Kate's bookshelf: all

Kate's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 25 Nov 2024 12:39:53 -0800 60 Kate's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The River We Remember 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 Kate 0 4.18 2023 The River We Remember

author: William Kent Krueger
name: Kate
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/25
date added: 2024/11/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Dear Mother 22590697
Alex , the youngest, is a bitter, unhappy woman who refuses to face the horrors of her childhood. Finding solace in a bottle, her life is spiralling dangerously out of control.

Eldest child, Catherine , has strived for success, despite her difficult upbringing. But behind the carefully constructed façade lies a secret that could shatter her world forever.

Beth , the middle child, bore the greatest burden. But having blocked out the cruelty they suffered, she remained with their mother until her death. Now she must confront the devastating reality of the past.

Brought together as strangers, the sisters embark on a painful journey to heal themselves and each other. Can they finally put their terrible childhoods to rest and start over?

An emotional, heart-breaking and compelling novel for readers of Diane Chamberlain, Amanda Prowse and Kelly Rimmer.

Previously Published as The Middle Child]]> 240 Angela Marsons 1786810417 Kate 0 to-read 4.11 2014 Dear Mother

author: Angela Marsons
name: Kate
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Little Liar 112975105 333 Mitch Albom 0062406655 Kate 5 4.54 2023

author: Mitch Albom
name: Kate
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:

]]> The Wishing Game 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.]]> 278 Meg Shaffer 0593598830 Kate 2 North Prov. August 2004 4.01 2023 The Wishing Game

author: Meg Shaffer
name: Kate
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/16
date added: 2024/08/16
shelves:
review:
North Prov. August 2004
]]> <![CDATA[The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen]]> 15765147 The minute I saw the letter, I knew it was hers. There was no mistaking it: the salutation, the tiny, precise handwriting, the date, the content itself, all confirmed its ancient status and authorship��

Samantha McDonough cannot believe her eyes--or her luck. Tucked in an uncut page of a two-hundred-year old poetry book is a letter she believes was written by Jane Austen, mentioning with regret a manuscript that "went missing at Greenbriar in Devonshire."

Could there really be an undiscovered Jane Austen novel waiting to be found? Could anyone resist the temptation to go looking for it?

Making her way to the beautiful, centuries-old Greenbriar estate, Samantha finds it no easy task to sell its owner, the handsome yet uncompromising Anthony Whitaker, on her wild idea of searching for a lost Austen work--until she mentions its possible million dollar value.

After discovering the unattributed manuscript, Samantha and Anthony are immediately absorbed in the story of Rebecca Stanhope, daughter of a small town rector, who is about to encounter some bittersweet truths about life and love. As they continue to read the newly discovered tale from the past, a new one unfolds in the present--a story that just might change both of their lives forever.]]> 422 Syrie James 0425253368 Kate 0 to-read, historical-fiction 3.83 2007 The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen

author: Syrie James
name: Kate
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read, historical-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot]]> 54798488 An extraordinary friendship. A lifetime of stories.
Their last one begins here.

Life is short. No-one knows that better than seventeen year old Lenni living on the terminal ward. But as she is about to learn, it's not only what you make of life that matters, but who you share it with.

Dodging doctor's orders, she joins an art class where she bumps into fellow patient Margot, a rebel-hearted eighty three year old from the next ward. Their bond is instant as they realize that together they have lived an astonishing one hundred years.

To celebrate their shared century, they decide to paint their life stories: of growing old and staying young, of giving joy, of receiving kindness, of losing love, of finding the person who is everything.

As their extraordinary friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet.

Fiercely alive, disarmingly funny and brimming with tenderness, THE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENNI AND MARGOT unwraps the extraordinary gift of life even when it is about to be taken away, and revels in our infinite capacity for friendship and love when we need them most. ]]> 322 Marianne Cronin 0063017504 Kate 4 4.26 2021 The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

author: Marianne Cronin
name: Kate
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/26
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves:
review:

]]> The Reading List 55276648 An unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb.

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.

Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.

When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list�� hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again.��]]> 368 Sara Nisha Adams 0063025280 Kate 4 4.02 2021 The Reading List

author: Sara Nisha Adams
name: Kate
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves:
review:

]]> All the Colors of the Dark 203019740 From the New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End comes a soaring thriller and an epic love story that spans decades.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

A missing person mystery, a serial killer thriller, a love story, a unique twist on each, Chris Whitaker has written a novel about what lurks in the shadows of obsession, and the blinding light of hope.]]> 608 Chris Whitaker 0593798872 Kate 0 to-read 4.22 2024 All the Colors of the Dark

author: Chris Whitaker
name: Kate
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Someone Else's Shoes 62971668 A story of mix-ups, mess-ups and making the most of second chances, this is the new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You and The Giver of Stars.

Who are you when you are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes?

Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope--she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in.

That’s because Sam Kemp �� in the bleakest point of her life �� has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag--she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat. When she tries on Nisha’s six-inch high Christian Louboutin red crocodile shoes, the resulting jolt of confidence that makes her realize something must change—and that thing is herself.

Full of Jojo Moyes�� signature humor, brilliant storytelling, and warmth, Someone Else’s Shoes is a story about how just one little thing can suddenly change everything.]]> 438 Jojo Moyes 1984879294 Kate 4 book-club 3.88 2023 Someone Else's Shoes

author: Jojo Moyes
name: Kate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/16
date added: 2024/05/16
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> Canary Girls 61896638
Early in the Great War, men left Britain’s factories in droves to enlist. Struggling to keep up production, arsenals hired women to build the weapons the military urgently needed. “Be the Girl Behind the Man Behind the Gun,�� the recruitment posters beckoned.

Thousands of women—cooks, maids, shopgirls, and housewives—answered their nation’s call. These “munitionettes�� worked grueling shifts often seven days a week, handling TNT and other explosives with little protective gear.

Among them is nineteen-year-old former housemaid April Tipton. Impressed by her friend Marjorie’s descriptions of higher wages, plentiful meals, and comfortable lodgings, she takes a job at Thornshire Arsenal near London, filling shells in the Danger Building—difficult, dangerous, and absolutely essential work.

Joining them is Lucy Dempsey, wife of Daniel Dempsey, Olympic gold medalist and star forward of Tottenham Hotspur. With Daniel away serving in the Footballers�� Battalion, Lucy resolves to do her bit to hasten the end of the war. When her coworkers learn she is a footballer’s wife, they invite her to join the arsenal ladies�� football club, the Thornshire Canaries.

The Canaries soon acquire an unexpected fan in the boss’s wife, Helen Purcell, who is deeply troubled by reports that Danger Building workers suffer from serious, unexplained illnesses. One common symptom, the lurid yellow hue of their skin, earns them the nickname “canary girls.�� Suspecting a connection between the canary girls�� maladies and the chemicals they handle, Helen joins the arsenal administration as their staunchest, though often unappreciated, advocate.

The football pitch is the one place where class distinctions and fears for their men fall away. As the war grinds on and tragedy takes its toll, the Canary Girls persist despite the dangers, proud to serve, determined to outlive the war and rejoice in victory and peace.]]> 417 Jennifer Chiaverini 0063080745 Kate 4 3.99 2023

author: Jennifer Chiaverini
name: Kate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves: book-club, historical-fiction, history, wwii
review:

]]> Apples Never Fall 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 Kate 0 to-read 3.69 2021 Apples Never Fall

author: Liane Moriarty
name: Kate
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Dictionary of Lost Words 49354511 Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium��, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid�� flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.]]> 384 Pip Williams 1925972593 Kate 3 england 3.97 2020 The Dictionary of Lost Words

author: Pip Williams
name: Kate
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/31
date added: 2024/03/31
shelves: england
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Colección integral de Jane Austen: Emma, Lady Susan, Mansfield Park, Orgullo y Prejuicio, Persuasión, Sentido y Sensibilidad, La abadía de Northanger (Spanish Edition)]]> 23006969 2562 Jane Austen Kate 0 to-read 4.27 1981 Colección integral de Jane Austen: Emma, Lady Susan, Mansfield Park, Orgullo y Prejuicio, Persuasión, Sentido y Sensibilidad, La abadía de Northanger (Spanish Edition)

Colección integral de Jane Austen: Emma, Lady Susan, Mansfield Park, Orgullo y Prejuicio, Persuasión, Sentido y Sensibilidad, La abadía de Northanger (Spanish Edition)

author: Jane Austen
name: Kate
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Go as a River 63922274 A sweeping, heart-stopping epic of a young woman's journey to becoming, set against the harsh beauty of mid-century Colorado

On a cool autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash delivers late-season peaches from her family's farm set amid the wild beauty of Colorado. As she heads into her village, a disheveled stranger stops to ask her the way. How she chooses to answer will unknowingly alter the course of both their young lives.

So begins the mesmerizing story of split-second choices and courageous acts that propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength.

Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life forever.

Go as a River is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettable characters and a breathtaking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming, of the deepest mysteries of love, truth and fate.]]> 320 Shelley Read 1954118236 Kate 3 book-club, fiction Book Club NPSC 4.20 2023 Go as a River

author: Shelley Read
name: Kate
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: book-club, fiction
review:
Book Club NPSC
]]> Bright Lights, Big Christmas 65214218 From Mary Kay Andrews, New York Times bestselling author of The Homewreckers and The Santa Suit, comes a novella celebrating love and the warm, glittering charm of the holiday season.

When fall rolls around, it’s time for Kerry Tolliver to leave her family’s Christmas tree farm in the mountains of North Carolina for the wilds of New York City to help her gruff older brother & his dog, Queenie, sell the trees at the family stand on a corner in Greenwich Village. Sharing a tiny vintage camper and experiencing Manhattan for the first time, Kerry’s ready to try to carve out a new corner for herself.

In the weeks leading into Christmas, Kerry quickly becomes close with the charming neighbors who live near their stand. When an elderly neighbor goes missing, Kerry will need to combine her country know-how with her newly acquired New York knowledge to protect the new friends she’s come to think of as family,

And complicating everything is Patrick, a single dad raising his adorable, dragon-loving son Austin on this quirky block. Kerry and Patrick’s chemistry is undeniable, but what chance does this holiday romance really have?

Filled with family ties, both rekindled and new, and sparkling with Christmas magic, Bright Lights, Big Christmas delivers everything Mary Kay Andrews fans adore, all tied up in a hilarious, romantic gem of a novel.]]> 288 Mary Kay Andrews 125028581X Kate 5 3.74 2023

author: Mary Kay Andrews
name: Kate
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/04
date added: 2024/02/01
shelves:
review:

]]> Coronation Year 61042487
It is Coronation Year, 1953, and a new queen is about to be crowned. The people of London are in a mood to celebrate, none more so than the residents of the Blue Lion hotel.

Edie Howard, owner and operator of the floundering Blue Lion, has found the miracle she needs: on Coronation Day, Queen Elizabeth in her gold coach will pass by the hotel’s front door, allowing Edie to charge a fortune for rooms and, barring disaster, save her beloved home from financial ruin. Edie’s luck might just be turning, all thanks to a young queen about her own age.

Stella Donati, a young Italian photographer and Holocaust survivor, has come to live at the Blue Lion while she takes up a coveted position at Picture Weekly magazine. London in celebration mode feels like a different world to her. As she learns the ins and outs of her new profession, Stella discovers a purpose and direction that honor her past and bring hope for her future.

James Geddes, a war hero and gifted artist, has struggled to make his mark in a world that disdains his Indian ancestry. At the Blue Lion, though, he is made to feel welcome and worthy. Yet even as his friendship with Edie deepens, he begins to suspect that something is badly amiss at his new home.

When anonymous threats focused on Coronation Day, the Blue Lion, and even the queen herself disrupt their mood of happy optimism, Edie and her friends must race to uncover the truth, save their home, and expose those who seek to erase the joy and promise of Coronation Year.]]> 400 Jennifer Robson 0063074141 Kate 3 book-club, historical-fiction 3.88 2023

author: Jennifer Robson
name: Kate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/01
date added: 2024/02/01
shelves: book-club, historical-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)]]> 18148202
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free.

Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.]]> 486 Helene Wecker 0062110845 Kate 0 to-read 4.19 2013 The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)

The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)

author: Helene Wecker
name: Kate
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All the Broken Places 61111301
Then, a new family moves into the apartment below her. In spite of herself, Gretel can't help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget. One night, she witnesses a disturbing, violent argument between Henry's beautiful mother and his arrogant father, one that threatens Gretel's hard-won, self-contained existence.

All The Broken Places moves back and forth in time between Gretel's girlhood in Germany to present-day London as a woman whose life has been haunted by the past. Now, Gretel faces a similar crossroads to one she encountered long ago. Back then, she denied her own complicity, but now, faced with a chance to interrogate her guilt, grief and remorse, she can choose to save a young boy. If she does, she will be forced to reveal the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting. This time, she can make a different choice than before -- whatever the cost to herself....

From the New York Times bestselling author John Boyne, a devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for bravery. ]]> 400 John Boyne 0593653068 Kate 4 4.43 2022 All the Broken Places

author: John Boyne
name: Kate
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/17
date added: 2023/11/17
shelves: book-club, england, fiction, germany, historical-fiction, world-ii
review:

]]> Year of Wonders 4965
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 304 Geraldine Brooks 0142001430 Kate 0 4.00 2001

author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Kate
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/11
shelves: to-read, historical-fiction, england
review:

]]> The White Lady 61346151
A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in London, and exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government.

Post-World War II Britain, 1947. Forty-one-year-old “Miss White," as Elinor is known, lives in a village in Kent, England, so quietly and privately as to seem an enigma to her fellow villagers. Well she might, as Elinor occupies a "grace and favor" property, a rare privilege offered to faithful servants of the Crown for services to the nation. But the residents of Shacklehurst have no way of knowing how dangerous Elinor's war work had been, or how deeply their mysterious neighbor continues to be haunted by her past.

It will take the child of Jim Mackie, a young farmworker and his wife, Rose, to break through Miss White's icy demeanor—but Jim has something in common with Elinor. He, too, is desperate to escape his past. When the powerful Mackie crime family demands a return of their prodigal son for an important job, Elinor assumes the task of protecting her neighbors, especially the bright-eyed Susie, who reminds her of the darkest day of her life.

Elinor’s wartime training and instincts serve her well, but as she endeavors to neutralize the threat to Jim, Rose and Susie Mackie, she is rapidly led along a tunnel of smoke and mirrors in which former wartime colleagues �� who know the truth about what happened in 1944, and the terrible event that led to her wartime suicide attempt �� are compromised by more powerful influences.

Ultimately, Elinor will hold a gun to the head of a Mackie crime lord to uncover the truth behind the family's pursuit of Jim, and in doing so, reveal the far-reaching tentacles of their power—along with the truth that will free Elinor from her past.]]> 321 Jacqueline Winspear 0062867989 Kate 4 Book Club MS. Would recommend 3.89 2023 The White Lady

author: Jacqueline Winspear
name: Kate
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/06
date added: 2023/11/08
shelves:
review:
Book Club MS. Would recommend
]]> Black Cake 57926137 We can’t choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become?

In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.

Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right��? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?

Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.]]> 385 Charmaine Wilkerson Kate 0 to-read 4.06 2022

author: Charmaine Wilkerson
name: Kate
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Shipping News 7354
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
(back cover)]]> 337 Annie Proulx 0743225422 Kate 3 3.88 1993

author: Annie Proulx
name: Kate
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1993
rating: 3
read at: 2018/09/17
date added: 2023/10/31
shelves: fiction, book-club, contemporary, literature
review:
I would not have finished this book if it was not a book club pick.
]]> The Villa 60784641 From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins comes a deliciously wicked gothic suspense, set at an Italian villa with a dark history, for fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware.

As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend.

Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce’s girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album––and ends in Pierce’s brutal murder.

As Emily digs into the villa’s complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce’s murder wasn’t just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred––and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind.

Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge––and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.]]> 279 Rachel Hawkins 125028001X Kate 2 3.59 2023

author: Rachel Hawkins
name: Kate
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2023/10/26
date added: 2023/10/26
shelves: book-club, contemporary, crime, fiction, italy, mystery, mystery-crime
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, #1)]]> 40914165 An alternate cover edition for ISBN 978-1492671527 can be found here.

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

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

Along her dangerous route, Cussy, known to the mountain folk as Bluet, confronts those suspicious of her damselfly-blue skin and the government's new book program. She befriends hardscrabble and complex fellow Kentuckians, and is fiercely determined to bring comfort and joy, instill literacy, and give to those who have nothing, a bookly respite, a fleeting retreat to faraway lands.]]> 309 Kim Michele Richardson Kate 3 book-club, fiction, crime 4.17 2019 The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, #1)

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

author: Kim Michele Richardson
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/27
date added: 2023/09/27
shelves: book-club, fiction, crime
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Blue-Skinned People Of Kentucky: Their Stories And The Ridiculous Troubles That They Have To Face: Novel About Prejudice]]> 57003089 Jarod Branstetter Kate 0 to-read 5.00

The Blue-Skinned People Of Kentucky: Their Stories And The Ridiculous Troubles That They Have To Face: Novel About Prejudice

author: Jarod Branstetter
name: Kate
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hang the Moon 61272702
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who’d amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans.

Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the 20th century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is her father’s daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his mother’s son, timid and cerebral. When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out.

Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That’s a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness. Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.

You will fall in love with Sallie Kincaid, a feisty and fearless, terrified and damaged young woman who refuses to be corralled.]]> 368 Jeannette Walls 1501117297 Kate 3 book-club 3.67 2023 Hang the Moon

author: Jeannette Walls
name: Kate
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/31
date added: 2023/08/31
shelves: book-club
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search]]> 17707622
Philomena's son, renamed Michael Hess, grew up to be a top Washington lawyer and a leading Republican official in the Reagan and Bush administrations. But he was a gay man in a homophobic party where he had to conceal not only his sexuality but, eventually, the fact that he had AIDS. With little time left, he returned to Ireland and the convent where he was his desperate quest to find his mother before he died left a legacy that was to unfold with unexpected consequences for all involved.

The Lost Child of Philomena Lee is the tale of a mother and a son whose lives were scarred by the forces of hypocrisy on both sides of the Atlantic and of the secrets they were forced to keep. A compelling narrative of human love and loss, Martin Sixsmith's moving account is heartbreaking yet ultimately redemptive.]]> 420 Martin Sixsmith 0143124722 Kate 2 ireland, e-reader, mystery 3.46 2009 Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search

Philomena: A Mother, Her Son, and a Fifty-Year Search

author: Martin Sixsmith
name: Kate
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2009
rating: 2
read at: 2015/01/22
date added: 2023/08/02
shelves: ireland, e-reader, mystery
review:

]]> Chenneville 112975135 Consumed with grief, driven by vengeance, a man undertakes an unrelenting odyssey across the lawless post–Civil War frontier seeking redemption in this fearless novel from the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of News of the World.

Union soldier John Chenneville suffered a traumatic head wound in battle. His recovery took the better part of a year as he struggled to regain his senses and mobility. By the time he returned home, the Civil War was over, but tragedy awaited. John’s beloved sister and her family had been brutally murdered.

Their killer goes by many names. He fought for the North in the late unpleasantness, and wore a badge in the name of the law. But the man John knows as A. J. Dodd is little more than a rabid animal, slaughtering without reason or remorse, needing to be put down.

Traveling through the unforgiving landscape of a shattered nation in the midst of Reconstruction, John braves winter storms and confronts desperate people in pursuit of his quarry. Untethered, single-minded in purpose, he will not be deterred. Not by the U.S. Marshal who threatens to arrest him for murder should he succeed. And not by Victoria Reavis, the telegraphist aiding him in his death-driven quest, yet hoping he’ll choose to embrace a life with her instead.

And as he trails Dodd deep into Texas, John accepts that this final reckoning between them may cost him more than all he’s already lost…]]> 307 Paulette Jiles 0063252686 Kate 0 to-read 3.96 2023 Chenneville

author: Paulette Jiles
name: Kate
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All the Little Hopes 55479339 A Southern story of friendship forged by books and bees, when the timeless troubles of growing up meet the murky shadows of World War II.

Deep in the tobacco land of North Carolina, nothing's been the same since the boys shipped off to war and worry took their place. Thirteen-year-old Lucy Brown is precocious and itching for adventure. Then Allie Bert Tucker wanders into town, an outcast with a puzzling past, and Lucy figures the two of them can solve any curious crime they find―just like her hero, Nancy Drew.

Their chance comes when a man goes missing, a woman stops speaking, and an eccentric gives the girls a mystery to solve that takes them beyond the ordinary. Their quiet town, seasoned with honeybees and sweet tea, becomes home to a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. More men go missing. And together, the girls embark on a journey to discover if we ever really know who the enemy is.

Lush with Southern atmosphere, All The Little Hopes, is the story of two girls growing up while war creeps closer, blurring the difference between what's right, what's wrong, and what we know to be true]]> 352 Leah Weiss 1728232740 Kate 0 to-read 4.03 2021 All the Little Hopes

author: Leah Weiss
name: Kate
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Return to Cranford: Cranford and other stories]]> 7329542
This celebratory omnibus edition includes the classic novel of the same name, a comic portrait of the lives of Cranford's genteel female inhabitants, as well as a novella and a short story. Both of these, The Moorland Cottage and The Cage at Cranford, feature in the Cranford two-part Special due to be screened on BBC television over Christmas 2009. These poignant portraits of early Victorian country village life deserve to be read and re-read.]]> 352 Elizabeth Gaskell 1408805944 Kate 4 classics 4.06 1853 Return to Cranford: Cranford and other stories

Return to Cranford: Cranford and other stories

author: Elizabeth Gaskell
name: Kate
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1853
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2023/06/27
shelves: classics
review:

]]> Lessons in Chemistry 58065033 390 Bonnie Garmus Kate 2 book-club, canada 4.23 2022

author: Bonnie Garmus
name: Kate
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/06/22
date added: 2023/06/22
shelves: book-club, canada
review:
I know it's a popular book however I would not recommend it I just didn't enjoy it I only finished it because I was reading it for book club
]]> Remarkably Bright Creatures 58733693 Remarkably Bright Creatures, an exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.

After Tova Sullivan's husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she's been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago.

Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn't dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors--until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.

Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova's son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it's too late.

Shelby Van Pelt's debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible.]]> 368 Shelby Van Pelt 0063204150 Kate 4 4.35 2022 Remarkably Bright Creatures

author: Shelby Van Pelt
name: Kate
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/23
date added: 2023/05/23
shelves:
review:

]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780063251922.

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver Kate 2 4.46 2022

author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Kate
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/05/10
date added: 2023/05/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Whittiers 60624763
Preston and Constance Whittier have built a happy life together with a brood of six children raised in a beautiful historic Manhattan mansion. Now, with a nearly empty nest, it’s easier than ever for the Whittiers to maintain their tradition of a solo romantic “wintermoon�� ski trip.

But with this year’s trip comes tragedy. Suddenly, their adult children find themselves reuniting in the family home without their parents for the first time ever. The oldest, Lyle, is reaching a breaking point in his marriage and must decide whether a divorce would be best for him and his two children. Gloria’s big job on Wall Street has kept her single at forty, and growing ever more cynical. The twins, Caroline and Charlie, moved out long ago to start a fashion business that may now be faltering. Benjie, with special needs, is hit hard by the loss of his parents and needs his siblings�� help. And Annabelle, the youngest, drops out of college and starts to spin out of control.

The eldest four are forced to put aside their personal issues and their grief to keep the family together and support each other and their two youngest siblings. Selling the house, along with all the memories that live in its walls, feels like yet another devastating loss. Could there be another way, as unconventional as it seems?

In The Whittiers, Danielle Steel delivers an inspiring story about the everlasting bonds of one unforgettable family.]]> 272 Danielle Steel 1984821849 Kate 4 4.14 2022

author: Danielle Steel
name: Kate
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/28
date added: 2023/03/15
shelves: book-club, contemporary, fiction
review:
I did not think I would like this book but it turned out to be very enjoyable very Comfort reading
]]> The Paris Apartment 58468990 From the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest List comes a new locked room mystery, set in a Paris apartment building in which every resident has something to hide��

Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up �� to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? �� he’s not there.

The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.

The socialite �� The nice guy �� The alcoholic �� The girl on the verge �� The concierge

Everyone’s a neighbor. Everyone’s a suspect. And everyone knows something they’re not telling.]]> 360 Lucy Foley 0063003058 Kate 4 book-club, mystery 3.62 2022 The Paris Apartment

author: Lucy Foley
name: Kate
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/01
date added: 2023/02/28
shelves: book-club, mystery
review:
I am halfway through this book and I'm having a difficult time getting into it the only reason why I will finish it it is a selection for one of my book clubs this I just don't get it keep hoping for some kind of mystery to pop up
]]> <![CDATA[The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove, #1)]]> 57789636 Beloved New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis begins a new series--Sunrise Cove--set near beautiful Lake Tahoe, with a heartwarming story of found family and love.

During the snowstorm of the century Levi Cutler is stranded on a ski lift with a beautiful stranger named Jane. After strong winds hurl the gondola in front of them into the ground, Levi calls his parents to prepare them for the worst...but can't bring himself to say goodbye. Instead, wanting to fulfill his mother's lifelong wish, he impulsively tells her he's happily settled and Jane is his girlfriend--right before his phone dies.

But Levi and Jane do not.

Now Levi's family is desperate to meet "The One." Though Jane agrees to be his pretend girlfriend for just one dinner, she's nervous. After a traumatic childhood, Jane isn't sure she knows how to be around a tight-knit family that cherishes one another. She's terrified, and a little jealous. But an unexpected series of events and a host of new friends soon show Jane that perhaps this is the life she was always meant to have.

As Jane and Levi spend more time together, pretend feelings quickly turn into real ones. Now all Jane has to do is admit to herself she can't live without the man she's fallen in love with and the family she has always dreamed of.]]> 356 Jill Shalvis 0063025485 Kate 4 3.95 2022 The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove, #1)

author: Jill Shalvis
name: Kate
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/03
date added: 2023/02/28
shelves: book-club, contemporary, fiction
review:
Harlequin romance if you like that type of book then I would suggest this one
]]> The Body in the Back Garden 86674633
Crescent Cove, a small hamlet on Vancouver Island, is the last place out-of-work investigative journalist Luke Tremblay ever wanted to see again. He used to spend summers here, until his family learned that he was gay and rejected him. Now, following his aunt’s sudden death, he’s inherited her entire estate, including her seaside cottage and the antiques shop she ran for forty years in Crescent Cove. Luke plans to sell everything and head back to Toronto as soon as he can...but Crescent Cove isn’t done with him just yet.

When a stranger starts making wild claims about Luke’s aunt, Luke sends him packing. The next morning, though, Luke discovers that the stranger has returned, and now he’s lying dead in the back garden. To make matters worse, the officer leading the investigation is a handsome Mountie with a chip on his shoulder who seems convinced that Luke is the culprit. If he wants to prove his innocence and leave this town once and for all, Luke will have to use all his skills as a journalist to investigate the colorful locals while coming to terms with his own painful past.

There are secrets buried in Crescent Cove, and the more Luke digs, the more he fears they might change the town forever.]]> 272 Mark Waddell 1639104402 Kate 0 to-read 3.99 2023 The Body in the Back Garden

author: Mark Waddell
name: Kate
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison]]> 60728888 The definitive and surprising true story of one of history's most notorious prisons--and the remarkable cast of POWs who tried relentlessly to escape their Nazi captors, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor

In this gripping account, Ben Macintyre tackles one of the most famous prison stories in history and makes it utterly his own. The legend of the German prison at Colditz Castle was built into its very conception: designed as the most secure prison imaginable, to hold--with varying success--some of the greatest escape artists of World War II. But as Macintyre reveals, the story of Colditz was about much more than escape, and its prisoners were far more complicated than the cardboard heroes they became later in popular culture.

Colditz was a miniature replica of officer-class society at the time, only far stranger: a lethal, high-stakes boarding school surrounded by barbed wire, a heavily guarded human cage with its own culture, eccentricities, and internal tensions. With access to declassified archives, private papers, and never-before-seen photos, Macintyre reveals a remarkable cast of characters previously hidden from history: Indian doctor Birendranath Mazumdar, whose ill treatment, hunger strike, and eventual escape read like fiction; Florimond Duke, America's oldest paratrooper and least successful secret agent; Christopher Clayton Hutton, the brilliant inventor employed by British intelligence to manufacture escape aids for POWs, from maps hidden in playing cards to a compass secreted inside a walnut; and many others.

In intimate and compelling detail, Macintyre explores what happens to people when they are locked up without committing a crime and with no idea when or if they might be liberated. This, then, is a tale of the indomitable human spirit, but also one of snobbery, class conflict, hidden sexuality, bullying, espionage, boredom, insanity, and farce. Bringing together the wartime intrigue of his acclaimed Operation Mincemeat and keen psychological portraits of his bestselling true-life spy stories, Macintyre has breathed stunning new life into one of the greatest war stories ever told.]]> 368 Ben Macintyre 0593136349 Kate 0 to-read 4.37 2022 Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the Nazis' Fortress Prison

author: Ben Macintyre
name: Kate
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wrong One 60726718
In this new novella from the number one internationally best-selling author of The Sisters and The Murder Rule, Dervla McTiernan, a mother and son fighting to prove her innocence are reunited with an estranged friend—a detective who may hold the key to her freedom—as they’re forced to put their differences aside to uncover the shocking truth behind the crime.

When Clara Coleman is taken into custody, her teenage son, Sebastien, wastes no time before calling Simon Miller: an estranged family friend and detective in their old hometown of Hartford, Connecticut. Clara’s been arrested for the murder of Rachel Stapleton, a wealthy housewife and prominent figure in Lavender Valley, their well-to-do New Jersey suburb. But she swears she did not commit the crime.

Simon knows that Clara is not capable of murder and will do anything he can to prove her innocence—he’s felt indebted to the Coleman family since her husband, Will, Simon’s best friend, passed away years before. He arrives in Lavender Valley and hits the ground running on the case. With time, details surrounding the crime as well as the Colemans�� family history are revealed, unravelling the complex web of cause and effect that will finally bring the truth to light.

Please note: this audio contains strong language, distressing situations and descriptions of violence that some listeners may find upsetting. Discretion is advised. ]]> 4 Dervla McTiernan Kate 0 to-read 3.25 2022 The Wrong One

author: Dervla McTiernan
name: Kate
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Diamond Eye 58490567 The New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history's deadliest female sniper. Based on a true story.

In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kyiv, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son--but Hitler's invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper--a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour.

Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC--until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness. But when an old enemy from Mila's past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.

Based on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.]]> 435 Kate Quinn 0062943510 Kate 3 4.26 2022 The Diamond Eye

author: Kate Quinn
name: Kate
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/26
date added: 2022/11/26
shelves: fiction, germany, historical-fiction, history, russia, wwii, ukraine
review:

]]> The Lost Girls of Willowbrook 59530862
Sage Winters always knew her sister was a little different even though they were identical twins. They loved the same things and shared a deep understanding, but Rosemary—awake to every emotion, easily moved to joy or tears—seemed to need more protection from the world.

Six years after Rosemary’s death from pneumonia, Sage, now sixteen, still misses her deeply. Their mother perished in a car crash, and Sage’s stepfather, Alan, resents being burdened by a responsibility he never wanted. Yet despite living as near strangers in their Staten Island apartment, Sage is stunned to discover that Alan has kept a shocking secret: Rosemary didn’t die. She was committed to Willowbrook State School and has lingered there until just a few days ago, when she went missing.

Sage knows little about Willowbrook. It’s always been a place shrouded by rumor and mystery. A place local parents threaten to send misbehaving kids. With no idea what to expect, Sage secretly sets out for Willowbrook, determined to find Rosemary. What she learns, once she steps through its doors and is mistakenly believed to be her sister, will change her life in ways she never could imagined . . .]]> 369 Ellen Marie Wiseman 1496715888 Kate 0 to-read 3.82 2022 The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
name: Kate
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lost Summers of Newport 59445992 From the New York Times bestselling team of Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White--a novel of money and secrets set among the famous summer mansions of Newport, Rhode Island, spanning over a century from the Gilded Age to the present day.

2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America's most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort of America's gilded class--famous for the lavish "summer cottages" of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still lives in the mansion, Lucia "Lucky" Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions: One, nobody speaks to her. Two, nobody touches the mansion's ruined boathouse.

1899: Ellen Daniels has been hired to give singing lessons to Miss Maybelle Sprague, a naive young Colorado mining heiress whose stepbrother John has poured their new money into buying a place among Newport's elite. John is determined to see Maybelle married off to a fortune-hunting Italian prince, and Ellen is supposed to polish up the girl for her launch into society. But the deceptively demure Ellen has her own checkered past, and she's hiding in plain sight at Sprague Hall.

1958: Lucia "Lucky" Sprague has always felt like an outsider at Sprague Hall. When she and her grandmother--the American-born Princess di Conti--fled Mussolini's Italy, it seemed natural to go back to the imposing Newport house Nana owned but hadn't seen since her marriage in 1899. Over the years, Lucky's lost her Italian accent and found a place for herself among the yachting set by marrying Stuyvesant Sprague, the alcoholic scion of her Sprague stepfamily. But one fateful night in the mansion's old boathouse will uncover a devastating truth...and change everything she thought she knew about her past.

As the cameras roll on Mansion Makeover, the house begins to yield up the dark secrets the Spragues thought would stay hidden forever....

]]> 393 Beatriz Williams 0063040743 Kate 3 3.64 2022 The Lost Summers of Newport

author: Beatriz Williams
name: Kate
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/27
date added: 2022/10/27
shelves: book-club, fiction, historical-fiction
review:

]]> Immodest 58800883
Perele, a young Jewish woman, was raised in an extreme Ultra-orthodox society.
When she turns eighteen and her parents have a hard time finding a match for her, she is thrown into the arms of a cold and violent man, who makes her life unbearable.

A forbidden chance encounter with a man and the feelings that ensue, make her begin to question everything she has ever known �� and even consider that maybe, she does not have to choose this life that has been thrust upon her. But she knows that once she makes a drastic decision, there will be no way back into the arms of the Jewish community.

Immodest tells the story of a courageous young woman who chooses to obey the commandments of her heart and not give up, despite the huge price she is forced to pay.]]> 353 L.S. Einat Kate 0 to-read 4.47 2021

author: L.S. Einat
name: Kate
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/10/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This Time Tomorrow 59089704 What if you could take a vacation to your past?

With her celebrated humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestseller Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes, and a different kind of love story.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Alice's life isn't terrible. She likes her job, even if it isn't exactly the one she expected. She's happy with her apartment, her romantic status, her independence, and she adores her lifelong best friend. But her father is ailing, and it feels to her as if something is missing. When she wakes up the next morning she finds herself back in 1996, reliving her 16th birthday. But it isn't just her adolescent body that shocks her, or seeing her high school crush, it's her dad: the vital, charming, 40-something version of her father with whom she is reunited. Now armed with a new perspective on her own life and his, some past events take on new meaning. Is there anything that she would change if she could?]]> 310 Emma Straub 052553900X Kate 1 book-club, science-fiction 3.78 2022 This Time Tomorrow

author: Emma Straub
name: Kate
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2022/09/22
date added: 2022/09/22
shelves: book-club, science-fiction
review:
Would not recommend. Read for NP Book Club
]]> The Younger Wife 57693338 THE HUSBAND
A heart surgeon at the top of his field, Stephen Aston is getting married again. But first he must divorce his current wife, even though she can no longer speak for herself.

THE DAUGHTERS
Tully and Rachel Aston look upon their father’s fiancée, Heather, as nothing but an interloper. Heather is younger than both of them. Clearly, she’s after their father’s money.

THE FORMER WIFE
With their mother in a precarious position, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family’s secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is.

THE YOUNGER WIFE
Heather has secrets of her own. Will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses in all of them?]]> 346 Sally Hepworth 1250229618 Kate 4 3.71 2021

author: Sally Hepworth
name: Kate
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/31
date added: 2022/08/31
shelves: book-club, mystery, england, fiction, thriller
review:
Read for a book club. Many people said there was no ending to this book I disagree there totally was an ending.
]]> <![CDATA[It's Not All Downhill from Here]]> 49819833
Loretha Curry's life is full. On the eve of her sixty-eighth birthday, she has a booming beauty supply empire, a gaggle of lifelong friends, and a husband who's still got moves that surprise. True, she's carrying a few more pounds than she should be, but she's not one of those women who thinks her best days are behind her, and she's determined to prove her mother, her twin sister, and everyone else with that outdated view of aging wrong—it's not all downhill from here.

But when an unexpected loss turns her world upside down, Loretha will have to summon all her strength, resourcefulness, and determination to keep on thriving, pursue joy, heal old wounds, and chart new paths. With a little help from her friends, of course.]]> 355 Terry McMillan 1984823744 Kate 4 3.77 2020 It's Not All Downhill from Here

author: Terry McMillan
name: Kate
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/28
date added: 2022/07/31
shelves: book-club, fiction, inspirational
review:

]]> Three Faces in the Mirror 53318251
Socialite and Savannah businesswoman Ivy Abernathy’s capacity for love and forgiveness is put to the ultimate test when her picture-perfect family is shattered by the actions of her oldest daughter. A daughter her husband knows nothing about.]]> 402 Veronica Mixon Kate 0 to-read 4.51 Three Faces in the Mirror

author: Veronica Mixon
name: Kate
average rating: 4.51
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/07/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> These Impossible Things 59228196 ��razor‑sharp debut novel of three best friends navigating love, sex, faith, and the one night that changes it all.

It’s always been Malak, Kees, and Jenna against the world. Since childhood, under the watchful eyes of their parents, aunties and uncles, they’ve learned to live their own lives alongside the expectations of being good Muslim women. Staying over at a boyfriend's place is disguised as a best friend’s sleepover, and tiredness can be blamed on studying instead of partying. They know they’re existing in a perfect moment. With growing older and the stakes of love and life growing higher, the delicate balancing act between rebellion and religion is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.

Malak wants the dream: for her partner, community, and faith to coexist happily, and she wants this so much she's willing to break her own heart to get it. Kees is in love with Harry, a white Catholic man who her parents can never know about. When he proposes, she must decide between her future happiness and the life she knows and family she loves. Jenna is the life of the party, always ready for new pleasures, even though she’s plagued by a loneliness she can’t shake. Through it all, they have always had each other. But as their college years come to a close, one night changes everything when harsh truths are revealed.

As their lives begin to take different paths, Malak, Kees, and Jenna—now on the precipice of true adulthood—must find a way back to each other as they reconcile faith, family, and tradition with their own needs and desires. These Impossible Things��is a paean to youth and female friendship—and to all the joy and messiness love holds. ��Marie Claire��Book Club Pick for June 2022 and a Most Anticipated Book by:��Bustle, theSkimm,��Fortune, Apartment Therapy,��and BookRiot]]> 400 Salma El-Wardany 1538709309 Kate 0 nonfiction, to-read 4.21 2022 These Impossible Things

author: Salma El-Wardany
name: Kate
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/06
shelves: nonfiction, to-read
review:

]]> The Personal Librarian 55333938 This is a previously-published edition of ISBN 9780593101537.

The remarkable, little-known story of Belle da Costa Greene, J. P. Morgan's personal librarian—who became one of the most powerful women in New York despite the dangerous secret she kept in order to make her dreams come true, from New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict and acclaimed author Victoria Christopher Murray.

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture on the New York society scene and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps build a world-class collection.

But Belle has a secret, one she must protect at all costs. She was born not Belle da Costa Greene but Belle Marion Greener. She is the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard and a well-known advocate for equality. Belle's complexion isn't dark because of her alleged Portuguese heritage that lets her pass as white—her complexion is dark because she is African American.

The Personal Librarian tells the story of an extraordinary woman, famous for her intellect, style, and wit, and shares the lengths to which she must go—for the protection of her family and her legacy—to preserve her carefully crafted white identity in the racist world in which she lives.]]> 341 Marie Benedict Kate 5 3.98 2021 The Personal Librarian

author: Marie Benedict
name: Kate
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/03
date added: 2022/06/03
shelves:
review:

]]> Of Women and Salt 53138197
From 19th-century cigar factories to present-day detention centers, from Cuba to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia's Of Women and Salt is a kaleidoscopic portrait of betrayals—personal and political, self-inflicted and those done by others—that have shaped the lives of these extraordinary women. A haunting meditation on the choices of mothers, the legacy of the memories they carry, and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their stories despite those who wish to silence them, this is more than a diaspora story; it is a story of America’s most tangled, honest, human roots.]]> 207 Gabriela Garcia 1250776686 Kate 4 3.68 2021 Of Women and Salt

author: Gabriela Garcia
name: Kate
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/02
date added: 2022/06/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Certain Age (A Certain Age, #1)]]> 30653710 A Hundred Summers brings the Roaring Twenties brilliantly to life in this enchanting and compulsively readable tale of intrigue, romance, and scandal in New York Society, brimming with lush atmosphere, striking characters, and irresistible charm.

As the freedom of the Jazz Age transforms New York City, the iridescent Mrs. Theresa Marshall of Fifth Avenue and Southampton, Long Island, has done the unthinkable: she’s fallen in love with her young paramour, Captain Octavian Rofrano, a handsome aviator and hero of the Great War. An intense and deeply honorable man, Octavian is devoted to the beautiful socialite of a certain age and wants to marry her. While times are changing and she does adore the Boy, divorce for a woman of Theresa’s wealth and social standing is out of the question, and there is no need; she has an understanding with Sylvo, her generous and well-respected philanderer husband.

But their relationship subtly shifts when her bachelor brother, Ox, decides to tie the knot with the sweet younger daughter of a newly wealthy inventor. Engaging a longstanding family tradition, Theresa enlists the Boy to act as her brother’s cavalier, presenting the family’s diamond rose ring to Ox’s intended, Miss Sophie Fortescue—and to check into the background of the little-known Fortescue family. When Octavian meets Sophie, he falls under the spell of the pretty ingénue, even as he uncovers a shocking family secret. As the love triangle of Theresa, Octavian, and Sophie progresses, it transforms into a saga of divided loyalties, dangerous revelations, and surprising twists that will lead to a shocking transgression . . . and eventually force Theresa to make a bittersweet choice.

Full of the glamour, wit and delicious twists that are the hallmarks of Beatriz Williams�� fiction and alternating between Sophie’s spirited voice and Theresa’s vibrant timbre, A Certain Age is a beguiling reinterpretation of Richard Strauss’s comic opera Der Rosenkavalier, set against the sweeping decadence of Gatsby’s New York.]]> 352 Beatriz Williams 0062404962 Kate 0 to-read 3.58 2016 A Certain Age (A Certain Age, #1)

author: Beatriz Williams
name: Kate
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents]]> 51152447 The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.��

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.]]> 544 Isabel Wilkerson 0593230256 Kate 4 4.52 2020 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Kate
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2021/11/07
date added: 2021/11/07
shelves:
review:

]]> The Bluest Eye 11337 The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways.

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.]]> 216 Toni Morrison Kate 4 4.13 1970

author: Toni Morrison
name: Kate
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1970
rating: 4
read at: 2021/05/01
date added: 2021/05/01
shelves:
review:

]]> The only women in the room 56778169
But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis and revolutionize modern communication...if anyone would listen to her.

A novel based on the true story of the glamour icon and scientist whose groundbreaking invention revolutionized modern communication.]]> Marie Benedict Kate 0 to-read 3.79 2019 The only women in the room

author: Marie Benedict
name: Kate
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Simon the Fiddler 54427140 “The reader is treated to a kind of alchemy on the page when character, setting and song converge at��all the right notes, generating an authentic humanity that is worth remembering and celebrating.�� —�� New York Times

The critically acclaimed, bestselling author of News of the World and Enemy Women returns to Texas in this atmospheric story, set at the end of the Civil War, about an itinerant fiddle player, a ragtag band of musicians with whom he travels trying to make a living, and the charming young Irish lass who steals his heart.

In March 1865, the long and bitter War between the States is winding down. Till now, twenty-three-year-old Simon Boudlin has evaded military duty thanks to his slight stature, youthful appearance, and utter lack of compunction about bending the truth. But following a barroom brawl in Victoria, Texas, Simon finds himself conscripted, however belatedly, into the Confederate Army. Luckily his talent with a fiddle gets him a comparatively easy position in a regimental band.

Weeks later, on the eve of the Confederate surrender, Simon and his bandmates are called to play for officers and their families from both sides of the conflict. There the quick-thinking, audacious fiddler can’t help but notice the lovely Doris Mary Dillon, an indentured girl from Ireland, who is governess to a Union colonel’s daughter.

After the surrender, Simon and Doris go their separate ways. He will travel around Texas seeking fame and fortune as a musician. She must accompany the colonel’s family to finish her three years of service. But Simon cannot forget the fair Irish maiden, and vows that someday he will find her again.

Incandescent in its beauty, told in Paulette Jiles’s trademark spare yet lilting style, Simon the Fiddler is a captivating, bittersweet tale of the chances a devoted man will take, and the lengths he will go to fulfill his heart’s yearning.

"Jiles�� sparse but lyrical writing��is a joy to read. . . . Lose yourself in this entertaining tale.”��—�� Associated Press ]]> 368 Paulette Jiles 0062966758 Kate 0 to-read 3.79 2020 Simon the Fiddler

author: Paulette Jiles
name: Kate
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories]]> 1050062 In the short novel The Anastasia Syndrome, prominent historical writer Judith Chase is living in London and preparing for her marriage to Sir Stephen Hallett, expected to become England's next Prime Minister. Orphaned during World War II, Judith wants to trace her origins. In this quest, she goes to a renowned psychiatrist and becomes the victim of his experiments in regression. When a woman in a dark green cape sets off bombs in London, Sir Stephen and Judith are faced with an intangible, mysterious force threatening their very existence.

Obsessive love is the subject of Terror Stalks the Class Reunion; psychic contact with a dead twin sister is the only defense against a murder in Double Vision; Lucky Day, compared to O. Henry's The Gift of the Magi, begins premonition of imminent danger; in The Lost Angel, mother follows her intuition in a harrowing search for her missing child.

]]> 308 Mary Higgins Clark 0671701231 Kate 3 mystery, mystery-crime 3.66 1989 The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories

author: Mary Higgins Clark
name: Kate
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1989
rating: 3
read at: 2014/07/12
date added: 2021/02/07
shelves: mystery, mystery-crime
review:

]]> The Four Winds 53138081 Texas, 1934. Millions are out of work and a drought has broken the Great Plains. Farmers are fighting to keep their land and their livelihoods as the crops are failing, the water is drying up, and dust threatens to bury them all. One of the darkest periods of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl era, has arrived with a vengeance.

In this uncertain and dangerous time, Elsa Martinelli—like so many of her neighbors—must make an agonizing choice: fight for the land she loves or go west, to California, in search of a better life. The Four Winds is an indelible portrait of America and the American Dream, as seen through the eyes of one indomitable woman whose courage and sacrifice will come to define a generation.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes an epic novel of love and heroism and hope, set against the backdrop of one of America’s most defining eras—the Great Depression.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250178602]]> 464 Kristin Hannah 1250178606 Kate 0 to-read 4.27 2021 The Four Winds

author: Kristin Hannah
name: Kate
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Send for Me 53481714 An achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the ceaseless push and pull of family

Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents' popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can't quite believe that it will affect them; they're hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refusing to patronize the bakery. Luckily Annelise and her husband are given the chance to leave for America, but they must go without her parents, whose future and safety are uncertain.

Two generations later, in a small Midwestern city, Annelise's granddaughter, Clare, is a young woman newly in love. But when she stumbles upon a trove of her grandmother's letters from Germany, she sees the history of her family's sacrifices in a new light, and suddenly she's faced with an impossible choice: the past, or her future. A novel of dazzling emotional richness, Send for Me is a major departure for this acclaimed author, an epic and intimate exploration of mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness.]]> 272 Lauren Fox Kate 0 to-read 3.37 2021

author: Lauren Fox
name: Kate
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2021/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog]]> 9786641 Now a family friendly major motion picture from Fox 2000 Studios—featuring Milo Ventimiglia, Amanda Seyfried, and Kevin Costner as the voice of Enzo the dog!

In this��young readers�� edition of the New York Times bestselling adult novel The Art of Racing in the Rain, meet one funny mutt - Enzo, the lovable dog who tells this story.

Enzo knows he is different from other dogs. Most dogs love to chase cars, but Enzo longs to race them.

He learns about racing and the world around him by watching TV and by listening to the words of his best friend, Denny, an up-and-coming race car driver, and Denny's daughter, Zoë, his constant companion. Enzo finds that life is just like being on the racetrack - it isn't simply about going fast.

Applying the rules of racing to his world, Enzo takes on his family's challenges and emerges a hero. In the end, Enzo holds in his heart the dream that Denny will go on to be a racing champion with his daughter by his side.

For theirs is an extraordinary friendship - one that reminds us all to celebrate the triumph of the human (and canine) spirit.]]> 304 Garth Stein 0062015761 Kate 4 4.37 2011 Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog

author: Garth Stein
name: Kate
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/18
date added: 2020/12/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Sweat 29633728
Based on Nottage's extensive research and interviews with real residents of Reading, Sweat is a topical reflection of the present and poignant outcome of America's economic decline.]]> 112 Lynn Nottage 1559365323 Kate 4 book-club, inspirational 4.03 2017 Sweat

author: Lynn Nottage
name: Kate
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/18
date added: 2020/12/18
shelves: book-club, inspirational
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (Early American Places, 12)]]> 27558397
Historians have written expansively about the slave economy and its vital role in early American economic life. Like their northern neighbors, Rhode Islanders bought and sold slaves and supplies that sustained plantations throughout the Americas; however, nowhere else was this business so important. During the colonial period trade with West Indian planters provided Rhode Islanders with molasses, the key ingredient for their number one rum. More than 60 percent of all the slave ships that left North America left from Rhode Island. During the antebellum period Rhode Islanders were the leading producers of “negro cloth,�� a coarse wool-cotton material made especially for enslaved blacks in the American South.

Clark-Pujara draws on the documents of the state, the business, organizational, and personal records of their enslavers, and the few first-hand accounts left by enslaved and free black Rhode Islanders to reconstruct their lived experiences. The business of slavery encouraged slaveholding, slowed emancipation and led to circumscribed black freedom. Enslaved and free black people pushed back against their bondage and the restrictions placed on their freedom. It is convenient, especially for northerners, to think of slavery as southern institution. The erasure or marginalization of the northern black experience and the centrality of the business of slavery to the northern economy allows for a dangerous fiction―that North has no history of racism to overcome. But we cannot afford such a delusion if we are to truly reconcile with our past.]]> 224 Christy Clark-Pujara 1479870420 Kate 0 to-read 4.25 Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (Early American Places, 12)

Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (Early American Places, 12)

author: Christy Clark-Pujara
name: Kate
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Educated 35133922
Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.

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

Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty and of the grief that comes with severing the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.]]> 352 Tara Westover 0399590501 Kate 4 4.46 2018 Educated

author: Tara Westover
name: Kate
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2021/05/04
date added: 2020/10/26
shelves: book-club, memoir-autobiography
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto (A True Story of Courage)]]> 27276379
In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While there, she reached out to the trapped Jewish families, going from door to door and asking the parents to trust her with their young children. She started smuggling them out of the walled district, convincing her friends and neighbors to hide them. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city’s sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings.

But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept secret lists buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend’s back garden. On them were the names and true identities of those Jewish children, recorded with the hope that their relatives could find them after the war. She could not have known that more than ninety percent of their families would perish.]]> 317 Tilar J. Mazzeo 1476778507 Kate 0 to-read 4.23 2016 Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto (A True Story of Courage)

Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto (A True Story of Courage)

author: Tilar J. Mazzeo
name: Kate
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/09/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Woman Is No Man 34313931 339 Etaf Rum 0062699768 Kate 3 Three stars for BBBC 4.25 2019

author: Etaf Rum
name: Kate
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2021/05/04
date added: 2020/08/22
shelves:
review:
Three stars for BBBC
]]> <![CDATA[I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer]]> 35068432
"You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark."

For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.

Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.

At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.]]> 352 Michelle McNamara 0062319809 Kate 0 to-read 4.12 2018 I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer

author: Michelle McNamara
name: Kate
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/08/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Comeback 51941088 Grace Turner was one movie away from Hollywood’s A-List. So no one understood why, at the height of her career and on the eve of her first Golden Globe nomination, she disappeared.

Now, one year later, Grace is back in Los Angeles and determined to reclaim her life on her own terms.

So when Grace is asked to present a lifetime achievement award to director Able Yorke—the man who controlled her every move for eight years—she knows there’s only one way she’ll be free of the secret that’s already taken so much from her.

The Comeback is a powerful and provocative story of justice in the #MeToo era—a true page-turner about a young woman finding the strength and power of her voice.]]> 378 Ella Berman 0593099516 Kate 0 to-read 3.71 2020

author: Ella Berman
name: Kate
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/08/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Until the Twelfth of Never: The Deadly Divorce of Dan & Betty Broderick]]> 586843 546 Bella Stumbo 0671726668 Kate 0 to-read 4.15 1993

Until the Twelfth of Never: The Deadly Divorce of Dan & Betty Broderick

author: Bella Stumbo
name: Kate
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1993
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/07/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Bridge Home 40206380
Viji starts working with the boys scavenging in trash heaps while Rukku makes bead necklaces, and they buy food with what little money they earn. They are often hungry and scared but they have each other--and Kutti, the best dog ever. When the kids are forced from their safe haven on the bridge, they take shelter in a graveyard.

But it is now the rainy season and they are plagued by mosquitos, and Rukku and Muthu fall ill. As their symptoms worsen, Viji and Arul must decide whether to risk going for help--when most adults in their lives have proven themselves untrustworthy--or to continue holding on to their fragile, hard-fought freedom.]]> 208 Padma Venkatraman 1524738115 Kate 0 to-read 4.25 2019 The Bridge Home

author: Padma Venkatraman
name: Kate
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me]]> 7684263 256 Bruce Feiler 0061778761 Kate 0 to-read 3.82 2010

The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me

author: Bruce Feiler
name: Kate
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Carol 25622850
Based on a true story plucked from Highsmith's own life, Carol tells the riveting drama of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose routine is forever shattered by a gorgeous epiphany—the appearance of Carol Aird, a customer who comes in to buy her daughter a Christmas toy. Therese begins to gravitate toward the alluring suburban housewife, who is trapped in a marriage as stultifying as Therese's job. They fall in love and set out across the United States, ensnared by society's confines and the imminent disapproval of others, yet propelled by their infatuation. Carol is a brilliantly written story that may surprise Highsmith fans and will delight those discovering her work.

This authorized edition includes an afterword by Patricia Highsmith. Previously titled The Price of Salt.]]> 304 Claire Morgan 0393352684 Kate 4 fiction 4.02 1952 Carol

author: Claire Morgan
name: Kate
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1952
rating: 4
read at: 2016/02/02
date added: 2020/06/05
shelves: fiction
review:

]]> City of Girls 42135029
Now ninety-five years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it.

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.]]> 470 Elizabeth Gilbert 1594634734 Kate 0 to-read 4.00 2019

author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Kate
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/05/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)]]> 1736739
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse.

As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life �� sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.]]> 270 Elizabeth Strout Kate 4 book-club, fiction 3.85 2008 Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, #1)

author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Kate
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/04
date added: 2020/03/04
shelves: book-club, fiction
review:
I know this was a very popular book. I wanted to read it for a few years. It is 13 stories that do not come together at the end. I read this book for my book club, which will meet on Tuesday, January 6th. It will be interesting to hear the opinions of the other members. Elizabeth Strout is one of my favorite authors. I read the Burgess Boys last year and gave it 4 Stars.
]]> <![CDATA[Olive, Again (Olive Kitteridge, #2)]]> 43984883 San Francisco Chronicle).��The��New Yorker��has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,�� and she has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire��us—in Strout’s words—“to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”]]> 289 Elizabeth Strout 0812996542 Kate 4 4.06 2019 Olive, Again (Olive Kitteridge, #2)

author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Kate
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/03
date added: 2020/03/03
shelves: book-club, fiction, nonfiction
review:
In 2014 I read Olive Kitteridge. A few years later I watch on HBO a two night min-series on Olive Kitteridge. I was told that you could read Olive Again without reading Olive Kitteridge. I TOTALLY DISAGREE. Olive again was published in 2019. I suggest that if you are going to read Olive Again first read Olive Kitteridge.
]]> <![CDATA[Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore]]> 36755779 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD
A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2018
A GUARDIAN, NPR's SCIENCE FRIDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018

Hailed as "deeply felt" (New York Times), "a revelation" (Pacific Standard), and "the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing" (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love.

With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant--and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.

Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice--a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago--with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins.]]> 299 Elizabeth Rush 1571313672 Kate 3 book-club, envionment A Book on climate change.]]> 4.17 2018 Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore

author: Elizabeth Rush
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2020/02/28
date added: 2020/02/28
shelves: book-club, envionment
review:
BBBC for February 2020 pm
A Book on climate change.
]]> Nothing to See Here 42519313
Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth.

Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other—and stay cool—while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her—urgently and fiercely. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for?]]> 288 Kevin Wilson 0062913484 Kate 4 3.95 2019 Nothing to See Here

author: Kevin Wilson
name: Kate
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/15
date added: 2020/02/15
shelves: book-club, fantasy, fiction, humor
review:
This book is very different. Read for my book club January 2020. It was a book suggested by Jenna Bush Hager in November 2019. Different and strange. NP BK
]]> Room 553 45449793 "She felt no remorse for drawing blood. In the context of their relationship, it had its place."��

For Max and Laurel, nothing is off limits when they meet in room 553. Their illicit affair is exhilarating, passionate--and dangerous.��

Driven as much by compulsion as pleasure, Max can't stop. His mistress is Jesus on the streets, and Satan in the sack. But when things take a sharp and sudden turn for the worse, he finds himself ensnared in a trap of his own making.��

Under heavy scrutiny by the police and the media, Max is hailed as a cold and evasive womanizer. He made mistakes, to be sure. But does that make him a killer?

Unnerving and addictive,��Room 553��is a��vivid and sensual psychological thriller that weaves a story of cruelty, reckless desire, and blind, bloody justice.��

]]> 248 Britney King Kate 0 to-read 3.81 2019

author: Britney King
name: Kate
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/02/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Just Mercy 20342617
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit law office in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to defending the poor, the incarcerated, and the wrongly condemned.

Just Mercy tells the story of EJI, from the early days with a small staff facing the nation’s highest death sentencing and execution rates, through a successful campaign to challenge the cruel practice of sentencing children to die in prison, to revolutionary projects designed to confront Americans with our history of racial injustice.

One of EJI’s first clients was Walter McMillian, a young Black man who was sentenced to die for the murder of a young white woman that he didn’t commit. The case exemplifies how the death penalty in America is a direct descendant of lynching �� a system that treats the rich and guilty better than the poor and innocent.]]> 336 Bryan Stevenson Kate 5 4.62 2014 Just Mercy

author: Bryan Stevenson
name: Kate
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2017/03/25
date added: 2020/01/30
shelves: nonfiction, memoir-autobiography, book-club, history, law, favorite
review:
Excellent! When the author was in Providence had the opportunity to meet him.
]]> Where the Crawdads Sing 36809135
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world—until the unthinkable happens.

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

The story asks how isolation influences the behavior of a young woman, who like all of us, has the genetic propensity to belong to a group. The clues to the mystery are brushed into the lush habitat and natural histories of its wild creatures.]]> 384 Delia Owens 0735219117 Kate 4 4.35 2018 Where the Crawdads Sing

author: Delia Owens
name: Kate
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2020/12/18
date added: 2020/01/29
shelves: mystery, young-adult, book-club, crime, envionment, fiction, mystery-crime
review:
Read for NPSS January 2020 Enjoyed the book. However, some very said parts. I was shock at the ending.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Sister (Columbia River, #1; Callahan & McLane, #5)]]> 46184620 An Amazon Charts and Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Three sisters�� secrets collide in a shocking novel of suspense by the bestselling author of the Mercy Kilpatrick series.

Twenty years ago Emily Mills’s father was murdered, and she found his body hanging in the backyard. Her younger sister, Madison, claims she was asleep in her room. Her older sister, Tara, claims she was out with friends. The tragedy drove their mother to suicide and Tara to leave town forever. The killer was caught. The case closed.

Ever since, Emily and Madison have tried to forget what happened that night—until an eerily similar murder brings it all back. It also brings FBI special agent Zander Wells to the Oregon logging town. As eager as he is to solve the brutal double slaying, he is just as intrigued with the mystery of Emily’s and her sisters�� past.

When more blood is shed, Zander suspects there’s a secret buried in this town no one wants unearthed. Is it something Emily and Madison don’t know? Or aren’t telling? And Tara? Maybe Emily can’t bear to find her. Because when Tara disappeared, she took a secret of her own with her.]]> 328 Kendra Elliot Kate 0 mystery-crime, to-read 4.11 2020 The Last Sister (Columbia River, #1; Callahan & McLane, #5)

The Last Sister (Columbia River, #1; Callahan & McLane, #5)

author: Kendra Elliot
name: Kate
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/21
shelves: mystery-crime, to-read
review:

]]> A Map of the World 5205
A loner by nature, Alice is torn between a yearning for solitude coupled with a deep need to be at the center of a perfect family. On this particular day, Emma has started the morning with a violent tantrum, her little sister Claire is eating pennies, and it is Alice's turn to watch her neighbor's two small girls as well as her own. She absentmindedly steals a minute alone that quickly becomes ten: time enough for a devastating accident to occur. Her neighbor's daughter Lizzy drowns in the farm's pond, and Alice - whose own volatility and unmasked directness keep her on the outskirts of acceptance - becomes the perfect scapegoat. At the same time, a seemingly trivial incident from Alice's past resurfaces and takes on gigantic proportions, leading the Goodwins far from Lizzy's death into a maze of guilt and doubt culminating in a harrowing court trial and the family's shattering downfall.]]> 400 Jane Hamilton 0385720106 Kate 3 book-club 3.82 1992 A Map of the World

author: Jane Hamilton
name: Kate
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2020/01/20
date added: 2020/01/20
shelves: book-club
review:
Empire 1/20 the book was rather long-winded it was not a book I would recommend to a friend. It was a movie made about 20 years ago and I've heard that it's a good movie.
]]> The Girls with No Names 43331046 The Girls with No Names pulls readers into the gilded age of New York City in the 1910s, when suffragettes marched in the street, unions fought for better work conditions—and girls were confined to the House of Mercy for daring to break the rules.

Not far from Luella and Effie Tildon’s large family mansion in Inwood looms the House of Mercy, a work house for wayward girls. The sisters grow up under its shadow with the understanding that even as wealthy young women, their freedoms come with limits. But when the sisters accidentally discover a shocking secret about their father, Luella, the brazen older sister, becomes emboldened to do as she pleases.

But her rebellion comes with consequences, and one morning Luella is mysteriously gone. Effie suspects her father has made good on his threat to send Luella to the House of Mercy and hatches a plan to get herself committed to save her sister. But she made a miscalculation, and with no one to believe her story, Effie’s escape from the House of Mercy seems impossible—unless she can trust an enigmatic girl named Mable. As their fates entwine, Mable and Effie must rely on each other and their tenuous friendship to survive.

The Home for Unwanted Girls meets The Dollhouse in this atmospheric, heartwarming story that explores not only the historical House of Mercy, but the lives—and secrets—of the girls who stayed there.]]> 336 Serena Burdick 0778308731 Kate 0 to-read 4.01 2020 The Girls with No Names

author: Serena Burdick
name: Kate
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Mother's Secret 18167456 A novel based on a true story, a mother and daughter risk their lives to provide shelter to two families and a��German soldier--all unbeknownst to each other--in a tiny two-room house in Sokal, Poland, during the Nazi invasion.

Based on a true story, MY MOTHER'S SECRET is a profound, captivating, and ultimately uplifting tale intertwining the lives of two Jewish families in hiding from the Nazis, a fleeing German soldier, and the clever and "righteous" mother and daughter who teamed up to save them.

Franciszka and her daughter, Helena, are unlikely heroines. They are simple people who mind their own business and don't stand out from the crowd. Until 1939, when crisis strikes. The Nazis have invaded Poland and they are starting to persecute the Jews. Providing shelter to a Jew has become a death sentence. And yet, Franciszka and Helena decide to do just that. In their tiny, two-bedroom home in Sokal, Poland, they cleverly hide a Jewish family of two brothers and their wives in their pigsty out back, a Jewish doctor with his wife and son in a makeshift cellar under the kitchen floorboards, and a defecting German soldier in the attic--each group completely unbeknownst to the others. For everyone to survive, Franciszka will have to outsmart her neighbors and the German commanders standing guard right outside her yard.

Told simply and succinctly from four different perspectives, MY MOTHER'S SECRET is a reminder that there are,��in fact,��no profiles of courage and each individual's character is a personal choice.

This book was inspired by the true story of Franciszka Halamajowa, who, with her daughter, saved the lives of fifteen Jews in Poland during the Second World War. She also hid a young German soldier in her attic at the same time. Before the war, there were six thousand Jews in Sokal, Poland. Only thirty survived the war and half of those did so because of Franciszka.]]> 208 J.L. Witterick 0399168540 Kate 0 history, poland, to-read 4.15 2013 My Mother's Secret

author: J.L. Witterick
name: Kate
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/01/13
shelves: history, poland, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One with Others: [a little book of her days]]]> 8396429 The New York Times Book Review

"Wright has found a way to wed fragments of an iconic America to a luminously strange idiom, eerie as a tin whistle."��The New Yorker

Investigative journalism is the poet's realm when C.D. Wright returns to her native Arkansas and examines an explosive incident from the Civil Rights movement. Wright interweaves oral histories, hymns, lists, newspaper accounts, and personal memories—especially those of her incandescent mentor, Mrs. Vititow—with the voices of witnesses, neighbors, police, activists, and black students who were rounded up and detained in an empty public swimming pool. This history leaps howling off the page.

I can walk down the highway unarmed
Scott Bond, born a slave, became
a millionaire. Wouldn't you like to run wild.
Run free. The Very Reverend Al Green
hailed from here. Sonny Liston a few miles west,
Sand Slough. Head hardened
on hickory sticks.
The cool water is for white/ the sun-heated for black
This chair is not for you [N-word]/ it is for the white buttock
This textbook/ is nearly new/ is not for you [N-word]
This plot of ground does not hold black bones
Today the sermon once again "Segregation After Death"

C.D. Wright has published a dozen books of poetry and prose, including the recent volumes One Big Self: An Investigation and Rising, Falling, Hovering, which received the Griffin Poetry Award. A MacArthur Fellow,��Wright teaches at Brown University and lives outside Providence, Rhode Island.]]> 160 C.D. Wright 1556593244 Kate 3 book-club Had a difficult time getting into this book Read for Book Club 11/19]]> 4.27 2010 One with Others: [a little book of her days]

One with Others: [a little book of her days]

author: C.D. Wright
name: Kate
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2019/12/02
date added: 2019/12/19
shelves: book-club
review:
Read for Book Club 12/19 BBBC
Had a difficult time getting into this book Read for Book Club 11/19
]]> <![CDATA[The Deadly Dance (Agatha Raisin, #15)]]> 344664 and British police; on the outs (again) with old friends—and dead in the sights of a murderer.

M.C. Beaton continues to delight fans of her wildly popular mystery series with The Deadly Dance.]]> 256 M.C. Beaton 031298474X Kate 0 to-read 3.82 2004 The Deadly Dance (Agatha Raisin, #15)

author: M.C. Beaton
name: Kate
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss]]> 42372550
And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds--the natural one and our own--"the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love's own twin."

Illustrated by the author's brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut.]]> 231 Margaret Renkl 1571313788 Kate 0 to-read 4.30 2019 Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

author: Margaret Renkl
name: Kate
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Watch Me Disappear 32740062
But then Olive starts having waking dreams—or are they hallucinations?—that her mother is still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive’s emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie’s past that bring into question everything he thought he knew about his wife. Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth—about Billie, their family, and the stories we tell ourselves about the people we love.]]> 358 Janelle Brown 0812989465 Kate 4 NPSC NOVEMBER 2013 3.64 2017 Watch Me Disappear

author: Janelle Brown
name: Kate
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/11/07
date added: 2019/11/21
shelves: book-club, mystery, mystery-crime
review:
NPSC NOVEMBER 2013
]]> <![CDATA[God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England]]> 36373283 Booklist, starred review) as determined Narragansett Indians refused to back down and accept English authority.

A devout Puritan minister in seventeenth-century New England, Roger Williams was also a social critic, diplomat, theologian, and politician who fervently believed in tolerance. Yet his orthodox brethren were convinced tolerance fostered anarchy and courted God’s wrath. Banished from Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, Williams purchased land from the Narragansett Indians and laid the foundations for the colony of Rhode Island as a place where Indian and English cultures could flourish side by side, in peace.

As the seventeenth century wore on, a steadily deepening antagonism developed between an expansionist, aggressive Puritan culture and an increasingly vulnerable, politically divided Indian population. Indian tribes that had been at the center of the New England communities found themselves shunted off to the margins of the region. By the 1660s, all the major Indian peoples in southern New England had come to accept English authority, either tacitly or explicitly. All, except one: the Narragansetts.

In God, War, and Providence “James A. Warren transforms what could have been merely a Pilgrim version of cowboys and Indians into a sharp study of cultural contrast…a well-researched cameo of early America�� (The Wall Street Journal). He explores the remarkable and little-known story of the alliance between Roger Williams’s Rhode Island and the Narragansett Indians, and how they joined forces to retain their autonomy and their distinctive ways of life against Puritan encroachment. Deeply researched, “Warren’s well-written monograph contains a great deal of insight into the tactics of war on the frontier�� (Library Journal) and serves as a telling precedent for white-Native American encounters along the North American frontier for the next 250 years.]]> 288 James A. Warren 150118041X Kate 4 book-club, history 4.04 2018 God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England

God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England

author: James A. Warren
name: Kate
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2019/11/17
date added: 2019/11/21
shelves: book-club, history
review:
Read for Brown Bag November 2019
]]> Goodbye, Vitamin 27746288 Goodbye, Vitamin is the wry, beautifully observed story of a woman at a crossroads, as Ruth and her friends attempt to shore up her father's career; she and her mother obsess over the ambiguous health benefits - in the absence of a cure - of dried jellyfish supplements and vitamin pills; and they all try to forge a new relationship with the brilliant, childlike, irascible man her father has become.]]> 208 Rachel Khong 1250109167 Kate 3 book-club NP 9/19 3.72 2017 Goodbye, Vitamin

author: Rachel Khong
name: Kate
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2019/10/30
date added: 2019/10/30
shelves: book-club
review:
NP 9/19
]]> A Sight for Sore Eyes 83410 When these three plots strands finally converge, the result is harrowing and unforgettable. "A Sight for Sore Eyes" is not just the work of a writer at the peak of her craft. It is an extraordinary story by a writer who, after 45 books, countless awards, and decades of international acclaim, is still getting better with every book.]]> 384 Ruth Rendell 0440235448 Kate 4 BBBB for 10/19 3.82 1998 A Sight for Sore Eyes

author: Ruth Rendell
name: Kate
average rating: 3.82
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2019/10/08
date added: 2019/10/08
shelves: book-club, fiction, mystery, mystery-crime, england
review:
BBBB for 10/19
]]> My Own Words 29868604
My Own Words offers Justice Ginsburg on wide-ranging topics, including gender equality, the workways of the Supreme Court, being Jewish, law and lawyers in opera, and the value of looking beyond US shores when interpreting the US Constitution. Throughout her life Justice Ginsburg has been (and continues to be) a prolific writer and public speaker. This book’s sampling is selected by Justice Ginsburg and her authorized biographers Mary Hartnett and Wendy W. Williams. Justice Ginsburg has written an introduction to the book, and Hartnett and Williams introduce each chapter, giving biographical context and quotes gleaned from hundreds of interviews they have conducted. This is a fascinating glimpse into the life of one of America’s most influential women.]]> 400 Ruth Bader Ginsburg 150114524X Kate 4 Books RI Sept 2019 4.02 2016 My Own Words

author: Ruth Bader Ginsburg
name: Kate
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/12
date added: 2019/09/22
shelves: biography-memoir, book-club, history, memoir-autobiography
review:
Books RI Sept 2019
]]> <![CDATA[The Garden of Small Beginnings]]> 32570475 In the spirit of A Man Called Ove and Good Grief--a poignant, funny, and utterly believable novel about life and loss.

Give grief a chance . . .

Lilian Girvan has been a single mother for three years--ever since her husband died in a car accident. One mental breakdown and some random suicidal thoughts later, she's just starting to get the hang of this widow thing. She can now get her two girls to school, show up to work, and watch TV like a pro. The only problem is she's becoming overwhelmed with being underwhelmed.

At least her textbook illustrating job has some perks--like actually being called upon to draw whale genitalia. Oh, and there's that vegetable-gardening class her boss signed her up for. Apparently, being the chosen illustrator for a series of boutique vegetable guides means getting your hands dirty, literally. Wallowing around in compost on a Saturday morning can't be much worse than wallowing around in pajamas and self-pity.

After recruiting her kids and insanely supportive sister to join her, Lilian shows up at the Los Angeles botanical garden feeling out of her element. But what she'll soon discover--with the help of a patient instructor and a quirky group of gardeners--is that into every life a little sun must shine, whether you want it to or not...

READERS GUIDE INCLUDED]]> 368 Abbi Waxman 0399583580 Kate 3 book-club, fiction, romance NP for Sept 3.90 2017 The Garden of Small Beginnings

author: Abbi Waxman
name: Kate
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2019/09/22
date added: 2019/09/22
shelves: book-club, fiction, romance
review:
NP for Sept
]]> <![CDATA[Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit]]> 25110984 A revealing new portrait of Robert F. Kennedy that gets closer to the man than any book before, by bestselling author Chris Matthews, an esteemed Kennedy expert and anchor of MSNBC’s Hardball.

With his bestselling biography Jack Kennedy, Chris Matthews shared a new look of one of America’s most beloved Presidents and the patriotic spirit that defined him. Now, with Bobby Kennedy, Matthews returns with a gripping, in-depth, behind-the-scenes portrait of one of the great figures of the American twentieth century.

Overlooked by his father, and overshadowed by his war-hero brother, Bobby Kennedy was the perpetual underdog. When he had the chance to become a naval officer like Jack, Bobby turned it down, choosing instead to join the Navy as a common sailor. It was a life changing experience that led him to connect with voters from all walks of life: young or old, black or white, rich or poor. They were the people who turned out for him in his 1968 campaign. RFK would prove himself to be the rarest of politicians—both a pragmatist who knew how to get the job done and an unwavering idealist who could inspire millions.

Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Matthews pulls back the curtain on the public and private worlds of Robert Francis Kennedy. He shines a light on all the important moments of his life, from his early years and his start in politics to his crucial role as attorney general in his brother’s administration and his tragic run for president. This definitive book brings Bobby Kennedy to life like never before and is destined to become a political classic]]> 416 Chris Matthews 1501111868 Kate 4 For book club msc 4.03 2017 Bobby Kennedy: A Raging Spirit

author: Chris Matthews
name: Kate
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/08/14
date added: 2019/08/14
shelves: book-club, historical-fiction, history
review:
For book club msc
]]> The King's Speech 9755737
Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman - he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the nervous, tongue-tied Duke of York into one of Britain's greatest kings after his brother, Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 over his love of Mrs Simpson.

This is the previously untold story of the remarkable relationship between Logue and the haunted future King George VI, written with Logue's grandson and drawing exclusively from his grandfather Lionel's diaries and archive. It throws an extraordinary light on the intimacy of the two men, and the vital role the King's wife, the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, played in bringing them together to save her husband's reputation and reign.

'The King's Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy' is an astonishing insight into a private world. Logue's diaries also reveal, for the first time, the torment the future King suffered at the hands of his father George V because of his stammer. Never before has there been such a personal portrait of the British monarchy - at a time of its greatest crisis - seen through the eyes of an Australian commoner who was proud to serve, and save, his King.]]> 242 Mark Logue 0857381105 Kate 4 classics, england, history 3.68 2010 The King's Speech

author: Mark Logue
name: Kate
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2019/07/25
date added: 2019/07/25
shelves: classics, england, history
review:

]]> The Silent Patient 40097951
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

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

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.]]> 336 Alex Michaelides 1250301696 Kate 0 to-read 4.17 2019 The Silent Patient

author: Alex Michaelides
name: Kate
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/07/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The New Girl (Gabriel Allon, #19)]]> 42791437
She was covered from head to toe in expensive wool and plaid, the sort of stuff one saw at the Burberry boutique in Harrods. She carried a leather bookbag rather than a nylon backpack. Her patent leather ballet slippers were glossy and bright. She was proper, the new girl, modest. But there was something else about her ��

At an exclusive private school in Switzerland, mystery surrounds the identity of the beautiful raven-haired girl who arrives each morning in a motorcade fit for a head of state. She is said to be the daughter of a wealthy international businessman. In truth, her father is Khalid bin Mohammed, the much-maligned crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Once celebrated for his daring social and religious reforms, he is now reviled for his role in the murder of a dissident journalist. And when his only child is brutally kidnapped, he turns to the one man he can trust to find her before it is too late.

What’s done cannot be undone ��

Gabriel Allon, the legendary chief of Israeli intelligence, has spent most of his life fighting terrorists, including the murderous jihadists financed by Saudi Arabia. Prince Khalid—or KBM, as he is known—has pledged to finally break the bond between the Kingdom and radical Islam. For that reason alone, Gabriel regards him as a valuable if flawed partner. Together they will become unlikely allies in a deadly secret war for control of the Middle East. The life of a child, and the throne of Saudi Arabia, hang in the balance. Both men have made their share of enemies. And both have everything to lose.

Filled with dark humor, breathtaking twists of plot, and an unforgettable cast of characters, The New Girl is both a thrilling, page-turning tale of entertainment and a sophisticated study of political alliances and great-power rivalries in a dangerous world. And it is once again proof that Gabriel Allon is “one of fiction’s greatest spies�� (Kirkus) and Daniel Silva is “quite simply the best�� (Kansas City Star) writer of foreign intrigue and suspense at work today.]]> 458 Daniel Silva Kate 0 to-read 4.29 2019 The New Girl (Gabriel Allon, #19)

author: Daniel Silva
name: Kate
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2019/07/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Uncommon Type 34389773 A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor.

A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country's civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game--and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he winds up ESPN's newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have!]]> 405 Tom Hanks 1101946156 Kate 2 M 7/19 3.41 2017 Uncommon Type

author: Tom Hanks
name: Kate
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2019/07/13
date added: 2019/07/13
shelves:
review:
M 7/19
]]> Breakfast With Budda 23268837
Listening Length: 9 hours and 34 minutes]]> 323 Roland Merullo Kate 4 3.94 2007

author: Roland Merullo
name: Kate
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2014/11/23
date added: 2019/06/30
shelves: book-club, fiction, contemporary
review:

]]> Compass Rose 7780773 Spartina won the National Book Award and was acclaimed by critics as being “possibly the best American novel . . . since The Old Man and the Sea�� (The New York Times Book Review), but in this extraordinary follow-up novel barely any time has passed in the magical landscape of salt ponds and marshes in John Casey’s fictional Rhode Island estuary.

Elsie Buttrick, prodigal daughter of the smart set who are gradually taking over the coastline of Sawtooth Point, has just given birth to Rose, a child conceived during a passionate affair with Dick Pierce—a fisherman and the love of Elsie’s life, who also happens to live practically next door with his wife, May, and their children. A beautiful but guarded woman who feels more at ease wading through the marshes than lounging on the porches of the fashionable resort her sister and brother-in-law own, Elsie was never one to do as she was told. She is wary of the discomfort her presence poses among some members of her gossipy, insular community, yet it is Rose, the unofficially adopted daughter and little sister of half the town, who magnetically steers everyone in her orbit toward unexpected—and unbreakable—relationships. As we see Rose grow from a child to a plucky adolescent with a flair for theatrics both onstage and at home during verbal boxing matches with her mother, to a poised and prepossessing teenager, she becomes the unwitting emotional tether between Elsie and everyone else. “Face it, Mom,�� Rose says, “we live in a tiny ecosystem.�� And indeed, like the rugged, untouched marshes that surround these characters, theirs is an ecosystem that has come by its beauty honestly, through rhythms and moods that have shaped and reshaped their lives.

With an uncanny ability to plunge confidently and unwaveringly into the thoughts and desires of women—mothers, daughters, wives, lovers—John Casey astonishes us again with the power of a family saga.

From the Hardcover edition.]]> 368 John Casey 0375410252 Kate 3 3.37 2010 Compass Rose

author: John Casey
name: Kate
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2019/06/23
date added: 2019/06/23
shelves: book-club, drama, fiction, romance
review:
Read for a book club Regency/Empire
]]> Snow Falling on Cedars 77142 460 David Guterson 067976402X Kate 4 Empire 3.86 1994

author: David Guterson
name: Kate
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2016/12/07
date added: 2019/06/17
shelves: literary-fiction, japan, book-club, historical-fiction, re-reading, favorite
review:
Empire
]]> <![CDATA[The Word is Murder (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #1)]]> 36204075 SHE PLANNED HER OWN FUNERAL. BUT DID SHE ARRANGE HER OWN MURDER?

New York Times bestselling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty, Anthony Horowitz has yet again brilliantly reinvented the classic crime novel, this time writing a fictional version of himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes.

One bright spring morning in London, Diana Cowper �� the wealthy mother of a famous actor - enters a funeral parlor. She is there to plan her own service.

Six hours later she is found dead, strangled with a curtain cord in her own home.

Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric investigator who’s as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. Hawthorne needs a ghost writer to document his life; a Watson to his Holmes. He chooses Anthony Horowitz.

Drawn in against his will, Horowitz soon finds himself a the center of a story he cannot control. Hawthorne is brusque, temperamental and annoying but even so his latest case with its many twists and turns proves irresistible. The writer and the detective form an unusual partnership. At the same time, it soon becomes clear that Hawthorne is hiding some dark secrets of his own.

A masterful and tricky mystery that springs many surprises, The Word is Murder is Anthony Horowitz at his very best.]]> 400 Anthony Horowitz 0062676784 Kate 4 book-club, england, mystery NPM 3.89 2017 The Word is Murder (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #1)

The Word is Murder (Hawthorne & Horowitz, #1)

author: Anthony Horowitz
name: Kate
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/15
date added: 2019/06/15
shelves: book-club, england, mystery
review:
NPM
]]>