Donna (weegraydog)'s bookshelf: read en-US Mon, 30 Jun 2025 21:11:14 -0700 60 Donna (weegraydog)'s bookshelf: read 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Bitter Medicine (V.I. Warshawski, #4)]]> 281218 321 Sara Paretsky 0140113053 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.86 1987 Bitter Medicine (V.I. Warshawski, #4)
author: Sara Paretsky
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion]]> 53410433 Comfortable with Uncertainty offers short, stand-alone readings designed to help us cultivate compassion and awareness amid the challenges of daily living. More than a collection of thoughts for the day, it offers a progressive program of spiritual study, leading the reader through essential concepts, themes, and practices on the Buddhist path.

Readers do not need to have prior knowledge of Buddhist thought or practice, making Comfortable with Uncertainty a perfect introduction to Pema Chödrön's teaching. It features the most essential and stirring passages from Chödrön's previous books, exploring topics such as lovingkindness, meditation, mindfulness, "nowness," letting go, and working with fear and other painful emotions. Through the course of this book, readers will learn practical methods for heightening awareness and overcoming habitual patterns that block compassion.]]> 250 Pema Chödrön 0834821125 Donna (weegraydog) 0 currently-reading 4.30 2002 Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion
author: Pema Chödrön
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Woman in the White Kimono 59045700 Oceans and decades apart, two women are inextricably bound by the secrets between them.

Japan, 1957. Seventeen-year-old Naoko Nakamura’s prearranged marriage to the son of her father’s business associate would secure her family’s status in their traditional Japanese community, but Naoko has fallen for another man—an American sailor, a gaijin—and to marry him would bring great shame upon her entire family. When it’s learned Naoko carries the sailor’s child, she’s cast out in disgrace and forced to make unimaginable choices with consequences that will ripple across generations.

America, present day. Tori Kovač, caring for her dying father, finds a letter containing a shocking revelation—one that calls into question everything she understood about him, her family and herself. Setting out to learn the truth behind the letter, Tori’s journey leads her halfway around the world to a remote seaside village in Japan, where she must confront the demons of the past to pave a way for redemption.

In breathtaking prose and inspired by true stories from a devastating and little-known era in Japanese and American history, The Woman in the White Kimono illuminates a searing portrait of one woman torn between her culture and her heart, and another woman on a journey to discover the true meaning of home.]]> 257 Ana Johns Donna (weegraydog) 4 japan, chick-lit 4.39 2019 The Woman in the White Kimono
author: Ana Johns
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/30
date added: 2025/06/30
shelves: japan, chick-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Killing Orders (V.I. Warshawsky, #3)]]> 13621925 373 Sara Paretsky 0062190814 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-warshawski 3.94 1985 Killing Orders (V.I. Warshawsky, #3)
author: Sara Paretsky
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/26
date added: 2025/06/26
shelves: mystery-warshawski
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous]]> 41880609 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.

With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.]]> 246 Ocean Vuong 0525562028 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.05 2019 On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
author: Ocean Vuong
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy]]> 195790788
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.”

Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.” So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.

Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.]]> 304 Tia Levings 1250288282 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.29 2024 A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
author: Tia Levings
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Deadlock (V.I. Warshawski, #2)]]> 10456903 “V.I. Warshawski is one of the best . . . smart, tough, sexy.”—Daily News (New York)“Sara Paretsky makes excellent use of local backgrounds in a carefully plotted tale of murder and great misdeeds in the world of Great Lakes cargo shipping.”—Chicago TribuneWhen Chicago Black Hawks hockey legend Boom Boom Warshawski slips off a wharf and drowns in Lake Michigan, his private-eye cousin questions the accidental death report and rumors of suicide. Armed with a bottle of Black Label and a Smith & Weson, V.I. follows a trail of violence and corruption to the center of the Windy City's powerful shipping industry. Dodging elaborate attempts on her life with characteristic grit and humor, the one-of-a-kind detective wends her way through a maze of grain elevators and thousand-ton freighters, ruthless businessmen and gorgeous ballerinas, to ferret out Boom Boom's killers before they phase her out of the picture—permanently.“Hard-boiled detective fiction . . . a swift-paced and engrossing read.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer“Slithers with suspense!”—Chicago Sun-Times]]> 322 Sara Paretsky 0307781283 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-warshawski 4.04 1984 Deadlock (V.I. Warshawski, #2)
author: Sara Paretsky
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/16
date added: 2025/06/16
shelves: mystery-warshawski
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Indemnity Only (V.I. Warshawski, #1)]]> 36266659
Meeting an anonymous client late on a sizzling summer night is asking for trouble. But trouble is Chicago private eye V. I. Warshawski’s specialty. Her client says he’s the prominent banker John Thayer. Turns out he’s not. He says his son’s girlfriend, Anita Hill, is missing. Turns out that’s not her real name.

V. I.’s search turns up someone soon enough—the real John Thayer’s son, and he’s dead. Who’s V. I.’s client? Why has she been set up and sent out on a wild-goose chase? By the time she’s got it figured, things are hotter—and deadlier—than Chicago in July. V. I.’s in a desperate race against time. At stake: a young woman’s life.]]> 338 Sara Paretsky Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-warshawski 4.07 1982 Indemnity Only (V.I. Warshawski, #1)
author: Sara Paretsky
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/04
date added: 2025/06/16
shelves: mystery-warshawski
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)]]> 41161349
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' pain.

Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith...and a startling vision of human destiny.

This highly acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel of hope and terror from award-winning author Octavia E. Butler “pairs well with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale” (John Green, New York Times)—now with a new foreword by N. K. Jemisin.]]> 329 Octavia E. Butler 1538732181 Donna (weegraydog) 5 4.17 1993 Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1)
author: Octavia E. Butler
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1993
rating: 5
read at: 2025/06/08
date added: 2025/06/09
shelves: america, speculative-fiction, coming-of-age, fiction-earthseed, loucc-book-group
review:

]]> One Hundred Flowers 219827860 The fragrance of a single stem in a vase.
The shimmering reflection of fireworks in a lake.
The quiet of a bookshop as evening falls.
The feeling of opening a brand-new diary and beginning to write ...

Moments of beauty endure. But what happens when you begin to forget?

Yuriko leads a quiet, orderly life as a piano teacher. It's New Year's Eve and her grown-up son Izumi comes to visit. Yuriko makes him his favourite omelette and hayashi rice. Together, they look like a normal family.

But Yuriko has a secret. Many years earlier, when Izumi was a boy, Yuriko suddenly disappeared for an entire year. She returned, but the lost year was never discussed.

Now as Yuriko begins to lose her memory, Izumi is forced to race against time as he seeks the truth behind this long-buried mystery. Will he learn to understand the woman his mother once was, before it is too late? And is he ready to become a father himself?

One Hundred Flowers is a story about the preciousness of every moment, the beauty and pain of family love, and the healing power of letting go.]]> 288 Genki Kawamura 1804189596 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.80 2019 One Hundred Flowers
author: Genki Kawamura
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blindsighted (Grant County #1)]]> 59114410 Blindsighted (book one of an anticipated three featuring Grant County, Georgia, pediatrician and coroner Dr. Sara Linton), first-time novelist Karin Slaughter comes out swinging in true medical examiner fashion. That is to say, covered with blood from the get-go.

Without warning, the body jerked violently, pitching forward and slamming Sara onto the floor. Blood spread out around both of them, and Sara instinctively clawed to get out from under the convulsing woman. With her feet and hands she groped for some kind of purchase on the slick bathroom floor. Finally, Sara managed to slide out from underneath her. She turned Sibyl over, cradling her head, trying to help her through the convulsions. Suddenly, the jerking stopped.

Sibyl is, or was, Sibyl Adams, a college professor who had the misfortune of being drugged, savagely raped, slashed, and left for dead in the toilet of the local diner, to be coincidentally discovered by Sara Linton. Coincidences don't stop there, and neither do the rapes and murders. The next is, unimaginably, still more gruesome than the first and it, too, is discovered by Dr. Linton. Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver is Sara's ex-husband, and mercurial detective Lena Adams, another major player in the ensuing drama, was Sibyl's twin sister.

And the monster behind these increasingly more depraved acts? Suspects abound, from the diner's jack-of-all-trades, Will Harris, to Victim No. 2's boyfriend, to Jack Allen Wright who, a dozen years prior, raped Dr. Linton (that rape had been a secret until now). There are other possibilities, naturally, and it soon becomes apparent that Sara's an intended target.

A graduate of the Patricia Cornwell school of mayhem and gore, Slaughter has faithfully stitched together a fast, engaging, and diverting read complete with a strong-yet-vulnerable heroine. Characters are nicely if somewhat obviously drawn, the plot is inventive, and the narrative's pacing quickens the pulse straight to the cliff-hanging denouement. And really, what more can you ask of an ME thriller? --Michael Hudson]]> 468 Karin Slaughter Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-grant-county-no 4.29 2001 Blindsighted (Grant County #1)
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2001
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/01
date added: 2025/06/01
shelves: mystery-grant-county-no
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fine Art of Invisible Detection (Umiko Wada #1)]]> 51001804 377 Robert Goddard Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.22 2021 The Fine Art of Invisible Detection (Umiko Wada #1)
author: Robert Goddard
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Twisted Women's Book Club 229961057
A seemingly ordinary book group holds deadly secrets in this collection of connected stories from Karin Slaughter, Lee Child, B. A. Paris, and more of the world’s leading thriller writers.

Dr. Margaret Richter has it all. She’s rich, thanks to her best-selling self-help books. She has a beautiful home in Cape Cod overlooking the beach. And she has a monthly book club that everyone is dying to get invited to.

Literally.

Because behind the crystal wine glasses, the fine linens and the catered hors d'oeuvres lies a tangled web of secrets, of deceit, of murder. No member of the book club is innocent—and many are guilty.

And the person with the most to hide is Margaret Richter herself.

With an introduction by best-selling author Jennifer Weiner, The Twisted Women’s Book Club was created in partnership with International Thriller Writers. Special thanks to Joseph Finder, Gregg Hurwitz and Kimberley Howe.

Full cast of narration.]]> Karin Slaughter Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.57 The Twisted Women's Book Club
author: Karin Slaughter
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Postmortem (Kay Scarpetta, #1)]]> 59116406 449 Patricia Daniels Cornwell Donna (weegraydog) 5 mystery-kay-scarpetta 4.23 1990 Postmortem (Kay Scarpetta, #1)
author: Patricia Daniels Cornwell
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1990
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/29
date added: 2025/05/29
shelves: mystery-kay-scarpetta
review:

]]> The Last Bookshop in London 55317113 Inspired by the true World War II history of the few bookshops to survive the Blitz, The Last Bookshop in London is a timeless story of wartime loss, love and the enduring power of literature.

August 1939: London is dismal under the weight of impending war with Germany as Hitler’s forces continue to sweep across Europe. Into this uncertain maelstrom steps Grace Bennett, young and ready for a fresh start in the bustling city streets she’s always dreamed of—and miles away from her troubled past in the countryside.

With aspirations of working at a department store, Grace never imagined she’d wind up employed at Primrose Hill, an offbeat bookshop nestled in the heart of the city—after all, she’s never been much of a reader. Overwhelmed with organizing the cluttered store, she doesn’t have time to read the books she sells. But when one is gifted to her, what starts as an obligation becomes a passion that draws her into the incredible world of literature.

As the Blitz rains down bombs on the city night after night, a devastating attack leaves the libraries and shops of London’s literary center in ruins. Miraculously, Grace’s bookshop survives the firestorm. Through blackouts and air raids, Grace continues running the shop, discovering a newfound comfort in the power of words and storytelling that unites her community in ways she never imagined—a force that triumphs over even the darkest nights of war-torn London.

]]> 320 Madeline Martin Donna (weegraydog) 3 4.39 2021 The Last Bookshop in London
author: Madeline Martin
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/25
date added: 2025/05/28
shelves: britain, ww2, historical-fiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cat Who Saved Books (The Cat Who..., #1)]]> 56755560 The Cat Who Saved Books is a heart-warming story about finding courage, caring for others – and the tremendous power of books.

Grandpa used to say it all the time: 'books have tremendous power'. But what is that power really?

Natsuki Books was a tiny second-hand bookshop on the edge of town. Inside, towering shelves reached the ceiling, every one crammed full of wonderful books. Rintaro Natsuki loved this space that his grandfather had created. He spent many happy hours there, reading whatever he liked. It was the perfect refuge for a boy who tended to be something of a recluse.

After the death of his grandfather, Rintaro is devastated and alone. It seems he will have to close the shop. Then, a talking tabby cat called Tiger appears and asks Rintaro for help. The cat needs a book lover to join him on a mission. This odd couple will go on three magical adventures to save books from people who have imprisoned, mistreated and betrayed them. Finally, there is one last rescue that Rintaro must attempt alone . . .

Sosuke Natsukawa's international bestseller, translated from Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai, is a story for those for whom books are so much more than words on paper.]]> 198 Sōsuke Natsukawa 0063095726 Donna (weegraydog) 4 fantasy-cat-who, japan 3.74 2017 The Cat Who Saved Books (The Cat Who..., #1)
author: Sōsuke Natsukawa
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/18
date added: 2025/05/18
shelves: fantasy-cat-who, japan
review:

]]> Gourmet Rhapsody 6366085 The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Pierre Athens, the greatest food critic in the world, is dying. Revered by some and reviled by many, Monsieur Arthens has been lording it over the world’s most esteemed chefs for years, passing judgment on their creations, deciding their fates with a stroke of his pen, destroying and building reputations on a whim. But now, during these his final hours, his mind has turned to simpler things. He is desperately searching for that singular flavor, that sublime something once sampled, never forgotten, the Flavor par excellence. Indeed, this flamboyant and self-absorbed man desires only one thing before he dies: one last taste.

Thus begins a charming voyage that traces the career of Monsieur Arthens from childhood to maturity across a celebration of all manner of culinary delights. Alternating with the voice of the supercilious Arthens is a chorus belonging to his acquaintances and familiars—relatives, lovers, a would-be protege, even a cat. Each will have his or her say about M. Arthens, a man who has inspired only extreme emotions in people. Here, as in The Elegance of Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery’s story celebrates life’s simple pleasures and sublime moments while condemning the arrogance and vulgarity of power.]]> 160 Muriel Barbery 1933372958 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.26 2000 Gourmet Rhapsody
author: Muriel Barbery
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)]]> 57991307 Alternate cover edition can be found here

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.

But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?]]> 361 Richard Osman 1984880985 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.84 2020 The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Y is for Yesterday (Kinsey Millhone, #25)]]> 33964729 Sue Grafton is back with the twenty-fifth book in her Alphabet series, as Kinsey Millhone, discovers what Y is for . . .

The darkest and most disturbing case report from the files of Kinsey Millhone, Y begins in 1979, when four teenage boys from an elite private school sexually assault a fourteen-year-old classmate — and film the attack. Not long after, the tape goes missing and the suspected thief, a fellow classmate, is murdered. In the investigation that follows, one boy turns in evidence for the state and two of his peers are convicted. But the ringleader escapes without a trace.

Now, it’s 1989 and one of the perpetrators, Fritz McCabe, has been released from prison. Moody, unrepentant, and angry, he is a virtual prisoner of his ever-watchful parents — until a copy of the missing tape arrives with a ransom demand. That’s when the McCabes call Kinsey Millhone for help. As she is drawn into their family drama, she keeps a watchful eye on Fritz. But he’s not the only one being haunted by the past. A vicious sociopath with a grudge against Millhone may be leaving traces of himself for her to find . . .

]]> 496 Sue Grafton 1101614358 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.23 2017 Y is for Yesterday (Kinsey Millhone, #25)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/05
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Practicing Stillness: 50 Simple Exercises to Slow Down, Live in the Moment, and Find Peace]]> 61160918 Find balance and stillness through calming exercises

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, it’s important to prioritize your mental health and find ways to foster your own inner peace. This book offers 50 beginner-friendly practices that help you achieve stillness and discover the beauty that exists in the present moment.

This mindfulness book helps

Understand stillness—Learn about the history of stillness in different cultures and traditions, the benefits of practicing stillness, and how to lay the foundation for your own routine.Enjoy a range of practices—Discover a variety of effective methods for cultivating stillness and staying grounded, including breathwork exercises, mindfulness meditations, yoga poses, and more.Nurture your whole being—Explore various aspects of stillness through relaxing exercises that help you release physical tension, embrace your emotions, and infuse mindfulness into everyday activities like bathing and eating.

Navigate everyday life with a greater sense of calm and self-awareness—Practicing Stillness shows you how.

Show Additional Fields]]> 159 Nissa Keyashian 1685391354 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.17 Practicing Stillness: 50 Simple Exercises to Slow Down, Live in the Moment, and Find Peace
author: Nissa Keyashian
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.17
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Living With Loss: Meditations for Grieving Widows]]> 2215099 360 Ellen Sue Stern 0976705435 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.25 1995 Living With Loss: Meditations for Grieving Widows
author: Ellen Sue Stern
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Grief One Day at a Time: 365 Meditations to Help You Heal After Loss]]> 27131470 384 Alan D. Wolfelt 1617222380 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.62 2016 Grief One Day at a Time: 365 Meditations to Help You Heal After Loss
author: Alan D. Wolfelt
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Yes, and...: Daily Meditations]]> 51878560 Yes, and... is an excellent daily prayer resource for fans of Richard Rohr’s work, and those who are looking for an alternate way to live out their faith—a way centered in the open-minded search for spiritual relevance of a transforming nature.]]> 437 Richard Rohr 163253293X Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.67 2013 Yes, and...: Daily Meditations
author: Richard Rohr
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stop Fixing Yourself: Wake Up, All Is Well (1) (The Anthony De Mello Legacy Library)]]> 56614902
We were brainwashed by society into building our life on the unquestioned belief that without money, power, success, approval, romance, etc., we cannot be happy.  It's a false belief that has us constantly striving, constantly focused on what we don't have, constantly at the mercy of things and people as we try desperately to make life conform to society's formula for happiness, only to discover it offers nothing more in the way of a happy life than temporary respites from the fear of failing. 

Suppose there is a way of waking up from all that, where what is false and neurotic within you would drop with little or no effort on your part and your eyes would open to the reality of joy surrounding you. Here it Stop Fixing Yourself, the new book by Anthony DeMello that helps you rediscover the life you were meant to live.]]> 216 Anthony de Mello 1582708363 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.10 2021 Stop Fixing Yourself: Wake Up, All Is Well (1) (The Anthony De Mello Legacy Library)
author: Anthony de Mello
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It]]> 144743478 A riveting account of the decades-long effort by reactionary white conservatives to undermine democracy and entrench their power—and the movement to stop them.

The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy a blatant disregard for the will of the majority. But this crisis didn’t begin or end with Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Through voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, dark money, the takeover of the courts, and the whitewashing of history, reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift. Ari Berman charts these efforts with sweeping historical research and incisive on-the-ground reporting, chronicling how a wide range of antidemocratic tactics interact with profound structural inequalities in institutions like the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to threaten the survival of representative government in America.

“The will of the people,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1801, “is the only legitimate foundation of any government.” But that foundation is crumbling. Some counter-majoritarian measures were deliberately built into the Constitution, which was designed in part to benefit a small propertied upper class, but they have metastasized to a degree that the Founding Fathers could never have anticipated, undermining the very notion of “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Chilling and revelatory, Minority Rule exposes the long history of the conflict between white supremacy and multiracial democracy that has reached a fever pitch today—while also telling the inspiring story of resistance to these regressive efforts.]]> 386 Ari Berman 0374600228 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.64 2024 Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It
author: Ari Berman
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Blessed Contradictions: How the Bible Contradicts and Completes Itself]]> 53677844 130 Michael Anderson 1725258048 Donna (weegraydog) 0 4.43 Blessed Contradictions: How the Bible Contradicts and Completes Itself
author: Michael Anderson
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.43
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: christianity, spirituality, to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Evergreen (Japantown Mystery, #2)]]> 57979358
Los Angeles, 1946: It’s been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California—but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles.

Aki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse?

Only a few days later, Little Tokyo is rocked by a murder at the low-income hotel where the Watanabes have been staying. When the cops start sniffing around Aki’s home, she begins to worry that the violence tearing through her community might threaten her family. What secrets have the Watanabes been hiding, and can Aki protect her husband from getting tangled up in their mess?]]> 312 Naomi Hirahara 1641293608 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-japantown 4.06 2023 Evergreen (Japantown Mystery, #2)
author: Naomi Hirahara
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/14
date added: 2025/05/14
shelves: mystery-japantown
review:

]]> The Hundred Dresses 42369 80 Eleanor Estes 0152052607 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.10 1944 The Hundred Dresses
author: Eleanor Estes
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1944
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Earthlings 52648997
Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki's family are increasing, her friends wonder why she's still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki's childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?]]> 202 Sayaka Murata Donna (weegraydog) 1 speculative-fiction 3.51 2018 Earthlings
author: Sayaka Murata
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2018
rating: 1
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves: speculative-fiction
review:

]]> X (Kinsey Millhone, #24) 25052867 Of #1 New York Times–bestselling author Sue Grafton, NPR’s Maureen Corrigan said, “Makes me wish there were more than 26 letters.” With only two letters left, Grafton’s many devoted readers will share that sentiment.

  The number ten. An unknown quantity. A mistake. A cross. A kiss.

 The shortest entry in Webster’s Unabridged. Derived from Greek and Latin and commonly found in science, medicine, and religion. The most graphically dramatic letter. Notoriously tricky to think xylophone.

  The twenty-fourth letter in the English alphabet.

Sue Grafton’s X: Perhaps her darkest and most chilling novel, it features a remorseless serial killer who leaves no trace of his crimes. Once again breaking the rules and establishing new paths, Grafton wastes little time identifying this sociopath. The test is whether Kinsey can prove her case against him before she becomes his next victim.




From the Hardcover edition.]]> 416 Sue Grafton 110161434X Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.19 2015 X (Kinsey Millhone, #24)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/01
date added: 2025/05/01
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> <![CDATA[W is for Wasted (Kinsey Millhone #23)]]> 59121502 from Amazon.com

Of the #1 New York Times–bestselling Kinsey Millhone series, NPR said, “Makes me wish there were more than 26 letters.”

Two dead bodies changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I’d never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue.

The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He’d been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He’d been sleeping rough. Probably homeless. No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone’s name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID him.

Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes.

But as Kinsey digs deeper into the mystery of the John Doe, some very strange linkages begin to emerge. And before long at least one aspect is solved as Kinsey literally finds the key to his identity. “And just like that,” she says, “the lid to Pandora’s box flew open. It would take me another day before I understood how many imps had been freed, but for the moment, I was inordinately pleased with myself.”

In this multilayered tale, the surfaces seem clear, but the underpinnings are full of betrayals, misunderstandings, and outright murderous fraud. And Kinsey, through no fault of her own, is thoroughly compromised.

W is for . . . wanderer . . . worthless . . . wronged . . .

W is for wasted. ]]> 498 Sue Grafton Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.40 2013 W is for Wasted (Kinsey Millhone #23)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem]]> 277767 The Passion of the Christ, they discovered that many Christians are unclear on the details of events during the week leading up to Jesus's crucifixion.

Using the gospel of Mark as their guide, Borg and Crossan present a day-by-day account of Jesus's final week of life. They begin their story on Palm Sunday with two triumphal entries into Jerusalem. The first entry, that of Roman governor Pontius Pilate leading Roman soldiers into the city, symbolized military strength. The second heralded a new kind of moral hero who was praised by the people as he rode in on a humble donkey. The Jesus introduced by Borg and Crossan is this new moral hero, a more dangerous Jesus than the one enshrined in the church's traditional teachings.

The Last Week depicts Jesus giving up his life to protest power without justice and to condemn the rich who lack concern for the poor. In this vein, at the end of the week Jesus marches up Calvary, offering himself as a model for others to do the same when they are confronted by similar issues. Informed, challenged, and inspired, we not only meet the historical Jesus, but meet a new Jesus who engages us and invites us to follow him.]]> 220 Marcus J. Borg 0060845392 Donna (weegraydog) 4 4.08 2006 The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus's Final Week in Jerusalem
author: Marcus J. Borg
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/15
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: progressive-christianity, loucc-book-group
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #7)]]> 11226736
But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow's garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara's solo show at the famed Musée in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and there he finds the art world gathered, and with it a world of shading and nuance, a world of shadow and light. Where nothing is as it seems. Behind every smile there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship there hides a broken heart. And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they've found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light.]]> 345 Louise Penny Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-insp-gamache 4.55 2011 A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #7)
author: Louise Penny
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/11
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: mystery-insp-gamache
review:

]]> <![CDATA[V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone, #22)]]> 11794277 A spiderweb of dangerous relationships lies at the heart of this daring Kinsey Millhone mystery from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sue Grafton.Private detective Kinsey Millhone feels a bit out of place in any department store's lingerie section, but she's entirely in her element when she puts a stop to a brazen shoplifting spree. For her trouble she nearly gets run over in the parking lot by one of the fleeing thieves—and later learns that the one who didn't get away has been found dead in an apparent suicide. But Audrey Vance's grieving fiance suspects murder and hires Kinsey to investigate a case that will reveal a big story behind a small crime and lead her into a web that connects a shadowy “private banker,” an angry trophy wife, a spoiled kid with a spiraling addiction, and a brutal killer without a conscience...]]> 448 Sue Grafton 1101548134 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.29 2011 V is for Vengeance (Kinsey Millhone, #22)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/27
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> <![CDATA[How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith]]> 74865468 An inspirational guide to the key junctures in life that, if navigated with faith and discernment, pave the way for us to become our most courageous selves, by the bishop of the famed Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C.

The decisive moments in life are those pivot points when we’re called on to push past our fears and act with strength. With How We Learn to Be Brave, Bishop Mariann Budde teaches us to respond with clarity and grace even in the toughest times. Being brave is not a singular occurrence; it’s a journey that we can choose to undertake every day.
    Here, Bishop Budde explores the full range of decisive moments, from the most visible and dramatic (the decision to go), to the internal and personal (the decision to stay), to brave choices made with an eye toward the future (the decision to start), those born of suffering (the decision to accept that which we did not choose), and those that come unexpectedly (the decision to step up to the plate). Drawing on examples ranging from Harry Potter to the Gospel According to Luke, she seamlessly weaves together personal experiences with stories from scripture, history, and pop culture to underscore both the universality of these moments and the particular call each one of us must heed when they arrive.
    With Bishop Budde’s wisdom, readers will learn to live and to respond according to their true beliefs and in ways that align with their best selves. How We Learn to Be Brave will provide much-needed fortitude and insight to anyone searching for answers in uncertain times.]]> 224 Mariann Edgar Budde 0593539222 Donna (weegraydog) 4 4.55 2023 How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith
author: Mariann Edgar Budde
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.55
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: progressive-christianity, inspirational, self-help, loucc-book-group
review:

]]> <![CDATA[U is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone, #21)]]> 43879107 Sue Grafton takes the mystery genre to new heights with this twisting, complex #1 New York Times bestseller that draws private investigator Kinsey Millhone into a case shrouded in the sins of the past.

Looking solemn, Michael Sutton arrives in Kinsey Millhone's office with a story to tell. When he was six, he says, he wandered into the woods and saw two men digging a hole. They claimed they were pirates, looking for buried treasure. Now, all these years later, the long-forgotten events have come back to him—and he has pieced them together with news reports from the time, becoming convinced that he witnesses the burial of a kidnapped child.

Kinsey has nearly nothing to go on. Sutton doesn't even know where he was that day—and, she soon discovers, he has a history of what might generously be called an active imagination. Despite her doubts, Kinsey sets out to track down the so-called burial site. And what's found there pulls her into a hidden current of deceit stretching back more than twenty years...]]> 496 Sue Grafton Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.43 2009 U is for Undertow (Kinsey Millhone, #21)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> The People in the Trees 16126596 369 Hanya Yanagihara 0385536771 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.72 2013 The People in the Trees
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Little Life 22822858
Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.]]> 720 Hanya Yanagihara 0385539258 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.27 2015 A Little Life
author: Hanya Yanagihara
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Augustown 33828135 In the wake of Marlon James’s Man Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings, Augustown—set in the backlands of Jamaica—is a magical and haunting novel of one woman’s struggle to rise above the brutal vicissitudes of history, race, class, collective memory, violence, and myth.
 
Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don’t, and plenty of things that shouldn’t happen do. For the story of Kaia leads back to another momentous day in Jamaican history, the birth of the Rastafari and the desire for a better life.]]> 256 Kei Miller 1101871628 Donna (weegraydog) 5 4.32 2016 Augustown
author: Kei Miller
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction, jamaica
review:

]]> Sea of Tranquility 58446227 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time travel, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon five hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, NPR, GoodReads

"One of [Mandel's] finest novels and one of her most satisfying forays into the arena of speculative fiction yet." --The New York Times

Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal--an experience that shocks him to his core.

Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She's traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive's best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

A virtuoso performance that is as human and tender as it is intellectually playful, Sea of Tranquility is a novel of time travel and metaphysics that precisely captures the reality of our current moment.]]> 259 Emily St. John Mandel 0593321448 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.04 2022 Sea of Tranquility
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[T is for Trespass (Kinsey Millhone, #20)]]> 53125355
To help, Kinsey runs a check on the applicant, Solana Rojas. Social security, driver's license, nursing certification: It all checks out. And it sounds like she did a good job for her former employers. So Kinsey gives her the thumbs-up, figuring Gus will be the ideal assignment for this diligent, experienced caregiver.

And the real Solana Rojas was indeed an excellent caregiver. But the woman who has stolen her identity is not, and for her, Gus will be the ideal victim...]]> 412 Sue Grafton Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.42 2007 T is for Trespass (Kinsey Millhone, #20)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Mystery Guest (Molly the Maid, #2)]]> 218537468
When Detective Stark, Molly’s old foe, investigates the author’s unexpected demise, it becomes clear that this death was murder most foul. Suspects abound, and everyone wants to know: Who killed J. D. Grimthorpe? Was it Lily, the new Maid-in-Training? Or was it Serena, the author’s secretary? Could Mr. Preston, the hotel’s beloved doorman, be hiding something? And is Molly really as innocent as she seems?

As the high-profile death threatens the hotel’s pristine reputation, Molly knows she alone holds the key to unlocking the killer’s identity. But that key is buried deep in her past, as long ago, she knew J. D. Grimthorpe. Molly begins to comb her memory for clues, revisiting her childhood and the mysterious Grimthorpe mansion where she and her dearly departed Gran once worked side by side. With the entire hotel under investigation, Molly must solve the mystery posthaste. Because if there’s one thing she knows for sure, it’s that secrets don’t stay buried forever.]]> 336 Nita Prose 0593356209 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.81 2023 The Mystery Guest (Molly the Maid, #2)
author: Nita Prose
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cafe on the Edge of the World: A Story About the Meaning of Life]]> 55939390
Why are you here?

Do you fear death?

Are you fulfilled?

With this food for thought and the guidance of three people he meets at the cafe, John embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Along the way he discovers a new way to look at life, himself, and just how much you can learn from a green sea turtle.]]> 136 John P. Strelecky 0991392051 Donna (weegraydog) 3 philosophy, self-help 3.45 2003 The Cafe on the Edge of the World: A Story About the Meaning of Life
author: John P. Strelecky
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: philosophy, self-help
review:

]]> <![CDATA[R is for Ricochet (Kinsey Millhone, #18)]]> 6585470 390 Sue Grafton 1101147032 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.24 2004 R is for Ricochet (Kinsey Millhone, #18)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/05
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wild Irish Rose (Molly Murphy, #18)]]> 57798701 New York Times bestselling author Rhys Bowen, now writing in partnership with her daughter, Clare Broyles, transports and enthralls readers through the incomparable Molly Murphy Sullivan. Wild Irish Rose is the next novel in this beloved mystery series, a cause for celebration for readers and critics alike.

New York, 1907: Now that she’s no longer a private detective—at least not officially—Molly Murphy Sullivan is looking forward to a time of settled tranquility with friends and family. Back in New York, where her own story began, Molly decides to accompany some friends to Ellis Island to help distribute clothing to those in need. This journey quickly stirs up memories for Molly. When you’re far from home and see people from your country, every face looks like a family member.

That evening Molly’s policeman husband, Daniel, is late returning home. He comes with a tale to there was a murder on Ellis Island that day, and the main suspect is the spitting image of Molly. The circumstances are eerily similar to when Molly herself arrived on Ellis Island, and she can’t help but feel a sense of fate. Molly was meant to be there that day so that she can clear this woman’s name.]]> 384 Rhys Bowen 1250808065 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-molly-murphy 4.37 2022 Wild Irish Rose (Molly Murphy, #18)
author: Rhys Bowen
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/28
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: mystery-molly-murphy
review:

]]> Saint Maybe 112322
Depressed and depleted, Ian is almost crushed under the weight of an unbearable, secret guilt.  Then one crisp January evening, he catches sight of a window with glowing yellow neon, the CHURCH OF THE SECOND CHANCE.  He enters and soon discovers that forgiveness must be earned, through a bit of sacrifice and a lot of love...


A New York Times Notable Book]]> 337 Anne Tyler 0449911608 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.88 1991 Saint Maybe
author: Anne Tyler
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Talking God (Leaphorn & Chee, #9)]]> 766567 338 Tony Hillerman 006109918X Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.04 1989 Talking God (Leaphorn & Chee, #9)
author: Tony Hillerman
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone, #19)]]> 6574680 California private investigator Kinsey Millhone is hired to solve a decades-old cold case in this “undeniably entertaining” (Los Angeles Times) #1 New York Times bestseller from Sue Grafton.Cases don't get much colder than that of Violet Sullivan, who disappeared from her rural California town in 1953, leaving behind an abusive husband and a seven-year-old named Daisy. But PI Kinsey Millhone has promised the now adult Daisy she'll try her best to locate Violet, dead or alive. All signs point to a runaway wife—the clothes that disappeared; the secret stash of money Violet bragged about; the brazen flirtations she indulged in with local men, including some married ones. Kinsey tries to pick up a trail by speaking to those who remember Violet—and perhaps were more involved in her life than they let on. But the trail could lead her somewhere very dangerous. Because the case may have gone cold, but some people's feelings about Violet Sullivan still run as hot as ever...]]> 452 Sue Grafton 1101146966 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.24 2005 S is for Silence (Kinsey Millhone, #19)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/20
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> Norwegian Wood 214615790 From the bestselling author of Kafka on the A magnificent coming-of-age story steeped in nostalgia, “a masterly novel” (The New York Times Book Review) blending the music, the mood, and the ethos that were the sixties with a young man’s hopeless and heroic first love. Now with a new introduction by the author. Toru, a serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. As Naoko retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman. Stunning and elegiac, Norwegian Wood first propelled Haruki Murakami into the forefront of the literary scene.]]> 307 Haruki Murakami Donna (weegraydog) 4 coming-of-age, japan 3.99 1987 Norwegian Wood
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1987
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/13
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: coming-of-age, japan
review:

]]> <![CDATA[God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now]]> 554983 257 John Dominic Crossan 0060843233 Donna (weegraydog) 5 4.12 2007 God and Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now
author: John Dominic Crossan
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: social-justice, loucc-book-group, progressive-christianity
review:

]]> Wide Sargasso Sea 25622780 Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.

A new introduction by the award-winning Edwidge Danticat, author most recently of Claire of the Sea Light, expresses the enduring importance of this work. Drawing on her own Caribbean background, she illuminates the setting’s impact on Rhys and her astonishing work.]]> 176 Jean Rhys 0393352560 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.63 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea
author: Jean Rhys
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Brother, I'm Dying 430027 From the best-selling author of The Dew Breaker, a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to Danticat's heart - her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.

From the age of four, Edwidge Danticat came to think of her uncle Joseph, a charismatic pastor, as her “second father,” when she was placed in his care after her parents left Haiti for a better life in America. Listening to his sermons, sharing coconut-flavored ices on their walks through town, roaming through the house that held together many members of a colorful extended family, Edwidge grew profoundly attached to Joseph. He was the man who “knew all the verses for love.”

And so she experiences a jumble of emotions when, at twelve, she joins her parents in New York City. She is at last reunited with her two youngest brothers, and with her mother and father, whom she has struggled to remember. But she must also leave behind Joseph and the only home she’s ever known.

Edwidge tells of making a new life in a new country while fearing for the safety of those still in Haiti as the political situation deteriorates. But Brother, I’m Dying soon becomes a terrifying tale of good people caught up in events beyond their control. Late in 2004, his life threatened by an angry mob, forced to flee his church, the frail, eighty-one-year-old Joseph makes his way to Miami, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, he is detained by U.S. Customs, held by the Department of Homeland Security, brutally imprisoned, and dead within days. It was a story that made headlines around the world. His brother, Mira, will soon join him in death, but not before he holds hope in his arms: Edwidge’s firstborn, who will bear his name—and the family’s stories, both joyous and tragic—into the next generation.

Told with tremendous feeling, this is a true-life epic on an intimate scale: a deeply affecting story of home and family—of two men’s lives and deaths, and of a daughter’s great love for them both.]]> 272 Edwidge Danticat 1400041155 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.16 2007 Brother, I'm Dying
author: Edwidge Danticat
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)]]> 154488299 The Kamogawa Food Detectives is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just one more time?

Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner serves up deliciously extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason customers stop by . . .

The father-daughter duo are ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they are able to recreate dishes from a person’s treasured memories – dishes that may well hold the keys to their forgotten past and future happiness. The restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to vanished moments, creating a present full of possibility.

A bestseller in Japan, The Kamogawa Food Detectives is a celebration of good company and the power of a delicious meal.]]> 201 Hisashi Kashiwai 0593717716 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.70 2013 The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)
author: Hisashi Kashiwai
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Follow the Crow (Vanished, #1)]]> 22466686
Caroline Adams is a nurse with a special she sees things others can’t see. She knows that Ben is more than he seems, and that the crows are trying to tell him something.

What the crows know could shed new light on the mystery of Ana's disappearance, or it could place Ben and Caroline at risk of vanishing just like she did.]]> 353 B.B. Griffith 0989940055 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.10 2014 Follow the Crow (Vanished, #1)
author: B.B. Griffith
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust (Flavia de Luce, #11)]]> 203187399 The beloved series returns as Flavia de Luce, along with her pestilent younger cousin, investigates the murder of a former public hangman and uncovers secrets that bring the greatest shock of her life.Flavia de Luce has taken on the mentorship of her odious, moon-faced cousin Undine, who has come to live at Buckshaw following the death of her mother. Undine's main talent, aside from cultivating disgusting habits, seems to be raising Flavia's dander, although in her best moments she shows potential for trespassing, trickery, and other assorted mayhems.  When Major Greyleigh, a local recluse and former hangman, is found dead from a breakfast of poisonous mushrooms, suspicion falls on the de Luce family's longtime cook, Mrs. Mullet. After all, wasn't it she who picked the mushrooms, cooked the omelette, and served it to Greyleigh in the moments before his death? “I have to admit,” says Flavia, an expert in the chemical nature of poisons, “that I’d been praying to God for a jolly good, old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift such as mine without giving her the opportunity to use it?”But Flavia knows the beloved Mrs. Mullet is innocent. Together with Dogger, estate gardener and partner-in-crime, and the obnoxious Undine, she sets out to find the real killer and clear Mrs. Mullet's good name. Little does she know that following the case's twists and turns will lead her to a most surprising discovery—one with the power to upend her entire life.]]> 288 Alan Bradley 0593724526 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-flavia-de-luce 4.32 2024 What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust (Flavia de Luce, #11)
author: Alan Bradley
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: mystery-flavia-de-luce
review:

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

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

Controversial and groundbreaking, the book struck a chord with an entire generation of women, helping them realize that they weren't alone in their dissatisfactions, or their longings, lifting their eyes to new horizons of possibility and achievement. Margaret, Charlotte, Bitsy, and Viv are among them. But is it really the book that alters the lives of these four very different women? Or is it the bond of sisterhood that helps them find courage to confront the past, navigate turmoil in a rapidly changing world, and see themselves in a new and limitless light?]]> 372 Marie Bostwick 1400344743 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.07 2025 The Book Club for Troublesome Women
author: Marie Bostwick
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Q is for Quarry (Kinsey Millhone, #17)]]> 6473172 Sue Grafton delivers an intensely gripping mystery based on an actual unsolved murder in this #1 New York Times bestseller featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone.She was a "Jane Doe," an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California's Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's Department, but the detectives had little to go on. The woman was young, her hands were bound with a length of wire, there were multiple stab wounds, and her throat had been slashed. After months of investigation, the murder remained unsolved...That was eighteen years ago. Now the two men who found the body are nearing the end of their careers in law enforcement—and they want one last shot at the case. Old and ill, they need someone to help with their legwork and they turn to Kinsey Millhone.Kinsey is intrigued by the cold case and agrees to take the job. But revisiting the past can be a dangerous business, and what begins with the pursuit of Jane Doe's real identity ends in a high-risk hunt for her killer.]]> 408 Sue Grafton 1440620199 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.27 2002 Q is for Quarry (Kinsey Millhone, #17)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/29
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> <![CDATA[P is for Peril (Kinsey Millhone, #16)]]> 380976
The 69-year-old doctor said goodnight to colleagues at the Pacific Meadows nursing home, climbed into his car and drove away - never to be seen again. His embittered first wife Fiona is convinced he is still alive. His second wife, Crystal, a former stripper forty years his junior, is just as sure he is dead.

Enter private investigator Kinsey Millhone, hired by Fiona to find out just what happened to the man the two women loved. And also enter Tommy Hevener, a flame-haired, twenty-something who has set his romantic sights on Kinsey. It doesn't take long before we find out that Tommy is a man with a very interesting past. The word 'peril?' It applies most of all to Kinsey herself!]]> 370 Sue Grafton 0449003795 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 3.87 2000 P is for Peril (Kinsey Millhone, #16)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/19
date added: 2025/01/19
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> The Japanese Lover 25275996 New York Times and internationally bestselling author Isabel Allende, an exquisitely crafted love story and multigenerational epic that sweeps from San Francisco in the present-day to Poland and the United States during the Second World War.

In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family’s Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family—like thousands of other Japanese Americans—are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.

Decades later, Alma is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to come to terms with her own troubled past, meets the elderly woman and her grandson, Seth, at San Francisco’s charmingly eccentric Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge a friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma, eventually learning about Ichimei and this extraordinary secret passion that has endured for nearly seventy years.

Sweeping through time and spanning generations and continents, The Japanese Lover explores questions of identity, abandonment, redemption, and the unknowable impact of fate on our lives. Written with the same attention to historical detail and keen understanding of her characters that Isabel Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel The House of the Spirits, The Japanese Lover is a profoundly moving tribute to the constancy of the human heart in a world of unceasing change.]]> 337 Isabel Allende Donna (weegraydog) 4 historical-fiction, chick-lit 4.11 2015 The Japanese Lover
author: Isabel Allende
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-fiction, chick-lit
review:

]]> The Floating Admiral 1533098
Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector's investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vicar, whose boat the body was found in, is clearly withholding information, and the victim's niece has disappeared. There is clearly more to this case than meets the eye – even the identity of the victim is called into doubt. Inspector Rudge begins to wonder just how many people have contributed to this extraordinary crime and whether he will ever unravel it.

The authors of this novel are: G. K. Chesterton, Canon Victor Whitechurch, G. D. H. Cole and Margaret Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley.

Contents:
Introduction by Dorothy L. Sayers
Prologue - “The Three Pipe Dreams” by G. K. Chesterton
Chapter 1 - Corpse Ahoy! By Canon Victor L. Whitechurch
Chapter 2 - Breaking the news by G. D. H. and M. Cole
Chapter 3 - Bright Thoughts on Tides by Henry Wade
Chapter 4 - Mainly Conversation by Agatha Christie
Chapter 5 - Inspector Rudge Begins to Form a Theory by John Rhode
Chapter 6 - Inspector Rudge Thinks Better of It by Milward Kennedy
Chapter 7 - Shocks for the Inspector by Dorothy L. Sayers
Chapter 8 - Thirty-Nine Articles of Doubt by Ronald A. Knox
Chapter 9 - The Visitor in the Night by Freeman Wills Crofts
Chapter 10 - The Bathroom Basin by Edgar Jepson
Chapter 11 - At the Vicarage by Clemence Dane
Chapter 12 - Clearing Up the Mess by Anthony Berkeley
Appendix I - Solutions]]> 309 The Detection Club 044124095X Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-agatha-christie 3.17 1931 The Floating Admiral
author: The Detection Club
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.17
book published: 1931
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: mystery-agatha-christie
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Junior High Samurai Short Story: A Rei Shimura Short (Rei Shimura Series)]]> 22927106 20 Sujata Massey Donna (weegraydog) 3 mystery-rei-shimura 3.59 2011 Junior High Samurai Short Story: A Rei Shimura Short (Rei Shimura Series)
author: Sujata Massey
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: mystery-rei-shimura
review:

]]> <![CDATA[O is for Outlaw (Kinsey Millhone, #15)]]> 262228
Kinsey gets a call on a Monday morning from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units at auction. Last week he bought a stack of boxes. They had stuff in them—Kinsey stuff. For thirty bucks, he'll sell her the lot. She has never been one for personal possessions, but curiosity wins out and she hands over a twenty. Kinsey may be curious but she loves to bargain! What she finds amid childhood memorabilia is an old undelivered letter.

It will force her to reexamine her beliefs about the breakup of her first marriage, about the honor of Mickey, that first husband, and about an old unsolved murder. It will put her life in the gravest peril. "O Is for Outlaw" is Kinsey Millhone's fifteenth adventure into the dark side of human nature.]]> 354 Sue Grafton 0449003787 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 3.95 1999 O is for Outlaw (Kinsey Millhone, #15)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1999
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> Rocannon’s World 92610 258 Ursula K. Le Guin 0441732968 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.81 1966 Rocannon’s World
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1966
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Left Hand of Darkness 18423 The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 304 Ursula K. Le Guin Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.11 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Twelve Books of Christmas (Bibliophile Mystery, #17)]]> 75571237
In the middle of a wonderful Christmas holiday in Dharma, Brooklyn and Derek receive a frantic phone call from their dear friend Claire in Loch Ness, Scotland. The laird of the castle, Cameron MacKinnon, has just proposed to her! They plan to be married on New Year’s Day, and they want Derek and Brooklyn to be their witnesses. And while they’re visiting, Claire hopes that Brooklyn will be able to solve a little mystery that’s occurred in the castle library—twelve very rare, very important books have gone missing.

Once in Scotland, Brooklyn starts working on the mystery of the missing books but is soon distracted by all of the thumping and bumping noises she’s been hearing in the middle of the night. You’d think the Ghost of Christmas Past had taken up residence. But when one of the guests is poisoned and another is killed by an arrow through the heart, Brooklyn and Derek know this is not the work of any ghost. Now they must race to find a killer and a book thief before another murder occurs and their friends’ bright and happy future turns dark and deadly.]]> 336 Kate Carlisle 0593637690 Donna (weegraydog) 2 mystery-bibliophile 3.87 2023 The Twelve Books of Christmas (Bibliophile Mystery, #17)
author: Kate Carlisle
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2023
rating: 2
read at: 2024/12/23
date added: 2024/12/23
shelves: mystery-bibliophile
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis]]> 52117860 Climate change: it is arguably the most urgent and consequential issue humankind has ever faced. How we address it in the next thirty years will determine the kind of world we will live in and will bequeath to our children and to theirs.

In The Future We Choose, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac--who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015--have written a cautionary but optimistic book about the world's changing climate and the fate of humanity.

The authors outline two possible scenarios for our planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris climate targets. In the other, they lay out what it will be like to live in a carbon neutral, regenerative world. They argue for confronting the climate crisis head-on, with determination and optimism. The Future We Choose presents our options and tells us what governments, corporations, and each of us can and must do to fend off disaster.]]> 210 Christiana Figueres 0525658351 Donna (weegraydog) 5 activism, climate 4.04 2020 The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis
author: Christiana Figueres
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: activism, climate
review:

]]> Mexican Gothic 52873094
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.]]> 304 Silvia Moreno-Garcia Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.76 2020 Mexican Gothic
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Princess Elizabeth's Spy (Maggie Hope, #2)]]> 38213370 Susan Elia MacNeal introduced the remarkable Maggie Hope in her acclaimed début, Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. Now Maggie returns to protect Britain’s beloved royals against an international plot—one that could change the course of history.

As World War II sweeps the continent and England steels itself against German attack, Maggie Hope, former secretary to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, completes her training to become a spy for MI-5. Spirited, strong-willed, and possessing one of the sharpest minds in government for mathematics and code-breaking, she fully expects to be sent abroad to gather intelligence for the British front. Instead, to her great disappointment, she is dispatched to go undercover at Windsor Castle, where she will tutor the young Princess Elizabeth in maths. Yet castle life quickly proves more dangerous—and deadly—than Maggie ever expected. The upstairs-downstairs world at Windsor is thrown into disarray by a shocking murder, which draws Maggie into a vast conspiracy that places the entire royal family in peril. And as she races to save England from a most disturbing fate, Maggie realizes that a quick wit is her best defence, and that the smallest clues can unravel the biggest secrets, even within her own family.]]> 386 Susan Elia MacNeal Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-maggie-hope 4.22 2012 Princess Elizabeth's Spy (Maggie Hope, #2)
author: Susan Elia MacNeal
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: mystery-maggie-hope
review:

]]> Claire of the Sea Light 16280051
From the best-selling author of Brother, I'm Dying and The Dew Breaker: a stunning new work of fiction that brings us deep into the intertwined lives of a small seaside town where a little girl, the daughter of a fisherman, has gone missing.

Claire Limyè Lanmè - Claire of the Sea Light - is an enchanting child born into love and tragedy in Ville Rose, Haiti. Claire's mother died in childbirth, and on each of her birthdays Claire is taken by her father, Nozias, to visit her mother's grave. Nozias wonders if he should give away his young daughter to a local shopkeeper, who lost a child of her own, so that Claire can have a better life.

But on the night of Claire's seventh birthday, when at last he makes the wrenching decision to do so, she disappears. As Nozias and others look for her, painful secrets, haunting memories, and startling truths are unearthed among the community of men and women whose individual stories connect to Claire, to her parents, and to the town itself. Told with piercing lyricism and the economy of a fable, Claire of the Sea Light is a tightly woven, breathtaking tapestry that explores what it means to be a parent, child, neighbor, lover, and friend, while revealing the mysterious bonds we share with the natural world and with one another. Embracing the magic and heartbreak of ordinary life, it is Edwidge Danticat's most spellbinding, astonishing book yet.]]> 238 Edwidge Danticat 030727179X Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.65 2013 Claire of the Sea Light
author: Edwidge Danticat
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Case of the Elusive Bombay Duck (Vish Puri, #6)]]> 218694285 Portly, perceptive and spectacularly moustachioed, India’s finest private detective, Vish Puri, tackles his most difficult case to date in the long-awaited return of Tarquin Hall’s delightful humorous whodunit series set in New Delhi.

“Vish Puri is the Indian Poirot” Financial Times

“A wonderfully engaging PI” The Times

“Vish Puri [is] a Punjabi Sherlock Holmes” The Guardian

When Vish Puri, India’s Most Private Detective, learns he’s won the long-coveted International Detective of the Year award, it’s supposed to be a secret. But within hours, it seems all of Delhi knows – and his indomitable Mummy-ji announces she’ll be coming with him to the ceremony in London, never mind that she’s not been invited.

To add to his woes, a senior government bureaucrat gives him an undercover mission he can’t refuse. Puri is tasked with tracking down India’s most-wanted fugitive: a billionaire pharmaceutical fraudster codenamed Bombay Duck, who’s rumoured to be hiding in the British capital.

Puri’s only spending a week in London . . . and he’s already promised his wife he won’t work during their once-in-a-lifetime trip.

In desperation, he enlists the help of his reluctant nephew Jags and dives headfirst into the case. But can Puri hook the Bombay Duck and bring him to justice – all the while keeping his investigations secret from his wife and meddling mother?

Packed with the sights, sounds and flavours of both New Delhi and London, author Tarquin Hall – who divides his time between India and the UK – delivers an irresistible read for fans of Alexander McCall Smith, Harini Nagendra and Jesse Sutanto.>b>]]> 224 Tarquin Hall 0727889222 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.02 The Case of the Elusive Bombay Duck (Vish Puri, #6)
author: Tarquin Hall
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.02
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> At Bertram's Hotel 921047 245 Agatha Christie 0061003638 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-miss-marple 3.60 1965 At Bertram's Hotel
author: Agatha Christie
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.60
book published: 1965
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: mystery-miss-marple
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Final Notice (A Miss Zukas Mystery, #6)]]> 8203922 244 Jo Dereske Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-miss-zukas-fin 4.42 1998 Final Notice (A Miss Zukas Mystery, #6)
author: Jo Dereske
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.42
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2021/09/16
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: mystery-miss-zukas-fin
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What I Talk About When I Talk About Running]]> 2195464
Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and takes us to places ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvelous lens of sport emerges a panorama of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs, and the experience, after fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back.

By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is rich and revelatory, both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in running.]]> 188 Haruki Murakami Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.87 2007 What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea]]> 162332 This is an alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780679750154

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea tells the tale of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness they call "objectivity." When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealize the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. They regard their disappointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part, and react violently.]]> 181 Yukio Mishima Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.86 1963 The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
author: Yukio Mishima
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[N Is For Noose (Kinsey Millhone, #14)]]> 824301
Newquist's widow, Selma, didn't doubt the coroner's report. But still, she couldn't help wondering what had so bothered Tom in the last six weeks of his life. What was it that had made him prowl restlessly at night and brood constantly? Determined to help Selma find the answer, Kinsey Millhone sets up shop in Nota Lake, where she finds that looking for a needle in a haystack can draw blood --- very likely, her own ...]]> 322 Sue Grafton 0449223612 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 3.66 1998 N Is For Noose (Kinsey Millhone, #14)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/03
date added: 2024/12/03
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Poverty in the Promised Land: Neighborliness, Resistance, and Restoration]]> 208151707 105 Walter Brueggemann Donna (weegraydog) 5 4.20 Poverty in the Promised Land: Neighborliness, Resistance, and Restoration
author: Walter Brueggemann
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: progressive-christianity, activism, loucc-book-group
review:

]]> <![CDATA[M is for Malice (Kinsey Millhone, #13)]]> 64854
Malek Construction is a mega-million-dollar company that grew out of modest soil to become one of the big three in California construction—and one of the few still in family hands. Today, the three Malek sons stand to inherit a fortune, but in order for any one of them to claim his share, the missing fourth brother must be found.

M is for MISSING…

Now it’s up to Kinsey Millhone to find Guy Malek, the man who, eighteen years ago, vanished without a trace. Did he run away—or was he abducted? Did he intend to make something of himself on his own, apart from the wealth and prowess of his family, or were his motives something more sinister?

M is for MALICE...

The ties that bind. The rivalries of brotherhood. The fall of an empire… As Kinsey tries to unravel the mystery of the missing Malek brother she finds herself in a heart-stopping race against time in which loyalties are tested, greed is rampant, and no one—including Kinsey herself—is safe…]]> 337 Sue Grafton 0449223604 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 4.09 1996 M is for Malice (Kinsey Millhone, #13)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1996
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> The Skeleton in the Closet 517679 218 M.C. Beaton 0312981457 Donna (weegraydog) 3 mystery-misc 3.66 2001 The Skeleton in the Closet
author: M.C. Beaton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves: mystery-misc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ghost of Christmas Past (Molly Murphy, #17)]]> 35008560 In der Cosy Crime-Reihe von Rhys Bowen weihnachtet es sehr

Nach dem verhängnisvollen Erdbeben in San Francisco und dessen schrecklichen Folgen wollen Molly Murphy und ihre Familie friedlich Weihnachten feiern. Als sie über die Feiertage in ein Herrenhaus am Hudson River eingeladen werden, nehmen sie daher begeistert an. Doch schon bald spüren sie die angespannte Atmosphäre des Haushalts. Sie erfahren, dass Charlotte, die kleine Tochter der Gastgeber, vor 10 Jahren verschwand und weder sie selbst noch ein Hinweis auf ihren Verbleib je aufgetaucht sind. Molly möchte helfen, merkt jedoch bald, dass die Familienmitglieder mehr wissen, als sie zugeben. Als das verschwundene Mädchen tatsächlich wieder auftaucht, behauptet der Vater, sie wäre nicht die echte Charlotte …]]> 267 Rhys Bowen Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-molly-murphy 4.42 2017 The Ghost of Christmas Past (Molly Murphy, #17)
author: Rhys Bowen
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/12
date added: 2024/11/12
shelves: mystery-molly-murphy
review:

]]> Murder on the Red River 58745165
1970s, Red River Valley between North Dakota and Renee “Cash” Blackbear is 19 years old and tough as nails. She lives in Fargo, North Dakota, where she drives truck for local farmers, drinks beer, plays pool, and helps solve criminal investigations through the power of her visions. She has one friend, Sheriff Wheaton, her guardian, who helped her out of the broken foster care system.
One Saturday morning, Sheriff Wheaton is called to investigate a pile of rags in a field and finds the body of an Indian man. When Cash dreams about the dead man’s weathered house on the Red Lake Reservation, she knows that’s the place to start looking for answers. Together, Cash and Wheaton work to solve a murder that stretches across cultures in a rural community traumatized by racism, genocide, and oppression.]]> 202 Marcie R. Rendon 1641293772 Donna (weegraydog) 1 mystery-cash-blackbear 3.95 2017 Murder on the Red River
author: Marcie R. Rendon
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2017
rating: 1
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: mystery-cash-blackbear
review:

]]> This Will Be Fun 199635075 The Princess Bride meets People We Meet on Vacation in this cozy quest romantasy about a group of friends who once defended their magical land together but haven’t spoken since, reuniting to attend a royal wedding, and ending up on a new adventure to save the realm—and hopefully themselves.

Ten years ago, they saved the realm. It ruined their lives.

Everyone in Mythria knows the story of how best friends Beatrice and Elowen, handsome ex-bandit Clare, and valiant leader Galwell the Great defended the land from darkness. It’s a tale beloved by all—except the former heroes. They haven’t spoken in a decade, devastated by what their quest cost them.

But when they receive an invitation to the queen of Mythria’s wedding, it’s a summons they can’t refuse . . . and a reunion for the ages, with Clare secretly not over his long-ago fling with Beatrice, Beatrice fighting the guilt she feels over how everything ended, Elowen unprepared for the return of her former flame (the cunning Vandra), and all of them lost without Galwell’s presence. And if reuniting with old friends and lovers wasn’t perilous enough, dark forces from their past have returned, plotting a domination that only Mythria’s one-time defenders can stop. Maybe.

Dusting off old weapons and old instincts, they face undead nemeses, crystal caves, enchanted swords, coffee shops, games of magical Truth or Dare, and, hardest of all, their past—rife with wounds never healed and romances never forgotten.

This time around, will their story end in happily ever after?]]> 416 E.B. Asher 0063371367 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.37 2024 This Will Be Fun
author: E.B. Asher
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.37
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[L is for Lawless (Kinsey Millhone, #12)]]> 643962
'L is for Lawless,' but you could call it 'Kinsey Millhone in Bad Company.' Call it a mystery without a murder, a treasure hunt without a map, a quest novel with truly mixed-up motives. Call it the return of Kinsey as a bad girl - quick-witted and quick-silvery. She pokes her nose into everybody's dirty laundry as she joins up with a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde in an 'Our Gang' comedy that will take her halfway across the country and leave her with a major headache and an empty bank balance.

America's favorite borderline delinquent is back with her one-liners and her energy level on high, romping through her fastest and funniest adventure in this, her twelfth foray into the alphabet of crime.]]> 336 Sue Grafton 0449221490 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-kinsey-millhone 3.92 1995 L is for Lawless (Kinsey Millhone, #12)
author: Sue Grafton
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/07
date added: 2024/11/07
shelves: mystery-kinsey-millhone
review:

]]> Relic (Pendergast, #1) 2498014
But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.

Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who-or what-is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?
]]> 474 0812563581 Donna (weegraydog) 4 thriller-aloysius-pendergast 4.18 1995 Relic (Pendergast, #1)
author: Lincoln Preston Douglas and Child
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: thriller-aloysius-pendergast
review:

]]> Reliquary (Pendergast, #2) 39030 464 Douglas Preston 0765354950 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.03 1997 Reliquary (Pendergast, #2)
author: Douglas Preston
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Fisherman's Song 1653613 Carly Simon 0385419554 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.93 1991 The Fisherman's Song
author: Carly Simon
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1991
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Night 1617 Night is the terrifying record of Elie Wiesel's memories of the death of his family, the death of his own innocence, and his despair as a deeply observant Jew confronting the absolute evil of man. This new translation by his wife and most frequent translator, Marion Wiesel, corrects important details and presents the most accurate rendering in English of Elie Wiesel's testimony to what happened in the camps and of his unforgettable message that this horror must simply never be allowed to happen again.]]> 120 Elie Wiesel 0374500010 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.38 1956 Night
author: Elie Wiesel
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.38
book published: 1956
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The House at Pooh Corner (Winnie-the-Pooh, #2)]]> 776407 180 A.A. Milne 0525444440 Donna (weegraydog) 5 4.37 1928 The House at Pooh Corner (Winnie-the-Pooh, #2)
author: A.A. Milne
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1928
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: children, fantasy, animals, classic-lit
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Paper Caper (Bibliophile Mystery, #16)]]> 58975208 336 Kate Carlisle 0593201477 Donna (weegraydog) 3 mystery-bibliophile 4.16 2022 The Paper Caper (Bibliophile Mystery, #16)
author: Kate Carlisle
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/28
date added: 2024/10/28
shelves: mystery-bibliophile
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bury Your Dead (Armand Gamache, #6)]]> 8578294
Although he is supposed to be on leave, Gamache cannot walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French. Meanwhile, he is receiving disquieting letters from the village of Three Pines, where beloved Bistro owner Olivier was recently convicted of murder. "It doesn't make sense," Olivier's partner writes every day. "He didn't do it, you know." As past and present collide in this astonishing novel, Gamache must relive the terrible event of his own past before he can bury his dead.]]> 401 Louise Penny Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-insp-gamache 4.49 2010 Bury Your Dead (Armand Gamache, #6)
author: Louise Penny
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2024/10/23
shelves: mystery-insp-gamache
review:

]]> <![CDATA[My Neighbor Totoro (Tokuma's Magical Adventure)]]> 2009024 111 Hayao Miyazaki 4190869716 Donna (weegraydog) 5 children, fantasy, japan 4.32 1988 My Neighbor Totoro (Tokuma's Magical Adventure)
author: Hayao Miyazaki
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1988
rating: 5
read at: 2017/12/29
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves: children, fantasy, japan
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Most Awkward Man in Japan: Dispatches from a Philosopher Abroad]]> 214097109 The only memoir of travel, philosophy and anxiety you'll ever need!

Robert Gressis is a philosopher, a veteran world traveler, and an international man of obviousness. But there’s one thing he hasn’t an all-frills trip to Japan. With his wife. Laugh until you cry, and cry until you stop as you travel along with Rob from business class to a basement bar, a religious awakening to professional wrestling, a Michelin-starred sushi bar to a monkey park. Many such places. Most exciting of all, though, you get to tour Rob’s psyche, which is like Japan itself, but has a lot more rules.

The Most Awkward Man in Japan is the first book in a series of comedic travel books by professional philosopher Robert Gressis. If you like authors like Bill Bryson with hysterical wit, penetrating insight, and a traveler's spirit, you'll love this brand new comic memoir. This will be the funniest (not an exaggeration) book of philosophy (an exaggeration) you’ll ever read.]]> 352 Robert Gressis Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 3.26 The Most Awkward Man in Japan: Dispatches from a Philosopher Abroad
author: Robert Gressis
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.26
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> When We Were Orphans 136763  
Born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, Banks was orphaned at the age of nine after the separate disappearances of his parents. Now, more than twenty years later, he is a celebrated figure in London society; yet the investigative expertise that has garnered him fame has done little to illuminate the circumstances of his parents' alleged kidnappings. Banks travels to the seething, labyrinthine city of his memory in hopes of solving the mystery of his own, painful past, only to find that war is ravaging Shanghai beyond recognition-and that his own recollections are proving as difficult to trust as the people around him.

Masterful, suspenseful and psychologically acute, When We Were Orphans offers a profound meditation on the shifting quality of memory, and the possibility of avenging one’s past.]]> 336 Kazuo Ishiguro 0375724400 Donna (weegraydog) 4 booker-prize, shanghai 3.50 2000 When We Were Orphans
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/10
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: booker-prize, shanghai
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Dangerous Place (Maisie Dobbs, #11)]]> 22693178
Spring 1937. In the four years since she left England, Maisie Dobbs has experienced love, contentment, stability—and the deepest tragedy a woman can endure. Now, all she wants is the peace she believes she might find by returning to India. But her sojourn in the hills of Darjeeling is cut short when her stepmother summons her home to England; her aging father Frankie Dobbs is not getting any younger.

But on a ship bound for England, Maisie realizes she isn’t ready to return. Against the wishes of the captain who warns her, “You will be alone in a most dangerous place,” she disembarks in Gibraltar. Though she is on her own, Maisie is far from alone: the British garrison town is teeming with refugees fleeing a brutal civil war across the border in Spain.

Yet the danger is very real. Days after Maisie’s arrival, a photographer and member of Gibraltar’s Sephardic Jewish community, Sebastian Babayoff, is murdered, and Maisie becomes entangled in the case, drawing the attention of the British Secret Service. Under the suspicious eye of a British agent, Maisie is pulled deeper into political intrigue on “the Rock”—arguably Britain’s most important strategic territory—and renews an uneasy acquaintance in the process. At a crossroads between her past and her future, Maisie must choose a direction, knowing that England is, for her, an equally dangerous place, but in quite a different way.]]> 309 Jacqueline Winspear 0062220551 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-maisie-dobbs 3.83 2015 A Dangerous Place (Maisie Dobbs, #11)
author: Jacqueline Winspear
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/30
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: mystery-maisie-dobbs
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)]]> 18931121
Molly Murphy—now Molly Sullivan—is a year into her marriage, expecting her first child, and confined to the life of a housewife. The most important decision Molly faces these days is whether the lace curtains need cleaning, and she’s restless and irritable in the heat of a New York summer and the enforced idleness of pregnancy. So when a trip to the post office brings a letter addressed to her old detective agency asking her to locate a missing Irish serving maid, Molly figures it couldn’t hurt to at least ask around, despite her promise to Daniel to give up her old career as a detective. On the same day, Molly learns that five babies have been kidnapped in the past month.Refusing to let Molly help with the kidnapping investigation, Daniel sends her away to spend the summer with his mother. But even in the quiet, leafy suburbs, Molly’s own pending motherhood makes her unable to ignore these missing children. What she uncovers will lead her on a terrifying journey through all levels of society, putting her life—and that of her baby’s—in danger.The latest entry in Rhys Bowen’s bestselling Molly Murphy series will delight fans and win over newcomers with its elegantly plotted mystery and vivid characters.]]> 305 Rhys Bowen 1250011647 Donna (weegraydog) 4 mystery-molly-murphy 4.42 2013 The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)
author: Rhys Bowen
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2019/02/09
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: mystery-molly-murphy
review:

]]> The Night Tiger 41124373 A sweeping historical novel about a dancehall girl and an orphan boy whose fates entangle over an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers.

When 11-year-old Ren’s master dies, he makes one last request of his Chinese houseboy: that Ren find his severed finger, lost years ago in an accident, and reunite it with his body. Ren has 49 days, or else his master’s soul will roam the earth, unable to rest in peace.

Ji Lin always wanted to be a doctor, but as a girl in 1930s Malaysia, apprentice dressmaker is a more suitable occupation. Secretly, though, Ji Lin also moonlights as a dancehall girl to help pay off her beloved mother’s Mahjong debts. One night, Ji Lin’s dance partner leaves her with a gruesome souvenir: a severed finger. Convinced the finger is bad luck, Ji Lin enlists the help of her erstwhile stepbrother to return it to its rightful owner.

As the 49 days tick down, and a prowling tiger wreaks havoc on the town, Ji Lin and Ren’s lives intertwine in ways they could never have imagined. Propulsive and lushly written, The Night Tiger explores colonialism and independence, ancient superstition and modern ambition, sibling rivalry and first love. Braided through with Chinese folklore and a tantalizing mystery, this novel is a page-turner of the highest order.

]]> 380 Yangsze Choo 1250175445 Donna (weegraydog) 5 malaya, mystery-misc 4.03 2019 The Night Tiger
author: Yangsze Choo
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2019/02/18
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: malaya, mystery-misc
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living]]> 20684910 52 Rueben P. Job 1426713894 Donna (weegraydog) 4 christianity 4.32 2007 Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living
author: Rueben P. Job
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/28
shelves: christianity
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dressed to Kill (A Tourist Trap Mystery #4)]]> 24423777 Of course everyone is expecting a “dead” body at the dress rehearsal…but this one isn’t acting! It turns out the main suspect is the late actor’s conniving girlfriend Sherry…who also happens to be the ex-wife of Jill’s main squeeze. Sherry is definitely a master manipulator…but is she a killer? Jill may discover the truth only when the curtain comes up on the final act…and by then, it may be far too late.]]> 217 Lynn Cahoon 1601834152 Donna (weegraydog) 0 to-read 4.23 2015 Dressed to Kill (A Tourist Trap Mystery #4)
author: Lynn Cahoon
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd (Flavia de Luce, #8)]]> 28823326 The Boston Globe, Flavia de Luce returns in the much anticipated new mystery novel from award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley.]]> 400 Alan Bradley 0345539982 Donna (weegraydog) 5 4.22 2016 Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd (Flavia de Luce, #8)
author: Alan Bradley
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2020/04/09
date added: 2024/09/26
shelves: britain, mystery-flavia-de-luce
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #14)]]> 18755158 Modern ideas get tangled up with traditional ones in the latest intriguing installment in the beloved, best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.
 
Precious Ramotswe has taken on two puzzling cases. First she is approached by the lawyer Mma Sheba, who is the executor of a deceased farmer’s estate. Mma Sheba has a feeling that the young man who has stepped forward may be falsely impersonating the farmer’s nephew in order to claim his inheritance. Mma Ramotswe agrees to visit the farm and find out what she can about the self-professed nephew. Then the proprietor of the Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon comes to Mma Ramotswe for advice. The opening of her new salon has been shadowed by misfortune. Not only has she received a bad omen in the mail, but rumors are swirling that the salon is using dangerous products that burn people’s skin. Could someone be trying to put the salon out of business?
 
Meanwhile, at the office, Mma Ramotswe has noticed something different about Grace Makutsi lately. Though Mma Makutsi has mentioned nothing, it has become clear that she is pregnant . . . But in Botswana—a land where family has always been held above all else—this may be cause for controversy as well as celebration.
 
With genuine warmth, sympathy, and wit, Alexander McCall Smith explores some tough questions about married life, parenthood, grief, and the importance of the traditions that shape and guide our lives.
 
This is the fourteenth installment in the series.




From the Hardcover edition.]]> 256 Alexander McCall Smith 0307908143 Donna (weegraydog) 4 4.37 2013 The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, #14)
author: Alexander McCall Smith
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2020/02/29
date added: 2024/09/24
shelves: africa, botswana, mystery-precious-ramotswe
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It]]> 54124317 From the author of A New Kind of Christianity comes a bold proposal: only doubt can save the world—and your faith

"An honest, vital conversation... will help you live fuller and breathe easier. He illuminates the reality that belief and doubt are not opposites" —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Love Warrior

"Important book…Helps you find a deeper and wiser faith " —Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, author of The Universal Christ

Sixty-five million adults in the U.S. have dropped out of active church attendance and about 2.7 million more are leaving every year. Faith After Doubt is for the millions of people around the world who feel that their faith is falling apart.

Using his own story and the stories of a diverse group of struggling believers, Brian D. McLaren, a former pastor and now an author, speaker, and activist shows how old assumptions are being challenged in nearly every area of human life, not just theology and spirituality. He proposes a four-stage model of faith development in which questions and doubt are not the enemy of faith, but rather a portal to a more mature and fruitful kind of faith. The four stages—Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony—offer a path forward that can help sincere and thoughtful people leave behind unnecessary baggage and intensify their commitment to what matters most.]]> 248 Brian D. McLaren 125026278X Donna (weegraydog) 5 4.34 2021 Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It
author: Brian D. McLaren
name: Donna (weegraydog)
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2021/03/22
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves: to-read, christianity, deconstruction, inspirational, spirituality
review:

]]>