en-US Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:16:35 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 12888599
Adrift on the Atlantic, the weather deteriorating and supplies dwindling, the caraways scheme and battle, caught up in a vicious power struggle between ruthless but experienced sailor and an enigmatic matron with surprising powers of persuasion.

Choosing a side will seal her fate, but Grace has made her way in the world by seizing every possible advantage. As she recollects the unorthodox way she and Henry met and considers the new life of privilege she thought she'd found, Grace must now decide: Will she pay any price to keep it?

The Lifeboat is a masterful debut, a story of hard choices, ambition, and entertainment narrated by a woman as complex and unforgettable as the events she describes.]]> 279 Charlotte Rogan 0316185906 LibraryCin 0 currently-reading 3.18 2012
author: Charlotte Rogan
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/01
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 9359546
In the passing shadow of the Civil War, defiant Confederate General Oleander Hume waits to be let loose, too evil and warped to die, too mad with bloodlust to let go of his black magic.

He hungers for his lost and most precious possession, an ancient weapon of foreboding doom. Having fallen into the hands of an innocent girl, this last and most powerful of six revolvers is the key to unlocking unstoppable power.

But before General Hume, with his wicked bride and four twisted horsemen, can summon an army of undead to claim what is his, in his path stands Drake Sinclair--a gunslinger playing with cards close to his chest.

However, Sinclair is no white knight and is himself on the hunt for the six guns...]]> 170 Cullen Bunn 1934964603 LibraryCin 2
This is a graphic novel. I wasn’t a big fan of this one. It’s kind of a western/fantasy/horror mix. Not sure why I added it to my tbr to begin with. There was a lot of fighting and gun blasts. Maybe just not my thing (horror is, but western and fantasy, not as much).]]> 4.01 2011
author: Cullen Bunn
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2011
rating: 2
read at: 2025/06/29
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: graphic-novels, westerns, guns, supernatural
review:
There is a magical gun that is in the possession of a dying man. There are nefarious people who want to get their hands on the gun, but it is bound to the person who is holding it when the previous person dies. The daughter of the man is now this person, but she has no idea about this gun. Multiple people are now after her to get their hands on the gun.

This is a graphic novel. I wasn’t a big fan of this one. It’s kind of a western/fantasy/horror mix. Not sure why I added it to my tbr to begin with. There was a lot of fighting and gun blasts. Maybe just not my thing (horror is, but western and fantasy, not as much).
]]> 25324129
Deep in the Chalk, something is stirring. The owls and the foxes can sense it, and Tiffany Aching feels it in her boots. An old enemy is gathering strength.

This is a time of endings and beginnings, old friends and new, a blurring of edges and a shifting of power. Now Tiffany stands between the light and the dark, the good and the bad.

As the fairy horde prepares for invasion, Tiffany must summon all the witches to stand with her. To protect the land. Her land.

There will be a reckoning...]]> 344 Terry Pratchett 0857534815 LibraryCin 0 currently-reading 4.38 2015
author: Terry Pratchett
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 34228069 #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author

Celebrate the tenth anniversary of Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones with this gorgeous new edition, complete with special content and exclusive color illustrations.

The tenth anniversary of Cassandra Clare’s phenomenal City of Bones demands a luxe new edition. The pride of any fan’s collection, City of Bones now has new cover art, gilded edges, over thirty interior illustrations, and six new full-page color portraits of everyone’s favorite characters! This beautifully crafted collector’s item also includes four bonus stories that have previously only appeared in limited distribution, and—best of all—a new piece written by Cassandra Clare. A perfect gift for the Shadowhunter fan in your life.

This is the book where Clary Fray first discovered the Shadowhunters, a secret cadre of warriors dedicated to driving demons out of our world and back to their own. The book where she first met Jace Wayland, the best Shadowhunter of his generation. The book that started it all.]]> 512 Cassandra Clare 1534406255 LibraryCin 4
I really enjoyed this. I had a 10th anniversary edition to read and it included some colour plates of illustrations of the main characters. There were also some nice illustrations of some of the locations and a map at the start of the book, as well as illustrations before each chapter and others sprinkled throughout the book. I quite like Simon. There is a surprise near the end and I will continue the series.]]> 3.95 2007
author: Cassandra Clare
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/29
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: urban-fantasy, teenagers, young-adult, relationships, friendship, new-york-city, supernatural, demons, coming-of-age, family
review:
Clary and her best friend Simon are a dance/party when Clary sees something she almost can’t believe. A few people around her own age (teenagers) have cornered and killed someone… who then disappears. Not only that, Clary seems to be the only person who can see these teens who did the killing. As she finds out more, it seems the person who was killed was a demon and that’s what these other teens do – they kill demons. When Clary gets home, her mom is frantic for them to leave, and Clary doesn’t understand why, so she storms off for a while, but returns to a horrifying scene as she realizes her mom is missing.

I really enjoyed this. I had a 10th anniversary edition to read and it included some colour plates of illustrations of the main characters. There were also some nice illustrations of some of the locations and a map at the start of the book, as well as illustrations before each chapter and others sprinkled throughout the book. I quite like Simon. There is a surprise near the end and I will continue the series.
]]> 55404546 Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.

Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them... and what they will leave behind.]]> 369 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1524798657 LibraryCin 3
Every year, Nina Riva has a huge party at her home in Malibu where celebrities come. A lot of things come to a boil at this year’s party in the early 1980s. Nina has three siblings and when their famous singer father left years ago, their mother raises them on her own while running a seafood restaurant.

This was good. There were a lot of unlikable characters, but the siblings were mostly likable (at least I thought so). They were all dealing with their own issues. The POV did move from person to person. The book also moved back in time to look at their parents’ relationship. ]]> 4.02 2021
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/26
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: 1980s, family, brothers-and-sisters, parties, relationships, california, dysfunctional-families, fathers-and-daughters
review:
3.5 stars

Every year, Nina Riva has a huge party at her home in Malibu where celebrities come. A lot of things come to a boil at this year’s party in the early 1980s. Nina has three siblings and when their famous singer father left years ago, their mother raises them on her own while running a seafood restaurant.

This was good. There were a lot of unlikable characters, but the siblings were mostly likable (at least I thought so). They were all dealing with their own issues. The POV did move from person to person. The book also moved back in time to look at their parents’ relationship.
]]> 856135 415 Anthony Bidulka 1894663918 LibraryCin 4
I really liked this. It might have helped that I grew up in Saskatchewan and my brother lives in Saskatoon, so at least some of the names of places are familiar, as were some of the descriptions. There were bits of humour spread throughout that had me laughing out loud. I’m happy to see this is a series and I plan to continue. Note that I listened to this book, though not the official audio book, but even with the computerized-sounding voice, the story (and setting) kept me very interested.]]> 3.77 2000
author: Anthony Bidulka
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/25
date added: 2025/06/28
shelves: lgbtqia, canada, saskatchewan, detectives, mystery, missing-persons, relationships, france, canadian-fiction
review:
Russell Quant is a gay man and a private detective in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. A wealthy man, Harold, comes to Russell to find Harold’s runaway fiancee, Tom, who left Harold at the alter. It appears Tom went on their honeymoon to France without Harold. So Russell heads to France; later things become much more complex.

I really liked this. It might have helped that I grew up in Saskatchewan and my brother lives in Saskatoon, so at least some of the names of places are familiar, as were some of the descriptions. There were bits of humour spread throughout that had me laughing out loud. I’m happy to see this is a series and I plan to continue. Note that I listened to this book, though not the official audio book, but even with the computerized-sounding voice, the story (and setting) kept me very interested.
]]> 40605223 Now a Netflix original movie, this deeply scary and intensely unnerving novel follows a couple in the midst of a twisted unraveling of the darkest unease. You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, I’m Thinking of Ending Things pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.]]> 241 Iain Reid LibraryCin 2
A girl has just started dating her boyfriend, Jake. She is getting odd phone calls/messages on her phone and she just tries to ignore them. Jake brings her to a rural area/farm to meet his parents.

This was odd and confusing. Initially, I thought the “ending things” meant suicide, but I later realized it just meant ending the relationship. At the start (first half) it seemed not much was happening and this picked up in the second half after they arrived at Jake’s parents’ farm and on the way back home, but it was still confusing and didn’t make a lot of sense. ]]> 3.53 2016
author: Iain Reid
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2016
rating: 2
read at: 2025/06/24
date added: 2025/06/28
shelves: mental-illness, canadian-fiction, relationships
review:
2.5 stars

A girl has just started dating her boyfriend, Jake. She is getting odd phone calls/messages on her phone and she just tries to ignore them. Jake brings her to a rural area/farm to meet his parents.

This was odd and confusing. Initially, I thought the “ending things” meant suicide, but I later realized it just meant ending the relationship. At the start (first half) it seemed not much was happening and this picked up in the second half after they arrived at Jake’s parents’ farm and on the way back home, but it was still confusing and didn’t make a lot of sense.
]]> 577027
Now Mary and her brother, Caleb, have a decision to make: Are the villagers right? Or is their mother innocent? And if she is—can they help her escape before it's too late?]]> 272 Kathryn Lasky 0590473328 LibraryCin 3
Mary Chase is 12(?) years old and lives with her mother, Virginia, and her brother, Caleb, on a farm in/near Salem Village in the late 17th century. Mary’s father died two years earlier and they have worked hard to make a success of their farm without him. It is at this time that some girls in town start accusing others of witchcraft.

I did not listen to the official audio book, but I did listen to it being read, so it was not a professionally done audio, so I was quite happy that the story still mostly kept me interested. Mary’s family was a fictional family caught up in the Salem witch “hysteria” at the time and we followed each of the family as the story was told, though primarily it was Mary’s perspective. There is a very good author’s note at the end. ]]> 3.71 1994
author: Kathryn Lasky
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.71
book published: 1994
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/21
date added: 2025/06/27
shelves: historical-fiction, young-adult, salem, witches, new-england, 17th-century, family, farming
review:
3.25 stars

Mary Chase is 12(?) years old and lives with her mother, Virginia, and her brother, Caleb, on a farm in/near Salem Village in the late 17th century. Mary’s father died two years earlier and they have worked hard to make a success of their farm without him. It is at this time that some girls in town start accusing others of witchcraft.

I did not listen to the official audio book, but I did listen to it being read, so it was not a professionally done audio, so I was quite happy that the story still mostly kept me interested. Mary’s family was a fictional family caught up in the Salem witch “hysteria” at the time and we followed each of the family as the story was told, though primarily it was Mary’s perspective. There is a very good author’s note at the end.
]]> 60524292 A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration

It’s 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have fled Lebanon and moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories.. She had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, and fast. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center as a hotline operator.

All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she’s Mona, and she’s good at listening. These strangers all have so much to say once someone shows interest in their lives--marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office Muna is privy to her clients’ deepest secrets.]]> 280 Dimitri Nasrallah 1550655949 LibraryCin 0 currently-reading 4.13 2022
author: Dimitri Nasrallah
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/26
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 16106469 Thomas Hardy LibraryCin 3
Audio. What a jerk! Multiple times on multiple levels, not just the one time. I did lose track at times in the middle of the book so missed catching some of the other relationships in town, but I did manage to keep up with the main happenings of Michael, Susan (the wife), and Elizabeth Jane (the girl). I was a bit surprised at the end and I am giving this an “ok” rating.]]> 4.02 1886
author: Thomas Hardy
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1886
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/19
date added: 2025/06/26
shelves: classics, 19th-century, england, relationships, fathers-and-daughters
review:
When Michael is 21-years old, he travels to a fair near Casterbridge where he auctions off his wife and little girl. They leave with the sailor who paid for them. Years later, they return, looking for Michael after the sailor died. Michael is a well-regarded man in Casterbridge and it seems no one remembers what he did all those years ago and he wants to keep it quiet.

Audio. What a jerk! Multiple times on multiple levels, not just the one time. I did lose track at times in the middle of the book so missed catching some of the other relationships in town, but I did manage to keep up with the main happenings of Michael, Susan (the wife), and Elizabeth Jane (the girl). I was a bit surprised at the end and I am giving this an “ok” rating.
]]> 17333223
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.]]> 771 Donna Tartt 0316055433 LibraryCin 3
Audio. The narrator does accents well. I missed much of the first third or so of the book, except the explosion. I paid more attention to the time in Las Vegas, but missed more after until the last third or so. I wasn’t sure if I liked Boris. Because I missed so much of the start of the book it was harder to pay attention when Theo was back in NYC with the characters I’d missed at the start. There was much philosophizing for a while, which got boring for me. Though the end was more interesting/exciting. But I also missed something at the end and I’m not sure if I just missed it, or if the author didn’t address it. ]]> 3.94 2013
author: Donna Tartt
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/12
date added: 2025/06/26
shelves: new-york-city, orphans, crime, art, paintings, fraud, friendship, relationships
review:
This summary is partly with help from wikipedia. Theo is 13(?) when his mom is killed in an explosion. It seems he ends up living with “Hubie” and a girl Theo has a crush on, Pippa (I think she lives there, too). Until Theo’s dad reappears and takes him to Las Vegas where Theo meets Boris and they become friends. Eventually, Theo makes his way back to New York City.

Audio. The narrator does accents well. I missed much of the first third or so of the book, except the explosion. I paid more attention to the time in Las Vegas, but missed more after until the last third or so. I wasn’t sure if I liked Boris. Because I missed so much of the start of the book it was harder to pay attention when Theo was back in NYC with the characters I’d missed at the start. There was much philosophizing for a while, which got boring for me. Though the end was more interesting/exciting. But I also missed something at the end and I’m not sure if I just missed it, or if the author didn’t address it.
]]> 218695909 A teenage girl breaks free from her father's world of isolation in this exhilarating novel of family, identity, and the power we have to shape our own destinies—from the New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Things and Watch Me Disappear

The first thing you have to understand is that my father was my entire world.

Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence existence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Thoreau-like utopia.

As Jane becomes a teenager she starts pushing against the boundaries of her restricted world. She begs to accompany her father on his occasional trips away from the cabin. But when Jane realizes that her devotion to her father has made her an accomplice to a horrific crime, she flees Montana to the only place she knows to look for answers about her mysterious past, and her mother's San Francisco. It is a city in the midst of a seismic change, where her quest to understand herself will force her to reckon with both the possibilities and the perils of the fledgling Internet, and where she will come to question everything she values.]]> 368 Janelle Brown 0593449789 LibraryCin 4
This was really good. There was kind of a before and after section where life was very different for Jane. I could even almost agree with parts of her dad’s anti-technology rants (with hindsight), but of course he takes it to an extreme. I maybe would have liked a bit more in the wrap-up at the end. ]]> 4.18 2025
author: Janelle Brown
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/02
date added: 2025/06/02
shelves: fathers-and-daughters, 1990s, bombings, crime, montana, california, hermits, coming-of-age, technology
review:
17-year old Jane has been raised by her father in a cabin in remote Montana. Jane’s mom died when she was 4 and her father is very mistrusting of the “feds” and of technology. He is a smart man and has degrees from Harvard in three subjects and has taught Jane everything he knows. But Jane is itching to do and see more outside of their secluded life. When she accompanies her dad to Seattle when he is seeing a friend, things go very wrong when she is attacked and shoots the guy in self-defense. But what her dad has done is much, much worse.

This was really good. There was kind of a before and after section where life was very different for Jane. I could even almost agree with parts of her dad’s anti-technology rants (with hindsight), but of course he takes it to an extreme. I maybe would have liked a bit more in the wrap-up at the end.
]]> 32905337
The goal of The Pact seems simple: to keep marriages happy and intact, and most of its rules make sense: Always answer the phone when your spouse calls. Exchange thoughtful gifts monthly. Plan a trip together once per quarter. . . .

Never mention The Pact to anyone.

Alice and Jake are initially seduced by the glamorous parties, the sense of community, their widening social circle of like-minded couples--and then one of them breaks the rules. The young lovers are about to discover that for adherents to The Pact, membership, like marriage, is for life, and The Pact will go to any lengths to enforce that rule. For Jake and Alice, the marriage of their dreams is about to become their worst nightmare.]]> 415 Michelle Richmond 0385343299 LibraryCin 4
Jake and Alice have just gotten married and have been gifted a locked box. It turns out this is a “marriage pact” if they are willing to sign it. It seems good at first, having a group of people to help others keep their marriages on track, but things get a bit odd with “crimes” and punishments that seem ridiculously harsh.

This really drew me in (and made me angry). I thought those punishments seemed to me to do the opposite of what they Pact was supposed to do. And whoa! That ending! (Though it was slightly rushed). But given my emotional reaction to everything going on in the book, I am giving this a very high rating. ]]> 3.63 2017
author: Michelle Richmond
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/01
date added: 2025/06/02
shelves: husbands-and-wives, cults, suspense, crime, thrillers, psychology, california
review:
4.5 stars

Jake and Alice have just gotten married and have been gifted a locked box. It turns out this is a “marriage pact” if they are willing to sign it. It seems good at first, having a group of people to help others keep their marriages on track, but things get a bit odd with “crimes” and punishments that seem ridiculously harsh.

This really drew me in (and made me angry). I thought those punishments seemed to me to do the opposite of what they Pact was supposed to do. And whoa! That ending! (Though it was slightly rushed). But given my emotional reaction to everything going on in the book, I am giving this a very high rating.
]]> 59053366 She only went off the trail for a moment...

22-year-old Eileen goes missing while hiking in the remote Ashlough Forest. Five days later, her camera is discovered washed downriver, containing bizarre photos taken after her disappearance.

Chris wants to believe Eileen is still alive. When the police search is abandoned, he and four of his friends create their own search party to scour the mountain range. As they stray further from the hiking trails and the unsettling discoveries mount, they begin to believe they’re not alone in the forest… and that Eileen’s disappearance wasn’t an accident.

By that point, it’s too late to escape.]]> 409 Darcy Coates LibraryCin 4
This was told from multiple points of view, including the “crusty” lead police officer on Eileen’s case. I really liked it. There were a couple of twists at the end that I certainly didn’t see coming. ]]> 4.10 2018
author: Darcy Coates
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/30
date added: 2025/06/01
shelves: horror, survival, hiking, police-officers, friendship, serial-killers, forests
review:
Eileen is hiking by herself and posting to social media, but she disappears in the forest. When her film camera is found, it’s very hard to see the monster-like faces between the trees, but when Chris (Eileen’s brother) and Eileen’s friends see it, and the police still don’t believe it, Chris and friends head into the woods to try to find Eileen themselves.

This was told from multiple points of view, including the “crusty” lead police officer on Eileen’s case. I really liked it. There were a couple of twists at the end that I certainly didn’t see coming.
]]> 33566868 From the bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet comes a powerful novel, inspired by a true story, about a boy whose life is transformed at Seattle's epic 1909 World's Fair.

For twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a charity student at a boarding school, the chance to go to the World's Fair feels like a gift. But only once he's there, amid the exotic exhibits, fireworks, and Ferris wheels, does he discover that he is the one who is actually the prize. The half-Chinese orphan is astounded to learn he will be raffled off--a healthy boy "to a good home."

The winning ticket belongs to the flamboyant madam of a high-class brothel, famous for educating her girls. There, Ernest becomes the new houseboy and befriends Maisie, the madam's precocious daughter, and a bold scullery maid named Fahn. Their friendship and affection form the first real family Ernest has ever known--and against all odds, this new sporting life gives him the sense of home he's always desired.

But as the grande dame succumbs to an occupational hazard and their world of finery begins to crumble, all three must grapple with hope, ambition, and first love.

Fifty years later, in the shadow of Seattle's second World's Fair, Ernest struggles to help his ailing wife reconcile who she once was with who she wanted to be, while trying to keep family secrets hidden from their grown-up daughters.

Against a rich backdrop of post-Victorian vice, suffrage, and celebration, Love and Other Consolations is an enchanting tale about innocence and devotion--in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale.]]> 321 Jamie Ford 0525492585 LibraryCin 4
In the early 1900s, we follow Ernest as a child in China, brought to the US by boat, and raffled off to a woman running a fancy brothel. While working there, Ernest befriends two girls, Maisie and Fahn (neither works “upstairs”).

I listened to the audio. I really liked this. There is, of course, an author’s note that discusses Seattle at the time, including the two fairs and the fact that there was a boy raffled off in 1909. ]]> 3.90 2017
author: Jamie Ford
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/27
date added: 2025/06/01
shelves: historical-fiction, washington-state, prostitutes, chinese-americans, japanese-americans, 20th-century, love
review:
In 1962, Ernest’s wife Gracie is living in a home, slowly forgetting her husband and adult daughters. Their oldest daughter, Juju, a reporter, is doing an article on the world’s fair in Seattle, and discovers at the fair in 1909 (also in Seattle) a young boy was raffled off. It turns out that boy was Ernest, Juju’s father.

In the early 1900s, we follow Ernest as a child in China, brought to the US by boat, and raffled off to a woman running a fancy brothel. While working there, Ernest befriends two girls, Maisie and Fahn (neither works “upstairs”).

I listened to the audio. I really liked this. There is, of course, an author’s note that discusses Seattle at the time, including the two fairs and the fact that there was a boy raffled off in 1909.
]]> 54698705
Ben takes his role as your new black friend seriously, providing original and borrowed wisdom on stereotypes, slurs, the whole “swimming thing,” how much Beyoncé is too much Beyoncé, Black Girl Magic, the rise of the Karens, affirmative action, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other conversations you might want to have with your new BBFF.

Oscillating between the impulse to be "one of the good ones" and the occasional need to excuse himself to the restrooms, stuff his mouth with toilet paper, and scream, Ben navigates his own Blackness as an "Oreo" with too many opinions for his father’s liking, an encyclopedic knowledge of CW teen dramas, and a mouth he can't always control.

From cheating his way out of swim tests to discovering stray family members in unlikely places, he finds the punchline in the serious while acknowledging the blunt truths of existing as a Black man in today’s world.]]> 320 Ben Philippe 0063026449 LibraryCin 3
There did seem to be more memoir/autobiography in this one, and I like memoirs. I’m not sure the author is completely likeable, however! I didn’t like the use of “Karen” or “Karens” at the times he was using the word perjoratively. (I don’t like using one person’s name like that, in general.) I realize that’s off-topic, but it bothered me. That being said, there was some interesting advice included, as well as a glossary. ]]> 3.80 2021
author: Ben Philippe
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/26
date added: 2025/06/01
shelves: african-americans, canadian-authors, black-people, memoir, friendship, race-relations
review:
This is mostly a memoir/autobiography of a Black man born in Haiti, raised in Quebec, and living the U.S. as an adult. It’s made to sound more like advice (and there is some of that in the start and end chapters) on race relations between mixed-race friends on how to relate and interact with your Black friend.

There did seem to be more memoir/autobiography in this one, and I like memoirs. I’m not sure the author is completely likeable, however! I didn’t like the use of “Karen” or “Karens” at the times he was using the word perjoratively. (I don’t like using one person’s name like that, in general.) I realize that’s off-topic, but it bothered me. That being said, there was some interesting advice included, as well as a glossary.
]]> 55825416
But Natalka had a reason to be at the police station: while clearing out Peggy's flat, she noticed an unusual number of crime novels, all dedicated to Peggy. And each psychological thriller included a mysterious postscript: PS: for PS. When a gunman breaks into the flat to steal a book and its author is found dead shortly thereafter—Detective Kaur begins to think that perhaps there is no such thing as an unsuspicious death after all.

And then things escalate: from an Aberdeen literary festival to the streets of Edinburgh, writers are being targeted. DS Kaur embarks on a road trip across Europe and reckons with how exactly authors can think up such realistic crimes . . .]]> 9 Elly Griffiths 0358450411 LibraryCin 3 mystery, murder, authors
Audio. It was ok. The narrator did accents well. It was not nearly as good as the first in the series, but I knew it wouldn’t be, as Kaur was the least interesting character in the first book (for me, anyway). I also didn’t like Natalka’s character. I did miss a few things, including the introduction of a few characters, so I continued through the book not really knowing how they related to the other characters or why they appeared. I’ll likely give the series one more try, but if It’s not better, I won’t likely continue beyond. ]]> 3.61 2020
author: Elly Griffiths
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/27
date added: 2025/05/27
shelves: mystery, murder, authors
review:
90-year old Peggy is found dead by her “carer”, Natalka. It is assumed be old age, but when a postcard is found with a threatening note, this is questioned. Harbinder Kaur is brought in to help. Turns out Peggy was a “murder consultant”, who helped mystery authors (based on her often being named in the acknowledgements).

Audio. It was ok. The narrator did accents well. It was not nearly as good as the first in the series, but I knew it wouldn’t be, as Kaur was the least interesting character in the first book (for me, anyway). I also didn’t like Natalka’s character. I did miss a few things, including the introduction of a few characters, so I continued through the book not really knowing how they related to the other characters or why they appeared. I’ll likely give the series one more try, but if It’s not better, I won’t likely continue beyond.
]]> 221854086 Welcome to Christmas Town, where it is Christmas every day!
Visit the town where your wishes come true. Recapture the magic of your youth. Find love and happiness.
You’ll never want to leave.
Christmas was once Diane’s favourite holiday, but she can’t face it after the tragic accident that took her husband’s life shortly before the festive season.
Wishing to recapture the happy times of their youth, Diane’s grown children take her to Ireland’s latest attraction. Christmas Town, nestled in the Cavan hills, where it is Christmas 365 days a year.
There’s something about Christmas Town that unsettles Diane. Maybe it’s the fixed, happy smiles of the people who work there. Perhaps it’s the odd images in the wallpaper, or the blood that seeps out of the snow. Could it be her grief that’s stopping her from being happy?
As reality warps around her, Diane realises that leaving is not an option. In a place where wishes come true, Diane’s one wish is to save her family, even if she must confront The Thing in Christmas Town to do it.
]]> 143 Iseult Murphy LibraryCin 4
I really liked this. It was creepy. I do like horror and I also love Christmas. Maybe the end shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I still didn’t see it coming. ]]> 4.21
author: Iseult Murphy
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.21
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/19
date added: 2025/05/27
shelves: horror, christmas, small-towns, short-stories, ireland
review:
Short story/novella. Christmas Town is a small town set up as a tourist town with Christmas all year. Diane has been mourning the loss of her husband for two years, so her (adult) kids buy tickets to Christmas Town for a few days, but Diane is seeing odd and sometimes violent things that no one else seems to notice.

I really liked this. It was creepy. I do like horror and I also love Christmas. Maybe the end shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I still didn’t see it coming.
]]> 222432282
A strange town with a strange name, Cemetery, NY is filled with crime and secrets.

When a car accident one fateful night leads to a search for two missing bodies, detectives Abby Williams – an almost-thirty year old with something to prove – and Ed Reyes – a jaded, senior officer with a career as long as his partner is old – set out to solve the latest mystery.

Before long, a string of missing persons becomes a collection of bloodless bodies that has even the police pathologist stumped.

As the bloodshed continues, it becomes clear that the gruesome killings plaguing the town of Cemetery may not be the handiwork of some shadowy figure but of something even more sinister.

As detectives Williams and Reyes start to question the world around them, can they learn to put their differences aside? Or will the investigation of a lifetime be the end of their lives?

In this fast-paced small town crime thriller, nothing is as it seems.]]> 387 C.J. Daley LibraryCin 4
There was definitely a lot of action happening, spaced throughout the book. Initially, I didn’t take the book as horror, but more as a mystery/police procedural, and it ended up being that mixed with the gore (and “thrill”) of horror. As a librarian myself, I did like Abby’s new girlfriend, though I wasn’t sure about her at the start. It took a while to get used to the gruff Ed, but I liked him in the end, too. I am hoping this will continue as a series; it sounds like there is a book of short stories set to come out set in Cemetery, but I’m not sure if there will be more novels or not.]]> 3.90
author: C.J. Daley
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/19
date added: 2025/05/21
shelves: horror, mystery, serial-killers, murder, missing-persons, small-towns, police-corruption, new-york, lgbtqia
review:
Abby Williams and Ed Reyes are detectives in the small town of Cemetery, New York. A car accident brings them out to find no one around, when there should at least have been a body somewhere closeby. Where did the driver go? How did they get out and away from the accident and why didn’t they wait for help? Soon after, more and more people, starting with teenagers (a group of friends), many of whom were involved with drugs (but these are small crimes), disappear and some are turning up drained of blood.

There was definitely a lot of action happening, spaced throughout the book. Initially, I didn’t take the book as horror, but more as a mystery/police procedural, and it ended up being that mixed with the gore (and “thrill”) of horror. As a librarian myself, I did like Abby’s new girlfriend, though I wasn’t sure about her at the start. It took a while to get used to the gruff Ed, but I liked him in the end, too. I am hoping this will continue as a series; it sounds like there is a book of short stories set to come out set in Cemetery, but I’m not sure if there will be more novels or not.
]]> 92141
A brand-new recording narrated by Elphaba herself, Cynthia Erivo!

With millions of copies in print around the world, Gregory Maguire’s Wicked is established not only as a commentary on our time but as a novel to revisit for years to come. Wicked relishes the inspired inventions of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, while playing sleight of hand with our collective memories of the 1939 MGM film starring Margaret Hamilton (and Judy Garland). In this fast-paced, fantastically real, and supremely entertaining novel, Maguire has populated the largely unknown world of Oz with the power of his own imagination.

Years before Dorothy and her dog crash-land, another little girl makes her presence known in Oz. This girl, Elphaba, is born with emerald-green skin—no easy burden in a land as mean and poor as Oz, where superstition and magic are not strong enough to explain or overcome the natural disasters of flood and famine. Still, Elphaba is smart, and by the time she enters Shiz University, she becomes a member of a charmed circle of Oz’s most promising young citizens.

But Elphaba’s Oz is no utopia. The Wizard’s secret police are everywhere. Animals—those creatures with voices, souls, and minds—are threatened with exile. Young Elphaba, green and wild and misunderstood, is determined to protect the Animals—even if it means combating the mysterious Wizard, even if it means risking her single chance at romance. Ever wiser in guilt and sorrow, she can find herself grateful when the world declares her a witch. And she can even make herself glad for that young girl from Kansas.

Recognized as an iconoclastic tour de force on its initial publication, the novel has inspired the blockbuster musical of the same name—one of the longest-running plays in Broadway history. Popular, indeed. But while the novel’s distant cousins hail from the traditions of magical realism, mythopoeic fantasy, and sprawling nineteenth-century sagas of moral urgency, Maguire’s Wicked is as unique as its green-skinned witch.]]> 560 Gregory Maguire 0061350966 LibraryCin 3
I have never read The Wizard of Oz, and I’ve only seen the movie once. Wasn’t a big fan, but then I’m not a big fan of fantasy. I vaguely recall the story, however. I’m mixed on how to rate the book. I liked some of it, but then was bored by the politics and philosophy. I enjoyed more when Elphaba was younger, and when she first met Glinda (a.k.a. Galinda) and made some friends in college. As she got older and the focus was more on the politics, I wasn’t quite as interested. The book was a little longer than I’d like.]]> 3.42 1995
author: Gregory Maguire
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.42
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2009/06/08
date added: 2025/05/21
shelves: fantasy, witches, from-shelfari, year-read-2009
review:
3.25 stars. As the title suggests, “Wicked” tells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West’s life.

I have never read The Wizard of Oz, and I’ve only seen the movie once. Wasn’t a big fan, but then I’m not a big fan of fantasy. I vaguely recall the story, however. I’m mixed on how to rate the book. I liked some of it, but then was bored by the politics and philosophy. I enjoyed more when Elphaba was younger, and when she first met Glinda (a.k.a. Galinda) and made some friends in college. As she got older and the focus was more on the politics, I wasn’t quite as interested. The book was a little longer than I’d like.
]]> 15824178
Living and working as a part-time librarian in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Isaac had finally earned the magical research position he dreamed of with Die Zwelf Portenære, better known as the Porters. He was seeing a smart, fun, gorgeous dryad named Lena Greenwood. He had been cleared by Johannes Gutenberg to do libriomancy once again, to reach into books and create whatever he chose from their pages. Best of all, it had been more than two months since anything tried to kill him.

And then Isaac, Lena, and Porter psychiatrist Nidhi Shah are called to the small mining town of Tamarack, Michigan, where a pair of septuagenarian werewolves have discovered the brutally murdered body of a wendigo.

What begins as a simple monster-slaying leads to deeper mysteries and the discovery of an organization thought to have been wiped out more than five centuries ago by Gutenberg himself. Their magic rips through Isaac’s with ease, and their next target is Lena Greenwood.

They know Lena’s history, her strengths and her weaknesses. Born decades ago from the pages of a pulp fantasy novel, she was created to be the ultimate fantasy woman, shaped by the needs and desires of her companions. Her powers are unique, and Gutenberg’s enemies mean to use her to destroy everything he and the Porters have built. But their plan could unleash a far darker power, an army of entropy and chaos, bent on devouring all it touches.

The Upper Peninsula is about to become ground zero in a magical war like nothing the world has seen in more than five hundred years. But the more Isaac learns about Gutenberg and the Porters, the more he questions whether he’s fighting for the right cause.

One way or another, Isaac must find a way to stop a power he doesn’t fully understand. And even if he succeeds, the outcome will forever change him, the Porters, and the whole world.]]> 326 Jim C. Hines 0756408164 LibraryCin 4
This is book 2 in a series. Isaac is a librarian, but also a “libriomancer”. That means he can pull items out of books and use them, often magically. There are a group of libriomancers who call themselves Porters, lead by Gutenberg himself. When a wendigo is found by a couple of werewolves, murdered, Isaac and one of the local werewolves go to investigate, along with the help of Isaac’s dryad girlfriend, Lena, and Lena’s other love/girlfriend, Nidhi (also a psychiatrist) go to help find out what happened. This becomes bigger and bigger and ends in a bit of a “war” with magical metal insects, a ghost army, a vindictive father wanting to learn magic, the Chinese equivalent of libriomancers (though many of them have been dead for years, or trapped in books).

There is almost too much fantasy for me in this, but at the same time, I quite enjoyed it. I liked the dryad, Lena, and I love Isaac’s pet: a “fire-spider”, Smudge. I also love that Isaac is a librarian. The beginning of each chapter gives us Lena’s background. It was in italics and I often tend to skim parts like that, but I actually did pay attention to this story, as well.]]> 3.91 2013
author: Jim C. Hines
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/16
date added: 2025/05/16
shelves: librarians, magic, urban-fantasy, books, supernatural
review:
3.75 stars

This is book 2 in a series. Isaac is a librarian, but also a “libriomancer”. That means he can pull items out of books and use them, often magically. There are a group of libriomancers who call themselves Porters, lead by Gutenberg himself. When a wendigo is found by a couple of werewolves, murdered, Isaac and one of the local werewolves go to investigate, along with the help of Isaac’s dryad girlfriend, Lena, and Lena’s other love/girlfriend, Nidhi (also a psychiatrist) go to help find out what happened. This becomes bigger and bigger and ends in a bit of a “war” with magical metal insects, a ghost army, a vindictive father wanting to learn magic, the Chinese equivalent of libriomancers (though many of them have been dead for years, or trapped in books).

There is almost too much fantasy for me in this, but at the same time, I quite enjoyed it. I liked the dryad, Lena, and I love Isaac’s pet: a “fire-spider”, Smudge. I also love that Isaac is a librarian. The beginning of each chapter gives us Lena’s background. It was in italics and I often tend to skim parts like that, but I actually did pay attention to this story, as well.
]]> 10081055 The magic continues in "New York Times" bestselling author Mercedes Lackey's enchanting new story from the Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series. A beauty must battle some beasts before she rescues her prince.

The eldest daughter is often doomed in fairy tales. But Bella—Isabella Beauchamps, daughter of a wealthy merchant—vows to escape the usual pitfalls.

Anxious to avoid the traditional path, Bella dons a red cloak and ventures into the forbidden forest to consult with "Granny," the local wisewoman. But on the way home she's attacked by a wolf—who turns out to be a cursed nobleman. Secluded in his castle, Bella is torn between her family and this strange man who creates marvelous inventions and makes her laugh—when he isn't howling at the moon.

Bella knows all too well that breaking spells is never easy. But a determined beauty, a wizard (after all, he's only an occasional werewolf) and a little Godmotherly interference might just be able to bring about a happy ending.]]> 329 Mercedes Lackey 0373803281 LibraryCin 4
While at the Manor, Bella learns about the invisible servants and discovers they are smarter than either Sebastian or his brother, Eric (who is supposed to make sure people stay away). She also learns some magic from Sebastian and starts helping Eric with his patrols. But will she become a werewolf?

I really liked this. I guess the main fairy tale basis of this one is “Beauty and the Beast”, but there are elements of “Little Red Riding Hood” (at the start) and there is a magic mirror like in “Snow White” that Bella can use to speak to Godmother Elena. So, I love this for the fairy tale mashups. I also loved the invisible servants and Bella’s relationship with them. Sadly, it looks like this is the last of the “Five Hundred Kingdoms” books; I had hoped there would be more. I’ve really enjoyed them. (Though I do see an anthology I haven’t yet read.)]]> 3.75 2011
author: Mercedes Lackey
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/13
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: fairy-tales, relationships, fantasy, magic, werewolves, women, curses
review:
Bella is off to see Granny in the woods, but on her way home, she is attacked by a werewolf. As soon as he bites her, she screams and oddly, he runs off. The next day, Bella is taken out to the Duke’s manor in the woods and is told that she was bitten by a werewolf (the Duke himself) and has to stay for three months to be sure she isn’t infected and won’t attack anyone else herself. The Duke (Sebastian) is usually locked up for three nights/month to prevent him from hurting anyone, so no one knows how he got out that night.

While at the Manor, Bella learns about the invisible servants and discovers they are smarter than either Sebastian or his brother, Eric (who is supposed to make sure people stay away). She also learns some magic from Sebastian and starts helping Eric with his patrols. But will she become a werewolf?

I really liked this. I guess the main fairy tale basis of this one is “Beauty and the Beast”, but there are elements of “Little Red Riding Hood” (at the start) and there is a magic mirror like in “Snow White” that Bella can use to speak to Godmother Elena. So, I love this for the fairy tale mashups. I also loved the invisible servants and Bella’s relationship with them. Sadly, it looks like this is the last of the “Five Hundred Kingdoms” books; I had hoped there would be more. I’ve really enjoyed them. (Though I do see an anthology I haven’t yet read.)
]]> 136825998
Wool introduced the world of the silo. Shift told the story of its creation. Dust will describe its downfall.

Juliette, now mayor of Silo 18, doesn’t trust Silo 1, especially its leader, Donald. But in the world of the Silos, there is no black and white—everything is shades of gray. Donald may not be the monster Juliette thinks he is, and may in fact be key to humanity’s continued survival. But can they work together long enough to succeed?]]> Hugh Howey LibraryCin 3
This is the 3rd in a trilogy where groups of people (in the future) have been living in silos to get out of the dangerous outside air.

I tend to read series books quite far apart in time, so it’s tricky to get up to speed. On audio didn’t help. I did feel like I was more interested than in the last book, maybe (on checking my review, this comment stands for the start of book 2, but not the end), but there was still too much that I missed (or didn’t remember) from the previous books, and I really didn’t care about the people and I never did remember or figure out who some of the characters were. Looking at my reviews of the first two books, I liked the first one best and I must not have done the audio (I didn’t mention it, anyway, so I don’t think so). I did listen to the audio for the second book. I think I would have enjoyed the entire series more if I hadn’t done them on audio. I rated the first book the highest and my ratings got lower with each successive book.]]> 3.90 2013
author: Hugh Howey
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/13
date added: 2025/05/13
shelves: survival, science-fiction, dystopia, future
review:
2.75 stars

This is the 3rd in a trilogy where groups of people (in the future) have been living in silos to get out of the dangerous outside air.

I tend to read series books quite far apart in time, so it’s tricky to get up to speed. On audio didn’t help. I did feel like I was more interested than in the last book, maybe (on checking my review, this comment stands for the start of book 2, but not the end), but there was still too much that I missed (or didn’t remember) from the previous books, and I really didn’t care about the people and I never did remember or figure out who some of the characters were. Looking at my reviews of the first two books, I liked the first one best and I must not have done the audio (I didn’t mention it, anyway, so I don’t think so). I did listen to the audio for the second book. I think I would have enjoyed the entire series more if I hadn’t done them on audio. I rated the first book the highest and my ratings got lower with each successive book.
]]> 38903644 In the tradition of John Vaillant’s modern classic The Golden Spruce comes a story of the unlikely survival of one of the largest and oldest trees in Canada.

On a cool morning in the winter of 2011, a logger named Dennis Cronin was walking through a stand of old-growth forest near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. He came across a massive Douglas fir the height of a twenty-storey building. Instead of allowing the tree to be felled, he tied a ribbon around the trunk, bearing the words “Leave Tree.” The forest was cut but the tree was saved. The solitary Douglas fir, soon known as Big Lonely Doug, controversially became the symbol of environmental activists and their fight to protect the region’s dwindling old-growth forests.

Originally featured as a long-form article in The Walrus that garnered a National Magazine Award (Silver), Big Lonely Doug weaves the ecology of old-growth forests, the legend of the West Coast’s big trees, the turbulence of the logging industry, the fight for preservation, the contention surrounding ecotourism, First Nations land and resource rights, and the fraught future of these ancient forests around the story of a logger who saved one of Canada's last great trees.]]> 328 Harley Rustad 1487003110 LibraryCin 4
It’s sad how toothless the guidelines are that allow the companies to take the biggest oldest trees (it’s possible Big Lonely Doug is over 1000 years old! But one can’t really know for sure until the tree comes down and they can read the tree rings). The book looks at both the logging companies, as well as environmentalists/activists on Vancouver Island, and what is happening in those forests on the island. Also sad to read that they are logging the forests on Vancouver Island faster than the Amazon (though it’s the Amazon that gets all the media coverage). ]]> 4.13 2018
author: Harley Rustad
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/11
date added: 2025/05/12
shelves: trees, forests, british-columbia, canada, logging, environment, sustainability, canadian-authors
review:
This book looks at the logging industry in British Columbia, Canada, mostly on Vancouver Island. “Big Lonely Doug” is what was found to be the second-tallest Douglas fir in Canada as the loggers were clear cutting everything around it. There was nothing stopping them from taking down this particular tree, either, except the guy who was marking what goes and what stays (very little stays), decided this tree should stay.

It’s sad how toothless the guidelines are that allow the companies to take the biggest oldest trees (it’s possible Big Lonely Doug is over 1000 years old! But one can’t really know for sure until the tree comes down and they can read the tree rings). The book looks at both the logging companies, as well as environmentalists/activists on Vancouver Island, and what is happening in those forests on the island. Also sad to read that they are logging the forests on Vancouver Island faster than the Amazon (though it’s the Amazon that gets all the media coverage).
]]> 13426294
With a keen sense of humor and a big-hearted voice, she describes how she arrived in New York City one star-struck summer as a seventeen-year-old carrying a suitcase and two guitars; and how she built a career that has spanned four decades with films such as Carrie , Coal Miner's Daughter , 3 Women , and The Help . She details working with some of the great directors of our time, including Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, David Lynch, and Brian De Palma-who thought of her as a no-talent set decorator until he cast her as the lead in Carrie. She also reveals why, at the height of her fame, she and her family moved away from Los Angeles to a farm in rural Virginia.

Whether she's describing the terrors and joys of raising two talented, independent daughters, taking readers behind the scenes on Oscar night, or meditating on the thrill of watching a pair of otters frolicking in her pond, Sissy Spacek's memoir is poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, plainspoken and utterly honest. My Extraordinary Ordinary Life is about what matters the exquisite worth of ordinary things, the simple pleasures of home and family, and the honest job of being right with the world. "If I get hit by a truck tomorrow," she writes, "I want to know I've returned my neighbor's cake pan."]]> 288 Sissy Spacek 1401324363 LibraryCin 3
Sissy Spacek grew up in rural Texas (Quitman) with two older brothers. She was a tomboy and wanted to be a singer. She loved her life growing up, but she did leave to see if she could become a musician. She initially stayed in New York with her actor uncle Rip Torn for a while and eventually made her way to Los Angeles. We all know she became a very well-respected actor, highlights included “Carrie” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (at least, these are the two I think of first!).

I liked this. She seems to be really down to earth. She and her husband chose to live on a farm in Virginia to raise their two daughters in a rural area like she’d been raised herself. I like that she grew up in a town about the same size as the town I grew up in. I love that she loves animals (though I wasn’t excited to read about the hunting – though both her brothers cried when they first shot something). She did talk about filming some of the movies she did, including “Carrie” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, as well as a few others. This also makes me want to rewatch “Coal Miner’s Daughter” just a little bit! ]]> 3.91 2012
author: Sissy Spacek
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/10
date added: 2025/05/11
shelves: actors, rural-life, biography, women
review:
3.5 stars

Sissy Spacek grew up in rural Texas (Quitman) with two older brothers. She was a tomboy and wanted to be a singer. She loved her life growing up, but she did leave to see if she could become a musician. She initially stayed in New York with her actor uncle Rip Torn for a while and eventually made her way to Los Angeles. We all know she became a very well-respected actor, highlights included “Carrie” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (at least, these are the two I think of first!).

I liked this. She seems to be really down to earth. She and her husband chose to live on a farm in Virginia to raise their two daughters in a rural area like she’d been raised herself. I like that she grew up in a town about the same size as the town I grew up in. I love that she loves animals (though I wasn’t excited to read about the hunting – though both her brothers cried when they first shot something). She did talk about filming some of the movies she did, including “Carrie” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, as well as a few others. This also makes me want to rewatch “Coal Miner’s Daughter” just a little bit!
]]> 12326627 Caught between loyalties, the mother of the Tudors must choose between the red rose and the white.

When Henry Tudor picks up the crown of England from the mud of Bosworth field, he knows he must marry the princess of the enemy house—Elizabeth of York—to unify a country divided by war for nearly two decades.

But his bride is still in love with his slain enemy, Richard III—and her mother and half of England dream of a missing heir, sent into the unknown by the White Queen. While the new monarchy can win power, it cannot win hearts in an England that plots for the triumphant return of the House of York.

Henry’s greatest fear is that somewhere a prince is waiting to invade and reclaim the throne. When a young man who would be king leads his army and invades England, Elizabeth has to choose between the new husband she is coming to love and the boy who claims to be her beloved lost brother: the rose of York come home at last.]]> 544 Philippa Gregory LibraryCin 4
When Henry VII became king by killing Richard III, Elizabeth of York married him in order to join the two warring sides of Lancaster and York. Elizabeth Woodville came to live with them (as well as Henry’s very protective mother, Margaret). Elizabeth hated Henry initially, but came to care for him, as they had children who would be expected to later take the throne (including Henry VIII). But Henry and Margaret were always suspicious of anyone claiming to be a York heir who might have a better claim to the throne, particularly one “boy” (now a man) claiming to be Elizabeth’s brother, Richard. They called him Perkin Warbeck (among other things), as they tried to defend Henry’s crown – and Henry and Elizabeth’s heirs – from losing the throne to him. Poor Elizabeth was in the middle of it all (and her mother was also suspected to be helping other Yorkists claim the throne, even with her own daughter, Elizabeth, as Henry’s queen).

Of course, this is fiction. There is a short author’s note at the end, and I’m not sure if I believe that Perkin Warbeck was Richard. This book takes that view, however. That being said, I actually don’t think I’ve read a whole lot about Elizabeth of York herself (though I’ve read plenty, at this point, about the people who came before and after her), and I really liked the book. I certainly felt Elizabeth’s frustrations with her super-suspicious husband and mother-in-law and also how torn she was between her husband and protecting the crown’s inheritance to her children and how much she wanted Perkin Warbeck to be her little brother, Richard.]]> 3.93 2013
author: Philippa Gregory
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/07
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: historical-fiction, queens, royalty, england, 15th-century, wars-of-the-roses, elizabeth-of-york, tudors, betrayal, henry-vii
review:
Elizabeth of York was the daughter of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. Elizabeth’s two brothers, Edward and Richard are the two boys known to history as “the princes in the tower”, who were kept there after Edward IV died and his youngest brother, Richard III, became king. Edward and Richard were never seen again. There are all kinds of theories, most commonly that they were killed by Richard III. There is also a theory that young Richard escaped.

When Henry VII became king by killing Richard III, Elizabeth of York married him in order to join the two warring sides of Lancaster and York. Elizabeth Woodville came to live with them (as well as Henry’s very protective mother, Margaret). Elizabeth hated Henry initially, but came to care for him, as they had children who would be expected to later take the throne (including Henry VIII). But Henry and Margaret were always suspicious of anyone claiming to be a York heir who might have a better claim to the throne, particularly one “boy” (now a man) claiming to be Elizabeth’s brother, Richard. They called him Perkin Warbeck (among other things), as they tried to defend Henry’s crown – and Henry and Elizabeth’s heirs – from losing the throne to him. Poor Elizabeth was in the middle of it all (and her mother was also suspected to be helping other Yorkists claim the throne, even with her own daughter, Elizabeth, as Henry’s queen).

Of course, this is fiction. There is a short author’s note at the end, and I’m not sure if I believe that Perkin Warbeck was Richard. This book takes that view, however. That being said, I actually don’t think I’ve read a whole lot about Elizabeth of York herself (though I’ve read plenty, at this point, about the people who came before and after her), and I really liked the book. I certainly felt Elizabeth’s frustrations with her super-suspicious husband and mother-in-law and also how torn she was between her husband and protecting the crown’s inheritance to her children and how much she wanted Perkin Warbeck to be her little brother, Richard.
]]> 198222359 From million-copy-bestselling author John Boyne, an inescapably gritty story about one young man whose direction in life takes a vastly different turn than what he expected.

It’s the tabloid sensation of the two well-known footballers standing in the dock, charged with sexual assault, a series of vile text messages pointing towards their guilt.

As the trial unfolds, Evan Keogh reflects on the events that have led him to this moment. Since leaving his island home, his life has been a lie on many levels. He’s a talented footballer who wanted to be an artist. A gay man in a sport that rejects diversity. A defendant whose knowledge of what took place on that fateful night threatens more than just his freedom or career.

The jury will deliver a verdict but, before they do, Evan must judge for himself whether the man he has become is the man he wanted to be.]]> 168 John Boyne 152991650X LibraryCin 0 to-read 4.31 2024
author: John Boyne
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 26236852
A princess of Spain, Catalina is only sixteen years old when she sets foot on the shores of England. The youngest daughter of the powerful monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, Catalina is a coveted prize for a royal marriage - and Arthur, Prince of Wales, and heir to the English throne, has won her hand. But tragedy strikes and Catalina, now Princess Katherine, is betrothed to the future Henry VIII. She must wait for his coming-of-age, an ordeal that tests her resolve, casts doubt on her trusted confidantes, and turns her into a virtual prisoner.

Katherine's patience is rewarded when she becomes Queen of England. The affection between Katherine and Henry is genuine, but forces beyond her control threaten to rend her marriage, and indeed the nation, apart. Henry has fallen under the spell of Katherine's maid of honor, Anne Boleyn. Now Katherine must be prepared to fight, to the end if God wills it, for her faith, her legitimacy, and her heart.]]> 602 Alison Weir 1101966483 LibraryCin 0 to-read 4.07 2016
author: Alison Weir
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 27274322 Orphan Train and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, a compelling historical novel from “one of the best authors of women’s fiction” (Library Journal). Set against the turbulent backdrop of American Vaudeville, four sisters embark on an unexpected adventure—and a last-ditch effort to save their family.

In 1919, the Turner sisters and their parents are barely scraping by. Their father is a low-paid boot-stitcher in Johnson City, New York, and the family is always one paycheck away from eviction. When their father’s hand is crushed and he can no longer work, their irrepressible mother decides that the vaudeville stage is their best—and only—chance for survival.

Traveling by train from town to town, teenagers Gert, Winnie, and Kit, and recent widow Nell soon find a new kind of freedom in the company of performers who are as diverse as their acts. There is a seamier side to the business, however, and the young women face dangers and turns of fate they never could have anticipated. Heartwarming and surprising, The Tumbling Turner Sisters is ultimately a story of awakening—to unexpected possibilities, to love and heartbreak, and to the dawn of a new American era.]]> 352 Juliette Fay 1501134485 LibraryCin 4
They do and get better as they travel and do more and more shows. They also meet and befriend many other performers (and also dislike some of the other performers). Gert falls for a black man, Tip, and this is dangerous. Winnie falls for a young man, Joe, who is playing piano while his younger sister sings. The way of vaudeville, though, is that they come together with the other performers a week at a time, then are sent in different directions to do different shows. The chapters alternate between the points-of-view of Winnie and Gert.

I really liked this. I liked many of the supporting characters (the other performers), and of our main characters, I especially liked Winnie (though Gert’s storyline was good, too). There was a great author’s note, including a couple of pictures, as her own great-grandfather had been a vaudeville performer. The theatres that the sisters performed at not only really existed at the time, they still exist (though not all still as a theatre), as well as the hotels and restaurants. Some of the characters had names of real people (including using her great-grandfather’s name as one of the performers), and not only that, “Archie Leach” was included; Archie Leach was a real vaudeville performer who later changed his name to Cary Grant!]]> 3.87 2016
author: Juliette Fay
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/04
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves: vaudeville, performers, historical-fiction, sisters, relationships, friendship, travel, 1910s, 1920s, mothers-and-daughters, coming-of-age
review:
The four Turner sisters include Winnie, Gert, youngest Kit and eldest Nell, who is married and has just had a baby (all aged between 13 and 22). When their father is no longer able to work due to an injury and Nell’s husband doesn’t make it home from the war in 1918, they need to find a way to make some money to pay the rent. Their mother has always wanted the girls to perform, so they organize themselves into a short acrobatic show and see if they can get on a vaudeville stage.

They do and get better as they travel and do more and more shows. They also meet and befriend many other performers (and also dislike some of the other performers). Gert falls for a black man, Tip, and this is dangerous. Winnie falls for a young man, Joe, who is playing piano while his younger sister sings. The way of vaudeville, though, is that they come together with the other performers a week at a time, then are sent in different directions to do different shows. The chapters alternate between the points-of-view of Winnie and Gert.

I really liked this. I liked many of the supporting characters (the other performers), and of our main characters, I especially liked Winnie (though Gert’s storyline was good, too). There was a great author’s note, including a couple of pictures, as her own great-grandfather had been a vaudeville performer. The theatres that the sisters performed at not only really existed at the time, they still exist (though not all still as a theatre), as well as the hotels and restaurants. Some of the characters had names of real people (including using her great-grandfather’s name as one of the performers), and not only that, “Archie Leach” was included; Archie Leach was a real vaudeville performer who later changed his name to Cary Grant!
]]> 1178657
Dying before the age of 30, Anne Neville packed into her short life incident enough for many adventurous careers, but was always the passive instrument of others’ evil intentions. In this book, Anne's story is told in her own right, uncovering the real wife of Richard III.]]> 254 Michael Hicks 0752441299 LibraryCin 3
Like with many women historical figures, including high-ranking ones, there is very little information to go on, so there are many gaps in time and a lot of guesses as to where she might have been and what she might have been doing, based on what others (Richard, her father…) - that is, the men around her – were doing or where they were. I feel like this is more of a history of the time and place she was alive than an actual biography. I should expect it by now, but it’s still a bit disappointing. On the other hand, it’s also a reminder of some of the people/characters and events of the time period.
]]> 3.05 2006
author: Michael Hicks
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.05
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: biographical-fiction, history, england, 15th-century, women, queens, royalty
review:
This is meant to be a biography of Anne Neville, King Richard III’s wife. She was married twice, had one son with Richard (but that son died before she did), and she only lived to 28 years old. Her father, Warwick, was also known as “The Kingmaker”. He married both his daughters to two brothers in line to inherit the crown.

Like with many women historical figures, including high-ranking ones, there is very little information to go on, so there are many gaps in time and a lot of guesses as to where she might have been and what she might have been doing, based on what others (Richard, her father…) - that is, the men around her – were doing or where they were. I feel like this is more of a history of the time and place she was alive than an actual biography. I should expect it by now, but it’s still a bit disappointing. On the other hand, it’s also a reminder of some of the people/characters and events of the time period.

]]> 39350248 People Who Eat Darkness.

On March 11, 2011, a powerful earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than eighteen thousand people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned.

It was Japan’s greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.

Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, lived through the earthquake in Tokyo and spent six years reporting from the disaster zone. There he encountered stories of ghosts and hauntings, and met a priest who exorcised the spirits of the dead. And he found himself drawn back again and again to a village that had suffered the greatest loss of all, a community tormented by unbearable mysteries of its own.

What really happened to the local children as they waited in the schoolyard in the moments before the tsunami? Why did their teachers not evacuate them to safety? And why was the unbearable truth being so stubbornly covered up?

Ghosts of the Tsunami is an intimate account of an epic tragedy, told through the accounts of those who lived through it. It tells the story of how a nation faced a catastrophe and the struggle to find consolation in the ruins.]]> Richard Lloyd Parry LibraryCin 3
Audio. It’s an interesting topic, but the male British narrator didn’t do well keeping my interest, though there were times when I stayed interested. I’m rating this “ok”.
]]> 3.92 2017
author: Richard Lloyd Parry
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: history, japan, early-21st-century, tidal-waves, disasters, children, schools
review:
When an earthquake, then a tusnami, hit Japan in 2011, one school lost almost all the kids there, whereas almost all other schools got the kids to safety and they lived. This book follows the people/parents who kept looking for the bodies of their kids and why did that one school lose so many?

Audio. It’s an interesting topic, but the male British narrator didn’t do well keeping my interest, though there were times when I stayed interested. I’m rating this “ok”.

]]> 190572 576 Victor Klemperer 0375756973 LibraryCin 0 4.38 1995
author: Victor Klemperer
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at: 2006/01/01
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: biography, world-war-ii, holocaust, jewish-people, from-shelfari, year-read-2006
review:

]]> 15815346 Sometimes coming home for the holidays isn’t as easy as it seems….

It’s December 21, and the Yancey sisters have been called home. When the girls were young, holidays at their family farm meant a tinsel-garnished tree, the scent of simmering food, and laughter ringing through the house. But as the years unfolded, family bonds fractured, and the three sisters scattered and settled into separate lives. Until now. The Yancey sisters are coming to spend the holidays with their mother. They’re also coming to bury their father.

Claire, the youngest, a free spirit who journeyed to California, returns first. Then comes Julia, the eldest, a college professor with a teenage son of her own. And finally there’s Maya, the middle child, who works so hard to be the perfect mother and wife.

During the sisters’ week together, old conflicts surface, new secrets emerge, and the limits and definitions of family are tested. And as the longest night of the year slips by and brightening days beckon, the sisters will have to answer one question: When you’re a sister, aren’t you a sister forever?]]> 368 Jennifer Scott 0451418816 LibraryCin 3
It’s Christmas and Elise’s three daughters are all coming home for the first time in a decade. Julia is the eldest and is bringing her 14-year old sullen son, Eli. Maya is the middle daughter and her husband and two kids come with her. Claire is the youngest and is on her own. Maya and Claire had a fight ten years ago and haven’t spoken since. They all have their own secrets. In fact, they haven’t actually come home for Christmas, but for the funeral of their abusive father.

I liked this. I loved the Christmas-y of it. It was frustrating that the sisters (particularly Maya and Claire… really Maya) wouldn’t even talk to Claire. Of course, all their secrets did come out with time. Some of the chapters were from Eli’s point of view, as he has his own issues. ]]> 3.57 2013
author: Jennifer Scott
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/28
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: mothers-and-daughters, sisters, chick-lit, abuse, dysfunctional-families, christmas, secrets
review:
3.5 stars

It’s Christmas and Elise’s three daughters are all coming home for the first time in a decade. Julia is the eldest and is bringing her 14-year old sullen son, Eli. Maya is the middle daughter and her husband and two kids come with her. Claire is the youngest and is on her own. Maya and Claire had a fight ten years ago and haven’t spoken since. They all have their own secrets. In fact, they haven’t actually come home for Christmas, but for the funeral of their abusive father.

I liked this. I loved the Christmas-y of it. It was frustrating that the sisters (particularly Maya and Claire… really Maya) wouldn’t even talk to Claire. Of course, all their secrets did come out with time. Some of the chapters were from Eli’s point of view, as he has his own issues.
]]> 18062305 16 Gabriel García Márquez 1482939711 LibraryCin 2
This was another audio and this was the time for any audio that was going to hold my interest to do it because I was recovering from eye surgery and was really unable to do much of anything besides listen to things. So, there was nothing to distract me from it, but I really wasn’t interested. Yes, this happens with audios for me, but usually I’m doing something else that can pull my attention away. This one couldn’t even hold my attention at all.]]> 3.77 1985
author: Gabriel García Márquez
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1985
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: classics, latin-america, relationships, aging, early-20th-century
review:
Not sure I can do a summary. Three characters I (sort of) remember: Dr. Urbano and there were two characters that started with F, one male, one female (I will call them He-F and She-F). I think we backed up in time from the start when Dr. Urbano was old and dying(?). As far as I could tell, everyone was just sleeping with everyone else. It sounded like it might have been set in the Caribbean and I never did quite figure out the time period.

This was another audio and this was the time for any audio that was going to hold my interest to do it because I was recovering from eye surgery and was really unable to do much of anything besides listen to things. So, there was nothing to distract me from it, but I really wasn’t interested. Yes, this happens with audios for me, but usually I’m doing something else that can pull my attention away. This one couldn’t even hold my attention at all.
]]> 17380041  
If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them.
 
In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own. ]]> 332 Jo Baker 0385351232 LibraryCin 2
This is Pride & Prejudice from the point of view of the servants, mostly Sarah, a maid who was an orphan taken in my Mr. and Mrs. Hill, head servants at Longbourn. Sarah is raised here and things get more interesting when a new “footman”, James Smith, arrives.

(Audio) This was quite slow-moving. I caught more of the big events, I think, but lost interest in many details. Nor sure I liked the end; I thought Sarah made a bad decision at the end, at least in my opinion. ]]> 3.63 2013
author: Jo Baker
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2013
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/19
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: historical-fiction, relationships, servants, england, 19th-century
review:
2.5 stars

This is Pride & Prejudice from the point of view of the servants, mostly Sarah, a maid who was an orphan taken in my Mr. and Mrs. Hill, head servants at Longbourn. Sarah is raised here and things get more interesting when a new “footman”, James Smith, arrives.

(Audio) This was quite slow-moving. I caught more of the big events, I think, but lost interest in many details. Nor sure I liked the end; I thought Sarah made a bad decision at the end, at least in my opinion.
]]> 217927936 What would you do if the past showed up on your doorstep? A woman who grew up in a cult must decide if she can trust the stranger claiming to have answers to the dark mysteries of her childhood in this "irresistible"* thriller.

*Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines

Twenty years ago, the members of a reclusive commune outside Philadelphia vanished without a trace. The mystery of their disappearance has never been solved. No sightings of the members were ever verified, and no bodies ever found. But the group did leave one thing a twelve-year-old girl wandering alone on the side of the road in search of her lost family.

In the years since that morning, Lee Burton has tried to put the pain of her past behind her. She has built a new identity for herself, with a doting husband and seven-month-old daughter, Lucy. No one in her life now knows about her connection to “the cult that went missing,” not even her husband. But new motherhood is proving a bigger challenge than she anticipated. She doesn't want to let Lucy out of her sight even for a moment. She can't return to work. She's not sleeping, and she's starting to have paranoid thoughts of Lucy being harmed.  

Then a stranger shows up on her doorstep, offering to finally answer all of Lee’s questions about her past—if she could only trust that the woman is who she says she is. As she digs deeper into the woman's history, the safe, stable life that Lee has constructed for herself threatens to shatter. In The Ascent, Allison Buccola has crafted a nerve-rattling thriller about motherhood, identity, and the truths we think we know about our families.]]> 336 Allison Buccola 0593730011 LibraryCin 4
I really liked most of this but there was a twist near the end that I just don’t see how she could have figured out. I thought it was an unbelievable leap by an unreliable narrator. Other than that, I still really liked it. It kep me reading, wondering what had happened to Lee’s family. ]]> 4.04 2025
author: Allison Buccola
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/29
shelves: thrillers, mothers-and-daughters, sisters, husbands-and-wives, cults, missing-persons
review:
Lee grew up in a commune, a “cult”, and one day when she was 12-years old, she woke up and everyone else was gone, including her mother and younger sister. Twenty years later, Lee is married and they have a newborn daughter, Lucy. Her husband. Theo, doesn’t know about Lee’s background/childhood. And one day, someone shows up claiming to be Lee’s sister, Mona.

I really liked most of this but there was a twist near the end that I just don’t see how she could have figured out. I thought it was an unbelievable leap by an unreliable narrator. Other than that, I still really liked it. It kep me reading, wondering what had happened to Lee’s family.
]]> 7744611
But the hunt takes a dark turn when Tory locates the other box—a fake bomb, along with a sinister proposal from The Gamemaster. Now, the real game has begun: another bomb is out there—a real one—and the clock is ticking.]]> 408 Kathy Reichs 0099543850 LibraryCin 4
I listened to the audio and though I did occasionally lose focus, I really liked this story. There was also a surprising twist (well, surprising to me – maybe there were hints I missed, though I don’t often catch those, anyway!). Things ramped up toward the end to make it all a bit more exciting. I also liked that one of the adults did help a bit in this one.]]> 4.24 2013
author: Kathy Reichs
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/13
date added: 2025/04/13
shelves: mystery, murder, games, friendship, young-adult, teenagers, canadian-fiction, geocaching, supernatural, crime, puzzles
review:
This is the 3rd in a YA series. Tory and her friends have acquired some special abilities (in previous books). They have come across a geocaching site and one of them encourages the others to join in to solve the puzzles. This particular geocache is a bit different and leads to another. Then, another. And it gets weird and scary. Then, the teens find a dead body.

I listened to the audio and though I did occasionally lose focus, I really liked this story. There was also a surprising twist (well, surprising to me – maybe there were hints I missed, though I don’t often catch those, anyway!). Things ramped up toward the end to make it all a bit more exciting. I also liked that one of the adults did help a bit in this one.
]]> 256389
In this important book, Elaine Breslaw claims to have rediscovered Tituba, the elusive, mysterious, and often mythologized Indian woman accused of witchcraft in Salem in 1692 and immortalized in Arthur Miller's The Crucible .

Reconstructing the life of the slave woman at the center of the notorious Salem witch trials, the book follows Tituba from her likely origins in South America to Barbados, forcefully dispelling the commonly-held belief that Tituba was African. The uniquely multicultural nature of life on a seventeenth-century Barbadan sugar plantation―defined by a mixture of English, American Indian, and African ways and folklore―indelibly shaped the young Tituba's world and the mental images she brought with her to Massachusetts.

Breslaw divides Tituba’s story into two parts. The first focuses on Tituba's roots in Barbados, the second on her life in the New World. The author emphasizes the inextricably linked worlds of the Caribbean and the North American colonies, illustrating how the Puritan worldview was influenced by its perception of possessed Indians. Breslaw argues that Tituba’s confession to practicing witchcraft clearly reveals her savvy and determined efforts to protect herself by actively manipulating Puritan fears. This confession, perceived as evidence of a diabolical conspiracy, was the central agent in the cataclysmic series of events that saw 19 people executed and over 150 imprisoned, including a young girl of 5.

A landmark contribution to women's history and early American history, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem sheds new light on one of the most painful episodes in American history, through the eyes of its most crucial participant.]]> 270 Elaine G. Breslaw 0814713076 LibraryCin 3
Tituba was an indigenous woman, likely indigenous to South America, and was a slave in Barbados before she came to Massachusetts with Samuel Parrish in the late 1600s. When the girls started convulsing and pointing fingers at possible “witches,” Tituba was one of the first who was pointed at. In fact, Tituba “confessed,” but she later indicated that she had lied to save herself. This was a biography, of sorts, of Tituba.

There is not a lot of information on Tituba beyond the time of the witch trials in Salem, but with a lot of research, the author has put together something that makes sense. But it is a lot of looking at the research and deducing things. So, especially at the start, it’s not super-enticing. But, there is a reason the author wants to include Tituba’s likely background as a child in her indigenous community as a child, then as a slave in Barbados. The author thinks Tituba drew on those things when she was testifying, and it does, in fact, explain some of what was happening, if the author is correct. So, I think there is good information here, though it is a bit slow-going, especially at the start. ]]> 3.54 1995
author: Elaine G. Breslaw
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1995
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/08
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: salem, new-england, 17th-century, witches, trials, biography, history
review:
3.25 stars

Tituba was an indigenous woman, likely indigenous to South America, and was a slave in Barbados before she came to Massachusetts with Samuel Parrish in the late 1600s. When the girls started convulsing and pointing fingers at possible “witches,” Tituba was one of the first who was pointed at. In fact, Tituba “confessed,” but she later indicated that she had lied to save herself. This was a biography, of sorts, of Tituba.

There is not a lot of information on Tituba beyond the time of the witch trials in Salem, but with a lot of research, the author has put together something that makes sense. But it is a lot of looking at the research and deducing things. So, especially at the start, it’s not super-enticing. But, there is a reason the author wants to include Tituba’s likely background as a child in her indigenous community as a child, then as a slave in Barbados. The author thinks Tituba drew on those things when she was testifying, and it does, in fact, explain some of what was happening, if the author is correct. So, I think there is good information here, though it is a bit slow-going, especially at the start.
]]> 29452508
Birds have not been known for their high IQs, which is why a person of questionable intelligence is sometimes called a "birdbrain." Yet in the past two decades, the study of avian intelligence has witnessed dramatic advances. From a time when birds were seen as simple instinct machines responding only to stimuli in their external worlds, we now know that some birds have complex internal worlds as well. This beautifully illustrated book provides an engaging exploration of the avian mind, revealing how science is exploding one of the most widespread myths about our feathered friends―and changing the way we think about intelligence in other animals as well.

Bird Brain looks at the structures and functions of the avian brain, and describes the extraordinary behaviors that different types of avian intelligence give rise to. It offers insights into crows, jays, magpies, and other corvids―the “masterminds” of the avian world―as well as parrots and some less-studied species from around the world. This lively and accessible book shows how birds have sophisticated brains with abilities previously thought to be uniquely human, such as mental time travel, self-recognition, empathy, problem solving, imagination, and insight.

Written by a leading expert and featuring a foreword by Frans de Waal, renowned for his work on animal intelligence, Bird Brain shines critical new light on the mental lives of birds.]]> 192 Nathan J. Emery 0691165173 LibraryCin 0 currently-reading 3.96
author: Nathan J. Emery
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 46015758 If it Bleeds is a collection of four new novellas —Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, The Life of Chuck, Rat, and the title story If It Bleeds— each pulling readers into intriguing and frightening places.

A collection of four uniquely wonderful long stories, including a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider.

News people have a saying: 'If it bleeds, it leads'. And a bomb at Albert Macready Middle School is guaranteed to lead any bulletin.

Holly Gibney of the Finders Keepers detective agency is working on the case of a missing dog - and on her own need to be more assertive - when she sees the footage on TV. But when she tunes in again, to the late-night report, she realizes there is something not quite right about the correspondent who was first on the scene. So begins 'If It Bleeds' , a stand-alone sequel to The Outsider featuring the incomparable Holly on her first solo case.

Dancing alongside are three more long stories - 'Mr Harrigan's Phone', 'The Life of Chuck' and 'Rat' .

The novella is a form King has returned to over and over again in the course of his amazing career, and many have been made into iconic films, If It Bleeds is a uniquely satisfying collection of longer short fiction by an incomparably gifted writer.]]> 438 Stephen King LibraryCin 4
The Life of Chuck: It seems the Earth is falling to pieces. But what is this giant ad that keeps popping up – on billboards, even when the tv starts disappearing, there is this ad about Chuck retiring after 39 great years. The story moves back in time to reveal to the reader Chuck’s life.

If It Bleeds: Holly Gibney, a detective character from the Mr. Mercedes books, is our main character. When a school is bombed, she sees it on the news. After dealing with a family issue, she thinks more and more about the bombing and the reporter who first came on tv with the story. Something is a bit off about him…

Rat: Drew is an author and has an idea for a novel. He insists on leaving his wife and kids to head out to his dad’s old cabin in a rural, isolated area, despite that the last time he tried to write a novel, something went very wrong with his mental health. He insists he’ll be ok. Unfortunately, while there, he not only gets sick, a huge storm comes up likely to strand him for at least a few days.

I often rate short stories (though one was closer to a short novel) no higher than 3.5 stars (good), but Stephen King is not only one of my favourite authors, all of his stories can grab me and keep me interested. And these did. I would have rated every one of these, separately, 4 stars… mmmm, maybe “Chuck’s Life” would be 3.5 – I didn’t like it as much as the others. I know many people love Holly Gibney, but when she was first introduced, she drove me nuts! I was ok with her in this story, though.]]> 3.99 2020
author: Stephen King
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: short-stories, supernatural, new-england, death
review:
Mr. Harrigan’s Phone: Craig works for the rich old man and gets him a cell phone. With reluctance Mr Harrigan starts using it. When Mr Harrigan dies, Craig slips it into the coffin to be buried with him. Craig liked Mr Harrigan and finds himself comforted when he can call and her Mr Harrigan’s voice and leave a message. Craig is bullied and calls Mr Harrigan to tell him. It’s not long before the bully is found dead.

The Life of Chuck: It seems the Earth is falling to pieces. But what is this giant ad that keeps popping up – on billboards, even when the tv starts disappearing, there is this ad about Chuck retiring after 39 great years. The story moves back in time to reveal to the reader Chuck’s life.

If It Bleeds: Holly Gibney, a detective character from the Mr. Mercedes books, is our main character. When a school is bombed, she sees it on the news. After dealing with a family issue, she thinks more and more about the bombing and the reporter who first came on tv with the story. Something is a bit off about him…

Rat: Drew is an author and has an idea for a novel. He insists on leaving his wife and kids to head out to his dad’s old cabin in a rural, isolated area, despite that the last time he tried to write a novel, something went very wrong with his mental health. He insists he’ll be ok. Unfortunately, while there, he not only gets sick, a huge storm comes up likely to strand him for at least a few days.

I often rate short stories (though one was closer to a short novel) no higher than 3.5 stars (good), but Stephen King is not only one of my favourite authors, all of his stories can grab me and keep me interested. And these did. I would have rated every one of these, separately, 4 stars… mmmm, maybe “Chuck’s Life” would be 3.5 – I didn’t like it as much as the others. I know many people love Holly Gibney, but when she was first introduced, she drove me nuts! I was ok with her in this story, though.
]]> 20826544
And, she's just learned that her charming time-traveling partner, Gideon, has probably been using her all along. This stunning conclusion to The Ruby Red Trilogy picks up where Sapphire Blue left off, reaching new heights of intrigue and romance, as Gwen finally uncovers the secrets of the time-traveling society and learns her fate.

An unabridged recording (12 hours, 42 minutes).]]> 13 Kerstin Gier LibraryCin 3
I listened to this on audio (as I did the 2nd in the trilogy), and I did enjoy what I paid attention to, but I did lose focus quite a bit more than I would have liked. There seemed to be more fantasy elements than I tend to like, as well, at least in the way it was presented; I’m not sure if there was more of that than in the first two books, or if it just didn’t pull me in as much as the other two, but I didn’t like this as much as I liked the first two books (the first being my favourite of the three). I was also unable to come up with a good summary. ]]> 3.87 2010
author: Kerstin Gier
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2010
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: young-adult, time-travel, supernatural, relationships, urban-fantasy
review:
This is the third in a YA time travel trilogy. Possible spoilers for first two books: [spoilers removed]

I listened to this on audio (as I did the 2nd in the trilogy), and I did enjoy what I paid attention to, but I did lose focus quite a bit more than I would have liked. There seemed to be more fantasy elements than I tend to like, as well, at least in the way it was presented; I’m not sure if there was more of that than in the first two books, or if it just didn’t pull me in as much as the other two, but I didn’t like this as much as I liked the first two books (the first being my favourite of the three). I was also unable to come up with a good summary.
]]> 58045504 An alternative cover for this ISBN can be found here.

The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.]]> 480 Evelyn Waugh 0141182482 LibraryCin 2
I was bored. When I’m bored, I skim and really don’t pay attention to what’s happening. I learned a bit more about it all via wikipedia as I neared the end of the book, but really I didn’t like it. 2 stars only because I’d reserve 1 star for “hated it”, and it’s hard to hate what you aren’t paying attention to.]]> 4.04 1945
author: Evelyn Waugh
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1945
rating: 2
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: family, friendship, relationships, classics, 1920s
review:
I can’t really do a summary here because I didn’t pay close enough attention. It started during WWII, but then backed up (it took me a while to figure that out – did we go forward or backward in time?). Charles, Sebastian, and Julia were friends (so I thought – turns out Sebastian and Julia are siblings). Not sure what all happened except at some point Charles visited Sebastian’s family’s home (I think it’s called Brideshead, but there might also have been a character called Brideshead?). Later on Julie married a Canadian named Rex. People got divorced. That’s about all I know.

I was bored. When I’m bored, I skim and really don’t pay attention to what’s happening. I learned a bit more about it all via wikipedia as I neared the end of the book, but really I didn’t like it. 2 stars only because I’d reserve 1 star for “hated it”, and it’s hard to hate what you aren’t paying attention to.
]]> 36016296 352 Jim Kelly 0749021616 LibraryCin 0 to-read 3.70 2018
author: Jim Kelly
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 177192295 She took on titans, battled generals, and changed the world as we know it…

New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and dramatic new novel about an American heroine Frances Perkins.

Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference.

When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists, including the millionaire socialite Mary Harriman Rumsey, the flirtatious budding author Sinclair Lewis, and the brilliant but troubled reformer Paul Wilson, with whom she falls deeply in love.

But when Frances meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. She thinks he’s a rich, arrogant dilettante who gets by on a handsome face and a famous name. He thinks she’s a priggish bluestocking and insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but over the next twenty years, they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House.

Frances is destined to rise in a political world dominated by men, facing down the Great Depression as FDR’s most trusted lieutenant—even as she struggles to balance the demands of a public career with marriage and motherhood. And when vicious political attacks mount and personal tragedies threaten to derail her ambitions, she must decide what she’s willing to do—and what she’s willing to sacrifice—to save a nation.]]> 528 Stephanie Dray 0593437055 LibraryCin 0 to-read 4.34 2024
author: Stephanie Dray
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54870100 The New York Times bestselling author of Elevator Pitch and master of psychological suspense returns with a riveting thriller in which the possible heirs of a dying tech millionaire are mysteriously being eliminated, one by one.

Tech millionaire Miles Cookson has more money than he can ever spend, and everything he could dream of—except time. He has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and there is a fifty percent chance that it can be passed on to the next generation. For Miles, this means taking a long hard look at his past . . .

Two decades ago, a young, struggling Miles was a sperm donor. Somewhere out there, he has kids—nine of them. And they might be about to inherit both the good and the bad from him—maybe his fortune, or maybe something much worse.

As Miles begins to search for the children he’s never known, aspiring film documentarian Chloe Swanson embarks on a quest to find her biological father, armed with the knowledge that twenty-two years ago, her mother used a New York sperm bank to become pregnant.

When Miles and Chloe eventually connect, their excitement at finding each other is overshadowed by a series of mysterious and terrifying events. One by one, Miles’s other potential heirs are vanishing—every trace of them wiped, like they never existed at all.

Who is the vicious killer—another heir methodically erasing rivals? Or is something even more sinister going on?

It’s a deadly race against time . . .]]> 438 Linwood Barclay 0062678310 LibraryCin 4
Miles is incredibly wealthy, but has just been diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. He has never married, but years ago, he donated his sperm to a fertility clinic. Huntington’s is inherited and can be tested for early to know if one will develop it or not. Plus, except for his brother (who is married to a horrible, greedy woman), Miles has no one to inherit his wealth. He will dole out “smaller” amounts monthly to his brother so his wife can’t easily get her hands on a chunk of it, and he decides to seek out his biological children (adults now) to tell them about his health and that they can get tested, plus he plans to offer them much of his money when he dies. But as he connects with the first of nine biological children, some of them start disappearing.

Unlike (most of) Barclay’s other thrillers, this one starts a bit slower, but it builds. There are also a number of characters it either takes time for the reader to figure out who they are/how they are connected, or for a few, it really doesn’t come until the end. Because of so many characters, at least at the start, it’s hard to remember when returning to someone, who they are. I think most of Barclay’s books I’ve rated 4 stars (some higher) and towards the end, that is what I’d rate it. But it took some time to get there; overall, I’m rating it just below that. ]]> 3.99 2021
author: Linwood Barclay
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/28
date added: 2025/03/29
shelves: mystery, murder, thrillers, family, kidnapping, canadian-fiction, fathers
review:
3.75 stars

Miles is incredibly wealthy, but has just been diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. He has never married, but years ago, he donated his sperm to a fertility clinic. Huntington’s is inherited and can be tested for early to know if one will develop it or not. Plus, except for his brother (who is married to a horrible, greedy woman), Miles has no one to inherit his wealth. He will dole out “smaller” amounts monthly to his brother so his wife can’t easily get her hands on a chunk of it, and he decides to seek out his biological children (adults now) to tell them about his health and that they can get tested, plus he plans to offer them much of his money when he dies. But as he connects with the first of nine biological children, some of them start disappearing.

Unlike (most of) Barclay’s other thrillers, this one starts a bit slower, but it builds. There are also a number of characters it either takes time for the reader to figure out who they are/how they are connected, or for a few, it really doesn’t come until the end. Because of so many characters, at least at the start, it’s hard to remember when returning to someone, who they are. I think most of Barclay’s books I’ve rated 4 stars (some higher) and towards the end, that is what I’d rate it. But it took some time to get there; overall, I’m rating it just below that.
]]> 454856
After fleeing his parents and dropping out of high school, his savant-like ability to visualize electronic circuits landed him a gig with KISS, for whom he created their legendary fire-breathing guitars. Later, he drifted into a “real” job, as an engineer for a major toy company. But the higher Robison rose in the company, the more he had to pretend to be “normal” and do what he simply couldn’t communicate. It wasn’t worth the paycheck.
It was not until he was forty that an insightful therapist told him he had the form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. That understanding transformed the way Robison saw himself—and the world.

Look Me in the Eye is the moving, darkly funny story of growing up with Asperger’s at a time when the diagnosis simply didn’t exist. A born storyteller, Robison takes you inside the head of a boy whom teachers and other adults regarded as “defective,” who could not avail himself of KISS’s endless supply of groupies, and who still has a peculiar aversion to using people’s given names (he calls his wife “Unit Two”). He also provides a fascinating reverse angle on the younger brother he left at the mercy of their nutty parents—the boy who would later change his name to Augusten Burroughs and write the bestselling memoir Running with Scissors .

Ultimately, this is the story of Robison’s journey from his world into ours, and his new life as a husband, father, and successful small business owner—repairing his beloved high-end automobiles. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien, yet always deeply human.]]> 288 John Elder Robison 0307395987 LibraryCin 3
John Elder Robison is the older brother of Augusten Burroughs, author of “Running With Scissors”. Augustin is autistic and John is also on the spectrum. John was in his 40s when he finally had a diagnosis to explain the kind of person he is, why he is so different from everyone else: he has Asperger’s. This is his autobiography as he grew up in an abusive home; both parents had their own issues. When John left home (at 15 or 16 years old), he ended up on the road with Pink Floyd, April Wine, and KISS, as he created guitar effects for them.

I listened to the audio and this was good. I did lose just a bit of interest when he described the technicalities of the various engineering things he was doing. Thought it was pretty cool that he worked for those famous 70s bands. It was a tough life for him as a kid, though. ]]> 3.91 2007
author: John Elder Robison
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: from-shelfari, autism, mental-illness, psychology, biography, dysfunctional-families, engineers, abuse, music, technology
review:
3.5 stars

John Elder Robison is the older brother of Augusten Burroughs, author of “Running With Scissors”. Augustin is autistic and John is also on the spectrum. John was in his 40s when he finally had a diagnosis to explain the kind of person he is, why he is so different from everyone else: he has Asperger’s. This is his autobiography as he grew up in an abusive home; both parents had their own issues. When John left home (at 15 or 16 years old), he ended up on the road with Pink Floyd, April Wine, and KISS, as he created guitar effects for them.

I listened to the audio and this was good. I did lose just a bit of interest when he described the technicalities of the various engineering things he was doing. Thought it was pretty cool that he worked for those famous 70s bands. It was a tough life for him as a kid, though.
]]> 1061001
- The ten shopping commandments
- How to spot deceptive sales tricks
- Profiles of common purchases, from lipsticks to lawnmowers, lightbulbs to lingerie - What to ask before buying a product

Filled with celebrity tips from the likes of Martha Stewart and Diane von Furstenberg, this hip, handy guide will make sure consumers never feel ripped off again.]]> 256 Anna Wallner 0451218582 LibraryCin 3
This is written by hosts (and journalists) of a tv show by the same name. Anna and Kristina test a wide variety of products that you might buy and tell you what they found. They also talk to experts and get opinions from other people.

I read it through, but it’s really best as a reference if there is something you want to buy in the moment (although I suppose that wouldn’t necessarily be the case for the food section!). They do have some overall tips, in addition. I used to watch the tv show on occasion (it’s been over for more than a decade now) and I quite liked it. I also liked the book. It was published in 2005/2006 (depending on the edition), though, so some of the items are older and you aren’t likely to buy some of the things, anymore. ]]> 3.67 2006
author: Anna Wallner
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: shopping, consumerism, reference
review:
3.5 stars

This is written by hosts (and journalists) of a tv show by the same name. Anna and Kristina test a wide variety of products that you might buy and tell you what they found. They also talk to experts and get opinions from other people.

I read it through, but it’s really best as a reference if there is something you want to buy in the moment (although I suppose that wouldn’t necessarily be the case for the food section!). They do have some overall tips, in addition. I used to watch the tv show on occasion (it’s been over for more than a decade now) and I quite liked it. I also liked the book. It was published in 2005/2006 (depending on the edition), though, so some of the items are older and you aren’t likely to buy some of the things, anymore.
]]> 17459228 337 Daniel Allen Butler 1280599995 LibraryCin 4
I have read so much about the Titanic, so I do “know”/recognize some of the names of some of the guests on the ship (yes, beyond John Jacob Astor), but it continues to fascinate. Again, this was quite detailed, so I lost a bit of interest in the building of the ship, but overall, this is very good - in part, because of all the detail. The author has also written a separate book on the Carpathia and the Californian, the two ships that were closest. The Californian, within sight distance, did nothing to help. The Carpathia, though about four hours away, raced as fast as it could to help. It was the Carpathia that picked up the people off the lifeboats, so the author is well versed in that perspective, as well. This book was originally published in 1998, but this was a 2012 edition, so there was an extra chapter with updates. Given all the detail in this one, it’s probably one of the better Titanic books.]]> 4.31 1998
author: Daniel Allen Butler
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: 1910s, history, ships, shipwrecks, disasters, ocean, titanic, survival
review:
Another book about the Titanic. This one is quite detailed: it starts with the building of the ship and continues through the sailing and the night the ship sank. It includes the investigations (one in the US, one in the UK) into what happened afterward, and follows up with what happened to some of the survivors.

I have read so much about the Titanic, so I do “know”/recognize some of the names of some of the guests on the ship (yes, beyond John Jacob Astor), but it continues to fascinate. Again, this was quite detailed, so I lost a bit of interest in the building of the ship, but overall, this is very good - in part, because of all the detail. The author has also written a separate book on the Carpathia and the Californian, the two ships that were closest. The Californian, within sight distance, did nothing to help. The Carpathia, though about four hours away, raced as fast as it could to help. It was the Carpathia that picked up the people off the lifeboats, so the author is well versed in that perspective, as well. This book was originally published in 1998, but this was a 2012 edition, so there was an extra chapter with updates. Given all the detail in this one, it’s probably one of the better Titanic books.
]]> 229036501 A contemporary guide to the roots, paths and tools of witchcraft.

A new generation of witchcraft is here! Today, witchcraft encompasses many different paths and is one of the most rapidly growing sets of spiritual systems in the world. Modern Witchcraft For Dummies walks you through what it means to be a modern witch—going beyond the Euro-pagan traditions and Wicca—and how to ensure your witchcraft moves toward inclusivity and spiritual activism. Discover the roots and impact of witchcraft, consider the differences between “open” and “closed” practices, and explore the ethics of magical practice.

Within, you'll

Explore histories of regional witches across the world Understand witchcraft archetypes and practices (with clear guidance on how to start your own practice) Discover the various types of witches and determine the type of witch you want to be Create your own altars and grimoires, set intentions, and practice your spellcasting and rituals (on your own or with a coven!) Get ready to explore a world of powerful spiritual connectedness with Modern Witchcraft For Dummies. It's a must-read for witches, pagans, and the simply occult-curious.]]> 364 Lorraine Monteagut 1394303653 LibraryCin 0 to-read 0.0
author: Lorraine Monteagut
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 71430967 A violent family living in violent times. In the 1840s, the Donnelly family immigrates from Ireland to the British province of Canada. Almost immediately problems develop as the patriarch of the family is sent to the Kingston Penitentiary for manslaughter, leaving his wife to raise their eight children on her own. The children are raised in an incredibly violent community and cultivate a devoted loyalty to their mother and siblings, which often leads to problems with the law and those outside of the family. The tensions between the family and their community escalate as the family's enemies begin to multiply. The brothers go into business running a stagecoach line and repay all acts of violence perpetrated against them, which only worsens the situation. Refusing to take a backwards step, the Donnellys stand alone against a growing power base that includes wealthy business interests in the town of Lucan, the local diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, law authorities and a number of their neighbors. Contains mature themes.]]> 1 John Little LibraryCin 3
This was a volume 1 of a two-parter, and I accidentally listened to v. 2 first. Volume 1 started with James and Johanna coming to Canada and followed them throughout their time in Lucan, while they and their sons got into trouble, some of their own making, and much blamed on them and the family only because several town members disliked (hated) them. This volume ends just before the murders happen.

Like with v. 2, this was very detailed. Because I listened to the audio and do other things while I listen, I was distracted at times. With all the detail, sometimes that can draw me in, and sometimes it’s too much. In this case, I think it mostly depending what I was doing whether or not all the detailed info could hold my attention. It’s a good book, and I like all the detail. I always wonder in these cases, if I would rate it better if I hadn’t listened to it; I do think this is likely in this case.]]> 3.00
author: John Little
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.00
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: true-crime, history, ontario, canada, murder, family, 19th-century, canadian-authors, immigrants
review:
[My summary repeated from v. 2.] The Donnelly family came from Ireland in the mid-1800s to rural Ontario. James and Johanna were the parents and they had a number of sons and their youngest was a daughter. They (parents and sons) often managed to get into trouble, whether that be drinking, fistfights, vandalism, and other things. At some point (even though there were others in and around town who did these things, as well), the Donnellys fairly consistently got blamed. A vigilance committee was formed and on Feb 4, 1880, a crowd of people on the committee entered the Donnelly farmstead and murdered James, Johanna, one son and a niece visiting from Ireland. A young boy, Johnny, was staying overnight and hid under a bed while it happened. When the committee left, they headed to the next farm over, where another of the Donnelly sons lived. There was a second Donnelly son staying there and he was also killed.

This was a volume 1 of a two-parter, and I accidentally listened to v. 2 first. Volume 1 started with James and Johanna coming to Canada and followed them throughout their time in Lucan, while they and their sons got into trouble, some of their own making, and much blamed on them and the family only because several town members disliked (hated) them. This volume ends just before the murders happen.

Like with v. 2, this was very detailed. Because I listened to the audio and do other things while I listen, I was distracted at times. With all the detail, sometimes that can draw me in, and sometimes it’s too much. In this case, I think it mostly depending what I was doing whether or not all the detailed info could hold my attention. It’s a good book, and I like all the detail. I always wonder in these cases, if I would rate it better if I hadn’t listened to it; I do think this is likely in this case.
]]> 15808340 Here I am thinking the education I received at my posh Swiss finishing school would never come in handy. And while it hasn't landed me a job, or a husband, it has convinced Her Majesty the Queen, and the Dowager Duchess to enlist my help. I have been entrusted with grooming Jack Altringham, the Duke's newly discovered heir fresh from the Outback of Australia, for high society.
The upside is I am to live in luxury at one of England's most gorgeous stately homes. But upon arrival at Kingsdowne Place, my dearest Darcy has been sent to fetch Jack, leaving me stuck in a manor full of miscreants...none of whom are too pleased with the discovery of my new ward.
And no sooner has the lad been retrieved than the Duke announces he wants to choose his own heir. With the house in a hubbub over the news, Jack's hunting knife somehow finds its way into the Duke's back. Eyes fall, backs turn, and fingers point to the young heir. As if the rascal wasn't enough of a handful, now he's suspected of murder. Jack may be wild, but I'd bet the crown jewels it wasn't he who killed the Duke...]]> 295 Rhys Bowen 042526002X LibraryCin 3
Georgie, once again, needs a place to live. She will head to the home of one of the queen’s friends’ (a dowager duchess) to help acclimate the woman’s grandson (Jack), her heir, who is coming from Australia to England. He does not understand the intricacies of “society” and he is pretty rough around the edges. Technically, the home Georgie is now living in belongs to the duchess’s other son, Cedric, who is not married and has no heirs. So, Jack from Australia is who the heir has to be. But it’s not long before someone is killed! And, of course, that someone was not much liked by anyone, and many people had a reason to kill him.

This was another enjoyable mystery. I still think Queenie (Georgie’s maid) is (mostly) funny (at other times, I feel like Georgie really should get rid of her… at the same time knowing she can’t afford to hire someone else). Of course, Darcy ends up at the house, as well (he escorted Jack from the airport to the house and ends up stuck there while the police need to question everyone). ]]> 3.92 2013
author: Rhys Bowen
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: murder, mystery, historical-fiction, 1930s, inheritance, england, social-classes, royalty, humour
review:
3.5 stars

Georgie, once again, needs a place to live. She will head to the home of one of the queen’s friends’ (a dowager duchess) to help acclimate the woman’s grandson (Jack), her heir, who is coming from Australia to England. He does not understand the intricacies of “society” and he is pretty rough around the edges. Technically, the home Georgie is now living in belongs to the duchess’s other son, Cedric, who is not married and has no heirs. So, Jack from Australia is who the heir has to be. But it’s not long before someone is killed! And, of course, that someone was not much liked by anyone, and many people had a reason to kill him.

This was another enjoyable mystery. I still think Queenie (Georgie’s maid) is (mostly) funny (at other times, I feel like Georgie really should get rid of her… at the same time knowing she can’t afford to hire someone else). Of course, Darcy ends up at the house, as well (he escorted Jack from the airport to the house and ends up stuck there while the police need to question everyone).
]]> 12577479 307 Dave Perrin LibraryCin 4
Because he took on both pets and he drove out to farms to look at various farm animals, he actually reminded me a lot of James Herriot. Of course, there was also much humour in the stories he tells in this book. And there were some really great illustrations to go with each story, as well. It looks like he has written a few more books, and I am hoping to get my hands on them, as well. ]]> 4.20 2000
author: Dave Perrin
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: veterinarians, memoir, british-columbia, canada, canadian-authors, animals, farm-animals, pets, small-towns, 1970s, humour
review:
This is another memoir of a veterinarian. Dr. Perrin, in his first year after vet school in Saskatoon, Sask, in the 1970s, set up a vet practice in the town of Creston, B.C. This book recounts stories not only of the pets and farm animals he treated, but the people and just getting his practice set up, as he was still learning things.

Because he took on both pets and he drove out to farms to look at various farm animals, he actually reminded me a lot of James Herriot. Of course, there was also much humour in the stories he tells in this book. And there were some really great illustrations to go with each story, as well. It looks like he has written a few more books, and I am hoping to get my hands on them, as well.
]]> 1149578 Nobody's Mother is a collection of stories by women who have already made this choice.

From introspective to humorous to rabble-rousing, these are personal stories that are well and honestly told. The writers range in age from early 30s to mid-70s and come from diverse backgrounds. All have thought long and hard about the role of motherhood, their own destinies, what mothering means in our society and what their choice means to them as individuals and as members of their ethnic communities or social groups.

Finalist for the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award, 2007 BC Book Prizes]]> 240 Bruce Gillespie (editor) 1894898400 LibraryCin 3
This is a book of essays by women, mostly writers in some way (journalists, authors), who don’t have biological children. The majority of the women are Canadian. Some of them have stepkids. Some of these woman chose not to have kids and others wanted them, but circumstances led them to not have kids of their own.

I don’t have kids; I never wanted kids, so of course, this was the appeal for me. It didn’t occur to me until I started reading that it wasn’t by choice for all of them. But it was interesting to read all the reasons and circumstances that brought these women to this point. Even the ones who wanted kids, it seems, mostly came to the conclusion that they are ok without them, and there were some benefits to not having kids. Even those who chose not to have kids – most of them seem to like kids (I do not until they are older); many of these women also teach, so they interact with kids in that capacity. Interesting perspectives, anyway.]]> 3.85 2006
author: Bruce Gillespie (editor)
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: essays, canadian-authors, mothers, women, childlessness
review:
3.5 stars

This is a book of essays by women, mostly writers in some way (journalists, authors), who don’t have biological children. The majority of the women are Canadian. Some of them have stepkids. Some of these woman chose not to have kids and others wanted them, but circumstances led them to not have kids of their own.

I don’t have kids; I never wanted kids, so of course, this was the appeal for me. It didn’t occur to me until I started reading that it wasn’t by choice for all of them. But it was interesting to read all the reasons and circumstances that brought these women to this point. Even the ones who wanted kids, it seems, mostly came to the conclusion that they are ok without them, and there were some benefits to not having kids. Even those who chose not to have kids – most of them seem to like kids (I do not until they are older); many of these women also teach, so they interact with kids in that capacity. Interesting perspectives, anyway.
]]> 206936
This edition includes a new foreword by environmental historian Donald Worster. Matthews's new afterword describes how with growing support from Native Americans and private groups like the Nature Conservancy, the Poppers' dream of a Buffalo Commons is becoming a reality.

"An admirably crafted book, as poignant and entertaining as it is informative."— Seattle Times

"A priceless piece of Americana."— The Boston Globe

"Matthew's delightful account of the Poppers, their proposal and the controversy surrounding it does focus new attention on the region and its problems."— The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Bright, active, effective journalism. . . . An extremely savvy overlook of the dilemmas of the Great Plains."—Wallace Stegner]]> 222 Anne Matthews 0226510964 LibraryCin 3
I grew up in what would be the Canadian equivalent of the Great Plains, so I could picture some of the people. And yes, the towns are dying out and the majority of people left in them are mostly older. But of course, people will react badly; I think most people would. There were some nice descriptions of the areas they visited. Since this idea by the Poppers was from the 1980s, and the book was originally published in 1992, it has been a while; I read the 2nd edition, published in 2002. I expect that many more of the towns have died out since they did their tour, but I also suspect there are still some hanging on. ]]> 3.88 1992
author: Anne Matthews
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: prairies, nature, united-states, buffalo, conservation, environment, rural-life, 1980s, travel, animals
review:
The author followed two researchers/professors from New Jersey (Frank and Deborah Popper) through the “Great Plains” as they travelled to talk about their idea of a “Buffalo Commons”. (I believe this happened in the 1980s.) The Buffalo Commons was their idea to revert the land in places that are emptying of people, anyway, to their natural state and reintroduce buffalo. Of course, there was much push back from the people who did still live there.

I grew up in what would be the Canadian equivalent of the Great Plains, so I could picture some of the people. And yes, the towns are dying out and the majority of people left in them are mostly older. But of course, people will react badly; I think most people would. There were some nice descriptions of the areas they visited. Since this idea by the Poppers was from the 1980s, and the book was originally published in 1992, it has been a while; I read the 2nd edition, published in 2002. I expect that many more of the towns have died out since they did their tour, but I also suspect there are still some hanging on.
]]> 19302578 **“카지노싸이트 Friday” Summer Reading Pick**
**Discover magazine Top 5 Summer Reads**
**People magazine Best Summer Reads**

“A lovely, big-hearted book…brimming with compassion and the tales of the many, many humans who devote their days to making animals well” (The New York Times).

Have you ever wondered if your dog might be a bit depressed? How about heartbroken or homesick? Animal Madness takes these questions seriously, exploring the topic of mental health and recovery in the animal kingdom and turning up lessons that Publishers Weekly calls “Illuminating…Braitman’s delightful balance of humor and poignancy brings each case of life….[Animal Madness’s] continuous dose of hope should prove medicinal for humans and animals alike.”

Susan Orlean calls Animal Madness “a marvelous, smart, eloquent book—as much about human emotion as it is about animals and their inner lives.” It is “a gem…that can teach us much about the wildness of our own minds” (Psychology Today).]]> 320 Laurel Braitman 1442371358 LibraryCin 4
The author’s dog was very anxious and hurt himself badly when she and her husband were away (once, he jumped out of a window), but due to their work, they couldn’t be home with Oliver all the time. This got Braitman interested in animal psychology and she searched for various cases and all types of different animals to research.

Less ¼ star for occasionally losing interest in the audio. But overall, and what I did hear, was very interesting. Much of it wasn’t new or a surprise, but interesting to be reminded of these things or to learn of the things I hadn’t heard of before. People really should realize that a. humans are also animals and so b. other animals also feel and can have psychological issues, especially when they aren’t treated well. Very good read. ]]> 3.86 2014
author: Laurel Braitman
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/09
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: animals, mental-illness, psychology, science
review:
3.75 stars

The author’s dog was very anxious and hurt himself badly when she and her husband were away (once, he jumped out of a window), but due to their work, they couldn’t be home with Oliver all the time. This got Braitman interested in animal psychology and she searched for various cases and all types of different animals to research.

Less ¼ star for occasionally losing interest in the audio. But overall, and what I did hear, was very interesting. Much of it wasn’t new or a surprise, but interesting to be reminded of these things or to learn of the things I hadn’t heard of before. People really should realize that a. humans are also animals and so b. other animals also feel and can have psychological issues, especially when they aren’t treated well. Very good read.
]]> 16135442
WAS SHE A SWEET SOUTHERN CHARMER?

OR A COLD-BLOODED KILLER?

For their wedding portrait, petite Pat Taylor and handsome Tom Allanson posed as Rhett and Scarlett.

Both came from fine Southern families, and dreamed of the Tara-like plantation where they would grow roses, raise horses, and move in the genteel circles of Atlanta society. Less than two months later, their dream exploded in terror and murder: their beautiful home mysteriously burned to the ground and Tom was convicted of the brutal slaying of his mother and father.

Pat's only brother had died in a puzzling suicide, her grandparents-in-law were poisoned with arsenic, and no one—from her wealthy employers to her own children—was safe when Pat Allanson didn't get her way. It took Georgia lawmen more than two decades to stop her for good—if indeed they have.

In this fascinating account, Ann Rule delivers a tour de force: a whirlwind of misguided love, denial, guilt, and passions out of control; a series of brilliantly manipulated crimes; the bizarre and horrifying tale of two families brought to ruin; and, at the center of it all, the heartless, supremely selfish sociopath whose evil hid behind soft words and gentle manners, but who destroyed—without mercy—those who loved her.]]> 558 Ann Rule LibraryCin 4
Meanwhile, Pat, who got along well with Tom’s grandparents, took care of them. All the while, having them change their wills to leave everything to her as she slowly poisoned them. That was caught in time (before they died). Pat finally went to jail, but was out again after only a few years. During all her adult life, though she had three kids of her own, Pat’s parents would always take her in and protect her as much a they were able, regardless of anything she did.

When Pat got out of jail in the late 1980s, Pat misrepresented herself (and her younger daughter, Debbie) as registered nurses, working for an elderly couple, but when the husband died not long after Pat and Debbie were let go by the family, things heated up. It was a few years later, but Pat’s oldest daughter learned from that family what had happened. It turns out Pat and Debbie were poisoning the couple and stealing from them. On’70s.

She did a lot of awful “smaller” things in between, as well. She was quite a selfish, manipulative, narcissistic child, really. She never grew up. In fact, she resented her children and grandchildren if they became too close to her own mother and took away time and love she thought should only be hers. She had a brother who was not treated well because of Pat’s selfishness, who ended up killing himself when he was still in his 20s. It’s sad that she did everything she did and it hurt so many people, including within her own family (though many in her family continued to side with her through everything, and against other family members who spoke up against Pat).

This book was extremely well researched and very detailed. I have a 2002 edition with a bit of updated information on what happened when Pat was released from jail. It was originally published while she was still in jail. ]]> 3.87 1992
author: Ann Rule
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/08
date added: 2025/03/09
shelves: georgia, 1970s, 1980s, women, murder, poison, trials, biography, true-crime, mental-illness, dysfunctional-families
review:
Pat was a pretty child who was given everything this wanted and was never punished for anything. She grew up (but she didn’t, really) to continue to expect to be given everything she wanted. When she married for the second time to Tom, his parents detested her. Tom sided with Pat, and for years he was unable to see how manipulative she was. When his parents were shot and died in the mid-1970s, Tom went to jail for it. Pat made sure he handled the trial as she wanted him to, not how his lawyer wanted him to. He was in jail for 14 years.

Meanwhile, Pat, who got along well with Tom’s grandparents, took care of them. All the while, having them change their wills to leave everything to her as she slowly poisoned them. That was caught in time (before they died). Pat finally went to jail, but was out again after only a few years. During all her adult life, though she had three kids of her own, Pat’s parents would always take her in and protect her as much a they were able, regardless of anything she did.

When Pat got out of jail in the late 1980s, Pat misrepresented herself (and her younger daughter, Debbie) as registered nurses, working for an elderly couple, but when the husband died not long after Pat and Debbie were let go by the family, things heated up. It was a few years later, but Pat’s oldest daughter learned from that family what had happened. It turns out Pat and Debbie were poisoning the couple and stealing from them. On’70s.

She did a lot of awful “smaller” things in between, as well. She was quite a selfish, manipulative, narcissistic child, really. She never grew up. In fact, she resented her children and grandchildren if they became too close to her own mother and took away time and love she thought should only be hers. She had a brother who was not treated well because of Pat’s selfishness, who ended up killing himself when he was still in his 20s. It’s sad that she did everything she did and it hurt so many people, including within her own family (though many in her family continued to side with her through everything, and against other family members who spoke up against Pat).

This book was extremely well researched and very detailed. I have a 2002 edition with a bit of updated information on what happened when Pat was released from jail. It was originally published while she was still in jail.
]]> 202173601
AN ORPHANAGE FULL OF SECRETS

Hazel wants a new life.

She’s thirty years old, single, and her private investigation business is months away from folding.

Her luck takes a turn when Madeline Hemsley, a mysterious socialite, pays Hazel a visit with an offer too enticing to resist. An orphan girl has disappeared from a children’s home—The Orphanage By The Lake, as the locals call it—and Madeline wants Hazel to find her.

At first glance, it appears to be a standard runaway case, but as Hazel plunges into the investigation, she finds signs of something more: unexplained blood stains, cryptic symbols, sinister figures shadowing her every move. The more she digs, the more she realizes that The Orphanage By The Lake holds terrifying secrets, and even worse…

…so does Madeline.]]> 300 Daniel G. Miller 1737646366 LibraryCin 4
I really liked this. There were a lot of suspects whom it could have been, so I kept going between them, thinking it might be each of them. Or at least that each might be involved in some way. I really liked Hazel; as scary as this job got, she was tough and determined. This was a Netgalley book to be published this month, and I’m really hoping this might morph into a series, because I’d love to read more and see where this all goes for Hazel. ]]> 3.92 2024
author: Daniel G. Miller
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: detectives, girls, orphans, mystery, kidnapping, missing-persons, relationships
review:
Hazel is a young private detective, but isn’t getting great jobs and is having trouble making ends meet. Then, a woman comes in to her office one day and offers her a few thousand dollars to start, then will pay her $100,000 if she can find her missing goddaughter in only eight days. Mia is the girl who went missing from the orphanage she was living at. Outwardly, it appears the orphanage is a great place for these girls, but there seem to be some odd things going on… And the further Hazel digs into things, the more dangerous it becomes.

I really liked this. There were a lot of suspects whom it could have been, so I kept going between them, thinking it might be each of them. Or at least that each might be involved in some way. I really liked Hazel; as scary as this job got, she was tough and determined. This was a Netgalley book to be published this month, and I’m really hoping this might morph into a series, because I’d love to read more and see where this all goes for Hazel.
]]> 30646488 328 Darcy Coates LibraryCin 4
Adrienne has inherited a house from a great-aunt she doesn’t remember ever meeting (though apparently she did when she was a child). This is at a good time, as she and her cat, Wolfgang, are homeless and have been sleeping on friends’ couches. She is surprised to find the house outside of the nearest town, quite isolated with forest between it and town. Even worse, every night at the moment of sundown, there is an eerie silence, then a sudden burst of birds flying everywhere. And no electricity on the second floor. Along with a few other oddities around the old house. Adrienne is happy to meet a few women around her own age, but they seem curious, but a bit reluctant to visit, as the house has a reputation of being haunted. They are even more reluctant to visit after one of them brings some food out for Adrienne, but crashes her car and isn’t found until morning; Marion is lucky to be alive.

This horror novel did its job – around the half way point, I was too scared to head to the basement to scoop the cat’s litter! (It was night and I was by myself in my house.) After the first time this happened, I learned to do this job before sitting down to read. This is the third or fourth book I’ve read by Darcy Coates and I’ve really liked all of them. They sure do scare the heck out of me (as a horror novel should)! I also loved Wolfgang and given the descriptions of him, I figured the author must also have a cat (they do). I did guess one small portion of what might be happening only a few pages before it was revealed, but that didn’t diminish how much I “enjoyed” the book.
]]> 3.86 2016
author: Darcy Coates
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: horror, family-history, mystery, haunted-houses, ghosts, inheritance, supernatural
review:
4.5 stars

Adrienne has inherited a house from a great-aunt she doesn’t remember ever meeting (though apparently she did when she was a child). This is at a good time, as she and her cat, Wolfgang, are homeless and have been sleeping on friends’ couches. She is surprised to find the house outside of the nearest town, quite isolated with forest between it and town. Even worse, every night at the moment of sundown, there is an eerie silence, then a sudden burst of birds flying everywhere. And no electricity on the second floor. Along with a few other oddities around the old house. Adrienne is happy to meet a few women around her own age, but they seem curious, but a bit reluctant to visit, as the house has a reputation of being haunted. They are even more reluctant to visit after one of them brings some food out for Adrienne, but crashes her car and isn’t found until morning; Marion is lucky to be alive.

This horror novel did its job – around the half way point, I was too scared to head to the basement to scoop the cat’s litter! (It was night and I was by myself in my house.) After the first time this happened, I learned to do this job before sitting down to read. This is the third or fourth book I’ve read by Darcy Coates and I’ve really liked all of them. They sure do scare the heck out of me (as a horror novel should)! I also loved Wolfgang and given the descriptions of him, I figured the author must also have a cat (they do). I did guess one small portion of what might be happening only a few pages before it was revealed, but that didn’t diminish how much I “enjoyed” the book.

]]> 56996772 448 John Little 177041620X LibraryCin 3
This, unfortunately for me, was a volume 2, and I didn’t notice when I checked it out of the library. Well, it was an audio book, and I was unable to use my eyes at the time I checked it out so asked a friend to do it for me. Would I have noticed it was v. 2 if I had checked it out myself? I’m not sure (I didn’t notice it was v. 2 when I added it to my wishlist). Anyway, I have read enough about the Donnellys to have a good idea of the lead up, but that’s what is in v. 1 (which I will listen to soon, as well).

So, in this v. 2, it started with the murders and continued on to the trials and aftermath from there. This was very very detailed, and I am impressed with that. Unfortunately, because it was audio, I did lose focus sometimes, which is why the “lower” rating (which for me, represents “ok”) of 3 stars. ]]> 4.09
author: John Little
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.09
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: family, ontario, canada, canadian-authors, murder, true-crime, history, trials, 19th-century
review:
The Donnelly family came from Ireland in the mid-1800s to rural Ontario. James and Johanna were the parents and they had a number of sons and their youngest was a daughter. They (parents and sons) often managed to get into trouble, whether that be drinking, fistfights, vandalism, and other things. At some point (even though there were others in and around town who did these things, as well), the Donnellys fairly consistently got blamed. A vigilance committee was formed and on Feb 4, 1880, a crowd of people on the committee entered the Donnelly farmstead and murdered James, Johanna, one son and a niece visiting from Ireland. A young boy, Johnny, was staying overnight and hid under a bed while it happened. When the committee left, they headed to the next farm over, where another of the Donnelly sons lived. There was a second Donnelly son staying there and he was also killed.

This, unfortunately for me, was a volume 2, and I didn’t notice when I checked it out of the library. Well, it was an audio book, and I was unable to use my eyes at the time I checked it out so asked a friend to do it for me. Would I have noticed it was v. 2 if I had checked it out myself? I’m not sure (I didn’t notice it was v. 2 when I added it to my wishlist). Anyway, I have read enough about the Donnellys to have a good idea of the lead up, but that’s what is in v. 1 (which I will listen to soon, as well).

So, in this v. 2, it started with the murders and continued on to the trials and aftermath from there. This was very very detailed, and I am impressed with that. Unfortunately, because it was audio, I did lose focus sometimes, which is why the “lower” rating (which for me, represents “ok”) of 3 stars.
]]> 222042 344 Drusilla Campbell 0758209215 LibraryCin 4
Dana’s marriage with her lawyer husband, David, is not doing well after their young daughter, Bailey, is kidnapped. David has been working long hours on a case defending a man he does not like, a man who may have murdered his neighbour’s little girl. Dana’s best friend, Lexy, is an Episcopalian priest, and their friendship also seems a bit strained.

As we go a little bit back in time, we learn more of what is making Dana more on edge. For the most part, I really liked the book and wanted to give it 4 stars, but [spoilers removed], so that brought my rating down just that little bit, the ¼ star. There is a lot going on the book, and we do see different character’s perspectives, but for the most part, I was ok with that. I didn’t think either Dana or David were particularly likable characters, though I disliked Dana more. ]]> 3.39 2005
author: Drusilla Campbell
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: family, husbands-and-wives, kidnapping, adultery, lawyers, california, italy, women
review:
3.75 stars

Dana’s marriage with her lawyer husband, David, is not doing well after their young daughter, Bailey, is kidnapped. David has been working long hours on a case defending a man he does not like, a man who may have murdered his neighbour’s little girl. Dana’s best friend, Lexy, is an Episcopalian priest, and their friendship also seems a bit strained.

As we go a little bit back in time, we learn more of what is making Dana more on edge. For the most part, I really liked the book and wanted to give it 4 stars, but [spoilers removed], so that brought my rating down just that little bit, the ¼ star. There is a lot going on the book, and we do see different character’s perspectives, but for the most part, I was ok with that. I didn’t think either Dana or David were particularly likable characters, though I disliked Dana more.
]]> 1083281
Halfway through a midsummer afternoon performance, Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus's big top caught fire. The tent had been waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline; in seconds it was burning out of control, and more than 8,000 people were trapped inside. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of survivors, O'Nan skillfully re-creates the horrific events and illuminates the psychological oddities of human behavior under the mad scramble for the exits; the hero who tossed dozens of children to safety before being trampled to death.

Brilliantly constructed and exceptionally moving, The Circus Fire is history at its most compelling.


From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 370 Stewart O'Nan 0385496842 LibraryCin 4 disasters, fire, circus
Very interesting book. I don't know why I'm so interested in disasters like this, but I find them fascinating to read about. I especially found the mystery of the unidentified little girl - Little Miss 1565 - intriguing.]]> 3.85 2000
author: Stewart O'Nan
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2009/03/01
date added: 2025/02/23
shelves: disasters, fire, circus
review:
July 6, 1944. Hartford, Connecticut. The circus is in town and almost 10,000 people fill the stands in the main "big top" tent. As the tent catches fire, people scramble to get out - some are trampled, lots are separated from family and friends, some don't make it. 167 people, including 67 kids, died in that fire. O'Nan's book describes a bit of circus history before the fire, describes the fire and people's recollections of it, and looks at the aftermath. Some of the aftermath is trying to find out what (or who?) started the fire, and some of the aftermath is focused on people recovering and trying to solve the mystery of a few unidentified people who died that day. O'Nan also included some photographs in his book.

Very interesting book. I don't know why I'm so interested in disasters like this, but I find them fascinating to read about. I especially found the mystery of the unidentified little girl - Little Miss 1565 - intriguing.
]]> 34181487 White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing is the story of Gail Lukasik’s mother’s “passing,” Gail’s struggle with the shame of her mother’s choice, and her subsequent journey of self-discovery and redemption.

In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her African-American mother’s decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness.

Haunted by her mother’s fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother’s racial lineage, tracing her family back to eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.
]]> 316 Gail Lukasik 1510724125 LibraryCin 3
There were some interesting stories in her family’s background, but it was hard to keep track of all the people. And not all the stories were as interesting as others. Doing the tv show also helped reunite her with family she never knew she had, which was interesting. ]]> 3.59 2017
author: Gail Lukasik
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: family, family-history, genealogy, memoir, mothers-and-daughters, authors, generations, race-relations, african-americans, history, passing-for-white
review:
Gail Lukasik is a mystery author. As an adult, she sent away for her mother’s birth certificate from New Orleans, only to see “(col.)” after her mother’s name. “Col”? Coloured? What!? This began a genealogical search (after her mother refused to talk about it), with help from the tv show “Genelalogical Roadshow” for her ancestry (much of the searching, and the tv show came after her mother died). Her mother did, indeed, abandon her family in New Orleans so that she could move north and pass for white.

There were some interesting stories in her family’s background, but it was hard to keep track of all the people. And not all the stories were as interesting as others. Doing the tv show also helped reunite her with family she never knew she had, which was interesting.
]]> 60910287
Former FBI agent Kendra Donovan’s attempts to return to the twenty-first century have failed, leaving her stuck at Aldridge Castle in 1815. And her problems have just begun: in London, the Duke of Aldridge’s nephew Alec—Kendra’s confidante and lover—has come under suspicion for murdering his former mistress, Lady Dover, who was found viciously stabbed with a stiletto, her face carved up in a bizarre and brutal way.

Lady Dover had plenty of secrets, and her past wasn’t quite what she’d made it out to be. Nor is it entirely in the past—which becomes frighteningly clear when a crime lord emerges from London’s seamy underbelly to threaten Alec. Joining forces with Bow Street Runner Sam Kelly, Kendra must navigate the treacherous nineteenth century while she picks through the strands of Lady Dover’s life.

As the noose tightens around Alec’s neck, Kendra will do anything to save him, including following every twist and turn through London’s glittering ballrooms, where deception is the norm—and any attempt to uncover the truth will get someone killed.

©2017 Julie McElwain (P)2017 Tantor]]> 17 Julie McElwain LibraryCin 3
Book 2 of a series. FBI agent, Kendra, is still stuck in 1815. When Lady Dover is found stabbed multiple times, likely with a stiletto, Kendra is called on to help solve this murder. There are an abundance of people who did not like Lady Dover, as she had affairs with multiple men (a father-in-law and son-in-law), her stepson disliked her, and many more people had reason to dislike her.

This one focused less on the time travel and time differences than the first book, and it seemed like more of a police procedural-type mystery. It was good. I listened to the audio (as I believe I did with the first book) and I admit to losing focus occasionally, but it was still good. There was a bit more with Kendra’s relationship to Alec. I didn’t like this one as much as the first, but I do plan to continue the series. ]]> 3.86 2017
author: Julie McElwain
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/19
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: murder, mystery, time-travel, historical-fiction, relationships, 19th-century
review:
3.5 stars

Book 2 of a series. FBI agent, Kendra, is still stuck in 1815. When Lady Dover is found stabbed multiple times, likely with a stiletto, Kendra is called on to help solve this murder. There are an abundance of people who did not like Lady Dover, as she had affairs with multiple men (a father-in-law and son-in-law), her stepson disliked her, and many more people had reason to dislike her.

This one focused less on the time travel and time differences than the first book, and it seemed like more of a police procedural-type mystery. It was good. I listened to the audio (as I believe I did with the first book) and I admit to losing focus occasionally, but it was still good. There was a bit more with Kendra’s relationship to Alec. I didn’t like this one as much as the first, but I do plan to continue the series.
]]> 35801648
We learn of the strangers who shelter Walter and his family, the members of the Resistance who risked their lives to see them to safety again and again, and of the Hidden Village, a community in the forests of Holland that hid more than 100 people. Throughout, we see the courage and resilience of a boy faced with unimaginable hatred and terror.]]> 200 Janet Wees 177260061X LibraryCin 3
Walter is only 5-years old when his Jewish family moves out of Germany to the Netherlands in 1937. He doesn’t understand why they have to leave. In the following years, after the Nazis invade the Netherlands in 1940, Walter’s family has to continually move around and hide to stay safe, often with Walter not really understanding what is going on.

This is nonfiction and geared toward a younger audience. It is an interesting perspective of a young boy who really doesn’t understand (at least for the first few years) what is happening around him as his family constantly needs to keep moving. The book mentions some of the people who were part of the Dutch Underground who helped Walter and his family and includes pictures of some of the people and places. I found the “Hidden Village” in the forest particularly interesting, but I suppose people had to be creative in order to survive. There were letters included that Walter wrote to his grandmother while they were (separately) in hiding. I probably could have done without the narration of an older Walter to his granddaughter. ]]> 3.83
author: Janet Wees
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: children-s-literature, boys, holland, jewish-people, survival, world-war-ii, coming-of-age
review:
3.5 stars

Walter is only 5-years old when his Jewish family moves out of Germany to the Netherlands in 1937. He doesn’t understand why they have to leave. In the following years, after the Nazis invade the Netherlands in 1940, Walter’s family has to continually move around and hide to stay safe, often with Walter not really understanding what is going on.

This is nonfiction and geared toward a younger audience. It is an interesting perspective of a young boy who really doesn’t understand (at least for the first few years) what is happening around him as his family constantly needs to keep moving. The book mentions some of the people who were part of the Dutch Underground who helped Walter and his family and includes pictures of some of the people and places. I found the “Hidden Village” in the forest particularly interesting, but I suppose people had to be creative in order to survive. There were letters included that Walter wrote to his grandmother while they were (separately) in hiding. I probably could have done without the narration of an older Walter to his granddaughter.
]]> 21853621 In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are.

France, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women's war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France―a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.]]> 440 Kristin Hannah 0312577222 LibraryCin 4
Vianne and Isabelle are sisters, but are not close. Vianne is married and has a daughter and lives in rural France, while Isabelle prefers Paris. Vianne’s husband goes to fight in World War II, and Isabelle goes to live with Vianne. The sisters are opposites. Vianne wants to not rock the boat and just wait for Antoine to come home. Isabelle is furious and wants to help stop the Germans, so she gets involved with some underground resistance. In fact, Isabelle is very involved and it is very dangerous. Meanwhile, Vianne’s home is “confiscated” by the Germans when the town is invaded and a German soldier stays with them. This is dangerous for everyone…

2025 Review: This is a reread. I don’t have a lot to add to my review from the first time and I am rating it the same. I was able to listen to about two-thirds of it this time before I had to switch to the ebook, but the audio was also done really well. Still an amazing book the second time around. There was very little I actually remembered of the book, so it was almost like not having read it before.

2017 Review: The book goes back and forth between 1995 and 1939-1945. I think I’ve only read one other book (that comes to mind, anyway) that is set in France during the war (Sarah’s Key), so between the two books, I am learning more of what happened in occupied France. At first, I found Isabelle’s story more intriguing (we also went back and forth between what was happening with each sister), but as time went on, things were happening on both ends. Despite the length of the book, it was a fast read for me. Very, very well done and very interesting and heartbreaking, at times.
]]> 4.63 2015
author: Kristin Hannah
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: historical-fiction, world-war-ii, sisters, fathers-and-daughters, france, survival, women, small-towns
review:
4.5 stars

Vianne and Isabelle are sisters, but are not close. Vianne is married and has a daughter and lives in rural France, while Isabelle prefers Paris. Vianne’s husband goes to fight in World War II, and Isabelle goes to live with Vianne. The sisters are opposites. Vianne wants to not rock the boat and just wait for Antoine to come home. Isabelle is furious and wants to help stop the Germans, so she gets involved with some underground resistance. In fact, Isabelle is very involved and it is very dangerous. Meanwhile, Vianne’s home is “confiscated” by the Germans when the town is invaded and a German soldier stays with them. This is dangerous for everyone…

2025 Review: This is a reread. I don’t have a lot to add to my review from the first time and I am rating it the same. I was able to listen to about two-thirds of it this time before I had to switch to the ebook, but the audio was also done really well. Still an amazing book the second time around. There was very little I actually remembered of the book, so it was almost like not having read it before.

2017 Review: The book goes back and forth between 1995 and 1939-1945. I think I’ve only read one other book (that comes to mind, anyway) that is set in France during the war (Sarah’s Key), so between the two books, I am learning more of what happened in occupied France. At first, I found Isabelle’s story more intriguing (we also went back and forth between what was happening with each sister), but as time went on, things were happening on both ends. Despite the length of the book, it was a fast read for me. Very, very well done and very interesting and heartbreaking, at times.

]]> 2216225 Not far from the city there is an ancient wood, forgotten by the modern world, where Mystery walks in the moonlight. He wears the shape of a stag, or a goat, or a horned man wearing a cloak of leaves. He is summoned by the music of the pipes or a fire of bones on Midsummer's Evening. He is chased by the hunt and shadowed by the wild girl.

]]> 328 Charles de Lint 0441302955 LibraryCin 3
14-year old Ali and her mom, Frankie, have moved to Frankie’s old house after she won the lottery. They are going to fix the house up and stay. But when Frankie’s ex, Earl, learns that Frankie won the lottery, he’s coming after her for the money. Meanwhile, Ali is making friends with their neighbour, Tony. They don’t know at first, but Tony is hiding from the mafia, which he used to be involved in until there was a “hit” out for him. But Ali can tell Tony’s a good guy. In the forest behind their homes are some odd things though: a piper that plays eerie music that makes people do odd things, a stag that appears, a young girl who is a little odd…

This was good. I’m not always a fan of fantasy, but this is urban fantasy (though not an urban area, the bulk of the story is in the “real” world, with parts of fantasy in the forest), and I usually do better with this type of fantasy. Based on the description and cover, there was less fantasy that I expected, so I was happy about that. The book followed many different characters at different points, and I’m not always as interested in the “bad guys’” perspectives when books do this. This was the case, once again, particularly following Tony’s crew. Overall, though, I did like the story, and I like Ali and Frankie, especially. And even Tony. There were some pretty terrible characters, though (looking at you, Earl! For one). ]]> 3.89 1988
author: Charles de Lint
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1988
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: canada, ontario, canadian-fiction, forests, neighbours, mafia, abuse, exes, urban-fantasy, coming-of-age, magic, nature, crime
review:
3.5 stars

14-year old Ali and her mom, Frankie, have moved to Frankie’s old house after she won the lottery. They are going to fix the house up and stay. But when Frankie’s ex, Earl, learns that Frankie won the lottery, he’s coming after her for the money. Meanwhile, Ali is making friends with their neighbour, Tony. They don’t know at first, but Tony is hiding from the mafia, which he used to be involved in until there was a “hit” out for him. But Ali can tell Tony’s a good guy. In the forest behind their homes are some odd things though: a piper that plays eerie music that makes people do odd things, a stag that appears, a young girl who is a little odd…

This was good. I’m not always a fan of fantasy, but this is urban fantasy (though not an urban area, the bulk of the story is in the “real” world, with parts of fantasy in the forest), and I usually do better with this type of fantasy. Based on the description and cover, there was less fantasy that I expected, so I was happy about that. The book followed many different characters at different points, and I’m not always as interested in the “bad guys’” perspectives when books do this. This was the case, once again, particularly following Tony’s crew. Overall, though, I did like the story, and I like Ali and Frankie, especially. And even Tony. There were some pretty terrible characters, though (looking at you, Earl! For one).
]]> 17557627 A small-town boy hops a bus to New York City to crash an audition for E.T.: The Musical. Nate Foster has big dreams. His whole life, he’s wanted to star in a Broadway show. (Heck, he’d settle for seeing a Broadway show.) But how is Nate supposed to make his dreams come true when he’s stuck in Jankburg, Pennsylvania, where no one (except his best pal Libby) appreciates a good show tune? With Libby’s help, Nate plans a daring overnight escape to New York. There’s an open casting call for E.T.: The Musical, and Nate knows this could be the difference between small-town blues and big-time stardom.



Tim Federle writes a warm and witty debut that's full of broken curfews, second chances, and the adventure of growing up—because sometimes you have to get four hundred miles from your backyard to finally feel at home.]]> Tim Federle 1442366206 LibraryCin 3
13-year old Nate lives in Pennsylvania, but dreams of being on Broadway. When there is a casting call for a musical production of E.T., he and his best friend Libby collaborate so he can get into NYC for a day without his parents finding out so he can try out for the part of Eliot. Nate was excited, not only to try out, but to also experience New York for a short time.

I listened to the audio and this was enjoyable. Some humourous bits thrown in. It’s meant for a young audience and I expect many that age would enjoy this little adventure of Nate’s. It looks like this is the start of a series, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue. The narrator was the author himself and he did a very good job. Adding an extra ¼ star for his narration.]]> 3.96 2013
author: Tim Federle
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: actors, children-s-literature, boys, new-york-city, e-t, friendship, humour, lgbtqia, theatre, coming-of-age
review:
3.25 stars

13-year old Nate lives in Pennsylvania, but dreams of being on Broadway. When there is a casting call for a musical production of E.T., he and his best friend Libby collaborate so he can get into NYC for a day without his parents finding out so he can try out for the part of Eliot. Nate was excited, not only to try out, but to also experience New York for a short time.

I listened to the audio and this was enjoyable. Some humourous bits thrown in. It’s meant for a young audience and I expect many that age would enjoy this little adventure of Nate’s. It looks like this is the start of a series, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue. The narrator was the author himself and he did a very good job. Adding an extra ¼ star for his narration.
]]> 211004179 For fans of Jordan Peele’s films, Stranger Things, and The Other Black Girl, Listen To Your Sister is a laugh-out-loud, deeply terrifying, and big-hearted speculative horror novel from electrifying debut talent Neena Viel.

Twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.

When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.]]> 352 Neena Viel 1250906326 LibraryCin 2
I am not a fan of stories within a story, or in a similar note, I tend to tune out if there is a dream in a book. This was all about the dream. Especially when they reached the cabin and it was hard to tell what was a dream and what wasn’t. I like horror. I also was interested before the horror aspect picked up, in what was going on with this family. But the nightmare and trying to figure out the nightmare vs reality… I just ended up tuning half (or more) of that out.]]> 3.23 2025
author: Neena Viel
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.23
book published: 2025
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/05
shelves: siblings, brothers-and-sisters, family, horror, dreams, dopplegangers
review:
A young woman (in her mid-20s), Callie, ends up taking care of her 16-year old brother, Jamie, while her other brother, Dre (early 20s), had said he’d help out, but he rarely does. After Jamie is suspended from school due to drugs, things get worse when he attends a protest with friends and is driving a vehicle caught handing out weapons. Meanwhile, Dre gets caught up in a conflict that should have been his roommate’s conflict, but it’s Dre in the middle of it. Callie has nightmares about both her brothers dying. With all this going on, they decide to leave town and find a horribly beaten down cabin to regroup. Then things get worse.

I am not a fan of stories within a story, or in a similar note, I tend to tune out if there is a dream in a book. This was all about the dream. Especially when they reached the cabin and it was hard to tell what was a dream and what wasn’t. I like horror. I also was interested before the horror aspect picked up, in what was going on with this family. But the nightmare and trying to figure out the nightmare vs reality… I just ended up tuning half (or more) of that out.
]]> 34506931
Dive in for an intimate look at the dynamic hammerhead, infamous great white, primordial megalodon, and the gentle nurse shark, the rare species that will let a scuba diver pet them! This book is filled to the gills with jaw-dropping illustrations and razor-sharp facts that shed light on these fascinating creatures of the deep, including their undersea terrain, cunning adaptability, and staggering variety.

Every volume of 카지노싸이트 Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic—dinosaurs, coral reefs, the solar system, volcanoes, bats, flying machines, and more. These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty year old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you!]]> 128 Joe Flood 1626727880 LibraryCin 4
I love this series. It’s geared toward a younger audience, but there is so much for adults to learn, as well. These are also graphic novels, but with the colour pictures, they can illustrate so much of what is being explained to make it all easier to picture. Have to admit, I liked that this one had less “focus” on the story to tell us about sharks (in comparison to some of the other 카지노싸이트 Comics); I’m sure that part of it is to appeal to younger readers, so maybe it is more appealing for the younger ones, but I feel like this one had less of that.]]> 4.49 2018
author: Joe Flood
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/02
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: animals, sharks, oceans, science, graphic-novels, marine-life, biology
review:
Another in the 카지노싸이트 Comics series, this focuses on sharks. Many people are fascinated by them; many are scared of them. This looks at their biology, their evolution, many different types of sharks, and their (rare) interactions with humans.

I love this series. It’s geared toward a younger audience, but there is so much for adults to learn, as well. These are also graphic novels, but with the colour pictures, they can illustrate so much of what is being explained to make it all easier to picture. Have to admit, I liked that this one had less “focus” on the story to tell us about sharks (in comparison to some of the other 카지노싸이트 Comics); I’m sure that part of it is to appeal to younger readers, so maybe it is more appealing for the younger ones, but I feel like this one had less of that.
]]> 54860585 A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.

The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss.

Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.

Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781250252708]]> 336 S.A. Cosby LibraryCin 0 to-read 4.09 2021
author: S.A. Cosby
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61884832 A Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust.

Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.

Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.

As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.

Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction” (The Washington Post).]]> 338 S.A. Cosby 1250831911 LibraryCin 4
Titus is the black sheriff. He once worked for the FBI and something happened there. He came home to help out his elderly father, and ran to be sheriff, hoping he could make some changes from the inside to this racist area.

This was very good. Definitely some tense moments. The book is very dark and some awful things happen. On the personal side (Titus’ personal side) of the book, I have to agree with his girlfriend – what did he ever see in his ex!?]]> 4.18 2023
author: S.A. Cosby
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/31
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: murder, mystery, serial-killers, american-south, police-officers, virginia, african-americans, racism, religion
review:
It started as a school shooting in a small town in Virginia. A white teacher was shot and killed by a black man. The black man came out of the school to confront the black sheriff and was shot by two white officers. Then they found the pictures and videos on the teacher’s phone and it gets messy in this religious Virginia town with religion and racism all mixed together.

Titus is the black sheriff. He once worked for the FBI and something happened there. He came home to help out his elderly father, and ran to be sheriff, hoping he could make some changes from the inside to this racist area.

This was very good. Definitely some tense moments. The book is very dark and some awful things happen. On the personal side (Titus’ personal side) of the book, I have to agree with his girlfriend – what did he ever see in his ex!?
]]> 6276037 145 Sheila Burnford 0553102206 LibraryCin 3
When their owners leave for months, two dogs and a cat are boarded with a friend many miles away, but when that person leaves for a few days, the pets (after a mixup with the people meant to care for them for those few days) head out to find their way to their owners’ home through the wilderness in Ontario. One of the dogs is older, one younger, but they all have bumps and bruises along the way and sometimes come close to death as the three do their best to survive and take care of each other as they encounter water to swim across, various humans (most who help), and various wildlife.

I enjoyed this. It was quick to read. I do suspect the author had pets herself as many of the descriptions of the animals seemed pretty true to life. Despite this being a Canadian “classic” (I think), I’ve never read it before, nor have I seen any of the movies. ]]> 3.56 1960
author: Sheila Burnford
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.56
book published: 1960
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: animals, pets, cats, dogs, travel, canada, ontario, classics, adventure, survival, children-s-literature, canadian-fiction
review:
3.5 stars

When their owners leave for months, two dogs and a cat are boarded with a friend many miles away, but when that person leaves for a few days, the pets (after a mixup with the people meant to care for them for those few days) head out to find their way to their owners’ home through the wilderness in Ontario. One of the dogs is older, one younger, but they all have bumps and bruises along the way and sometimes come close to death as the three do their best to survive and take care of each other as they encounter water to swim across, various humans (most who help), and various wildlife.

I enjoyed this. It was quick to read. I do suspect the author had pets herself as many of the descriptions of the animals seemed pretty true to life. Despite this being a Canadian “classic” (I think), I’ve never read it before, nor have I seen any of the movies.
]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ‘80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 LibraryCin 0 to-read 4.39 2017
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 9474770 Set in the challenging terrain of Ice Age Europe that millions of Jean Auel’s readers have come to treasure, The Mammoth Hunters is an epic novel of love, knowledge, jealousy, and hard choices—a novel certain to garner Jean Auel even greater acclaim as a master storyteller of the dawn of humanity.Ayla, the independent heroine of The Clan of the Cave Bear and The Valley of Horses, sets out from the valley on Whinney, the horse she tamed. With her is Jondalar, the tall, handsome, yellow-haired man she nursed back to health and came to love. Together they meet the Mamutoi—the Mammoth Hunters—people like Ayla. But to Ayla, who was raised by the Clan of the Cave Bear, they are “the Others.” She approaches them with mixed feelings of fear and curiosity. Talut, a powerful bear of a man with bright red hair, a booming laugh, and a gentle heart, and his tall, dark-haired sister, Tulie, are the leaders of the Lion Camp of the Mamutoi. It is here that Ayla finds her first women friends, but some among the Mamutoi dislike Ayla because she was raised by “flatheads,” their name for the people of the Clan. Ayla is haunted by her memories of the Clan because Rydag, a child of mixed parentage living with the Mamutoi, bears so strong a resemblance to her own son, Durc. It is the Mamutoi master carver of ivory—dark-skinned Ranec, flirtatious, artistic, magnetic—who fascinates Ayla. She finds herself drawn to him. Because of her uncanny control over animals, her healing skills, and the magic firestone she discovered, Ayla is adopted into the Mammoth Hearth by Mamut, the ancient shaman of the Great Earth Mother. Ayla finds herself torn between her strong feelings for Ranec and her powerful love for the wildly jealous and unsure Jondalar. It is not until after the great mammoth hunt, when Ayla’s life is threatened, that a fateful decision is made. This eBook includes the full text of the novel plus the following additional • An Earth’s Children® series sampler including free chapters from the other books in Jean M. Auel’s bestselling series• A Q&A with the author about the Earth’s Children® series]]> 753 Jean M. Auel LibraryCin 3
In the 3rd book of the series of prehistoric people, Ayla and Jondalar have arrived at a “Mamutoi” settlement. These are humans more like we know them now, and more like Ayla, than the “cave” people she was raised with. In addition to having to learn the new culture and still being new to the spoken language, it’s hard for Ayla to fit in. Not only that, she brought domesticated horses with her, which is unnerving for the people here. But she is beautiful and she brings many good qualities, first and foremost as a Healer. So she is soon welcomed. But her relationship with Jondalar is tested as one of the men in this camp is very interested in Ayla and doesn’t keep it a secret.

Of course, there is a lot more going on in this than I’ve summarized. It’s a good book, but it was so long. I started it two months ago, but it was taking so long to read, I set it aside for other books before I came back to finish it off. It is a bit annoying how perfect Ayla is, though. Maybe not perfect, but she does so many things so well – things that others can’t do or have a hard time doing. I also hate the hunting; I cry for the animals, though I know the people needed to hunt to survive. ]]> 4.36 1985
author: Jean M. Auel
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: historical-fiction, community, women, family, relationships, culture, ice-age, prehistoric-people
review:
3.5 stars

In the 3rd book of the series of prehistoric people, Ayla and Jondalar have arrived at a “Mamutoi” settlement. These are humans more like we know them now, and more like Ayla, than the “cave” people she was raised with. In addition to having to learn the new culture and still being new to the spoken language, it’s hard for Ayla to fit in. Not only that, she brought domesticated horses with her, which is unnerving for the people here. But she is beautiful and she brings many good qualities, first and foremost as a Healer. So she is soon welcomed. But her relationship with Jondalar is tested as one of the men in this camp is very interested in Ayla and doesn’t keep it a secret.

Of course, there is a lot more going on in this than I’ve summarized. It’s a good book, but it was so long. I started it two months ago, but it was taking so long to read, I set it aside for other books before I came back to finish it off. It is a bit annoying how perfect Ayla is, though. Maybe not perfect, but she does so many things so well – things that others can’t do or have a hard time doing. I also hate the hunting; I cry for the animals, though I know the people needed to hunt to survive.
]]> 58322021 all Creatures Great and Small.

It is just after World War II, and James has returned from the R.A.F. to do battle with the diseases and injuries that befall the farm animals and pets of Skeldale and the surrounding moors. Four-year-old Jimmy Herriot, Humphrey Cobb and his little beagle Myrtle, Norman the book-loving veterinary assistant, and many more new faces join old favorites among the green hills of Yorkshire, as James takes an unforgettable voyage to Russia on a freighter with 383 pedigreed sheep. Touching our hearts with laughter and wisdom, lifting our spirits with compassion and goodness, James Herriot never fails to delight.
]]> James Herriot 1427220735 LibraryCin 3
I listened to the audio, so there was a bit too much that I missed to be able to rate it higher. Most of what I heard was enjoyable. There were tidbits included about his family and kids, as well. ]]> 4.27 1981
author: James Herriot
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1981
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: memoir, veterinarians, 20th-century, england, animals, farm-animals, rural-life, classical-music
review:
This is another of English veterinarian James Herriot’s books about his practice during the mid-20th-century in rural England, mostly working with farm animals. Amidst the usual anecdotes about various critters, he did a couple of long trips (one on a ship to Russia), tending to the animals aboard during the trips.

I listened to the audio, so there was a bit too much that I missed to be able to rate it higher. Most of what I heard was enjoyable. There were tidbits included about his family and kids, as well.
]]> 4223
As Langdon and gifted French cryptologist Sophie Neveu sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to discover a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo da Vinci—clues visible for all to see and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Even more startling, the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion—a secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci—and he guarded a breathtaking historical secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle—while avoiding the faceless adversary who shadows their every move—the explosive, ancient truth will be lost forever.]]> 752 Dan Brown 0739326740 LibraryCin 4 3.64 2003
author: Dan Brown
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2005/01/01
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: murder, thrillers, france, suspense, paintings, symbols, catholic-church, leonardo-da-vinci, knights-templar, from-shelfari, year-read-2005
review:

]]> 7054124
It this spellbinding true crime narrative, Dow takes us inside of prisons, inside the complicated minds of judges, inside execution-administration chambers, into the lives of death row inmates (some shown to be innocent, others not) and even into his own home--where the toll of working on these gnarled and difficult cases is perhaps inevitably paid. He sheds insight onto unexpected phenomena-- how even religious lawyer and justices can evince deep rooted support for putting criminals to death-- and makes palpable the suspense that clings to every word and action when human lives hang in the balance.]]> 288 David R. Dow 0446562068 LibraryCin 4
In the meantime, other cases came up with people looking for help. Like with our main case in this book, many were represented in their trials by inept lawyers who didn’t do their jobs. There are appeals after appeals for the people on death row, but they rarely help or change anything. There are so many rules, it’s almost impossible to overturn these sentences, despite the legal issues with some of the inmates even being on death row.

I already don’t agree with the death penalty. But the more I read about it, the more convinced I am (once upon a time I wasn’t convinced). ]]> 3.96 2010
author: David R. Dow
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/22
shelves: death-row, lawyers, texas, memoir, capital-punishment, true-crime, murder, politics
review:
The author is a lawyer for inmates on death row in Texas. In fact, at one point, this lawyer was in favour of the death penalty. The main part of this book is when he was fighting to save the life of a man convicted of killing his wife, then two kids. But it was all circumstantial evidence and his lawyer was completely inept. Another death row inmate talked to Dow to tell him he knew who killed the other man’s family and it was a mistaken identity. You can’t always believe these guys, but Dow and his staff looked further into it, and they were pretty convinced the man didn’t do it.

In the meantime, other cases came up with people looking for help. Like with our main case in this book, many were represented in their trials by inept lawyers who didn’t do their jobs. There are appeals after appeals for the people on death row, but they rarely help or change anything. There are so many rules, it’s almost impossible to overturn these sentences, despite the legal issues with some of the inmates even being on death row.

I already don’t agree with the death penalty. But the more I read about it, the more convinced I am (once upon a time I wasn’t convinced).
]]> 202102048
We talk a lot about sheep: following the herd, counting sheep to fall asleep and looking out for wolves in sheep’s clothing. But, just like people, animals don’t always follow the pack. Some are affectionate while others butt heads; some follow the leader while some guide the whole flock home. With startling beauty and tenderness, Rosamund Young reveals the remarkable emotional and intellectual complexity of the animals she lives with on her family farm, and the story of her life’s work, with the intimacy of a personal diary.

Just as she did in her acclaimed book, The Secret Life of Cows, Young transports readers to the wild meadows of Kite’s Nest Farm, where she has worked as an organic farmer for over forty years, at the beck and call of the abundant wildlife, living in direct contact with the consciousnesses of her beloved animals. Through tender portraits of her sometimes eventful but always rewarding days at Kite’s Nest, Young recounts a multitude of discoveries, such as how cows converse with one another, why sheep are so strongheaded—and why you should never, ever text whilst milking. That’s a lesson you need learn only once.

This is a story of joy, discovery, cooperation and, sometimes, heartbreak. But through it all, The Wisdom of Sheep is a fresh and delightful tribute to the miraculous inner worlds of the animals all around us and what we can learn about them, and about ourselves, by watching them more closely.]]> 272 Rosamund Young 0593656172 LibraryCin 2
The author runs an organic farm. These are little anecdotes.

The book started well – a bit of her biography/background. But then it got into chapters of (sometimes odd, in my opinion) anecdotes. Some chapters were just a poem or a quote from literature; some were about other critters (not sheep) such as frogs, insects, butterflies, birds. Many chapters (maybe more than the ones about sheep?) were about cows. (Some of) the chapters on cows and sheep were the most interesting to me, but often she’d also throw in more literary references and other things that just were odd to me. There were some nice little illustrations and it was a very fast read. ]]> 3.71
author: Rosamund Young
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.71
book published:
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/18
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: sheep, cows, farm-animals, farmers, organic, animals
review:
2.25 stars

The author runs an organic farm. These are little anecdotes.

The book started well – a bit of her biography/background. But then it got into chapters of (sometimes odd, in my opinion) anecdotes. Some chapters were just a poem or a quote from literature; some were about other critters (not sheep) such as frogs, insects, butterflies, birds. Many chapters (maybe more than the ones about sheep?) were about cows. (Some of) the chapters on cows and sheep were the most interesting to me, but often she’d also throw in more literary references and other things that just were odd to me. There were some nice little illustrations and it was a very fast read.
]]> 17305367 ‘Seek and ye shall find.’

With these words echoing in his head, eminent Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon awakes in a hospital bed with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. Nor can he explain the origin of the macabre object that is found hidden in his belongings.

A threat to his life will propel him and a young doctor, Sienna Brooks, into a breakneck chase across the city of Florence. Only Langdon’s knowledge of hidden passageways and ancient secrets that lie behind its historic facade can save them from the clutches of their unknown pursuers.

With only a few lines from Dante’s dark and epic masterpiece, The Inferno, to guide them, they must decipher a sequence of codes buried deep within some of the most celebrated artefacts of the Renaissance – sculptures, paintings, buildings – to find the answers to a puzzle which may, or may not, help them save the world from a terrifying threat…

Set against an extraordinary landscape inspired by one of history’s most ominous literary classics, Inferno is Dan Brown’s most compelling and thought-provoking novel yet, a breathless race-against-time thriller that will grab you from page one and not let you go until you close the book.]]> 465 Dan Brown 0593072499 LibraryCin 4
I quite liked this. It did slow down for me in the middle, but it picked up again at the end. I almost never say this, but I was, in this instance, cheering for the bad guy!]]> 3.71 2013
author: Dan Brown
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2019/06/04
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: literature, philosophy, art, mystery, italy, thrillers, amnesia, plague, genetic-engineering, overpopulation, viruses
review:
When Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital, he doesn’t realize he’s in Italy and when he finds that out, he has no recollection of why he’s there or how he got there. He quickly finds out someone has shot him in the head, and whoever it is is still coming after him! He and a doctor helping him escape together and try to find out why he is there and why someone is trying to kill him.

I quite liked this. It did slow down for me in the middle, but it picked up again at the end. I almost never say this, but I was, in this instance, cheering for the bad guy!
]]> 29220494 2016 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize finalist

When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break — a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house — she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime.

In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim — police, family, and friends — tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night. Lou, a social worker, grapples with the departure of her live-in boyfriend. Cheryl, an artist, mourns the premature death of her sister Rain. Paulina, a single mother, struggles to trust her new partner. Phoenix, a homeless teenager, is released from a youth detention centre. Officer Scott, a Métis policeman, feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city. Through their various perspectives a larger, more comprehensive story about lives of the residents in Winnipeg’s North End is exposed.

A powerful intergenerational family saga, The Break showcases Vermette’s abundant writing talent and positions her as an exciting new voice in Canadian literature.]]> 350 Katherena Vermette 1487001118 LibraryCin 4
This was very good. It’s a very difficult topic, but I liked the writing and thought it was well done. There were a LOT of characters. The first five or six chapters were all from different points of view and initially didn’t appear connected. Of course, they were and it was explained, but it was still hard to keep everyone straight and how they were related (many literally) to each other.]]> 4.29 2016
author: Katherena Vermette
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: indigenous-peoples, metis, canadian-fiction, manitoba, canada, family, sexual-assault, gangs, mothers-and-daughters, women
review:
Emily is only 13-years old. She has a crush on a boy and attends a party he invited her to, but she also doesn’t realize a. what kind of party this is; and b. the boy has a girlfriend… a very jealous girlfriend with a violent streak. Emily ends up in the hospital after a very severe attack, and is surrounded by her extended family as she heals and as the police try to figure out what happened.

This was very good. It’s a very difficult topic, but I liked the writing and thought it was well done. There were a LOT of characters. The first five or six chapters were all from different points of view and initially didn’t appear connected. Of course, they were and it was explained, but it was still hard to keep everyone straight and how they were related (many literally) to each other.
]]> 207821741 222 Wendy Murphy 1947976435 LibraryCin 3
This is a collection of essays highlighting different women in history (mostly the 19th and 20th centuries, but at least one earlier than that) who were inventors, scientists, architects, artists, and more, but had their work “stolen” by men, and the men got the credit (and often, the men were awarded prestigious prizes for that work, including a number of Nobel prizes).

This was good. The stories/essays were short, so it’s hard to remember them all. There was biographical information included about the women, as well. And, sadly, a few women whose husbands took advantage and took credit for their wives ideas/inventions/art/etc. (some of those marriages also ended later). A couple of memorable ones for me was who invented Monopoly and the discovery of two-strand DNA. There were also chapteres on Einstein and his wife, Mileva, as well and F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. ]]> 4.36 2024
author: Wendy Murphy
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/17
date added: 2025/01/17
shelves: women, science, history, inventors, 19th-century, 20th-century
review:
3.5 stars

This is a collection of essays highlighting different women in history (mostly the 19th and 20th centuries, but at least one earlier than that) who were inventors, scientists, architects, artists, and more, but had their work “stolen” by men, and the men got the credit (and often, the men were awarded prestigious prizes for that work, including a number of Nobel prizes).

This was good. The stories/essays were short, so it’s hard to remember them all. There was biographical information included about the women, as well. And, sadly, a few women whose husbands took advantage and took credit for their wives ideas/inventions/art/etc. (some of those marriages also ended later). A couple of memorable ones for me was who invented Monopoly and the discovery of two-strand DNA. There were also chapteres on Einstein and his wife, Mileva, as well and F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda.
]]> 43833008 A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice.

With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community loses communication. Days later, it goes dark. Cut off from the urban realm of the south, many of its people become passive and confused. They eventually descend into panic as the food supply dwindles, with few hunters left in the First Nation. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives from a city in the south to escape a crumbling society. Soon after, others follow.

The community leadership is faced with the dilemma of allowing the urban refugees to live with them on their territory. Tensions rise, and as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again, while they grapple with a grave decision.

Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.]]> Waubgeshig Rice LibraryCin 3
When a remote northern Indigenous community loses all power and cell service, no one is quite sure why, but this happens sometimes, just not usually at the same time. But when this continues for a while, the community decides they need to figure out what to do to make it through the winter in case is doesn’t come back. When two young boys from the community return from the city in the south on snowmobiles, they learn that things are just as bad in the city and it’s getting worse. At least many of the Indigenous peoples can hunt and fish. Soon, a large white man appears asking for a place to stay; he has followed the tracks of the boys’ skidoos to get there. People aren’t sure if they can trust this guy, but they allow him to stay.

I listened to the audio. It occurred to me that Indigenous people (at least those who learned to hunt and fish and to do other traditional things might be in a better position than many (certainly us city folk) to withstand hardships like this). Of course, even so, not everyone fares well. It was actually a pretty slow moving book, but there were moments of tension. I am willing to give the sequel a try, as well. ]]> 3.80 2018
author: Waubgeshig Rice
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: survival, canada, ontario, indigenous-peoples, community, dystopia, canadian-fiction
review:
3.5 stars

When a remote northern Indigenous community loses all power and cell service, no one is quite sure why, but this happens sometimes, just not usually at the same time. But when this continues for a while, the community decides they need to figure out what to do to make it through the winter in case is doesn’t come back. When two young boys from the community return from the city in the south on snowmobiles, they learn that things are just as bad in the city and it’s getting worse. At least many of the Indigenous peoples can hunt and fish. Soon, a large white man appears asking for a place to stay; he has followed the tracks of the boys’ skidoos to get there. People aren’t sure if they can trust this guy, but they allow him to stay.

I listened to the audio. It occurred to me that Indigenous people (at least those who learned to hunt and fish and to do other traditional things might be in a better position than many (certainly us city folk) to withstand hardships like this). Of course, even so, not everyone fares well. It was actually a pretty slow moving book, but there were moments of tension. I am willing to give the sequel a try, as well.
]]> 207689829 The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents

Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous – and most revered – doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role. His crucial role in identifying HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises make him truly an American hero.

His memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious disease preparedness at home. On Call will be an inspiration for readers who admire and are grateful to him and for those who want to emulate him in public service. He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” with dignity and results.]]> 464 Anthony Fauci 0593657470 LibraryCin 0 to-read 4.47 2024
author: Anthony Fauci
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56269064 Think you know the person you married? Think again…

Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.

Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts – paper, cotton, pottery, tin – and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. They both know this weekend will make or break their marriage, but they didn’t randomly win this trip. One of them is lying, and someone doesn’t want them to live happily ever after.

Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets. And an anniversary they will never forget.

Rock Paper Scissors is the latest exciting domestic thriller from the queen of the killer twist, New York Times bestselling author Alice Feeney.]]> 294 Alice Feeney 1250266106 LibraryCin 4
We read the story from the viewpoints of all three characters. In addition, we back up in time to read letters written to Adam on their anniversary every year and we can see where things have been going wrong. There were definitely creepy bits and there were a few twists at the end; I don’t think I saw any of them coming. ]]> 3.87 2021
author: Alice Feeney
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/14
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: thrillers, authors, marriage, husbands-and-wives, scotland, mystery, revenge, winter
review:
Amelia and Adam have been having trouble in their marriage. When Amelia wins a trip at work to head to Scotland to stay in an old isolated church, she jumps at the chance, hoping the two of them can start to repair their marriage. They drive through a snowstorm to get there and the church is locked. It’s cold, and dark, and they were lucky to not be killed on the drive, due to the road conditions. There are creepy things happening all around. Meanwhile, Robin lives in a small cottage nearby. Robin is a hermit and rarely goes into town. Amelia and Adam don’t know she’s there, but she is keeping a very close eye on the two of them.

We read the story from the viewpoints of all three characters. In addition, we back up in time to read letters written to Adam on their anniversary every year and we can see where things have been going wrong. There were definitely creepy bits and there were a few twists at the end; I don’t think I saw any of them coming.
]]> 24693264
Including interviews with key figures who knew Bhutto and have never before spoken on the record, Benazir Bhutto: Favored Daughter illuminates Bhutto’s tragic life as well as the role she played as the first female prime minister of Pakistan. Celebrated literary critic Brooke Allen approaches Bhutto in a way not many have done before in this taut biography of a figure who had a profound effect on the volatile politics of the Middle East, drawing on contemporary news sources and eyewitness reports, as well as accounts from her supporters and her enemies.]]> 176 Brooke Allen 0544648935 LibraryCin 3
Benazir Bhutto was the first female prime minister of Pakistan in 1988 (she was also the youngest at 34-years old). Her father had been prime minister earlier on before the country was taken over by the head of the military. Her father was a socialist and believed in democracy. He made sure his children were well-educated in the US and England. Benazir was attractive and charismatic. When she was elected, she promised health care, education, and more housing.

But underneath it all, Benazir herself wasn’t really democratic nor socialist, despite her adoration of her father and being groomed by him to become a politician. With her feudal family background, she felt she had a God-given right to rule as she wished. She and another party leader switched leading Pakistan throughout the 1990s, but Benazir and her husband were actually quite corrupt and stole/skimmed a lot of money from Pakistan. She was later arrested and forced into exile. But she came back to devastating results (for herself): she was assassinated in 2007.

I’ve left out quite a bit and there is a lot of detail in this short book (it’s under 200 pages). The history of Pakistan is not something I know much about, so I feel like I learned a lot, but there was also so much information that it was also hard to take it all in. It is a good book; I do feel if I’d already known more about Pakistan, I might have been able to absorb even more. ]]> 3.55 2016
author: Brooke Allen
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/12
date added: 2025/01/12
shelves: history, biography, women, politicians, pakistan, politics, late-20th-century
review:
3.5 stars

Benazir Bhutto was the first female prime minister of Pakistan in 1988 (she was also the youngest at 34-years old). Her father had been prime minister earlier on before the country was taken over by the head of the military. Her father was a socialist and believed in democracy. He made sure his children were well-educated in the US and England. Benazir was attractive and charismatic. When she was elected, she promised health care, education, and more housing.

But underneath it all, Benazir herself wasn’t really democratic nor socialist, despite her adoration of her father and being groomed by him to become a politician. With her feudal family background, she felt she had a God-given right to rule as she wished. She and another party leader switched leading Pakistan throughout the 1990s, but Benazir and her husband were actually quite corrupt and stole/skimmed a lot of money from Pakistan. She was later arrested and forced into exile. But she came back to devastating results (for herself): she was assassinated in 2007.

I’ve left out quite a bit and there is a lot of detail in this short book (it’s under 200 pages). The history of Pakistan is not something I know much about, so I feel like I learned a lot, but there was also so much information that it was also hard to take it all in. It is a good book; I do feel if I’d already known more about Pakistan, I might have been able to absorb even more.
]]> 452154 200 Ann N. Martin 0939165562 LibraryCin 4
I knew of some of these things, but there are horrifying things going on, particularly the animal experiments. I will add that this book (I don’t think there is a newer edition) is from 2008, but I’d be surprised of many of these practices have changed. The author is Canadian, and looks mostly at pet food in Canada and the US.

There is a good chunk of detail explaining what many of the ingredients you see on packaging actually mean. For this reason, I feel like this is a good book to have as a reference (I borrowed a library copy). It’s hard to keep all the ingredients straight. Pets that were euthanized, but not cremated, are likely in most of these foods… this includes the drug used to euthanize those pets ending up in these foods. Also dead livestock, roadkill, and zoo animals. These are all sent to rendering plants that grind and mix them up, then send them to pet food companies to use in pet food.

The drug companies do awful tests on animals for useless purposes (some, actually useless, while other testing is likely done to find the cheapest things they can add to the food to make more money). I’d already read this, but vets are rarely taught about nutrition except in elective courses, and even then, those courses are taught by the pet food companies themselves. Regulations are pretty much nonexistent, and what regulations there are, are mostly voluntary.

Despite the author preferring a home-made diet for pets (and she includes all kinds of nutrition information that needs to be included (for cats and dogs), as well as recipes), she also mentions a few of the companies that she thinks are better than others (at least back in 2008).

There is a lot of repetition in the book, but I just assumed that was in case someone read the chapters out of order (that is, if they were reading a certain chapter on a certain topic, then maybe later (or not) came to read a different chapter on a different topic).]]> 4.25 1997
author: Ann N. Martin
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1997
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/11
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: pets, animals, business, canadian-authors, food
review:
This is the third edition. The author is looking at commercial pet food diets, what’s in them, the animals testing, all kinds of other crazy things the pet food companies do for profits (potentially at the expense of people’s pets, and certainly at the expense of animals who are used for testing). The author advocates for people making their pets’ food from human-grade foods.

I knew of some of these things, but there are horrifying things going on, particularly the animal experiments. I will add that this book (I don’t think there is a newer edition) is from 2008, but I’d be surprised of many of these practices have changed. The author is Canadian, and looks mostly at pet food in Canada and the US.

There is a good chunk of detail explaining what many of the ingredients you see on packaging actually mean. For this reason, I feel like this is a good book to have as a reference (I borrowed a library copy). It’s hard to keep all the ingredients straight. Pets that were euthanized, but not cremated, are likely in most of these foods… this includes the drug used to euthanize those pets ending up in these foods. Also dead livestock, roadkill, and zoo animals. These are all sent to rendering plants that grind and mix them up, then send them to pet food companies to use in pet food.

The drug companies do awful tests on animals for useless purposes (some, actually useless, while other testing is likely done to find the cheapest things they can add to the food to make more money). I’d already read this, but vets are rarely taught about nutrition except in elective courses, and even then, those courses are taught by the pet food companies themselves. Regulations are pretty much nonexistent, and what regulations there are, are mostly voluntary.

Despite the author preferring a home-made diet for pets (and she includes all kinds of nutrition information that needs to be included (for cats and dogs), as well as recipes), she also mentions a few of the companies that she thinks are better than others (at least back in 2008).

There is a lot of repetition in the book, but I just assumed that was in case someone read the chapters out of order (that is, if they were reading a certain chapter on a certain topic, then maybe later (or not) came to read a different chapter on a different topic).
]]> 18647
Galileo's oldest child was thirteen when he placed her in a convent near him in Florence, where she took the most appropriate name of Suor Maria Celeste. Her support was her father's greatest source of strength. Her presence, through letters which Sobel has translated from Italian and masterfully woven into the narrative, graces her father's life now as it did then.

GALILEO'S DAUGHTER dramatically recolors the personality and accomplishment of a mythic figure whose seventeenth-century clash with Catholic doctrine continues to define the schism between science and religion. Moving between Galileo's public life and Maria Celeste's sequestered world, Sobel illuminates the Florence of the Medicis and the papal court in Rome during an era when humanity's perception of its place in the cosmos was overturned. With all the human drama and scientific adventure that distinguished Latitude, GALILEO'S DAUGHTER is an unforgettable story.]]> 0 Dava Sobel 0739322907 LibraryCin 2
This is nonfiction, and I listened to the audio (which may explain why I’m not too sure what all happened). It just didn’t hold my interest. I caught bits and pieces of things… Galileo was still religious despite the conflict his science brought to religion; somewhere along the way he was on trial and I think he went to jail? I haven’t read anything else about him, so I’m not sure, and either this book or the audio or both just didn’t interest me enough to pay attention. One word I heard far too many times was the odd pronunciation of Soeur (sounded like “sewer” or “sewar”), so I feel like I heard him say “Sewer” Maria [whatever the rest of her nun name was]. That definitely bothered me! (And as I read the summary now, of course, it’s Italian, not French so the word is Suor… so I’m not sure how that should be pronounced.) Anyway, I might be willing to try a different book about Galileo, but this isn’t the one for me.]]> 3.69 1999
author: Dava Sobel
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.69
book published: 1999
rating: 2
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: galileo, astronomy, astronomers, biography, history, science, 17th-century, italy, fathers-and-daughters, letters, scientists
review:
(One of) Galileo’s daughters wrote letters to her father, so this includes those letters. She was a nun (as were her other sisters, I think, though one not by choice, I think). Primarily, though, I think this followed Galileo himself more than his daughter.

This is nonfiction, and I listened to the audio (which may explain why I’m not too sure what all happened). It just didn’t hold my interest. I caught bits and pieces of things… Galileo was still religious despite the conflict his science brought to religion; somewhere along the way he was on trial and I think he went to jail? I haven’t read anything else about him, so I’m not sure, and either this book or the audio or both just didn’t interest me enough to pay attention. One word I heard far too many times was the odd pronunciation of Soeur (sounded like “sewer” or “sewar”), so I feel like I heard him say “Sewer” Maria [whatever the rest of her nun name was]. That definitely bothered me! (And as I read the summary now, of course, it’s Italian, not French so the word is Suor… so I’m not sure how that should be pronounced.) Anyway, I might be willing to try a different book about Galileo, but this isn’t the one for me.
]]> 214152057 When a beloved actress is cast in a feminist adaptation of a Fitzgerald classic, she finds herself the victim in a deadly game of revenge in which everyone, on screen and off, is playing a part.

Lila Crayne is America’s sweetheart: she’s generous and kind, gorgeous and magnetic. She and her fiancé, visionary filmmaker Kurt Royall, have settled into a stunning new West Village apartment and are set to begin filming their feminist adaptation of Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night.

To prepare for the leading role, Lila begins working with charming and accomplished therapist Jonah Gabriel to dig into the trauma of her past. Soon, Lila’s impeccably manicured life begins to unravel on the therapy couch—and Jonah is just the man to pick up the pieces. But everyone has a secret, and no one is quite who they seem.

A twisty, thought-provoking novel of construction and deconstruction in conversation with the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald and told through the lens of the film industry, Sweet Fury is an incisive and bold critique of America’s deep-rooted misogyny. With this novel, Bischoff examines the narratives we tell ourselves, and what happens when we co-opt others into those stories; and she probes the blurred lines between victim and perpetrator and the true meaning of justice.]]> 288 Sash Bischoff 1668043254 LibraryCin 3
This started very slowly for me. I wasn’t interested in all the movie scenes, nor am I much interested in F. Scott Fitzgerald. I have read “The Great Gatsby”, but nothing else by him and the author tells us early on there are a lot of Fitzgerald references (and Easter eggs). I wasn’t a fan of the writing style. The first bit of the book was a mix of the movie scenes and letters written by Lila to Jonah (as a way to put down her thoughts). Now, it did pick up in the last half or 1/3 of the book or so, and there were some tense moments, but it wasn’t enough to bring my rating up by much (though it did a little). The end was also ambiguous to me; I wasn’t quite sure what happened there, so I didn’t like that, either. Overall, I’m rating it ok, but only for the twists and extra suspense close to the end of the book.]]> 3.39
author: Sash Bischoff
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.39
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/08
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: actors, psychologists, psychology, relationships, abuse, revenge
review:
Lila is an actress who has come to psychologist Jonah to help unpack some childhood trauma as she embarks on a new movie with her director fiancee, Kurt. The new movie is based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, but with a feminist twist. It seems, though, that Lila has more going on than the childhood issues; is Kurt mistreating her, as well? Plus, there are things Jonah hasn’t told Lila about knowing her when they were at Princeton together.

This started very slowly for me. I wasn’t interested in all the movie scenes, nor am I much interested in F. Scott Fitzgerald. I have read “The Great Gatsby”, but nothing else by him and the author tells us early on there are a lot of Fitzgerald references (and Easter eggs). I wasn’t a fan of the writing style. The first bit of the book was a mix of the movie scenes and letters written by Lila to Jonah (as a way to put down her thoughts). Now, it did pick up in the last half or 1/3 of the book or so, and there were some tense moments, but it wasn’t enough to bring my rating up by much (though it did a little). The end was also ambiguous to me; I wasn’t quite sure what happened there, so I didn’t like that, either. Overall, I’m rating it ok, but only for the twists and extra suspense close to the end of the book.
]]> 59069071 Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada.

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.

Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full-length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.]]> 430 Kate Beaton 1770462899 LibraryCin 4
In 2005, the author Kate finished university with a social science degree and had student loans to pay off. She was from Cape Breton Island (off the coast of Nova Scotia) and there weren’t a lot of good paying jobs there, so she (like many men do) headed to Alberta to work in the oil sands (which I will, going forward, call the tar sands… yes, that’s what environmentalists call it, but after having read “Fire Weather” by John Vaillant, I do feel like it’s a more accurate description), so she could make a lot of money and pay off those loans. Unfortunately, it is a place where the men outnumber women 50 to 1. There was (likely still is) a lot of sexual harassment (and worse) going on, and Kate had to just deal with it. Complaining did nothing.

It’s disheartening to see this is still so prevalent. It reminded me of the “Class Action” book about the woman in Minnesota(?) working in a mine in the 70s and everything she went through (the movie made from the book was called “North Country”). I used the word disheartening; maybe frustrating or enraging are better words. By the time Kate went to Alberta, it had been three decades since that case (or at least when it all happened), and things haven’t changed!? Ugh! Of course, with the way things appear to be (politically) now and how people talk, etc, it seems another two decades probably still haven’t changed much (if at all).

Though that was the main focus of the book, toward the end there was some mention of the environmental impacts to animals and the other Indigenous communities living nearby.
]]> 4.41 2022
author: Kate Beaton
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/05
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves: women, alberta, canada, memoir, graphic-novels, sexual-harassment, sexual-assault, tar-sands, canadian-authors, 2000s, oil-companies
review:
4.5 stars

In 2005, the author Kate finished university with a social science degree and had student loans to pay off. She was from Cape Breton Island (off the coast of Nova Scotia) and there weren’t a lot of good paying jobs there, so she (like many men do) headed to Alberta to work in the oil sands (which I will, going forward, call the tar sands… yes, that’s what environmentalists call it, but after having read “Fire Weather” by John Vaillant, I do feel like it’s a more accurate description), so she could make a lot of money and pay off those loans. Unfortunately, it is a place where the men outnumber women 50 to 1. There was (likely still is) a lot of sexual harassment (and worse) going on, and Kate had to just deal with it. Complaining did nothing.

It’s disheartening to see this is still so prevalent. It reminded me of the “Class Action” book about the woman in Minnesota(?) working in a mine in the 70s and everything she went through (the movie made from the book was called “North Country”). I used the word disheartening; maybe frustrating or enraging are better words. By the time Kate went to Alberta, it had been three decades since that case (or at least when it all happened), and things haven’t changed!? Ugh! Of course, with the way things appear to be (politically) now and how people talk, etc, it seems another two decades probably still haven’t changed much (if at all).

Though that was the main focus of the book, toward the end there was some mention of the environmental impacts to animals and the other Indigenous communities living nearby.

]]> 76665595 A sweeping, tenderhearted love story, Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash tells the story of two families living through World War II on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and the shy, irresistible young woman who will call them both her own.

As German bombs fall over London in 1940, working-class parents Millie and Reginald Thompson make an impossible choice: they decide to send their eleven-year-old daughter, Beatrix, to America. There, she’ll live with another family for the duration of the war, where they hope she’ll stay safe.

Scared and angry, feeling lonely and displaced, Bea arrives in Boston to meet the Gregorys. Mr. and Mrs. G, and their sons William and Gerald, fold Bea seamlessly into their world. She becomes part of this lively family, learning their ways and their stories, adjusting to their affluent lifestyle. Bea grows close to both boys, one older and one younger, and fills in the gap between them. Before long, before she even realizes it, life with the Gregorys feels more natural to her than the quiet, spare life with her own parents back in England.

As Bea comes into herself and relaxes into her new life—summers on the coast in Maine, new friends clamoring to hear about life across the sea—the girl she had been begins to fade away, until, abruptly, she is called home to London when the war ends.

Desperate as she is not to leave this life behind, Bea dutifully retraces her trip across the Atlantic back to her new, old world. As she returns to post-war London, the memory of her American family stays with her, never fully letting her go, and always pulling on her heart as she tries to move on and pursue love and a life of her own.

As we follow Bea over time, navigating between her two worlds, Beyond That, the Sea emerges as a beautifully written, absorbing novel, full of grace and heartache, forgiveness and understanding, loss and love.]]> Laura Spence-Ash 1250882249 LibraryCin 3
I listened to the audio and it was ok. There were a few times I lost interest, though I think not many. There were a few characters I never quite figured out, though – who are they? I guess I either missed when they were introduced or I heard it, but then forgot. The book is told from multiple points of view. ]]> 3.98 2023
author: Laura Spence-Ash
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/03
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: world-war-ii, family, historical-fiction, romance, foster-children, new-england, coming-of-age
review:
Bea is 11-years old(?) in England during WWII when her parents decide it would be safer to send her away to the United States to live with a family there. Bea stays with Mr and Mrs G, and their two sons Gerald and William. The book continues beyond the war when Bea heads back home, and in the years beyond.

I listened to the audio and it was ok. There were a few times I lost interest, though I think not many. There were a few characters I never quite figured out, though – who are they? I guess I either missed when they were introduced or I heard it, but then forgot. The book is told from multiple points of view.
]]> 17573681 592 David Quammen 0393346617 LibraryCin 3
This was published in 2012, so long before COVID-19. “Spillover” looks at various infections that cross over from other animals to humans. It delves into the history of those infections and how and when they first crossed over and from what animals. The author met with scientists and researchers and goes into detail about how scientists traced back to find those first cross-overs.

The author looked at a few that I hadn’t heard of, but the most interesting (and maybe the most detailed in the book?), I thought, were SARS (another earlier coronavirus) and HIV/AIDS. The section on HIV/AIDS also included a bit on Jane Goodall and her chimps, which was actually a bit sad, as I have read about her chimps a few times and recognized their names. It’s a long book, though, and I did lose interest at a number of points in the book. One interesting one that I hadn’t heard of (it was a very small outbreak – and this (outbreak) is an interesting word that he talks about at one point in the book – in Australia only) called Hendra. ]]> 4.44 2012
author: David Quammen
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: history, science, animals, wildlife, public-health, pandemics, biology, disease, medicine
review:
3.25 stars

This was published in 2012, so long before COVID-19. “Spillover” looks at various infections that cross over from other animals to humans. It delves into the history of those infections and how and when they first crossed over and from what animals. The author met with scientists and researchers and goes into detail about how scientists traced back to find those first cross-overs.

The author looked at a few that I hadn’t heard of, but the most interesting (and maybe the most detailed in the book?), I thought, were SARS (another earlier coronavirus) and HIV/AIDS. The section on HIV/AIDS also included a bit on Jane Goodall and her chimps, which was actually a bit sad, as I have read about her chimps a few times and recognized their names. It’s a long book, though, and I did lose interest at a number of points in the book. One interesting one that I hadn’t heard of (it was a very small outbreak – and this (outbreak) is an interesting word that he talks about at one point in the book – in Australia only) called Hendra.
]]> 40864792 카지노싸이트 Comics: Cats, we meet feline friends from the tiniest kodkod to the biggest tiger, and find out what makes your neighborhood domestic cats so special. Equipped with teeth, claws, and camouflage to survive everywhere from deserts to mountaintops, how did these ferocious felines make the leap from predators to playmates... and are they even done leaping?

Every volume of 카지노싸이트 Comics offers a complete introduction to a particular topic—dinosaurs, the solar system, robots, and more. Whether you're a fourth grader doing a natural science unit at school or a thirty year old with a secret passion for airplanes, these books are for you!]]> 128 Andy Hirsch 1250143136 LibraryCin 4
I love these books. Really enjoyed this one, as well. The colour illustrations are so nice. I also love cats, and I knew the basics of much of what was mentioned, but not the details. It talks about cats’ senses, how they became domesticated, and more. ]]> 4.39 2021
author: Andy Hirsch
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/06
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: cats, animals, graphic-novels, science, children-s-literature
review:
The “카지노싸이트 Comics” are a series of graphic novels aimed at young readers (middle grades?), but they all have interesting information for adults, too. This one follows a calico kitten left on the street to fend for herself, so she looks for food and finds other cats to befriend on the street. There is all kinds of information on wild cats, in addition to domestic.

I love these books. Really enjoyed this one, as well. The colour illustrations are so nice. I also love cats, and I knew the basics of much of what was mentioned, but not the details. It talks about cats’ senses, how they became domesticated, and more.
]]> 38205874 A chance encounter sparks an unrelenting web of lies in this stunning new psychological thriller from national bestselling author Mary Kubica

She sees the teenage girl on the train platform, standing in the pouring rain, clutching an infant in her arms. She boards a train and is whisked away. But she can't get the girl out of her head...

Heidi Wood has always been a charitable woman: she works for a nonprofit, takes in stray cats. Still, her husband and daughter are horrified when Heidi returns home one day with a young woman named Willow and her four-month-old baby in tow. Disheveled and apparently homeless, this girl could be a criminal—or worse. But despite her family's objections, Heidi invites Willow and the baby to take refuge in their home.

Heidi spends the next few days helping Willow get back on her feet, but as clues into Willow's past begin to surface, Heidi is forced to decide how far she's willing to go to help a stranger. What starts as an act of kindness quickly spirals into a story far more twisted than anyone could have anticipated.]]> 381 Mary Kubica LibraryCin 4
The book is told from three points-of-view: Hanna’s, Willow’s and Chris’s. As the story goes on, we go back in time to hear Willow’s story, as well. It’s actually pretty slow-moving through most of the book, but there are some good twists at the end, at least one I never would have guessed. ]]> 3.88 2015
author: Mary Kubica
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves: psychology, mothers-and-daughters, child-abuse, foster-children, foster-homes, homeless, mental-illness
review:
Hanna helps homeless people in her work. When she sees a young girl and a baby in the rain beside the L train a couple days in a row, she decides to help them by bringing them home. The girl tells Hanna her name is Willow and that she’s 18-years old, though Hanna is certain she is younger (but it would be illegal to not turn her in if she is younger, so Hanna just sees what she wants to see). Hanna is married to Chris and has an 11-year old daughter, Zoe. Chris works at a well-paying financial job that has him travelling a lot… often with a beautiful woman, Cassidy, whom Hanna doesn’t trust.

The book is told from three points-of-view: Hanna’s, Willow’s and Chris’s. As the story goes on, we go back in time to hear Willow’s story, as well. It’s actually pretty slow-moving through most of the book, but there are some good twists at the end, at least one I never would have guessed.
]]> 6138530 Favorite Wife is a powerful account of the affairs of the heart, coming of age under exceptional circumstances, and the tough choices that are sometimes painfully necessary to preserve human dignity.]]> 424 Susan Ray Schmidt 1599214946 LibraryCin 4
The vast bulk of the book was while she was part of the FLDS. I would have liked a bit more about her life after she left, but this was really just a chapter or two toward the end of the book, but I did appreciate that she also brought the reader up to date on many of the other people she knew and mentioned in this book. I have read a few other books about the LeBarons, but they must have been long enough ago that I didn’t remember a whole lot about this part of the FLDS (Susan’s story takes place in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s; many of the other FLDS books I’ve read were later in time after the Jeffs’ family was ruling). ]]> 3.76 2009
author: Susan Ray Schmidt
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/22
date added: 2024/12/22
shelves: mormons, polygamy, 1960s, 1970s, mexico, memoir, family, husbands-and-wives, relationships, murder, religion, poverty
review:
Susan Ray was only 15 when she fell in love with Verlon LeBaron, 23 years her senior. He also already had five other wives. They were part of the FLDS (the polygamous Mormons). Verlon’s brother, Ervil, tried to win Susan away from Verlon, but lucky for Susan (in a way), she realized something was “off” and went back to Verlon. Once Susan and Verlon got married, though, Verlon was rarely home as Susan tried to get along with Verlon’s other wives, tried to feed herself (and later on, her multiple children) and get (rare) time with Verlon. Verlon was also in a bit of a power struggle (within the church) with Ervil, as Ervil lured more people (including some of Susan’s family) away in order to help with his “blood atonement” (that is, murders).

The vast bulk of the book was while she was part of the FLDS. I would have liked a bit more about her life after she left, but this was really just a chapter or two toward the end of the book, but I did appreciate that she also brought the reader up to date on many of the other people she knew and mentioned in this book. I have read a few other books about the LeBarons, but they must have been long enough ago that I didn’t remember a whole lot about this part of the FLDS (Susan’s story takes place in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s; many of the other FLDS books I’ve read were later in time after the Jeffs’ family was ruling).
]]> 1975095
When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn’s heritage: She was born into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband’s psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.

Carolyn’s every move was dictated by her husband’s whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse—at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife’s compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.

Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who, in the name of God, deprive their followers the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.]]> 0 Carolyn Jessop 0739354574 LibraryCin 4
Carolyn Jessop was 35 years old, had 8 kids, and was one of 7 wives of Merrill Jessop when she took the chance to escape, with her kids, from the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) community she was a part of for her entire life. This book tells her story of growing up in the community (or cult, as she later calls it), her escape with her kids, their adjustment to the outside world and the custody battle to hold on to her kids.

Wow! Wow! Of course, I've heard about the polygamous sect of the FLDS in the news, but it sounds like it's so much worse that I ever imagined. Listening to this book, I was presented with shock after shock after shock. The abuse that happened - child, spousal and animal abuse... physical, mental and emotional abuse... Not only parent to child, but wife to wife, and child to parent. There were so little freedoms even when she was growing up, it got even worse once Warren Jeffs took over as prophet (initially in his father's name, and moreso after his father died). I already have a few more biographies of former FLDS members on my tbr, and I'm going to try to get to them sooner rather than later.]]> 3.95 2007
author: Carolyn Jessop
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2011/03/13
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: family, biography, women, religion, abuse, cults, mormons, polygamy
review:
4.5 stars

Carolyn Jessop was 35 years old, had 8 kids, and was one of 7 wives of Merrill Jessop when she took the chance to escape, with her kids, from the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) community she was a part of for her entire life. This book tells her story of growing up in the community (or cult, as she later calls it), her escape with her kids, their adjustment to the outside world and the custody battle to hold on to her kids.

Wow! Wow! Of course, I've heard about the polygamous sect of the FLDS in the news, but it sounds like it's so much worse that I ever imagined. Listening to this book, I was presented with shock after shock after shock. The abuse that happened - child, spousal and animal abuse... physical, mental and emotional abuse... Not only parent to child, but wife to wife, and child to parent. There were so little freedoms even when she was growing up, it got even worse once Warren Jeffs took over as prophet (initially in his father's name, and moreso after his father died). I already have a few more biographies of former FLDS members on my tbr, and I'm going to try to get to them sooner rather than later.
]]> 138505710
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?

Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.

Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. Doppelganger What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times.]]> 416 Naomi Klein 0374610320 LibraryCin 0 to-read 4.21 2023
author: Naomi Klein
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

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Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm. Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she’s drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts—and herself.

Paris 1936. She may have escaped Berlin for Paris, but Hannah Brecht discovers the City of Light is no refuge from the anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathizers she thought she left behind. Heartbroken and tormented by the role she played in the betrayal that destroyed her family, Hannah throws herself into her work at the German Library of Burned Books. Through the quiet power of books, she believes she can help counter the tide of fascism she sees rising across Europe and atone for her mistakes. But when a dear friend decides actions will speak louder than words, Hannah must decide what stories she is willing to live—or die—for.

New York 1944. Since her husband Edward was killed fighting the Nazis, Vivian Childs has been waging her own war: preventing a powerful senator’s attempts to censor the Armed Service Editions, portable paperbacks that are shipped by the millions to soldiers overseas. Viv knows just how much they mean to the men through the letters she receives—including the last one she got from Edward. She also knows the only way to win this battle is to counter the senator’s propaganda with a story of her own—at the heart of which lies the reclusive and mysterious woman tending the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books in Brooklyn.

As Viv unknowingly brings her censorship fight crashing into the secrets of the recent past, the fates of these three women will converge, changing all of them forever.

Inspired by the true story of the Council of Books in Wartime—the WWII organization founded by booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors to use books as “weapons in the war of ideas”—The Librarian of Burned Books is an unforgettable historical novel, a haunting love story, and a testament to the beauty, power, and goodness of the written word.]]> Brianna Labuskes LibraryCin 3
In New York City during WWII, President Taft wants to ban a number of books from being sent to the American soldiers. Viv is part of the program that sends these books overseas and sees how much good this does. She will fight this new proposed law.

In Germany in the early 1930s, Althea is an author who has been invited by the Nazis to come to Germany and she quickly falls for Deitrich, who is a member of the party. She sees all the excitement happening as Hitler is rising to power.

I listened to the audio and found it a bit confusing, as it went back and forth in time, trying to figure out who was who, doing what in which time period. I got most of it figured out, but some characters still eluded me as to who they were and what role they played in the story. There were two speeches at an event held be Viv at the end of the book, and I loved one of them, in particular, but both speeches hit pretty close to “home” (though I’m in Canada), with some of the politics happening in the US now. (It seems I missed that there was a 3rd time period and place… I caught the character, but also didn’t catch that she was a 3rd main character, in addition to Althea and Viv… She crossed paths, more with Althea, so I just thought she was part of Althea’s story, and not a main character on her own.)]]> 3.65 2023
author: Brianna Labuskes
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: historical-fiction, 1930s, 1940s, world-war-ii, books, censorship, germany, new-york-city, france, authors, librarians, women
review:
3.5 stars

In New York City during WWII, President Taft wants to ban a number of books from being sent to the American soldiers. Viv is part of the program that sends these books overseas and sees how much good this does. She will fight this new proposed law.

In Germany in the early 1930s, Althea is an author who has been invited by the Nazis to come to Germany and she quickly falls for Deitrich, who is a member of the party. She sees all the excitement happening as Hitler is rising to power.

I listened to the audio and found it a bit confusing, as it went back and forth in time, trying to figure out who was who, doing what in which time period. I got most of it figured out, but some characters still eluded me as to who they were and what role they played in the story. There were two speeches at an event held be Viv at the end of the book, and I loved one of them, in particular, but both speeches hit pretty close to “home” (though I’m in Canada), with some of the politics happening in the US now. (It seems I missed that there was a 3rd time period and place… I caught the character, but also didn’t catch that she was a 3rd main character, in addition to Althea and Viv… She crossed paths, more with Althea, so I just thought she was part of Althea’s story, and not a main character on her own.)
]]> 15818324 320 Mary Kay McComas 0062084801 LibraryCin 3
Sophie is in her 20s and was adopted as a baby. She was very loved by her adoptive parents and had no interest in finding her birth parents. But she is mysteriously called to the death bed of someone she doesn’t know, as there is something he wants to tell her. She doesn’t make it to him in time, but she is asked to attend the reading of the will, where she discovers he has left her his home. Meanwhile, in this small town, there are a few people who appear hostile to Sophie, and it’s not long before one of them turns up dead.

The first half was a bit slow-going, but it was good. It really ramped up in the second half, though, when the mystery really got going (at least the murder mystery, anyway! Well, Sophie’s mystery, too, as it’s all connected). Yes, there is a romance here, too, but for me the romance was secondary to the much more interesting mystery(ies) going on. ]]> 3.30 2013
author: Mary Kay McComas
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/18
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: mystery, murder, adoption, family, small-towns, romance
review:
3.5 stars

Sophie is in her 20s and was adopted as a baby. She was very loved by her adoptive parents and had no interest in finding her birth parents. But she is mysteriously called to the death bed of someone she doesn’t know, as there is something he wants to tell her. She doesn’t make it to him in time, but she is asked to attend the reading of the will, where she discovers he has left her his home. Meanwhile, in this small town, there are a few people who appear hostile to Sophie, and it’s not long before one of them turns up dead.

The first half was a bit slow-going, but it was good. It really ramped up in the second half, though, when the mystery really got going (at least the murder mystery, anyway! Well, Sophie’s mystery, too, as it’s all connected). Yes, there is a romance here, too, but for me the romance was secondary to the much more interesting mystery(ies) going on.
]]> 52739975
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

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

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 11 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0593213874 LibraryCin 3
Noemi has gone to see her recently-married cousin, Catalina, who married suddenly and is now living in a remote large house with her new husband’s family. Noemi’s father is worried about some letters Catalina has written, as it sounds like she is very ill, so he wanted Noemi to go see how Catalina is doing and see if she can help. Catalina’s husband, Virgil, and his entire family is very odd, to say the least… and it seems quite apparent that they don’t want Noemi there.

The book is slow moving. I listened to the audio, which was fine, but not a whole lot happened until about the last quarter of the book. It did pick up, but not enough for me to raise my rating very much (the extra .25 is for when it finally picked up). I’ve seen this compared to “Rebecca” as a Mexican Rebecca, and Rebecca also started very slow, but there was something about the atmosphere in Rebecca and the story that had me like it better, overall. The atmosphere was done well in this one, too, but one thing I didn’t like were the odd, kind of psychedelic, dreams Noemi was having. Those were just...weird. That did put me off some. Overall, 3 stars for me is ok, and I added the little extra for the pick up at the end.]]> 3.48 2020
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2021/04/18
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: mexico, 1950s, supernatural, gothic, cousins, dysfunctional-families, historical-fiction, canadian-fiction, mushrooms, haunted-houses
review:
3.25 stars

Noemi has gone to see her recently-married cousin, Catalina, who married suddenly and is now living in a remote large house with her new husband’s family. Noemi’s father is worried about some letters Catalina has written, as it sounds like she is very ill, so he wanted Noemi to go see how Catalina is doing and see if she can help. Catalina’s husband, Virgil, and his entire family is very odd, to say the least… and it seems quite apparent that they don’t want Noemi there.

The book is slow moving. I listened to the audio, which was fine, but not a whole lot happened until about the last quarter of the book. It did pick up, but not enough for me to raise my rating very much (the extra .25 is for when it finally picked up). I’ve seen this compared to “Rebecca” as a Mexican Rebecca, and Rebecca also started very slow, but there was something about the atmosphere in Rebecca and the story that had me like it better, overall. The atmosphere was done well in this one, too, but one thing I didn’t like were the odd, kind of psychedelic, dreams Noemi was having. Those were just...weird. That did put me off some. Overall, 3 stars for me is ok, and I added the little extra for the pick up at the end.
]]> 58082198
To add to her feelings of sticky unease, Lila's little town of Shady Palms has resurrected the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which she won many years ago--a fact that serves as a wedge between Lila and her cousin slash rival, Bernadette. But when the head judge of the pageant is murdered and Bernadette becomes the main suspect, the two must put aside their differences and solve the case--because it looks like one of them might be next.]]> 279 Mia P. Manansala 0593201698 LibraryCin 3
In book 2 of the series, Filipino-American Lila has joined with a couple of friends to open a cafe and they are still setting things up. Meanwhile, her own family already runs their own restaurant. Lila once won the town’s beauty pageant and she has been asked to judge this year’s contest. But there have been threatening letters made toward the pageant. And it’s not long before someone turns up dead.

I enjoyed this. I like most of the characters and their stories; however, there is more food description than is my “thing”, but I’m sure would be appealing for many readers (as well as the recipes included at the end of the book). I do plan to continue the series, though.]]> 3.66 2022
author: Mia P. Manansala
name: LibraryCin
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/16
shelves: murder, mystery, beauty-pageants, food, filipinos
review:
3.5 stars

In book 2 of the series, Filipino-American Lila has joined with a couple of friends to open a cafe and they are still setting things up. Meanwhile, her own family already runs their own restaurant. Lila once won the town’s beauty pageant and she has been asked to judge this year’s contest. But there have been threatening letters made toward the pageant. And it’s not long before someone turns up dead.

I enjoyed this. I like most of the characters and their stories; however, there is more food description than is my “thing”, but I’m sure would be appealing for many readers (as well as the recipes included at the end of the book). I do plan to continue the series, though.
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