Amber's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 28 Apr 2025 19:16:48 -0700 60 Amber's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women]]> 34394482 The incredible true story of the women who fought America's Undark danger

The Curies' newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive - until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women's cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...]]> 476 Kate Moore 1492649368 Amber 0 currently-reading 4.28 2016 The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women
author: Kate Moore
name: Amber
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2016
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/28
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> Maame 106187659 An alternate cover edition for this ASIN can be found here.

Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi but in my case, it means woman.

It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.

When her mum returns from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important “firsts�: She finds a flat share, says yes to after-work drinks, pushes for more recognition in her career, and throws herself into the bewildering world of internet dating. But it's not long before tragedy strikes, forcing Maddie to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils—and rewards—of putting her heart on the line.

Smart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George's Maame deals with the themes of our time with humor and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.]]> 320 Jessica George Amber 4 4.19 2023 Maame
author: Jessica George
name: Amber
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/28
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life]]> 57643625


A look inside a dancer’s world

Inspiring, revealing, and deeply relatable, Being a Ballerina is a firsthand look at the realities of life as a professional ballet dancer. Through episodes from her own career, Gavin Larsen describes the forces that drive a person to study dance; the daily balance that dancers navigate between hardship and joy; and the dancer’s continual quest to discover who they are as a person and as an artist.



Starting with her arrival as a young beginner at a class too advanced for her, Larsen tells how the embarrassing mistake ended up helping her learn quickly and advance rapidly. In other stories of her early teachers, training, and auditions, she explains how she gradually came to understand and achieve what she and her body were capable of.



Larsen then re-creates scenes from her experiences in dance companies, from unglamorous roles to exhilarating performances. Working as a ballerina was shocking and scary at first, she says, recalling unexpected injuries, leaps of faith, and her constant struggle to operate at the level she wanted—but full of enormously rewarding moments. Larsen also reflects candidly on her difficult decision to retire at age 35.

An ideal read for aspiring dancers, Larsen’s memoir will also delight experienced dance professionals and fascinate anyone who wonders what it takes to live a life dedicated to the perfection of the art form.]]> 268 Gavin Larsen 081306595X Amber 4 4.48 2021 Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life
author: Gavin Larsen
name: Amber
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/17
date added: 2025/04/17
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review:

]]> Woodworking 217311813 An unforgettable and heartwarming debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: one of her students.

Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.

Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others� expectations.

As their unlikely friendship evolves under the increasing scrutiny of their community, both women—and those closest to them—will come to realize that sometimes there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you really are.

Detransition Baby meets Fleishman is in Trouble in this remarkable debut novel from an incisive contemporary voice. A story about the awkwardness of growing up and the greatest love story of all, that between us and our friends, Woodworking is a tonic for the moment and a celebration of womanhood in all its multifaceted joy.]]> 351 Emily St. James 163893147X Amber 0 to-read 4.43 2025 Woodworking
author: Emily St. James
name: Amber
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe]]> 57778458
"Incandescent and ultimately intoxicating." —The Boston Globe

A lively and magisterial popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself.

The word “medieval� conjures images of the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors.

The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante—inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy—writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today.

The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire� but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics.

The Bright Ages contains an 8-page color insert.]]> 320 Matthew Gabriele 0062980912 Amber 5 thesis 3.93 2021 The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe
author: Matthew Gabriele
name: Amber
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves: thesis
review:

]]> The Antidote 214537790 FromPulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestsellingauthor of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove. A gripping Dust Bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples� memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.]]> 432 Karen Russell 059380225X Amber 0 to-read 4.02 2025 The Antidote
author: Karen Russell
name: Amber
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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]]> <![CDATA[The World and All That It Holds: A Novel]]> 63198854 The World and All That It Holds—in all its hilarious, heartbreaking, erotic, philosophical glory—showcases Aleksandar Hemon’s celebrated talent at its pinnacle. It is a grand, tender, sweeping story that spans decades and continents. It cements Hemon as one of the boldest voices in fiction.

As Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his estimable father. It’s not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it’s nothing a dash of laudanum from the high shelf, a summer stroll, and idle fantasies about passersby can’t put in perspective.

And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto’s introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller; Pinto’s protector and lover.

Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches, survive near-certain death, tangle with spies and Bolsheviks. Over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto’s love for Osman—with the occasional opiatic interlude—that keeps him going.]]> 354 Aleksandar Hemon 0374716269 Amber 5 4.06 2023 The World and All That It Holds: A Novel
author: Aleksandar Hemon
name: Amber
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/14
date added: 2025/02/14
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]]> <![CDATA[Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer]]> 206489 With intelligence and wit, the author looks at how mapmakers and writers deal with blank space and the blank page; the conventions they use or consciously disregard; the role of geometry in maps and the parallel role of form in writing; how both maps and writing serve to re-create an individual’s view of the world; and the artist’s delicate balance of intuition with intention.
A unique combination of history, critical cartography, personal essay, and practical guide to writing, Maps of the Imagination is a book for writers, for readers, and for anyone interested in creativity. Colorful illustrations and Turchi’s insightful observations make his book both beautiful and a joy to read.]]> 224 Peter Turchi 159534005X Amber 0 to-read 4.01 2004 Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer
author: Peter Turchi
name: Amber
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> All Fours 197828937
"A giddy, bold, mind-blowing tour de force by one of our most important literary writers." � George Saunders, Booker-Prize winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo

"Profound and bawdy and deeply human, a brilliant work of art from a completely blown open and fearless mind."—Emma Cline, New York Times bestselling author of The Guest

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country, from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.]]> 333 Miranda July 0593190289 Amber 4 3.46 2024 All Fours
author: Miranda July
name: Amber
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/01/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil]]> 215020997 ALL first edition copies will be signed by the author! Signed copies available while supplies last.

From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger.

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life�
how it ends, and how it starts.

USA Today, 15 Most Anticipated of 2025
BookBub, Most Anticipated of 2025 (and Reader’s Pick)
Readers Digest, 20 Most Anticipated Books This Year
Paste Magazine, Most Anticipated Fantasy Books of 2025
BookRiot, Most Anticipated Books of 2025
Men's Health, 25 Best & Most Anticipated Books of 2025
The Nerd Daily, SFF to Devour in 2025
ŷ, Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2025]]> 560 Victoria E. Schwab 1035064642 Amber 0 to-read 4.39 2025 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Amber
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Lightfall (The Everlands Trilogy, #1)]]> 211003690 An epic fantasy of vampires, werewolves and sorcerers, Lightfall is the debut novel of Ed Crocker, for fans of Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire and Richard Swan’s The Justice of Kings.

No humans here. Just immortals: their politics, their feuds—and their long buried secrets.

For centuries, vampires freely roamed the land until the Grays came out of nowhere, wiping out half the population in a night. The survivors fled to the last vampire city of First Light, where the rules are simple. If you’re poor, you drink weak blood. If you’re nobility, you get the good stuff. And you can never, ever leave.

Palace maid Sam has had enough of these rules, and she’s definitely had enough of cleaning the bedpans of the lords who enforce them. When the son of the city’s ruler is murdered and she finds the only clue to his death, she seizes the chance to blackmail her way into a better class and better blood. She falls in with the Leeches, a group of rebel maids who rein in the worst of the Lords. Soon she’s in league with a sorcerer whose deductive skills make up for his lack of magic, a deadly werewolf assassin and a countess who knows a city’s worth of secrets.

There’s just one problem. What began as a murder investigation has uncovered a vast conspiracy by the ruling elite, and now Sam must find the truth before she becomes another victim. If she can avoid getting murdered, she might just live forever.]]> 368 Ed Crocker 1250287731 Amber 0 to-read 3.55 2025 Lightfall (The Everlands Trilogy, #1)
author: Ed Crocker
name: Amber
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Famous Last Words 212421066
From the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes an addictive thriller about a new mother’s world upended when her husband commits a terrifying crime. How well does she truly know the man she loves? And what danger does she face if her entire life has been built on a lie?

It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.

Then it starts. Breaking news: there's a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn't a hostage. Her husband—doting father, eternal optimist—is the gunman.

What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says...

Famous Last Words is the story of a crime, a marriage, and more secrets than Camilla ever could have imagined. This novel cements Gillian McAllister’s reputation as “the best at putting her characters in impossible situations and making her readers not only contemplate but feel what it would be like to find themselves in those situations.� (Emily Henry)]]> 336 Gillian McAllister 0063338424 Amber 0 to-read 3.70 2025 Famous Last Words
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Amber
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Crash 216223604 The nightmare she’s running from is nothing compared to where she’s headed.

Tegan is eight months pregnant, alone, and desperately wants to put her crumbling life in the rearview mirror. So she hits the road, planning to stay with her brother until she can figure out her next move. But she doesn’t realize she’s heading straight into a blizzard.

She never arrives at her destination.

Stranded in rural Maine with a dead car and broken ankle, Tegan worries she’s made a terrible mistake. Then a miracle she is rescued by a couple who offers her a room in their warm cabin until the snow clears.

But something isn’t right. Tegan believed she was waiting out the storm, but as time ticks by, she comes to realize she is in grave danger. This safe haven isn’t what she thought it was, and staying here may have been her most deadly mistake yet.

And now she must do whatever it takes to save herself—and her unborn child.

A gut-wrenching story of motherhood, survival, and twisted expectations, #1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden delivers a snowbound thriller that will chill you to the bone.
]]> 384 Freida McFadden 1464232989 Amber 0 to-read 3.58 2025 The Crash
author: Freida McFadden
name: Amber
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> Beautiful Ugly 211004123 The million-copy bestselling Queen of Twists Alice Feeney returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage. . .
. . . and revenge.

Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.

Grady calls his wife to share some exciting news as she is driving home. He hears Abby slam on the brakes, get out of the car, then nothing. When he eventually finds her car by the cliff edge the headlights are on, the driver door is open, her phone is still there. . . but his wife has disappeared.

A year later, Grady is still overcome with grief and desperate to know what happened to Abby. He can’t sleep, and he can’t write, so he travels to a tiny Scottish island to try to get his life back on track. Then he sees the impossible � a woman who looks exactly like his missing wife.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t.
Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.]]> 306 Alice Feeney 125033778X Amber 0 to-read 3.63 2025 Beautiful Ugly
author: Alice Feeney
name: Amber
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> Atmosphere 220817728 From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six comes an epic new novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s Space Shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits.

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easy-going even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.

Fast-paced, thrilling, and emotional, Atmosphere is Taylor Jenkins Reid at her best: transporting readers to iconic times and places, with complex protagonists, telling a passionate and soaring story about the transformative power of love, this time among the stars.]]> 352 Taylor Jenkins Reid 0593158717 Amber 0 to-read 4.45 2025 Atmosphere
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: Amber
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> The Listeners 56988057
January 1942. The Avallon Hotel & Spa has always offered elegant luxury in the wilds of West Virginia, its mountain sweetwater washing away all of high society’s troubles.

Local girl-turned-general manager June Porter Hudson has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. The Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, have trained her well. But when the family heir makes a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats, June must persuade her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the front lines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

Meanwhile FBI Agent Tucker Minnick, whose coal tattoo hints at an Appalachian past, presses his ears to the hotel’s walls, listening for the diplomats� secrets. He has one of his own, which is how he knows that June’s balancing act can have dangerous consequences: the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal.

June has never met a guest she couldn’t delight, but the diplomats are different. Without firing a single shot, they have brought the war directly to her. As clashing loyalties crack the Avallon’s polished veneer, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.]]> 400 Maggie Stiefvater 0593655508 Amber 0 to-read 3.99 2025 The Listeners
author: Maggie Stiefvater
name: Amber
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> The Names 217245618 In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son's birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she'd like to call the child, Cora hesitates...

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora's and her young son's lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the "one . . . precious life" we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic.]]> 336 Florence Knapp 0593833902 Amber 0 to-read 4.31 2025 The Names
author: Florence Knapp
name: Amber
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
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]]> The Bright Years 214152211 One family. Four generations. A secret son. A devastating addiction. A Texas family is met with losses and surprises of inheritance, but they’re unable to shake the pull back toward each other in this big-hearted family saga perfect for readers of Mary Beth Keane and Claire Lombardo.

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

Told from three intimate points of view, The Bright Years is a tender, true-to-life novel that explores the impact of each generation in a family torn apart by tragedy but, over time, restored by the power of grace and love.]]> 288 Sarah Damoff 1668061449 Amber 0 to-read 4.36 2025 The Bright Years
author: Sarah Damoff
name: Amber
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place.

Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.]]> 303 Charlotte McConaghy 1250827957 Amber 0 to-read 4.25 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Amber
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)]]> 22733729
Rosemary Harper doesn’t expect much when she joins the crew of the aging Wayfarer. While the patched-up ship has seen better days, it offers her a bed, a chance to explore the far-off corners of the galaxy, and most importantly, some distance from her past. An introspective young woman who learned early to keep to herself, she’s never met anyone remotely like the ship’s diverse crew, including Sissix, the exotic reptilian pilot, chatty engineers Kizzy and Jenks who keep the ship running, and Ashby, their noble captain.

Life aboard the Wayfarer is chaotic and crazy—exactly what Rosemary wants. It’s also about to get extremely dangerous when the crew is offered the job of a lifetime. Tunneling wormholes through space to a distant planet is definitely lucrative and will keep them comfortable for years. But risking her life wasn’t part of the plan. In the far reaches of deep space, the tiny Wayfarer crew will confront a host of unexpected mishaps and thrilling adventures that force them to depend on each other. To survive, Rosemary’s got to learn how to rely on this assortment of oddballs—an experience that teaches her about love and trust, and that having a family isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the universe.]]> 518 Becky Chambers 1500453307 Amber 0 to-read 4.15 2014 The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)
author: Becky Chambers
name: Amber
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Martyr! 139400713 A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]> 331 Kaveh Akbar 0593537610 Amber 0 to-read 4.22 2024 Martyr!
author: Kaveh Akbar
name: Amber
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Bones Beneath My Skin 211004023 A spine-tingling thriller by New York Times bestselling author TJ Klune, about a 10-year-old girl with an impossible power, her father, and an unlikely stranger, who come together to confront the dangerous forces that want her at all costs. A strange story of family, love, comets, and bacon. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

In the spring of 1995, Nate Cartwright has lost everything: his parents are dead, his older brother wants nothing to do with him, and he's been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington DC. With nothing left to lose, he returns to his family's summer cabin outside the small mountain town of Roseland, Oregon to try and find some sense of direction. The cabin should be empty. It's not. Inside is a man named Alex. And with him is an extraordinary little girl who calls herself Artemis Darth Vader. Artemis, who isn't exactly as she appears.

Soon it becomes clear that Nate must make a choice: let himself drown in the memories of his past, or fight for a future he never thought possible. Because the girl is special. And forces are descending upon them who want nothing more than to control her.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 1250890438 Amber 0 to-read 4.10 2018 The Bones Beneath My Skin
author: T.J. Klune
name: Amber
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[All of This: A Memoir of Death and Desire]]> 56921924 "Beautifully written, complex, provocative, painful, genuine...an unforgettable memoir."--ROXANE GAY

"Wonderfully lyrical and uncomfortably honest in a way that is so rare, yet so needed."--JENNY LAWSON

"Disturbing and profound, this intimate book also reveals the sometimes-labyrinthine nature of the bonds that unite people in love...A provocative and memorable work."--Kirkus Reviews

After years of struggling in a tumultuous marriage, writer Rebecca Woolf was finally ready to leave her husband. Two weeks after telling him she wanted a divorce, he was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Four months later, at the age of forty-four, he died.

In All of This, Woolf chronicles the months before her husband's death--and her rebirth after he was gone. With rigorous honesty and incredible awareness, she reflects on the end of her marriage: how her husband's illness finally gave her the space to make peace with his humanity and her own.

Stunning, compelling, and brilliantly nuanced, All of This is one woman's story of embracing the complexities of grief without shame--as a mother, a widow, and a sexual being--and emerging on the other side of a relationship with gratitude and relief.]]> 235 Rebecca Woolf 0063052695 Amber 5
Merged review:

Rebecca, this is a masterpiece. I loved it so much I couldn’t put it down. Thank you for capturing your love and your grief and your liberation in a way that reflects the complicated nature of all of them.]]> 3.92 2022 All of This: A Memoir of Death and Desire
author: Rebecca Woolf
name: Amber
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/21
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves:
review:
Rebecca, this is a masterpiece. I loved it so much I couldn’t put it down. Thank you for capturing your love and your grief and your liberation in a way that reflects the complicated nature of all of them.

Merged review:

Rebecca, this is a masterpiece. I loved it so much I couldn’t put it down. Thank you for capturing your love and your grief and your liberation in a way that reflects the complicated nature of all of them.
]]> Set the Boy Free 29099287 The long-awaited memoir from the legendary guitarist and cofounder of the seminal British band The Smiths.

An artist who helped define a period in popular culture, Johnny Marr tells his story in a memoir as vivid and arresting as his music. The Smiths, the band with the signature sound he cofounded, remains one of the most beloved bands ever, and have a profound influence on a number of acts that followed—from the Stone Roses, Suede, Blur, and Radiohead to Oasis, The Libertines, and Arctic Monkeys.

Marr recalls his childhood growing up in the northern working-class city of Manchester, in a house filled with music. He takes us back to the summer of 1982 when, at eighteen, he sought out one Stephen Morrissey to form a new band they called The Smiths. Marr invites fans on stage, on the road, and in the studio for the five years The Smiths were together and how after a rapid ascent, the working-class teenage rock star enjoyed and battled with the perks of success until ideological differences, combined with his much publicized strained relationships with fellow band mates, caused him to leave in 1987. Marr’s “escape� as he calls it, ensured the beginning of the end for one of the most influential groups of a generation. But The Smiths� end was only the beginning for Marr. The bona-fide guitar hero continues to experiment and evolve in his solo career to this day, playing with Paul McCartney, Pretenders, Modest Mouse, Oasis and collaborating today’s most creative and renowned artists.

Rising above and beyond the personal struggles and bitter feuds, Marr delivers the story of his music and his band, sharing the real insights of a man who has made music his life, and finally giving fans what they’ve truly been waiting for.

]]> 465 Johnny Marr 0062438727 Amber 5 4.17 2016 Set the Boy Free
author: Johnny Marr
name: Amber
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/06/07
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family For a Year]]> 12593379
She did it anyway. The Quarter-Acre Farm is Warren's account of deciding, despite all resistance, to take control of her family's food choices, get her hands dirty, and create a garden in her suburban yard. It's a story of bugs, worms, rot, and failure; of learning, replanting, harvesting, and eating. The road is long and riddled with mistakes, but by the end of her yearlong experiment, Warren's sons and husband have become her biggest fans, in fact, they're even eager to help harvest (and eat) the beautiful bounty she brings in.

Full of tips and recipes to help anyone interested in growing and preparing at least a small part of their diet at home, The Quarter-Acre Farm is a warm, witty tale about family, food, and the incredible gratification that accompanies self-sufficiency.]]> 342 Spring Warren 1580054013 Amber 5 3.92 2011 The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I Kept the Patio, Lost the Lawn, and Fed My Family For a Year
author: Spring Warren
name: Amber
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2011/11/26
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
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]]> The Push 54848595 A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family—and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for—and everything she feared.

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.

But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter—she doesn’t behave like most children do.

Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.

Then their son Sam is born—and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.

The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.]]> 320 Ashley Audrain 1984881671 Amber 0 to-read 4.12 2021 The Push
author: Ashley Audrain
name: Amber
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Darkest Hour 38313146
"Four will become two. Lion and tiger will meet in battle, and blood will rule the forest."

The time has come for prophecies to unfold, and for heroes to rise ...]]> 348 Erin Hunter Amber 5 4.80 2004 The Darkest Hour
author: Erin Hunter
name: Amber
average rating: 4.80
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/14
date added: 2024/08/14
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]]> <![CDATA[The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories]]> 99300
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.

These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women � and how they might be improved.

Collects:
—The Yellow Wallpaper
—Three Thanksgivings
—The Cottagette
—TܰԱ
—Making a Change
—If I Were a Man
—Mr. Peebles' Heart]]> 129 Charlotte Perkins Gilman 0486298574 Amber 3 4.05 1892 The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
name: Amber
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1892
rating: 3
read at: 2011/02/17
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
I read this as part of my 15-years-too-late declaration to catch up on the year of American Literature I missed during high school. I wasn't really that enthralled with The Yellow Wallpaper, but perhaps if I'd gotten to discuss & critique it, it would hold more meaning for me. As it is, if I want to read the words of a person going insane, I'd rather read Plath--but I AM glad I read this short story, just to say that I've done it.
]]> The Call of Cthulhu 6092613 54 H.P. Lovecraft Amber 3 3.97 1928 The Call of Cthulhu
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Amber
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1928
rating: 3
read at: 2011/02/21
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
I probably should have read the Cthulhu stories in order. This was good, but I felt like I was missing some context. I will piece it all together eventually!
]]> <![CDATA[Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout]]> 9341909 Wall Street Journal and talked his way into a job far from the streets of lower Manhattan: working as one of the last fire lookouts in America. Spending nearly half the year in a 7' x 7' tower, 10,000 feet above sea level in remote New Mexico, his tasks were simple: keep watch over one of the most fire-prone forests in the country and sound the alarm at the first sign of smoke.

Fire Season is Connors's remarkable reflection on work, our place in the wild, and the charms of solitude. The landscape over which he keeps watch is rugged and roadless � it was the first region in the world to be officially placed off limits to industrial machines � and it typically gets hit by lightning more than 30,000 times per year. Connors recounts his days and nights in this forbidding land, untethered from the comforts of modern life: the eerie pleasure of being alone in his glass-walled perch with only his dog Alice for company; occasional visits from smokejumpers and long-distance hikers; the strange dance of communion and wariness with bears, elk, and other wild creatures; trips to visit the hidden graves of buffalo soldiers slain during the Apache wars of the nineteenth century; and always the majesty and might of lightning storms and untamed fire.

Written with narrative verve and startling beauty, and filled with reflections on his literary forebears who also served as lookouts � among them Edward Abbey, Jack Kerouac, Norman Maclean, and Gary Snyder � Fire Season is a book to stand the test of time.]]> 246 Philip Connors 0061859362 Amber 0 to-read 3.93 2011 Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout
author: Philip Connors
name: Amber
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Young Men and Fire 30044 "blowup" -- an explosive, 2,000-degree firestorm 300 feet deep and 200 feet tall -- a deadly explosion of flame and wind rarely encountered and little understood at the time. Only seconds ahead of the approaching firestorm, the foreman, R. Wagner Dodge, throws himself into the ashes of an "escape fire " - and survives as most of his confused men run, their last moments obscured by smoke. The parents of the dead cry murder, charging that the foreman's fire killed their boys. Exactly what happened in Mann Gulch that day has been obscured by years of grief and controversy. Now a master storyteller finally gives the Mann Gulch fire its due as tragedy.
These first deaths among the Forest Service's elite firefighters prompted widespread examination of federal fire policy, of the field of fire science, and of the frailty of young men. For Maclean, who witnessed the fire from the ground in August of 1949, and even then he knew he would one day become a part of its story. It is a story of Montana, of the ways of wildfires, firefighters, and fire scientists, and especially of a crew, young and proud, who "hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy." This tale is also Maclean's own, the story of a writer obsessed by a strange and human horror, unable to let the truth die with these young men, searching for the last - and lasting - word. A canvas on which to tell many stories, including the story of his research into the story itself. And finally Nature's violence colliding with human fallibility.
Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean returned to the scene with two of the survivors and pursues the mysteries that Mann Gulch has kept hidden since 1949. From the words of witnesses, the evidence of history, and the research of fire scientists, Maclean at last assembles the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy; in his last work that consumed 14 years of his life, and earned a 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award.
The excruciating detail of this book makes for a sobering reading experience. Maclean -- a former University of Chicago English professor and avid fisherman -- also wrote A River Runs Through It and Other Stories , which is set along the Missouri River, one gulch downstream from Mann Gulch.

"A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."
—� from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992

The Men who Perished in the Mann Gulch Fire:
Robert J. Bennett�
Eldon E. Diettert�
James O. Harrison

William J. Heilman�
Phillip R. McVey�
David R. Navon�
Leonard L. Piper�
Stanley J. Reba�
Marvin L. Sherman�
Joseph B. Sylvia

Henry J. Thol, Jr.

Newton R. Thompson

Silas R. Thompson

Survivors of the Fire:
R. Wagner Dodge, foreman�
Walter B. Rumsey

Robert W. Sallee]]> 301 Norman Maclean 0226500624 Amber 0 to-read 4.03 1992 Young Men and Fire
author: Norman Maclean
name: Amber
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1992
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)]]> 17934530 Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition.

The group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain, record all observations of their surroundings and of one another, and, above all, avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another that change everything.]]> 195 Jeff VanderMeer 0374104093 Amber 0 to-read 3.80 2014 Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)
author: Jeff VanderMeer
name: Amber
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Birnam Wood 60784757 Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker--or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.]]> 432 Eleanor Catton 0374110336 Amber 0 to-read 3.79 2023 Birnam Wood
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Amber
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)]]> 2052
Librarian's note: this is an alternate cover edition.]]> 231 Raymond Chandler 0394758285 Amber 0 to-read 3.96 1939 The Big Sleep (Philip Marlowe, #1)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Amber
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Dangerous Path 38313209 Meanwhile, a mysterious and vicious threat unlike any other has invaded the forest, placing every cat's life in peril. Fireheart's beloved leader has turned her back on their warrior ancestors, and Fireheart can't help but wonder if she's right. Has StarClan abandoned them forever?]]> 346 Erin Hunter Amber 5 4.75 2004 A Dangerous Path
author: Erin Hunter
name: Amber
average rating: 4.75
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2)]]> 199347538 Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the hugely anticipated sequel to TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, one of the best-loved and best-selling fantasy novels of the past decade. Featuring gorgeous orange sprayed edges!

A magical house. A secret past. A summons that could change everything.

Arthur Parnassus lives a good life built on the ashes of a bad one.

He’s the master of a strange orphanage on a distant and peculiar island, and he hopes to soon be the adoptive father to the six dangerous and magical children who live there.

Arthur works hard and loves with his whole heart so none of the children ever feel the neglect and pain that he once felt as an orphan on that very same island so long ago. He is not alone: joining him is the love of his life, Linus Baker, a former caseworker in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth. And there’s the island’s sprite, Zoe Chapelwhite, and her girlfriend, Mayor Helen Webb. Together, they will do anything to protect the children.

But when Arthur is summoned to make a public statement about his dark past, he finds himself at the helm of a fight for the future that his family, and all magical people, deserve.

And when a new magical child hopes to join them on their island home—one who finds power in calling himself monster, a name that Arthur worked so hard to protect his children from—Arthur knows they’re at a breaking point: their family will either grow stronger than ever or fall apart.

Welcome back to Marsyas Island. This is Arthur’s story.

Somewhere Beyond the Sea is a story of resistance, lovingly told, about the daunting experience of fighting for the life you want to live and doing the work to keep it.]]> 416 T.J. Klune 125088120X Amber 0 to-read 4.16 2024 Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2)
author: T.J. Klune
name: Amber
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> Rising Storm 38313168

Fire alone can save our clan...

Fireheart's traitorous enemy Tigerclaw has been vanquished and exiled from ThunderClan—but Fireheart can't shake the feeling that he's lurking out there in the forest, waiting for the chance to strike.

That's not the only problem facing the young ThunderClan deputy in these blazing summer months, as he struggles to handle ominous omens, a disrespectful apprentice with a shocking secret, and a devastated Clan leader who is a shell of her former self.

Meanwhile the forest gets hotter and hotter . . . and everyone braces for the coming storm. . . .

]]> 348 Erin Hunter Amber 5 4.69 2004 Rising Storm
author: Erin Hunter
name: Amber
average rating: 4.69
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/09
date added: 2024/07/09
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Meet Kirsten: An American Girl (American Girls: Kirsten, #1)]]> 508211 59 Janet Beeler Shaw 0937295795 Amber 5
Also � pretty bold and brutal of them to kill Kirsten’s best friend with cholera in the first book! It was a choice! ]]> 3.94 1986 Meet Kirsten: An American Girl (American Girls: Kirsten, #1)
author: Janet Beeler Shaw
name: Amber
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1986
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2024/06/16
shelves:
review:
Reading a book from my youth that I’d read dozens of times � each line came back to me as if it had been just in the periphery of my brain the entire time. Love reading it through an adult’s eyes.

Also � pretty bold and brutal of them to kill Kirsten’s best friend with cholera in the first book! It was a choice!
]]> <![CDATA[Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)]]> 61431922 Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders...

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don’t bond to “fragile� humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom's protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die]]> 517 Rebecca Yarros 1649374046 Amber 4 4.56 2023 Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
author: Rebecca Yarros
name: Amber
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/11
date added: 2024/06/11
shelves:
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The entire time I was reading this book, I couldn’t decide whether I loved or hated it. This went right up to the final two pages. I was all set to give it three stars, and then the twist at the very end threw all that out the window. Now I have to read the next one. Dang!
]]> <![CDATA[Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love]]> 40364332 Hourglass now gives us a new memoir about identity, paternity, and family secrets—a real-time In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father. She woke up one morning and her entire history—the life she had lived—crumbled beneath her.

Inheritance is a book about secrets—secrets within families, kept out of shame or self-protectiveness; secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. It is the story of a woman’s urgent quest to unlock the story of her own identity, a story that has been scrupulously hidden from her for more than fifty years, years she had spent writing brilliantly, and compulsively, on themes of identity and family history. It is a book about the extraordinary moment we live in—a moment in which science and technology have outpaced not only medical ethics but also the capacities of the human heart to contend with the consequences of what we discover.]]> 252 Dani Shapiro 1524732710 Amber 0 to-read 3.86 2019 Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love
author: Dani Shapiro
name: Amber
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/04/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Nightingale 21853621 Der Weltbestseller � die Nr. 1 aus den USA.
Zwei Schwestern im von den Deutschen besetzten Während Vianne ums Überleben ihrer Familie kämpft, schließt sich die jüngere Isabelle der Résistance an und sucht die Freiheit auf dem Pfad der Nachtigall, einem geheimen Fluchtweg über die Pyrenäen. Doch wie weit darf man gehen, um zu überleben? Und wie kann man die schützen, die man liebt?
In diesem epischen, kraftvollen und zutiefst berührenden Roman erzählt Kristin Hannah die Geschichte zweier Frauen, die ihr Schicksal auf ganz eigene Weise meistern.]]> 564 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 Amber 5 4.63 2015 The Nightingale
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Amber
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/04/22
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption]]> 8664353
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.]]> 475 Laura Hillenbrand 1400064163 Amber 0 to-read 4.38 2010 Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
author: Laura Hillenbrand
name: Amber
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/04/22
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]]> <![CDATA[A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire]]> 98652084 A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum comes a wildly entertaining new history of Rome that uses the lives of 21 extraordinary women to upend our understanding of the ancient world.

The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of "The Doing of Important Things," and as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don't make that history. From Romulus through "the political stab-fest of the late Republic," and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.

Emma Southon's A Rome of One's Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One's Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.]]> 416 Emma Southon 1419760181 Amber 0 to-read 4.16 2023 A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire
author: Emma Southon
name: Amber
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 150247395
Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820702 Amber 0 to-read 4.28 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Amber
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/03/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe: A History from the French Revolution to the Present Day]]> 599225 288 Annette F. Timm 1845203577 Amber 4 3.68 2007 Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe: A History from the French Revolution to the Present Day
author: Annette F. Timm
name: Amber
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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date added: 2024/03/11
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]]> All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

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

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Amber 0 to-read 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Amber
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Book of Love 157981682 The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love—from friendship to romance to abiding family ties—with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.

Late one night, Laura, Daniel, and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are.

With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance—and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks; while they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. In the end, there will be winners and there will be losers.

But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo grapple with the pieces of the lives they left behind, and Laura’s sister, Susannah, attempts to reconcile what she remembers with what she fears, these mysterious others begin to arrive, engulfing their community in danger and chaos, and it becomes imperative that the teens solve the mystery of their deaths to avert a looming disaster.]]> 628 Kelly Link 0812996585 Amber 0 currently-reading 3.44 2024 The Book of Love
author: Kelly Link
name: Amber
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/25
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Book of Doors 156008269 If you could open a door to anywhere, where would you go?

In New York City, bookseller Cassie Andrews is living an unassuming life when she is given a gift by a favourite customer. It's a book - an unusual book, full of strange writing and mysterious drawings. And at the very front there is a handwritten message to Cassie, telling her that this is the Book of Doors, and that any door is every door.

What Cassie is about to discover is that the Book of Doors is a special book that bestows an extraordinary powers on whoever possesses it, and soon she and her best friend Izzy are exploring all that the Book of Doors can do, swept away from their quiet lives by the possibilities of travelling to anywhere they want.

But the Book of Doors is not the only magical book in the world. There are other books that can do wondrous and dreadful things when wielded by dangerous and ruthless individuals - individuals who crave what Cassie now possesses.

Suddenly Cassie and Izzy are confronted by violence and danger, and the only person who can help them is, it seems, Drummond Fox. He is a man fleeing his own demons - a man with his own secret library of magical books that he has hidden away in the shadows for safekeeping. Because there is a nameless evil out there that is hunting them all . . .

Because some doors should never be opened. ]]> 418 Gareth Brown 0063324008 Amber 4 4.12 2024 The Book of Doors
author: Gareth Brown
name: Amber
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/25
date added: 2024/02/25
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This book was really really good. Really fantastic world building, great twists. There was just something that prevented this from being a 5 star book. I’m not sure what it is, it’s something intangible. But anyway I loved this book and it’s more like 4.25-4.5 stars.
]]> <![CDATA[A Woman by Sibilla Aleramo (1980-10-23)]]> 128893350 0 Sibilla Aleramo Amber 3 4.14 1906 A Woman by Sibilla Aleramo (1980-10-23)
author: Sibilla Aleramo
name: Amber
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1906
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/19
date added: 2024/02/19
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]]> <![CDATA[The Romans: From Village to Empire: A History of Rome from Earliest Times to the End of the Western Empire]]> 12545870 Vividly written and accessible, The Romans, Second Edition, traces Rome's remarkable evolution from village, to monarchy, to republic, to one-man rule by an emperor--whose power at its peak stretched from Scotland to Iraq and the Nile Valley--to the empire's fall in 476. Firmly grounded in ancient literary and material sources, the text describes and analyzes major political and military landmarks, from the Punic Wars, to Caesar's conquest of Gaul and his crossing of the Rubicon, to the victory of Octavian over Mark Antony, and through Constantine's adoption of Christianity. Featuring two new chapters (13 and 14), the second edition extends the book's coverage through the rise of Christianity, the growth of the Barbarian threat, the final years of the empire, its fall in 476, and, finally, to its revival in the East as Byzantium. This edition also combines chapters 1 and 2 into one--"Archaic Italy and the Origins of Rome"--and integrates more material on women, religion, and cultural history throughout.
Ideal for courses in Roman history and Roman civilization, The Romans, Second Edition, is enhanced by two new 8-page, 4-color inserts and almost 100 extensively captioned illustrations. It also includes more than 30 ancient maps, revised and improved under the supervision of coauthor Richard J. A. Talbert, and textual extracts that provide fascinating cultural observations made by ancient Romans themselves. A new Image Bank CD contains PowerPoint-based slides of all the photos and maps in the text.]]> 585 Mary T. Boatwright 0199730571 Amber 4 3.94 2003 The Romans: From Village to Empire: A History of Rome from Earliest Times to the End of the Western Empire
author: Mary T. Boatwright
name: Amber
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/16
date added: 2024/02/16
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review:

]]> The Measure of Silence 74887271 Two sisters fulfilling their grandfather’s dying wish uncover decades of secrets in a powerful novel about family, truth, and forgiveness.

Dallas, Dealey Plaza, 1963. Nineteen-year-old Mariah Byrne is following her dream of a career in photography. One moment she’s filled with joy and hope watching the president and Mrs. Kennedy drive past. In the next, the world—and Mariah’s life—is split into before and after. What follows, and the unconventional decisions Mariah makes, will affect her and her family forever.

Sixty years later, sisters Raine and Jessica grieve the death of their grandfather. For both his beloved grand girls, Papa leaves behind a last wish and an unexpected the key to their grandmother Mariah’s hope chest. Explore its contents, he writes, and follow where they lead. But what secrets can their family history possibly hold?

Raine and Jessica unite to piece together the mystery of a past they never knew existed. But facts can’t reveal the whole story. With Mariah’s memories fading, the sisters struggle to understand her choices before the truth disappears forever.]]> 364 Elizabeth Langston 1662512090 Amber 2
I don’t often give “the dreaded two stars� to books, but this was such a disappointment. I was angry for most of the time I was reading it because it disappointed so much. ]]> 4.10 2023 The Measure of Silence
author: Elizabeth Langston
name: Amber
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/07
date added: 2024/02/07
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review:
I wanted to love this book. It has such a good premise! But the execution was terrible. The story focuses on the wrong things, most of the characters are one dimensional, it doesn’t have a lot of depth, I don’t understand why most of the characters were so upset about the “family secret,� and the writing was amateurish. Most of all, for a historical fiction book it was about 95% fiction and 5% history. I was hoping for more of an immersive historical experience with beautiful writing, but that was not this book.

I don’t often give “the dreaded two stars� to books, but this was such a disappointment. I was angry for most of the time I was reading it because it disappointed so much.
]]> <![CDATA[Forest of Secrets (Warriors, #3)]]> 38313229
Every cat has something to hide in the third enthralling installment of the new feline fantasy series Warriors! Ages: 10+.]]> 336 Erin Hunter Amber 4 4.72 2003 Forest of Secrets (Warriors, #3)
author: Erin Hunter
name: Amber
average rating: 4.72
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/27
date added: 2024/01/27
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]]> Wild and Distant Seas 150779156
Her choices ripple through generations, across continents, and into the depths of the sea, in a narrative that follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho. Moving, beautifully written, and elegantly conceived, Wild and Distant Seas takes Moby-Dick as its starting point, but Tara Karr Roberts brings four remarkable women to life in a spellbinding epic all her own.]]> 304 Tara Karr Roberts 1324064889 Amber 0 to-read 3.67 2024 Wild and Distant Seas
author: Tara Karr Roberts
name: Amber
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/25
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]]> Station Eleven 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 Amber 5 4.05 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Amber
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/17
date added: 2024/01/17
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]]> Libra 400
In this powerful, unsettling novel, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.

A gripping, masterful blend of fact and fiction, alive with meticulously portrayed characters both real and created, Libra is a grave, haunting, and brilliant examination of an event that has become an indelible part of the American psyche.]]> 480 Don DeLillo 0140156046 Amber 0 to-read 4.05 1988 Libra
author: Don DeLillo
name: Amber
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/01/08
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]]> The Vaster Wilds 62952130
A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own civilization has taught her.

Lauren Groff’s new novel is at once a thrilling adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.]]> 272 Lauren Groff 0593418395 Amber 0 to-read 3.73 2016 The Vaster Wilds
author: Lauren Groff
name: Amber
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/03
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review:

]]> The Midnight Feast 199743738 Secrets. Lies. Murder. Let the festivities begin...

It’s the opening night of The Manor, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles; crystal pouches for guests� healing have been placed in the Seaside Cottages and Woodland Hutches; the “Manor Mule� cocktail (grapefruit, ginger, vodka, and a dash of CBD oil) is being poured with a heavy hand. Everyone is wearing linen.

But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests. Just outside the Manor’s immaculately kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets. And the Sunday morning of opening weekend, the local police are called. Something’s not right with the guests. There’s been a fire. A body’s been discovered.

THE FOUNDER * THE HUSBAND * THE MYSTERY GUEST * THE KITCHEN HELP

It all began with a secret, fifteen years ago. Now the past has crashed the party. And it’ll end in murder at� The Midnight Feast.]]> 354 Lucy Foley 0063003104 Amber 0 to-read 3.55 2024 The Midnight Feast
author: Lucy Foley
name: Amber
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/28
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Murder at the End of the World]]> 136276877
Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.

On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 107 hours, the fog will smother the island—and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer—and they don't even know it.

And the clock is ticking.

From the bestselling author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle and The Devil and the Dark Water comes an inventive, high-concept murder mystery: an ingenious puzzle, an extraordinary backdrop, and an audacious solution.]]> 368 Stuart Turton Amber 0 to-read 3.63 2024 The Last Murder at the End of the World
author: Stuart Turton
name: Amber
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/28
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]]> Murder Road 196614815 A young couple find themselves haunted by a string of gruesome murders committed along an old deserted road in this terrifying new novel.

July 1995. April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to be a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchhiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

When the hitchhiker dies at the local hospital, April and Eddie find themselves in the crosshairs of the Coldlake Falls police. Unexplained murders have been happening along Atticus Line for years and the cops finally have two witnesses who easily become their only suspects. As April and Eddie start to dig into the history of the town and that horrible stretch of road to clear their names, they soon learn that there is something supernatural at work, something that could not only tear the town and its dark secrets apart, but take April and Eddie down with it all.]]> 341 Simone St. James 0593200381 Amber 0 to-read 3.67 2024 Murder Road
author: Simone St. James
name: Amber
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/28
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]]> The Fury 123206645 A masterfully paced thriller about a reclusive ex–movie star and her famous friends whose spontaneous trip to a private Greek island is upended by a murder � from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient.

This is a tale of murder.

Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it?

Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex–movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island.

I tell you this because you may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time � it caused a real stir in the tabloids, if you remember. It had all the necessary ingredients for a press a celebrity; a private island cut off by the wind…and a murder.

We found ourselves trapped there overnight. Our old friendships concealed hatred and a desire for revenge. What followed was a game of cat and mouse � a battle of wits, full of twists and turns, building to an unforgettable climax. The night ended in violence and death, as one of us was found murdered.

But who am I?

My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.]]> 298 Alex Michaelides 125075898X Amber 0 to-read 3.34 2024 The Fury
author: Alex Michaelides
name: Amber
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/28
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]]> The Great Divide 181110028
It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn enough money for her ailing sister’s surgery. When she sees a young man—Omar—who has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.

John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada’s bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.

Searing and empathetic, The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers—those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.]]> 321 Cristina Henríquez 0063291320 Amber 0 to-read 3.61 2024 The Great Divide
author: Cristina Henríquez
name: Amber
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/28
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]]> The Phoenix Crown 64417401
San Francisco, 1906. In a city bustling with newly minted millionaires and scheming upstarts, two very different women hope to change their fortunes: Gemma, a golden-haired, silver-voiced soprano whose career desperately needs rekindling, and Suling, a petite and resolute Chinatown embroideress who is determined to escape an arranged marriage. Their paths cross when they are drawn into the orbit of Henry Thornton, a charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the fabled Phoenix Crown, a legendary relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace.

His patronage offers Gemma and Suling the chance of a lifetime, but their lives are thrown into turmoil when a devastating earthquake rips San Francisco apart and Thornton disappears, leaving behind a mystery reaching further than anyone could have imagined . . . until the Phoenix Crown reappears five years later at a sumptuous Paris costume ball, drawing Gemma and Suling together in one last desperate quest for justice.]]> 384 Kate Quinn 0063304732 Amber 0 to-read 3.76 2024 The Phoenix Crown
author: Kate Quinn
name: Amber
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Women 127305853
Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

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

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

The Women is the story of one woman gone to war, but it shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm's way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A novel about deep friendships and bold patriotism, The Women is a richly drawn story with a memorable heroine whose idealism and courage under fire will come to define an era.]]> 471 Kristin Hannah 1250178630 Amber 0 to-read 4.58 2024 The Women
author: Kristin Hannah
name: Amber
average rating: 4.58
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Monday Mourning (Temperance Brennan, #7)]]> 181116
Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial.

She should be going over her notes, but instead she’s digging in the basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die?

Homicide detective Luc Claudel, never Tempe’s greatest fan, believes the bones are historic. Not his case, not his concern. The pizza parlor owner found nineteenth-century buttons in the cellar with the skeletons. Claudel takes them as an indicator of the bones� antiquity.

But something doesn’t make sense. Tempe examines the bones in her lab and establishes approximate age with Carbon-14. Further study of tooth enamel tells her where the women were born. If she’s right, Claudel has three recent murders on his hands. Definitely his case.

Detective Andrew Ryan, meanwhile, is acting mysteriously. What are those private phone calls he takes in the other room, and why does he suddenly disappear just when Tempe is beginning to hope he might be a permanent part of her life? Looks like more lonely nights for Tempe and Birdie, her cat.

As Tempe searches for answers in both her personal and professional lives, she finds herself drawn deep into a web of evil from which there may be no escape. Women have disappeared, never to return...Tempe may be next.

With its powerful mix of nail-biting suspense and cutting-edge forensic science, Monday Mourning is the best yet from this superbly gifted, megastar author who, as New York Newsday says, is “the real thing.”]]> 383 Kathy Reichs 0743453018 Amber 4 4.05 2004 Monday Mourning (Temperance Brennan, #7)
author: Kathy Reichs
name: Amber
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/28
date added: 2023/12/28
shelves:
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]]> Fire and Ice 38313277 336 Erin Hunter Amber 4 4.67 2003 Fire and Ice
author: Erin Hunter
name: Amber
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/15
date added: 2023/12/22
shelves:
review:

]]> That's Not My Name 123429195
Shivering and bruised, a teen wakes up on the side of a dirt road with no memory of how she got there―or who she is. A passing officer takes her to the police station, and not long after, a frantic man arrives. He's been searching for her for hours. He has her school ID, her birth certificate, and even family photos. He is her father. Her name is Mary. Or so he says.

When Lola slammed the car door and stormed off into the night, Drew thought they just needed some time to cool off. Except Lola disappeared, and the sheriff, his friends, and the whole town are convinced Drew murdered his girlfriend. Forget proving his innocence, he needs to find her before it's too late. The longer Lola is missing, the fewer leads there are to follow…and the more danger they both are in.]]> 297 Megan Lally 1728270111 Amber 0 to-read 4.04 2023 That's Not My Name
author: Megan Lally
name: Amber
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/12/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times]]> 52623750 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780593189481.

An intimate, revelatory book exploring the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.

A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May’s story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.

Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.]]> 241 Katherine May Amber 0 to-read 3.82 2020 Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
author: Katherine May
name: Amber
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/17
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]]> The Postcard 63880836 Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and partly restored through the power of storytelling.

January, 2003. Together with the usual holiday cards, an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. On the back, the names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents, Ephraïm and Emma, and their children, Noémie and Jacques—all killed at Auschwitz.

Fifteen years after the postcard is delivered, Anne, the heroine of this novel, is moved to discover who sent it and why. Aided by her chain-smoking mother, family members, friends, associates, a private detective, a graphologist, and many others, she embarks on a journey to discover the fate of the Rabinovitch family: their flight from Russia following the revolution, their journey to Latvia, Palestine, and Paris. What emerges is a moving saga that shatters long-held certainties about Anne’s family, her country, and herself.]]> 464 Anne Berest Amber 0 to-read 4.31 2021 The Postcard
author: Anne Berest
name: Amber
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/07
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]]> A Flicker in the Dark 57693172
Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren't really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?

In a debut novel that has already been optioned for a limited series by actress Emma Stone and sold to a dozen countries around the world, Stacy Willingham has created an unforgettable character in a spellbinding thriller that will appeal equally to fans of Gillian Flynn and Karin Slaughter.]]> 357 Stacy Willingham 1250803829 Amber 0 to-read 3.96 2022 A Flicker in the Dark
author: Stacy Willingham
name: Amber
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/05
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]]> <![CDATA[Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths]]> 51135393
Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Virgil to from Aeschylus to Sophocles and Euripides. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost three thousand years ago. But modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men, and have routinely shown little interest in telling women’s stories.

Now, in Pandora’s Jar, Natalie Haynes � broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist � redresses this imbalance. Taking Greek creation myths as her starting point and then retelling the four great mythic sagas: the Trojan War, the Royal House of Thebes, Jason and the Argonauts, Heracles, she puts the female characters on equal footing with their menfolk. The result is a vivid and powerful account of the deeds � and misdeeds - of Hera, Aphrodite, Athene and Circe. And away from the goddesses of Mount Olympus it is Helen, Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Antigone and Medea who sing from these pages, not Paris, Agamemnon, Orestes or Jason.]]> 320 Natalie Haynes 1509873112 Amber 0 to-read 4.23 2020 Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Amber
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/12/05
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]]> A Thousand Ships 53487148 This is the women’s war, just as much as it is the men’s. They have waited long enough for their turn . . .

This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of them all . . .

In the middle of the night, a woman wakes to find her beloved city engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over. Troy has fallen.

From the Trojan women whose fates now lie in the hands of the Greeks, to the Amazon princess who fought Achilles on their behalf, to Penelope awaiting the return of Odysseus, to the three goddesses whose feud started it all, these are the stories of the women whose lives, loves, and rivalries were forever altered by this long and tragic war.

A woman’s epic, powerfully imbued with new life, A Thousand Ships puts the women, girls and goddesses at the center of the Western world’s great tale ever told.]]> 368 Natalie Haynes 0063065398 Amber 3 4.05 2019 A Thousand Ships
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Amber
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2023/12/05
date added: 2023/12/05
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]]> Big Swiss 60701439
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…]]> 336 Jen Beagin 1982153083 Amber 0 to-read 3.69 2023 Big Swiss
author: Jen Beagin
name: Amber
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Flesh Made Word: Saints� Stories and the Western Imagination]]> 2303071
In this study of stories from the fourth through the fourteenth centuries, we meet the tender Perpetua bidding farewell to her infant son, Simeon Stylites turning himself into a rotting corpse, Francis of Assisi finding joy in suffering, and Fra Ginepro playing the fool, for Christ. We meet holy anchorites, headstrong virgins, fearless dragon slayers, and scheming politicians. Kleinberg unveils the inner contradictions, the subversive ideas, and the deadly power games that lay behind the making of the Western imagination. People, ideas, and passions―often relegated to the back pews―take center stage in this daring book. This is a story of how stories change lives.]]> 352 Aviad Kleinberg 0674026470 Amber 3 4.17 2000 Flesh Made Word: Saints’ Stories and the Western Imagination
author: Aviad Kleinberg
name: Amber
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/30
date added: 2023/11/30
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I wanted to love this book, and I did like some parts of it. I like the psychological aspect. I liked the sporadic snarky statements. But ultimately this was very esoteric and I guess that’s just not my thing.
]]> <![CDATA[Grave Secrets (Temperance Brennan, #5)]]> 281350
And then four young girls go missing from Guatemala City.

When a skeleton is found at the back of a rundown hotel, only someone with Tempe's expertise can deduce the identity and cause of death.

But as she searches for answers, her path is blocked at every turn. It is clear that some people will stop at nothing to keep Guatemala's secrets buried.]]> 315 Kathy Reichs 0684859734 Amber 4 3.99 2002 Grave Secrets (Temperance Brennan, #5)
author: Kathy Reichs
name: Amber
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/27
date added: 2023/11/27
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]]> <![CDATA[From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (The Middle Ages Series)]]> 1989674
In From Virile Woman to WomanChrist , Barbara Newman asks these and other questions to trace a gradual and ambiguous transition in the gender strategies of medieval religious women. An egalitarian strain in early Christianity affirmed that once she asserted her commitment to Christ through a vow of chastity, monastic profession, or renunciation of family ties, a woman could become "virile," or equal to a man. While the ideal of the "virile woman" never disappeared, another ideal slowly evolved in medieval Christianity. By virtue of some gender-related trait—spotless virginity, erotic passion, the capacity for intense suffering, the ability to imagine a feminine aspect of the Godhead—a devout woman could be not only equal, but superior to men; without becoming male, she could become a "womanChrist," imitating and representing Christ in uniquely feminine ways.

Rooted in women's concrete aspirations and sufferings, Newman's "womanChrist" model straddles the bounds of orthodoxy and heresy to illuminate the farther reaches of female religious behavior in the Middle Ages. From Virile Woman to WomanChrist will generate compelling discussion in the fields of medieval literature and history, history of religion, theology, and women's studies.]]> 424 Barbara Newman 0812215451 Amber 3 4.44 1995 From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (The Middle Ages Series)
author: Barbara Newman
name: Amber
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/27
date added: 2023/11/27
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Heir to Blackwood Library]]> 61155405
With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.

The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own.

Rumors swirl in the village about the abbey’s previous owners, about ghosts and curses, and an enigmatic manuscript at the center of it all. And as events grow more sinister, it will be up to Ivy to uncover the library’s mysteries in order to reclaim her own story—before it vanishes forever.

Lush, atmospheric and transporting, The Last Heir to Blackwood Libraryis a skillful reflection on memory and female agency, and a love letter to books from a writer at the height of her power.]]> 336 Hester Fox 1525804782 Amber 0 to-read 3.30 2023 The Last Heir to Blackwood Library
author: Hester Fox
name: Amber
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/20
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]]> The Echo of Old Books 62060274 absorvem o que os rodeia, e ela tem a capacidade de o sentir.
Quando encontra dois belos volumes que parecem nunca ter sido publicados, a descoberta rapidamente se transforma em obsessão.
Cada um deles contém uma acusação marcante, e os seus autores, Hemi e Belle, recontam lados opostos de um romance trágico.
Determinada a descobrir a verdade por trás desta infeliz história de amor, Ashlyn embarca num mistério literário feito de traições aparentemente imperdoáveis. Quanto mais descobre sobre os dois
amantes, mais perto chega de encerrar finalmente a dramática história de amor � e os capítulos inacabados da sua própria vida.
Uma história dentro de outra história, e com um toque de realismo mágico, O eco dos livros antigos é um romance inesquecível e perfeito para todos os apaixonados pelos livros.]]> 431 Barbara Davis 1542038154 Amber 0 to-read 4.27 2023 The Echo of Old Books
author: Barbara Davis
name: Amber
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/18
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]]> The Secret Book of Flora Lea 61964751
In the war-torn London of 1939, fourteen-year-old Hazel and five-year-old Flora are evacuated to a rural village to escape the horrors of the Second World War. Living with the kind Bridie Aberdeen and her teenage son, Harry, in a charming stone cottage along the River Thames, Hazel fills their days with walks and games to distract her young sister, including one that she creates for her sister and her sister alone—a fairy tale about a magical land, a secret place they can escape to that is all their own.

But the unthinkable happens when young Flora suddenly vanishes while playing near the banks of the river. Shattered, Hazel blames herself for her sister’s disappearance, and she carries that guilt into adulthood as a private burden she feels she deserves.

Twenty years later, Hazel is in London, ready to move on from her job at a cozy rare bookstore to a career at Sotheby’s. With a charming boyfriend and her elegantly timeworn Bloomsbury flat, Hazel’s future seems determined. But her tidy life is turned upside down when she unwraps a package containing an illustrated book called Whisperwood and the River of Stars . Hazel never told a soul about the imaginary world she created just for Flora. Could this book hold the secrets to Flora’s disappearance? Could it be a sign that her beloved sister is still alive after all these years?

As Hazel embarks on a feverish quest, revisiting long-dormant relationships and bravely opening wounds from her past, her career and future hang in the balance. An astonishing twist ultimately reveals the truth in this transporting and refreshingly original novel about the bond between sisters, the complications of conflicted love, and the enduring magic of storytelling.]]> 355 Patti Callahan Henry 1668011832 Amber 0 to-read 4.02 2023 The Secret Book of Flora Lea
author: Patti Callahan Henry
name: Amber
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/18
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]]> The Keeper of Hidden Books 62054146 A heartwarming story about the power of books to bring us together, inspired by the true story of the underground library in WWII Warsaw, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London.

All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship: books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also in need of saving.

With the death count rising and persecution intensifying, Zofia jumps to action to save her friend and salvage whatever books she can from the wreckage, hiding them away, and even starting a clandestine book club. She and her dearest friend never surrender their love of reading, even when Janina is forced into the newly formed ghetto.

But the closer Warsaw creeps toward liberation, the more dangerous life becomes for the women and their families—and escape may not be possible for everyone. As the destruction rages around them, Zofia must fight to save her friend and preserve her culture and community using the only weapon they have left—literature.]]> 416 Madeline Martin 1335455027 Amber 0 to-read 4.07 2023 The Keeper of Hidden Books
author: Madeline Martin
name: Amber
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/18
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]]> Starter Villain 61885029
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

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

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

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

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389223 Amber 0 to-read 4.09 2023 Starter Villain
author: John Scalzi
name: Amber
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/11/18
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]]> <![CDATA[A Short Reader of Medieval Saints (Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures)]]> 9074559 191 Mary-Ann Stouck 1442600942 Amber 3 3.56 2009 A Short Reader of Medieval Saints (Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures)
author: Mary-Ann Stouck
name: Amber
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2009
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/18
date added: 2023/11/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100]]> 3768670
"A tremendous piece of scholarship. . . . This journey through more than 2,000 saints is anything but dull. Along the way, Schulenburg informs our ideas regarding the role of saints in the medieval psyche, gender-specific identification, and the heroics of virginity." � Library Journal

"[This book] will be a kind of 'roots' experience for some readers. They will hear the voices, haunted and haunting, of their distant ancestors and understand more about themselves." � Christian Science Monitor

"This fascinating book reaches far beyond the history of Christianity to recreate the 'herstory' of a whole gender." —Kate Saunders, The Independent]]> 595 Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg 0226740544 Amber 4 4.14 1998 Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500-1100
author: Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg
name: Amber
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/17
date added: 2023/11/17
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]]> <![CDATA[Fatal Voyage (Temperance Brennan, #4)]]> 128759 448 Kathy Reichs 1416510567 Amber 4 4.05 2001 Fatal Voyage (Temperance Brennan, #4)
author: Kathy Reichs
name: Amber
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/14
date added: 2023/11/14
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It took me a while to really get into this one, but once I did, I really enjoyed it. Another great book by Reichs.
]]> <![CDATA[Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women]]> 345768
Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and have sometimes applied modern medical or psychological theories to them. Using materials based on saints' lives and the religious and mystical writings of medieval women and men, Caroline Walker Bynum uncovers the pattern lying behind these aspects of women's religiosity and behind the fascination men and women felt for such miracles and devotional practices. She argues that food lies at the heart of much of women's piety. Women renounced ordinary food through fasting in order to prepare for receiving extraordinary food in the eucharist. They also offered themselves as food in miracles of feeding and bodily manipulation.

Providing both functionalist and phenomenological explanations, Bynum explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. She also describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh. The author's interpretation of women's piety offers a new view of the nature of medieval asceticism and, drawing upon both anthropology and feminist theory, she illuminates the distinctive features of women's use of symbols. Rejecting presentist interpretations of women as exploited or masochistic, she shows the power and creativity of women's writing and women's lives.]]> 499 Caroline Walker Bynum 0520063295 Amber 4 4.20 1987 Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women
author: Caroline Walker Bynum
name: Amber
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1987
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/11/14
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]]> Holy Anorexia 623542
"Everyone interested in anorexia nervosa . . . should skim this book or study it. It will make you realize how dependent upon culture the definition of disease is. I will never look at an anorexic patient in the same way again."—Howard Spiro, M.D., Gastroenterology

"[This] book is a first-class social history and is well-documented both in its historical and scientific portions."—Vern L. Bullough, American Historical Review

"A significant contribution to revisionist history, which re-examines events in light of feminist thought. . . . Bell is particularly skillful in describing behavior within its time and culture, which would be bizarre by today's norms, without reducing it to the pathological."—Mary Lassance Parthun, Toronto Globe and Mail

"Bell is both enlightened and convincing. His book is impressively researched, easy to read, and utterly fascinating."—Sheila MacLeod, New Statesman]]> 255 Rudolph M. Bell 0226042057 Amber 3 3.64 1985 Holy Anorexia
author: Rudolph M. Bell
name: Amber
average rating: 3.64
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2023/11/11
date added: 2023/11/11
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Other than Bell’s weird preoccupation with Freud, which I ascribe to his scholarship being dated at this point (nearly 40 years old now), this is a good exploration of what he terms “holy anorexia� among medieval saints. I have read some of the very low star reviews and I feel like many are missing the point. He’s not trying to say that holy women wanted to be thin. They wanted to seek a spiritual enlightenment, holiness as an analogy to the modern desire for thinness that leads to anorexia nervosa. I think he’s quite clear about not conflating the two, and the epilogue, written by a colleague, states it again very well. This isn’t a book for someone trying to read about modern anorexia in the past. It’s a book grappling with real issues about why so many women sought holiness by starving themselves to death. This is but one of four books I’ll be reading on the topic, and I suspect I’ll like this one the least of the four, but in no way does it mean I think this book is bad or useless.
]]> The Woman in Me 74894304 The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.

Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.]]> 287 Britney Spears Amber 3 3.93 2023 The Woman in Me
author: Britney Spears
name: Amber
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/10/31
date added: 2023/10/31
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]]> <![CDATA[My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies, #2)]]> 36301023
Or does she?

Prepare for an adventure of Gothic proportions, in which all is not as it seems, a certain gentleman is hiding more than skeletons in his closets, and one orphan Jane Eyre, aspiring author Charlotte Brontë, and supernatural investigator Alexander Blackwood are about to be drawn together on the most epic ghost hunt this side of Wuthering Heights.]]> 447 Cynthia Hand 006265277X Amber 0 to-read 3.75 2018 My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies, #2)
author: Cynthia Hand
name: Amber
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/31
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]]> <![CDATA[Paris: A Memoir for Young Women in the Age of Influencers]]> 61812426 Behind Paris Hilton's meteoric rise from Upper West Side club kid to household name lies her self-proclaimed "superpower" of ADHD and a hidden history that traumatized and defined her. Shocking, funny, and surprisingly profound, Paris is the deeply personal memoir of the ultimate It Girl and a stunning inside view of a pop culture phenomenon.

Until, in a revealing documentary, Paris Hilton disclosed that her childhood was shattered by two years of strip searches, isolation, beatings, restraint, and brainwashing within the now infamous "troubled teen industry," Paris Hilton was simply the billionaire heiress America had watched grow up on television, on the internet, and in tabloids. But there was always more to Paris Hilton than met the eye. Yes, she is the media personality, DJ, entrepreneur, model, singer, actress, and icon beloved all over the globe. And yet...

Paris is the story people have always wanted Paris Hilton to tell--the story of who she really is. In this revealing and thought-provoking book, Hilton will separate the creation from the creator, the brand from the ambassador, and show the woman who grew up with incredible privilege but was also trapped in a world of unreasonable expectation at a moment when young women were humiliated for sport in a gossip economy on steroids. Paris recounts her perilous journey through pre-#METOO sexual politics with grace, generosity, and plenty of fun, rising above a series of heart-wrenching challenges to find healing, lasting love, and a life of meaning and purpose.

The parallel story arcs in Hilton's braided narrative come to full bloom as a watershed portrait of the Aughts, challenging each of us to question our role in her story and her role in ours. The result is an intimate and unexpected memoir about persona and personification, the price of being young and disobedient, and the complexity of manifesting your dreams after watching part of yourself disappear.]]> 365 Paris Hilton 0063224631 Amber 4 4.27 2023 Paris: A Memoir for Young Women in the Age of Influencers
author: Paris Hilton
name: Amber
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 4
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date added: 2023/10/27
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]]> Year of Wonders 6586144
Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

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

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

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. ]]> 323 Geraldine Brooks Amber 5 4.18 2001 Year of Wonders
author: Geraldine Brooks
name: Amber
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2020/05/26
date added: 2023/10/22
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]]> <![CDATA[The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery]]> 239728
History may be written by the victors, Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues in his brilliant and provocative book, but the losers often have the final word. Focusing on three seminal cases of modern warfare-the South after the Civil War, France in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany following World War I-Schivelbusch reveals the complex psychological and cultural reactions of vanquished nations to the experience of military defeat.

Drawing on responses from every level of society, Schivelbusch shows how conquered societies question the foundations of their identities and strive to emulate the the South to become a "better North," the French to militarize their schools on the Prussian model, the Germans to adopt all things American. He charts the losers' paradoxical equation of military failure with cultural superiority as they generate myths to glorify their pasts and explain their the nostalgic "plantation legend" after the fall of the Confederacy; the cult of Joan of Arc in vanquished France; the fiction of the stab in the back by "foreign" elements in postwar Germany. From cathartic epidemics of "dance madness" to the revolutions that so often follow battlefield humiliation, Schivelbusch finds remarkable similarities across cultures.

Eloquently and vibrantly told, The Culture of Defeat is a tour de force that opens new territory for historical inquiry.]]> 416 Wolfgang Schivelbusch 0312423195 Amber 0 to-read 4.02 2001 The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery
author: Wolfgang Schivelbusch
name: Amber
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/10/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe]]> 467568
Geary dismantles the nationalist myths about how the nations of Europe were born. Through rigorous analysis set in lucid prose, he contrasts the myths with the actual history of Europe's transformation between the fourth and ninth centuries - the period of grand migrations that nationalists hold dear. The nationalist sentiments today increasingly taken for granted in Europe emerged, he argues, only in the nineteenth century. Ironically, this phenomenon was kept alive not just by responsive populations - but by complicit scholars.

Ultimately, Geary concludes, the actual formation of European peoples must be seen as an extended process that began in antiquity and continues in the present. The resulting image is a challenge to those who anchor contemporary antagonisms in ancient myths - to those who claim that immigration and tolerance toward minorities despoil ''nationhood.'' As Geary shows, such ideologues - whether Le Pens who champion ''the French people born with the baptism of Clovis in 496'' or Milosevics who cite early Serbian history to claim rebellious regions--know their myths but not their history.

The Myth of Nations will be intensely debated by all who understood that a history that does not change, that reduces the complexities of many centuries to a single, eternal moment, isn't history at all.]]> 216 Patrick J. Geary 0691114811 Amber 0 currently-reading 3.81 2001 The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe
author: Patrick J. Geary
name: Amber
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Bequest 60600072

Isabel needs a good friend during such a rocky start, and finds one when she reconnects with Rose Brewster, her charismatic classmate from undergrad. But when Rose confides to Isabel that she is in trouble, and then goes missing, Isabel’s already-unsteady life is sent into a tailspin. A suicide note surfaces, followed by a coded message: Rose is alive but, unless Isabel can complete the research begun before her friend’s disappearance, both women will be killed by her captors.


As Isabel follows the Rose’s paper trail from Genoa to Florence and, finally, to Paris, she uncovers family secrets, the legend of an enormous cursed emerald, and a chain of betrayal and treason which parallels her own perilous present. If she can put the pieces together soon, she could solve a 400-year-old mystery—and save her and her friend’s lives in the process.


Combining epistolary elements, Gothic suspense, and an atmospheric “dark academia� setting, The Bequest is a gripping literary thriller that will appeal to fans of Alex Michaelides� The Maidens and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.]]> 312 Joanna Margaret Amber 3 2.99 2022 The Bequest
author: Joanna Margaret
name: Amber
average rating: 2.99
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/11/22
date added: 2023/10/08
shelves:
review:
I love the academia side of this, but it got really bogged down in the middle, even for a medieval history grad student like me. I thought this was a pretty good thriller, but about halfway through I was feeling pretty bored, probably because Isabel's topic isn't my own research focus
]]> Into the Wild (Warriors, #1) 38213280 Fire alone can save our Clan...

For generations, four Clans of wild cats have shared the forest according to the laws laid down by the powerful ancestors. But the warrior code is threatened, and the ThunderClan cats are in grave danger. The sinister ShadowClan grows stronger every day. Noble warriors are dying -- and some deaths are more mysterious than others.
In the midst of this turmoil appears an ordinary housecat named Rusty... Who may yet turn out to be the bravest warrior of them all.]]> 290 Erin Hunter Amber 4 4.53 2003 Into the Wild (Warriors, #1)
author: Erin Hunter
name: Amber
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/07
date added: 2023/10/07
shelves:
review:
This book is so good! Read it!
]]> Bright Young Women 101124639
The survivors, including key witness Pamela Schumacher, will be forever changed by this night. They have all become victims. But they tell their perspectives here, they remain masters of their stories. And they hunt the perpetrator on their own - against resistance from the justice system and the police; against public opinion, which idolizes the serial killer.]]> 384 Jessica Knoll 1501153226 Amber 0 to-read 3.99 2023 Bright Young Women
author: Jessica Knoll
name: Amber
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/10/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Militia House 61793523 Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize
Nominated for the 2023 Shirley Jackson Award

“An extraordinary novel about the quiet and not so quiet horrors of war.� —Roxane Gay

Stephen King meets Tim O’Brien in John Milas’s The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.

It’s 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward—loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters—and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they’re replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don’t need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.

It’s a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marines� growing unease, convinced that it’s just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.

Meticulously plotted and viscerally immediate in its telling, The Militia House is a gripping and brilliant exploration of the unceasing horrors of war that’s no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.]]> 257 John Milas 1250857074 Amber 0 to-read 3.65 2023 The Militia House
author: John Milas
name: Amber
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Deadly Decisions (Temperance Brennan, #3)]]> 128754 368 Kathy Reichs 0671028367 Amber 4 3.96 2000 Deadly Decisions (Temperance Brennan, #3)
author: Kathy Reichs
name: Amber
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2023/09/13
date added: 2023/09/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado]]> 12595893 228 Randy Turner 0615516114 Amber 0 to-read 3.82 2011 5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado
author: Randy Turner
name: Amber
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Just Another Missing Person 62292411 From the author of the Reese’s Book Club Pick and the New York Times bestseller Wrong Place Wrong Time comes a new heart-stopping thriller in which a missing-person case unravels deeper, darker secrets that lead a detective to an impossible moral choice.

22-year-old Olivia has been missing for one day…and counting. She was last seen on CCTV, entering a dead-end alley. And not coming back out again.

Julia, the detective heading up the search for Olivia, thinks she knows what to expect. A desperate family, a ticking clock, and long hours away from her husband and daughter. But she has no idea just how close to home this case is going to get.

Because the criminal at the heart of the disappearance has something she never expected. His weapon isn’t a gun, or a knife: it’s a secret. Her worst one. And her family's safety depends on one thing: Julia must NOT find out what happened to Olivia - and must frame somebody else for her murder.

If you find her, you will lose everything. What would you do?

This clever and endlessly surprising thriller is laced with a smart look at family and motherhood, and cements Gillian McAllister as a major talent in the world of suspense and a master of creating ethical dilemmas that show just how murky the distinction between right and wrong can be.]]> 377 Gillian McAllister 0063252392 Amber 0 to-read 3.59 2023 Just Another Missing Person
author: Gillian McAllister
name: Amber
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster]]> 41717906
Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers not only its own citizens, but all of humanity. It is a story that has long remained in dispute, clouded from the beginning in secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation.

Midnight In Chernobyl is an indelible portrait of history's worst nuclear disaster, of human resilience and ingenuity and the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will - lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats - remain not just vital but necessary.

Now, Higginbotham brings us closer to the truth behind this colossal tragedy.]]> 562 Adam Higginbotham Amber 0 to-read 4.45 2019 Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
author: Adam Higginbotham
name: Amber
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> God's Bits of wood 123209560 504 Ousmane Sembène Amber 3 3.00 1960 God's Bits of wood
author: Ousmane Sembène
name: Amber
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1960
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/29
date added: 2023/09/02
shelves:
review:

]]>