Dani 's bookshelf: all en-US Sat, 26 Apr 2025 10:50:57 -0700 60 Dani 's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend]]> 214152206 From rare book dealer and guest star of the hit show Pawn Stars, a page-turning literary adventure that introduces readers to the women writers who inspired Jane Austen—and investigates why their books have disappeared from our shelves.

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She loved that Austen’s books took the lives of women seriously, explored relationships with wit and confidence, and always, allowed for the possibility of a happy ending. She read and reread them, often wishing Austen wrote just one more.

But Austen wasn’t a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers—and clues about those women, and the exceptional books they wrote, are sprinkled like breadcrumbs throughout Austen’s work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn’t a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes such a stir in Mansfield Park is a real one by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald. In fact, the phrase “pride and prejudice� came from Frances Burney’s second novel Cecilia. The women that populated Jane Austen’s bookshelf profoundly influenced her work; Austen looked up to them, passionately discussed their books with her friends, and used an appreciation of their books as a litmus test for whether someone had good taste. So where had these women gone? Why hadn’t Romney—despite her training—ever read them? Or, in some cases, even heard of them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon?

Jane Austen’s Bookshelf investigates the disappearance of Austen’s heroes—women writers who were erased from the Western canon—to reveal who they were, what they meant to Austen, and how they were forgotten. Each chapter profiles a different writer including Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth—and recounts Romney’s experience reading them, finding rare copies of their works, and drawing on connections between their words and Austen’s. Romney collects the once-famed works of these forgotten writers, physically recreating Austen’s bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. Jane Austen’s Bookshelf will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels.]]> 464 Rebecca Romney 1982190248 Dani 0 currently-reading 4.41 2025 Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
author: Rebecca Romney
name: Dani
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (Jane Austen Mysteries, #1)]]> 76712 352 Stephanie Barron 0553575937 Dani 0 3.70 1996 Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (Jane Austen Mysteries, #1)
author: Stephanie Barron
name: Dani
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read, tbr-i-actually-own, mystery
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cards You're Dealt: How to Deal when Life Gets Real—A Tarot Guidebook]]> 125165722
We are not always dealt the gentlest cards in life. Sometimes we’re dealt a very difficult hand. At some point all of us will be confronted by life’s inevitable tough the loss of loved ones, a health crisis or illness, the endless thrum of national and global tragedies—as well as the empty nest, the loss of a job, the loss of a relationship, the loss of youth.

“Theresa Reed has written the exact book I need exactly when I needed it.� —Melinda Lee Holm, author of Your Tarot Guide

When we’re going through a difficult time, tarot can be a source of comfort, catharsis, healing, and connection to a power greater than ourselves. Doing a tarot reading can help you tune into your instincts and make better choices. It can help you think clearly during those moments when nothing feels simple or clear. And when you realize, “I have three options, and frankly, all of them are lousy and this whole situation is just really sad,� tarot can help you find acceptance and bear the pain with a little more grace.

But even in difficult times, we can find purpose and hope. With tarot as a tool, we can make wiser choices and steer things in a more positive direction. In this guidebook, Theresa provides
“The stories that Theresa shares are vulnerable and real, sprinkled with her Scorpio Moon humor. This book is for both tarot beginners and seasoned practitioners.� —Pamela Chen, author of Tarot of the Owls

The Cards You’re Dealt will help you deepen your connection to the tarot and find what you need to help you, and your clients, begin the healing process.]]> 240 Theresa Reed 1578638038 Dani 0 4.28 The Cards You're Dealt: How to Deal when Life Gets Real—A Tarot Guidebook
author: Theresa Reed
name: Dani
average rating: 4.28
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
shelves: to-read, spiritual, tbr-i-actually-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ancestral Whispers: A Guide to Building Ancestral Veneration Practices]]> 83891066
Presenting historical and cultural examples of ancestral veneration from around the world, Ben Stimpson shows you how to build a strong, healthy relationship with your ancestors. He teaches the concepts and considerations of this important practice, walks you through the ins and outs of ritual, and shares profound insight on building community.

Ancestral Whispers provides exercises and journal prompts specially designed to help you develop an authentic, living practice. Stimpson reveals the various types of ancestors and discusses the physical elements of practice, including sacred space, objects of power, and offerings. He also encourages you to explore the elements of pilgrimage and reflect deeply on your own beliefs. With this book, you can create a legacy for current and future generations.]]> 272 Ben Stimpson 0738774723 Dani 0 4.48 Ancestral Whispers: A Guide to Building Ancestral Veneration Practices
author: Ben Stimpson
name: Dani
average rating: 4.48
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read, spiritual, tbr-i-actually-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Knight and the Butcherbird]]> 224970641
In this gritty, haunting tale about doing whatever it takes for love, a small-town storyteller resolves to keep the local monster—and her own secrets—safe from a legendary knight.

Nestled deep in the steep hills, valleys, and surrounding woodlands lies Iron Hollow, a rural community beset by demons. Such horrors are common in the outlands, where most folks die young, if they don’t turn into monsters first. But what’s causing these transformations?

No one has the answer, not even the town’s oral historian, seventeen-year-old Shrike. And when a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest beast to haunt their woods, Shrike has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still human, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.

Determined to keep May safe, Shrike stalks the knight and his demon-hunting hawk through the recesses of the forest. But as they creep through toxic creeks and overgrown kudzu, Shrike realizes the knight has a secret of his own. And he’ll do anything to protect it.]]> 36 Alix E. Harrow 1662527233 Dani 0 to-read 4.03 2025 The Knight and the Butcherbird
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: Dani
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Hungerstone 212342605 Hungerstoneis a thrillingly seductive sapphic romance for fans of S.T. Gibson’sA Dowry of Bloodand Emilia Hart’sWeyward.

For what do you hunger, Lenore?

Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage, the relationship has soured and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry's ambitions take them out of London and to the imposing Nethershaw manor in the countryside, where Henry aims to host a hunt with society’s finest. Lenore keeps a terrible secret from the last time her husband hunted, and though they never speak of it, it haunts their marriage to this day.

The preparations for the event take a turn when a carriage accident near their remote home brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore's life. Carmilla who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night; Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore. Soon girls from local villages begin to fall sick before being consumed by a bloody hunger.

Torn between regaining her husband's affection and Carmilla's ever-growing presence, Lenore begins to unravel her past and in doing so, uncovers a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .

Set against the violent wilderness of the moors and the uncontrolled appetite of the industrial revolution,Hungerstoneis a compulsive feminist reworking ofCarmilla, the book that inspiredDracula: a captivating story of appetite and desire.]]> 336 Kat Dunn 1638932166 Dani 0 currently-reading 4.02 2025 Hungerstone
author: Kat Dunn
name: Dani
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Teller of Small Fortunes 207611551 A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells "small" fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences�

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.]]> 336 Julie Leong 0593815912 Dani 3 2025, botm, fantasy 3.81 2024 The Teller of Small Fortunes
author: Julie Leong
name: Dani
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: 2025, botm, fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service]]> 219551344 Who works for the government and what do they do? A timely and absorbing civics lessons from an all-star team of writers and storytellers.

The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.

Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers to find someone doing an interesting job for the government and write about them. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.

Whether they’re digitizing archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these workers are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. The vivid profiles in On Duty blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.]]> 272 Michael Lewis Dani 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.24 2025 Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service
author: Michael Lewis
name: Dani
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Green Witch Illustrated: An Enchanting Immersion Into the Magic of Natural Witchcraft (Green Witch Witchcraft Series)]]> 207293931 256 Arin Murphy-Hiscock 1507223196 Dani 0 to-read, spiritual 4.15 The Green Witch Illustrated: An Enchanting Immersion Into the Magic of Natural Witchcraft (Green Witch Witchcraft Series)
author: Arin Murphy-Hiscock
name: Dani
average rating: 4.15
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, spiritual
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]]> <![CDATA[The Way Through the Woods: The Green Witch’s Guide to Navigating Life’s Ups and Downs]]> 204164251 272 Rebecca Beattie 1783967846 Dani 0 to-read, spiritual 3.80 The Way Through the Woods: The Green Witch’s Guide to Navigating Life’s Ups and Downs
author: Rebecca Beattie
name: Dani
average rating: 3.80
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, spiritual
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]]> <![CDATA[A Year of Living Curiously: 365 Things Really Worth Knowing]]> 216283050
Finding the time to appreciate the bounty of our world can be tricky amid the demands of work, family and scrolling our phones. Happily, E. Foley and B. Coates have curated A Year of Living Curiously, a book of daily shots of knowledge that will lift your spirits and expand your mind in a flash. In 365 joyfully random, utterly fascinating entries, you'll learn what the Japanese mean by 'kuchisabishii' and how the Victorians communicate through flowers; you'll start to get quantum computing and discover the secret history of the bobble hat. There are tales of footballing bees and Viking mice, the beginning of the thesaurus and the end of the library of Alexandria.

Spend just two minutes a day with this glorious almanac of curious treasure and you'll end your year full of wonder and just that little bit wiser.]]> 304 Elizabeth Foley 057138448X Dani 0 3.69 A Year of Living Curiously: 365 Things Really Worth Knowing
author: Elizabeth Foley
name: Dani
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nonfiction, self-help
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Homework for Grown-Ups: Everything You Learned at School and Promptly Forgot.]]> 5819627 "Have you ever stared blankly at your kids when they've asked why the sky is blue? Or clumsily changed the subject when they've wanted to know why the wind blows? If you're done with school, it's likely you're also done knowing the difference between an isosceles and equilateral triangle, and you probably leave participles dangling all over the place. Well, not anymore! Thanks to professional know-it-alls Foley and Coates, you can now gain back your self-respect and actually show those kids a thing or two as you tell it to them straight (and not make it up from fragments of facts you kind of remember).
Packed with all the basic facts that have managed to free-fall from our heads over the years, "Homework for Grown-ups" is the ultimate grammar school refresher course in book form. In fact, there's even a quiz at the end of each chapter to ensure you've been paying attention! Written in the light, engaging style of a favorite teacher and featuring lessons in English, math, history, science, geography, art, and even home economics and recess, this fun and handy guide will help you stop hemming and hawing and start speaking with a lot more authority--and a little less shame.
E. FOLEY and B. COATES are editors at Vintage who both live in London.]]> 432 Beth Coates 0099540029 Dani 0 3.51 2008 Homework for Grown-Ups: Everything You Learned at School and Promptly Forgot.
author: Beth Coates
name: Dani
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nonfiction, self-help
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us]]> 220208908 A life-altering journey through the science of neuroaesthetics, which offers proof for how our brains and bodies transform when we participate in the arts--and how this knowledge can improve our health, enable us to flourish, and build stronger communities.

Many of us think of the arts as entertainment--a luxury of some kind. In Your Brain on Art, authors Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross show how activities from painting and dancing to expressive writing, architecture, and more are essential to our lives.

We're on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone. Magsamen and Ross offer compelling research that shows how engaging in an art project for as little as forty-five minutes reduces the stress hormone cortisol, no matter your skill level, and just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years. They expand our understanding of how playing music builds cognitive skills and enhances learning; the vibrations of a tuning fork create sound waves to counteract stress; virtual reality can provide cutting-edge therapeutic benefit; and interactive exhibits dissolve the boundaries between art and viewers, engaging all of our senses and strengthening memory. Doctors have even been prescribing museum visits to address loneliness, dementia, and many other physical and mental health concerns.

Your Brain on Art is a portal into this new understanding about how the arts and aesthetics can help us transform traditional medicine, build healthier communities, and mend an aching planet.

Featuring conversations with artists such as David Byrne, Ren�e Fleming, and evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson, Your Brain On Art is an authoritative guide neuroaesthetics. The book weaves a tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.]]> 304 Susan Magsamen 059344924X Dani 0 to-read, nonfiction 3.67 2023 Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us
author: Susan Magsamen
name: Dani
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> Care and Feeding: A Memoir 216497043
Behind the scenes, Laurie’s life is frequently chaotic, an often pleasurable buffet of bad decisions at which she frequently overstays her welcome. Acerbic and wryly self-deprecating, Laurie attempts to carve her own space as a woman in this world that is by turns toxic and intoxicating. Laurie seeks to try it all—from a seedy Atlantic City strip club to the Park Hyatt Tokyo, from a hippie vegetarian co-op to the legendary El Bulli—while balancing her consuming work with her sometimes ambivalent relationship to marriage and motherhood.

As the food world careens toward an overdue reckoning and Laurie’s mentors face their own high-profile descents, she is confronted with the questions of where she belongs and how to hold on to the parts of her life’s work that she truly values: care and feeding.]]> 352 Laurie Woolever 0063327600 Dani 0 3.58 Care and Feeding: A Memoir
author: Laurie Woolever
name: Dani
average rating: 3.58
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, memoirs-essays, self-help
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Slow Seasons: A Creative Guide to Reconnecting with Nature the Celtic Way]]> 177841605 Woman's Own Book Club 2023'A truly beautiful book. Rosie's writing makes me want to close my laptop, step outside, and appreciate the magic that each season brings' Jessica Elliot DennisonIn her late-twenties, feeling utterly overwhelmed by the pace of modern city life, Rosie Steer found solace in the traditions she had been brought up with, influenced by her Scottish roots, that celebrated nature and observed the small steady shifts in the seasons.The Celtic Wheel of the year is an ancient seasonal cycle that aligns with solar events � the solstices, equinoxes and their midpoints. For each mini-season, Rosie shares nature notes for what we can look out for as the days get warmer or cooler, the nights longer or shorter, alongside activities, things to make, flowers or fruit to forage, seasonal recipes to enjoy and a modern take on the traditional celebrations.As the Wheel turns to Samhain on 31st October, we can enjoy foraging apples and berries to make Hedgerow jelly, watch the leaves turn golden, collect pine cones for a Pine cone garland and celebrate pumpkin season with Pumpkin and root veg chilli and Chocolate cake with pumpkin curd.By slowing down and paying attention to the ebbs and flows of nature, we can find moments of calm whenever we need them.]]> 277 Rosie Steer 1526662736 Dani 0 to-read, spiritual 4.01 Slow Seasons: A Creative Guide to Reconnecting with Nature the Celtic Way
author: Rosie Steer
name: Dani
average rating: 4.01
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, spiritual
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]]> <![CDATA[Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy: The Simple Art of Taking Back Your Life]]> 221312017
Matthew Kelly spent thirty years rushing from one thing to the next. Leaving one thing early, arriving at the next thing late, squeezing as much as was inhumanely possible into each day—always striving for more, better, and faster.

But then something changed.

Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy is a deeply personal book. It provides a rare and intimate look at the author's own struggles with busy and urgent. By revealing his own vulnerabilities, Kelly provides us with the practical insights and timeless wisdom necessary to banish busy and urgent from our own lives.

The faster you go the more likely you are to crash, but we just keep going faster. We think if we get all the urgent stuff done, we will have time for what's important. But we never do.

Busy is not your friend. Only a toxic friend leaves you feeling anxious, overwhelmed, discouraged, exhausted, stressed, inadequate and resentful. It's time to take our lives back from this tyrant.

The speed and busyness of our lives stand in direct opposition to what we say matters most. It's time for a new strategy. It's time to embrace the speed of joy.

Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy isn't just a book. It's a way of life. It will quite simply and in every way imaginable change your life.]]> 160 Matthew Kelly 1635825644 Dani 0 4.43 Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy: The Simple Art of Taking Back Your Life
author: Matthew Kelly
name: Dani
average rating: 4.43
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nonfiction, self-help
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving]]> 52668196 Despite our constant search for new ways to 'hack' our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can't we just take a break?

In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside and start living instead of doing.

The key lies in embracing what makes us human: our creativity, our social connections (Instagram doesn't count), our ability for reflective thought, and our capacity for joy. Celeste's strategies will allow you to regain control over your life and break your addiction to false efficiency, including:

-Increase your time perception and determine how your hours are being spent.
-Stop comparing yourself to others.
-Invest in quality idle time. Take a hot bath and listen to music.
-Spend face-to-face time with friends and family

It's time to recover our leisure time and reverse the trend that's making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive.

]]> 288 Celeste Headlee 1984824732 Dani 0 3.84 2020 Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving
author: Celeste Headlee
name: Dani
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nonfiction, self-help
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tales Behind Tarot: Discover the stories within your tarot cards (Stories Behind�)]]> 62587618
Every tarot card has a story to tell and is rich in symbolic meaning . In this gorgeous book for aspiring and experienced tarot readers alike , expert practitioner Alison Davies brings the stories of the cards alive.

With key words and themes to help you understand the meanings of the cards, use this storybook as a tool to learn the tarot, or take your tarot readings to the next level.

Follow The Fool on his journey through the Major Arcana as he travels down the path of life, meeting iconic characters along the way such as The Magician , The Hermit, Death , and The High Priestess. Follow the stories of the four suits in the Minor Arcana, and watch three sisters rise to power in the Suit of Pentacles, and a world-changing idea is born in the Suit of Wands.

Stories give us context, context gives us knowledge, and knowledge is empowerment. Enhance your tarot practice , and learn to understand , decode , and apply the wisdom and meaning of the tarot in your life through the power of these stories.
]]> 224 Alison Davies 0711280665 Dani 0 to-read, spiritual 4.03 The Tales Behind Tarot: Discover the stories within your tarot cards (Stories Behind…)
author: Alison Davies
name: Dani
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, spiritual
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]]> <![CDATA[Tarot for Light Seers: A Journey Through the Symbols, Messages, & Secrets of the Cards]]> 206180717 With in-depth messages, prompts, and spreads in a playful, bright full-color format, this book is an expansion of The Light Seer’s Tarot guidebook, offering readers a guide to reading tarot from the optimistic perspective of a Light Seer.

ARE YOU READY TO TRAVEL THE SUNSHINE AND SHADOW PATH OF THE LIGHT SEER?

This book will expand the guidebook of The Light Seer’s Tarot—a deck which has shipped nearly 250K copies since late 2019 and has nearly 19K reviews on Amazon—from a 20K work "little white book" to a fully realized tarot-readers guide filled with interpretations, keywords, prompts, and spreads in a playful, bright, four-color format.

Taking a deep dive into the symbolism woven through the illustrations on each card and pointing out the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith imagery that inspired the contemporary artwork, this book will feature a breakdown of the symbolism on each card and share the traditional card art for comparison.

Explore this collection of dreams, archetypes, and stories as you walk the path of darkness and sunshine, living the lessons and channeling the messages of the Light Seer. The relatable, contemporary characters will allow you to easily and intuitively translate the message of the cards, and as you connect with their magic they will become trusted guides that will bring you to your own inner landscapes and knowing.]]> 530 Chris-Anne 1401978738 Dani 0 to-read, spiritual 4.81 Tarot for Light Seers: A Journey Through the Symbols, Messages, & Secrets of the Cards
author: Chris-Anne
name: Dani
average rating: 4.81
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, spiritual
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Archetypal Tarot: What Your Birth Card Reveals About Your Personality, Your Path, and Your Potential]]> 55308228
This book was previously published as Who Are You in the Tarot . This new edition includes a foreword by Theresa Reed, author of No Questions Asked , and a new preface by the author.]]> 288 Mary K. Greer 1578637481 Dani 0 to-read, spiritual 4.07 Archetypal Tarot: What Your Birth Card Reveals About Your Personality, Your Path, and Your Potential
author: Mary K. Greer
name: Dani
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, spiritual
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century]]> 2917848 349 Edward Dolnick 0060825413 Dani 0 to-read, nonfiction 3.86 2008 The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
author: Edward Dolnick
name: Dani
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nonfiction
review:

]]> Is a River Alive? 218569826 Underland delivers a revelatory book that transforms how we look at the natural world—and life itself.

Hailed as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler� (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane’s dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.]]> 384 Robert Macfarlane 0393242137 Dani 0 4.32 2025 Is a River Alive?
author: Robert Macfarlane
name: Dani
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nature-gardening, nonfiction
review:

]]> Dianaworld: An Obsession 217498069 A brilliant, kaleidoscopic new cultural history of Diana, her many lives and the world she created

‘This book is about layers of mythology and the people connected to them. It is less a biography of Diana, more the story of a cultural obsession told via an exploration of “Dianaworld�, the sprawling, ever-evolving precinct of her various lives—public and private, real and imagined.�

In February 1981 a 19-year-old nursery teacher’s assistant overnight became globally famous. In a frenzy of excitement, jumping every barrier of language and class, a new, overwhelming icon was conjured up.

This is a guide to Dianaworld � the extraordinary hall-of-mirrors through which one young woman, the world’s media, the royal family, and everybody else stalked one another. Fashion-plate, breeder of heirs, role model, fantasy object, saint and sinner, Diana gripped the minds of millions of people in ways which were unique, complex and distressing. After her death, chased by paparazzi through a Paris traffic tunnel, an estimated 2.5 billion people watched her funeral.

Edward White examines Princess Diana as the complex figure she a scion of a great aristocratic house, wife of the future king, mother of his heirs, an inspiration and delight to countless people for many years. And yet, of a human being inevitably and woefully underequipped either to deal with the horrors of the House of Windsor or control, or even lightly supervise, the Dianaworld she and others had created. This is a wonderful book, both admiring and incredulous, exuberant and melancholy.]]> 385 Edward White 014199990X Dani 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.33 2025 Dianaworld: An Obsession
author: Edward White
name: Dani
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
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]]> <![CDATA[The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris]]> 217388004 A deliciously entertaining, never-before-told history of a residence for American women artists in Paris from 1893 to 1914.

In Belle Époque Paris, the Eiffel Tower was newly built, France was experiencing remarkable political stability, and American women were painting the town and gathering at a female-only Residence known as The American Girls' Club in Paris. Opened in 1893, The Club was the center of expatriate living and of dedication to a calling in the fine arts, and singularly harbored a generation of independent, talented, and driven American women.

Now in The Club, curator, art historian, and podcast host Jennifer Dasal presents the never-before-told story of the Club, the philanthropists who created it, and the artists it housed. These women forged connections in the arts and letters with luminaries like Auguste Rodin and Gertrude Stein or became activists through their relationships with the likes of Emmeline Pankhurst. But just as importantly, these women's lives revealed the power of the Club itself, and the way that having a safe home for single women of ambition allowed them to grow as teachers, artists, suffragists, and people.

For readers interested in women's lives as captured in books like The Barbizon, art history buffs who loved Ninth Street Women, and armchair travelers longing to visit Belle Époque Paris, The Club is a captivating, colorful new history.]]> 336 Jennifer Dasal 163973130X Dani 0 to-read, nonfiction 0.0 The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris
author: Jennifer Dasal
name: Dani
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]]> <![CDATA[Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World]]> 217182458
For millennia, depictions of snakes as alternatively beautiful and menacing creatures have appeared in religious texts, mythology, poetry, and beyond. From the foundational deities of ancient Egypt to the reactions of squeamish schoolchildren today, it is a historically commonplace belief that snakes are devious, dangerous, and even evil. But where there is hatred and fear, there is also fascination and reverence. How is it that creatures so despised and sinister, so foreign of movement and ostensibly devoid of sociality and emotion, have fired the imaginations of poets, prophets, and painters across time and cultures?

In SLITHER, science writer Stephen S. Hall presents a naturalistic, cultural, ecological, and scientific meditation on these loathed yet magnetic creatures. In each chapter, he explores a biological aspect of The Snake, such as their cold blooded metabolism and venomous nature, alongside their mythology, artistic depictions, and cultural veneration. In doing so, he explores not only what neurologically triggers our wary fascination with these limbless creatures, but also how the current generation of snake scientists is using cutting-edge technologies to discover new truths about these evolutionarily ancient creatures—truths that may ultimately affect and enhance human health.]]> 416 Stephen S. Hall 1538741334 Dani 0 4.27 Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World
author: Stephen S. Hall
name: Dani
average rating: 4.27
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]]> <![CDATA[Slayers, Every One of Us: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On]]> 211004154 A memoir reflecting on heartbreak, perseverance, and life lessons learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the hosts of the hit podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer.

Kristin and Jenny’s marriage started with an ultimatum: to further their relationship, Kristin must watch Jenny's favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. With the terms set, they began a journey that has led them through seven seasons of the beloved genre show, a podcast rewatching the series with their newly minted listenership of “Scoobies,� unexpected success, and a divorce. Through it all, their love for Buffy and their commitment to their community held them together against the odds.

Slayers, Every One of Us is the story of how two queer women navigated divorce on a very public level and managed to stay in each other’s lives through it all. While chock full of Buffy (and Buffering!) content for true fans, this is ultimately a memoir of queer love and chosen family. It's a heartwarming story for anyone who's experienced lost love, and a roadmap for staying close with your ex.]]> 256 Kristin Russo 1250286247 Dani 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.37 2025 Slayers, Every One of Us: How One Girl in All the World Showed Us How to Hold On
author: Kristin Russo
name: Dani
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Rear Window: The Making of a Hitchcock Masterpiece in the Hollywood Golden Age]]> 223121117 The definitive, in-depth look inside the making of Alfred Hitchcock’sRear Window—the all-time classic of voyeurism, paranoia, and murder that became one of Hollywood’s greatest achievements and turned generations of viewers into “a race of Peeping Toms.� . . .

Before the internet and social media offered voyeuristic glimpses into the lives of others, the acclaimed Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, exposed the dangers and delights of looking—and knowing—too much in his 1954 masterpieceRear Window. Widely hailed as one of the greatest films ever made, it stars James Stewart and Grace Kelly at the top of their game but, in an unusual gamble, is shot entirely from within a Greenwich Village apartment . . .

Using this limited point of view, Hitchcock forces his audience to participate in his protagonist’s voyeuristic impulses and darkest obsessions—a bold move in the era of the Hollywood Blacklist and restrictive Hays Code. But the gamble paid off, andRear Windowbecame a timeless classic.

This eye-opening book goes straight to the source ofRear Window’s genius by mining the original papers of Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, and Thelma Ritter, revealing little-known facts behind the Why taking the role of Lisa Fremont was one of the toughest decisions Grace Kelly ever made; How Hitchcock intertwined suspense and romance with inspiration from Ingrid Bergman; How he used a topless scene to distract the censors from other scenes to which they may have objected; and how Hitchcock crafted the film’s unforgettable villain, Lars Thorwald, by modeling him on a producer he loathed—the infamous David O. Selznick.

Filled with eye-catching photographs, outrageous anecdotes, and delicious details, this exciting book pulls back the curtain on a classic thriller that’s as relevant today as ever—and every bit as thrilling.]]> 288 Jennifer O'Callaghan 0806543884 Dani 0 to-read, nonfiction 0.0 Rear Window: The Making of a Hitchcock Masterpiece in the Hollywood Golden Age
author: Jennifer O'Callaghan
name: Dani
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]]> <![CDATA[I Thought It Would Be Better Than This: Rise From Disappointment, Regain Control, and Rebuild a Life You Love]]> 217182558 Learn how to recover from life’s disappointments and rebuild a life you love.

What happens when you look at your life and think,I thought it would be better than this?You know you can’t stay where you are, but have no idea what to do next.

When Jessica N. Turner, a mom of three, lost her 16-year-marriage after her husband came out as gay, her life shattered. With grit and determination, she picked up the pieces, chose hope and courageously rebuilt a beautiful next chapter.

During this process, Jessica discovered universal tools that can support you, no matter what you’re facing. Using thoughtful reflections and exercises, vulnerable storytelling, and practical takeaways, Jessica will help

Evaluate your disappointments, heartaches, and unmet expectations so that you can move forward in healing. Talk candidly about your feelings to forge healthier and more meaningful relationships. Practice forgiveness and empathy for yourself and others so that you live with more love and less pain. Regain control over the parts of life where you have agency instead of passively waiting for things to happen to you. Discover creative practices to cultivate daily satisfaction and contentment. Learn to love yourself and the characteristics that make you unique so that you can be more confident and content. I Thought It Would Be Better Than Thisis a manifesto of hope that will empower you to transform your circumstances and move forward with intention and purpose.]]> 256 Jessica N. Turner 1546006710 Dani 0 4.30 I Thought It Would Be Better Than This: Rise From Disappointment, Regain Control, and Rebuild a Life You Love
author: Jessica N. Turner
name: Dani
average rating: 4.30
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shelves: to-read, nonfiction, self-help
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?: Expert Advice for Navigating Life's Challenges]]> 58536046 Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith provides the skills you need to navigate common life challenges and take charge of your emotional and mental health in her debut book.

Filled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health, even in the most trying of times. Dr Julie Smith's expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself. The book tackles everyday issues and offers practical solutions in bite-sized, easy-to-digest entries which make it easy to quickly find specific information and guidance.

Your mental well-being is just as important as your physical well-being. Packed with proven strategies, Dr Smith's empathetic guide offers a deeper understanding of how your mind works and gives you the insights and help you need to nurture your mental health every day. Wise and practical, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? might just change your life.]]> 368 Julie Smith 0063227932 Dani 0 3.85 2022 Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before?: Expert Advice for Navigating Life's Challenges
author: Julie Smith
name: Dani
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World]]> 200555184
A paradigm-shifting look at a long-undervalued yet hugely beneficial personality trait, from the creators of the world’s largest community for highly sensitive people

“Don’t be so sensitive!�

Everyone has a sensitive side, but nearly 1 in 3 people have the genes to be more sensitive than others—both physically and emotionally. These are the people who pause before speaking and think before acting; they tune into subtle details and make connections that others miss. They tend to be intelligent, big-hearted, and wonderfully creative; they are wired to go deep, yet society tells them to hide the very sensitivity that makes them this way. These are the world’s “highly sensitive people,� and Sensitive is the book that champions them.

By the creators of the world’s largest community for sensitive people, Sensitive teaches us how to unlock the potential in this undervalued strength and leverage it across the most important areas of our in friendships and relationships, the workplace, leadership, and parenting. Through fascinating research and expert storytelling, Jenn Granneman and Andre Sólo show readers that the way to thrive as a sensitive person is not to hide their sensitivity, but to embrace it—and they demonstrate how to do that in each area of life. Weaving together actionable advice, relatable anecdotes, and the latest scientific research, Sensitive shows readers how leaning in to their sensitivity unlocks a powerful “boost effect� to launch them ahead in life. It hands them the tools and insights they need to thrive as a sensitive person in a loud, fast, too-much world.

A powerfully validating, destigmatizing, and practical book, Sensitive plants a gently fluttering flag in the ground for sensitive people everywhere. This inspiring book has the power to change—once and for all—how we see sensitive people, and how they see themselves.]]> 288 Jenn Granneman 0593235037 Dani 0 3.80 2023 Sensitive: The Hidden Power of the Highly Sensitive Person in a Loud, Fast, Too-Much World
author: Jenn Granneman
name: Dani
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: to-read, nonfiction, self-help
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]]> <![CDATA[Close to Home: The Wonders of Nature Just Outside Your Door]]> 215749530 An award-winning natural-history writer opens the door to the nature that thrives in our yards, gardens, and parks

We all live on nature’s doorstep, but we often overlook it. From backyards to local parks, the natural places we see the most may well be the ones we know the least.

In Close to Home, biologist Thor Hanson shows how retraining our eyes reveals hidden wonders just waiting to be discovered. In Kansas City, migrating monarch butterflies flock to the local zoo. In the Pacific Northwest, fierce yellowjackets placidly sip honeydew, unseen in the treetops. In New England, a lawn gone slightly wild hosts a naturalist's life's work. And in the soil beneath our feet, remedies for everything from breast cancer to the stench of skunks lie waiting for someone’s searching shovel.

Close to Home is a hands-on natural history for any local patch of Earth. It shows that we each can contribute to science and improve the health of our planet. And even more, it proves that the wonders of nature don’t lie in some far-off they await us, close to home.]]> 304 Thor Hanson 1541601246 Dani 0 4.26 2025 Close to Home: The Wonders of Nature Just Outside Your Door
author: Thor Hanson
name: Dani
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)]]> 54654726
Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to—or actively engineer—each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable.

Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid.

This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout.

Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.]]> 152 Dean Spade 1839762128 Dani 0 to-read, nonfiction 4.33 2020 Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)
author: Dean Spade
name: Dani
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Blackthorn's Book of Sacred Plant Magic: Spells, Rites, and Rituals for Living an Aromatic Life]]> 206179360 Renowned herbalist Amy Blackthorn shows readers how to bring plant spirits into their daily spiritual practice with therapeutic access, subconscious learning, and divining skills that help them understand plant spirits on a deeper level. Blackthorn’s Botanical Magic showed a new generation of witches how scent affects people, whether they understand it or not. In Blackthorn’s Book of Sacred Plant Magic, we travel even deeper into the magical garden of scent. We know that a walk down a summer street can bring back the smell of childhood summers with friends, riding bikes and swimming. Spring breezes carry with them the clean soapy smell of your second-grade teacher. We experience scents not only in the here and now but also filtered through the lens of our past. Using the power of scent, we can create a sense of the sacred in our daily lives. Part reference guide, part recipe book, and part ritual journey, Blackthorn’s Book of Sacred Plant Magic offers readers an in-depth exploration of the vital connection between scents and magical practice. Topics covered

Connecting with Spirits of Plants, Place, and People Expanding your Scent Beyond “Floral� Scent, Memory, and Personal How History Effects Scent Creating Scent Activations]]> 272 Amy Blackthorn 1578638305 Dani 0 4.46 Blackthorn's Book of Sacred Plant Magic: Spells, Rites, and Rituals for Living an Aromatic Life
author: Amy Blackthorn
name: Dani
average rating: 4.46
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shelves: to-read, tbr-i-actually-own, spiritual, book-club-books
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]]> <![CDATA[Magical Housekeeping: Simple Charms and Practical Tips for Creating a Harmonious Home]]> 8395989 240 Tess Whitehurst 0738719854 Dani 0 4.05 2010 Magical Housekeeping: Simple Charms and Practical Tips for Creating a Harmonious Home
author: Tess Whitehurst
name: Dani
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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shelves: to-read, spiritual, tbr-i-actually-own
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]]> <![CDATA[No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity]]> 214161655 From award-winning sustainability expert Ashlee Piper, a witty, no-nonsense guide to regaining control over your time, consumerist impulses, and financial and mental wellness

For nearly two years, Ashlee Piper challenged herself to buy nothing new. And in the process, she got out of debt, cut clutter, crushed her goals, and became healthier and happier than ever—all the things she’d always wanted to do but “never had time to� (because she was mindlessly scrolling, shopping, spending, and stressing). After a decade of fine-tuning, No New Things guides readers through the same revolutionarily simple challenge that has helped thousands of global participants find freedom and fulfillment in just thirty days.

The book follows the rise of what Piper calls “conditioned consumerism� and how it sneakily hijacks our time, money, and mental bandwidth, as well as harms the planet. From there, readers follow customizable daily action items that bring about the ease and richness of a life less bogged down by spending and stuff, without compromising on style, convenience, or fun.

Whether you’re a bona fide shopaholic or someone who just wants to buy less and live more, No New Things is the antidote to modern overwhelm.]]> 288 Ashlee Piper 1250382165 Dani 0 currently-reading 4.19 No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity
author: Ashlee Piper
name: Dani
average rating: 4.19
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]]> The Secret War of Julia Child 203751793
Single, 6 foot 2, and thirty years old, Julia McWilliams took a job working for America's first espionage agency, years before cooking or Paris entered the picture.The Secret War of Julia Child traces Julia's transformation from ambitious Pasadena blue blood to Washington, DC file clerk, to head of General "Wild Bill" Donovan's secret File Registry as part of the Office of Strategic Services.

Thewartime journey takes her to the Far East, to Asia's remote frontlines of then-Ceylon, India, and China, where she finds purpose, adventure, self-knowledge � and love with mapmaker Paul Child.The spotlight has rarely shone on this fascinating period of time in the life of ("I'm not a spy") Julia Child, and this lyrical story allows us to explore the unlikely world of a woman in World War II spy station who has no idea of the impact she'll eventually impart.]]> 389 Diana R. Chambers 1464219044 Dani 0 to-read 3.53 2024 The Secret War of Julia Child
author: Diana R. Chambers
name: Dani
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Museum Detective 215808119 Archaeologist Dr. Gul Delani's investigation into a sensational discovery gets complicated—and personal—when it collides with her years-long search for a missing family member.

Inspired by a real-life antiquities scandal in Pakistan, this gripping, whip-smart, and heart-wrenching series opener is perfect for fans of Sue Grafton and Elsa Hart—and introduces an unforgettable new sleuth to the crime fiction canon.

When Dr. Gul Delani receives a call in the middle of the night from the Sindh police, she thinks they may have finally found her niece, Mahnaz—a precocious, politically conscious teenage girl who went missing three years prior. Gul has been racked with grief since Mahnaz’s disappearance, and distracts herself through she’s a talented curator at the Museum of Heritage and History in Karachi, one of the country’s leading experts in archaeology and ancient civilizations, a hard-won position for a woman.

But there is no news of Mahnaz. Instead, Gul is summoned to a narcotics investigation in a remote desert region in western Pakistan. In her wildest dreams, Gul couldn’t have imagined what she’d find amid a drug bust gone wrong, there is a mummy—life-size, seemingly authentic, its sarcophagus decorated with symbols from Persepolis, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire. The discovery confounds everyone. It is both too good to be true, and for Gul, too precious to leave in careless or corrupt hands.

Aided by her team of unlikely misfits, Gul will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of it, even as her quest for the truth puts her in the throes of a dangerous conspiracy and threatens to collide with her ongoing search for Mahnaz. A portrait of a city fueled by corruption and a woman relentlessly in pursuit of justice, this engrossing crime novel builds to an unforgettable, emotional conclusion readers won’t soon forget.The Museum Detective is an exciting, gritty new crime thriller that announces a whip-smart and brilliant sleuth and builds to a stunning, emotional conclusion that readers won’t soon forget.]]> 336 Maha Khan Phillips 1641296569 Dani 0 to-read 3.91 2025 The Museum Detective
author: Maha Khan Phillips
name: Dani
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2025
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]]> Midnight in Soap Lake 210827823
When Abigail agreed to move to Soap Lake, Washington, for her husband’s research, she expected old-growth forests and craft beer, folksy neighbors and the world’s largest lava lamp. Instead, after her husband jets off to Poland for a research trip, she finds herself alone, in a town surrounded by sand and haunted by its own urban legends.

But when a young boy runs through the desert into Abigail’s arms, her life becomes entwined with his and the questions surrounding the death of his mother, Esme. In Abigail’s search for answers, she enlists the help of a recovering addict turned librarian, a grieving brother, a broken motel owner and a mentally shattered conspiracy theorist to unearth Esme’s tragic past, the town’s violent history and the secret magic locked in the lake her husband was sent there to study.

As she gets closer to the answers, past and present crimes begin to collide, and Abigail finds herself gaining the unwelcome attention of the town’s unofficial mascot, the rubber-suited orchard stalker known as TreeTop, a specter who seems to be lurking in every dark shadow and around every shady corner.

A sweeping, decade-spanning mystery brimming with quirky characters and puzzle-hunt scenarios, Midnight in Soap Lake is a modern-day Twin Peaks—a rich, expansive universe that readers will enter and never forget.]]> 416 Matthew J. Sullivan 1335041796 Dani 0 to-read 3.95 2025 Midnight in Soap Lake
author: Matthew J. Sullivan
name: Dani
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
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]]> The Café with No Name 214204244 From one of Austria’s most beloved and best-selling authors, comes this vibrant tale of love, loss, and renewal set against the transformations of 1960s Vienna.

Summer 1966. Robert Simon is in his early thirties and has a to open a café. Raised in a home for war orphans run by the Sisters of Charity, Robert is warm-hearted, hard-working, and determined. When the corner café in the Carmelite market square closes, Robert realizes that his chance has come.

The place, dark and dilapidated, is in a poor neighborhood of the Austrian capital, but for some time now a new wind has been blowing, and the air is filled with an inexplicable energy and a desire for renewal. In the newspapers with which fishmongers wrap the char and trout from the Danube, one can read about great things to come, a bright future beginning to rise from the quagmire of the past. Enlivened by these promises, Robert refurbishes the café, painting the walls, varnishing the furniture, and polishing the stove plates. Rewarding Robert’s efforts and in search of a congenial place to gather, talk, read, or just sit and be, customers arrive, bringing their stories of passions, friendships, abandonments, and bereavements. Some are in search of company, others long for love, or just a place where they can feel understood. As the city is transformed, Robert's cafe becomes at once a place of refuge and one from which to observe and rejoice.

Combining the enchantment of warm prose with tender humor, Robert Seethaler has written a charming parable of human existence animated by unforgettable characters and a kaleidoscope of human stories.]]> 192 Robert Seethaler Dani 0 to-read 3.52 2023 The Café with No Name
author: Robert Seethaler
name: Dani
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Murder by Cheesecake (Golden Girls, #1)]]> 216524168 The first novel in the all-new Golden Girls Cozy Mystery Series!

When Dorothy’s obnoxious date is found dead in a hotel freezer, it not only ruins a gorgeous cheesecake but threatens the elaborate St. Olaf–themed wedding Rose is hosting.

Things are heating up, and not just because of Blanche’s hot flashes. Rose’s cousin is eloping to Miami, and Rose is playing host. If she can't balance the groom’s family’s snobbery against the traditional St. Olaf wedding week guidelines, her hometown may never accept her cousin again!

Dorothy quickly realizes she needs a date with whom she can exchange wedding-related wisecracks. Turning to a newfangled VHS dating service, she believes she’s found the ideal conversationalist. Unfortunately, what looks good on TV can actually be a total jerk in real life. It seems she’ll just have to enjoy the company of Sophia, Blanche, and whomever Blanche has targeted for a hookup.

As the Girls all pitch in, Rose is thrilled that the tea-and-fish-themed kickoff event is perfect, not a herring out of place. That is until Dorothy’s date is found dead—face-planted in an otherwise scrumptious-looking cheesecake. With every guest a suspect (especially Dorothy) and a marriage on the line, the four besties must ID the real killer, get the should-be-happy couple down the aisle, and make sure nobody from St. Olaf gets lost in the wilds of Miami. It’s up to the Golden Girls to sleuth out a way for friendship and love to win the day!]]> 336 Rachel Ekstrom Courage 1368102980 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.72 2025 Murder by Cheesecake (Golden Girls, #1)
author: Rachel Ekstrom Courage
name: Dani
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
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]]> <![CDATA[The Dazzling Paget Sisters: Identical Twins at the Heart of the 20th Century]]> 220262095 304 Ariane Banks 1961341352 Dani 0 to-read 0.0 The Dazzling Paget Sisters: Identical Twins at the Heart of the 20th Century
author: Ariane Banks
name: Dani
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]]> A Horse at Night: On Writing 60065627 A Room of One’s Own and William H. Gass’s On Being Blue.

“Without planning it, I wrote a diary of sorts. Lightly. A diary of fiction. Or is that not what this is?�

A series of essayistic inquiries come together to form a sustained meditation on writers and their works, on the spaces of reading and writing fiction, and how these spaces take shape inside a life. Driven by primary questions of authenticity and freedom in the shadow of ecological and social collapse, A Horse at Night: On Writing moves associatively through a personal canon of authors—including Marguerite Duras, Elena Ferrante, Renee Gladman, and Virginia Woolf—and topics as timely and various as female friendships, zazen meditation, neighborhood coyotes, landscape painting, book titles, and the politics of excess. Amina Cain’s first nonfiction book is an individual reckoning with the contemporary moment and a quietly brilliant contribution to the lineage of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own or William H. Gass’s On Being Blue, books that are virtuosic arguments for—and beautiful demonstrations of—the essential unity of writing and life.]]> 136 Amina Cain 1948980134 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 4.04 2022 A Horse at Night: On Writing
author: Amina Cain
name: Dani
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert]]> 214151495 From RuPaul’s Drag Race winner and host of ’s We’re Here comes an inventive, wondrous novel about American hero Harriet Tubman that remixes history into a fresh, dynamic novel about love, freedom, salvation, and music.

In an age of miracles where our greatest heroes from history have magically, unexplainably returned to shake us out of our confusion and hate, Harriet Tubman is back, and she has a lot to say.

Harriet Tubman and four of the enslaved persons she led to freedom want to tell their story in a unique way—by following in the footsteps of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Harriet wants to put on a show about her life, and she needs a songwriter to help her.

She calls upon Darnell Williams, a once successful hip-hop producer who was topping the charts before being outed by a rival at the BET Awards. Darnell has no idea what to expect when he steps into the studio with Harriet, only that they have one week to write a Broadway caliber musical she can take on the road. Over the course of their time together, they not only mount a show that will take the country by storm, but confront the horrors of both their pasts, and learn to find a way to a better future.

Original, evocative, and historic, Harriet Live in Concert is a landmark achievement that will burrow deep into our hearts (and ears).]]> 240 Bob the Drag Queen 166806197X Dani 4 audiobooks, 2025 4.09 2025 Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert
author: Bob the Drag Queen
name: Dani
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: audiobooks, 2025
review:

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

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

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

A wry, propulsive, exquisitely observed story of a singularly eccentric family and the sibling rivalry, generational divides, and long-buried secrets that shape them. This is an extraordinary debut novel from a seasoned playwright with a flare for dialogue and, in the end, immense empathy.]]> 256 Camilla Barnes 1668062836 Dani 0 to-read 3.59 2025 The Usual Desire to Kill
author: Camilla Barnes
name: Dani
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/17
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]]> When the Harvest Comes 216522695 A young Black gay man reckoning with the death of his father must confront his painful past—and his deepest desires around gender, love, and sex.

The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness.

But on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. Never mind that his mother, who died decades before, and his father, whose anger drove Davis to flee their home in Ohio for a freer life in New York City, won’t be there to walk him down the aisle. All Davis needs to be happy in this life is Everett, his new family, and his burgeoning career as an award-winning violist.

When Davis learns during the wedding reception that his father has died in a terrible car accident, years of childhood trauma and unspoken emotion resurface. Davis must revisit everything that went wrong between them, his fledgling marriage and irresistible self-confidence spiraling into a pit of despair.

In resplendent prose, Denne Michele Norris’s When the Harvest Comes fearlessly reveals the pain of inheritance and the heroic power of love, reminding us that in the end we are more than the men who came before us.]]> 304 Denne Michele Norris 0593729609 Dani 0 to-read 4.06 2025 When the Harvest Comes
author: Denne Michele Norris
name: Dani
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
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]]> The Otherwhere Post 214268980 The New York Times bestselling author of Hotel Magnifique returns with another glittering dark fantasy about a deadly mystery that spans worlds and a teenage girl who must risk everything to uncover the truth.

Seven years ago, Maeve Abenthy lost her world, her father, even her name. Desperate to escape the stain of her father’s crimes, she lives under a fake name, never staying in one place long enough to put down roots.

Then she receives a mysterious letter with four impossible words Your father was innocent.

To uncover the truth, she poses as an apprentice for the Otherwhere Post, where she’ll be trained in the art of scriptomancy—the dangerous magic that allows couriers to enchant letters and deliver them to other worlds. But looking into her father’s past draws more attention than she’d planned.

Her secretive, infuriatingly handsome mentor knows she’s lying about her identity, and time is running out to convince him to trust her. Worse, she begins to receive threatening letters, warning her to drop her investigation�or else. For Maeve to unravel the mystery of what happened seven years ago, she may have to forfeit her life.]]> 400 Emily J. Taylor 0593404548 Dani 0 to-read 4.05 2025 The Otherwhere Post
author: Emily J. Taylor
name: Dani
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
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]]> Six Days in Bombay 212378278
When renouned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she's expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that's where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira's stories of her travels, and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she's left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona, seeing in her something bigger than the small life she's living with her mother. Mira is released from the hospital just in time to attend a lavish engagement party where all of Bombay society. But the next day, Mira is readmitted to the hospital in worse condition than before, and when she dies under mysterious circumstances, Sona immediately falls under suspicion.

Before leaving the hospital in disgrace, Sona is given a note Mira left for her, along with her four favorite paintings. But how could she have known to leave a note if she didn't know she was going to die? The note sends Sona on a mission to deliver three of the paintings—the first to Petra, Mira's childhood friend and first love in Prague; the second to her art dealer Josephine in Paris; the third to her first painting tutor, Paolo, with whom both Mira and her mother had affairs. As Sona uncovers Mira's history, she learns that the charming facade she'd come to know was only one part of a complicated and sometimes cruel woman. But can she discover what really happened to Mira and exonerate herself?

Along the way, Sona also comes to terms with her own complex history and the English father who deserted her and her mother in India so many years ago. In the end, she'll discover that we are all made up of pieces, and only by seeing the world do we learn to see ourselves.]]> 352 Alka Joshi 077836853X Dani 0 to-read 3.74 2025 Six Days in Bombay
author: Alka Joshi
name: Dani
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Queer Rites: A Magickal Grimoire to Honor Your Milestones with Pride]]> 213631750
Explore rituals for taking on a drag persona, hosting a funeral for your deadname, acknowledging chosen family, hosting a polyamorous handfasting, and more. Enhance your rituals with a variety of partners, including deities and community ancestors (such as queer activists and leaders).

Featuring a wealth of queer-specific rituals not offered elsewhere, this book helps connect your lived experiences to your magickal practice. Regardless of your skill level or spiritual tradition, Queer Rites makes it simple to commemorate occasions in a way that resonates with your unique and wonderful self.



Includes guest ritual writers Storm Faerywolf, Misha Magdalene, Brandon Weston, and Rev. Ron Padrón]]> 240 Enfys J. Book 0738776106 Dani 0 4.67 Queer Rites: A Magickal Grimoire to Honor Your Milestones with Pride
author: Enfys J. Book
name: Dani
average rating: 4.67
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, tbr-i-actually-own, spiritual
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tradition of Household Spirits: Ancestral Lore and Practices]]> 15955010
� Shares many tales of house spirits, from cajoling the local land spirit into becoming one’s house spirit to the good and bad luck bestowed by mischievous house elves

� Explains the meaning behind door and window placement, house orientation, horsehead gables, the fireplace or hearth, and the threshold

� Reveals the charms, chants, prayers, and building practices used by our ancestors to bestow happiness and prosperity upon their homes and their occupants

Why do we hang horseshoes for good luck or place wreaths on our doors? Why does the groom carry his new bride over the threshold? These customs represent the last vestiges from a long, rich history of honoring the spirits of our homes. They show that a house is more than a building: it is a living being with a body and soul.

Examining the extensive traditions surrounding houses from medieval times to the present, Claude Lecouteux reveals that, before we entered the current era of frequent moves and modular housing, moving largely from the countryside into cities, humanity had an extremely sacred relationship with their homes and all the spirits who lived there alongside them--from the spirit of the house itself to the mischievous elves, fairies, and imps who visited, invited or not. He shows how every aspect of constructing and keeping a house involved rites, ceremony, customs, and taboos to appease the spirits, including the choice of a building lot and the very materials with which it was built. Uncovering the lost meaning behind door and window placement, the hearth, and the threshold, Lecouteux shares many tales of house spirits, from the offerings used to cajole the local land spirit into becoming the domestic house spirit to the good and bad luck bestowed upon those who seek the help of the “Little Money Man.� He draws on studies and classic literature from old Europe--from Celtic lands and Scandinavia to France and Germany to the far eastern borders of Europe and into Russia--to explain the pagan roots behind many of these traditions.

Revealing our ancestors� charms, prayers, and practices to bestow happiness and prosperity upon their homes, Lecouteux shows that we can invite the spirits back into our houses, old or new, and restore the sacred bond between home and inhabitant.]]> 248 Claude Lecouteux 1620551055 Dani 0 4.22 2000 The Tradition of Household Spirits: Ancestral Lore and Practices
author: Claude Lecouteux
name: Dani
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: to-read, spiritual, tbr-i-actually-own
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]]> The Art of Thinking Clearly 16248196
Have you ever:
� Invested time in something that, with hindsight, just wasn't worth it?
� Overpayed in an Ebay auction?
� Continued doing something you knew was bad for you?
� Sold stocks too late, or too early?
� Taken credit for success, but blamed failure on external circumstances?
� Backed the wrong horse?

These are examples of cognitive biases, simple errors we all make in our day-to-day thinking. But by knowing what they are and how to spot them, we can avoid them and make better choices-whether dealing with a personal problem or a business negotiation; trying to save money or make money; working out what we do or don't want in life: and how best to get it.

Simple, clear and always surprising, this indispensable book will change the way you think and transform your decision-making-work, at home, every day. It reveals, in 99 short chapters, the most common errors of judgment, and how to avoid them.]]> 384 Rolf Dobelli 0062219685 Dani 0 3.83 2011 The Art of Thinking Clearly
author: Rolf Dobelli
name: Dani
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/14
shelves: to-read, nonfiction, tbr-i-actually-own
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book Club for Troublesome Women]]> 216052751 Four dissatisfied sixties-era housewives form a book club turned sisterhood that will hold fast amid the turmoil of a rapidly changing world and alter the course of each of their lives.

By early 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan, Viv Buschetti, and Bitsy Cobb, suburban housewives in a brand-new "planned community" in Northern Virginia, appear to have it all. The fact that "all" doesn't feel like enough leaves them feeling confused and guilty, certain the fault must lie with them. Things begin to change when they form a book club with Charlotte Gustafson--the eccentric and artsy "new neighbor" from Manhattan--and read Betty Friedan's just-released book, The Feminine Mystique.

Controversial and groundbreaking, the book struck a chord with an entire generation of women, helping them realize that they weren't alone in their dissatisfactions, or their longings, lifting their eyes to new horizons of possibility and achievement. Margaret, Charlotte, Bitsy, and Viv are among them. But is it really the book that alters the lives of these four very different women? Or is it the bond of sisterhood that helps them find courage to confront the past, navigate turmoil in a rapidly changing world, and see themselves in a new and limitless light?]]> 384 Marie Bostwick 1400344743 Dani 0 to-read 4.13 2025 The Book Club for Troublesome Women
author: Marie Bostwick
name: Dani
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Greenteeth 214229691 From an outstanding new voice in cozy fantasy comesGreenteeth,a tale of fae, folklore, and found family, narrated by a charismatic lake-dwelling monster with a voice unlike any other, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher.

Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce.

Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake, something makes Jenny decide she's worth saving. Temperance doesn't know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only that it has something to do with the malevolent new pastor.

Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny's lake and Temperance's family, as well as the very soul of Britain.]]> 304 Molly O'Neill Dani 0 to-read 3.99 2025 Greenteeth
author: Molly O'Neill
name: Dani
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> House of Frank 206777216 A warm and hopeful story of a lonely witch consumed by grief who discovers a whimsical cast of characters in a magical arboretum—and the healing power of found family.

Powerless witch Saika is ready to enact her sister’s final to plant her remains at the famed Ash Gardens. When Saika arrives at the always-stormy sanctuary, she is welcomed by its owner, an enormous, knit-cardiganed mythical beast named Frank, who offers her a role as one of the estate’s caretakers.

Overcome with grief, Saika accepts, desperate to put off her final farewell to her sister. But the work requires a witch with intrinsic power, and Saika’s been disconnected from her magic since her sister’s death two years prior. Saika gets by at the sanctuary using a fragment of a fallen star to cast enchantments—while hiding the embarrassing truth about herself.

As Saika works harder in avoidance of her pain, she learns more about Frank, the decaying house at Ash Gardens, and the lives of the motley staff, including bickering twin cherubs, a mute ghost, a cantankerous elf, and an irritating half witch, among others. Over time, she rediscovers what it means to love and be wholly loved and how to allow her joy and grief to coexist. Warm and inventive, House of Frank is a stirring portrait of the ache of loss and the healing embrace of love.]]> 352 Kay Synclaire 1959411667 Dani 0 to-read 4.03 2024 House of Frank
author: Kay Synclaire
name: Dani
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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]]> The Rose Bargain 211742041 The Cruel Prince meets The Selection in this captivating duology opener brimming with heart-pounding romance, vicious competition, and beautiful, cruel fae, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Witch Haven, Sasha Peyton Smith.

Every citizen of England is granted one bargain from their immortal fae queen.

High society girls are expected to bargain for qualities that will win them suitors: a rare talent for piano in exchange for one’s happiest childhood memory. A perfect smile for one’s ability to taste.

But Ivy Benton’s debut season arrives with a shocking twist: a competition to secure the heart of the Queen’s fae son, Prince Bram. A prize that could save Ivy’s family from ruin� and free her sister from the bargain that destroyed her.

Yet every glittering fae deal has a rotting heart—and at the center of this contest is a dark plot that could destroy everything Ivy knows.

Sweepingly romantic and deceptively enchanting, this alternate history romantasy will enthrall readers of Holly Black, Stephanie Garber, and Adalyn Grace.]]> 400 Sasha Peyton Smith 0063372525 Dani 0 to-read 3.97 2025 The Rose Bargain
author: Sasha Peyton Smith
name: Dani
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/14
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]]> The Favorites 211399784 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

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

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

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

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

As the ten-year anniversary of their final skate approaches, an unauthorized documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha, claiming to uncover the “real story� through interviews with their closest friends and fiercest rivals. Kat wants nothing to do with the documentary, but she can’t stand the thought of someone else defining her legacy. So, after a decade of silence, she’s telling her story: from the childhood tragedies that created her all-consuming bond with Heath to the clash of desires that tore them apart. Sensational rumors have haunted their every step for years, but the truth may be even more shocking than the headlines.]]> 448 Layne Fargo 0593732049 Dani 0 to-read 4.17 2025 The Favorites
author: Layne Fargo
name: Dani
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/14
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]]> The Satisfaction Café 220160649
As Joan and her children grow older and their circumstances evolve, she makes a drastic change by opening the Satisfaction Café, a place where people can visit for a bit of conversation and to be heard and understood. Through this radical yet pragmatic business, Joan constructs a lasting legacy.]]> 352 Kathy Wang 1668068923 Dani 0 to-read 4.21 The Satisfaction Café
author: Kathy Wang
name: Dani
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/14
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]]> <![CDATA[10% Happier 10th Anniversary: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story]]> 181110019 New York Timesbestseller that changed the way we look at meditation, expanded with new material by Dan Harris. After having a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America , Dan Harris knew he had to make some changes. A lifelong nonbeliever, he found himself on a bizarre adventure involving a disgraced pastor, a mysterious self-help guru, and a gaggle of brain scientists. Eventually, Harris realized that the source of his problems was the very thing he always thought was his greatest the incessant, insatiable voice in his head. We all have an inner narrator. It’s what has us losing our temper unnecessarily, checking our email compulsively, eating when we’re not hungry, and fixating on the past and the future at the expense of the present. Most of us assume we’re stuck with this voice—that there’s nothing we can do to rein it in—but Harris stumbled upon an effective way to do just that. 10% Happier is now considered a classic text on the power of meditation, an introduction to the practice that can convert even the most hardened skeptic. With over a million copies sold, 10% Happier is the go-to guide, and with meditation now a widely accepted and encouraged practice, Dan Harris is a pivotal and approachable figure in the field who has built a thriving platform based on the ideas he first presented in this book. In this 10th Anniversary Edition, Harris offers a new preface reflecting on how much has changed—for him and for the public perceptions of meditation, plus a revised and expanded appendix, filled with guided meditations and practical advice for people looking to boot up a habit.]]> 272 Dan Harris 0063356473 Dani 0 to-read 4.20 2014 10% Happier 10th Anniversary: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story
author: Dan Harris
name: Dani
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> Girl in Hyacinth Blue 947847
The German-American son of the Nazi who looted it from a Jewish home in Amsterdam in 1942, hides it out of shame for his father's atrocities, loves it with awe and passion, wrestles with moral questions of unlawful ownership and his own responsibilities of penance and restitution, and, like his father, ultimately fails as a human being.

The rest of the eight stories which make up this composite novel move back in time to the Renaissance. In each episode, the painting figures in casual affairs, natural catastrophe, flawed marriages, domestic violence, a murder, a hanging, yet in spite of these dreary circumstances, the power of beauty and art elevates the characters in individual, subtle ways.]]> 242 Susan Vreeland 1878448900 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.68 1999 Girl in Hyacinth Blue
author: Susan Vreeland
name: Dani
average rating: 3.68
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> Mrs. Miniver 15907 ]]> 162 Jan Struther Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.94 1939 Mrs. Miniver
author: Jan Struther
name: Dani
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1939
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Book of Frida Kahlo]]> 13544788 368 F.G. Haghenbeck 1451632843 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.69 2009 The Secret Book of Frida Kahlo
author: F.G. Haghenbeck
name: Dani
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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]]> The Wren, the Wren 123979630 An incandescent novel about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

Nell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, full of verve and wit, twenty-two-year-old Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry—and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet� with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother.

The Wren, the Wren brings to life three generations of women who contend with inheritances—of abandonment and of sustaining love that is “more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.� In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.]]> 288 Anne Enright 1324005688 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.53 2023 The Wren, the Wren
author: Anne Enright
name: Dani
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Wideacre (The Wideacre Trilogy, #1)]]> 16188 688 Philippa Gregory 0743249291 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.33 1987 Wideacre (The Wideacre Trilogy, #1)
author: Philippa Gregory
name: Dani
average rating: 3.33
book published: 1987
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Meridon (The Wideacre Trilogy, #3)]]> 16186 New York Times bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl comes the final book of the extraordinary Wideacre trilogy as the heir to the great estate comes home at last.

Meridon knows she does not belong in the dirty, vagabond life of a gypsy bareback rider. The half-remembered vision of another life burns in her heart, even as her beloved sister, Dandy, risks everything for their future. Alone, Meridon follows the urgings of her dream, riding in the moonlight past the rusted gates, up the winding drive to a house--clutching the golden clasp of the necklace that was her birthright--home at last to Wideacre. The lost heir of one of England's great estates would take her place as its mistress...

Meridon is a rich, impassioned tapestry of a young woman's journey from dreams to glittering drawing rooms and elaborate deceits, from a simple hope to a deep and fulfilling love. Set in the savage contrasts of Georgian England--a time alive with treachery, grandeur, and intrigue--Meridon is Philippa Gregory's masterwork.]]> 569 Philippa Gregory 0743249313 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.70 1990 Meridon (The Wideacre Trilogy, #3)
author: Philippa Gregory
name: Dani
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Favored Child (The Wideacre Trilogy, #2)]]> 16182 New York Times bestselling author and "queen of royal fiction" (USA TODAY) Philippa Gregory comes the thrilling sequel to the New York Times bestseller Wideacre as the once-great Lacey estate is restored to its former grandeur--though not without cost.

The Wideacre estate is bankrupt. The villagers are living in poverty and formerly stunning hall is a smoke-blackened ruin. But, in the Dower House nearby, two children are being raised in protected innocence.

Equal claimants to the estate, rivals for the love of the village, they are tied by a secret childhood betrothal but forbidden to marry. Only one can be the favored child--only one can inherit the magical understanding between the land and the Lacey family that can make the Sussex village grow green again. Only one can be Beatrice Lacey's true heir. Sensual, gripping, and mystical, The Favored Child irresistibly sweeps the reader into a world of secrets, betrayals, and power in this revolutionary period of English history.]]> 624 Philippa Gregory 0743249305 Dani 0 to-read 3.64 1989 The Favored Child (The Wideacre Trilogy, #2)
author: Philippa Gregory
name: Dani
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1989
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[They May Not Mean To, But They Do]]> 26114424
The Bergman clan has always stuck together, growing as it incorporated in-laws, ex-in-laws, and same-sex spouses. But families don’t just grow, they grow old, and the clan’s matriarch, Joy, is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would have wished. When Joy’s beloved husband dies, Molly and Daniel have no shortage of solutions for their mother’s loneliness and despair, but there is one challenge they did not count on: the reappearance of an ardent suitor from Joy’s college days. And they didn’t count on Joy herself, a mother suddenly as willful and rebellious as their own kids.

The New York Times–bestselling author Cathleen Schine has been called “full of invention, wit, and wisdom that can bear comparison to [ Jane] Austen’s own� (The New York Review of Books), and she is at her best in this intensely human, profound, and honest novel about the intrusion of old age into the relationships of one loving but complicated family. They May Not Mean To, But They Do is a radiantly compassionate look at three generations, all coming of age together.]]> 293 Cathleen Schine 0374280134 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.50 2016 They May Not Mean To, But They Do
author: Cathleen Schine
name: Dani
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Michael Tolliver Lives (Tales of the City, #7)]]> 16267 Michael Tolliver, the sweet-spirited Southerner in Armistead Maupin's classic Tales of the City series, is arguably one of the most widely loved characters in contemporary fiction. Now, almost twenty years after ending his ground-breaking saga of San Francisco life, Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero, letting the fifty-five-year-old gardener tell his story in his own voice.

Having survived the plague that took so many of his friends and lovers, Michael has learned to embrace the random pleasures of life, the tender alliances that sustain him in the hardest of times. Michael Tolliver Lives follows its protagonist as he finds love with a younger man, attends to his dying fundamentalist mother in Florida, and finally reaffirms his allegiance to a wise octogenarian who was once his landlady.

Though this is a stand-alone novel—accessible to fans of Tales of the City and new readers alike—a reassuring number of familiar faces appear along the way. As usual, the author's mordant wit and ear for pitch-perfect dialogue serve every aspect of the story—from the bawdy to the bittersweet. Michael Tolliver Lives is a novel about the act of growing older joyfully and the everyday miracles that somehow make that possible.

]]> 277 Armistead Maupin 0060761350 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 3.93 2007 Michael Tolliver Lives (Tales of the City, #7)
author: Armistead Maupin
name: Dani
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2007
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read, tbr-i-actually-own
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]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Dani 5 botm, 2025, best-reads 4.28 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Dani
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: botm, 2025, best-reads
review:

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

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

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

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

Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy—and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods. . . .]]> 400 Chuck Wendig 0593156560 Dani 0 to-read 3.89 2025 The Staircase in the Woods
author: Chuck Wendig
name: Dani
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Harvest of Hearts 210693153 In the beloved tradition of Howl’s Moving Castle, a whimsical and unforgettable story of fantastic adventure, common sense, and the power of love to overcome the greatest of obstacles . . .

Before Foss Butcher was Snagged, she thought no more of the magic-users than did anyone else in her tiny village. Sometimes gorgeous women in impossible carriages rolled into town and took bits of people’s hearts. Everyone knew hearts fueled their magic. But Foss, plain, clumsy, and practical as a boot, never expected anyone would want hers.

True enough, when the only sorcerer in the kingdom stepped from his glossy carriage, he didn’t intend to hook Foss. Sylvester’s riot of black curls and perfectly etched cheekbones caught her eye a moment too long, that was all. Suddenly, Foss is cursed and finds herself stomping toward the grand City to keep his enchanted House, where her only friend is a talking cat and the walls themselves have moods.

But as Foss learns the ways of magic, she realizes she’s far from its only unwilling captive. Even Sylvester is hemmed in by spells and threats. It’s said this sorcery protects king, country, and order for thousands. If Foss wants to free herself—and, perhaps, Sylvester—she’ll have to confront it all . . . and uncover the blight nestled in the heart of the kingdom itself.]]> 448 Andrea Eames 1645661881 Dani 0 to-read 3.60 2025 A Harvest of Hearts
author: Andrea Eames
name: Dani
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/09
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]]> The Heirloom Garden 45288569
In her inimitable style, Viola Shipman explores the unlikely relationship between two very different women brought together by the pain of war, but bonded by hope, purpose…and flowers.

Iris Maynard lost her husband in World War II, her daughter to illness and, finally, her reason to live. Walled off from the world for decades behind the towering fence surrounding her home, Iris has built a new family…of flowers. Iris propagates her own daylilies and roses while tending to a garden filled with the heirloom starts that keep the memories of her loved ones alive.

When Abby Peterson moves next door with her family—a husband traumatized by his service in the Iraq War and a young daughter searching for stability—Iris is reluctantly yet inevitably drawn into her boisterous neighbor’s life, where, united by loss and a love of flowers, she and Abby tentatively unearth their secrets, and help each other discover how much life they have yet to live.

With delightful illustrations and fascinating detail, Viola Shipman’s heartwarming story will charm readers while resonating with issues that are so relevant today.

Don't miss bestselling author Viola Shipman's charming new novel, THE WISHING BRIDGE � where an ambitious executive rediscovers the magic of family, friendship, home...and Christmas!

Other books by Viola ]]> 407 Viola Shipman 1525804618 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 4.13 2020 The Heirloom Garden
author: Viola Shipman
name: Dani
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read, tbr-i-actually-own
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]]> The Page Turner 198385441 A young romance writer makes a discovery that throws her elitist family into chaos.

Emma Page grew up the black sheep in a bookish household, raised to believe fine literature is the only worthy type of fiction. Her parents, self-proclaimed “serious� authors who run their own vanity press, The Mighty Pages, mingle in highbrow social circles that look down on anything too popular or mainstream, while her sister, Jess, is a powerful social-media influencer whose stylish reviews can make or break a novel.

Hiding her own romance manuscript from her disapproving parents, Emma finds inspiration at the family cottage among the “fluff� they despise: the juicy summer romances that belonged to her late grandmother. But a chance discovery unearthed from her Gigi’s belongings reveals a secret that has the power to ruin her parents� business and destroy their reputation in the industry—a secret that has already fallen into the hands of an unscrupulous publishing insider with a grudge to settle. Now Emma must decide: As much as she’s dreamed of the day her parents are forced to confront their own egos, can she really just sit back and watch The Mighty Pages be exposed and their legacy destroyed?]]> 336 Viola Shipman 1525804871 Dani 0 to-read 3.75 2025 The Page Turner
author: Viola Shipman
name: Dani
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> Glorious Exploits 211003856 An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.]]> 304 Ferdia Lennon 1250893682 Dani 0 to-read 3.96 2024 Glorious Exploits
author: Ferdia Lennon
name: Dani
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading (Heroes Among Us, 4)]]> 214175254
To be a bookseller or librarian�

You have to play detective.

Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. An advocate. A visionary.

A person who creates "book joy" by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, "You've got to read this. You're going to love it."

Step inside The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians and enter a world where you can feed your curiosities, discover new voices, find whatever you want or require. This place has the magic of rainbows and unicorns, but it's also a business. The book business.

Meet the smart and talented people who live between the pages—and who can't wait to help you find your next favorite book.]]> 352 James Patterson 1538758989 Dani 0 to-read 4.13 2024 The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading (Heroes Among Us, 4)
author: James Patterson
name: Dani
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> Sour Cherry 213816143 A stunning reimagining of Bluebeard—one of the most mythologized serial killers—twisted into a modern tale of toxic masculinity, a feminist sermon, and a folktale for the twenty-first century.

The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy—until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her. The ghosts can all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin: If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.

Natalia Theodoridou’s haunting and unforgettable debut novel, Sour Cherry, confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.]]> 312 Natalia Theodoridou 1963108191 Dani 0 to-read 3.76 2025 Sour Cherry
author: Natalia Theodoridou
name: Dani
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Perspective(s) 211934923 A pulse-quickening murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence by the renowned author of HHhH.

As dawn breaks over the city of Florence on New Year’s Day 1557, Jacopo da Pontormo is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him are the frescoes he labored over for more than a decade—masterpieces all, rivaling the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. When guards search his quarters, they find an obscene painting of Venus and Cupid—with the face of Venus replaced by that of Maria de� Medici, the Duke of Florence’s oldest daughter. The city erupts in chaos.

Who could have committed these murder and lèse-majesté? Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation. Letters start to fly back and forth—between Maria and her aunt Catherine de� Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and the scheming Piero Strozzi; and between Vasari and Michelangelo—carrying news of political plots and speculations about the identity of Pontormo’s killer. The truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot center of European art and intrigue.

Bursting with characters and historical color, Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s) is a whodunit like no other—a labyrinthine murder mystery that shows us Renaissance Florence as we’ve never seen it before. This is a dark, dazzling, unforgettable read.]]> 272 Laurent Binet 0374614601 Dani 0 to-read 3.90 2023 Perspective(s)
author: Laurent Binet
name: Dani
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> These Heathens 219301727 In this vibrant, gratifying novel, a pious, small-town teenager travels to Atlanta to get an abortion and finds herself smack in the middle of the civil rights movement and the secret lives of queer Black people.

Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if the town midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia's celebrities whom Doris has seen in the pages of Jet and Ebony, political leaders like Coretta Scott King and Diane Nash, women who dance close together, atheists!And even more shocking? Mrs. Lucas seems right at home.

The young people Doris encounters are no less surprising. When he's not flirting too hard or talking too much, Sylvia’s nephew, Dexter, brings Doris into the heart of Atlanta’s civil rights movement, where some activists practice nonviolence to prepare for sit-ins, while others carry guns to protect Black families from the Klan.

From the guests at a queer kickback to the student activists at a SNCC conference, Doris suddenly finds herself surrounded by so many people who seem to know exactly who or what they want. Doris knows she doesn’t want a baby, but what does she want? Will this trip help her find out?

These Heathens! is a funny, poignant story about Black women’s obligations and ambitions, what we owe to ourselves, and the transformative power of leaving your bubble, even for just one chaotic weekend.]]> 272 Mia McKenzie 0593596943 Dani 0 to-read 4.70 2025 These Heathens
author: Mia McKenzie
name: Dani
average rating: 4.70
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
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]]> <![CDATA[There Is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America's Biggest Catfish]]> 201294595 Part memoir, part explosive window into the mind of a catfisher, a thrilling personal account of three women coming face-to-face with an internet predator and teaming up to expose them

In 2011 three successful and highly educated women fell head over heels for the brilliant and charming Ethan Schuman. Unbeknownst to the others, each exchanged countless messages with Ethan, staying up late into the evenings to deepen their connections with this fascinating man. His detailed excuses about broken webcams and complicated international calling plans seemed believable, as did last-minute trip cancellations. After all, why would he lie? Ethan wasn't after money—he never convinced his marks to shell out thousands of dollars for some imagined crisis. Rather, he ensnared these women in a web of intense emotional intimacy.

After the trio independently began to question inconsistencies in their new flame's stories, they managed to find one another and uncover a greater deception than they could have ever imagined. As Anna Akbari and the women untangled their catfish’s web, they found other victims and realized that without a proper crime, there was no legal reason for “Ethan� to ever stop.

There is No Ethan catalogues Akbari's experience as both victim and observer. By looking at the bigger picture—a world where technology mediates our relationships; where words and images are easily manipulated; and where truth, reality, and identity have become slippery terms—Akbari provides an explanation for why these stories matter.]]> 304 Anna Akbari 1538742195 Dani 0 3.57 2024 There Is No Ethan: How Three Women Caught America's Biggest Catfish
author: Anna Akbari
name: Dani
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: currently-reading, book-club-books, nonfiction
review:

]]> The Dead and the Dark 53141419 Courtney Gould’s thrilling debut The Dead and the Dark is about the things that lurk in dark corners, the parts of you that can’t remain hidden, and about finding home in places―and people―you didn’t expect.

The Dark has been waiting for far too long, and it won't stay hidden any longer.

Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing, some turning up dead, the weather isn’t normal, and all fingers seem to point to TV’s most popular ghost hunters who have just returned to town. Logan Ortiz-Woodley, daughter of TV's ParaSpectors, has never been to Snakebite before, but the moment she and her dads arrive, she starts to get the feeling that there's more secrets buried here than they originally let on.

Ashley Barton’s boyfriend was the first teen to go missing, and she’s felt his presence ever since. But now that the Ortiz-Woodleys are in town, his ghost is following her and the only person Ashley can trust is the mysterious Logan. When Ashley and Logan team up to figure out who—or what—is haunting Snakebite, their investigation reveals truths about the town, their families, and themselves that neither of them are ready for. As the danger intensifies, they realize that their growing feelings for each other could be a light in the darkness.]]> 368 Courtney Gould 1250762014 Dani 5 3.93 2021 The Dead and the Dark
author: Courtney Gould
name: Dani
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves: 2025, lgbtq, thriller, young-adult-ya
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Witch's Guide to Love and Poison]]> 213940601 Bisma knows three things to be true: the Enchanted Forest will always be her home, she would go to the ends of the Earth to protect her sisters, and Xander Chapman is the most irritating guy she's ever met.

Since finding a home in the Enchanted Forest, Bisma - a garden witch with a penchant for potions - has always been protective of other runaways. So, if a drop of one of her poisons finds its way into the porridge of those who have hurt them . . . that's none of her business.

But Xander, the charmingly handsome son of the apothecary, sees things differently and is fast becoming known for creating cures - much to Bisma's annoyance.

When her sisters are poisoned themselves, Bisma will need to put her feelings aside and enlist Xander's help to find out who is responsible and save the only family she has, before it's too late.

Aamna Qureshi has woven a beautiful, warm and rich world of magic in this charming new cosy YA fantasy.]]> 325 Aamna Qureshi 1444977482 Dani 0 to-read 4.14 A Witch's Guide to Love and Poison
author: Aamna Qureshi
name: Dani
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
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]]> The Grace of Wild Things 61150756 An inventive and fantastical reimagining of Anne of Green Gables—with magic and witches!—that explores found family, loss, and the power of a girl's imagination, from the acclaimed author of The Language of Ghosts and The School Between Winter and Fairyland.

Grace has never been good at anything except magic—not that anyone believes her. While other children are adopted from the orphanage, nobody wants Grace. So she decides to make a home for herself by running away and offering herself as an apprentice to the witch in the nearby woods. After all, who better to teach Grace to use her magic? Surely the witch can’t be that bad.

But the witch is that bad—she steals souls for spells and gobbles up hearts. So Grace offers a deal: If she can learn all 100½ spells in the witch’s grimoire, the witch will make Grace her apprentice. But if Grace fails, the witch can take her magic. The witch agrees, and soon an unexpected bond develops between them. But the spells are much harder than Grace expected, and when a monster from the witch’s past threatens the home Grace has built, she may have to sacrifice more than her magic to save it.

Inspired by Anne of Green Gables, this is a magical story of found family, loss, and the power of a girl’s imagination.]]> 360 Heather Fawcett 0063142627 Dani 0 to-read 4.10 2023 The Grace of Wild Things
author: Heather Fawcett
name: Dani
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Call Forth a Fox 194025272
One winter night, on her way home from foraging, Ro encounters a fox being attacked by a bear. She fights the bear to save the fox’s life, only to see the bear turn into a boy after her sister shoots him with an arrow. When the boy wakes, he has no memory of who he is—all he knows is Ro’s name and that he has to kill the fox.

Ro never believed in the faeries from her father’s stories, but she can’t deny the magic surrounding her and that both the boy and the fox are victims of a faerie curse. She’ll have to remember everything her father taught her in order to extract herself from this deadly game and keep her precious fox out of harm’s way.]]> 384 Markelle Grabo Dani 0 to-read 3.73 2024 Call Forth a Fox
author: Markelle Grabo
name: Dani
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Along Came Amor (Primas of Power, #3)]]> 65961539 From the international bestselling author of You Had Me at Hola and A Lot Like Adiós comes a steamy love story of a divorced schoolteacher who discovers that her perfect no-strings fling is anything but�

No strings

After Ava Rodriguez’s now-ex-husband declares he wants to “follow his dreams”—which no longer include her—she’s left questioning everything she thought she wanted. So when a handsome hotelier flirts with her, Ava vows to stop overthinking and embrace the opportunity for an epic one-night-stand complete with a penthouse suite, rooftop pool, and buckets of champagne.

No feelings

Roman Vasquez’s sole focus is the empire he built from the ground up. He lives and dies by his schedule, but the gorgeous stranger grimacing into her cocktail glass inspires him to change his plans for the evening. At first, it’s easy for Roman to agree to Ava’s rules: no strings, no feelings. But one night isn’t enough, and the more they meet, the more he wants.

No falling in love

Roman is the perfect fling, until Ava sees him at her cousin’s engagement party—as the groom’s best man, no less! Suddenly, maintaining her boundaries becomes a lot more complicated as she tries to hide the truth of their relationship from her family. However, Roman isn’t content being her dirty little secret, and he doesn’t just want more, he wants everything. With her future uncertain and her family pressuring her from all sides, Ava will have to decide if love is worth the risk—again.]]> 512 Alexis Daria 0062960008 Dani 0 to-read 4.20 2025 Along Came Amor (Primas of Power, #3)
author: Alexis Daria
name: Dani
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> Homegrown Magic 215362543 A delightful queer romantic fantasy full of friends-to-lovers chemistry, found family, rival family drama, and cozy garden magic from two acclaimed YA authors making their debut in the adult space.

Yael Clauneck is the only scion of an obscenely wealthy banking family with its fingers in every pie in the realm. They’re on the precipice of a predetermined life when they flee their own graduation party, galloping away in search of…well, they’re not sure, but maybe the chance to feel like life can still be a grand adventure.

Margot Greenwillow—talented plant witch, tea lover, and greenhouse owner—has never felt further from adventure in her life. She’s been desperately trying to keep what remains of her family's magic remedies business afloat. So when her childhood friend and former crush, Yael, rides back into her life, she’s shocked. But perhaps this could be a good thing. After all, Margot could use an assistant in the greenhouses.

Yael has no experience or, honestly, practical skills, but they’re delighted to accept. They can lay low for a while, flirting with Margot while they figure out what to do next. Meanwhile, Margot has plans of her own—but plans are notoriously unreliable things, unlikely to survive a swiftly blooming mutual attraction, not to mention the machinations of parents determined to get their heir back . . . no matter the cost.]]> 368 Jamie Pacton 0593873653 Dani 0 to-read 3.54 2025 Homegrown Magic
author: Jamie Pacton
name: Dani
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
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]]> A Gentleman's Gentleman 214537773 From the acclaimed author of Chef's Kiss, a groundbreaking trans Regency romance that's both delightfully witty and refreshingly iconoclastic.

The notoriously eccentric Lord Christopher Eden is a “man of unusual make� and even more unusual habits: he prefers to live as far from the prying eyes and ears of the ton as possible, and would rather have the comfortable company of his childhood cook and his aged butler, Plinkton, than the swarm of servants and hangers-on befitting a man of his station.

But Christopher's pleasant, if occasionally lonely life is upended when he receives word from his lawyers that, according to his late father’s will, he must find a wife by the end of the Season if he intends to keep his family's fortune and the Eden's End estate. Christopher cannot imagine a worse fate: as he isn't attracted to women, his chances of making a wife happy are slim. Furthermore, if his quest to marry has any hope of succeeding, he must move to London posthaste and acquire some more suitable staff.

Enter James Harding, Christopher's new, distractingly handsome—if rigidly traditional—valet. After a rocky start, the two strike up a fragile friendship amid the throes of the London Season . . . a friendship that threatens to shatter under the looming shadow of Christopher’s impending nuptials—and the secrets both men are keeping.

With its heady combination of dry wit, slow-burn romance, and a nuanced, complex portrait of trans identity and relationships that’s as relevant now as it was during the Regency era, A Gentleman's Gentleman stands to transform the historical romance genre as we know it.]]> 336 T.J. Alexander 0593686209 Dani 0 to-read 4.11 2025 A Gentleman's Gentleman
author: T.J. Alexander
name: Dani
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Dark Maestro 217453559 From the author of The Violin Conspiracy and Symphony of Secrets comes a mesmerizing page-turner about a young Black musical virtuoso at the peak of his career who’s forced into hiding when his family runs afoul of a ruthless international cartel—and uses his music to fight back.

Curtis Wilson is a classical music prodigy. Having played since the age of five, he is that rare performer who, through sheer force of will and phenomenal talent, has clawed his way out of inner-city DC and risen to the heights of the classical music world—soloing with the New York Philharmonic. Zippy, his father, is a midlevel drug dealer, and Larissa, his father’s girlfriend, is a loving mother figure to Curtis and the heart of the family.

Then, when Zippy runs afoul of the kingpin who has provided his livelihood and nurtured his son’s talents, the family finds their lives in danger. With no choice but to run, they enter the witness protection program and abandon their former lives, including Curtis’s extraordinary career. When law enforcement seems unable to bring the cartel down, Curtis, Zippy, and Larissa realize that their only chance of returning to the way things were is to take on the cartel themselves—their own way.

A propulsive and moving story about sacrifice, loyalty, and the indomitable human spirit, TheDark Maestro is Slocumb at the height of his powers.]]> 416 Brendan Slocumb 0593687612 Dani 0 to-read 4.05 2025 The Dark Maestro
author: Brendan Slocumb
name: Dani
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life]]> 217245588 A guide to the art of journaling—and a meditation on the central questions of life—by the bestselling author of Between Two Kingdoms, with contributions from Hanif Abdurraqib, Jon Batiste, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, George Saunders, and many more

“The Book of Alchemy proves on every page that a creative response can be found in every moment of life—regardless of what is happening in the world.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love

From the time she was young, Suleika Jaouad has kept a journal. She’s used it to mark life's biggest occasions and to weather its most ferocious storms. Journaling has buoyed her through illness, heartbreak, and the deepest uncertainty. And she is not alone: for so many people, keeping a journal is an essential tool for navigating both the personal peaks and valleys and the collective challenges of modern life. More than ever, we need a space for puzzling through.

In The Book of Alchemy, Suleika explores the art of journaling and shares everything she’s learned about how this life-altering practice can help us tap into that mystical trait that exists in every human: creativity. She has gathered wisdom from one hundred writers, artists, and thinkers in the form of essays and writing prompts. Their insights invite us to inhabit a more inspired life.

A companion through challenging times, The Book of Alchemy is broken into themes ranging from new beginnings to love, loss, and rebuilding. Whether you’re a lifelong journaler or new to the practice, this book gives you the tools, direction, and encouragement to engage with discomfort, ask questions, peel back the layers, dream daringly, uncover your truest self—and in doing so, to learn to hold the unbearably brutal and astonishingly beautiful facts of life in the same palm.

Also includes essays from: Martha Beck � Nadia Bolz-Weber � Alain de Botton � Susan Cheever � Lena Dunham � Melissa Febos � Liana Finck � John Green � Marie Howe � Pico Iyer � Oliver Jeffers � Quintin Jones � Michael Koryta � Hanif Kureishi � Kiese Laymon � Cleyvis Natera � Ann Patchett � Esther Perel � Adrienne Raphel � Jenny Rosenstrach � Sarah Ruhl � Sharon Salzberg � Dani Shapiro � Mavis Staples � Linda Sue Park � Nafissa Thompson-Spires � Jia Tolentino � Lindy West � Lidia Yuknavitch � And many others]]> 336 Suleika Jaouad 0593734637 Dani 0 to-read 4.53 2025 The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life
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]]> <![CDATA[The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)]]> 205335957
Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum's windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams.

Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil's visions. But when Sybil's fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral's cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she'd rather avoid Rodrick's dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.]]> 400 Rachel Gillig 0356522962 Dani 0 to-read 4.62 2025 The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)
author: Rachel Gillig
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]]> When the Tides Held the Moon 213075628 In Coney Island, true love rises to the surface. With lush illustrations and buoyant prose, Venessa Vida Kelley forges an unforgettable New York fairytale.

Benigno “Benny� Caldera knows an orphaned Boricua blacksmith in 1910s New York City can’t call himself an artist. But the ironwork tank he creates for famed Coney Island playground, Luna Park, astounds the eccentric sideshow proprietor who commissioned it. He invites Benny to join the show’s eclectic cast and share in their shocking secret: the tank will cage their newest exhibit, a live merman stolen from the salty banks of the East River.

More than a mythic marvel, Benny soon comes to know the merman Río as a kindred spirit, wise and more compassionate than any human he’s ever met. Despite their different worlds, what begins as a friendship of necessity deepens to love, leading Benny’s heart into uncharted waters where he can no longer ignore the agonizing truth of Río’s captivity—and his own.

Releasing Río could mean losing his found family, his new home, and his soulmate forever. Yet Benny’s courageous choice may just reveal a love strong enough to free them both.]]> 464 Venessa Vida Kelley 1645661539 Dani 0 to-read 4.39 2025 When the Tides Held the Moon
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]]> My Name Is Emilia del Valle 217245557 In this spellbinding historical novel from the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Petal of the Sea and The Wind Knows My Name, a young writer journeys to South America to uncover the truth about her father—and herself.

In San Francisco 1866, an Irish nun, left pregnant and abandoned following a torrid relationship with a Chilean aristocrat, gives birth to a daughter named Emilia Del Valle. Raised by a loving stepfather, Emilia grows into an independent thinker and a self-sufficient young woman.

To pursue her passion for writing, she is willing to defy societal norms. At the age of sixteen, she begins to publish pulp fiction under a man’s pen name. When these fictional worlds can't contain her sense of adventure any longer, she turns to journalism, convincing an editor at the San Francisco Examiner to hire her. There she is paired with another talented reporter, Eric Whelan.

As she proves herself, her restlessness returns, until an opportunity arises to cover a brewing civil war in Chile. She seizes it, along with Eric, and while there, begins to uncover the truth about her father and the country that represents her roots. But as the war escalates, Emilia finds herself in danger and at a crossroads, questioning both her identity and her destiny.

A riveting tale of self-discovery and love from one of the most masterful storytellers of our time, My Name is Emilia del Valle introduces a character who will never let hold of your heart.]]> 304 Isabel Allende 059397509X Dani 0 to-read 4.02 2025 My Name Is Emilia del Valle
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]]> The Eights 216522711 They didn't know they would change each other.

Following the unlikely friendship of four of the first ever women to matriculate at Oxford University in the aftermath of the First World War, a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination and the many forms courage can take.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world's most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne and Otto (collectively known as The Eights) have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Politically-minded Beatrice, daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way - and some friends her own age. Otto was a nurse during the war but is excited to return to her socialite lifestyle in Oxford - where she hopes to find distraction from the memories that haunt her. And finally Marianne, the quiet, clever daughter of a village pastor, who has a shocking secret she must hide from everyone, even her new friends, if she is to succeed.

But Oxford's dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.]]> 384 Joanna Miller 0593851412 Dani 0 to-read 3.87 2025 The Eights
author: Joanna Miller
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]]> Cloistered: My Years as a Nun 126917977
Cloistered takes the reader deep into the hidden world of a traditional Carmelite monastery as it approaches the third Millennium and tells the story of an intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, in Northumberland, Catherine trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfold her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, quite unaware of the complexity and dangers that lie ahead.

Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself. When Sister Catherine realises that a mesmerising cult of the personality, with the distortions it entails, has replaced the ancient ideal of religious obedience, she is faced with a dilemma. Will she submit to this, or will she be forced to speak out?

An exploration of the limits of trust, Cloistered shows us how far youthful idealism can take us along the road of self-surrender, and of how much harm is done when institutional flaws go unacknowledged. Catherine’s honest account of her time in the monastery � and her dramatic flight from it � is both a love song to a lost community and an exploration of what is most compelling, yet most potentially destructive when closed human groups become laws unto themselves.]]> 342 Catherine Coldstream Dani 0 to-read 3.83 2024 Cloistered: My Years as a Nun
author: Catherine Coldstream
name: Dani
average rating: 3.83
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]]> <![CDATA[Be Ready When the Luck Happens]]> 209192698 In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.

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

From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.]]> 320 Ina Garten 0593799895 Dani 0 to-read, tbr-i-actually-own 4.25 2024 Be Ready When the Luck Happens
author: Ina Garten
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]]> <![CDATA[Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women]]> 61086853
In the last few years, as identity politics has taken hold, middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings, the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused.

Hags asks the question why these women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme - care work, beauty, violence, political organization, sex - and explores it in relation to middle-aged women's beliefs, bodies and choices. Victoria Smith traces the attitudes she describes back to the same anxieties about older women that drove Early Modern witch hunts, and explores the very specific reasons why this type of misogyny is so powerful today. The demonisation of hags has never felt more now.

Victoria Smith has decided in this book that she will be the Karen so nobody else has to be, and she ends on a positive note, exploring potential solutions which can benefit all women, hags and hags-in-waiting.]]> 368 Victoria Smith 0349726965 Dani 0 to-read 3.51 2023 Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement]]> 200679358 352 Susannah Gibson 0393881385 Dani 0 to-read 3.92 2024 The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement
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name: Dani
average rating: 3.92
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]]> <![CDATA[Hitchcock's Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director's Dark Obsession]]> 78299256
Alfred Hitchcock was fixated—not just on the dark, twisty stories that became his hallmark, but also by the blond actresses who starred in many of his iconic movies. The director of North by Northwest , Rear Window , and other classic films didn’t much care if they wore wigs, got their hair coloring out of a bottle, or were the rarest human specimen—a natural blonde—as long as they shone with a golden veneer on camera. The lengths he went to in order to showcase (and often manipulate) these women would become the stuff of movie legend. But the women themselves have rarely been at the center of the story, until now.

In Hitchcock’s Blondes, bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer offers an intimate journey into the lives of eight legendary actresses whose stories helped chart the course of the troubled, talented director’s career—from his early days in the British film industry, to his triumphant American debut, to his Hollywood heyday and beyond. Through the stories of June Howard-Tripp, Madeleine Carroll, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and Tippi Hedren—who starred in fourteen of Hitchcock’s most notable films and who bore the brunt of his fondness and sometimes fixation—we can finally start to see the enigmatic man himself. After all, “his� blondes (as he thought of them) knew the truths of his art, his obsessions and desires, as well as anyone.

From the acclaimed author of Capote’s Women comes an intimate, revealing, and thoroughly modern look at both the enduring art created by a man obsessed…and the private toll that fixation took on the women in his orbit.]]> 336 Laurence Leamer 0593542975 Dani 0 to-read 3.34 2023 Hitchcock's Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director's Dark Obsession
author: Laurence Leamer
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average rating: 3.34
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]]> <![CDATA[The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective]]> 210129411 A revelatory history of the women who brought Victorian criminals to account—and how they became a cultural sensation

From Wilkie Collins to the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the traditional image of the Victorian detective is male. Few people realise that women detectives successfully investigated Victorian Britain, working both with the police and for private agencies, which they sometimes managed themselves.

Sara Lodge recovers these forgotten women’s lives. She also reveals the sensational role played by the fantasy female detective in Victorian melodrama and popular fiction, enthralling a public who relished the spectacle of a cross-dressing, fist-swinging heroine who got the better of love rats, burglars, and murderers alike.

How did the morally ambiguous work of real women detectives, sometimes paid to betray their fellow women, compare with the exploits of their fictional counterparts, who always save the day? Lodge’s book takes us into the murky underworld of Victorian society on both sides of the Atlantic, revealing the female detective as both an unacknowledged labourer and a feminist icon.]]> 384 Sara Lodge 0300277881 Dani 0 to-read 3.71 2024 The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective
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average rating: 3.71
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]]> Upon a Starlit Tide 211004131 A dark and enchanting fairy tale-inspired historical fantasy combining elements of "The Little Mermaid" and "Cinderella" into a wholly original tale of love, power, and betrayal.

Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758.
For Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of one of Saint-Malo's wealthiest ship-owners, the high walls of the city are more hindrance than haven. While her sisters are interested in securing advantageous marriages, Luce dreams of escaping her elegant but stifling home and joining a ship's crew. Only Samuel—Luce's best friend and an English smuggler—understands her longing for the sea, secretly teaching her to sail whenever she can sneak away. For Luce, the stolen time on the water with Samuel is precious.

One stormy morning, Luce's plans are blown off course when she rescues Morgan de Chatelaine, the youngest son of the most powerful ship-owner in Saint-Malo, from the sea. Immediately drawn to his charm and sense of adventure, she longs to attend the glittering ball held in honor of his safe return and begins to contemplate a different kind of future for herself.

But it is not only Luce's hopes at stake—the local fae are leaving Brittany and taking their magic with them, while the long-standing war with the English means Saint-Malo is always at risk of attack. As Luce is plunged into a world of magic, brutality, and seduction, secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface. The truth of her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper.

Or the scales of a sea-maid's tail.]]> 432 Kell Woods 125085251X Dani 0 to-read 4.30 2025 Upon a Starlit Tide
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]]> Raising Hare: A Memoir 214269337 A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman’s unlikely friendship with a wild hare.

Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.

In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare—a leveret—that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how impossible it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, stoats, feral cats, raptors, and even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death.

Raising Hare chronicles their journey together, while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness first-hand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.]]> 285 Chloe Dalton 0593701844 Dani 0 to-read 4.42 2025 Raising Hare: A Memoir
author: Chloe Dalton
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]]> <![CDATA[Spells, Strings, and Forgotten Things (Sisters of Light and Shadow, #1)]]> 214269343 A young witch cursed with sacrificing memories to cast spells must decide how much she’s willing to lose to save her town in this thrilling tale of magic, love, and self-discovery—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic.

In the small town of Gold Springs, Calliope Petridi and her two sisters carefully guard the secret of their magic and the price they must pay to practice it: memories. The more powerful the magic, the greater the memory required.

Luckily, all Calliope wants to do is forget. Forget the mother who left them without a trace. Forget the cracks in her relationships with her judgmental oldest sister, Thalia, and her distant middle sister, Eurydice. Forget about the very cost of her magic. And most of all, forget the way the love of her life shattered her heart two years ago.

But when an ancient evil awakens in their town, the fragile thread that holds the sisters together breaks. As their magic slowly begins to fade, Calliope accidentally binds herself to an annoyingly handsome leader of a rival coven infamous for their ruthless pursuit of power.

Battling a sizzling chemistry to a man she can't trust, Calliope needs to confront her sisters and the painful memories of her past, dark family secrets, and ancient magic in order to keep the town and all she loves safe. But will she have anything left of herself?]]> 400 Breanne Randall 0593875001 Dani 0 to-read 3.55 2025 Spells, Strings, and Forgotten Things (Sisters of Light and Shadow, #1)
author: Breanne Randall
name: Dani
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]]> The Bookshop Woman 198403445 A love story to climbing all the way down a book's rope, free diving to its bottom, and then resurfacing at its close, ready to breathe a different kind of air.

Nanako Hanada's life is in crisis. Recently separated from her husband, living in youth hostels and internet cafes, her work is going no better. Book sales at the eccentric Village Vanguard bookstore in Tokyo, which Nanako manages, are dwindling. Fallen out of love in all aspects of her life, Nanako realises how narrow her life has become, with no friends outside of her colleagues, and no hobbies apart from reading and arranging books.

That's when Nanako, in a bid to inject some excitement into her life, joins a meet-up site where people meet for 30-minute bursts to find romance, build a network, or just share ideas. She describes herself as a sexy bookseller who will give you a personalised book recommendation. In the year that follows, Nanako meets an eclectic range of strangers, some of whom wanted more than just a book, others she became real friends with.

Written with a subtle but sharp sense of humour, The Bookshop Woman is a heart-warming book about a bookseller's self-discovery. It offers a glimpse into bookselling in Japan and the quirky side of Tokyo and its people. Books, once again, offer inspiration and serve as channels for human communication.]]> 204 Nanako Hanada 1914240790 Dani 0 to-read 3.59 2018 The Bookshop Woman
author: Nanako Hanada
name: Dani
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2018
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