a little more complicated than that.

Have I killed someone? Yes. I have.

Who was it?

Let's get started.

EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE

My brother

My stepsister

My wife

My father

My mother

My sister-in-law

My uncle

My stepfather

My aunt

Me]]>
371 Benjamin Stevenson 0063279029 Doug 4 2024-rankings 3.75 2022 Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (Ernest Cunningham, #1)
author: Benjamin Stevenson
name: Doug
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: 2024-rankings
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Red Rising (Red Rising, #1) 52880778
Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it.
The Reds are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie.

That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds.

A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought. Until the day that Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside.

But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.

Break the chains.

Live for more.

This edition contains a preview of Golden Son, Book II of the Red Rising trilogy.]]>
400 Pierce Brown 034553980X Doug 0 to-read 4.21 2014 Red Rising (Red Rising, #1)
author: Pierce Brown
name: Doug
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/05
shelves: to-read
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Neverwhere (London Below, #1) 14497
"Neverwhere" is the London of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Strange destinies lie in wait in London below - a world that seems eerily familiar. But a world that is utterly bizarre, peopled by unearthly characters such as the Angel called Islington, the girl named Door, and the Earl who holds Court on a tube train.

Now a single act of kindness has catapulted young businessman Richard Mayhew out of his safe and predictable life - and into the realms of "Neverwhere." Richard is about to find out more than he ever wanted to know about this other London. Which is a pity. Because Richard just wants to go home...]]>
370 Neil Gaiman 0060557818 Doug 4 2024-rankings 4.17 1996 Neverwhere (London Below, #1)
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Doug
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/02/16
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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The Master and Margarita 40580109 A 50th-anniversary Deluxe Edition of the incomparable 20th-century masterpiece of satire and fantasy, in a newly revised version of the acclaimed Pevear and Volokhonsky translation

Nothing in the whole of literature compares with The Master and Margarita. One spring afternoon, the Devil, trailing fire and chaos in his wake, weaves himself out of the shadows and into Moscow. Mikhail Bulgakov's fantastical, funny, and devastating satire of Soviet life combines two distinct yet interwoven parts, one set in contemporary Moscow, the other in ancient Jerusalem, each brimming with historical, imaginary, frightful, and wonderful characters. Written during the darkest days of Stalin's reign, and finally published in 1966 and 1967, The Master and Margarita became a literary phenomenon, signaling artistic and spiritual freedom for Russians everywhere.

This newly revised translation, by the award-winning team of Pevear and Volokhonsky, is made...

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412 Mikhail Bulgakov 1524704121 Doug 0 to-read 4.04 1967 The Master and Margarita
author: Mikhail Bulgakov
name: Doug
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/02/15
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Last Argument of Kings (The First Law, #3)]]> 944076
Logen Ninefingers might only have one more fight in him, but it's going to be a big one. Battle rages across the North, the King of the Northmen still stands firm, and there's only one man who can stop him. His oldest friend, and his oldest enemy: it's time for the Bloody-Nine to come home.

With too many masters and too little time, Superior Glokta is fighting a different kind of war. A secret struggle in which no-one is safe, and no-one can be trusted. And, as his days with a sword are far behind him, it's fortunate that he's deadly with his remaining weapons: threats, blackmail and torture.

Jezal dan Luthar has decided that winning glory is too painful an undertaking and turned his back on soldiering for a simple life with the woman he loves. But love can be painful too � and glory has a nasty habit of creeping up on a man when he least expects it.

While the King of the Union lies on his deathbead, the peasants revolt and the nobles scramble to steal his crown. No-one believes that the shadow of war is about to fall across the heart of the Union. Only the First of the Magi has a plan to save the world � as he always does � but this time there are risks. There is no risk more terrible, after all, than to break the First Law...]]>
536 Joe Abercrombie 0575077905 Doug 5 2024-rankings 4.35 2008 Last Argument of Kings (The First Law, #3)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Doug
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/31
date added: 2024/01/31
shelves: 2024-rankings
review:

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Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1) 518848
With Sabriel, the first installment in the Abhorsen series, Garth Nix exploded onto the fantasy scene as a rising star, in a novel that takes readers to a world where the line between the living and the dead isn't always clear—and sometimes disappears altogether.]]>
491 Garth Nix 0064471837 Doug 0 to-read 4.17 1995 Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1)
author: Garth Nix
name: Doug
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Priestess of the White (Age of the Five, #1)]]> 28248
Auraya is one.

Her heroism saved a village from destruction; now Auraya has been named Priestess of the White. The limits of her unique talents must be tested in order to prove her worthy of the honor and grave responsibility awarded to her. But a perilous road lies ahead, fraught with pitfalls that will challenge the newest servant of the gods. An enduring friendship with a Dreamweaver—a member of an ancient outcast sect of sorcerer-healers—could destroy Auraya's future. And her destiny has set her in conflict with a powerful and mysterious, black-clad sorcerer with but a single purpose: the total annihilation of the White. And he is not alone . . .]]>
598 Trudi Canavan 0060815701 Doug 0 to-read 3.89 2005 Priestess of the White (Age of the Five, #1)
author: Trudi Canavan
name: Doug
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/04
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Blood Song (Raven's Shadow, #1)]]> 13569581 “The Sixth Order wields the sword of justice and smites the enemies of the Faith and the Realm.â€�

Vaelin Al Sorna was only a child of ten when his father left him at the iron gate of the Sixth Order. The Brothers of the Sixth Order are devoted to battle, and Vaelin will be trained and hardened to the austere, celibate, and dangerous life of a Warrior of the Faith. He has no family now save the Order.

Vaelin’s father was Battle Lord to King Janus, ruler of the unified realm. Vaelin’s rage at being deprived of his birthright and dropped at the doorstep of the Sixth Order like a foundling knows no bounds. He cherishes the memory of his mother, and what he will come to learn of her at the Order will confound him. His father, too, has motives that Vaelin will come to understand. But one truth overpowers all the rest: Vaelin Al Sorna is destined for a future he has yet to comprehend. A future that will alter not only the realm, but the world.]]>
591 Anthony Ryan 1466085665 Doug 0 to-read 4.42 2011 Blood Song (Raven's Shadow, #1)
author: Anthony Ryan
name: Doug
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/30
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Theft of Swords (The Riyria Revelations, #1-2)]]> 10790290
Can a self-serving thief and an idealistic swordsman survive long enough to unravel the first part of an ancient mystery that has toppled kings and destroyed empires?

And so begins the first tale of treachery and adventure, sword fighting and magic, myth and legend.

When author Michael J. Sullivan self-published the first books of his Riyria Revelations, they rapidly became ebook bestsellers. Now, Orbit is pleased to present the complete series for the first time in bookstores everywhere.]]>
691 Michael J. Sullivan 0316187747 Doug 0 to-read 4.23 2011 Theft of Swords (The Riyria Revelations, #1-2)
author: Michael J. Sullivan
name: Doug
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Illborn (The Illborn Saga, #1)]]> 57480478
Over eight hundred years later, in a medieval world which is threatened by war and religious persecution, four young men and women begin to develop supernatural abilities. These forbidden and secret powers will shatter the lives that they have known, and will force each of them to confront the mystery of the ethereal Gate which haunts their dreams. What does the dream mean, and how is it connected to their burgeoning abilities?

As they experience conflict, love, lust and betrayal, in lands which are being overtaken by war, they must try to stay ahead of and to survive the sinister forces which are now pursuing them. For they are being hunted�

ILLBORN is Daniel T. Jackson's powerful and gritty debut novel, and is the thrilling opening chapter in the epic fantasy story of The Illborn Saga.]]>
713 Daniel T. Jackson 1800468962 Doug 0 to-read 4.12 2021 Illborn (The Illborn Saga, #1)
author: Daniel T. Jackson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/30
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves (Bass Reeves Trilogy #1)]]> 50083554 Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves is an origin story in the true American tradition. Before Bass Reeves could stake his claim as the most successful nineteenth-century American lawman, arresting more outlaws than any other deputy during his thirty-two-year career as a deputy U.S. marshal in some of the most dangerous regions of the Wild West, he was a slave.

After a childhood picking cotton, he became an expert marksman under his master’s tutelage, winning shooting contests throughout the region. His skill had serious implications, however, as the Civil War broke out. Reeves was given to his master’s mercurial, sadistic, Moby-Dick-quoting son in the hopes that Reeves would keep him safe in battle. The ensuing humiliation, love, heroics, war, mind games, and fear solidified Reeves’s determination to gain his freedom and drew him one step further on his fated path to an illustrious career.

Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves is an important historical work that places Reeves in the pantheon of American heroes and a thrilling historical novel that narrates a great man’s exploits amid the near-mythic world of the nineteenth-century frontier.
Ìę]]>
240 Sidney Thompson 1496218752 Doug 0 to-read 3.91 2020 Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves (Bass Reeves Trilogy #1)
author: Sidney Thompson
name: Doug
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/23
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)]]> 902715
Northmen have spilled over the border of Angland and are spreading fire and death across the frozen country. Crown Prince Ladisla is poised to drive them back and win undying glory. There is only one problem � he commands the worst-armed, worst-trained, worst-led army in the world.

And Bayaz, the First of the Magi, is leading a party of bold adventurers on a perilous mission through the ruins of the past. The most hated woman in the South, the most feared man in the North, and the most selfish boy in the Union make a strange alliance, but a deadly one. They might even stand a chance of saving mankind from the Eaters. If they didn't hate each other quite so much.

Ancient secrets will be uncovered. Bloody battles will be won and lost. Bitter enemies will be forgiven � but not before they are hanged.]]>
441 Joe Abercrombie 0575077883 Doug 5 2023-rankings 4.35 2007 Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Doug
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/22
date added: 2023/12/22
shelves: 2023-rankings
review:

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So Long (Faith Bold #1) 102625318 FBI Special Agent Faith Bold, hospitalized and haunted by her encounter with a serial killer, is ready to retire—when Turk, a K9 German Shepherd, himself traumatized, comes into her life. When a new serial killer strikes, leaving his victims at the bottom of isolated wells, Faith, this time with Turk at her side, will stop at nothing to hunt him down and save the next victim before it is too late.

“A masterpiece of thriller and mystery.â€�
—Books and Movie Reviews, Roberto Mattos (re Once Gone)
⭐⭐⭐⭐�

SO LONG is Book #1 in a long-anticipated new series by #1 bestseller and USA Today bestselling author Blake Pierce, whose bestseller Once Gone (a free download) has received over 7,000 five star ratings and reviews.

FBI Special Agent Faith Bold doesn’t believe she can ever return to the force after the trauma she’s been through. Suffering from past demons, she feels unfit for duty and content to retire—until Turk walks into her life.

Turk, a former Marine Corps dog, wounded in battle, suffers from his own demons. But he never lets it show as he gives everything to Faith to get her back on her feet.

Each are slow to warm up to each other, but when they do, they are inseparable. Each is equally determined to hunt down the demons chasing them, whatever the cost, and to watch each other’s backs—even at the risk of their own life.

A page-turning and harrowing crime thriller featuring a brilliant and tortured FBI agent, the Faith Bold series is a riveting mystery, packed with non-stop action, suspense, twists and turns, revelations, and driven by a breakneck pace that will keep you flipping pages late into the night. Fans of Rachel Caine, Teresa Driscoll and Robert Dugoni are sure to fall in love.

Future books in the series are now also available.

“An edge of your seat thriller in a new series that keeps you turning pages! ...So many twists, turns and red herringsâ€� I can't wait to see what happens next.â€�
—Reader review (Her Last Wish)
⭐⭐⭐⭐�

“A strong, complex story about two FBI agents trying to stop a serial killer. If you want an author to capture your attention and have you guessing, yet trying to put the pieces together, Pierce is your author!â€�
—Reader review (Her Last Wish)
⭐⭐⭐⭐�

“A typical Blake Pierce twisting, turning, roller coaster ride suspense thriller. Will have you turning the pages to the last sentence of the last chapter!!!â€�
—Reader review (City of Prey)
⭐⭐⭐⭐�

“Right from the start we have an unusual protagonist that I haven't seen done in this genre before. The action is nonstopâ€� A very atmospheric novel that will keep you turning pages well into the wee hours.â€�
—Reader review (City of Prey)
⭐⭐⭐⭐�

“Everything that I look for in a bookâ€� a great plot, interesting characters, and grabs your interest right away. The book moves along at a breakneck pace and stays that way until the end. Now on go I to book two!â€�
—Reader review (Girl, Alone)
⭐⭐⭐⭐�

“Exciting, heart pounding, edge of your seat bookâ€� a must read for mystery and suspense readers!â€�
—Reader review (Girl, Alone)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐]±Ő>
161 Blake Pierce Doug 0 to-read 4.21 2023 So Long (Faith Bold #1)
author: Blake Pierce
name: Doug
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/28
shelves: to-read
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Piranesi 52702097
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]>
246 Susanna Clarke Doug 4 2023-rankings 4.24 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Doug
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/22
date added: 2023/11/22
shelves: 2023-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)]]> 944073
Nobleman Captain Jezal dan Luthar, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.

Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glokta a whole lot more difficult.

Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.

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515 Joe Abercrombie 0575079797 Doug 5 2011-rankings, 2023-rankings 4.21 2006 The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: Doug
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/01
date added: 2023/11/01
shelves: 2011-rankings, 2023-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Prisoner (John Wells, #11)]]> 30583156 To unmask a CIA mole, John Wells must resume his old undercover identity as an al Qaeda jihadi—and hope he can survive it—in this cutting-edge novel from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.

It is the most dangerous mission of John Wells’s career.

Evidence is mounting that someone high up in the CIA is doing the unthinkable—passing messages to ISIS, alerting them to planned operations. Finding out the mole’s identity without alerting him, however, will be very hard, and to accomplish it, Wells will have to do something he thought he’d left behind forever. He will have to reassume his former identity as an al Qaeda jihadi, get captured, and go undercover to befriend an ISIS prisoner in a secret Bulgarian prison.

Many years before, Wells was the only American agent ever to penetrate al Qaeda, but times have changed drastically. The terrorist organizations have gotten bigger, crueler, more ambitious and powerful. Wells knows it may well be his death sentence. But there is no one else.]]>
430 Alex Berenson Doug 4 2023-rankings 4.22 2017 The Prisoner (John Wells, #11)
author: Alex Berenson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/14
date added: 2023/09/06
shelves: 2023-rankings
review:

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Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4) 17252041 This an alternate cover for B00AXIZ4TQ

In his international blockbusters The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown masterfully fused history, art, codes, and symbols. In this riveting new thriller, Brown returns to his element and has crafted his highest-stakes novel to date.

In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology, Robert Langdon, is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history's most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces...Dante's Inferno.

Against this backdrop, Langdon battles a chilling adversary and grapples with an ingenious riddle that pulls him into a landscape of classic art, secret passageways, and futuristic science. Drawing from Dante's dark epic poem, Langdon races to find answers and decide whom to trust... before the world is irrevocably altered.]]>
480 Dan Brown Doug 0 to-read 4.02 2013 Inferno (Robert Langdon, #4)
author: Dan Brown
name: Doug
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2013
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/09/06
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus]]> 39020 In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

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563 Charles C. Mann 1400032059 Doug 4 2023-rankings 4.04 2005 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
author: Charles C. Mann
name: Doug
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/05
date added: 2023/09/05
shelves: 2023-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Homeland (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #1)]]> 50027 Discover the origin story of one of the greatest heroes of the Realms—Drizzt Do’Urden—in this thrilling first installment of the Dark Elf Trilogy

Drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, first introduced in The Icewind Dale Trilogy, quickly became one of the fantasy genre’s standout characters. With Homeland, Salvatore pulls back the curtain to reveal the startling tale of how this hero came to be—how this one lone drow walked out of the shadowy depths of the Underdark; how he left behind an evil society and a family that wanted him dead.

As the third son of Mother Malice and weaponmaster Zaknafein, Drizzt Do’Urden is meant to be sacrificed to Lolth, the evil Spider Queen, per drow tradition. But with the unexpected death of his older brother, young Drizzt is spared—and, as a result, further ostracized by his family. As Drizzt grows older, developing his swordsmanship skills and studying at the Academy, he begins to realize that his idea of good and evil does not match up with those of his fellow drow. Can Drizzt stay true to himself in a such an unforgiving, unprincipled world?

Homeland is the first book in the Dark Elf Trilogy and the Legend of Drizzt series.]]>
343 R.A. Salvatore Doug 5 favorite-books 4.26 1990 Homeland (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #1; Legend of Drizzt, #1)
author: R.A. Salvatore
name: Doug
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/07/30
shelves: favorite-books
review:

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Terminal Rage 18271349
Warning. Highly addictive escapism disguised as fiction. Only commit to this experience if you can tolerate pure adrenaline.]]>
400 A.M. Khalifa 1940387000 Doug 3 2023-rankings 4.15 2013 Terminal Rage
author: A.M. Khalifa
name: Doug
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/04
date added: 2023/06/04
shelves: 2023-rankings
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<![CDATA[Killing Floor (Jack Reacher #1)]]> 78129 474 Lee Child 0515141429 Doug 3 2023-rankings 4.08 1997 Killing Floor (Jack Reacher #1)
author: Lee Child
name: Doug
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1997
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/28
date added: 2023/03/28
shelves: 2023-rankings
review:

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The Maze (John Corey, #8) 55455333 ***The brand new, unmissable John Corey novel from America's Greatest Living Thriller Writer.***'Bottom line, if a man is known by his enemies, I'm one helluva guy.'Former anti-terrorist cop John Corey is NYU - New York Unemployed - and watching his back, ever more convinced his past will soon catch up with him. Then a new opportunity comes calling, and with it, plenty of trouble . . .A series of bodies has been found along a beach close to his home and he can no longer deny that a serial killer is on the loose, and no one seems able to find the culprit. Is the failure to find the perpetrator a result of the department's oversight? Is it due to the fact the victims are prostitutes? Or is it something darker? Could the killer be someone on the inside?John Corey must root out friend and foe in this dazzling thriller, which features his trademark snark, matched by brilliant investigative skills, and the masterful plot twists that are a signature of the American thriller legend Nelson DeMille.]]> 448 Nelson DeMille 0751565911 Doug 3 2023-rankings 3.83 2022 The Maze (John Corey, #8)
author: Nelson DeMille
name: Doug
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/26
date added: 2023/03/28
shelves: 2023-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Charon's Claw (Forgotten Realms: Neverwinter, #3; Legend of Drizzt, #22)]]> 13227445 Ìę
Praise for the Neverwinter
“Emotional, respectful of its characters, intelligently written and structured, and finally summons a sense of nostalgic sorrow throughout”–Fantasy Book Review on Gauntlgrym , Neverwinter Saga Book I
“Full of excitement. Salvatore has mastered the art of showing a beautiful fight scene, and he is at the top of his game in this one. We meet many characters with many different fighting styles, and Salvatore does a great job of distinguishing between them. He manages to take these scenes from so much more than just a fight scene, to an integral part of the story.”—The SFF Hub on Gauntlgrym , Neverwinter Saga Book I

“A quick read with some very satisfying fight scenes. It’s also deeply layered with emotional atmosphereâ€� —California Literary Review on Gauntlgrym , Neverwinter Saga Book I]]>
352 R.A. Salvatore 0786962232 Doug 4 4.20 2012 Charon's Claw (Forgotten Realms: Neverwinter, #3; Legend of Drizzt, #22)
author: R.A. Salvatore
name: Doug
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/30
date added: 2022/12/30
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17)]]> 23106013
But this time it’s different. A being more powerful and dangerous on an order of magnitude beyond what the world has seen in a millennium is coming. And she’s bringing an army. The Last Titan has declared war on the city of Chicago, and has come to subjugate humanity, obliterating any who stand in her way.

Harry’s mission is simple but impossible: Save the city by killing a Titan. And the attempt will change Harry’s life, Chicago, and the mortal world forever.]]>
418 Jim Butcher 0593199308 Doug 4 2022-rankings 4.35 2020 Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Doug
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/14
date added: 2022/09/14
shelves: 2022-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)]]> 22249640 Dresden Files series. When the Supernatural nations of the world meet up to negotiate an end to ongoing hostilities, Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, joins the White Council's security team to make sure the talks stay civil. But can he succeed, when dark political manipulations threaten the very existence of Chicago--and all he holds dear?

Peace Talks is the sixteenth novel in the Dresden Files series and follows Harry’s adventures after the events of Skin Game.]]>
352 Jim Butcher 035651529X Doug 3 2022-rankings 4.15 2020 Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Doug
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/30
date added: 2022/06/30
shelves: 2022-rankings
review:

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The Wolves (John Wells, #10) 25716596
The latest thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author of Twelve Days, Alex Berenson.
John Wells has just barely managed to stop an operation designed to drive the United States and Iran into war, but the instigator himself disappeared behind an impenetrable war of security. Now it’s time for him to pay, and Wells has made it his personal mission. There are plenty of crosscurrents at work, though. The White House doesn’t want anybody stirring the pot; his old CIA bosses have their own agendas; other countries are starting to sniff around, sensing something unusual. It is when Russia and China enter the mix, however, that the whole affair is set to combust. With alarming speed, Wells is once again on his own . . . and the wolves are closing in.]]>
389 Alex Berenson 0399176144 Doug 3 2022-rankings 4.01 2016 The Wolves (John Wells, #10)
author: Alex Berenson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/01
date added: 2022/06/01
shelves: 2022-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Armageddon's Children (Genesis of Shannara, #1)]]> 15549
Logan Tom is doomed to remember the past and determined to rescue the future. Far behind him lies a boyhood cut violently short by his family’s slaughter, when the forces of madness and hate swept our world after decadent excesses led to civilization’s downfall. Somewhere ahead of him rests the only chance to beat back the minions of evil that are systematically killing and enslaving the last remnants of humanity. Navigating the scarred and poisoned landscape that once was America and guided by a powerful talisman, Logan has sworn an oath to seek out a remarkable being born of magic, possessed of untold abilities, and destined to lead the final fight against darkness.

Across the country, Angel Perez, herself a survivor of the malevolent, death-dealing forces combing the land, has also been chosen for an uncanny mission in the name of her ruined world’s salvation. From the devastated streets of Los Angeles, she will journey to find a place–and a people–shrouded in mystery, celebrated in legend, and vital to the cause of humankind . . . even as a relentless foe follows close behind, bent on her extermination. While in the nearly forsaken city of Seattle, a makeshift family of refugees has carved out a tenuous existence among the street gangs, mutants, and marauders fighting to stay alive against mounting odds–and something unspeakable that has come from the shadows in search of prey.

In time, all their paths will cross. Their common purpose will draw them together. Their courage and convictions will be tested and their fates will be decided, as their singular crusade begins: to take back, or lose forever, the only world they have.

In Armageddon’s Children, Brooks brings his gifts as a mythmaker to the timeless theme of the unending, essential conflict between darkness and light–and carries his unique imaginative vision to a stunning new level. Prepare for a breathtaking tour de force. To those who are new to Terry Brooks, welcome. And to those who have read him for many years: prepare for a dramatic surprise.


From the Hardcover edition.]]>
384 Terry Brooks 0345484088 Doug 0 to-read 4.12 2006 Armageddon's Children (Genesis of Shannara, #1)
author: Terry Brooks
name: Doug
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/27
shelves: to-read
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The Squire 57795441
Conrad lives a quiet rural life with his parents in the Northlands. During one fated night, his world is turned on its head, as nightmares become reality. While his Northlands blood cries out for revenge, Conrad’s head tells him surviving is the best he can do.

Rescued by a motley band of mercenaries, Conrad embarks on a life he could have barely imagined –squire to the men who saved him. As new challenges, friends, and enemies present themselves, Conrad knows that one day he will have to face the evil that so altered his life, and when that day comes, he will need to be ready.]]>
412 Duncan M. Hamilton Doug 0 to-read 4.03 2021 The Squire
author: Duncan M. Hamilton
name: Doug
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Agent of the State: A groundbreaking new thriller by the former commander of special branch (John Kerr Book 1)]]> 19098514 449 Roger Pearce Doug 0 to-read 4.27 2012 Agent of the State: A groundbreaking new thriller by the former commander of special branch (John Kerr Book 1)
author: Roger Pearce
name: Doug
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)]]> 2495567 My name is Kvothe.

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.

You may have heard of me.

So begins a tale unequaled in fantasy literature--the story of a hero told in his own voice. It is a tale of sorrow, a tale of survival, a tale of one man's search for meaning in his universe, and how that search, and the indomitable will that drove it, gave birth to a legend.

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722 Patrick Rothfuss 0756404746 Doug 4 2009-rankings 4.43 2007 The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1)
author: Patrick Rothfuss
name: Doug
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2009/06/26
date added: 2020/09/03
shelves: 2009-rankings
review:

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Saint Odd (Odd Thomas, #7) 15722284 From “one of the master storytellers of this or any ageâ€� (The Tampa Tribune) comes the stunning final adventure of “one of the most remarkable and appealing characters in current fictionâ€�(The Virginian-Pilot)—as #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz brings the unforgettable odyssey of Odd Thomas to its dazzling conclusion.
Ìę
Odd Thomas is back where it all started . . . because the time has come to finish it. Since he left his simple life in the small town of Pico Mundo, California, his journey has taken him to places strange and wonderful, mysterious and terrifying. Across the land, in the company of mortals and spirits alike, he has known kindness and cruelty, felt love and loss, saved lives and taken them—as he’s borne witness to the greatest good and darkest evil humanity is capable of. Again and again, he has gone where he must and done what he had to do—for better or worse—with his courage and devotion sorely tested, and his soul forever changed. Every triumph has been hard won. Each sacrifice has taken its toll.
Ìę
Now, whatever destiny drives him has finally steered his steps home, where those he cares for most surround him, the memory of his tragically lost true love haunts him, and one last challenge—vast and dreadful—awaits him. For Odd Thomas, born to serve a purpose far greater than himself, the wandering is done. Only the reckoning remains.]]>
352 Dean Koontz 0345545885 Doug 3 2020-rankings 4.20 2014 Saint Odd (Odd Thomas, #7)
author: Dean Koontz
name: Doug
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2020/04/13
date added: 2020/04/13
shelves: 2020-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening, #1)]]> 25451852 Winner 2016 Readers' Favourite Award for Epic Fantasy
Winner 2015 LYRA Award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Winner 2015 CIPA EVVY Award for Fiction/Fantasy
Winner 2015 Beverly Hills Book Award for Fantasy
Winner 2016 Audible Best Fantasy Audiobook
Runner-up 2016 IPPY Awards and 2015 Great Midwest Book Festival for Sci-Fi/Fantasy
#1 Bestseller in Epic, Historical and Coming of Age Fantasy.

When a high-ranking officer gallops into the quiet Mistyvales, he brings a warning that shakes the countryfolk to their roots. But for Aedan, a scruffy young adventurer with veins full of fire and a head full of ideas, this officer is not what he seems.

The events that follow propel Aedan on a journey that only the foolhardy or desperate would risk, leading him to the gates of the nation’s royal academy â€� a whole world of secrets in itself.

But this is only the beginning of his discoveries. Something is stirring in the land, something more ominous than the rising threat of hostile nations. Fearful travellers whisper of an ancient power breathing over Thirna, changing it, waking it. In the very heart of these stirrings, Aedan encounters that which defies belief, leaving him speechless with terror � and wonder.]]>
715 Jonathan Renshaw Doug 0 to-read 4.35 2015 Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening, #1)
author: Jonathan Renshaw
name: Doug
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Deserter (Scott Brodie & Maggie Taylor #1)]]> 44155068 *NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*

An “outstandingâ€� (Publishers Weekly, starred review) blistering thriller featuring a brilliant and unorthodox Army investigator, his enigmatic female partner, and their hunt for the Army’s most notorious—and dangerous—deserter from #1 New York Times bestselling author Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille.

When Captain Kyle Mercer of the Army’s elite Delta Force disappeared from his post in Afghanistan, a video released by his Taliban captors made international headlines. But circumstances were Did Mercer desert before he was captured? Then a second video sent to Mercer’s Army commanders leaves no the trained assassin and keeper of classified Army intelligence has willfully disappeared.

When Mercer is spotted a year later in Caracas, Venezuela, by an old Army buddy, top military brass task Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor of the Criminal Investigation Division to fly to Venezuela and bring Mercer back to America—preferably alive. Brodie knows this is a difficult mission, made more difficult by his new partner’s inexperience, by their undeniable chemistry, and by Brodie’s suspicion that Maggie Taylor is reporting to the CIA.

With ripped-from-the-headlines appeal, an exotic and dangerous locale, and the hairpin twists and inimitable humor that are signature DeMille, The Deserter is the first in a timely and thrilling new series from an unbeatable team of True the #1 New York Times bestseller Nelson DeMille and his son, award-winning screenwriter Alex DeMille.]]>
544 Nelson DeMille 1501101773 Doug 4 2020-rankings 4.08 2019 The Deserter (Scott Brodie & Maggie Taylor #1)
author: Nelson DeMille
name: Doug
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/11
date added: 2020/02/11
shelves: 2020-rankings
review:

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Twelve Days (John Wells, #9) 22571522
John Wells has only twelve days to stop the United States from being tricked into invading Iran in the new cutting-edge novel of modern suspense from the #1 New York Times–bestselling author.
Twelve days.

Wells, with his former CIA bosses Ellis Shafer and Vinnie Duto, has uncovered a staggering plot, a false-flag operation to convince the President to attack Iran. But they have no hard evidence, and no one at Langley or the White House will listen.

Now the President has set a deadline for Iran to give up its nuclear program, and the mullahs in Tehran—furious and frightened—have responded with a deadly terrorist attack. Wells, Shafer, and Duto know they have only twelve days to find the proof they need. They fan out, from Switzerland to Saudi Arabia, Israel to Russia, desperately trying to tease out the clues in their possession. Meanwhile, the United States is moving soldiers and Marines to Iran’s border. And Iran has mobilized its own squad of suicide bombers.

And as the days tick by and the obstacles mount, they realize that everything they do may not be enough�

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422 Alex Berenson 0399159746 Doug 4 2019-rankings 4.00 2015 Twelve Days (John Wells, #9)
author: Alex Berenson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/18
date added: 2019/12/20
shelves: 2019-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Night Ranger (John Wells, #7)]]> 15815367 John Wells enters new territory, as he goes underground in East Africa to track four kidnapped Americans and the Somali bandits who snatched them, in the tough, thoughtful, electrifying new novel from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.

Four friends, recent college graduates, travel to Kenya to work at a giant refugee camp for Somalis. Two men, two women, each with their own reasons for being there. But after twelve weeks, they’re ready for a break and pile into a Land Cruiser for an adventure.

They get more than they bargained for. Bandits hijack them. They wake up in a hut, hooded, bound, no food or water. Hostages. As a personal favor, John Wells is asked to try to find them, but he does so reluctantly. East Africa isn’t his usual playing field. And when he arrives, he finds that the truth behind the kidnappings is far more complex than he imagined.

The clock is ticking. The White House is edging closer to an invasion of Somalia. Wells has a unique ability to go undercover, and to make things happen, but if he can’t find the hostages soon, they’ll be dead â€� and the U.S. may be in a war it never should have begun.
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387 Alex Berenson 039915972X Doug 3 2019-rankings 4.03 2013 The Night Ranger (John Wells, #7)
author: Alex Berenson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/29
date added: 2019/10/29
shelves: 2019-rankings
review:

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The Cuban Affair 34466751
INCLUDES AN EXTENDED INTERVIEW WITH NELSON DEMILLE AND SCOTT BRICK!

From the legendary #1 New York Times bestselling author of Plum Island and Night Fall, Nelson DeMille’s blistering new novel features an exciting new character—US Army combat veteran Daniel “Macâ€� MacCormick, now a charter boat captain, who is about to set sail on his most dangerous cruise.

Daniel Graham MacCormick—Mac for short—seems to have a pretty good life. At age thirty-five he’s living in Key West, owner of a forty-two-foot charter fishing boat, The Maine. Mac served five years in the Army as an infantry officer with two tours in Afghanistan. He returned with the Silver Star, two Purple Hearts, scars that don’t tan, and a boat with a big bank loan. Truth be told, Mac’s finances are more than a little shaky.

One day, Mac is sitting in the famous Green Parrot Bar in Key West, contemplating his life, and waiting for Carlos, a hotshot Miami lawyer heavily involved with anti-Castro groups. Carlos wants to hire Mac and The Maine for a ten-day fishing tournament to Cuba at the standard rate, but Mac suspects there is more to this and turns it down. The price then goes up to two million dollars, and Mac agrees to hear the deal, and meet Carlos’s clients—a beautiful Cuban-American woman named Sara Ortega, and a mysterious older Cuban exile, Eduardo Valazquez.

What Mac learns is that there is sixty million American dollars hidden in Cuba by Sara’s grandfather when he fled Castro’s revolution. With the “Cuban Thawâ€� underway between Havana and Washington, Carlos, Eduardo, and Sara know it’s only a matter of time before someone finds the stash—by accident or on purpose. And Mac knows if he accepts this job, he’ll walk away rich
or not at all.

Brilliantly written, with his signature humor, fascinating authenticity from his research trip to Cuba, and heart-pounding pace, Nelson DeMille is a true master of the genre.]]>
0 Nelson DeMille 1508241333 Doug 4 2019-rankings 3.59 2017 The Cuban Affair
author: Nelson DeMille
name: Doug
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/27
date added: 2019/09/27
shelves: 2019-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Counterfeit Agent (John Wells, #8)]]> 18079700
John Wells returns for another deadly mission from New York Times bestselling author Alex Berenson...
In an Istanbul hotel, a deep source warns a CIA agent that Iran intends to kill a CIA station chief. Quickly, John Wells is called in to investigate, but before he can get far, the tip comes true. Which means that the next warning the source gives will be taken very seriously indeed. And it’s a big one.

A radioactive one.

As the threat level jumps and the government mobilizes, Wells must figure out what’s really going on. From a drug lord’s mansion in Guatemala to a secret plastic surgery center in Thailand to the slums of Istanbul, Wells uses every skill he has—including his ability to go undercover in the Arab world—to chase down leads. But the enemy he faces is equally determined. And soon he may be too late to pull the United States back from the brink of warâ€�

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374 Alex Berenson 0399159738 Doug 3 2019-rankings 3.95 2014 The Counterfeit Agent (John Wells, #8)
author: Alex Berenson
name: Doug
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2019/08/06
date added: 2019/08/06
shelves: 2019-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Core (The Demon Cycle, #5)]]> 16096968
But in their efforts to bring the war to the demons, Arlen and Jardir have set something in motion that may prove the end of everything they hold dear—a Swarm. Now the war is at hand and humanity cannot hope to win it unless Arlen and Jardir, with the help of Arlen’s wife, Renna, can bend a captured demon prince to their will and force the devious creature to lead them to the Core, where the Mother of Demons breeds an inexhaustible army.

Trusting their closest confidantes, Leesha, Inevera, Ragen and Elissa, to rally the fractious people of the Free Cities and lead them against the Swarm, Arlen, Renna, and Jardir set out on a desperate quest into the darkest depths of evil—from which none of them expects to return alive.]]>
781 Peter V. Brett 0345531507 Doug 4 2019-rankings 4.11 2017 The Core (The Demon Cycle, #5)
author: Peter V. Brett
name: Doug
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/07/09
date added: 2019/07/09
shelves: 2019-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)]]> 7235533 From #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings, book one of The Stormlight Archive begins an incredible new saga of epic proportion.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Speak again the ancient oaths:

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.

and return to men the Shards they once bore.

The Knights Radiant must stand again.
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1007 Brandon Sanderson 0765326353 Doug 0 to-read 4.66 2010 The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.66
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2018/08/08
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Skull Throne (Demon Cycle, #4)]]> 13630171
Built from the skulls of fallen generals and demon princes, it is a seat of honor and ancient, powerful magic, keeping the demon corelings at bay. From atop the throne, Ahmann Jardir was meant to conquer the known world, forging its isolated peoples into a unified army to rise up and end the demon war once and for all.

But Arlen Bales, the Warded Man, stood against this course, challenging Jardir to a duel he could not in honor refuse. Rather than risk defeat, Arlen cast them both from a precipice, leaving the world without a savior, and opening a struggle for succession that threatens to tear the Free Cities of Thesa apart.

In the south, Inevera, Jardir’s first wife, must find a way to keep their sons from killing each other and plunging their people into civil war as they strive for glory enough to make a claim on the throne.

In the north, Leesha Paper and Rojer Inn struggle to forge an alliance between the duchies of Angiers and Miln against the Krasians before it is too late.

Caught in the crossfire is the duchy of Lakton--rich and unprotected, ripe for conquest.

All the while, the corelings have been growing stronger, and without Arlen and Jardir there may be none strong enough to stop them. Only Renna Bales may know more about the fate of the missing men, but she, too, has disappeared...]]>
681 Peter V. Brett 0345531485 Doug 4 2016-rankings 4.11 2015 The Skull Throne (Demon Cycle, #4)
author: Peter V. Brett
name: Doug
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2016/10/15
date added: 2016/10/15
shelves: 2016-rankings
review:

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The Chopin Manuscript 13543683 LENGTH -- 7 hrs and 34 mins

15 thriller masters. 1 masterful thriller.
Former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a previously unknown score by Frederic Chopin. But he is unaware that, locked within its handwritten notes, lies a secret that now threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. As he races from Poland to America to uncover the mystery of the manuscript, Middleton will be accused of murder, pursued by federal agents, and targeted by assassins. But the greatest threat will come from a shadowy figure out of his past: the man known only as Faust.
The Chopin Manuscript is a unique collaboration by 15 of the world's greatest thriller writers. Jeffery Deaver conceived the characters and set the plot in motion; the other authors each wrote a chapter in turn. Deaver then completed what he started, bringing The Chopin Manuscript to its explosive conclusion.
The Chopin Manuscript was written by:
Jeffery Deaver (Lincoln Rhyme series)
David Hewson (Nic Costa series)
James Grady (Six Days of the Condor)
S. J. Rozan (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin series)
Erica Spindler (Last Known Victim)
John Ramsey Miller (Winter Massey series)
David Corbett (Blood of Paradise)
John Gilstrap (Scott Free)
Joseph Finder (Power Play)
Jim Fusilli (Terry Orr series)
Peter Spiegelman (John March series)
Ralph Pezzullo (Jawbreaker)
Lisa Scottoline (Daddy's Girl)
P.J. Parrish (Louis Kincaid, Joe Frye series)
Lee Child (Jack Reacher series)]]>
8 Jeffery Deaver Doug 3 3.46 2007 The Chopin Manuscript
author: Jeffery Deaver
name: Doug
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2008/07/01
date added: 2016/09/17
shelves:
review:

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<![CDATA[Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)]]> 15839976 "I live for the dream that my children will be born free," she says. "That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them."

"I live for you," I say sadly.

Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations.

Yet he spends his life willingly, knowing that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity already reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and sprawling parks spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity's overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society's ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies... even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.]]>
382 Pierce Brown 0345539788 Doug 0 to-read 4.26 2014 Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)
author: Pierce Brown
name: Doug
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/06/16
shelves: to-read
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<![CDATA[Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15)]]> 19486421
Because as Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful.

He doesn’t know the half of itâ€�

Mab has just traded Harry’s skills to pay off one of her debts. And now he must help a group of supernatural villains—led by one of Harry’s most dreaded and despised enemies, Nicodemus Archleone—to break into the highest-security vault in town, so that they can then access the highest-security vault in the Nevernever.

It's a smash and grab job to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure hoard in the supernatural world—which belongs to the one and only Hades, Lord of the freaking Underworld and generally unpleasant character. Worse, Dresden suspects that there is another game afoot that no one is talking about. And he's dead certain that Nicodemus has no intention of allowing any of his crew to survive the experience. Especially Harry.

Dresden's always been tricky, but he's going to have to up his backstabbing game to survive this mess—assuming his own allies don’t end up killing him before his enemies get the chance
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464 Jim Butcher 0451464397 Doug 5 2016-rankings 4.54 2014 Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Doug
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2016/05/20
date added: 2016/05/22
shelves: 2016-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Last Guardian (Artemis Fowl, #8)]]> 9307674
Opal Koboi, power-crazed pixie, is plotting to exterminate mankind and become fairy queen.

If she succeeds, the spirits of long-dead fairy warriors will rise from the earth, inhabit the nearest available bodies and wreak mass destruction. But what happens if those nearest bodies include crows, or deer, or badgers - or two curious little boys by the names of Myles and Beckett Fowl?

Yes, it's true. Criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl's four-year-old brothers could be involved in destroying the human race. Can Artemis and Captain Holly Short of the Lower Elements Police stop Opal and prevent the end of the world?]]>
328 Eoin Colfer 1423161610 Doug 4 2016-rankings 4.15 2012 The Last Guardian (Artemis Fowl, #8)
author: Eoin Colfer
name: Doug
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2016/03/15
date added: 2016/03/16
shelves: 2016-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Pale Horseman (The Saxon Stories, #2)]]> 68528
This is the exciting—yet little known—story of the making of England in the 9th and 10th centuries, the years in which King Alfred the Great, his son and grandson defeated the Danish Vikings who had invaded and occupied three of England’s four kingdoms.

At the end of The Last Kingdom, The Danes had been defeated at Cynuit, but the triumph of the English is not fated to last long. The Danish Vikings quickly invade and occupy three of England’s four kingdoms—and all that remains of the once proud country is a small piece of marshland, where Alfred and his family live with a few soldiers and retainers, including Uhtred, the dispossessed English nobleman who was raised by the Danes. Uhtred has always been a Dane at heart, and has always believed that given the chance, he would fight for the men who raised him and taught him the Viking ways. But when Iseult, a powerful sorceress, enters Uhtred’s life, he is forced to consider feelings he’s never confronted before—and Uhtred discovers, in his moment of greatest peril, a new-found loyalty and love for his native country and ruler.]]>
349 Bernard Cornwell 0061144835 Doug 0 to-read 4.30 2006 The Pale Horseman (The Saxon Stories, #2)
author: Bernard Cornwell
name: Doug
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1)]]> 68527
The story is seen through the eyes of Uhtred, a dispossessed nobleman, who is captured as a child by the Danes and then raised by them so that, by the time the Northmen begin their assault on Wessex (Alfred’s kingdom and the last territory in English hands) Uhtred almost thinks of himself as a Dane. He certainly has no love for Alfred, whom he considers a pious weakling and no match for Viking savagery, yet when Alfred unexpectedly defeats the Danes and the Danes themselves turn on Uhtred, he is finally forced to choose sides. By now he is a young man, in love, trained to fight and ready to take his place in the dreaded shield wall. Above all, though, he wishes to recover his father’s land, the enchanting fort of Bebbanburg by the wild northern sea.

This thrilling adventure—based on existing records of Bernard Cornwell’s ancestors—depicts a time when law and order were ripped violently apart by a pagan assault on Christian England, an assault that came very close to destroying England.]]>
333 Bernard Cornwell 0060887184 Doug 4 2016-rankings 4.27 2004 The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1)
author: Bernard Cornwell
name: Doug
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2016/02/18
date added: 2016/02/18
shelves: 2016-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Radiant Angel (John Corey, #7)]]> 23197346
But Corey realizes something the U.S. government doesn't: The all-too-real threat of a newly resurgent Russia.

When Vasily Petrov, a colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service posing as a diplomat with the Russian U.N. Mission, mysteriously disappears from a Russian oligarch's party in Southampton, it's up to Corey to track him down. What are the Russians up to and why? Is there a possible nuclear threat, a so-called radiant angel? Will Corey find Petrov and put a stop to whatever he has planned before it's too late? Or will Corey finally be outrun and outsmarted, with America facing the prospect of a crippling attack unlike anything it's ever seen before?

Prescient and chilling. DeMille's new novel takes us into the heart of a new Cold War with a clock-ticking plot that has Manhattan in its crosshairs.]]>
311 Nelson DeMille 0446580856 Doug 3 2015-rankings 3.79 2015 Radiant Angel (John Corey, #7)
author: Nelson DeMille
name: Doug
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2015/12/03
date added: 2015/12/03
shelves: 2015-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[The Shadow Patrol (John Wells, #6)]]> 11890812
When they ask John Wells to investigate, he reluctantly agrees to return to the country where his career as an undercover operative began. But there, he finds a vipers' nest of hostility and mistrust-and clues that hint at a drug-trafficking operation involving the Agency, the military, and the Taliban. Americans are dying, and an American is responsible. And only John Wells stands in his way . . . for now.]]>
400 Alex Berenson 0399158294 Doug 3 2015-rankings 4.11 2012 The Shadow Patrol (John Wells, #6)
author: Alex Berenson
name: Doug
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2015/11/04
date added: 2015/11/04
shelves: 2015-rankings
review:

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Up Country 33820 859 Nelson DeMille 0446611913 Doug 4 2015-rankings 4.02 2002 Up Country
author: Nelson DeMille
name: Doug
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2015/10/09
date added: 2015/10/09
shelves: 2015-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Stormbird (Wars of the Roses, #1)]]> 17830079
In 1437, after years of regency, the pious and gentle Henry VI, the Lamb, comes of age and accedes to the English throne. His poor health and frailty of mind render him a weakling king -Henry depends on his closest men, Spymaster Derry Brewer and William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, to run his kingdom.

Yet there are those, such as the Plantagenet Richard, Duke of York, who believe England must be led by a strong king if she is to survive. With England's territories in France under threat, and rumours of revolt at home, fears grow that Henry and his advisers will see the country slide into ruin. With a secret deal struck for Henry to marry a young French noblewoman, Margaret of Anjou, those fears become all too real.

As storm clouds gather over England, King Henry and his supporters find themselves besieged abroad and at home. Who, or what can save the kingdom before it is too late?]]>
482 Conn Iggulden 0718159837 Doug 0 to-read 3.91 2013 Stormbird (Wars of the Roses, #1)
author: Conn Iggulden
name: Doug
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/09/22
shelves: to-read
review:

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<![CDATA[Straken (High Druid of Shannara, #3)]]> 15550
For reasons known only to himself, the King of the Silver River has charged young Penderrin Ohmsford, barely more than a boy, with the daunting task of rescuing his aunt, Grianne, Ard Rhys of the Druid order, from her forced exile in the terrifying dimension of all things damned: the Forbidding. With the noble dwarf Tagwen and the prodigal elven princess Khyber Elessedil by his side–and with the outcome of the bloody war between the Federation and the Free-born at stake–Pen has accepted his mission without question. But not without risk . . . or sacrifice.

Because Shadea a’Ru, the ruthless Druid responsible for imprisoning the true Ard Rhys and usurping leadership at Paranor, has sent her agents and assassins in relentless pursuit of Pen and his comrades. And in securing the talisman he needs to breach the Forbidding, Pen has paid a devastating price. Now if the Free-born forces–already decimated by the Federation’s death-dealing new weapon–should fall, Shadea’s domination of the Four Lands will be assured. Nothing short of Pen’s success can turn the tide.

But Pen’s challenge grows greater when he learns that his parents, Bek Ohmsford and Rue Meridian, have fallen into Shadeaâ€� s hands. He must try to help them–but once within the walls of Druid’s Keep, where Shadea’s minions and dark magic lurk at every turn, Pen’s survival is far from assured. Yet it will all pale in comparison to the horrors that wait inside the Forbidding–horrors poised to break free upon the Four Lands when the time is right. . . .]]>
384 Terry Brooks 0345451139 Doug 3 2015-rankings 4.05 2005 Straken (High Druid of Shannara, #3)
author: Terry Brooks
name: Doug
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2015/09/22
date added: 2015/09/22
shelves: 2015-rankings
review:

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<![CDATA[Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)]]> 12216302
He is now Harry Dresden, Winter Knight to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. After Harry had no choice but to swear his fealty, Mab wasn’t about to let something as petty as death steal away the prize she had sought for so long. And now, her word is his command, no matter what she wants him to do, no matter where she wants him to go, and no matter who she wants him to kill.

Guess which Mab wants first?

Of course, it won’t be an ordinary, everyday assassination. Mab wants her newest minion to pull off the impossible: Kill an immortal. No problem there, right? And to make matters worse, there exists a growing threat to an unfathomable source of magic that could land Harry in the sort of trouble that will make death look like a holiday.

Beset by enemies new and old, Harry must gather his friends and allies, prevent the annihilation of countless innocents, and find a way out of his eternal subservience before his newfound powers claim the only thing he has left to call his own . . . his soul.]]>
515 Jim Butcher 0451464400 Doug 4 2015-rankings 4.47 2012 Cold Days (The Dresden Files, #14)
author: Jim Butcher
name: Doug
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2015/08/13
date added: 2015/08/13
shelves: 2015-rankings
review:

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