Alexa (Library of Alexa)'s bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 01 Apr 2025 13:01:02 -0700 60 Alexa (Library of Alexa)'s bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Electric State 38642323 A teen girl and her robot embark on a cross-country mission in this illustrated science fiction story, perfect for fans of Ready Player One and Black Mirror.

In late 1997, a runaway teenager and her small yellow toy robot travel west through a strange American landscape where the ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside, along with the discarded trash of a high-tech consumerist society addicted to a virtual-reality system. As they approach the edge of the continent, the world outside the car window seems to unravel at an ever faster pace, as if somewhere beyond the horizon, the hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.]]> 144 Simon StĂĄlenhag 1501181416 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.42 2017 The Electric State
author: Simon StĂĄlenhag
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Truth According to Ember 201751362 A Chickasaw woman who can’t catch a break serves up a little white lie that snowballs into much more in this witty and irresistible rom-com by debut author Danica Nava.

Ember Lee Cardinal has not always been a liar—well, not for anything that counted at least. But her job search is not going well and when her resumé is rejected for the thirty-seventh time, she takes matters into her own hands. She gets “creative� listing her qualifications and answers the ethnicity question on applications with a lie—a half-lie, technically. No one wanted Native American Ember, but white Ember has just landed her dream accounting job on Park Avenue (Oklahoma City, that is). Accountant Ember thrives in corporate life—and her love life seems to be looking up Danuwoa Colson, the IT guy and fellow Native who caught her eye on her first day, seems to actually be interested in her too. Despite her unease over the no-dating policy at work, they start to see each other secretly, which somehow makes it even hotter? But when they're caught in a compromising position on a work trip, a scheming colleague blackmails Ember, threatening to expose their relationship. As the manipulation continues to grow, so do Ember’s lies. She must make the hard decision to either stay silent or finally tell the truth, which could cost her everything.]]> 382 Danica Nava 0593642619 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 currently-reading 3.74 2024 The Truth According to Ember
author: Danica Nava
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008]]> 60323152 An explosive oral history of emo's takeover from 1999 to 2008, featuring

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE, FALL OUT BOY, PARAMORE, PANIC! AT THE DISCO, TAKING BACK SUNDAY, JIMMY EAT WORLD, DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL, AND MANY MORE

If Meet Me in the Bathroom traced New York City's early 2000's rock scene, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? gives the inside story of the turn-of-the-millennium emo subculture that became bigger than anyone thought possible. There was Pete Wentz, the Fall Out Boy leader who launched a litany of scene-stealing bands and preposterous side-hustles, and Gerard Way, the wizard behind My Chemical Romance and The Black Parade. Panic! At the Disco and Paramore emerged soon after--a pair of intrepid outsiders who got massive playing by their own rules. As they ascended, MySpace took over the internet and the age of influencers dawned, with emo its choice aesthetic.

Music journalist Chris Payne experienced emo's mainstream takeover from sweaty crowds and mosh pits growing up in New Jersey. In Where Are Your Boys Tonight? he offers an authoritative, impassioned, and occasionally absurd account told through interviews with more than 150 people, from the scene's biggest bands, producers, and managers to the teenage fans who helped redefine American music culture.]]> 496 Chris Payne 0063251280 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.41 2023 Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008
author: Chris Payne
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)]]> 2767052
Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun. . . .

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.]]> 374 Suzanne Collins Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 damn this still slaps 4.34 2008 The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2008
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/30
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves:
review:
damn this still slaps
]]> <![CDATA[The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy, #1)]]> 40004709
After Vasilisa's mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa's new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa's stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse's most frightening tales.

The Bear and the Nightingale is a magical debut novel from a gifted and gorgeous voice. It spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent.]]> 370 Katherine Arden Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 tbr_dec24, dnf 4.19 2017 The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy, #1)
author: Katherine Arden
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: tbr_dec24, dnf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere]]> 59723779 That I was born Puerto Rican was happenstance, but that I have no connection to what it means is no accident. My grandparents made conscious decisions and so did my father as part of the first generation born here in the States. And none of it bothered me until recently, which is probably why I can’t quite put my finger on any of this. I’m still grappling with what I’ve lost and how I can miss something I’ve never had.

Robert Lopez’s grandfather Sixto was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, in 1904, immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, where he lived in a racially proportioned apartment complex in East New York, Brooklyn, until his death in 1987. The family’s efforts to assimilate within their new homeland led to the near complete erasure of their heritage, culture, and language within two generations.

Little is known of Sixto—he may have been a longshoreman, a painter, or a boxer, but was most likely a longshoreman—or why he originally decided to leave Puerto Rico, other than that he was a meticulously slow eater who played the standup keyboard and guitar, and enjoyed watching baseball. Through family recollection, the constant banter volleyed across nets within Brooklyn’s diverse tennis community, as well as an imagined fabulist history drawn from Sixto’s remembered traits, in Dispatches From Puerto Nowhere: An American Story of Assimilation and Erasure, Robert Lopez paints a compassionate portrait of family that attempts to bridge the past to the present, and re-claim a heritage threatened by assimilation and erasure.]]> 224 Robert Lopez 1953387241 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 tbr_dec24, owned-tbr 3.86 Dispatches from Puerto Nowhere
author: Robert Lopez
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: tbr_dec24, owned-tbr
review:
Such a punch to my heart - I resonates so much with Lopez and his rumination on identity. I also really loved the sort of vignette style format this book used. It helped to balance the dark and the sad with the levity and the thoughtful which meant you can take it in tiny sips.
]]> <![CDATA[The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet]]> 55145261 A deeply moving and mind-expanding collection of personal essays in the first ever work of non-fiction from #1 internationally bestselling author John Green

The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.

Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.]]> 304 John Green 0525555218 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.37 2021 The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
author: John Green
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Punching the Air 49151299 From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Walter Dean Myers, and Elizabeth Acevedo.

The story that I thought

was my life

didn’t start on the day

I was born

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys� turns out to be true only when those boys are white.

The story that I think

will be my life

starts today

Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?

With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.]]> 400 Ibi Zoboi 0062996487 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 5 owned-tbr 4.40 2020 Punching the Air
author: Ibi Zoboi
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/21
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: owned-tbr
review:
Really beautiful and important piece of work - I can imagine myself recommending this widely. Highly recommend listening via audio!
]]> Snotgirl #16 221530927 SNOTGIRL is back! Now that allergy-suffering fashion influencer Lottie Person is officially in a couple with Caroline, the girl of her dreams, what kind of trouble will they get into next? Find out in this long-awaited new issue, picking up where SNOTGIRL #15 left off!
Select praise for
“Will appeal to longtime O’MALLEY fans and offer a challenging but entertaining perspective to young adults whose reality is mediated through the glow of their smartphones.� --School Library Journal
“SNOTGIRL could scarcely be more different from BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY’s past comic book projects, and yet its sheer weirdness, creativity and heart will appeal to fans of Scott Pilgrim and Seconds.� --IGN
“This comic features the best of O’MALLEY and elevates his writing thanks to HUNG’s fashionable, funny and feminine art, creating an absurd ride that hits close to home.� --CBR
RETAILERS TAKE NOTE! Lunar accounts will receive a 2-sided freebie poster promoting this New Story Arc & the available SNOTGIRL backlist trade paperbacks.]]> 32 Bryan Lee O'Malley Alexa (Library of Alexa) 3 to-read 4.29 Snotgirl #16
author: Bryan Lee O'Malley
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.29
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:
3.5, So happy to have this series back!! Nothing crazy happening in this episode but happy to see Lottie happy.
]]> <![CDATA[Royal Assassin (Farseer Trilogy, #2)]]> 23582628 Alternate cover can be found here.

Fitz has survived his first hazardous mission as king’s assassin, but is left little more than a cripple. Battered and bitter, he vows to abandon his oath to King Shrewd, remaining in the distant mountains. But love and events of terrible urgency draw him back to the court at Buckkeep, and into the deadly intrigues of the royal family.

Renewing their vicious attacks on the coast, the Red-Ship Raiders leave burned-out villages and demented victims in their wake. The kingdom is also under assault from within, as treachery threatens the throne of the ailing king. In this time of great danger, the fate of the kingdom may rest in Fitz’s hands—and his role in its salvation may require the ultimate sacrifice.]]> 675 Robin Hobb Alexa (Library of Alexa) 5 tbr_nov24 4.24 1996 Royal Assassin (Farseer Trilogy, #2)
author: Robin Hobb
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1996
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: tbr_nov24
review:
Ugh omg I truly deeply love the characters in this book and I know my heart will only be broken in time. I love the Fool and am so so interested to know more. I adore how slow paced and carefully plotted this series is so far and how vast I know the story will end up being. I so appreciate the balance of this story - the stakes are extremely high and the topics serious without being gratuitously violent and while maintaining moments of love, hope, and levity. Can't wait to finish off this trilogy and continue in the Realm!! (also we all agree that Verity is super hot right?)
]]> The Mistletoe Motive 59567857 From the author of THE BERGMAN BROTHERS series comes a slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers holiday romance, perfect for fans of THE HATING GAME and YOU'VE GOT MAIL.

He loathes the holidays. She loves them. She’s full of festive cheer. He’s brimming with Bah, Humbugs. Besides unreasonably seasonable names, the only thing Jonathan Frost and Gabriella Di Natale have in common is a healthy dose of mutual contempt. Well, that and the same place of employment at the city’s most beloved independent bookstore, Bailey’s Bookshop. But when the store’s owners confess its dire financial state, Jonathan and Gabby discover another unfortunate commonality: the imminent threat of unemployment.

With the Baileys� requests to minimize expenses, win new customers, and make record sales dancing in their heads, Jonathan and Gabby conclude—barring a financial Christmas miracle—one of them will soon be cut from the payroll. Neither are willing to step down from their position, so they strike a bargain: whoever has more sales in December gets to stay on in the new year; the loser will resign. With a lifetime's worth of festive tricks up her sleeve, Gabby should easily outsell her nemesis, except the unreadable Mr. Frost’s every move seems purely designed to throw her off her game.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Gabby's deceptive ex won't quit pursuing her, and her anonymous online friend suggests they take a break. Worst of all, as the pressure mounts to save the bookshop and her job, Gabby meets a new, tender side of Jonathan. Is this the same man she's called her cold-hearted enemy?

Maybe he’s got a motive she just can’t figure out—or maybe Jonathan Frost isn’t as chilly as she once thought. Maybe Jonathan and Gabby already know—and love—each other in ways they never thought possible.

This is an #OwnVoices story for its portrayal of autism by an autistic author.]]> 185 Chloe Liese 1774536781 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 3 3.78 2021 The Mistletoe Motive
author: Chloe Liese
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:
2.5, Pretty cute and very festive loose retelling of You've Got Mail. Fun for the season and I really appreciated the representation but ultimately a little too sentimental for my personal tastes!
]]> <![CDATA[Moon of the Crusted Snow (Moon, #1)]]> 39082248
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.

Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.]]> 213 Waubgeshig Rice 1770414002 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 tbr_dec24, dnf 3.83 2018 Moon of the Crusted Snow (Moon, #1)
author: Waubgeshig Rice
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: tbr_dec24, dnf
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)]]> 35519109
Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit.

But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue?

And what will become of it when it’s caught?]]> 163 Martha Wells Alexa (Library of Alexa) 5 tbr_dec24 4.38 2018 Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)
author: Martha Wells
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: tbr_dec24
review:
4.5, Had such a fun time with this one! Murderbot has become one of my favorite characters to follow and I can't wait to continue this series. Wells writes action so well but manages to keep the tone overall light - even during stressful and emotional moments. This book series is almost cozy??
]]> Babel 57945316 From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?]]> 544 R.F. Kuang 0063021420 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 24in24 4.17 2022 Babel
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: 24in24
review:
The quality and uniqueness of this book is so extremely high - I am very much looking forward to reading more from R.F. Kuang!! I wanted this to be perfect for me so badly and it was just shy of that - mostly due to personal preferences. I lost steam a little bit at the halfway to 2/3rd mark and at team really wanted more that Robin's perspective.
]]> You Had Me at Hola 52585101 Leading Ladies do not end up on tabloid covers.Ěý

After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Planâ€� should be easy enough to follow—until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez.Ěý

Leading Ladies don’t need a man to be happy.Ěý

After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worried his career is dead as well. Joining this new cast as a last-minute addition will give him the chance to show off his acting chops to American audiences and ping the radar of Hollywood casting agents. To make it work, he’ll need to generate smoking-hot on-screen chemistry with Jasmine. Easier said than done, especially when a disastrous first impression smothers the embers of whatever sexual heat they might have had.Ěý

Leading Ladies do not rebound with their new costars.Ěý

With their careers on the line, Jasmine and Ashton agree to rehearse in private. But rehearsal leads to kissing, and kissing leads to a behind-the-scenes romance worthy of a soap opera. While their on-screen performance improves, the media spotlight on Jasmine soon threatens to destroy her new image and expose Ashton’s most closely guarded secret.]]> 365 Alexis Daria 0062959921 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 3 24in24, tbr_dec24, owned-tbr 3.74 2020 You Had Me at Hola
author: Alexis Daria
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: 24in24, tbr_dec24, owned-tbr
review:
This was so sweet and fun!! Loved the representation - not just in the main characters but in the full cast and the conversations being had. I felt the conflict was just a bit too long but ultimately I really enjoyed the story and the romance. Looking forward to reading more from Alexis Daria in the future.
]]> The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms 53847114
Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate - and gods and mortals - are bound inseparably together.]]> 412 N.K. Jemisin Alexa (Library of Alexa) 3 owned-tbr, tbr_nov24 3.90 2010 The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: owned-tbr, tbr_nov24
review:
Until about 250 pages in I might have given this 2 stars and not continued in the series. And then the remaining 40% really charmed me! I think this really suffered from clunky world-building and pacing up front. I wish we had started the story at a different moment in time and really leaned into the mystery solving force behind Yeine. Still unsure if I will continue but I am open to it.
]]> Arboreality 61259096
A novella expansion of the Sturgeon Award winning short story “An Important Failure.”]]> 117 Rebecca Campbell Alexa (Library of Alexa) 3 tbr_nov24 3.95 2022 Arboreality
author: Rebecca Campbell
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/30
date added: 2024/11/30
shelves: tbr_nov24
review:
2.5, Not loving this is totally my fault, not the book's! It delivered exactly what it said it would, it's just not really to my liking. I don't love following music lovers / musicians so I really struggled with the long story in the middle. In general, I struggled with the vignette style because I could not keep the characters straight - maybe from lack of distinction but also from lack of my personal interest.
]]> The Lamb 216867498
But Mama’s want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a beautiful, white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires, and make her own bid for freedom.

With this gothic coming-of-age tale, novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire, and animal instincts—and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.]]> 336 Lucy Rose 1399619713 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.90 2025 The Lamb
author: Lucy Rose
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)]]> 50794839 Ambition will fuel him.
Competition will drive him.
But power has its price.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined—every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.]]> 528 Suzanne Collins 1338635174 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 1 3.88 2020 The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves:
review:
1.5, dude I actively hated this. I was honestly never really interested in reading it because I really didn't feel like it needed to exist but I am doing a series reread so here we are. I felt the characters were extremely dull and Snow's "arc" was basically a flat line. Why was this so long?? I could see this being an interesting short story or something but damn the pacing was so slow and dragged out. I kept waiting for Lucy Gray to be interesting and unfortunately she was not. Huge bummer.
]]> <![CDATA[The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet]]> 7141642
But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?�

A magnificent mix of luminous writing, prodigious research, and heedless imagination, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is the most impressive achievement of its eminent author.]]> 479 David Mitchell 1400065453 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 dnf 4.01 2010 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
author: David Mitchell
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> Oye 196845489
A young woman reckons with her rowdy, unpredictable family and the revelation of their long-buried history in this wildly inventive debut.

“Yes, hi, Mari. It’s me. I’m over my tantrum and finally calling you back. But you have to promise that you won’t say anything to Mom or Abue about this, okay? They’ll set the house on fire if they find out…�

Luciana is the baby of her large Colombian American family. And despite usually being relegated to the sidelines, she now finds herself the voice of reason in the middle of their unexpected crisis. Her older sister, Mari, is away at college and reduced to a mere listening ear on the other end of their many phone calls, so when South Florida residents are ordered to evacuate before a hurricane, it’s up to Luciana to deal with her eccentric grandmother, Abue, who’s refusing to leave. But the storm isn’t the only danger. Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, is given a crushing medical diagnosis. While she’d prefer to ignore it and focus on upholding her reputation and her looks instead, the news sets Abue on her own personal journey, with Luciana reluctantly along for the ride.

When Abue moves into Luciana’s bedroom, their complicated bond only intensifies. Luciana would rather be skating or sneaking out to meet girls, but Abue’s wild demands and unpredictable antics are a welcome distraction from Luciana’s misguided mother, absent sister, and uncertain future. Forced to step into the role of caretaker, translator, and keeper of the devastating secrets that Abue begins to share, Luciana suddenly finds herself center stage, facing down adulthood—and rising to the occasion.

As Luciana chronicles the events of her upended senior year over the phone, Oye feels like the most entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel by an author as original as she is insightful.]]> 336 Melissa Mogollon 0593594908 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, owned-tbr 3.63 2024 Oye
author: Melissa Mogollon
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read, owned-tbr
review:

]]> But the Girl 201816644 “Having been Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina and Esther Greenwood all my life, my writing was an opportunity for the reader to have to be me…â€�Ěý

Girl was born on the very day her parents and grandmother immigrated from Malaysia to Australia. The story goes that her mother held on tight to her pelvic muscles in an effort to gift her the privilege of an Australian passport. But it's hard to be the embodiment of all your family's hopes and dreams, especially in a country that's hostile to your very existence.Ěý

When Girl receives a scholarship to travel to the UK, she is finally free for the first time. In London and then Scotland she is meant to be working on a PhD on Sylvia Plath and writing a postcolonial novel. But Girl can't stop thinking about her upbringing and the stories of the people who raised her. How can she reconcile their expectations with her reality? Did Sylvia Plath have this problem? What even is a 'postcolonial novel'? And what if the story of becoming yourself is not about carving out a new identity, but learning to understand the people who made you who you are?]]> 261 Jessica Zhan Mei Yu 1951213998 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.67 2024 But the Girl
author: Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Rachel Incident 63094957
Rachel is a student working at a bookstore when she meets James, and it’s love at first sight. Effervescent and insistently heterosexual, James soon invites Rachel to be his roommate and the two begin a friendship that changes the course of both their lives forever. Together, they run riot through the streets of Cork city, trying to maintain a bohemian existence while the threat of the financial crash looms before them.

When Rachel falls in love with her married professor, Dr. Fred Byrne, James helps her devise a reading at their local bookstore, with the goal that she might seduce him afterwards. But Fred has other desires. So begins a series of secrets and compromises that intertwine the fates of James, Rachel, Fred, and Fred’s glamorous, well-connected, bourgeois wife. Aching with unrequited love, shot through with delicious, sparkling humor, The Rachel Incident is a triumph.]]> 304 Caroline O'Donoghue 0593535707 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.06 2023 The Rachel Incident
author: Caroline O'Donoghue
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> First Love 61149963
Winner of the prestigious Naoki Prize and a Japanese bestseller, First Love is part psychological drama, part legal thriller.]]> 280 Rio Shimamoto 1915829135 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.94 2018 First Love
author: Rio Shimamoto
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> My Darling Dreadful Thing 193544852
Spirits are drawn to salt, be it blood or tears.

Roos Beckman has a spirit companion only she can see. Ruth—strange, corpse-like, and dead for centuries—is the light of Roos' life. That is, until the wealthy young widow Agnes Knoop visits one of Roos' backroom seances, and the two strike up a connection.

Soon, Roos is whisked away to the crumbling estate Agnes inherited upon the death of her husband, where an ill woman haunts the halls, strange smells drift through the air, and mysterious stone statues reside in the family chapel. Something dreadful festers in the manor, but still, the attraction between Roos and Agnes is undeniable.

Then, someone is murdered.

Poor, alone, and with a history of 'hysterics', Roos is the obvious culprit. With her sanity and innocence in question, she'll have to prove who—or what—is at fault or lose everything she holds dear.

"A Sapphic seance of preternatural proportions, My Darling Dreadful Thing summons a stunning new literary voice to be reckoned with. Johanna van Veen reaches beyond the veil to conjure up a gothic shocker like no other."—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters

©2024 Johanna van Veen (P)2024 Tantor]]> 375 Johanna van Veen 1728281547 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.85 2024 My Darling Dreadful Thing
author: Johanna van Veen
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Cat Person 38495921 She thought, brightly, This is the worst life decision I have ever made! And she marvelled at herself for a while, at the mystery of this person who'd just done this bizarre, inexplicable thing.

Margot meets Robert. They exchange numbers. They text, flirt and eventually have sex � the type of sex you attempt to forget. How could one date go so wrong?

Everything that takes place in Cat Person happens to countless people every day. But Cat Person is not an everyday story. In less than a week, Kristen Roupenian's New Yorker debut became the most read and shared short story in their website's history. This is the bad date that went viral. This is the conversation we’re all having.

This gift edition contains photographs by celebrated photographer Elinor Carucci, who was commissioned by the New Yorker to capture the image that accompanied Kristen Roupenian's Cat Person when it appeared in the magazine.]]> 59 Kristen Roupenian 147356123X Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.67 2018 Cat Person
author: Kristen Roupenian
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Yerba Buena 57693648 The debut adult novel by the bestselling and award-winning YA author Nina LaCour, following two women on a star-crossed journey toward each other

When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner.

When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts.

At once exquisite and expansive, astonishing in its humanity and heart, Yerba Buena is a love story for our time and a propulsive journey through the lives of two women finding their way in the world.]]> 304 Nina LaCour 1250810469 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, owned-tbr 3.85 2022 Yerba Buena
author: Nina LaCour
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: to-read, owned-tbr
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Touch of Darkness (Hades & Persephone #1)]]> 58750487
She remembered the words she had whispered to him in the back of the limo after La Rose. "You will worship me, and I won't even have to order you." His request felt sinful and devious, and she reveled in it.

She answered, "Yes."

---

Persephone is the Goddess of Spring in title only. Since she was a little girl, flowers have only shriveled at her touch. After moving to New Athens, she hoped to lead an unassuming life disguised as a mortal journalist. All of that changes when she sits down in a forbidden nightclub to play a hand of cards with a hypnotic and mysterious stranger.

Hades, God of the Dead, has built a gambling empire in the mortal world and his favorite bets are rumored to be impossible. But nothing has ever intrigued him as much as the goddess offering him a bargain he can't resist.

After her encounter with Hades, Persephone finds herself in a contract with the God of the Dead, and his terms are impossible: Persephone must create life in the Underworld or lose her freedom forever. The bet does more than expose Persephone's failure as a goddess, however. As she struggles to sow the seeds of her freedom, love for the God of the Dead grows―a love that is both captivating and forbidden.]]> 379 Scarlett St. Clair 1728258456 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, owned-tbr 3.87 2019 A Touch of Darkness (Hades & Persephone #1)
author: Scarlett St. Clair
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: to-read, owned-tbr
review:

]]> Private Rites 203579085 From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, centering three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a drowning world

It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.

More estranged than ever, the sisters� lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters� lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.]]> 291 Julia Armfield 125034431X Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.58 2024 Private Rites
author: Julia Armfield
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pride and Prejudice in Space 209318826 Pride and Prejudice is arguably the forerunner of all romantic comedies and certainly one of her most popular and irreverent works. And now, graphic designer and Nerdy Ink co-owner—and obsessive fan of Pride and Prejudice—Alexis Lampley gives this timeless, classic, Regency-era romance a new twist, setting it among the stars in a futuristic universe where spaceships and interplanetary travel is the daily norm. Featuring 50+ color illustrations of the Londinium Lunar System, drawings of gowns by Lydia Bennet, and spaceship designs by Elizabeth Bennet, this is a futuristic take on a classic by a dedicated Jane Austen fan, for Austen newbies and super-fans alike.]]> 504 Alexis Lampley 1454954116 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.73 Pride and Prejudice in Space
author: Alexis Lampley
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.73
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> New Mistakes 203613897 Classic human follies of desire and ambition foreground a revelatory awakening the planet needs.UFOs in formation in the sky. Vegetation—from cranky houseplants to wise old conifers—telepathically transmit their complaints. A cat gone viral rebels against her influencer caretaker. In California, interconnected strangers find one another, drawn by messy threads of sex and art, their lives falling apart as an extraordinary new reality arises.In this debut novel by Clement Goldberg, classic human follies of desire and ambition foreground a revelatory awakening the planet needs. By turns tender and hilarious, visionary, and perceptive, New Mistakes wittily shows us how we live today, and how we might, astonishingly, live tomorrow.]]> 232 Clement Goldberg 1635902258 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.05 New Mistakes
author: Clement Goldberg
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Lost and Lassoed (Rebel Blue Ranch, #3)]]> 207611511 She thrives in chaos. He prefers routine. The only thing they have in common? How much they hate each other.

From the author of Done and Dusted and Swift and Saddled, the highly anticipated next book in the Rebel Blue Ranch series, a small town romance in which enemies turn to lovers when they're forced to work together during one hot summer.

Teddy Andersen doesn’t have a plan. She’s never needed one before. She’s always been more of a go with the flow type of girl, but for some reason, the flow doesn’t seem to be going her way this time.

Her favorite vintage suede jacket has a hole in it, her sewing machine is broken, and her best friend just got engaged. Suddenly, everything feels like it’s starting to change. Teddy’s used to being a leader, but now she feels like she’s getting left behind, wondering if life in the small town she loves is enough for her anymore.

Gus Ryder has a lot on his plate. He doesn’t know what’s taking care of his family’s 8,000 acre ranch, or parenting his spunky six-year-old daughter, who is staying with him for the summer. Gus has always been the dependable one, but when his workload starts to overwhelm him, he has to admit that he can’t manage everything on his own. He needs help.

His little sister’s best friend, the woman he can’t stand, is not who he had in mind. But when no one else can step in, Teddy's the only option he’s got. Teddy decides to use the summer to try and figure out what she wants out of life. Gus, on the other hand, starts to worry that he’ll never find what he needs.

Tempers flare, tension builds, and for the first time ever, Gus and Teddy start to see each other in a different light. As new feelings start to simmer below the surface, they must decide whether or not to act on them. Can they keep things cool? Or will both of them get burned?]]> 313 Lyla Sage 0593732456 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 4.32 2024 Lost and Lassoed (Rebel Blue Ranch, #3)
author: Lyla Sage
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/14
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves:
review:
3.5, a fun installment! I really really liked Teddy as a character but felt this one was a bit insta lovey. I wanted more of Teddy’s next chapter and felt it was wrapped up a bit to easily. The kid was fairly unobtrusive - which is second best to not there at all for me lol.
]]> Queen of Teeth 58556306
Within forty-eight hours, Yaya Betancourt will go from discovering teeth between her thighs to being hunted by one of the most powerful corporations in America.

She assumes the vagina dentata is a side effect of a rare genetic condition caused by AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical, decades ago, when she and several thousand others were still in the womb.

But, when ABP corporate goons upend her life, she realizes her secondary teeth might be evidence of a new experiment for which she’s the most advanced test tube... a situation worsened when Yaya’s condition sprouts horns, tentacles, and a mind of its own.

On the run and transforming, Yaya may be either ABP’s greatest success, or the deadliest failure science has ever created.]]> 198 Hailey Piper 194633541X Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.75 2021 Queen of Teeth
author: Hailey Piper
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> King Lear 12938
The play tells us about families struggling between greed and cruelty, on the one hand, and support and consolation, on the other. Emotions are extreme, magnified to gigantic proportions. We also see old age portrayed in all its vulnerability, pride, and, perhaps, wisdom—one reason this most devastating of Shakespeare’s tragedies is also perhaps his most moving.

The authoritative edition of King Lear from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play

-Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play

-Scene-by-scene plot summaries

-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases

-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language

-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play

-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books

-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Susan Snyder

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.]]> 339 William Shakespeare Alexa (Library of Alexa) 3 3.91 1605 King Lear
author: William Shakespeare
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1605
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves:
review:
I have read many and seen many but somehow knew nothing about this one! Always fun to unpack a new Shakespeare story and finally get all of the homages - Tigers, Not Daughters and If We Were Villain finally make sense. I honestly struggled a bit to understand who the villain was here for a while until Lear's daughters became scooby-doo level. I thought they were kind of in the right for telling their dad not to bring 100 partying men to their house.
]]> 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 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, fae 3.97 2025 The Rose Bargain
author: Sasha Peyton Smith
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read, fae
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Cursed Son (Remnants of the Fallen Kingdom, #1)]]> 203805180 Romantic & sexy dreams link a false princess to a dangerous, disgraced fae prince in this fun, steamy enemies-to-lovers romantasy.

In her dreams, he envelops her in love. In real life, he imprisons her in ice.

Assassin, liar, impersonator—dreamer.

As a royal decoy, trained to replace the Krastel princess even in a political marriage, Astra’s life is not her own. With a duty like that, how can she dream about love?

And yet she knows she has a kindred soul. She can feel his presence every night, holding her in his arms, surrounding her with his warmth.

But ice-cold reality crashes in when Astra’s carriage is attacked by the Crystal Court’s disgraced prince. Banished for heinous crimes and armed with powerful relics, he’s a wielder of mighty magic and can even penetrate minds.

It turns out that he is the man in her dreams.

And this is about to get very, very awkward.

A Cursed Son is a fun, sexy, enemies-to-lovers romantic fantasy for fans of fae, elemental magic, arranged marriage, forced proximity, snarky banter, and dream connection.]]> 420 Day Leitao 1990790143 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, fae 3.98 2024 A Cursed Son (Remnants of the Fallen Kingdom, #1)
author: Day Leitao
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves: to-read, fae
review:

]]> Orbital 123136728
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?]]> 207 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.55 2023 Orbital
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Other Valley 176450755
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it’s the same valley, the same town--except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.

When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present. Edme––who is brilliant, funny, and the only person to truly see Odile––is about to die. Sworn to secrecy in order to preserve the timeline, Odile now becomes the Conseil’s top candidate, yet she finds herself drawing closer to the doomed boy, imperiling her entire future.]]> 290 Scott Alexander Howard 1668015471 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.85 2024 The Other Valley
author: Scott Alexander Howard
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Intermezzo 208931300 An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family—but especially love—from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.]]> 454 Sally Rooney 0374602638 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.86 2024 Intermezzo
author: Sally Rooney
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Dangers of Smoking in Bed 57100060
Tarinoissa uhrataan pahoille pyhimyksille, kiihotutaan sydänten sykkeestä, palvotaan rokkareita (kirjaimellisesti!), puhutaan sotilasjuntan murhaamille spiritismilaudan avulla. Buenos Airesin katujen svengi yhdistyy pohjoisargentiinalaiseen mustaan magiaan ja maan väkivaltaiseen poliittiseen historiaan, poppiin, hulluuteen ja verentahrimaan glitteriin.]]> 187 Mariana Enríquez 178378671X Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.69 2009 The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
author: Mariana EnrĂ­quez
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Share of Night 61111034
A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

For Gaspar, the son, this maniacal cult is his destiny. As the Order tries to pull him into their evil, he and his father take flight, attempting to outrun a powerful clan that will do anything to ensure its own survival. But how far will Gaspar’s father go to protect his child? And can anyone escape their fate?

Moving back and forth in time, from London in the swinging 1960s to the brutal years of Argentina’s military dictatorship and its turbulent aftermath, Our Share of Night is a novel like no other: a family story, a ghost story, a story of the occult and the supernatural, a book about the complexities of love and longing with queer subplots and themes. This is the masterwork of one of Latin America’s most original novelists, “a mesmerizing writer,� says Dave Eggers, “who demands to be read.”]]> 588 Mariana Enríquez 0451495144 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.07 2019 Our Share of Night
author: Mariana EnrĂ­quez
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mexican Gothic 53152636
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And NoemĂ­, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 320 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0525620788 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 3.66 2020 Mexican Gothic
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves:
review:
(somehow my og review disappeared?) so glad I finally got to this one! really vibed with the story and the atmosphere but I felt the pacing and characterization was less that perfect.
]]> Sorrowland 48915089
But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future - outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.]]> 355 Rivers Solomon 0374266778 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.82 2021 Sorrowland
author: Rivers Solomon
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Private Rites 199313102 From the bestselling author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a haunting novel of three sisters navigating queer love and faith at the end of the world.

There’s no way to bury a body in earth which is flooded
It is a fact consigned to history along with almost everything else

It’s been raining for a long time now, for so long that the lands have reshaped themselves. Old places have been lost. Arcane rituals and religions have crept back into practice.

Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their estranged father dies. A famous architect revered for making the new world navigable, he had long cut himself off from public life. They find themselves uncertain of how to grieve his passing when everything around them seems to be ending anyway.

As the sisters come together to clear the grand glass house that is the pinnacle of his legacy, they begin to sense that the magnetic influence of their father lives on through it. Something sinister seems to be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always been unusually interested in their lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperilled world.]]> 327 Julia Armfield Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, tbr_dec24 3.85 2024 Private Rites
author: Julia Armfield
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read, tbr_dec24
review:

]]> Wild Seed (Patternmaster, #1) 39326788 As the acclaimed Patternist science fiction series begins, two immortals meet in the long-ago past—and mankind’s destiny is changed forever.

For a thousand years, Doro has cultivated a small African village, carefully breeding its people in search of seemingly unattainable perfection. He survives through the centuries by stealing the bodies of others, a technique he has so thoroughly mastered that nothing on Earth can kill him. But when a gang of New World slavers destroys his village, ruining his grand experiment, Doro is forced to go west and begin anew.
Ěý
He meets Anyanwu, a centuries-old woman whose means of immortality are as kind as his are cruel. She is a shapeshifter, capable of healing with a kiss, and she recognizes Doro as a tyrant. Though many humans have tried to kill them, these two demi-gods have never before met a rival. Now they begin a struggle that will last centuries and permanently alter the nature of humanity.

Hugo and Nebula award–winning author Octavia E. Butler’s sweeping cross-century epic places her “among the best of contemporary SF writers� (Houston Chronicle).
Ěý
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author’s estate.
]]> 440 Octavia E. Butler 1453265449 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, tbr_dec24 4.24 1980 Wild Seed (Patternmaster, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read, tbr_dec24
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Annual Migration of Clouds (The Annual Migration of Clouds #1)]]> 56996758
The world is nothing like it once was: climate disasters have wracked the continent, causing food shortages, ending industry, and leaving little behind. Then came Cad, mysterious mind-altering fungi that invade the bodies of the now scattered citizenry. Reid, a young woman who carries this parasite, has been given a chance to get away - to move to one of the last remnants of pre-disaster society - but she can't bring herself to abandon her mother and the community that relies on her.

When she's offered a coveted place on a dangerous and profitable mission, she jumps at the opportunity to set her family up for life, but how can Reid ask people to put their trust in her when she can't even trust her own mind?]]> 158 Premee Mohamed 1770415939 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.68 2021 The Annual Migration of Clouds (The Annual Migration of Clouds #1)
author: Premee Mohamed
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sabrina & Corina 40236964 A haunting debut story collection on friendship, mothers and daughters, and the deep-rooted truths of our homelands, centered on Latinas of indigenous ancestry that shines a new light on the American West.

Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s magnetic story collection breathes life into her Latina characters of indigenous ancestry and the land they inhabit. Set against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado–a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite–these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives: with caution, grace, and quiet force.

In “Sugar Babies,� ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth but tend to rise during land disputes. “Any Further West� follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In “Tomi,� a woman leaves prison and finds herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, “Sabrina & Corina,� a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual.

Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home.]]> 224 Kali Fajardo-Anstine Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.18 2019 Sabrina & Corina
author: Kali Fajardo-Anstine
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1)]]> 10763598
In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherworldly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages—not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers—beautiful, haunted Akiva—fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?]]> 420 Laini Taylor Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.05 2011 Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1)
author: Laini Taylor
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)]]> 10859388 288 Catherynne M. Valente Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.97 2011 The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)
author: Catherynne M. Valente
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)]]> 1232 487 Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.26 2001 The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)
author: Carlos Ruiz ZafĂłn
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Pride and Prejudice 5509256 253 Jane Austen Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.22 1813 Pride and Prejudice
author: Jane Austen
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1813
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Fledgling 60925 Fledgling, Octavia Butler's new novel after a seven year break, is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly inhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted - and still wants - to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself. Fledgling is a captivating novel that tests the limits of "otherness" and questions what it means to be truly human.]]> 310 Octavia E. Butler 0446696161 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.80 2005 Fledgling
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> How to Read Now 60018643 How to Read Now explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories. Smart, funny, galvanizing, and sometimes profane, Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like The Watchmen to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico.

At once a deeply personal and searching history of one woman's reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today, How to Read Now empowers us to embrace a more complicated, embodied form of reading, inviting us to acknowledge complicated truths, ignite surprising connections, imagine a more daring solidarity, and create space for a riskier intimacy--within ourselves, and with each other.]]> 340 Elaine Castillo 0593489632 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.03 2022 How to Read Now
author: Elaine Castillo
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Only for the Week 152387598 You are cordially invited to the wedding of Amerie Cross and Arnold Hightower.

And now a toast from the maid of honor, Janelle Cross!

Hi everyone, thank you for being here.

Some of you may know me as the sister of the bride.

Some of you may know me as the ex-girlfriend of the groom.

But I'm willing to bet none of you know me as the woman secretly sleeping with the best man.

I am.

I know, I'm just as surprised as you.

It was only supposed to be for the week; but every kiss, adventure, and stolen moment with Rome Martin feels like it could last forever.

Oh well. What happens in Tulum stays in Tulum.

Right?]]> 244 Natasha Bishop Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 4.36 2023 Only for the Week
author: Natasha Bishop
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves:
review:
Low angst but still "fun" drama, great communicative main couple, funny, and well written! Really excited to read more from Natasha Bishop in the future!!
]]> <![CDATA[The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine]]> 61272713
First, we meet Stephen, the restaurant franchise manager who signed up for his company’s lowest priced plan, only to find himself facing insurmountable costs after a cancer diagnosis. Then Christian—a young college student and retail worker who can’t seem to get an accurate diagnosis, let alone treatment, for his debilitating knee pain. Geronimo, thirty-six years old, has liver failure, but his meager disability check disqualifies him for Medicaid—and puts a life-saving transplant just out of reach. Roxana, who’s lived in the community without a visa for more than two decades, suffers from complications related to her cancer treatment. And finally, there’s Ebonie, a young mother whose high-risk pregnancy endangers her life. Whether due to immigration status, income, or the vagaries of state Medicaid law, all five are denied access to care. For all five, this exclusion could prove life-threatening.

Each patient eventually lands at Ben Taub, the county hospital where Dr. Nuila has worked for over a decade. Nuila delves with empathy into the experiences of his patients, braiding their dramas into a singular narrative that contradicts the established idea that the only way to receive good healthcare is with good insurance. As readers follow the movingly rendered twists and turns in each patient’s story, it’s impossible to deny that our system is broken—and that Ben Taub’s innovative model, which emphasizes people over payments, could help light the path forward.]]> 370 Ricardo Nuila 1501198041 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.37 2020 The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine
author: Ricardo Nuila
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care]]> 61187307
Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.

The book is an assemblage of co-authored reflections, interviews and questions that are intended to aid and empower activists and organizers as they attempt to map their own journeys through the work of justice-making. It includes insights from a spectrum of experienced organizers, including Sharon Lungo, Carlos Saavedra, Ejeris Dixon, Barbara Ransby, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore about some of the difficult and joyous lessons they have learned in their work.]]> 296 Kelly Hayes Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.57 2023 Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
author: Kelly Hayes
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![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 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.33 2020 Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)
author: Dean Spade
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Kiss of Iron (Shadows of the Tenebris Court, #1)]]> 75565941 In the cut-throat game of court life, masters manipulate pawns—and you never know which one you are. One thing is certain: there’s no space on the board for love.

A penniless noblewoman, Kat is on the verge of losing everything when she’s offered a well-paid job that could be her salvation� or her ruin. Drawn into court’s deadly intrigues, she’s given a single task: spy on the powerful fae lord known as the Night Queen’s Shadow.

Bastian Marwood is handsome, ruthless, and cunning, but Kat can’t decide if he’s a threat to her kingdom or just her heart. To uncover the truth, she must play a dangerous game of desire and deceit, pushing him to reveal his secrets while protecting her own. But Bastian’s shadows have a hold on her—one she isn’t sure she wants to escape.

Kat soon learns that at court, nothing is as it seems and even the best-laid plans can be destroyed in an instant. As a pawn on the board, she can’t afford to fall victim to love—only fight for survival.

A Kiss of Iron is the first book in a new series featuring court intrigue, a morally grey hero, and an unforgettable enemies-to-lovers romance. Perfect for fans of Gild and From Blood and Ash.]]> 608 Clare Sager Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, fae 3.99 2023 A Kiss of Iron (Shadows of the Tenebris Court, #1)
author: Clare Sager
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/05
shelves: to-read, fae
review:

]]> Dracula Daily 61055723
He is deathly pale. His fingernails are cut to sharp points. His teeth protrude menacingly from his mouth in clouds of rancid breath� Yet even Count Dracula’s unnerving appearance and the frightened reaction of the local peasants fail to warn Jonathan Harker, a young man from England, about his host. Little does Jonathan know that this is a land where babies are snatched for their blood and wolves howl menacingly from the forest, where reality is far more frightening than superstition. What’s more, it’s going to be up to him to stop the world’s most bloodthirsty predator�

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel - it’s made up of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper clippings - and every part of it has a date. The whole story happens between May 3 and November 10. So: Dracula Daily will post a newsletter each day that something happens to the characters, in the same timeline that it happens to them.

Now you can read the book via email, in small digestible chunks - as it happens to the characters.]]> 111 Bram Stoker Alexa (Library of Alexa) 2 4.08 1897 Dracula Daily
author: Bram Stoker
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1897
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves:
review:
I don't know if reading via Dracula Daily was the way for me - it made this feel so extremely long and boring! Always fun to read a bit of an origin text and I am glad I can now read retellings and reimaginings knowing the source material.
]]> <![CDATA[Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)]]> 210367505 TOP SECRET: A clear and present threat exists. Open-ended. Existential. Confirmation via uncanny op. Nature of same: Unknown. Initiating entity: Unknown. Priority: High.

Ten years after the publication of Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance � award winners and international bestsellers all, the first the basis for a now-classic film � Jeff VanderMeer brings us back for a surprise fourth and final foray into Area X.

Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future � and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats.

Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line.

Old Jim’s investigation culminates in the first Central expedition into what has now been labeled Area X. A border has come down, and a full team � well trained but eccentric � has been assembled to find Area X’s “off switch� somewhere in the volatile, dangerous terrain that has mysteriously defied all attempts to be explored, mapped, or controlled. A landscape that, one way or another, seems to consume all who enter it.

Sweeping in scope and rich with ideas, iconic characters, and unpredictable adventure, Absolution converges the past, present, and future in terrifying, ecstatic, and mind-bending ways. It is the final word on one of the most provocative and popular speculative fiction series of our time.]]> 441 Jeff VanderMeer 0374616590 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 5 3.60 2024 Absolution (Southern Reach, #4)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2024/10/31
shelves:
review:
4.5, eeeep honestly just so happy to have more of this world. The first section had me so unbelievably hooked I was ready to claim this as my favorite book in the series. I felt the middle section was just a bit too slow to be perfect unfortunately. But overall, excellent writing, excellent world building, creepy as shit, and somehow funny. Excited for future Alexa to reread this whole series and unlock my brain some more.
]]> The World Doesn't Require You 41817522

Among its residents—wildly spanning decades, perspectives, and species—are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God’s last son; Tyrone, a ruthless PhD candidate, whose dissertation about a childhood game ignites mayhem in the neighboring, once-segregated town of Port Yooga; and Jim, an all-too-obedient robot who serves his Master. As the book builds to its finish with Special Topics in Loneliness Studies, a fully-realized novella, two unhinged professors grapple with hugely different ambitions, and the reader comes to appreciate the intricacy of the world Scott has created—one where fantasy and reality are eternally at war.]]> 304 Rion Amilcar Scott 1631495380 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 dnf 3.64 2019 The World Doesn't Require You
author: Rion Amilcar Scott
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> Ripe 63142995
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.]]> 304 Sarah Rose Etter Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 owned-tbr, to-read 3.60 2023 Ripe
author: Sarah Rose Etter
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves: owned-tbr, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gorgeous Gruesome Faces (Gorgeous Gruesome Faces, #1)]]> 63005207 Yellowjackets meets She Is a Haunting in this debut speculative thriller that follows a disgraced teen idol who comes face-to-face with the demons of her past in a glittering, cutthroat K-pop competition.

After a shocking scandal that abruptly ended her teen popstar career, eighteen-year-old Sunny Lee spends her days longing for her former life and cyberstalking her ex-BFF and groupmate, Candie. The two were once inseparable, but that was then—before the tragedy and heartache they left in their wake.

In the here and now, Sunny is surprised to discover that Candie is attending a new K-pop workshop in her hometown. Candie might be there chasing stardom, but Sunny can’t resist the chance to join her and finally confront their traumatic history. Because she still can’t figure out what happened that horrible night when Mina, the third in their tight-knit trio, jumped to her death. Or if the dark and otherworldly secrets she and Candie were keeping had something to do with it . . .

But the workshop doesn’t bring the answers Sunny had hoped for, nor a happy reunion with Candie. Instead, Sunny finds herself haunted by ghostly visions while strange injuries start happening to her competitors—followed by even stranger mutilations to their bodies. In her race to survive, Sunny will have to expose just who is behind the carnage—and if Candie is out for blood once more—in Linda Cheng’s spellbinding sapphic thriller that will have readers screaming and swooning for more.]]> 320 Linda Cheng 1250864992 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.64 2023 Gorgeous Gruesome Faces (Gorgeous Gruesome Faces, #1)
author: Linda Cheng
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blob: A Love Story 212994452 'A modern-day Mrs. Caliban, BLOB is a book that looks at identity and desire in profoundly interesting ways'
Kevin Wilson, author of Nothing to See Here

A hilarious and moving debut novel about a young woman who decides to turn a sentient blob into her perfect boyfriend...

The daughter of a Taiwanese father and white mother, Vi Liu has never quite fit into her Midwestern college town. Now at twenty-three, after getting dumped and dropping out of college, Vi works as a front desk attendant at a hotel where she refills cucumber water samovars and fends off overtures of friendship from her bubbly blond coworker, Rachel. But when Vi decides to accompany Rachel to a local drag show, her life changes forever. In the alley outside the bar, next to a trash can, is a blob with beady black eyes. Unable to leave it behind, Vi picks up the creature and, in a moment of drunken desperation, takes it home with her.

As her pet blob becomes sentient, Vi realizes it obeys her commands and she decides to mold the blob into her ideal partner. She feeds it sugary cereal and a stream of pop culture, and soon the creature transforms into a movie-star handsome white man. But as Vi's desire to be loved unconditionally threatens to spiral out of control, she is forced to confront her lonely childhood, the ex-boyfriend who has unfriended her, and the racial marginalization that has defined her relationships. Ultimately, Vi embarks on a journey of self-discovery and learns that it's impossible to control those you love.

Blending the familiar with the fantastical, BLOB tells a witty, heartfelt story of what it means to be human.

'An inventive, utterly unique debut'
Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light]]> 256 Maggie Su 0063358646 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.38 2025 Blob: A Love Story
author: Maggie Su
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Immaculate Conception 217453576 From the author of Natural Beauty, set in the fiercely competitive art world, a novel about an obsessive friendship upended by a cutting-edge technology purported to enhance empathy and connection

Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise—and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up an intense bond that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde’s fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close—no matter the cost.
Ěý
Enka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family’s company is funding an unconventional technology purported to heighten empathy, which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a disturbing series of events that forever changes their lives.

Blisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship—achingly tender and twisted—that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.]]> 304 Ling Ling Huang 0593850432 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.23 2025 Immaculate Conception
author: Ling Ling Huang
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Dream Hotel 60499589
From Laila Lalami—the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction� (NPR)—comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

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

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

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 11 Laila Lalami Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.78 2025 The Dream Hotel
author: Laila Lalami
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Chosen and the Beautiful 55169019
Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She's also queer, Asian, adopted, and treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Nghi Vo's debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.]]> 260 Nghi Vo 1250784786 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.53 2021 The Chosen and the Beautiful
author: Nghi Vo
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blood Moon 210843947
Mira is grown up now, starting freshman year at the nearby Lakeland University. College feels normal, exactly the thing she’s been craving most... except for one particular classmate: Julian Santos, a mysterious boy with long hair, golden eyes, and a coldness that seems directed exclusively at Mira for reasons she can’t understand and he won’t explain.

When Mira receives an unaddressed letter from her mother, she’s told the world isn’t as it seems. She suspects her mom might be telling the truth when she stumbles across strange animal tracks on a hiking trail, and when she’s miraculously saved from a twenty foot drop by the one and only, Julian Santos.

The problem? Julian would have had to jump the length of the cliff to catch her, making him incredibly fast and strong beyond belief. When she confronts him about this, he denies everything.

But when a Blood Moon rises, Mira soon finds herself caught in the middle of an ancient, magical war, with Julian on the other side of the line. She discovers there’s much more truth to the old town legends than she could ever have anticipated—and her family’s historic role in it will change her world forever.

BLOOD MOON is a dark and thrilling, intensely romantic ride, a fresh take on a werewolf love story for a new generation of paranormal romance readers, and is the first book in a series. It is set against a high-stakes paranormal backdrop—a world ripe with secret identities, rich supernatural lore, and a forbidden romance... that comes with a deadly bite.]]> 384 Britney S. Lewis Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.12 2025 Blood Moon
author: Britney S. Lewis
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Great Big Beautiful Life 218559595 Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years--or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it.]]> 432 Emily Henry Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.14 2025 Great Big Beautiful Life
author: Emily Henry
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Scary Stories to Make You Scared of Stories]]> 219240669 Scary Stories to Tell In the Dark, you’ll love this funny parody of classic horror short stories!

Maybe you’re looking for the perfect book for horror fans, funny books for adults, a perfect Christmas gift for horror lovers, or just comedy books that make funny stocking stuffers? Fans of everything from Comedy Bang Bang to The Exorcist will love this humor book with actually funny jokes.

SCARY CLOWNS, DRACULAS WITH GUNS, FAST MUMMIES, STRAIGHT-UP WEIRDOS � THAT’S JUST A TASTE OF WHAT'S INSIDE THIS SPINE-TINGLING, BOWEL-EMPTYING COLLECTION OF SCARY STORIES THAT ARE SURE TO MAKE YOU SCARED OF STORIES.

The Boo Boys are two Los Angeles based comedians who have been selling out Halloween-themed comedy shows for years. Now their unique brand of comedy writing is here to enjoy in the form of humorous paranormal spooky stories.

Are you someone who has never been scared of stories? Perhaps Scary Stories to Make You Scared of Stories will make you scared of stories. Read on� if you dare�

This is a funny book full of short stories for adults. Every single entry is a funny story, but these are good reads with bad words, and sometimes sexually graphic situations just for the purpose of humorous fiction.]]> 102 The Boo Boys Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.55 Scary Stories to Make You Scared of Stories
author: The Boo Boys
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bloody Summer 60486693 Her Body and Other Parties.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. In the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania, this hand-game song contains a history—centuries of inexplicable tiger sightings. A researcher arrives to write yet another academic paper about the well-studied town, called “Big Cats in the Children’s Hand-Games of Never-Again, Pennsylvania.� Nobody expects to find new clues—but, years after a scene of unimaginable violence, the truth about this childish chant is about to come out.

Carmen Maria Machado’s Bloody Summer is part of Trespass, a collection of wild stories about animal instincts, human folly, and survival from award-winning, bestselling authors. Read or listen to each in a single sitting.]]> 28 Carmen Maria Machado 1542035244 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 5 favorites 3.69 2022 Bloody Summer
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/07
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: favorites
review:
Damn this was so good - kind of gutted that it's not a full length novel I would absolutely devour it. So eerie, so freaky, so atmospheric, the coolest kind of like horror academia vibes.
]]> Catherine House 51934838 A story about a dangerously curious young undergraduate whose rebelliousness leads her to discover a shocking secret involving an exclusive circle of students . . . and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.

You are in the house and the house is in the woods.
You are in the house and the house is in you . . .

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises its graduates a future of sublime power and prestige, and that they can become anything or anyone they desire.

Among this year’s incoming class is Ines, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, pills, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. The school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves and their place within the formidable black iron gates of Catherine.

For Ines, Catherine is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had, and her serious, timid roommate, Baby, soon becomes an unlikely friend. Yet the House’s strange protocols make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when Baby’s obsessive desire for acceptance ends in tragedy, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda that is connected to a secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.]]> 311 Elisabeth Thomas 0062905651 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 5 favorites 3.10 2020 Catherine House
author: Elisabeth Thomas
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.10
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves: favorites
review:
I finally got around to this because I pulled a prompt to read the lowest rated book on my tbr - and you're telling me this insanely good book is poorly rated? I don't know why this isn't shelved with science fiction. Maybe that's why it hasn't reached the right readers? I understand it might not be for everyone but it was so for me. Genuinely one of the best things I have read this year and something I think I could unique revisit. If you can hear me Elisabeth Thomas, please write more Elisabeth Thomas!!
]]> The Salt Grows Heavy 61884779 USA Today bestselling author Cassandra Khaw comes The Salt Grows Heavy, a razor-sharp and bewitching fairytale of discovering the darkness in the world, and the darkness within oneself.

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

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

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

Includes the bonus short story, "And In Our Daughters, We Find a Voice", set in the same universe.]]> 106 Cassandra Khaw 1250830915 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 3 3.55 2023 The Salt Grows Heavy
author: Cassandra Khaw
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/22
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves:
review:
I somehow both loved and really disliked this writing style - and that inconsistency made this a tough read to rate. Oftentimes, the prose was far too dense for my liking. I was very intrigued by the story, the fantastic elements, etc. But I felt a bit dropped into it therefore the ending didn't have a huge payoff for me. Not sure if I am a huge dark fairytale person
]]> <![CDATA[Passing (Dover Literature: African American)]]> 19180063 "A work so fine, sensitive, and distinguished that it rises above race categories and becomes that rare object, a good novel."-- The Saturday Review of Literature
Married to a successful physician and prominently ensconced in Harlem's vibrant society of the 1920s, Irene Redfield leads a charmed existence-until she is shaken out of it by a chance encounter with a childhood friend who has been "passing for white." An important figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larsen was the first African-American woman to be awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. Her fictional portraits of women seeking their identities through a fog of racial confusion were informed by her own Danish-West Indian parentage, and Passing offers fascinating psychological insights into issues of race and gender.]]> 93 Nella Larsen 0486113469 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 3.92 1929 Passing (Dover Literature: African American)
author: Nella Larsen
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1929
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves:
review:
So glad I finally finished this after getting halfway through years ago! The writing is simply excellent in this novella. I felt parts one and two were much stronger than the last. I could have read forever about the two women but got a little restless with the widening of the cast list.
]]> <![CDATA[Long Live Evil (Time of Iron #1)]]> 201626991
She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.

So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.

This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain's shoes, for an adventure that is both 'brilliant' (Holly Black) and 'supremely satisfying' (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue's gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.]]> 435 Sarah Rees Brennan 0316568716 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Long Live Evil (Time of Iron #1)
author: Sarah Rees Brennan
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Yours for the Taking 65213204
Jacqueline Millender is a reclusive billionaire/women’s rights advocate, and thanks to a generous donation, she’s just become the director of the Inside being built on the bones of Manhattan. Her ideas are unorthodox, yet alluring—she's built a whole brand around rethinking the very concept of empowerment.

Shelby, a business major from a working-class family, is drawn to Jacqueline’s promises of power and impact. When she lands her dream job as Jacqueline’s personal assistant, she's instantly swept up into the glamourous world of corporatized feminism. Also drawn into Jacqueline's orbit is Olympia, who is finishing up medical school when Jacqueline recruits her to run the health department Inside. The more Olympia learns about the project, though, the more she realizes there's something much larger at play. As Ava, Olympia, and Shelby start to notice the cracks in Jacqueline's system, Jacqueline tightens her grip, becoming increasingly unhinged and dangerous in what she is willing to do—and who she is willing to sacrifice—to keep her dream alive.

At once a mesmerizing story of queer love, betrayal, and chosen family, and an unflinching indictment of cis, corporate feminism, Yours for the Taking holds a mirror to our own world, in all its beauty and horror.]]> 336 Gabrielle Korn 1250283361 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.64 2023 Yours for the Taking
author: Gabrielle Korn
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sky Full of Elephants 207293815 In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial� America in search of answers.

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.]]> 304 Cebo Campbell 1668034921 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.82 2024 Sky Full of Elephants
author: Cebo Campbell
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Phoenix Unbound (Fallen Empire, #1)]]> 34817019
But this year is different.

Azarion, the Empire's most famous gladiator, has somehow seen through her illusion, and is set on blackmailing Gilene into using her abilities to help him escape his life of slavery. And unknown to Gilene, he also wants to reclaim the birthright of his clan.

To protect her family and village, she will risk everything to return to the Empire and burn once more.]]> 431 Grace Draven 0451489764 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, zelink 3.89 2018 Phoenix Unbound (Fallen Empire, #1)
author: Grace Draven
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read, zelink
review:

]]> <![CDATA[His Secret Illuminations (The Warrior's Guild, #1)]]> 55750790 A Sheltered Monk

By day, LucĂ­an brews potions and illuminates manuscripts in service to the monastery that took him in as a child, wielding magic based in his faith and his purity. By night, he dreams of the world outside the cloister--a world he knows only in books and scrolls...

A Mysterious Warrior

A mercenary known as the She-Wolf hunts for a shipment of stolen manuscripts. When she needs a mage to track them down, she chooses LucĂ­an for both his adorable blushes and his magic. She purchases his contract, hurling him headfirst into an adventure that will test both his skills and his self-control...

A Sacred Vow

Inexorably drawn to the She-Wolf's strength, surprising kindness, and heated touches, LucĂ­an fights temptation at every turn. His holy magic is both vital to their mission and dependent upon his purity. How can he serve both her and the Lord if he gives in to his desire? As intrigue and danger forces them closer, how can he possibly resist?]]> 541 Scarlett Gale 1393846742 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, zelink 4.09 2020 His Secret Illuminations (The Warrior's Guild, #1)
author: Scarlett Gale
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read, zelink
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Falling Princess (Fallen Realm #1)]]> 60809096
Forced to carry the weight of the crown from childhood, all Princess Zosia wants is a chance to experience normal life and find love away from the pressure of court. Getting an education abroad is the perfect opportunity - unless death catches up with her first.

As the last of the Auralian royal line, Zosia is assigned a watchful knight to accompany her everywhere she goes. While her best friend adores him, Zosia can't wait to escape his constant scrutiny...until an assassination attempt sparks their forbidden romance.

A secret they can never tell, even when war tears them apart.]]> 430 Joline Pearce Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, zelink 3.69 Falling Princess (Fallen Realm #1)
author: Joline Pearce
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.69
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/18
shelves: to-read, zelink
review:

]]> The Employees 58470819 The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.
Olga Ravn’s prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.]]> 144 Olga Ravn 0811231356 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 5 3.65 2018 The Employees
author: Olga Ravn
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2024/10/14
shelves:
review:
4.5, adored this format and was so intrigued by this story. Eerie, interesting, and often darkly funny. This was the perfect amount of vague without being frustrating or obtuse.
]]> Our Wives Under the Sea 58724816 Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife, Miri, knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was the crew was supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.

By turns elegiac and furious, wry and heartbreaking, Our Wives Under the Sea is an exploration of the unknowable depths within each of us and the love that compels us, nevertheless, toward one another. Fathomlessly inventive and original, Julia Armfield’s debut novel is a portrait of marriage as we’ve never seen it before.]]> 228 Julia Armfield 1250229898 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 3.69 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/13
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves:
review:
I have put off reading this for sooo long because I was scared I was going to love it and I kind of did but also kind of had too high of expectations. The writing is stunning, the story is really both upsetting and full of love, but I struggled with the pacing a teeny bit. I like that we got both main characters POVs but the constant back and forth of voice AND timeline tripped me up personally. Still an excellent read, one I will continue to think about!
]]> The Factory 43862305 The English-language debut of Hiroko Oyamada—one of the most powerfully strange young voices in Japan.

In an unnamed Japanese city, three seemingly normal and unrelated characters find work at a sprawling industrial factory. They each focus intently on their specific jobs: one studies moss, one shreds paper, and the other proofreads incomprehensible documents. Life in the factory has its own logic and momentum, and, eventually, the factory slowly expands and begins to take over everything, enveloping these poor workers. The very margins of reality seem to be dissolving: all forms of life capriciously evolve, strange creatures begin to appear� After a while—it could be weeks or years—the workers don’t even have the ability to ask themselves: where does the factory end and the rest of the world begin?

Told in three alternating first-person narratives, The Factory casts a vivid—if sometimes surreal—portrait of the absurdity and meaninglessness of modern life. With hints of Kafka and unexpected moments of creeping humor, Hiroko Oyamada is one of the boldest writers of her generation.]]> 116 Hiroko Oyamada 0811228851 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.35 2010 The Factory
author: Hiroko Oyamada
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 5297 Apaixonado pela sua própria imagem na tela, Dorian deseja que esses traços imutáveis de beleza fiquem para sempre no seu rosto e que seja o retrato a envelhecer. É este o parti-pris narcisista, ou fáustico, do romance de Oscar Wilde.]]> 272 Oscar Wilde Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.13 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1890
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unmapping 216539720 Intimate and spellbinding, The Unmapping is a character-driven, literary speculative exploration of a city’s descent into chaos and confusion, perfect for fans of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid.Ěý

4 a.m., New York City. A silent disaster.Ěý

There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island—for now. The next night, it happens again.Ěý

Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the City of New York’s Emergency Management team and are tasked with disaster response for the Unmapping. As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, she’s distracted by the ongoing search for her missing fiancĂ©. Meanwhile, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers, hoping to become the hero the city needs.ĚýĚý


While scientists scramble to find a solution—or at least a means to cope—and mysterious “red cloakâ€� cults crop up in the disaster’s wake, New York begins to reckon with a new reality no one recognizes. For Esme and Arjun, the fight to hold the city together will mean tackling questions about themselves that they were too afraid to ask—and facing answers they never expected. With themes of climate change, political unrest, and life in a state of emergency, The Unmapping is a timely and captivating debut.Ěý]]> 408 Denise S. Robbins Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.56 2025 The Unmapping
author: Denise S. Robbins
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Company of Witches (Evenfall Witches B&B, #1)]]> 58427080 When a guest dies in the B&B she helps her aunts run, a young witch must rely on some good old-fashioned investigating to clear her aunt's name in this magical and charming new cozy mystery.

For four hundred years, the Warren witches have used their magic to quietly help the citizens of the sleepy New England town of Evenfall thrive. There's never been a problem they couldn't handle. But then Constance Graves--a local known for being argumentative and demanding--dies while staying at the bed and breakfast Brynn Warren maintains with her aunts. At first, it seems like an accident...but it soon becomes clear that there's something more sinister at work, and Aunt Nora is shaping up to be the prime suspect.

There's nothing Brynn wants more than to prove Nora's innocence, and it hurts her to know that even two years ago that might have been easier. Brynn, after all, is a witch of the dead--a witch who can commune with ghosts. Ghosts never remember much about their deaths, but Constance might remember something about her life that would help crack the case. But Brynn hasn't used her powers since her husband died, and isn't even sure she still can. Brynn will just have to hope that her aunts' magic and her own investigative skills will lead her to answers--and maybe back to the gift she once thought herself ready to give up forever.]]> 336 Auralee Wallace 0593335848 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 4 4.02 2021 In the Company of Witches (Evenfall Witches B&B, #1)
author: Auralee Wallace
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves:
review:
3.5, very fun and very cosy! I enjoyed the atmosphere and main family a lot. But felt some of the progressive disclosure was frustrating rather than fun (but I also am truly not a mystery girl). Very perfect autumnal / October read!!
]]> <![CDATA[A Feather So Black (Fair Folk, #1)]]> 182761396 Set in a world of perilous magic and moonlit forests, this seductive romantic fantasy tells the story of a defiant changeling, her cursed sister, and the dangerous fae lord she must defeat to save her family.

In a kingdom where magic has been lost, Fia is a rare changeling, left behind by the wicked Fair Folk when they stole the High Queen's daughter and retreated behind the locked gates of Tír na nÓg.

Most despise Fia's fae blood. But the queen raises her as a daughter and trains her to be a spy. Meanwhile, the real princess Eala is bound to Tír na nÓg, cursed to become a swan by day and only returning to her true form at night.

When a hidden gate to the realm is discovered, Fia is tasked by the queen to retrieve the princess and break her curse. But she doesn’t go with her is prince Rogan, Fia's dearest childhood friend—and Eala’s betrothed.

As they journey through the forests of the Folk, where magic winds through the roots of the trees and beauty can be a deadly illusion, Fia’s mission is complicated by her feelings for the prince…and her unexpected attraction to the dark-hearted fae lord holding Eala captive. Irian might be more monster than man, but he seems to understand Fia in a way no one ever has.

Soon, Fia begins to question the truth of her mission. But time is running out to break her sister's curse. And unraveling the secrets of the past might destroy everything she has come to love.]]> 496 Lyra Selene 0316564966 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, fae 3.71 2024 A Feather So Black (Fair Folk, #1)
author: Lyra Selene
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read, fae
review:

]]> Tales of a Monstrous Heart 184422843
Katherine Woodrow is Fey, and all she wants is to graduate from the Institute of Magic. But when the prejudiced mortal council threaten her position at the institute, she is left with only one option: accept a Mage Partnership with the elusive Lord Blackthorn.

Emrys Blackthorn is a riddle Kat is fearful of solving. The mysterious, cursed war hero with his stormy eyes and unpredictable ways leaves Kat with more questions than answers. What she does know is that she is irresistibly drawn to him . . . no matter how forbidden it might be.

When a string of murders and fey disappearances herald the return of dark magic, Kat and Emrys are thrown into a world of ancient books that hide hideous monsters, dark fiends who play with nightmares and mortal men who wish nothing more than to see them both burn.

But what haunts them both are secrets even ghosts dare not whisper, while insidious shadows lick their teeth and sharpen their claws, waiting for the moment that all tales will come to light - even the monstrous ones.]]> 468 Jennifer Delaney 1399615971 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, fae 3.71 2024 Tales of a Monstrous Heart
author: Jennifer Delaney
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/09
shelves: to-read, fae
review:

]]> The Anthropologists 195391751
As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, spends her days gathering footage from the neighborhood park like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,� chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.� Life back in Asya and Manu's respective home countries continues-parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly beyond their reach. But the world they're making in their new city is growing, too, they hope, into something that will be distinctly theirs. As they open up the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?

Hailed by Lauren Groff and Marina Abramovic, Savas's fine, precise craft turns The Anthropologist's simple apartment search into a soulful, often funny, examination of modern coupledom, home-building, and expat life in the universal modern city.]]> 192 AysegĂĽl Savas 163973306X Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.88 2024 The Anthropologists
author: AysegĂĽl Savas
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Participation 61279746 When the weather revolts, certainties dissolve and binaries blur as members of two reading groups converge at the intersection of theory and practice to reshape their lives, relationships, and reality itself.

In the latest novel from Anna Moschovakis, two reading groups, unofficially called Love and Anti-Love, falter amidst political friction and signs of environmental collapse. Participation offers a prescient look at communication in a time of rupture: anonymous participants exchange fantasies and ruminations, and relationships develop and unravel. As the groups consider―or neglect―their syllabi, and connections between members deepen, a mentor disappears, a translator questions his role, a colleague known as “the capitalist� becomes a point of fixation, and “the news reports� filter through in fragments. With incisive prose and surprising structural shifts, Participation forms an alluring vision of community, and a love story like no other.]]> 216 Anna Moschovakis 1566896576 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.71 2022 Participation
author: Anna Moschovakis
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Weak Spot 54809548 A woman discovers something toxic at work in the isolated village where she is apprenticing as a pharmacist, in this fable-like novel about power, surveillance, prescriptions, and cures by a captivating debut voice.

On a remote mountaintop somewhere in Europe, accessible only by an ancient funicular, a small pharmacy sits on a square. As if attending confession, townspeople carry their ailments and worries through its doors, in search of healing, reassurance, and a witness to their bodies and their lives.

One day, a young woman arrives in the town to apprentice under its charismatic pharmacist, August Malone. She slowly begins to lose herself in her work, lulled by stories and secrets shared by customers and colleagues. But despite her best efforts to avoid thinking and feeling altogether, as her new boss rises to the position of mayor, she begins to realize that something sinister is going on around her.

The Weak Spot is a fable about our longing for cures, answers, and an audience--and the ways it will be exploited by those who silently hold power in our world.]]> 176 Lucie Elven 1593766300 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.19 2021 The Weak Spot
author: Lucie Elven
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Helm of Midnight (The Five Penalties, #1)]]> 53205864 A legendary serial killer stalks the streets of a fantastical city in The Helm of Midnight, the stunning first novel in a new trilogy from acclaimed author Marina Lostetter.

In a daring and deadly heist, thieves have made away with an artifact of terrible power--the death mask of Louis Charbon. Made by a master craftsman, it is imbued with the spirit of a monster from history, a serial murderer who terrorized the city with a series of gruesome murders.

Now Charbon is loose once more, killing from beyond the grave. But these murders are different from before, not simply random but the work of a deliberate mind probing for answers to a sinister question.

It is up to Krona Hirvath and her fellow Regulators to enter the mind of madness to stop this insatiable killer while facing the terrible truths left in his wake.]]> 464 Marina J. Lostetter 1250757053 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.84 2021 The Helm of Midnight (The Five Penalties, #1)
author: Marina J. Lostetter
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Graveyard Shift 203578770 Author of sales sensation If We Were Villains returns with a story about a ragtag group of night shift workers who meet in the local cemetery to unearth the secrets lurking in an open grave.

Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story.

One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?

Before they go their separate ways, the gravedigger returns. As they trail him through the night, they realize he may be the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.

Atmospheric and eerie, with the ensemble cast her fans love and a delightfully familiar academic backdrop, Graveyard Shift is a modern Gothic tale in If We Were Villains author M. L. Rio’s inimitable style.]]> 144 M.L. Rio 1250356792 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 3 3.18 2024 Graveyard Shift
author: M.L. Rio
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves:
review:
3.5, not everything I wanted! More mystery/investigation that horror which is just not my preference. I think we had just a few too many characters for so short a novella - it means that I understood and cared about a few but not the full cast. I loved the ideas behind this, I just think I would have preferred a different POV of the story and a darker payoff.
]]> Held 200241802
1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory—a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast—as the snow falls.

1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river—alive, but not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his ghosts whose messages he cannot understand .

So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. This resonance through time—not only of actions but also of feelings and perceptions—desire in its many forms—are at the heart of this novel’s profound investigation.

Held is a deeply affecting and intensely beautiful novel, full of unforgettable characters and imagery, wisdom and compassion. It explores the deepest mysteries, and the ways in which desire in its many forms—andĚýperhaps the deepest desire, to find meaning—manifests itself. Held moves through history to light upon Darwin, Sir Ernest Rutherford, North Sea ganseys, early photography, Ella Mary Leather, modern field hospitals…while lovers find each other and snow drifts down across the centuries. From the WW1 battlefield where the novel begins, and its opening lines, Held is alive with "We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?”]]> 240 Anne Michaels 0771005458 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.49 2023 Held
author: Anne Michaels
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #7)]]> 140075
The summit is a tense situation. The vampire queen of Louisiana is in a precarious position, her power base weakened by hurricane damage to New Orleans. And there are some vamps who would like to finish what nature started. Soon, Sookie must decide what side she'll stand with. And her choice may mean the difference between survival and all-out catastrophe.

And with HBO's launching of an all-new show, True Blood, based on the Southern Vampire novels, the demand for Charlaine Harris and Sookie Stackhouse is bigger than ever.

]]> 336 Charlaine Harris 0441014941 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 1 4.06 2007 All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #7)
author: Charlaine Harris
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2007
rating: 1
read at: 2024/10/06
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves:
review:
1.5, damn I really didn't like this one. Some insanely out of pocket misogyny, poor plotting, exhausting info dumping, and lack of any real development except added trauma. Is my guilty pleasure series no longer a pleasure?? Do I even continue??
]]> Persuasion 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.15 1817 Persuasion
author: Jane Austen
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> We Cast a Shadow 40163362 A bold, provocative debut for fans of Get Out and Paul Beatty's The Sellout , about a father who will do anything to protect his son--even if it means turning him white.

How far would you go to protect your child?

Our narrator faces an impossible decision. Like any father, he just wants the best for his son Nigel, a biracial boy whose black birthmark is growing larger by the day. In this near-future society plagued by resurgent racism, segregation, and expanding private prisons, our narrator knows Nigel might not survive. Having watched the world take away his own father, he is determined to stop history from repeating itself.

There is one potential solution: a new experimental medical procedure that promises to save lives by turning people white. But in order to afford Nigel's whiteness operation, our narrator must make partner as one of the few Black associates at his law firm, jumping through a series of increasingly surreal hoops--from diversity committees to plantation tours to equality activist groups--in an urgent quest to protect his son.

This electrifying, suspenseful novel is at once a razor-sharp satire of surviving racism in America and a profoundly moving family story. Writing in the tradition of Ralph Ellison and Franz Kafka, Maurice Carlos Ruffin fearlessly shines a light on the violence we inherit, and on the desperate things we do for the ones we love.]]> 336 Maurice Carlos Ruffin 0525509062 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read, owned-tbr, 24in24 3.61 2019 We Cast a Shadow
author: Maurice Carlos Ruffin
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: to-read, owned-tbr, 24in24
review:

]]> The Incarnations 23492504 Who are you? You must be wondering. I am your soulmate, your old friend, and I have come back to this city of sixteen million in search of you.

So begins the first letter that falls into Wang’s lap as he flips down the visor in his taxi. The letters that follow are filled with the stories of Wang’s previous lives—from escaping a marriage to a spirit bride, to being a slave on the run from Genghis Khan, to living as a fisherman during the Opium Wars, and being a teenager on the Red Guard during the cultural revolution—bound to his mysterious “soulmate,� spanning one thousand years of betrayal and intrigue.

As the letters continue to appear seemingly out of thin air, Wang becomes convinced that someone is watching him—someone who claims to have known him for over one thousand years. And with each letter, Wang feels the watcher growing closer and closer�

Seamlessly weaving Chinese folklore, history, and literary classics, The Incarnations is a taut and gripping novel that sheds light on the cyclical nature of history as it hints that the past is never truly settled.]]> 371 Susan Barker 1501106783 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 dnf 3.75 2014 The Incarnations
author: Susan Barker
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/01
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> Autobiography of Red 61049 Autobiography of Red, a stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.

Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster, reveals the volcanic terrain of his fragile, tormented soul in an autobiography he begins at the age of five. As he grows older, Geryon escapes his abusive brother and affectionate but ineffectual mother, finding solace behind the lens of his camera and in the arms of a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation. When Herakles reappears years later, Geryon confronts again the pain of his desire and embarks on a journey that will unleash his creative imagination to its fullest extent. By turns whimsical and haunting, erudite and accessible, richly layered and deceptively simple, Autobiography of Red is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist coming to terms with the fantastic accident of who he is.

"A profound love story . . . sensuous and funny, poignant, musical and tender." -- The New York Times Book Review

"A deeply odd and immensely engaging book. . . . [Carson] exposes with passionate force the mythic underlying the explosive everyday."ĚýĚý-- The Village Voice

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

National book Critics Circle Award Finalist]]> 160 Anne Carson 037570129X Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 4.28 1998 Autobiography of Red
author: Anne Carson
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> NW 13537891 NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.]]> 296 Zadie Smith 0241144140 Alexa (Library of Alexa) 0 to-read 3.49 2012 NW
author: Zadie Smith
name: Alexa (Library of Alexa)
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>