Jess's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 20 Sep 2026 01:15:16 -0700 60 Jess's bookshelf: all 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Black Ambrosia 868730
Angelina doesn't kill out of hatred or fear--she kills out of love, bringing solace to her victims, guided by the seductive Voice that speaks only to her.

Angelina offers you eternal peace--at the cost of your soul!]]> 341 Elizabeth Engstrom 0812517512 Jess 0 to-read 3.76 1988 Black Ambrosia
author: Elizabeth Engstrom
name: Jess
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1988
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/09/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales]]> 1335019
H.P. Lovecraft's tales of the tentacled Elder God Cthulhu and his pantheon of alien deities were initially written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and '30s. These astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction and cosmic terror that are as powerful today as they were when they were first published.

This handsome tome collects together the very best of Lovecraft's tales of terror, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, just the way they were originally published. It will introduce a whole new generation of readers to Lovecraft's fiction, as well as being a must-buy for those fans who want all his work in a single, definitive, highly attractive volume.

Contents:
• Night-Gaunts
• Dagon
• The Statement of Randolph Carter
• The Doom The Came to Sarnath
• The Cats of Ulthar
• The Nameless City
• Herbert West - Reanimator
• The Music of Erich Zann
• The Lurking Fear
• The Hound
• The Rats in the Walls
• Under the Pyramids
• The Unnamable
• In the Vault
• The Outsider
• The Horror at Red Hook
• The Colour Out of Space
• Pickman’s Model
• The Call of Cthulhu
• Cool Air
• The Shunned House
• The Silver Key
• The Dunwich Horror
• The Whisperer in Darkness
• The Strange High House in the Mist
• The Dreams in the Witch-House
• From Beyond
• Through the Gates of the Silver Key
• At the Mountains of Madness
• The Shadow Over Innsmouth
• The Shadow Out of Time
• The Haunter of the Dark
• The Thing on the Doorstep
• The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
• To a Dreamer
• Afterword: A Gentleman of Providence by Stephen Jones

See also: Eldritch Tales.]]> 878 H.P. Lovecraft 0575081562 Jess 4 4.23 Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Jess
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2026/09/13
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review:
This is a good collection, but there's one story in particular where an illustration sort of spoiled the story. I had read the story in another (unillustrated) collection so it wasn't spoiled for me, but I could see it spoiled for someone who catches onto things even moderately quickly. It's a really awesome collector's book for anyone who likes H.P. Lovecraft though.
]]> A Game in Yellow 220161567 Euphoria meets Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke in this latest novel by the Bram Stoker Award–winning author Hailey Piper, following a couple whose search to spice up their sex life leads them down a path of madness.

A kink-fixated couple, Carmen and Blanca, have been in a rut. That is until Blanca discovers the enigmatic Smoke in an under-street drug den, who holds pages to a strange play, The King in Yellow. Read too much, and you’ll fall into madness. But read just a little and pull back, and it gives you the adrenaline rush of survivor’s euphoria, leading Carmen to fall into a game of lust at a nightmare’s edge.

As the line blurs between the world Carmen knows and the one that she visits after reading from the play, she begins to desire more time in this other world no matter what horrors she brings back with her.

Bram Stoker Award–winning author Hailey Piper masterfully blends horror, erotica, and psychological thriller in this captivating and chilling story.]]> 288 Hailey Piper 1668077086 Jess 0 to-read 3.27 2025 A Game in Yellow
author: Hailey Piper
name: Jess
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout]]> 29467305 ONE OF BILLBOARD'S "100 GREATEST MUSIC BOOKS OF ALL TIME"

The provocative transgender advocate and lead singer of the punk rock band Against Me! provides a searing account of her search for identity and her true self. It began in a bedroom in Naples, Florida, when a misbehaving punk teenager named Tom Gabel, armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a headful of anarchist politics, landed on a riff. Gabel formed Against Me! and rocketed the band from its scrappy beginnings-banging on a drum kit made of pickle buckets-to a major-label powerhouse that critics have called this generation's The Clash. Since its inception in 1997, Against Me! has been one of punk's most influential modern bands, but also one of its most divisive. With every notch the four-piece climbed in their career, they gained new fans while infuriating their old ones. They suffered legal woes, a revolving door of drummers, and a horde of angry, militant punks who called them "sellouts" and tried to sabotage their shows at every turn. But underneath the public turmoil, something much greater occupied Gabel-a secret kept for 30 years, only acknowledged in the scrawled-out pages of personal journals and hidden in lyrics. Through a troubled childhood, delinquency, and struggles with drugs, Gabel was on a punishing search for identity. Not until May of 2012 did a Rolling Stone profile finally reveal it: Gabel is a transsexual, and would from then on be living as a woman under the name Laura Jane Grace. Tranny is the intimate story of Against Me!'s enigmatic founder, weaving the narrative of the band's history, as well as Grace's, with dozens of never-before-seen entries from the piles of journals Grace kept. More than a typical music memoir about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll-although it certainly has plenty of that-Tranny is an inside look at one of the most remarkable stories in the history of rock.]]> 306 Laura Jane Grace 0316387959 Jess 0 to-read 4.30 2015 Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout
author: Laura Jane Grace
name: Jess
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Purgatory Funeral Cakes Volume 1]]> 229080309 A heartwarming and comforting manhwa that's perfect with a cup of tea on a rainy day, featuring gorgeous artwork by Sanho.

Funeral cakes are the final gift from the living to their departed loved ones—and the only comfort on their journey to rebirth.

Baker Margot and her ghostly assistant Miro make specialty cakes for the dearly departed. Each cake is made custom—tailored to the lost individual. Still-living loved ones share their memories of the deceased which serve as inspiration for the flavors and style, creating a truly one-of-a-kind cake.

First, a mystery novelist spends her time volunteering at a hospital to read to patients and meets a blind young woman who grew up in the hospital. The two bond over mystery novels, inspiring the Mystery Novel Crepe cake, a cake made with crepe layers like the pages of a book.

Then, the daughter of a vampire reminisces over her daytime life and the hours that separated her from her night-bound mother, and the moments they shared in an evening primrose field inspiring the Evening Primrose Cupcake.

The love and care put into each cake will surely bring comfort to both living and dead in this heartwarming story of love and loss.]]> 224 Sanho 1506751350 Jess 0 to-read 4.31 2021 Purgatory Funeral Cakes Volume 1
author: Sanho
name: Jess
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> Hello Kitty Must Die 7187820
To escape the burden of carrying her family's honor, Fiona decides to take her own virginity. In the process, she makes a surprising discovery that reunites her with a long-lost friend, Sean Killroy. Sean introduces her to a dark world of excitement, danger, cunning, and cruelty, pushing her to the limits of her own morality. But Fiona's father throws her new life into disarray when he dupes her into an overnight trip that results in a hasty engagement to Don Koo, the spoiled son of a wealthy chef.

Determined to thwart her parents' plans to marry her off into Asian suburbia, Fiona seeks her freedom at any price. How far will she go to bury the Hello Kitty stereotype forever? Fiona's journey of self-discovery is biting and clever as she embraces her true nature and creates her own version of the American Dream, eliminating--without fear or remorse--anyone who stands in her way.]]> 320 Angela S. Choi 1935562029 Jess 0 to-read 3.42 2010 Hello Kitty Must Die
author: Angela S. Choi
name: Jess
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Paprika (Vintage Contemporaries)]]> 13151779
When prototype models of a dream-invading device go missing at the Institute for Psychiatric Research, it transpires that someone is using them to drive people insane. Threatened both personally and professionally, brilliant psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba has to journey into the world of fantasy to fight her mysterious opponents. As she delves ever deeper into the imagination, the borderline between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurred, and nightmares begin to leak into the everyday realm. The scene is set for a final showdown between the dream detective and her enemies, with the subconscious as their battleground, and the future of the waking world at stake.]]> 352 Yasutaka Tsutsui 0307389189 Jess 0 to-read 2.93 1993 Paprika (Vintage Contemporaries)
author: Yasutaka Tsutsui
name: Jess
average rating: 2.93
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/07/12
shelves: to-read
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]]> Citadel 59070304
Or at least, that's what everyone's been told.

When Olivia, a nonverbal autistic nineteen-year-old, has a chance run-in with a demon, she realizes that these beings are not vicious, animals, or unholy, but sentient people. Forever scarred by her mother's legally sanctioned murder, and determined to prevent either side from losing more loved ones, Olivia embarks on a hazardous journey into the Flooded Forest where she faces flesh-eating predators, telekinetic zealot-warriors, and the demons of her own past.

Olivia's quest for answers forces her to decide to either seek justice for both sides, or continue the cycle of war, revenge, and death.]]> 350 C.M. Alongi Jess 0 to-read 4.27 2023 Citadel
author: C.M. Alongi
name: Jess
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/07/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Real Middle-Earth 62226244 In The Real Middle-Earth, explore the magically enchanting early-English civilization on which Tolkien based his world of The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien readily admitted that the concept of Middle-earth was not his own invention. An Old English term for the Dark Age world, it was always assumed that the importance of magic in this world existed only in Tolkien’s works; now Professor Brian Bates reveals the vivid truth about this historical culture. Behind the stories we know of Dark Age kings and queens, warriors and battles, lies the hidden history of Middle-earth, a world of magic, mystery and destiny. Fiery dragons were seen to fly across the sky, monsters haunted the marshes, and elves fired poisoned arrows. Wizards cast healing spells, wise trees gave blessings, and omens foretold the deaths of kings. The very landscape itself was enchanted and the world imbued with a life force.

Repressed by a millennium of Christianity, this belief system all but disappeared, leaving only faint traces in folk memory and fairy tales. In this remarkable book Professor Brian Bates has drawn on the latest archaeological findings to reconstruct the imaginative world of our past, revealing a culture with insights that may yet help us understand our own place in the world.]]> 298 Brian Bates 1529059623 Jess 0 to-read 3.49 2002 The Real Middle-Earth
author: Brian Bates
name: Jess
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Finding Home: The Real Stories of Migrant Britain]]> 25846520 Award-winning reporter Emily Dugan’s Finding Home follows the tumultuous lives of a group of immigrants, all facing intense challenges in their quest to live in the UK.


Syrian refugee Emad set up the Free Syrian League and worked illegally in the UK to pay for his mother to be smuggled across the Mediterranean on a perilous trip from Turkey. Even if she survives the journey, Emad knows it will be an uphill struggle to get her into Britain.


Australian therapist Harley risks deportation despite serving the NHS for ten years and being told by the Home Office she could stay. Teaching assistant Klaudia is one of thousands of Polish people now living in Boston, Lincolnshire – a microcosm of poorly managed migration. Aderonke, a leading Manchester LGBT activist, lives in a tiny B&B room in Salford with her girlfriend, Happiness, and faces deportation and persecution.


Dugan’s timely and acutely observed book reveals the intense personal dramas of ordinary men and women as they struggle to find somewhere to call home. It shows that migration is not about numbers, votes or opinions: it is about people.

]]> 325 Emily Dugan 184831910X Jess 0 to-read 4.50 Finding Home: The Real Stories of Migrant Britain
author: Emily Dugan
name: Jess
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Green Girl 11373953 251 Kate Zambreno 0983022631 Jess 0 to-read 3.49 2011 Green Girl
author: Kate Zambreno
name: Jess
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/06/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> Motherthing 60097451 A darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law.

When Ralph and Abby Lamb move in with Ralph’s mother, Laura, Abby hopes it’s just what she and her mother-in-law need to finally connect. After a traumatic childhood, Abby is desperate for a mother figure, especially now that she and Ralph are trying to become parents themselves. Abby just has so much love to give—to Ralph, to Laura, and to Mrs. Bondy, her favorite resident at the long-term care home where she works. But Laura isn’t interested in bonding with her daughter-in-law. She’s venomous and cruel, especially to Abby, and life with her is hellish.

When Laura takes her own life, her ghost haunts Abby and Ralph in very different ways: Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is terrorized by a force intent on destroying everything she loves. To make matters worse, Mrs. Bondy’s daughter is threatening to move Mrs. Bondy from the home, leaving Abby totally alone. With everything on the line, Abby comes up with a chilling plan that will allow her to keep Mrs. Bondy, rescue Ralph from his tortured mind, and break Laura's hold on the family for good. All it requires is a little ingenuity, a lot of determination, and a unique recipe for chicken à la king…]]> 288 Ainslie Hogarth 0593467027 Jess 3 3.58 2022 Motherthing
author: Ainslie Hogarth
name: Jess
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2026/02/25
date added: 2026/03/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Moon of the Crusted Snow (Moon, #1)]]> 39082248
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.

Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.]]> 218 Waubgeshig Rice 1770414002 Jess 5 3.80 2018 Moon of the Crusted Snow (Moon, #1)
author: Waubgeshig Rice
name: Jess
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2026/02/19
date added: 2026/02/26
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]]> Blood on Her Tongue 213570812 "I'm in your blood, and you are in mine…"

The Netherlands, 1887. Lucy's twin sister Sarah is unwell. She refuses to eat, mumbles nonsensically, and is increasingly obsessed with a centuries-old corpse recently discovered on her husband's grand estate. The doctor has diagnosed her with temporary insanity caused by a fever of the brain. To protect her twin from a terrible fate in a lunatic asylum, Lucy must unravel the mystery surrounding her sister's condition, but it's clear her twin is hiding something. Then again, Lucy is harboring secrets of her own, too.

Then, the worst happens. Sarah's behavior takes a turn for the strange. She becomes angry… and hungry.

Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.]]> 368 Johanna van Veen 1728281571 Jess 0 to-read 3.78 2025 Blood on Her Tongue
author: Johanna van Veen
name: Jess
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/01/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Buffalo Hunter Hunter 232654431 447 Stephen Graham Jones Jess 0 to-read 3.98 2025 The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Jess
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/12/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> Blood Water Paint 35540804 A debut novel based on the true story of the iconic painter, Artemisia Gentileschi.

Her mother died when she was twelve, and suddenly Artemisia Gentileschi had a stark choice: a life as a nun in a convent or a life grinding pigment for her father's paint.

She chose paint.

By the time she was seventeen, Artemisia did more than grind pigment. She was one of Rome's most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape Artemisia faced another terrible choice: a life of silence or a life of truth, no matter the cost.

He will not consume
my every thought.
I am a painter.
I will paint.

I will show you
what a woman can do.]]> 298 Joy McCullough 0735232113 Jess 0 4.14 2018 Blood Water Paint
author: Joy McCullough
name: Jess
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2022/04/03
date added: 2025/12/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1)]]> 29845906 From bestselling author, Jay Kristoff, comes a dangerous new world and a heroine born in darkness.

Destined to destroy empires, Mia Corvere is only ten years old when she is given her first lesson in death.

Six years later, the child raised in shadows takes her first steps towards keeping the promise she made on the day that she lost everything.

But the chance to strike against such powerful enemies will be fleeting, so if she is to have her revenge, Mia must become a weapon without equal. She must prove herself against the deadliest of friends and enemies, and survive the tutelage of murderers, liars and daemons at the heart of a murder cult.

The Red Church is no ordinary school, but Mia is no ordinary student.
The shadows love her.
And they drink her fear.]]> 448 Jay Kristoff 0008179999 Jess 0 to-read 4.27 2016 Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1)
author: Jay Kristoff
name: Jess
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/12/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> You Weren't Meant to Be Human 224004327 Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.

Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.

Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a deeply personal horror; a visceral statement about the lives of marginalized people in a hostile world, echoing the works of Stephen Graham Jones and Eric LaRocca.]]> 336 Andrew Joseph White 1668038072 Jess 0 to-read 3.73 2025 You Weren't Meant to Be Human
author: Andrew Joseph White
name: Jess
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/11/16
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]]> The Remarried Empress, Vol. 1 61398896 “I ACCEPT THIS DIVORCE… AND REQUEST AN APPROVAL OF MY REMARRIAGE.”

Empress Navier and Emperor Sovieshu: a match made in heaven, they were the two pillars of the land whom everyone believed would stand by each other through thick and thin…until a chance encounter with a beautiful girl in the forest leaves the emperor smitten! Though hurt by the betrayal, Navier’s not one to waste time wallowing in despair. And when Sovieshu requests a divorce, she has but one condition in return—permission to remarry the man of her choosing!]]> 256 Herelee Jess 0 to-read 4.35 2018 The Remarried Empress, Vol. 1
author: Herelee
name: Jess
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? [story]]]> 18070641
First published in Epoch, Fall 1966. Included in Prize Stories: O Henry Award Winners (1968), and The Best American Short Stories (1967).

Her name was Connie. She was fifteen and she had a quick, nervous giggling habit of craning her neck to glance into mirrors or checking other people’s faces to make sure her own was all right. Her mother, who noticed everything and knew everything...]]> 20 Joyce Carol Oates Jess 3 3.98 Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? [story]
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Jess
average rating: 3.98
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2013/01/01
date added: 2025/10/24
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]]> <![CDATA[The School Days of an Indian Girl]]> 6623083
We had been very impatient to start on our journey to the Red Apple Country, which, we were told, lay a little beyond the great circular horizon of the Western prairie. Under a sky of rosy apples we dreamt of roaming as freely and happily as we had chased the cloud shadows on the Dakota plains. We had anticipated much pleasure from a ride on the iron horse, but the throngs of staring palefaces disturbed and troubled us.

On the train, fair women, with tottering babies on each arm, stopped their haste and scrutinized the children of absent mothers. Large men, with heavy bundles in their hands, halted near by, and riveted their glassy blue eyes upon us......]]> 15 Zitkála-Šá Jess 0 3.70 1900 The School Days of an Indian Girl
author: Zitkála-Šá
name: Jess
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1900
rating: 0
read at: 2016/02/01
date added: 2025/10/23
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]]> Disco Witches of Fire Island 217312874 In the late 1980s, a coven of queer witches on New York's Fire Island strives to protect a young man facing a devastating tragedy.

A gripping novel of magic, romance, and hope—perfect for fans of The House in the Cerulean Sea, the Tales of the City series, and Red, White, and Royal Blue.

It’s 1989, and Joe Agabian and his best friend Ronnie set out to spend their first summer working in the hedonistic gay paradise of Fire Island Pines. Joe is desperate to let loose and finally move beyond the heartbreak of having lost his boyfriend to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The two friends are quickly taken in by a pair of quirky, older house cleaners. But something seems off, and Joe starts to suspect the two older men of being up to something otherworldly. In truth, Howie and Lenny are members of a secret disco witch coven tasked with protecting the island—and young men like Joe—from the relentless tragedies ravaging their community. The only problem is, having lost too many of their fellow witches to the epidemic, the coven’s protective powers have been seriously damaged.

Unaware of all the mystical shenanigans going on, Joe starts to fall for the super-cute bisexual ferryman who just happens to have webbed feet and an unusual ability to hold his breath underwater. But Joe’s longing to find love is tripped up by his own troublesome past as well as the lure of a mysterious hunk he keeps seeing around the island—a man Howie and Lenny warn may be a harbinger of impending doom.

The Disco Witches need to find help—fast—if they’re to save Joe and the island from the Great Darkness. But how? Fans of queer romances with a dash of fantasy will fall in love with this stunning novel of community, love, sex, magic, and hope in desperate times.]]> 348 Blair Fell Jess 0 to-read 3.80 2025 Disco Witches of Fire Island
author: Blair Fell
name: Jess
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/10/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Resistance of Witches 219848293 A historical fantasy debut set against the backdrop of World War II, where a witch journeys to find a book of unspeakable power before it lands in Nazi hands

Stubborn, plainspoken, and from an unimpressive family, Lydia Polk never expected to be accepted into the Royal Academy of Witches. Now, with Hitler’s army rampaging across Europe, the witches of Britain have joined the war effort, and Lydia is key to the cause: she must use her magic to track down magical relics before Hitler and his sycophants can. Then a Nazi witch infiltrates the Academy with heart-breaking consequences, leaving the coven shaken, exposed, and divided. The elder British witches have no interest in further loss of coven life in service of a government that has forced them into hiding for generations. But with the discovery of the Grimorium Bellum, an ancient book that leaves a trail of death and destruction wherever it goes, Lydia knows her mission has never been more urgent.

Alone and woefully outnumbered, Lydia makes her way to the heart of occupied France, where she finds allies in Rebecca Gagne, a fierce French resistance fighter with a secret, and Henry Boudreaux, a handsome Haitian American art historian with a little magic of his own. Together, they traverse the country, stalked by the natural and supernatural alike, in search of the grimoire. But, as Lydia soon discovers, finding the book is only half the battle the Grimorium Bellum itself has a dark agenda. Lydia must subdue it before the witches of the Third Reich can use it—but she’ll have to survive the book herself first.]]> 416 Morgan Ryan 0593831969 Jess 0 to-read 4.05 2025 A Resistance of Witches
author: Morgan Ryan
name: Jess
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Bewitching 220458657 357 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 0593874323 Jess 0 to-read 3.77 2025 The Bewitching
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Jess
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance]]> 209335622 Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most?

Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.”

As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”]]> 124 Robin Wall Kimmerer 1802067477 Jess 4 4.19 2024 The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance
author: Robin Wall Kimmerer
name: Jess
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2025/10/17
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review:

]]> Neuromancer (Sprawl #1) 22328 wrong people…]]> 271 William Gibson Jess 3 3.87 1984 Neuromancer (Sprawl #1)
author: William Gibson
name: Jess
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at: 2015/03/04
date added: 2025/10/05
shelves:
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]]> Beings 222885419 Winner of the 2026 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction

“The alien abduction meets lesbian yearning novel that will restore your faith in the universe. Ilana Masad excavates the juiciness of historical archives and the otherworldly mysteries of the everyday in her most brilliant work yet.” —Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy

Named a "Most Anticipated Book" by the LA Times, Washington Post, Autostraddle , Town and Country, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Lit Hub, and The Millions

In 1961, an interracial couple drove through the dark mountains of New Hampshire when a mysterious light began to follow them. Years later, through hypnosis, they recalled an unbelievable brush with extraterrestrial life. Unintentionally, a genre was born: the alien abduction narrative.

In Ilana Masad's Beings, the couple's experience serves as one part of a trio of intertwined threads: Known only by their roles as husband and wife, Masad explores the pair's trauma and its aftermath and questions what it means to accept the impossible. In the second thread, letters penned by a budding science-fiction writer, Phyllis, to her beloved, Rosa, expose the raw ache of queer yearning, loneliness, and alienation in the repressive 1960s-as well as the joy of finding community. In the present day, a reclusive and chronically ill Archivist attempts to understand a strange forgotten childhood encounter while descending into obsession over both Phyllis's letters and the testimony of the first alien abductees.

Over the course of a decade, Phyllis wrestles with her desires and ambitions as a lesbian writer, while the abducted couple grapple with how to maintain control of their narrative. All the while, the archive shatters and reforms, redefining fact and fiction via the stories left behind by the abductees, Phyllis, and the Archivist themself. Masad makes human what is alien and makes tangible what is hidden — sometimes by chance and sometimes intentionally — in the archive.]]> 291 Ilana Masad 1639737006 Jess 0 to-read 3.59 2025 Beings
author: Ilana Masad
name: Jess
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2025
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date added: 2025/09/20
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]]> Wool (Wool, #1) 12287209
Or you'll get what you wish for.]]> 56 Hugh Howey Jess 0 to-read 4.14 2011 Wool (Wool, #1)
author: Hugh Howey
name: Jess
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/09/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler]]> 221229879 A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work. 

As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity—our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American project—the nation’s transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernaut—made possible by chattel slavery—to a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion. 

In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, queer rights, Reaganomics. Morris reveals how these influences profoundly impacted Butler’s personal and intellectual trajectory and shaped the ideas central to her writing. Her cautionary tales warn us about succumbing to fascism, gender-based violence, and climate chaos while offering alternate paradigms to religion, family, and understanding our relationships to ourselves. Butler envisioned futures with Black women at the center, raising our awareness of how those who are often dismissed have the knowledge to shift the landscape of our world. But her characters are no magical martyrs; they are tough, flawed, intelligent, and complicated, a reflection of Butler’s stories. 

Morris explains what drove Butler: She wrote because she felt she must. “Who was I anyway? Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God’s sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn’t stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.” ]]> 272 Susana M. Morris 006321184X Jess 0 to-read 4.06 2025 Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler
author: Susana M. Morris
name: Jess
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/09/08
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]]> <![CDATA[Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI]]> 222725518 From a brilliant longtime AI insider with intimate access to the world of Sam Altman's OpenAI from the beginning, an eye-opening account of arguably the most fateful tech arms race in history, reshaping the planet in real time, from the cockpit of the company that is driving the frenzy

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong?

Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations?

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed.]]> 501 Karen Hao 0593657519 Jess 0 to-read 4.01 2025 Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI
author: Karen Hao
name: Jess
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/31
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]]> Woman, Life, Freedom 199469832
Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis , returns to graphic art with this collaboration of over 20 activists, artists, journalists, and academics working together to depict the historic uprising, in solidarity with the Iranian people and in defense of feminism.

On September 13th 2022, a young Iranian student, Mahsa Amini, was arrested by the religious police in Tehran. Her only crime was that she wasn’t properly wearing the headscarf required for women by the Islamic Republic. At the police station, she was beaten so badly she had to be taken to the hospital, where she fell into a deep coma. She died three days later.

A wave of protests soon spread through the whole country, and crowds adopted the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”—words that have been chanted around the world during solidarity rallies.

In order to tell the story of this major revolution happening in her homeland, Marjane Satrapi has gathered together an array of journalists, activists, academics, artists, and writers from around the world to create this powerful collection of full-color, graphic-novel-style essays and perspectives that bear



Woman, Life, Freedom demonstrates that this is not an unexpected movement, but a major uprising in a long history of women who have wanted to affirm their rights. It will continue.]]> 272 Marjane Satrapi 1644214059 Jess 0 to-read 4.41 2023 Woman, Life, Freedom
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Jess
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Bittersweet in the Hollow (Bittersweet in the Hollow, #1)]]> 78292413 In this beautifully dark and enthralling YA, four sisters with unusual talents investigate a mysterious disappearance in their secluded Appalachian town. For fans of House of Hollow and Wilder Girls!

In rural Caball Hollow, surrounded by the vast National Forest, the James women serve up more than fried green tomatoes at the Harvest Moon diner, where the family recipes are not the only secrets.

Like her sisters, Linden was born with an unusual ability. She can taste what others are feeling, but this so-called gift soured her relationship with the vexingly attractive Cole Spencer one fateful night a year ago . . . A night when Linden vanished into the depths of the Forest and returned with no memories of what happened, just a litany of questions--and a haze of nightmares that suggest there's more to her story than simply getting lost.

Now, during the hottest summer on record, another girl in town is gone, and the similarities to last year's events are striking. Except, this time the missing girl doesn't make it home, and when her body is discovered, the scene unmistakably spells murder.

As tempers boil over, Linden enlists the help of her sisters to find what's hiding in the forest . . . before it finds her. But as she starts digging for truth--about the Moth-Winged Man rumored to haunt the Hollow, about her bitter rift with Cole, and even about her family--she must question if some secrets are best left buried.]]> 384 Kate Pearsall 0593531027 Jess 0 to-read 3.98 2023 Bittersweet in the Hollow (Bittersweet in the Hollow, #1)
author: Kate Pearsall
name: Jess
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/24
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]]> Katabasis 210223811 Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:

The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.

That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….

Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.

With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.

But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.]]> 559 R.F. Kuang Jess 0 to-read 3.69 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: Jess
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
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]]> <![CDATA[Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta]]> 59227943
Carlotta Mercedes has been misunderstood her entire life. When she was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she’d grown up with in Fort Greene, Brooklyn—before it gentrified. But not long after her conviction, she took the name Carlotta and began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected, keeping Carlotta trapped in an all-male cell block, abused by both inmates and guards, and often placed in solitary.

In her fifth appearance before the parole board, Carlotta is at last granted conditional freedom and returns to a much-changed New York City. Over a whirlwind Fourth of July weekend, she struggles to reconcile with the son she left behind, to reunite with a family reluctant to accept her true identity, and to avoid any minor parole infraction that might get her consigned back to lockup.

Written with the same astonishing verve of  Delicious Foods , which dazzled critics and readers alike, Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta  sweeps the reader through seemingly every street of Brooklyn, much as Joyce’s Ulysses does through Dublin. The novel sings with brio and ambition, delivering a fantastically entertaining read and a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a prison system that continues to punish people long after their time has been served.]]> 352 James Hannaham 0316285277 Jess 4 3.95 2022 Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta
author: James Hannaham
name: Jess
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/08/20
date added: 2025/08/21
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]]> House of Frank 206777216 A warm and hopeful story of a lonely witch consumed by grief who discovers a whimsical cast of characters in a magical arboretum—and the healing power of found family.

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

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

As Saika works harder in avoidance of her pain, she learns more about Frank, the decaying house at Ash Gardens, and the lives of the motley staff, including bickering twin cherubs, a mute ghost, a cantankerous elf, and an irritating half witch, among others. Over time, she rediscovers what it means to love and be wholly loved and how to allow her joy and grief to coexist. Warm and inventive, House of Frank is a stirring portrait of the ache of loss and the healing embrace of love.]]> 352 Kay Synclaire 1959411667 Jess 0 to-read 3.91 2024 House of Frank
author: Kay Synclaire
name: Jess
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/19
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]]> The Silent Land 8719737 262 Graham Joyce 0385533802 Jess 0 to-read 3.64 2010 The Silent Land
author: Graham Joyce
name: Jess
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2010
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/22
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]]> <![CDATA[Signs Preceding the End of the World]]> 21535546 Winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction

Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back.

Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages – one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.]]> 114 Yuri Herrera 1908276428 Jess 0 to-read 3.89 2009 Signs Preceding the End of the World
author: Yuri Herrera
name: Jess
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/21
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]]> The Starving Saints 217896248 From the nationally bestselling author of The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence, a transfixing, intensely atmospheric fever dream of medieval horror.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.

Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.

As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters… or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself. ]]> 352 Caitlin Starling 0063418819 Jess 0 to-read 3.55 2025 The Starving Saints
author: Caitlin Starling
name: Jess
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
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]]> <![CDATA[All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages]]> 35140599 Take a journey through time and genres and discover a past where queer figures live, love and shape the world around them. Seventeen of the best young adult authors across the queer spectrum have come together to create a collection of beautifully written diverse historical fiction for teens.

From a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood set in war-torn 1870s Mexico featuring a transgender soldier, to two girls falling in love while mourning the death of Kurt Cobain, forbidden love in a sixteenth-century Spanish convent or an asexual girl discovering her identity amid the 1970s roller-disco scene, All Out tells a diverse range of stories across cultures, time periods and identities, shedding light on an area of history often ignored or forgotten.

Stories
Roja - Anna-Marie McLemore
The Sweet Trade - Natalie C. Parker
And They Don`t Kiss at the End - Nilah Magruder
Burnt Umber - Mackenzi Lee
The Dresser & the Chambermaid - Robin Talley
New Year - Malinda Lo
Molly`s Lips - Dahlia Adler
The Coven - Kate Scelsa
Every Shade of Red - Elliot Wake
Willows - Scott Tracey
The Girl with the Blue Lantern - Tess Sharpe
The Secret Life of a Teenage Boy - Alex Sanchez
Walking After Midnight - Kody Keplinger
The End of the World as We Know It - Sara Farizan
Three Witches - Tessa Gratton
The Inferno & the Butterfly - Shaun David Hutchinson
Healing Rosa - Tehlor Kay Mejia]]> 368 Saundra Mitchell 133547045X Jess 4 3.92 2018 All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages
author: Saundra Mitchell
name: Jess
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2025/07/17
date added: 2025/07/17
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]]> Bloom 78627220 A sweet sapphic romance takes a deadly dark turn in this sharp-as-a-knife novella from the New York Times bestselling author.

Rosemary meets Ash at the farmers’ market. Ash—precise, pretty, and practically perfect—sells bars of soap in delicate pastel colors, sprinkle-spackled cupcakes stacked on scalloped stands, beeswax candles, jelly jars of honey, and glossy green plants. Ro has never felt this way about another woman; with Ash, she wants to be her and have her in equal measure. But as her obsession with Ash consumes her, she may find she’s not the one doing the devouring…]]> 203 Delilah S. Dawson Jess 0 to-read 3.75 2023 Bloom
author: Delilah S. Dawson
name: Jess
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/07
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]]> With a Vengeance 219603177 One train. No stops. A deadly game of survival and revenge.

In 1942, six people destroyed Anna Matheson’s family. Twelve years later, she’s ready for retribution.

Under false pretenses, Anna has lured those responsible for her family’s downfall onto a luxury train from Philadelphia to Chicago, an overnight journey of fourteen hours. Her goal? Confront the people who’ve wronged her, get them to confess their crimes, and deliver them into the hands of authorities waiting at the end of the line. Justice will at last be served.

But Anna’s plan is quickly derailed by the murder of one of the passengers. As the train barrels through the night, it becomes clear that someone else on board is enacting their own form of revenge—and that they won’t stop until everyone else is dead.

With time running out before the train reaches its destination, Anna is forced to hunt the killer in their midst while protecting the people she hates the most. In order to destroy her enemies, she must first save them—even though it means putting her own life at risk.]]> 383 Riley Sager 0593472403 Jess 0 to-read 3.35 2025 With a Vengeance
author: Riley Sager
name: Jess
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/01
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]]> Swimming in the Dark 49977811 Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of Andre Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.

When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks camping in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.

Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly-coveted position in the ministry. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.

Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart, Swimming in the Dark is a potent blend of romance, post-war politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski has crafted an indelible and thought-provoking literary debut that explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.]]> 191 Tomasz Jedrowski 006289000X Jess 0 4.24 2020 Swimming in the Dark
author: Tomasz Jedrowski
name: Jess
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> Blackwater 58484027
"For fans of Heartstopper and Teen Wolf ." ― School Library Journal

Tony Price is a popular high school track star and occasional delinquent aching for his dad’s attention and approval. Eli Hirsch is a quiet boy with a chronic autoimmune disorder that has ravaged his health and social life. What happens when these two become unlikely friends (and a whole lot more . . .) in the spooky town of Blackwater, Maine? Werewolf curses, unsavory interactions with the quarterback of the football team, a ghostly fisherman haunting the harbor, and tons of high school drama.

Co-illustrated by Jeannette Arroyo and Ren Graham, who alternate drawing chapters in their own unique and dynamic styles, Blackwater combines the spookiness of Anya's Ghost with the irreverent humor of Nimona.]]> 304 Jeannette Arroyo 1250304024 Jess 0 to-read 3.50 2022 Blackwater
author: Jeannette Arroyo
name: Jess
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/30
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]]> West with Giraffes 56449476 An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America.

“Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes…”

Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.

It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world’s first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.

Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it’s too late.]]> 346 Lynda Rutledge 1542023351 Jess 0 to-read 4.32 2021 West with Giraffes
author: Lynda Rutledge
name: Jess
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature]]> 215612512 A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Growing up, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.

In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness of all the life around us. Fungal species, we learn, commonly encompass more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, a mystery that scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.

Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprises, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world.]]> 255 Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian 1954118902 Jess 0 to-read 3.96 2025 Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature
author: Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian
name: Jess
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Lord of the Butterflies (Button Poetry)]]> 39656141 95 Andrea Gibson 1943735425 Jess 0 4.45 2018 Lord of the Butterflies (Button Poetry)
author: Andrea Gibson
name: Jess
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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]]> Lonely Castle in the Mirror 54633169 Seven students find unusual common ground in this warm, puzzle-like Japanese bestseller laced with gentle fantasy and compassionate insight.

Bullied to the point of dropping out of school, Kokoro's days blur together as she hides in her bedroom, unable to face her family or friends. As she spirals into despair, her mirror begins to shine; with a touch, Kokoro is pulled from her lonely life into a resplendent, bizarre fairytale castle guarded by a strange girl in a wolf mask. Six other students have been brought to the castle, and soon this marvelous refuge becomes their playground.

The castle has a hidden room that can grant a single wish, but there are rules to be followed, and breaking them will have dire consequences. As Kokoro and her new acquaintances spend more time in their new sanctuary, they begin to unlock the castle's secrets and, tentatively, each other's.

Lonely Castle in the Mirror is a mesmerizing, heart-warming novel about the unexpected rewards of embracing human connection.]]> 355 Mizuki Tsujimura 0857527282 Jess 0 to-read 4.23 2017 Lonely Castle in the Mirror
author: Mizuki Tsujimura
name: Jess
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/30
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]]> Rainbow Black 173502162 Rainbow Black is part murder mystery, part gay international-fugitive love story—set against the ’90s Satanic Panic and spanning 20 years in the life of a young woman pulled into its undertow.

Lacey Bond is a thirteen-year-old girl in New Hampshire growing up in the tranquility of her hippie parents’ rural daycare center. Then the Satanic Panic hits. It’s the summer of 1990 when Lacey’s parents are handcuffed, flung into the county jail, and faced with a torrent of jaw-dropping accusations as part of a mass hysteria sweeping the nation. When a horrific murder brings Lacey to the breaking point, she makes a ruthless choice that will haunt her for decades.]]> 404 Maggie Thrash 0063286874 Jess 0 to-read 3.90 2024 Rainbow Black
author: Maggie Thrash
name: Jess
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/29
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]]> <![CDATA[Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community]]> 216838582 An activist priest provides sanctuary for an encampment of unhoused people in her churchyard

We think, maybe, that homelessness is some kind of stable state, like being housed except without housing. Without really considering it, most people imagine that people who are homeless live in, if not one place, at least in one condition, that their days are in some way predictable. But homelessness is, more than anything else, a life of constant displacement.

The housing crisis plaguing major urban centres has sent countless people into the streets. In spring 2022, some of them found their way to the yard beside the Anglican church in Toronto’s Kensington Market, where Maggie Helwig is the priest. They pitched tents, formed an encampment, and settled in. Known as an outspoken social justice activist, Helwig has spent the last three years getting to know the residents and fighting tooth and nail to allow them to stay, battling various authorities that want to clear the yard and prefer to keep the results of the housing crisis out of sight and out of mind.

Encampment tells the story of Helwig’s lifelong activism as preparation for her fight to keep her churchyard open to people needing a home. More importantly, it introduces us to the Artist, to Jeff, and to their lives, their challenges, their humanity. It confronts our society’s callousness in allowing so many to go unhoused, and it demands, by bringing their stories to the fore, that we begin to respond with compassion and grace.]]> 176 Maggie Helwig 1552455041 Jess 0 to-read 4.54 Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community
author: Maggie Helwig
name: Jess
average rating: 4.54
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date added: 2025/06/29
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]]> A Scatter of Light 60093178 Award-winning author Malinda Lo returns to the Bay Area with another masterful coming-of-queer-age story, this time set against the backdrop of the first major Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage. And almost sixty years after the end of Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Lo's new novel also offers a glimpse into Lily and Kath's lives since 1955.

Aria Tang West was looking forward to a summer on Martha's Vineyard with her best friends—one last round of sand and sun before college. But after a graduation party goes wrong, Aria's parents exile her to California to stay with her grandmother, artist Joan West. Aria expects boredom, but what she finds is Steph Nichols, her grandmother's gardener. Soon, Aria is second-guessing who she is and what she wants to be, and a summer that once seemed lost becomes unforgettable—for Aria, her family, and the working-class queer community Steph introduces her to. It's the kind of summer that changes a life forever.]]> 325 Malinda Lo 0525555285 Jess 0 to-read 3.80 2022 A Scatter of Light
author: Malinda Lo
name: Jess
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/28
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]]> Moonbound 195790867 Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure.

In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what’s next.

It is thirteen thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history―and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story.

Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.]]> 415 Robin Sloan 0374610606 Jess 0 to-read 3.93 2024 Moonbound
author: Robin Sloan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/27
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]]> The Summer Book 79550
Full of brusque humour and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own experience and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of the novels she wrote for adults. This new edition sees the return of a European literary gem—fresh, authentic and deeply humane.]]> 192 Tove Jansson 0954221710 Jess 0 currently-reading 4.00 1972 The Summer Book
author: Tove Jansson
name: Jess
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at: 2015/09/01
date added: 2025/06/26
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> <![CDATA[Six Wild Crowns (Queens of Elben, #1)]]> 221105524
Each queen vies for attention. Clever, ambitious Boleyn is determined to be Henry's favourite. And if she must incite a war to win Henry over? So be it.

Seymour acts as spy and assassin in a court teeming with dragons, backstabbing courtiers and strange magic. But when she and Boleyn become the unlikeliest of things - allies - the balance of power begins to shift. Together they will discover an ancient, rotting magic at Elben's heart. A magic that their king will do anything to protect.

A captivating epic fantasy filled with dragons, court politics and sapphic yearning, perfect for fans of The Priory of the Orange Tree and House of the Dragon.]]> 395 Holly Race 0356522660 Jess 0 to-read 3.60 2025 Six Wild Crowns (Queens of Elben, #1)
author: Holly Race
name: Jess
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/11
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]]> Matrix 57185348 Lauren Groff returns with her exhilarating first new novel since the groundbreaking Fates and Furies.

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, 17-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough?

Equally alive to the sacred and the profane, Matrix gathers currents of violence, sensuality, and religious ecstasy in a mesmerizing portrait of consuming passion, aberrant faith, and a woman that history moves both through and around. Lauren Groff's new novel, her first since Fates and Furies, is a defiant and timely exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world.
]]> 260 Lauren Groff 1594634491 Jess 0 currently-reading 3.64 2021 Matrix
author: Lauren Groff
name: Jess
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/07
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]]> <![CDATA[Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng]]> 218185743
Before fleeing the scene, the murderer whispered two words: bat eater.

Months pass, the killer is never caught, and Cora can barely keep herself together. She pushes away all feelings, disregards the bite marks that appear on her coffee table, and won't take her aunt's advice to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open.

Cora tries to ignore the rising dread in her stomach, even when she and her weird co-workers begin finding bat carcasses at their crime scene clean-ups. But Cora can't ignore the fact that all their recent clean-ups have been the bodies of East Asian women.

Soon Cora will learn: you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.]]> 304 Kylie Lee Baker 0778368459 Jess 0 to-read 4.05 2025 Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
author: Kylie Lee Baker
name: Jess
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/03
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]]> Bloom Town: Genesis 216398926 June, 1852.
A preacher’s daughter with a secret.
An outlaw running from the gallows.
A love story spanning oceans and deserts and years.

When Abby Proctor is kidnapped from a train in the middle of the desert halfway to her new life in California, she makes a promise to herself—she will escape. Because there’s a reason Abby is leaving Iowa and all its oppressions behind, and she refuses to be someone’s prisoner again. Especially when that someone is the infamous female outlaw Joey ‘JT London’ Taylor, Abby's brash, brooding, and inconveniently beautiful captor.

But as Abby plots her escape, she stumbles upon a larger conspiracy at play behind her kidnapping—a complicated revelation considering the feelings she’s been having for Joey, who might not be the ruthless criminal everyone believes her to be. And when Abby realizes it’s all connected—her kidnapping, the secrets she left behind in Iowa, even her plans in California—she has to decide between returning to a life of obedience and unhappiness, or trusting an enigmatic outlaw who is bound for the gallows.]]> 516 Ally North Jess 0 to-read 4.48 2024 Bloom Town: Genesis
author: Ally North
name: Jess
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Wild Folk: Tales from the Stones]]> 217539025 From the co-author of The Lost Words and The Lost Spells comes seven richly illustrated fables of transformation and power, summoned from the ancient stones beneath our feet and transformed by word and image into portals between past and future.

These tales from the stones are neither new nor old. They are full of ‘wild folk’, shape-shifting spirits that carry the energy that connects all things. You will meet selkies and silver trout and the black fox, as big as a wolf and so fast and cunning she drives the lord of the manor to madness and oblivion; the woman of flowers who is happier living as an owl; the boy who learns to feel the songs and stories of trees through his skin; Wayland, the smith who can hammer metal to such airy thinness he makes his own wings; and the great white raven, a bird so rare it awakens the king who sleeps beneath the stones of the wild west cliffs of Wales.

This book brings together the words of Jackie Morris and the stained-glass paintings of Tamsin Abbott, but the stories come from both, a true collaboration born out of friendship and hope. These are tales to make you see, listen and most of all feel the wild magic that links stone, tree, fox and star.]]> 400 Jackie Morris 1789652308 Jess 0 to-read 4.40 Wild Folk: Tales from the Stones
author: Jackie Morris
name: Jess
average rating: 4.40
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]]> The Thief Lord 113304
Befriended by a gang of street children and their mysterious leader, the Thief Lord, they shelter in an old, disused cinema. On their trail is a bungling detective, obsessed with disguises and the health of his pet tortoises. But a greater threat to the boys' new-found freedom is something from a forgotten past – a beautiful magical treasure with the power to spin time itself.]]> 350 Cornelia Funke 1903434777 Jess 0 to-read 3.99 2000 The Thief Lord
author: Cornelia Funke
name: Jess
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/28
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]]> Compound Fracture 203166772 Bestselling and award-winning author Andrew Joseph White returns with a queer Appalachian thriller, that pulls no punches, for teens who see the failures in our world and are pushing for radical change.

A gut-wrenching story following a trans autistic teen who survives an attempted murder, only to be drawn into the generational struggle between the rural poor and those who exploit them.

On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him.

The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death.

In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidentally kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles?

A visceral, unabashedly political page-turner that won’t let you go until you’ve reached the end, Compound Fracture is not for the faint of heart, but it is for every reader who is ready to fight for a better world.]]> 370 Andrew Joseph White 1682636127 Jess 0 to-read 4.37 2024 Compound Fracture
author: Andrew Joseph White
name: Jess
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/25
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]]> Old Soul 211178725
Following traces this mysterious person left behind, Jake travels from country to country gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered her across the decades—a trail of shattered souls that eventually leads him to Theo, a dying sculptor in rural New Mexico, who knows the woman better than anyone—and might just hold the key to who, or what, she is.

Part horror, part western, part thriller, Old Soul is a fearlessly bold and genre-defying tale about predation, morality and free will, and one man’s quest to bring a centuries-long chain of human devastation to an end.]]> 336 Susan Barker 0593718291 Jess 0 to-read 3.73 2025 Old Soul
author: Susan Barker
name: Jess
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/24
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]]> The Great Transition 62919387 For fans of Station Eleven and The Ministry for the Future, this richly imaginative, immersive, and electrifyingly relevant climate utopia novel follows a family navigating a crisis both personal and political, illuminating humanity’s capacity for change.

What happens after we save the world?

In the near future, humanity hasn’t avoided the worst of climate change—wildfires, rising oceans, mass migration, and skyrocketing inequality have become the daily reality. But just when it seems that it can’t get any worse, remarkably, a movement of workers, migrants, and refugees inspires the world to band together, save the planet, and rebuild a society for all. This is The Great Transition.

Teenager Emi Vargas was born post-Transition, into a utopia compared to the world known by previous generations. Her parents both suffered and sacrificed, playing pivotal roles in The Great Transition, but now their marriage is deteriorating. And when Emi’s mother goes missing amidst a shocking new political upheaval, Emi’s illusion of comfort and safety is shattered.

Alternating between Emi’s suspenseful search for her mother in the present and The Great Transition when her mother and father battled climate devastation and fell in love, this astonishing debut is a remarkable story of struggle, change, and hope.]]> 352 Nick Fuller Googins 1668010755 Jess 0 to-read 3.74 2023 The Great Transition
author: Nick Fuller Googins
name: Jess
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Certain American States: Stories]]> 36348542
Catherine Lacey brings her narrative mastery to Certain American States , her first collection of short stories. As with her acclaimed novels Nobody Is Ever Missing and The Answers , she gives life to a group of subtly complex, instantly memorable characters whose searches for love, struggles with grief, and tentative journeys into the minutiae of the human condition are simultaneously gripping and devastating.

The characters in Certain American States are continually coming to terms with their place in the world, and how to adapt to that place, before change inevitably returns. A woman leaves her dead husband’s clothing on the street, only for it to reappear on the body of a stranger; a man reads his ex-wife’s short story and neurotically contemplates whether it is about him; a young woman whose Texan mother insists on moving to New York City with her has her daily attempts to get over a family tragedy interrupted by a mute stranger showing her incoherent messages on his phone. These are stories of breakups, abandonment, and strained family ties; dead brothers and distant surrogate fathers; loneliness, happenstance, starting over, and learning to let go. Lacey’s elegiac and inspired prose is at its full power in this collection, further establishing her as one of the singular literary voices of her generation.]]> 208 Catherine Lacey 0374265895 Jess 0 to-read 3.79 2018 Certain American States: Stories
author: Catherine Lacey
name: Jess
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/17
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]]> Light from Uncommon Stars 56179360
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.

When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.

But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.

As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.]]> 384 Ryka Aoki 1250789060 Jess 5 4.00 2021 Light from Uncommon Stars
author: Ryka Aoki
name: Jess
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/15
date added: 2025/05/15
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]]> All the Living and the Dead 58724737
We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.

Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.]]> 288 Hayley Campbell 1250281849 Jess 0 to-read 4.25 2022 All the Living and the Dead
author: Hayley Campbell
name: Jess
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII]]> 51077194
When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in World War II, these girls took up arms against the enemy by seducing high-ranking Nazi officers, luring them into the woods and killing them. They provided Jewish children with safe houses and gathered vital intelligence for the resistance. They did what they did "because it had to be done." Above all, they tried to remain human in inhuman circumstances.

Hannie Schaft was executed by the Nazis three weeks before the end of the war and became the icon of female Dutch resistance. Truus and Freddie Oversteegen survived the war, but were forever haunted by the demons of their past.]]> 253 Sophie Poldermans 9083003418 Jess 0 to-read 3.75 2019 Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII
author: Sophie Poldermans
name: Jess
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/11
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]]> Good Material 96177629
Now he is. . .

Without a home

Waiting for his stand-up career to take off

Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking

Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of his ruined relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. But Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story…

In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.]]> 345 Dolly Alderton 0241523672 Jess 0 to-read 3.81 2023 Good Material
author: Dolly Alderton
name: Jess
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/10
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]]> <![CDATA[World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments]]> 48615751
As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted--no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape--she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance.

"What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts.

Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.]]> 165 Aimee Nezhukumatathil 1571313656 Jess 0 to-read 4.04 2020 World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments
author: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
name: Jess
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/03
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]]> Water & Salt 32445218 Water & Salt, sings in the voices of people ravaged by cycles of war and news coverage. These poems alternately rage, laugh, celebrate and grieve, singing in the voices of people ravaged by cycles of war and news coverage and inviting the reader to see the human lives lived beyond the headlines.
]]> 96 Lena Khalaf Tuffaha 1597090298 Jess 5 4.59 2017 Water & Salt
author: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
name: Jess
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> The Books of Jacob 58276619 The Nobel Prize-winner's richest, most sweeping and ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise and fall of a mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe.

In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas -- and a new unrest -- begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following.

In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect's secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs.

The story of Frank -- a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day -- is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries -- those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is -- The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.]]> 965 Olga Tokarczuk Jess 0 to-read 3.92 2014 The Books of Jacob
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Jess
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2014
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> <![CDATA[Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil]]> 213263148 From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger.

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

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

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

This is a story about life—
how it ends, and how it starts. ]]> 535 V.E. Schwab 1250320526 Jess 0 to-read 3.94 2025 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
author: V.E. Schwab
name: Jess
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/01
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]]> Jack (Gilead, #4) 50403478 Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction.

Jack  tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the beloved, erratic, and grieved-over prodigal son of a Presbyterian minister in Gilead, Iowa. In segregated St. Louis sometime after World War II, Jack falls in love with Della Miles, an African American high school teacher who is also the daughter of a preacher―discerning, generous, and independent. Their fraught, beautiful romance is one of Robinson’s greatest achievements.

The Gilead novels are about the dilemmas and promise of American history―about the ongoing legacy of the Civil War and the enduring impact of both racial inequality and deep-rooted religious belief. They touch the deepest chords in our national character and resonate with our deepest feelings.]]> 309 Marilynne Robinson 0374279306 Jess 0 to-read 3.84 2020 Jack (Gilead, #4)
author: Marilynne Robinson
name: Jess
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: to-read
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]]> milktooth 217102645 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction
Winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
Winner of the Golden Crown Literary Society Award for General Fiction

Sorcha is over the hook-ups and gay haunts of her twenties. At thirty-one what she wants, more than anything, is to have a baby. Then she meets Chris― with her buttoned-up plaid, 90s heartthrob hair, and grand romantic gestures― and things get serious. Fast. Though Sorcha's friends find her new partner problematic, Sorcha has an explanation for everything.

As Chris's moods turn volatile and Sorcha becomes increasingly isolated, Chris paints an idyllic picture of domestic bliss in Cape Breton. Sorcha is all in: if her conservative religious upbringing taught her anything, it's how to save. Plus, Chris promises Sorcha the thing she wants most― a baby.

But when Sorcha becomes pregnant and Chris's abuse escalates, Sorcha realizes she must escape the life they've built together, just as she escaped her own stifling family years before.

When Sorcha's estranged Aunt Agnes, a retired midwife, messages Sorcha out of the blue, her bothy in the Scottish Highlands seems the perfect place to hide. As the bundle of cells in Sorcha's belly diligently divides, she daydreams that Agnes will deliver the baby and they'll stay in Scotland, where Chris can't find them. And where, just maybe, Sorcha could build the sort of family she's always ached for.

Exploring the clandestinity of queer abuse, the fierceness of friendship, and the magic of found family, milktooth is a bold, inventive, lyrical and darkly funny story about finding the strength to cut away what's harmed you and create something entirely new.]]> 280 Jaime Burnet 1774713640 Jess 0 to-read 4.44 2025 milktooth
author: Jaime Burnet
name: Jess
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/27
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]]> <![CDATA[Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943]]> 118371 274 Erica Fischer 1555834507 Jess 0 currently-reading 4.04 1994 Aimée & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943
author: Erica Fischer
name: Jess
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1994
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/24
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]]> The Unworthy 214151601 The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.

From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.

But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?

A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.]]> 192 Agustina Bazterrica 1668051885 Jess 0 to-read 3.53 2023 The Unworthy
author: Agustina Bazterrica
name: Jess
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Dream Hotel 218695937 A novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

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

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

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.]]> 336 Laila Lalami 0593317602 Jess 0 to-read 3.56 2025 The Dream Hotel
author: Laila Lalami
name: Jess
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/23
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]]> The Antidote 214537790 The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl drought, but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.]]> 432 Karen Russell 059380225X Jess 0 to-read 3.83 2025 The Antidote
author: Karen Russell
name: Jess
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/23
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]]> Julia 86508927
But Julia becomes intrigued by a colleague from the Records Department—a mid-level worker of the Outer Party called Winston Smith—when she sees him locking eyes with a superior from the Inner Party at the Two Minutes Hate. And when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston, she impulsively hands him a note—a potentially suicidal gesture—she comes to realise that she's losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.

Seventy-five years after Orwell finished writing his iconic novel, Sandra Newman has tackled the world of Big Brother in a truly convincing way, offering a dramatically different, feminist narrative that is true to and stands alongside the original. For the millions of readers who have been brought up with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, here, finally, is a provocative, vital and utterly satisfying companion novel.]]> 400 Sandra Newman 0063265338 Jess 0 currently-reading 3.68 2023 Julia
author: Sandra Newman
name: Jess
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/22
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> House of Cotton 60784369
One night while working at her dead-end gas station job, a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton walks in and offers to turn Magnolia’s luck around. He offers her a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home. Magnolia accepts. But despite things looking up, Magnolia’s problems fatten along with her wallet. When Cotton’s requests become increasingly weird, Magnolia discovers there’s a lot more at stake than just her rent.

Sharp as a belted knife, this sly social commentary cuts straight to the bone, revealing the aftermath of the American plantation and what it means to be poor, Black, and a woman in the God fearing south.]]> 304 Monica Brashears 1250851912 Jess 0 2.97 2023 House of Cotton
author: Monica Brashears
name: Jess
average rating: 2.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/22
date added: 2025/04/22
shelves:
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This book took me a really long time to finish and I’m still processing it? What a strange book! I will update my review and rating, as I think this is a book that is going to stay with me.
]]> <![CDATA[The Fae Queen's Captive (Peculiar Tastes, #6)]]> 62093108
Janneth Carter has given up on magic these days. She’s done being curious, insatiable, dreamy; she just wants to finish her graduate degree and spend the rest of her life as a sensible archeologist. So the last thing she expects when she goes to her dig site on Halloween night is three mysterious strangers standing outside an ancient Scottish grave.

Okay, well the actual last thing she expects is for those strangers to kidnap her and drag her into fairyland.

Once in the vivid, carnal world of Faerie, Janneth is at the mercy of the coldly lovely and incredibly cruel Stag Queen. Desperate to get home to her own world, she offers the Queen a bargain: she’ll be a willing captive, the queen’s pet, so long as the Queen promises to keep her safe until Janneth leaves Faerie.

But fae promises are complicated things, and nothing in Faerie, even pleasure—even love—comes without a price…

***

The Fae Queen’s Captive is a dark sapphic standalone romance, set in the shared world of the Peculiar Tastes series. CWs can be found at the beginning of the book.

It's that time of year, friends. The moon is full and Samhain approaches. Your invitation to the Shadow Market is here. Three days of magic, drama, seduction, and maybe just a dash of human sacrifice! Come through the portal and meet witches, demons, gorgons, mermaids, the fae, and even the odd human who's gotten turned around and ended up somewhere they shouldn't.]]> 176 Sierra Simone Jess 0 to-read 3.65 2022 The Fae Queen's Captive (Peculiar Tastes, #6)
author: Sierra Simone
name: Jess
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> Wild Dark Shore 211004089
Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.

But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late―and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.]]> 298 Charlotte McConaghy Jess 0 to-read 4.05 2025 Wild Dark Shore
author: Charlotte McConaghy
name: Jess
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Don't Let the Forest In (Don't Let The Forest In, #1)]]> 200982373 Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him.

Kill for him.

High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality―Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.

But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won't say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork―whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew's wicked stories.

Desperate to figure out what's wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster―Thomas's drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator...]]> 336 C.G. Drews 1250895669 Jess 0 to-read 4.04 2024 Don't Let the Forest In (Don't Let The Forest In, #1)
author: C.G. Drews
name: Jess
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> Sister Snake 199531653 A glittering, bold, darkly funny novel about two sisters—one in New York, one in Singapore—who are bound by an ancient secret.

Sisterhood is difficult for Su and Emerald. Su leads a sheltered, moneyed life as the picture-perfect wife of a conservative politician in Singapore. Emerald is a nihilistic sugar baby in New York, living from whim to whim as she freely uses her beauty and charms to make ends meet. But they share a secret; once they were snakes, basking under a full moon in Tang Dynasty China.

A thousand years later, their mysterious history is the only thing still binding them together. When Emerald experiences a violent encounter in Central Park and Su boards the next flight to New York, the two reach a tenuous reconciliation for the first time in decades. Su convinces Emerald to move to Singapore so she can keep an eye on her—but she soon begins to worry that Emerald’s irrepressible behavior will out them both, in a sparkling, affluent city where everything runs like clockwork and any deviation from the norm is automatically suspect.

Razor-sharp, hilarious, and raw in emotion, Sister Snake explores chosen family, queerness, passing, and the struggle against conformity. Reimagining the Chinese folktale “The Legend of the White Snake,” this is a novel about being seen for who you are—and, ultimately, how to live free. ]]> 261 Amanda Lee Koe 006335506X Jess 0 to-read 3.75 2024 Sister Snake
author: Amanda Lee Koe
name: Jess
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> We Could Be Rats 214152402 A moving story about two very different sisters, and a love letter to childhood, growing up, and the power of imagination—from the bestselling author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead and Interesting Facts About Space.

Sigrid hates working at the Dollar Pal but having always resisted the idea of growing up into the trappings of adulthood, she did not graduate high school, preferring to roam the streets of her small town with her best friend Greta, the only person in the world who ever understood her. Her older sister Margit is baffled and frustrated by Sigrid’s inability to conform to the expectations of polite society.

But Sigrid’s detachment veils a deeper turmoil and sensitivity. She’s haunted by the pains of her past—from pretending her parents were swamp monsters when they shook the floorboards with their violent arguments to grappling with losing Greta’s friendship to the opioid epidemic ravaging their town. As Margit sets out to understand Sigrid and the secrets she has hidden, both sisters, in their own time and way, discover that reigniting their shared childhood imagination is the only way forward.

What unfolds is an unforgettable story of two sisters finding their way back to each other, and a celebration of that transcendent, unshakable bond.]]> 256 Emily R. Austin 1668058146 Jess 0 to-read 3.94 2025 We Could Be Rats
author: Emily R. Austin
name: Jess
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Washington's Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben]]> 174716416
In this graphic novel biography, author Josh Trujillo and illustrator Levi Hastings tell the true story of one of the most important, but largely forgotten, military leaders of the American Revolution, Baron Von Steuben, who brought much-needed knowledge to the inexperienced and ill-prepared Continental Army. As its first Inspector General, Von Steuben created an organizational framework for the US military, which included writing the Blue Book guide that became the standard for training American soldiers for more than a century.

Von Steuben was also, by all accounts, a flamboyant homosexual in an era when the term didn’t even exist. Beginning with Von Steuben’s career in the Prussian Army, Trujillo explores his recruitment by Benjamin Franklin, his work alongside General George Washington at the Battle of Valley Forge, and his eventual decline into obscurity. In Washington’s Gay General , Trujillo and Hastings impart both the intricacies of queer history and the importance of telling stories that highlight queer experiences.]]> 192 Josh Trujillo 1419743724 Jess 0 3.93 2023 Washington's Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben
author: Josh Trujillo
name: Jess
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/05
date added: 2025/04/05
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]]> Ghost Radio 3707819
Ghost Radio is a terrifying novel about a ghost-story call-in radio show that inadvertently opens a doorway into the paranormal, giving voice to the dead and instigating an epic battle for the souls of the living

From the cramped bowels of a dimly lit radio station, Ghost Radio is beamed onto the airwaves. More than a call-in show to tell scary stories about vampires and poltergeists, Ghost Radio is a sanctuary for those sleepless denizens of the night, lost halfway between this world and the next.

Joaquin, the hip, melancholy host, sits deep in a fog of cigarette smoke, fielding calls from believers and detractors alike. He is joined in the booth by his darkly beautiful girlfriend, Alondra, and his engineer, Watts. Soon what began as an underground cult sensation is primed to break out to mainstream audiences. When a huge radio conglomerate offers to syndicate the show and Ghost Radio becomes a national hit with an expanding legion of hardcore fans, neither Joaquin, Alondra, nor Watts is remotely prepared for what is about to happen.

Though a charismatic host, Joaquin remains a skeptic even as he begins to notice a curious and troubling phenomenon—he feels himself drawn further and further into the terrifying stories he solicits on the radio. Slowly he loses control over his reality and finds himself unable to distinguish between the real world and the world populated by the nightmares on Ghost Radio. He is forced to confront his past and his own mortality in order to save that which is most precious to him and repair the crumbling wall between the living and the dead.]]> 353 Leopoldo Gout 0061242683 Jess 0 to-read 3.05 2008 Ghost Radio
author: Leopoldo Gout
name: Jess
average rating: 3.05
book published: 2008
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
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]]> Victorian Psycho 213395480
Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning.

Wielding her signature sardonic wit and a penchant for the gorgeously macabre, Virginia Feito returns with a vengeance in Victorian Psycho.]]> 208 Virginia Feito 1631498630 Jess 0 to-read 3.53 2025 Victorian Psycho
author: Virginia Feito
name: Jess
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl]]> 40961608 In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows.   The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Timothy Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, he does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect” (New York Times). In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is “arguably the best nonfiction book yet” (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful reminder about the dangers of trifling with nature.]]> 352 Timothy Egan 0547347774 Jess 0 to-read 4.10 2005 The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
author: Timothy Egan
name: Jess
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2005
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: to-read
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]]> Severance 36348525
Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale and satire.]]> 291 Ling Ma 0374261598 Jess 0 to-read 3.87 2018 Severance
author: Ling Ma
name: Jess
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Emergent Strategy, #0)]]> 29633913
Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.]]> 280 Adrienne Maree Brown 1849352607 Jess 0 to-read 4.24 2017 Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Emergent Strategy, #0)
author: Adrienne Maree Brown
name: Jess
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/02
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Dead Dead Girls (Harlem Renaissance Mystery, #1)]]> 55333955
Following a harrowing kidnapping ordeal when she was in her teens, Louise is doing everything she can to maintain a normal life. She’s succeeding, too. She spends her days working at Maggie’s Café and her nights at the Zodiac, Harlem’s hottest speakeasy. Louise’s friends, especially her girlfriend, Rosa Maria Moreno, might say she’s running from her past and the notoriety that still stalks her, but don’t tell her that.

When a girl turns up dead in front of the café, Louise is forced to confront something she’s been trying to ignore—two other local Black girls have been murdered in the past few weeks. After an altercation with a police officer gets her arrested, Louise is given an ultimatum: She can either help solve the case or wind up in a jail cell. Louise has no choice but to investigate and soon finds herself toe-to-toe with a murderous mastermind hell-bent on taking more lives, maybe even her own....]]> 317 Nekesa Afia 0593199103 Jess 0 to-read 3.20 2021 Dead Dead Girls (Harlem Renaissance Mystery, #1)
author: Nekesa Afia
name: Jess
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> Strange Pictures 216670080 The spine-tingling bestseller that has taken Japan by storm—an eerie fresh take on horror for fans of Hidden Pictures and Junji Ito, in which a series of seemingly innocent pictures draws you into a disturbing web of unsolved mysteries and shattered psyches.

An exploration of the macabre, where the seemingly mundane takes on a terrifying significance. . . .

A pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.

A child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message.

A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbithole that will reveal a horrifying reality.

Structured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the mystery behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the internationally bestselling debut from mystery horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.]]> 236 Uketsu 0063433087 Jess 0 to-read 3.91 2022 Strange Pictures
author: Uketsu
name: Jess
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures]]> 857125
The story unfolds in the libertine atmosphere of the 1970s San Francisco, but the significance of Minnie's effort to understand herself and her world is universal. This is the story of an adolescent troubled by the discontinuity between what she thinks and feels and what she observes in those around her. The Diary of a Teenage Girl offers a searing comment on adult society as seen though the eyes of a young woman on the verge of joining it.

In this unusual novel, artist and writer Phoebe Gloeckner presents a pivotal year in a girl's life, recounted in diary pages and illustrations, with full narrative sequences in comics form.]]> 312 Phoebe Gloeckner 1583940634 Jess 0 to-read 3.98 2002 The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures
author: Phoebe Gloeckner
name: Jess
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2002
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Selected Works of Audre Lorde]]> 50489367 A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s "intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible" (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.

Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems—selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay.

Among the essays included here are:
• "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action"
• "The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"
• "I Am Your Sister"
• Excerpts from the American Book Award–winning A Burst of Light

The poems are drawn from Lorde’s nine volumes, including The Black Unicorn and National Book Award finalist From a Land Where Other People Live. Among them are:
• "Martha"
• "A Litany for Survival"
• "Sister Outsider"
• "Making Love to Concrete"]]> 367 Audre Lorde 1324004614 Jess 5 4.62 2020 The Selected Works of Audre Lorde
author: Audre Lorde
name: Jess
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/21
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]]> Greenteeth 214229691 From an outstanding new voice in cozy fantasy comes Greenteeth, a  tale of fae, folklore, and found family, narrated by a charismatic lake-dwelling monster with a voice unlike any other, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher.

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

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

Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny's lake and Temperance's family, as well as the very soul of Britain.]]> 304 Molly O'Neill Jess 0 to-read 3.95 2025 Greenteeth
author: Molly O'Neill
name: Jess
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America]]> 207567756 An investigation into the rise of the Christian right over the last half-century that lays out the grim vision Evangelicals are enforcing on our democracy.

All across America, a storm is gathering: from book bans in school libraries to anti-trans laws in state legislatures; firebombings of abortion clinics and protests against gay rights. The Christian Right, a cunning political force in America for more than half a century, has never been more powerful than it is right now—it propelled Donald Trump to power, and it won’t stop until it’s refashioned America in its own image.

In Wild Faith, critically acclaimed author Talia Lavin goes deep into what motivates the Christian Right, from its segregationist past to a future riddled with apocalyptic ideology.

Using primary sources and firsthand accounts, Lavin introduces you to “deliverance ministers” who carry out exorcisms by the hundreds; modern-day, self-proclaimed prophets and apostles; Christian militias, cults, zealots, and showmen; and the people in power who are aiding them to achieve their goals.

Along the way, she explores anti-abortion terrorists, the Christian Patriarchy movement, with its desire to place all women under absolute male control; the twisted theology that leads to rampant child abuse; and the ways conspiracy theorists and extremist Christians influence each other to mutual political benefit.

From school boards to the Supreme Court, Christian theocracy is ascendant in America—and only through exploring its motivations and impacts can we understand the crisis we face. In Wild Faith, Lavin fearlessly confronts whether our democracy can survive an organized, fervent theocratic movement, one that seeks to impose its religious beliefs on American citizens.]]> 304 Talia Lavin Jess 0 to-read 4.19 2024 Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America
author: Talia Lavin
name: Jess
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> Burn the Place: A Memoir 40916358 A singular, powerfully expressive debut memoir that traces one chef’s struggle to find her place and what happens once she does.

Burn the Place is a galvanizing memoir that chronicles Iliana Regan’s journey from foraging on the family farm to running her Michelin-starred restaurant, Elizabeth. Her story is raw like that first bite of wild onion, alive with startling imagery, and told with uncommon emotional power.

Regan grew up the youngest of four headstrong girls on a small farm in Northwest Indiana. While gathering raspberries as a toddler, Regan preternaturally understood to pick just the ripe fruit and leave the rest for another day. In the family’s leaf-strewn fields, the orange flutes of chanterelles beckoned her while they eluded others.

Regan has had this intense, almost otherworldly connection with food and the earth it comes from since her childhood, but connecting with people has always been more difficult. She was a little girl who longed to be a boy, gay in an intolerant community, an alcoholic before she turned twenty, and a woman in an industry dominated by men—she often felt she “wasn’t made for this world,” and as far as she could tell, the world tended to agree. But as she learned to cook in her childhood farmhouse, got her first restaurant job at age fifteen, taught herself cutting-edge cuisine while running a “new gatherer” underground supper club, and worked her way from front-of-house staff to running her own kitchen, Regan found that food could help her navigate the strangeness of the world around her.

Regan cooks with instinct, memory, and an emotional connection to her ingredients that can’t be taught. Written from that same place of instinct and emotion, Burn the Place tells Regan’s story in raw and vivid prose and brings readers into a world—from the Indiana woods to elite Chicago kitchens—that is entirely original and unforgettable.]]> 250 Iliana Regan 1572842679 Jess 0 to-read 3.61 2019 Burn the Place: A Memoir
author: Iliana Regan
name: Jess
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
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]]> A Song for You & I 214269388 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Being a ranger means adventure, action, and protecting the weak. But who protects the ranger when they lose their way? From the bestselling author of The Moth Keeper and the Tea Dragon Society comes a must read MG graphic novel for fans of soft sweeping fantasy romances.

Rowan knows exactly what they to be a ranger, protecting their village alongside their trusted flying horse Kes. But when Rowan's eagerness to show off their worth gets Kes injured, Rowan is suddenly unsure if they're capable of being the protector they've always dreamed of becoming. 

With Kes needing to heal, Rowan is assigned a slow and winding expedition across the outlying lands. Paired with a lackadasical sheep hearder Leone, Rowan only finds frustration as they seem to fail even the simplest tasks. But Leone's own struggles, and endless support brings a new possibility to Rowan. Could their unlikely friendship be something more? And if it is, will Rowan be able to leave Leone behind to pursue being a ranger once Kes is healed?]]> 240 K. O'Neill 0593182308 Jess 0 to-read 4.21 2025 A Song for You & I
author: K. O'Neill
name: Jess
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> <![CDATA[What Is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution]]> 218569848 A celebrated food writer’s expansive, audacious excavation of the development of modern queer identity and food culture.

Food in America and Europe has long been shaped, twisted, and upended by queer creatives. Beloved food writer John Birdsall fills the gap between the past and present, channeling the twin forces of criticism and cultural history to propel readers into the kitchens, restaurants, swirling party-houses, and humming interior lives of James Baldwin, Alice B. Toklas, Truman Capote, Esther Eng, and others who left an indelible mark on the culinary world from the margins. Queer food is brunch quiche à la Craig Claiborne, Richard Olney’s ecstatic salade composée, and Rainbow Ice-Box Cake from Ernest Matthew Mickler’s White Trash Cooking. It’s the intention surrounding a meal, the circumstances behind it, the people gathered around the table.

With cinematic verve and prose that dazzles, What Is Queer Food? is a monumental a testament to food’s essential link to a modern queerness that reveals how, like fashion or tastes in music, food has become a language of LGBTQ+ identity.]]> 304 John Birdsall 1324073799 Jess 0 to-read 3.26 2025 What Is Queer Food?: How We Served a Revolution
author: John Birdsall
name: Jess
average rating: 3.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> The Needfire 222075746 A Scottish sapphic Gothic horror debut for fans of Rebecca and The Hacienda.

You are afraid of the border places. You are afraid of the fork in the road.

Fleeing her mistakes in Glasgow for a marriage of convenience, Norah Mackenzie’s new home on an estate far in the north of Scotland is a chance for freedom, a fresh start. But in the dim, draughty corridors of Corrain House, something is very wrong. Despite their warm correspondence, her distant, melancholic husband does not seem to know her. She is plagued by ghost ships on the sea, spectres at the corner of her eye, by winding, grasping roots. Her only possible companion, the housekeeper Agnes Gunn, is by turns unnerving and alluring, and harbours uncanny secrets of her own.

As the foundations crumble beneath her feet, Norah must uncover the truth about Corrain House, her husband, Agnes, and herself, if she is to find the freedom she has been chasing.]]> 297 M.K. Hardy 1837862958 Jess 0 to-read 3.55 2025 The Needfire
author: M.K. Hardy
name: Jess
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/03/12
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