en-US Thu, 01 May 2025 12:15:11 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 61613291 A gripping, inspiring novel based on the true story of Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law.

When Hollywood auctioneer Emsley Wilson finds her famous grandmother's diary while cleaning out her New York brownstone, the pages are full of surprises. The first surprise is, the diary isn't her grandmother's. It belongs to Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law.

Johanna inherited Vincent van Gogh's paintings. They were all she had, and they weren't worth anything. She was a 28 year old widow with a baby in the 1800s, without any means of supporting herself, living in Paris where she barely spoke the language. Yet she managed to introduce Vincent's legacy to the world.

The inspiration couldn't come at a better time for Emsley. With her business failing, an unexpected love turning up in her life, and family secrets unraveling, can she find answers in the past?]]> 356 Marta Molnar 1940627486 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.10
author: Marta Molnar
name: Tara
average rating: 4.10
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 32148570 Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.]]> 342 Lisa Wingate 0425284689 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.38 2017
author: Lisa Wingate
name: Tara
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 16160797 456 Robert Galbraith 0316206849 Tara 0 currently-reading 3.88 2013
author: Robert Galbraith
name: Tara
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 55272232 Just as she did in her groundbreaking bestseller The Vagina Bible, Dr. Jen Gunter, the internet’s most fearless advocate for women’s health, brings you empowerment through knowledge by countering stubborn myths and misunderstandings about menopause with hard facts, real science, fascinating historical perspective, and expert advice.

The only thing predictable about menopause is its unpredictability. Factor in widespread misinformation, a lack of research, and the culture of shame around women's bodies, and it's no wonder women are unsure what to expect during the menopause transition and beyond.

Menopause is not a disease--it's a planned change, like puberty. And just like puberty, we should be educated on what's to come years in advance, rather than the current practice of leaving people on their own with bothersome symptoms and too much conflicting information. Knowing what is happening, why, and what to do about it is both empowering and reassuring.

Frank and funny, Dr. Jen debunks misogynistic attitudes and challenges the
over-mystification of menopause to reveal everything you really need to know about:

- Perimenopause
- Hot flashes
- Sleep disruption
- Sex and libido
- Depression and mood changes
- Skin and hair issues
- Outdated therapies
- Breast health
- Weight and muscle mass
- Health maintenance screening
- And much more!

Filled with practical, reassuring information, this essential guide will revolutionize how women experience menopause--including how their lives can be even better for it!]]> 400 Jen Gunter 0806540664 Tara 0 currently-reading 4.08 2021
author: Jen Gunter
name: Tara
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> 58884736
"A story of love and hope as interweaving characters display: how all moments, big and small, can measure a life. If you want joy, love, romance, and hope—read with us." —Jenna Bush Hager
A luminous, spirit-lifting blockbuster that asks: would you choose to find out the length of your life?

Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice.

It seems like any other day. You wake up, drink a cup of coffee, and head out.

But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. The contents of this mysterious box tells you the exact number of years you will live.

From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

As society comes together and pulls apart, everyone faces the same shocking choice: Do they wish to know how long they’ll live? And, if so, what will they do with that knowledge?

The Measure charts the dawn of this new world through an unforgettable cast of characters whose decisions and fates interweave with one another: best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, pen pals finding refuge in the unknown, a couple who thought they didn’t have to rush, a doctor who cannot save himself, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything.

Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is an ambitious, invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.]]> 353 Nikki Erlick 0063204207 Tara 3 3.96 2022
author: Nikki Erlick
name: Tara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> 222175354 A housemaid with a dangerous family secret conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia.

The rebel . . . the socialite . . . and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this “beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom� (Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends).

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives.

Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.]]> 384 Ashton Lattimore 0593600177 Tara 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Ashton Lattimore
name: Tara
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 9361589
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.]]> 506 Erin Morgenstern Tara 4 4.00 2011
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Tara
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
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]]> 60400 249 John Flanagan 0142406635 Tara 5 4.25 2004
author: John Flanagan
name: Tara
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
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]]> 61796683 REESE'S BOOK CLUB MAY 2023 PICK

BOOK OF THE MONTH MAY 2023 PICK

A multigenerational saga that traverses the glamour of old Hollywood and the seductive draw of modern-day showbiz

When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions.

A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty’s affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty’s journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could—and between a cheating fiancé and the fallout from a controversial social media post, there are plenty.

The truth behind Kitty's ascent to stardom from her beginnings in the segregated South threatens to expose a web of unexpected family ties, debts owed, and debatable crimes that could, with one pull, unravel the all-American fabric of the St. John sisters and those closest to them.

As Elise digs deeper into Kitty's past, she must also turn the lens upon herself, confronting the gifts and burdens of her own choices and the power that the secrets of the dead hold over the living. Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? is a sprawling page-turner set against the backdrop of the Hollywood machine, an insightful and nuanced look at the inheritances of family, race, and gender—and the choices some women make to break free of them.]]> 416 Crystal Smith Paul 1250815304 Tara 3 3.70 2023
author: Crystal Smith Paul
name: Tara
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves:
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The chapters written from Kitty’s perspective were stronger writing than the ones from Elise. And good thing as they carried the book. I thought the ending was a little anticlimactic too. Overall a decent read but more improperly provided food for thought and light shed on a topic not often discussed.
]]> 75670216 Three bickering half sisters. One unique antiques shop. The coziest holiday season of their lives.

Wildly different half sisters Maggie, Simone, and Star have hardly seen one another since their sprightly summers at Rowan Thorp, their eccentric father Augustus’s home. Known for his bustling approach to the knick-knack shop he ran, Augustus was loved by all and known by none, not even his daughters.

Now, years later, the three estranged women are called upon for the reading of Augustus’s will and quickly realize he's orchestrated a series of hoops through which they must jump to unlock their inheritance—the last thing any of them want to do. But Maggie and Star desperately need the money. And who would Simone be to resist?Ěý

Through hilarious goose chases, small-town mishaps, and one heart-warming winter solstice celebration, love, hope, and reconcilation is in the air, if only the three sisters can let themselves grasp it.]]> 413 Jenny Bayliss 0593422244 Tara 0 to-read 3.68 2023
author: Jenny Bayliss
name: Tara
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53288434 A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them - setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.

Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.

One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose - selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.

In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murdersâ€� that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate - and not everyone will survive.]]> 301 Sarah Penner 0778311015 Tara 4 3.72 2021
author: Sarah Penner
name: Tara
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/01
date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 25813942
After committing a terrible crime, Odie and Albert are forced to flee for their lives along with their best friend, Mose, a mute young man of Sioux heritage. Out of pity, they also take with them a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy. Together, they steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi in search for a place to call home.

Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphan vagabonds journey into the unknown, crossing paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an en­thralling, bighearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.]]> 450 William Kent Krueger 1476749299 Tara 5 4.35 2019
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Tara
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/01
date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 51791252
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.]]> 343 Brit Bennett 0525536299 Tara 3 4.11 2020
author: Brit Bennett
name: Tara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2022/02/01
date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 16435
What dangers await Jimmy on these five dark days? What terrifying events must he survive? At each of the crisis points, a mystery unfolds that will challenge his understanding of good and evil, life and death - and everything in between.]]> 476 Dean Koontz 0553588249 Tara 4 3.98 2005
author: Dean Koontz
name: Tara
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2025/01/01
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]]> 62919732
According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,� but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.

From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus , they tell from adversity beauty can bloom.

But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.

How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts? A captivating story of women helping each other, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is a triumphant reimagining of the life of one person who was remarkable in the Ming dynasty and would be considered remarkable today.]]> 352 Lisa See 1982117087 Tara 0 to-read 4.31 2023
author: Lisa See
name: Tara
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53205888 Welcome to Charon's Crossing.
The tea is hot, the scones are fresh, and the dead are just passing through.

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace from his own funeral, Wallace begins to suspect he might be dead.

And when Hugo, the owner of a peculiar tea shop, promises to help him cross over, Wallace decides he’s definitely dead.

But even in death he’s not ready to abandon the life he barely lived, so when Wallace is given one week to cross over, he sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.]]> 376 T.J. Klune 1250217342 Tara 3 4.11 2021
author: T.J. Klune
name: Tara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
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]]> 176451879
One dark evening on New York City’s Upper West Side, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realize they have much in common, especially loneliness and an intense desire for revenge against the men who destroyed their families. As they talk into the night, they come up with the perfect if you kill for me, I’ll kill for you.

In another part of the city, Ruth is home alone when the beautiful brownstone she shares with her husband, Scott, is invaded. She’s attacked by a man with piercing blue eyes, who disappears into the night. Will she ever be able to feel safe again while the blue-eyed stranger is out there?

Intricate, heart-racing, and from an author who “is the real deal� (Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author), Kill for Me, Kill for You will keep you breathless until the final page.]]> 340 Steve Cavanagh 1668049341 Tara 0 to-read 4.13 2023
author: Steve Cavanagh
name: Tara
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61918816 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin�-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass� scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,â€� and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she ł¦˛ą˛Ô’t refuse.]]> 416 Abby Jimenez 1538704390 Tara 0 to-read 4.29 2023
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Tara
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 75495002 When a father goes missing, his family's desperate search leads them to question everything they know about him and one another--both a riveting page-turner and a deeply moving portrait of a family in crisis from the award-winning author of Miracle Creek.

"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing.

Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia's brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.

What follows is both a ticking-clock investigation into the whereabouts of a father and an emotionally rich portrait of a family whose most personal secrets just may be at the heart of his disappearance. Full of shocking twists and fascinating questions of love, language, race, and human connection, Happiness Falls is a mystery, a family drama, and a novel of profound philosophical inquiry. With all the powerful storytelling she brought to her award-winning debut Miracle Creek, Angie Kim turns the missing person story into something wholly original, creating an indelible tale of a family who must go to remarkable lengths to truly understand one another.]]> 387 Angie Kim 0593448200 Tara 0 to-read 3.72 2023
author: Angie Kim
name: Tara
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> 59366244
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,� eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?� She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died , Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!�), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.]]> 304 Jennette McCurdy 1982185821 Tara 4 4.42 2022
author: Jennette McCurdy
name: Tara
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/18
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]]> 56143578 #1 New York Times Bestseller
A Peacock Original TV Series–Streaming Soon

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Liane Moriarty comes a novel that looks at marriage, siblings, and how the people we love the most can hurt us the deepest

The Delaney family love one another dearly—it’s just that sometimes they want to murder each other . . .

If your mother was missing, would you tell the police? Even if the most obvious suspect was your father?

This is the dilemma facing the four grown Delaney siblings.

The Delaneys are fixtures in their community. The parents, Stan and Joy, are the envy of all of their friends. They’re killers on the tennis court, and off it their chemistry is palpable. But after fifty years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their famed tennis academy and are ready to start what should be the golden years of their lives. So why are Stan and Joy so miserable?

The four Delaney children—Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke—were tennis stars in their own right, yet as their father will tell you, none of them had what it took to go all the way. But that’s okay, now that they’re all successful grown-ups and there is the wonderful possibility of grandchildren on the horizon.

One night a stranger named Savannah knocks on Stan and Joy’s door, bleeding after a fight with her boyfriend. The Delaneys are more than happy to give her the small kindness she sorely needs. If only that was all she wanted.

Later, when Joy goes missing, and Savannah is nowhere to be found, the police question the one person who remains: Stan. But for someone who claims to be innocent, he, like many spouses, seems to have a lot to hide. Two of the Delaney children think their father is innocent, two are not so sure—but as the two sides square off against each other in perhaps their biggest match ever, all of the Delaneys will start to reexamine their shared family history in a very new light.]]> 467 Liane Moriarty 1250220254 Tara 4 3.69 2021
author: Liane Moriarty
name: Tara
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/17
date added: 2024/12/17
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]]> 209192698 In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.Ěý

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.]]> 320 Ina Garten 0593799895 Tara 5 4.24 2024
author: Ina Garten
name: Tara
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/21
date added: 2024/11/21
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]]> 123266464 208 Jason VanRuler 0310367417 Tara 4 4.13
author: Jason VanRuler
name: Tara
average rating: 4.13
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/16
date added: 2024/11/16
shelves:
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]]> 38746485
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.]]> 426 Michelle Obama 1524763136 Tara 5 4.42 2018
author: Michelle Obama
name: Tara
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves:
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]]> 19428562 385 Ronald Takaki 1609804171 Tara 4 4.27 2012
author: Ronald Takaki
name: Tara
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/20
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves:
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]]> 63024287
The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Mary McLeod Bethune refuses to back down as white supremacists attempt to thwart her work. She marches on as an activist and an educator, and as her reputation grows she becomes a celebrity, revered by titans of business and recognized by U.S. Presidents. Eleanor Roosevelt herself is awestruck and eager to make her acquaintance. Initially drawn together because of their shared belief in women’s rights and the power of education, Mary and Eleanor become fast friends confiding their secrets, hopes and dreams—and holding each other’s hands through tragedy and triumph.
Ěý
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected president, the two women begin to collaborate more closely, particularly as Eleanor moves toward her own agenda separate from FDR, a consequence of the devastating discovery of her husband’s secret love affair. Eleanor becomes a controversial First Lady for her outspokenness, particularly onĚýcivil rights. And when she receives threats because of her strong ties to Mary, it only fuels the women’s desire to fight together for justice and equality.
Ěý
ThisĚýis the story of two different, yet equally formidable, passionate, and committed women, and the way in whichĚýtheir singular friendshipĚýhelped form the foundation for the modern civil rights movement.]]> 389 Marie Benedict 0593440285 Tara 3 3.96 2023
author: Marie Benedict
name: Tara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/20
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]]> 196585876 An Unfinished Love A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin, one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.

Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir.

Over the years, with humor, anger, frustration, and in the end, a growing understanding, Dick and Doris had argued over the achievements and failings of the leaders they served and observed, debating the progress and unfinished promises of the country they both loved.

The Goodwins� last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.

Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.]]> 480 Doris Kearns Goodwin 1982108665 Tara 4 4.53 2024
author: Doris Kearns Goodwin
name: Tara
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/07
date added: 2024/08/07
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]]> 56449476 An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America.

“Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes…�

Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.

It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.

Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.]]> 346 Lynda Rutledge 1542023351 Tara 4 4.34 2021
author: Lynda Rutledge
name: Tara
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/18
date added: 2024/07/18
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]]> 148357150 0 Tom Clancy Tara 1 1.00
author: Tom Clancy
name: Tara
average rating: 1.00
book published:
rating: 1
read at: 2024/06/21
date added: 2024/06/21
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]]> 55277901 Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo's Fire, Weekend at Bernie's, and Less than Zero, and as a charter member of Hollywood's Brat Pack. That iconic group of ingenues and heartthrobs included Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Demi Moore, and has come to represent both a genre of film and an era of pop culture.Ěý

In his memoir Brat: An '80s Story, McCarthy focuses his gaze on that singular moment in time. The result is a revealing look at coming of age in a maelstrom, reckoning with conflicted ambition, innocence, addiction, and masculinity. New York City of the 1980s is brought to vivid life in these pages, from scoring loose joints in Washington Square Park to skipping school in favor of the dark revival houses of the Village where he fell in love with the movies that would change his life.ĚýFilled with personal revelations of innocence lost to heady days in Hollywood with John Hughes and an iconic cast of characters, Brat is a surprising and intimate story of an outsider caught up in a most unwitting success.]]> 223 Andrew McCarthy 1538754274 Tara 4 3.57 2021
author: Andrew McCarthy
name: Tara
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/20
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]]> 43925876 From the author of Me Before You, set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond.

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

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

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

Based on a true story rooted in America’s past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope and epic in its storytelling. Funny, heartbreaking, enthralling, it is destined to become a modern classic–a richly rewarding novel of women’s friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond.]]> 390 Jojo Moyes 0399562486 Tara 0 4.27 2019
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Tara
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 18405 1037 Margaret Mitchell 0446365386 Tara 0 4.30 1936
author: Margaret Mitchell
name: Tara
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1936
rating: 0
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]]> 44318414
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.]]> 337 Ann Patchett 0062963678 Tara 0 4.08 2019
author: Ann Patchett
name: Tara
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> 52762903 The Book of Lost Names.

The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war?

As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named RĂ©my, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and RĂ©my disappears.

An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.]]> 388 Kristin Harmel 1982131896 Tara 0 to-read 4.41 2020
author: Kristin Harmel
name: Tara
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/19
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]]> 127305853
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets—and becomes one of—the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm's way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Tara 0 to-read 4.58 2024
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Tara
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> 196674638
There is a bright yellow bus who spends her days driving. She loves carrying children from one important place to another. Every morning they climb in... Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, giggle, giggle-patter . And they fill her with joy.

As time passes, things change. The Yellow Bus gets a new driver, a new route, and new passengers, young and old. Until one day the driving stops for good, and the Yellow Bus is left on her own. And yet, no matter where she is, the Yellow Bus still finds joy and discovery in the world around her.

With stirring black-and-white artwork and powerful pops of color, The Yellow Bus is a poignant reflection on the many new beginnings life has to offer.]]> 48 Loren Long 1250903130 Tara 0 to-read 4.43 2024
author: Loren Long
name: Tara
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/18
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]]> 209363566 One of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of the twenty-first the story of the world’s most prolific art thief, Stéphane Breitwieser.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser’s strange world—unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them.

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

This is a riveting story of art, crime, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.]]> 224 Michael Finkel 1984898450 Tara 0 to-read 4.04 2023
author: Michael Finkel
name: Tara
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/18
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]]> 45047384
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.

When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.

But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.

An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place—and realizing that family is yours.]]> 394 T.J. Klune Tara 0 4.37 2020
author: T.J. Klune
name: Tara
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/06/17
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]]> 59227941 Ěý
Filled with the emotional tension and multiple points of view that characterize Elin's books (The Blue Bistro, Golden Girl) as well as an added touch of historical reality, Hotel Nantucket offers something for everyone in this summer drama for the ages.Ěý]]> 416 Elin Hilderbrand 0316258679 Tara 3 4.01 2022
author: Elin Hilderbrand
name: Tara
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/16
date added: 2024/06/16
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]]> 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 Tara 4 Every time I thought I had to be getting close to the end, there was somehow more.
Many times the detailed descriptions and an over abundance of similes was tedious to annoying. A few times I wished that I could pop Theo or Boris on the back of the head and yell at them to get to the point already.
Despite all of that it’s a compelling story; A kid that survives a bombing, trauma, lost and stolen art , surviving your teens, divorce, love , New York, drug use, Russian culture , true friendship. So many things that don't seem related yet the writer weaves them together successfully.
]]> 3.94 2013
author: Donna Tartt
name: Tara
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/12
date added: 2024/05/12
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I thought this book was going to kill me.
Every time I thought I had to be getting close to the end, there was somehow more.
Many times the detailed descriptions and an over abundance of similes was tedious to annoying. A few times I wished that I could pop Theo or Boris on the back of the head and yell at them to get to the point already.
Despite all of that it’s a compelling story; A kid that survives a bombing, trauma, lost and stolen art , surviving your teens, divorce, love , New York, drug use, Russian culture , true friendship. So many things that don't seem related yet the writer weaves them together successfully.

]]> 60407689 Celebrated NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg delivers an extraordinary memoir of her personal successes, struggles, and life-affirming relationships, including her beautiful friendship of nearly fifty years with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she cemented her legacy as a prizewinning reporter, and nearly twenty-two years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, Nina called Ruth. A reporter for The National Observer, Nina was curious about Ruth’s legal brief, asking the Supreme Court to do something declare a law that discriminated “on the basis of sex� to be unconstitutional. In a time when women were fired for becoming pregnant, often could not apply for credit cards or get a mortgage in their own names, Ruth patiently explained her argument. That call launched a remarkable, nearly fifty-year friendship. Dinners with Ruth is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers. It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story’s heart is one, special Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood. During the devastating illness and eventual death of Nina’s first husband, Ruth drew her out of grief; twelve years later, Nina would reciprocate when Ruth’s beloved husband died. They shared not only a love of opera, but also of shopping, as they instinctively understood that clothes were armor for women who wanted to be taken seriously in a workplace dominated by men. During Ruth’s last year, they shared so many small dinners that Saturdays were “reserved for Ruth� in Nina’s house. Dinners with Ruth also weaves together compelling, personal portraits of other fascinating women and men from Nina’s life, including her cherished NPR colleagues Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer; her beloved husbands; her friendships with multiple Supreme Court Justices, including Lewis Powell, William Brennan, and Antonin Scalia, and Nina’s own family—her father, the legendary violinist Roman Totenberg, and her “best friends,� her sisters. Inspiring and revelatory, Dinners with Ruth is a moving story of the joy and true meaning of friendship.]]> 320 Nina Totenberg 1982188081 Tara 4 4.03 2022
author: Nina Totenberg
name: Tara
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/04/29
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]]> 34912895 Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

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

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

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

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

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska―a place of incomparable beauty and danger. The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.]]> 435 Kristin Hannah Tara 4 4.44 2018
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Tara
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/26
date added: 2024/04/26
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]]> 56269278 309 Percival Everett 164445064X Tara 0 to-read 4.06 2021
author: Percival Everett
name: Tara
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/21
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]]> 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Tara 0 to-read 4.46 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: Tara
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/21
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]]> 40617092
When Alice Hale leaves a career in publicity to become a writer and follows her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. But when she finds a vintage cookbook buried in a box in the old home’s basement, she becomes captivated by the cookbook’s previous owner�1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she realizes that within the cookbook’s pages Nellie left clues about her life–including a mysterious series of unsent letters penned to her mother.

Soon Alice learns that while baked Alaska and meatloaf five ways may seem harmless, Nellie’s secrets may have been anything but. When Alice uncovers a more sinister–even dangerous–side to Nellie’s marriage, and has become increasingly dissatisfied with the mounting pressures in her own relationship, she begins to take control of her life and protect herself with a few secrets of her own.]]> 336 Karma Brown 1524744948 Tara 3 3.64 2019
author: Karma Brown
name: Tara
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/20
date added: 2024/04/20
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]]> 62587676 Ěý
When Andrew McCarthy's eldest son began to take his first steps into adulthood, McCarthy found himself wishing time would slow down. Looking to create a more meaningful connection with Sam before he fled the nest, as well as recreate his own life-altering journey decades before, McCarthy decided the two of them should set out on a trek like few 500 miles across Spain's Camino de Santiago.
Ěý
Over the course of the journey, the pair traversed an unforgiving landscape, having more honest conversations in five weeks than they'd had in the preceding two decades. ĚýDiscussions of divorce, the trauma of school, McCarthy's difficult relationship with his own father, fame, and Flaming Hot Cheetos threatened to either derail their relationship or cement it. Ěý Walking With Sam Ěýcaptures this intimate, candid and hopeful expedition as the father son duo travel across the country and towards one another.]]> 256 Andrew McCarthy 1538709201 Tara 5 3.97 2023
author: Andrew McCarthy
name: Tara
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/19
date added: 2024/04/19
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]]> 51711280
“Finally, here’s a hopeful, comprehensive, and compassionate guide to navigating one of the most painful experiences for parents and their adult children alike.”—Lori Gottlieb, psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Labeled a silent epidemic by a growing number of therapists and researchers, estrangement is one of the most disorienting and painful experiences of a parent's life. Popular opinion typically tells a one-sided story of parents who got what they deserved or overly entitled adult children who wrongly blame their parents. However, the reasons for estrangement are far more complex and varied. As a result of rising rates of individualism, an increasing cultural emphasis on happiness, growing economic insecurity, and a historically recent perception that parents are obstacles to personal growth, many parents find themselves forever shut out of the lives of their adult children and grandchildren.

As a trusted psychologist whose own daughter cut off contact for several years and eventually reconciled, Dr. Joshua Coleman is uniquely qualified to guide parents in navigating these fraught interactions. He helps to alleviate the ongoing feelings of shame, hurt, guilt, and sorrow that commonly attend these dynamics. By placing estrangement into a cultural context, Dr. Coleman helps parents better understand the mindset of their adult children and teaches them how to implement the strategies for reconciliation and healing that he has seen work in his forty years of practice. Rules of Estrangement gives parents the language and the emotional tools to engage in meaningful conversation with their child, the framework to cultivate a healthy relationship moving forward, and the ability to move on if reconciliation is no longer possible.

While estrangement is a complex and tender topic, Dr. Coleman's insightful approach is based on empathy and understanding for both the parent and the adult child.]]> 320 Joshua Coleman 0593136861 Tara 5 4.02 2021
author: Joshua Coleman
name: Tara
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/14
date added: 2024/04/14
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]]> 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Tara 3 4.04 2022
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Tara
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/13
date added: 2024/04/13
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]]> 140089 267 Charlaine Harris 0786209852 Tara 4 3.80 1996
author: Charlaine Harris
name: Tara
average rating: 3.80
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/15
date added: 2024/04/13
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]]> 140096 256 Charlaine Harris 0373262175 Tara 4 3.84 1995
author: Charlaine Harris
name: Tara
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/05
date added: 2024/04/13
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]]> 140090 256 Charlaine Harris 0373261772 Tara 4 3.81 1994
author: Charlaine Harris
name: Tara
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/01
date added: 2024/04/13
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]]> 40849216
As the murder investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that the victim harbored secrets. Together with her FBI agent best friend, Cate, and park ranger Logan Wilde, Tessa must connect the pieces before the murderer strikes again. But the closer she gets to the truth, the more she finds herself—and the ones she loves—in harm’s way.

Pressure mounts as Tessa attempts to juggle the current case with her search for the truth behind her childhood friend Samantha’s disappearance twenty years ago. Can Tessa find the murderer and uncover answers about Samantha without jeopardizing everything she holds dear?]]> 116 Melinda Leigh 1503960161 Tara 4 4.20 2018
author: Melinda Leigh
name: Tara
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/25
date added: 2024/04/13
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]]> 140091 En el club Real Murders les gustaba hablar de asesinatos, hasta que se volvieron reales...

La bibliotecaria Aurora Teagarden pertenece al club Real Murders, que se reĂşne una vez al mes para charlar sobre asesinatos famosos.

Parece un pasatiempo inofensivo, hasta que uno de los miembros es asesinado de una manera sospechosamente parecida al crimen del que iban a hablar esa misma noche. Y no será el único cadáver?

Aurora aunará fuerzas con el apuesto detective Arthur Smith y el galante novelista de misterio Robin Crusoe para cazar al asesino. Un asesino que bien podría ser uno de sus propios amigos?

Ěý

Charlaine Harris, autora superventas de True Blood, presenta la serie Los misterios de Aurora Teagarden, ahora también en películas en Prime Video]]> 175 Charlaine Harris 0802757693 Tara 4 3.68 1990
author: Charlaine Harris
name: Tara
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1990
rating: 4
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]]> 101984457 208 Hannah Anderson 1087785154 Tara 0 4.08
author: Hannah Anderson
name: Tara
average rating: 4.08
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/13
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]]> 6 734 J.K. Rowling 0439139597 Tara 5 4.56 2000
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Tara
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2000
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/14
date added: 2024/04/10
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]]> 1 652 J.K. Rowling Tara 5 4.57 2005
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Tara
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/26
date added: 2024/04/10
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]]> 2
Harry has had enough. He is beginning to think he must do something, anything, to change his situation, when the summer holidays come to an end in a very dramatic fashion. What Harry is about to discover in his new year at Hogwarts will turn his world upside down...]]> 912 J.K. Rowling Tara 5 4.50 2003
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Tara
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2003
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2024/04/10
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]]> 1306402 320 Joshua Coleman 0061148423 Tara 0 to-read 3.90
author: Joshua Coleman
name: Tara
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 23500254 Show Up and Let Yourself be Seen

Is vulnerability the same as weakness? “In our culture,� teaches Dr. Brené Brown, “we associate vulnerability with emotions we want to avoid such as fear, shame, and uncertainty. Yet we too often lose sight of the fact that vulnerability is also the birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity, authenticity, and love.� On The Power of Vulnerability, Dr. Brown offers an invitation and a promise - that when we dare to drop the armor that protects us from feeling vulnerable, we open ourselves to the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives. Here she dispels the cultural myth that vulnerability is weakness and reveals that it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage.
“The Power of Vulnerability is a very personal project for me,� Brené explains. “This is the first place that all of my work comes together. This audio course draws from all three of my books - it’s the culmination of everything I’ve learned over the past twelve years. I'm very excited to weave it all into a truly comprehensive form that shows what these findings and insights can mean in our lives.�

Guidance and Insights for Wholehearted Living

Over the past twelve years, Dr. Brené Brown has interviewed hundreds of people as part of an ongoing study of vulnerability. “The research shows that we try to ward disappointment with a shield of cynicism, disarm shame by numbing ourselves against joy, and circumvent grief by shutting off our willingness to love,� explains Dr. Brown. When we become aware of these patterns, she teaches, we begin to become conscious of how much we sacrifice in the name of self-defense -and how much richer our lives become when we open ourselves to vulnerability.
“In my research,� Dr. Brown says, “the word I use to describe people who can live from a place of vulnerability is wholehearted.� Being wholehearted is a practice—one that we can choose to cultivate through empathy, gratitude, and awareness of our vulnerability armor. Join this engaging and heartfelt teacher on The Power of Vulnerability as she offers profound insights on leaning into the full spectrum of emotions—so we can show up, let ourselves be seen, and truly be all in.

HIGHLIGHTS

Cultivating shame resilience—the key to developing a sense of worth and belonging.
Vulnerability as the origin point for innovation, adaptability, accountability, and visionary leadership.
Our emotional armory - how we use perfectionism, numbing, and other tactics to avoid feeling vulnerable.
The myths of vulnerability - common misconceptions about weakness, trust, and self-sufficiency.
Discovering your vulnerability armor - recognizing what makes us shut down, and how we can change.
The 10 guideposts of wholehearted living - essential skills for becoming fully engaged in life.
Six hours of stories, warm humor, and transformative insights for living a life of courage, authenticity, and compassion from Dr. Brené Brown.]]> 1 Brené Brown Tara 0 4.61 2013
author: Brené Brown
name: Tara
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/13
date added: 2024/04/08
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]]> 62926992
Lucy Hart knows better than anyone what it’s like to grow up without parents who loved her. In a childhood marked by neglect and loneliness, Lucy found her solace in books, namely the Clock Island series by Jack Masterson. Now a twenty-six-year-old teacher’s aide, she is able to share her love of reading with bright, young students, especially seven-year-old Christopher Lamb, who was left orphaned after the tragic death of his parents. Lucy would give anything to adopt Christopher, but even the idea of becoming a family seems like an impossible dream without proper funds and stability.

But be careful what you wish for. . . .

Just when Lucy is about to give up, Jack Masterson announces he’s finally written a new book. Even better, he’s holding a contest at his home on the real Clock Island, and Lucy is one of the four lucky contestants chosen to compete to win the one and only copy.

For Lucy, the chance of winning the most sought-after book in the world means everything to her and Christopher. But first she must contend with ruthless book collectors, wily opponents, and the distractingly handsome (and grumpy) Hugo Reese, the illustrator of the Clock Island books. Meanwhile, Jack “the Mastermind� Masterson is plotting the ultimate twist ending that could change all their lives forever.

. . . You might just get it.]]> 304 Meg Shaffer 0593598830 Tara 0 to-read 4.01 2023
author: Meg Shaffer
name: Tara
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/07
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]]> 181325033 From acclaimed author Makiia Lucier, a dazzling, romantic fantasy inspired by Pacific Island mythology.

In the old tales, it is written that the egg of a seadragon, dragonfruit, holds within it the power to undo a person’s greatest sorrow. An unwanted marriage, a painful illness, and unpaid debt ... gone. But as with all things that promise the moon and the stars and offer hope when hope has gone, the tale comes with a warning.

Every wish demands a price.

Hanalei of Tamarind is the cherished daughter of an old island family. But when her father steals a seadragon egg meant for an ailing princess, she is forced into a life of exile. In the years that follow, Hanalei finds solace in studying the majestic seadragons that roam the Nominomi Sea. Until, one day, an encounter with a female dragon offers her what she desires most. A chance to return home, and to right a terrible wrong.

Samahtitamahenele, Sam, is the last remaining prince of Tamarind. But he can never inherit the throne, for Tamarind is a matriarchal society. With his mother ill and his grandmother nearing the end of her reign. Sam is left with two to marry, or to find a cure for the sickness that has plagued his mother for ten long years. When a childhood companion returns from exile, she brings with her something he has not felt in a very long time - hope.

But Hanalei and Sam are not the only ones searching for the dragonfruit. And as they battle enemies both near and far, there is another danger they cannot escape…that of the dragonfruit itself. Ěý]]> 356 Makiia Lucier 0358272106 Tara 0 to-read 3.85 2024
author: Makiia Lucier
name: Tara
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/07
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]]> 182484361 A housemaid with a dangerous family secret conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia.

The rebel . . . the socialite . . . and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this “beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom� (Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends).

Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives.

Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.]]> 368 Ashton Lattimore 0593600150 Tara 0 to-read 3.79 2024
author: Ashton Lattimore
name: Tara
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/07
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]]> 36692478 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780525520375.

Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American--grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.]]> 294 Tommy Orange Tara 4 3.98 2018
author: Tommy Orange
name: Tara
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/06
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]]> 32191706 de facto segregation—that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation—the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments—that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.

As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book� (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.]]> 368 Richard Rothstein 1631492853 Tara 4 4.44 2017
author: Richard Rothstein
name: Tara
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/03/18
date added: 2024/03/18
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]]> 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 Tara 0 to-read 4.26 2014
author: Pierce Brown
name: Tara
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/10
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]]> 52950915 A Common-Sense Guide to Living Rich�.Instead of Dying Rich

Imagine if by the time you died, you did everything you were told to. You worked hard, saved your money, and looked forward to financial freedom when you retired.
Ěý
The only thing you wasted along the way was�your life.
Ěý
Die with Zero presents a startling new and provocative philosophy as well as practical guide on how to get the most out of your moneyâ€�and out ofĚýyour life. It’s intended for those who place lifelong memorable experiences far ahead of simply making and accumulating money for one’s so-called Golden Years.
Ěý
In short, Bill Perkins wants to rescue you from over-saving and under-living. Regardless of your age, Die with Zero will teach you Perkins� plan for optimizing your life, stage by stage, so you’re fully engaged and enjoying what you’ve worked and saved for.
Ěý
You’ll discover how to maximize your lifetime memorable moments with “experience bucketing,� how to convert your earnings into priceless memories by following your “net worth curve,� and find out how to navigate whether to invest in, or delay, a meaningful adventure based on your “spend curve� and “personal interest rate.�
Ěý
Using his own life experiences as well as the inspiring stories and cautionary tales of others—and drawing on eye-opening insights about time, money, and happiness from psychological science and behavioral finance —Perkins makes a timely, convincing, and contrarian case for living large.]]> 240 Bill Perkins 0358099765 Tara 3 3.84 2020
author: Bill Perkins
name: Tara
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/10
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]]> 136251
In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited.]]> 759 J.K. Rowling Tara 5 4.61 2007
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Tara
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/10
date added: 2024/03/10
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]]> 5 435 J.K. Rowling 043965548X Tara 0 4.57 1999
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Tara
average rating: 4.57
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/29
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]]> 15881
And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls� bathroom. But then the real trouble begins � someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects� Harry Potter himself!]]> 352 J.K. Rowling Tara 0 4.42 1998
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Tara
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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]]> 34180947
The Breaking History series from History® offers a front row seat to history as it broke (like “breaking news�) and give the blow-by-blow of historical discovery—what we learned, when we learned it, who made the discovery, and how. Vanished! is an illustrated tour of history’s most confounding cases of disappearance from Amelia Earhart to Jimmy Hoffa; DB Cooper; Alcatraz escapists Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Algin; Jim Thompson; Judge Joseph Force Crater; and more. Starting with the first 30 days surrounding each incident, and then looking at efforts up to this very day to solve each case, this book covers in photos and text history’s most perplexing vanishings.]]> 256 Sarah Pruitt 1493030604 Tara 3 3.85
author: Sarah Pruitt
name: Tara
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/21
date added: 2024/02/21
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]]> 16158542
It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys� own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.]]> 404 Daniel James Brown 067002581X Tara 4 4.37 2013
author: Daniel James Brown
name: Tara
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/21
date added: 2024/02/21
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]]> 138378707 From one of the most powerful and authentic voices in Southern fiction comes a historical novel with an unforgettable heroine—the extraordinary Joetta McBride, who defiantly opens her North Carolina home and farm to soldiers from both sides during the Civil War.

Talk of impending war is a steady drumbeat throughout North Carolina, though Joetta McBride pays it little heed. The small farm she tends with her husband, Ennis, and their two sons provides all they need. Those who want to fight can fight, but Joetta considers her family to be neutral.

That opinion isn’t shared by Joetta’s father-in-law, Rudean. A staunch Confederate supporter, he fills his grandsons� heads with stories about the glories of soldiering, and insists that owning land and slaves is the only measure of success. When fifteen-year-old Henry, impressed by his grandfather’s stories, runs off to volunteer, Joetta insists Ennis go and search for him.

Weeks pass without word from either father or son, though other soldiers pass the farm, growing ever gaunter and hungrier. Joetta offers food and shelter to all, regardless of which uniform they wear. Her actions are deemed treasonous by townsfolk and the Home Guard, but Joetta won’t be swayed. After all, the wealthy find ways to stay away from battle. Why should poor men suffer and die on their behalf?

Though shunned and struggling, Joetta remains committed to her principles, and to her belief that her family will survive. But the greatest tests are still to come, for a fractured nation and for Joetta and those she loves . . .]]> 400 Donna Everhart 149674070X Tara 0 to-read 4.01 2024
author: Donna Everhart
name: Tara
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/14
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]]> 66089390 The Amadeuses were always considered somewhat strange. Even before the incident.

When six-year-old Beatrice Willoughby vanished at the Amadeuses' annual All Hallows Eve party, people in the tiny mountain town of Nevermore were quick to whisper: They were always odd. Their house is full of dark magic. And when Mort Amadeus was pegged for the crime, the Amadeuses, once the center of society, retreated. They closed their doors, disappeared from life. People almost forgot. Until thirteen years later, when six envelopes land at the doorstep of six households in town: We cordially invite you to a celebration on the 31st of October this Saturday evening at the Amadeus household.

So begins the mystery of who was really responsible for the missing girl thirteen years ago. Was it Duchess von Pelt, whose face no one has ever seen? Mrs. Raven, the keeper of the local inn? Wormwood, the Amadeuses' mysterious caretaker? Dr. Foozle, the town pharmacist? Count Baines, who seems to know when unlucky things are about to happen? Judge Ophelius, who presided over Beatrice's case originally? Mr. and Mrs. H, a couple who no one can ever quite remember? Or somehow, might precocious, thirteen-year-old Dewey and his storytelling dad, Chaucer, be somehow mixed up in all this?

The guests must work together to identify the guilty party among them over the course of the evening--but beware the ticking clock, because at midnight, everything is going to change! Told from different perspectives, this is a sly, darkly funny mystery. Filled with strange characters and set in a mansion deep, deep in the woods. G. Z. Schmidt has crafted an unforgettable puzzle, perfect for reading on a dark autumn night.]]> 275 G.Z. Schmidt 0823457354 Tara 0 to-read 4.14 2023
author: G.Z. Schmidt
name: Tara
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/14
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]]> 9375 Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who is telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women, the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again.]]> 416 Fannie Flagg 0375508414 Tara 4 4.28 1987
author: Fannie Flagg
name: Tara
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/05
date added: 2024/02/05
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]]> 60596112
Hulda Larkin of the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms has been trained in taming such structures in order to preserve their historical and magical significance. She understands the dangers of bespelled homes given to tantrums. She advises that it’s in Merritt’s best interest to make Whimbrel House their ally. To do that, she’ll need to move in, too.

Prepared as she is with augury, a set of magic tools, and a new staff trained in the uncanny, Hulda’s work still proves unexpectedly difficult. She and Merritt grow closer as the investigation progresses, but the house’s secrets run deeper than they anticipated. And the sentient walls aren’t their only concern—something outside is coming for the enchantments of Whimbrel House, and it could be more dangerous than what rattles within.]]> 347 Charlie N. Holmberg 1662500335 Tara 4 4.14 2022
author: Charlie N. Holmberg
name: Tara
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/03
date added: 2024/02/03
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]]> 16181775
Don Tillman, professor of genetics, has never been on a second date. He is a man who can count all his friends on the fingers of one hand, whose lifelong difficulty with social rituals has convinced him that he is simply not wired for romance. So when an acquaintance informs him that he would make a “wonderful� husband, his first reaction is shock. Yet he must concede to the statistical probability that there is someone for everyone, and he embarks upon The Wife Project. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which he approaches all things, Don sets out to find the perfect partner. She will be punctual and logical—most definitely not a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.

Yet Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also beguiling, fiery, intelligent—and on a quest of her own. She is looking for her biological father, a search that a certain DNA expert might be able to help her with. Don's Wife Project takes a back burner to the Father Project and an unlikely relationship blooms, forcing the scientifically minded geneticist to confront the spontaneous whirlwind that is Rosie—and the realization that love is not always what looks good on paper.

The Rosie Project is a moving and hilarious novel for anyone who has ever tenaciously gone after life or love in the face of overwhelming challenges.]]> 292 Graeme Simsion 1476729085 Tara 5 4.00 2013
author: Graeme Simsion
name: Tara
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/26
date added: 2024/01/26
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]]> 9418327
She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon—from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.]]> 283 Tina Fey Tara 4 3.97 2011
author: Tina Fey
name: Tara
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/01/17
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]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Tara 4 4.16 2020
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Tara
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/16
date added: 2024/01/16
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]]> 101673373
When Iris decides to move to New York to restart her life, she realizes she underestimated how big the Big Apple really is—all the nostalgic movies set in New York she’d watched with her mom while eating their special secret-recipe gelato didn’t quite do it justice.Ěý

But Bobby, Iris’s best friend, isn’t about to let her hide away. He drags her to a famous autumn street fair in Little Italy, and as they walk through the food stalls, a little family-run gelateria catches her eye—could it be the same shop that’s in an old photo of her mother’s?

Curious, Iris returns the next day and meets the handsome Gio, who tells her that the shop is in danger of closing. His uncle, sole keeper of their family’s gelato recipe, is in a coma, so theyĚýł¦˛ą˛Ô’t make more. When Iris samples the last remaining batch, she realizes that their gelato and her gelato are one and the same. ButĚýhow can she tell them she knows their secret recipe when she’s not sure why Gio’s uncle gave it to her mother in the first place?

Iris offers her services as a chef to help them re-create the flavor and finds herself falling for Gio and his family. But when Gio’s uncle finally wakes up, all of the secrets Iris has been keeping threaten to ruin the new life—and new love—she’s been building all winter long.]]> 384 Josie Silver 0593724933 Tara 4 3.64 2023
author: Josie Silver
name: Tara
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/07
date added: 2024/01/07
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]]> 61885029
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389223 Tara 4 4.09 2023
author: John Scalzi
name: Tara
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2024/01/01
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]]> 56318666 128 Proverbs 31 Ministries Tara 3 4.49
author: Proverbs 31 Ministries
name: Tara
average rating: 4.49
book published:
rating: 3
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date added: 2023/12/31
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]]> 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus Tara 4 4.23 2022
author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Tara
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/04/10
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 23604559 A charming, warmhearted novel from the author of the New York Times bestseller A Man Called Ove.

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

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

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry is told with the same comic accuracy and beating heart as Fredrik Backman’s bestselling debut novel, A Man Called Ove. It is a story about life and death and one of the most important human rights: the right to be different.]]> 372 Fredrik Backman 1501115065 Tara 3 4.04 2013
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Tara
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/28
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 60654349 I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.]]> 329 Emilia Hart 125028080X Tara 4 4.03 2023
author: Emilia Hart
name: Tara
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/15
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 29780253
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents� indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.

Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.]]> 289 Trevor Noah 0385689225 Tara 0 4.48 2016
author: Trevor Noah
name: Tara
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Tara 0 to-read 3.92 2023
author: Ann Patchett
name: Tara
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

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

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Tara 5 4.31 2014
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Tara
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/01
date added: 2023/12/29
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]]> 59836844
Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He’d have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver.

This single event starts a chain reaction, and an eclectic group of people discovers that talking to strangers can teach you quite a bit about the world around you—and even more about yourself.]]> 342 Clare Pooley 1984878646 Tara 4 4.16 2022
author: Clare Pooley
name: Tara
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/17
date added: 2023/12/17
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]]> 35817918 "Glorious...one of the best memoirs I've read in years...a tragicomic gem about family, class, race, justice, and the spectacular weirdness of Wichita. [McDermott] can move from barely controlled hilarity to the brink of rage to aching tenderness in a single breath." -- Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Book Review Zack McDermott, a 26-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed, Truman Show-style, as part of an audition for a TV pilot. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from "The Producer" to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital. So begins the story of Zack's freefall into psychosis and his desperate, poignant, often hilarious struggle to claw his way back to sanity. It's a journey that will take him from New York City back to his Kansas roots and to the one person who might be able to save him, his tough, big-hearted Midwestern mother, nicknamed the Bird, whose fierce and steadfast love is the light in Zack's dark world. Before his odyssey is over, Zack will be tackled by guards in mental wards, run naked through cornfields, receive secret messages from the TV, befriend a former Navy Seal and his talking stuffed monkey, and see the Virgin Mary in the whorls of his own back hair. But with the Bird's help, he just might have a shot at pulling through, starting over, and maybe even meeting a partner who can love him back, bipolar and all. Introducing an electrifying new voice, Gorilla and the Bird is a raw and unforgettable account of a young man's unraveling and the relationship that saves him.]]> 288 Zack McDermott 0316315117 Tara 3 4.33 2017
author: Zack McDermott
name: Tara
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/16
date added: 2023/12/16
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]]> 43641
Beautifully written, Water for Elephants is illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even love is a luxury that few can afford.]]> 368 Sara Gruen 1565125606 Tara 0 4.11 2006
author: Sara Gruen
name: Tara
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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]]> 40440
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.]]> 406 Diane Setterfield 0743298020 Tara 0 3.96 2006
author: Diane Setterfield
name: Tara
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2006
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/16
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]]> 252577
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the Pulitzer Prize winning memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.]]> 452 Frank McCourt 0007205236 Tara 0 4.15 1996
author: Frank McCourt
name: Tara
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> 10868 150 Steve Martin 0802135234 Tara 2 I’m thankful the book was short. ]]> 3.98 1994
author: Steve Martin
name: Tara
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1994
rating: 2
read at: 2023/11/08
date added: 2023/11/08
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I would have given this one star, but there were a couple of paragraphs in the Lapin at the Agile play that were mildly amusing. If you like the movie Steve Martin was in called The Jerk , then you’ll probably really like that play because it’s more of that type of humor. The other plays featured were weird and boring storylines.
I’m thankful the book was short.
]]> 10894332 240 Brennan Manning 1434764184 Tara 4 4.28 2011
author: Brennan Manning
name: Tara
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/07
date added: 2023/11/07
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]]> 50204812 She built a monument for all time. Then she was lost in its shadow. Discover the fascinating woman who helped design and construct the Brooklyn Bridge.

Emily Roebling refuses to live conventionally—she knows who she is and what she wants, and she's determined to make change. But then her husband asks the unthinkable: give up her dreams to make his possible.

Emily's fight for women's suffrage is put on hold, and her life transformed when her husband Washington Roebling, the Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge, is injured on the job. Untrained for the task, but under his guidance, she assumes his role, despite stern resistance and overwhelming obstacles. But as the project takes shape under Emily's direction, she wonders whose legacy she is building—hers, or her husband's. As the monument rises, Emily's marriage, principles, and identity threaten to collapse. When the bridge finally stands finished, will she recognize the woman who built it?

Based on the true story of an American icon, The Engineer's Wife delivers an emotional portrait of a woman transformed by a project of unfathomable scale, which takes her into the bowels of the East River, suffragette riots, the halls of Manhattan's elite, and the heady, freewheeling temptations of P.T. Barnum. The biography of a husband and wife determined to build something that lasts—even at the risk of losing each other.]]> 352 Tracey Enerson Wood 149269813X Tara 0 to-read 3.59 2020
author: Tracey Enerson Wood
name: Tara
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 53238858 Our earliest experiences shape our lives far down the road, and What Happened to You? provides powerful scientific and emotional insights into the behavioral patterns so many of us struggle to understand.

“Through this lens we can build a renewed sense of personal self-worth and ultimately recalibrate our responses to circumstances, situations, and relationships. It is, in other words, the key to reshaping our very lives.�—Oprah Winfrey

This book is going to change the way you see your life.

Have you ever wondered "Why did I do that?" or "Why can't I just control my behavior?" Others may judge our reactions and think, "What's wrong with that person?" When questioning our emotions, it's easy to place the blame on ourselves; holding ourselves and those around us to an impossible standard. It's time we started asking a different question.

Through deeply personal conversations, Oprah Winfrey and renowned brain and trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry offer a groundbreaking and profound shift from asking “What’s wrong with you?� to “What happened to you?�

Here, Winfrey shares stories from her own past, understanding through experience the vulnerability that comes from facing trauma and adversity at a young age. In conversation throughout the book, she and Dr. Perry focus on understanding people, behavior, and ourselves. It’s a subtle but profound shift in our approach to trauma, and it’s one that allows us to understand our pasts in order to clear a path to our future—opening the door to resilience and healing in a proven, powerful way.]]> 304 Bruce D. Perry 1250223180 Tara 5 4.43 2021
author: Bruce D. Perry
name: Tara
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/11/02
date added: 2023/11/02
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]]> 101160844 In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by the murder of its most powerful citizen, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling standalone novel.

On Memorial Day, as the people of Jewel, Minnesota gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. Investigation of the murder falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past.

Caught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose.

Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of midcentury American life, The River We Remember is an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home.]]> 432 William Kent Krueger 198217921X Tara 0 to-read 4.18 2023
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Tara
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> 61065813 Bono--artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2--has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him.

"When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I'd previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim's lack of progress ... With a fair amount of fun along the way." --Bono

As one of the music world's most iconic artists and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono's career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, it's Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2's unlikely journey to become one of the world's most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life--and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him.

Surrender's subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, is a nod to the book's forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created forty original drawings for Surrender, which appear throughout the book.]]> 564 Bono 0525521046 Tara 4 4.19 2022
author: Bono
name: Tara
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/25
date added: 2023/10/25
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]]> 60693459 Relationships are wonderful . . . until they're not.

Join #1ĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author Lysa TerKeurst as she helps you stop the dysfunction of unhealthy relationships by showing you biblical ways to set boundaries--and, when necessary, say goodbye--without losing the best of who you are.

Is it unloving or selfish to set a boundary? Are Christians ever called to walk away from a relationship that’s no longer safe or sustainable? Lysa TerKeurst deeply understands these hard questions in the midst of relational struggles.

But after thousands of hours of counseling intensives and extensive theological research that transformed the way she defined healthy relationships, Lysa is now more committed than ever to loving people well without losing the best of who she is. She wants to help you do the same. In these pages Lysa will help you:


Understand the five factors to remember when implementing healthy boundaries.
Determine the appropriate amount of personal and emotional access someone has to you based on how responsible they'll be with that access.
Stop being misled and emotionally paralyzed by wrongly interpreted or weaponized scriptures that perpetuate unhealthy dynamics in difficult relationships.
Overcome the frustrating cycle of ineffective boundary-setting with realistic scripts and practical strategies to help you communicate, keep, and implement healthier patterns.
Be equipped to say goodbye without guilt when a relationship has shifted from difficult to destructive and is no longer sustainable.
Receive therapeutic wisdom you can trust directly from Lysa’s Christian counselor Jim Cress, who weighs in throughout the book.
Ěý

You'll be relieved to learn that boundaries aren't just aĚýgoodĚýidea, they're aĚýGodĚýidea.]]> 272 Lysa TerKeurst 140021176X Tara 5 4.38 2022
author: Lysa TerKeurst
name: Tara
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/25
date added: 2023/10/25
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]]> 55594990 Alternate covers can be found here and here

The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, with their musty house and their exotic concoctions and their crowd of black cats. But all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape.

One will do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they share will bring them back—almost as if by magic...
]]> 286 Alice Hoffman 0425190374 Tara 3 3.71 1995
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Tara
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/25
date added: 2023/10/25
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]]>