en-US Tue, 21 Jul 2026 09:46:01 -0700 60 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 9480 119 Dodie Smith 0491024037 Ebster 0 to-read 3.51 1978
author: Dodie Smith
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1978
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]]> 19312
The two main characters are two brothers; the older Jonatan and the younger Karl. The two brothers' surname was originally Lion, but they are generally known as Lionheart. Karl's nickname is Skorpan (Rusky) since Jonatan likes these typical Swedish toasts or crusts.

In Nangijala, a land in "the campfires and storytelling days", the brothers experience adventures. Together with a resistance group they lead the struggle against the evil Tengil, who rules with the aid of the fearsome fire-breathing dragon, Katla.]]> 231 Astrid Lindgren 1930900244 Ebster 0 to-read 4.34 1973
author: Astrid Lindgren
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/07/04
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]]> 231560 116 Anton Chekhov 1406507881 Ebster 0 to-read 3.87 1897
author: Anton Chekhov
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1897
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/06/30
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]]> 1366730 32 Jacob Grimm 0060851600 Ebster 4 3.93
author: Jacob Grimm
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.93
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2016/09/12
date added: 2026/05/27
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]]> 17448047 ISBN:9781593080563
Pages: 66-69

Grimm's Fairy Tales, by Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics

All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

With the words “Once upon a time,” the Brothers Grimm transport readers to a timeless realm where witches, giants, princesses, kings, fairies, goblins, and wizards fall in love, try to get rich, quarrel with their neighbors, and have magical adventures of all kinds—and in the process reveal essential truths about human nature.

When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm set out to collect stories in the early 1800s, their goal was not to entertain children but to preserve Germanic folklore—and the hard life of European peasants was reflected in the tales they discovered. However, once the brothers saw how the stories entranced young readers, they began softening some of the harsher aspects to make them more suitable for children.

A cornerstone of Western culture since the early 1800s, Grimm’s Fairy Tales is now beloved the world over. This collection of more than 120 of the Grimms’ best tales includes such classics as “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “Hansel and Grethel,” “Rapunzel,” “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” and “The Frog Prince,” as well as others that are no less delightful.

Elizabeth Dalton is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Barnard College. She has published fiction and criticism in The New Yorker, Partisan Review, Commentary, and The New York Times Book Review.]]> Jacob Grimm Ebster 4 3.55
author: Jacob Grimm
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.55
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rating: 4
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date added: 2026/05/24
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]]> 6098570
A soaring work of the imagination based on oral histories of the post-Civil War years in North Texas, Paulette Jiles's The Color of Lightning is at once an intimate look into the hearts and hopes of tragically flawed human beings and a courageous reexamination of a dark American history.]]> 349 Paulette Jiles 1554683173 Ebster 0 to-read 3.98 2009
author: Paulette Jiles
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2009
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date added: 2026/05/05
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]]> 3368338 Book by Chris Mullin 304 Chris Mullin 1853710903 Ebster 0 to-read 4.41 1986
author: Chris Mullin
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/04/22
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]]> 123585 (...)in the creative ways they exclude their children from the discussion.
"You're so right," they say: "Sexual abuse is an enormous problem, particularly for young teens. Thank God mine aren't there yet."

No, sorry, says reality, the most common age at which sexual abuse begins is three.

"Well sure, if you have homosexuals around small children, there's a risk."

No, sorry, says reality, most sexual abuse is committed by heterosexual males.

"Yeah, but that kind of pervert isn't living in our neighbourhood."

Sorry, says reality, but that kind of pervert IS living in your neighbourhood. The Department of Justice estimates that on average, there is one child molester per square mile in the United States.

"Well, at least the police know who these people are."

Not likely, says reality, since the average child molester victimises between 50 and 150 children before he is ever arrested (and many more after he is arrested).

When all defenses against reality are taken away, some parents switch to resignation, literally resigning from responsibility: "Well, there's nothing you can do about it anyway." This misplaced fatalism actually becomes fatal for some children.

Another common refrain uttered by deniers of the dangers of sexual abuse is: "Well, kids are resilient. When bad things happen, they bounce back."

Absolutely not, says reality. Children do not bounce back. They adjust, they conceal, they repress, and sometimes they accept and move on, but they don't bounce back..
(From the foreword written by Gavin de Becker)]]> 288 Anna C. Salter 0465071732 Ebster 0 to-read 4.27 2003
author: Anna C. Salter
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.27
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date added: 2026/04/17
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]]> 240373
The gripping story of an epic prairie snowstorm that killed hundreds of newly arrived settlers and cast a shadow on the promise of the American frontier.

January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent.

By Friday morning, January 13, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.

With the storm as its dramatic, heartbreaking focal point, The Children's Blizzard captures this pivotal moment in American history by tracing the stories of five families who were forever changed that day. Drawing on family interviews and memoirs, as well as hundreds of contemporary accounts, David Laskin creates an intimate picture of the men, women, and children who made choices they would regret as long as they lived. Here too is a meticulous account of the evolution of the storm and the vain struggle of government forecasters to track its progress.

The blizzard of January 12, 1888, is still remembered on the prairie. Children fled that day while their teachers screamed into the relentless roar. Husbands staggered into the blinding wind in search of wives. Fathers collapsed while trying to drag their children to safety. In telling the story of this meteorological catastrophe, the deadliest blizzard ever to hit the prairie states, David Laskin has produced a masterful portrait of a tragic crucible in the settlement of the American heartland.]]> 307 David Laskin 0060520760 Ebster 0 to-read 3.89 2004
author: David Laskin
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2004
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]]> 33911349
Drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries and public records, Caroline Fraser masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder's biography, uncovering the grown-up story behind the best-loved childhood epic of pioneer life.

Set against nearly a century of unimaginable change, from the Homestead Act and the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, Wilder's life was full of drama and adversity. Settling on the frontier amid land-rush speculation, her family endured Biblical tribulations of locusts and drought, poverty and want, before she left at the age of eighteen to marry Almanzo. This is where the books end, but there is so much more to tell; deep in debt after a series of personal tragedies, Laura and Almanzo uprooted themselves once again, crisscrossing the country, taking menial jobs to support the family. In middle age, she began writing a farm advice column, prodded by her journalist daughter Rose. And at the age of sixty, fearing the loss of almost everything in the Depression, she turned to children's books, recasting her extraordinarily difficult childhood as a triumphal vision of homesteading - achieving fame and fortune in the process.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's life is one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches stories in American letters. Offering fresh insight and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman who defined the American pioneer character, and whose artful blend of fact and fiction grips us to this day.]]> 640 Caroline Fraser 1627792767 Ebster 0 to-read 3.94 2017
author: Caroline Fraser
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2017
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]]> 46756 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385721677.
Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.]]> 389 Margaret Atwood Ebster 0 to-read 4.00 2003
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2003
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]]> 55539565 Think Again is a book about the benefit of doubt, and about how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong. Evidence has shown that creative geniuses are not attached to one identity, but constantly willing to rethink their stances and that leaders who admit they don't know something and seek critical feedback lead more productive and innovative teams.

New evidence shows us that as a mindset and a skilllset, rethinking can be taught and Grant explains how to develop the necessary qualities to do it. Section 1 explores why we struggle to think again and how we can learn to do it as individuals, arguing that 'grit' alone can actually be counterproductive. Section 2 discusses how we can help others think again through learning about 'argument literacy'. And the final section 3 looks at how schools, businesses and governments fall short in building cultures that encourage rethinking.

In the end, learning to rethink may be the secret skill to give you the edge in a world changing faster than ever.]]> 307 Adam M. Grant 1984878107 Ebster 0 to-read 4.11 2021
author: Adam M. Grant
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
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date added: 2026/03/19
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]]> 1507800 Book by Aleichem, Sholem 0 Sholom Aleichem 0517030535 Ebster 0 to-read 3.67 1894
author: Sholom Aleichem
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1894
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/03/19
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]]> 5068757 0 Sholom Aleichem 1574535927 Ebster 0 to-read 3.95 1909
author: Sholom Aleichem
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1909
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/03/19
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]]> 51022071
All the while, Farrow and his producer faced a degree of resistance that could not be explained - until now. And a trail of clues revealed corruption and cover-ups from Hollywood, to Washington, and beyond.

This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability and silence victims of abuse - and it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.

Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power - and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook the culture.

In a dramatic account of violence and espionage, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at any cost.]]> 608 Ronan Farrow 0316454133 Ebster 0 to-read 4.32 2019
author: Ronan Farrow
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/02/11
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]]> 510907


At sixteen, Lance Bass received a phone call from Justin Timberlake that would change his life forever. Soon after, he left his small-town home in Clinton, Mississippi, to join an emerging musical group called *NSYNC. Two years later *NSYNC was inspiring Beatles-esque mania around the world, becoming the face of the new MTV generation, and earning the all-time record for most album sales in a single day (more than one million) and in a single week for No Strings Attached.



He's remained in the spotlight ever since, and here he talks in depth for the first time about his childhood, his astonishing experiences as a young man and Christian growing up in one of the biggest bands in the world, his shock and frustration at the band's eventual dissolution, and his subsequent career, including his six months in Russia, training to become a cosmonaut.



He also frankly discusses life as a gay man -- his first same-sex relationship at twenty-one, his struggle to keep his sexuality hidden from *NSYNC's fans in case it jeopardized the band's success, and the true circumstances that led to his decision to publicly come out at the age of twenty-seven.



Full of fascinating behind-the-scenes lore and revealing insights from a pop star who, until now, has been notoriously private, Out of Sync is the book that millions of fans have been waiting for.




About the Author

LANCE BASS is the ultimate multi-hyphenate: singer-actor-producer-writer-entrepreneur-philanthropist. As a member of *NSYNC, Lance won a number of honors, including a People's Choice Award, an American Music Award, an MTV Video Music Award, a Kids' Choice Award, and a host of Grammy nominations. Lance was inducted into the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame, making him the youngest person ever to receive this honor. He is currently Youth Spokesperson for World Space Week and remains active in various charitable organizations, including the Lance Bass Foundation, created to meet the health and educational needs of children. Lance lives in Los Angeles.]]> 208 Lance Bass 1416947884 Ebster 0
Which is interesting, because nowadays it seems like him being gay is the least interesting thing about him.

I'm still a little sad that he didn't get to go to space :(


PS:

Towards the end, Lance brings up (seemingly at random) Lou Pearlman and his disappointments with how things felt unresolved with him.

It's cool to see he was thinking of it back then because (being from the future) I know Lance is gonna make a really interesting documentary about it eventually.]]> 3.52 2007
author: Lance Bass
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2007
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This is a pretty straightforward, topical memoir. It doesn't delve too deeply into the NSYNC years. It mostly exists for him to talk about his upbringing and struggles with sexuality.

Which is interesting, because nowadays it seems like him being gay is the least interesting thing about him.

I'm still a little sad that he didn't get to go to space :(


PS:

Towards the end, Lance brings up (seemingly at random) Lou Pearlman and his disappointments with how things felt unresolved with him.

It's cool to see he was thinking of it back then because (being from the future) I know Lance is gonna make a really interesting documentary about it eventually.
]]> 888 360 Edward Bulwer-Lytton 158715739X Ebster 0 to-read 3.66 1834
author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.66
book published: 1834
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/02/06
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]]> 211200239
The viral TikTok stalker dark romance, burning with high heat, hilarious banter, and a love story like you’ve never seen before. Can you handle the ride?

I want someone with a soul as black as night. Someone who would burn the world down for me and not lose a single minute of sleep over it.

Trauma nurse Aly Cappellucci doesn’t need any more kinks. She likes the one she’s landed on just fine. To her, nothing could top the masked men she follows online. Unless one of those men was shirtless, heavily tattooed, and waiting for her in her bedroom. She dreams about being hunted by one in particular, of him chasing her down and doing deliciously dark things to her willing body. She never could have guessed that by sending one drunken text, those dreams would become her new reality.

I want things most people don’t, craving darkness and depravity instead of light and love.

Josh Hammond has spent his life avoiding the limelight, but his online persona is another story. At night, he posts masked thirst traps for his millions of fans to drool over, but one follower has caught his eye: Aly. After reading a comment begging him to break into her house wearing a mask, he decides to take her up on her offer.

Together, Aly and Josh live out their darkest fantasies, unaware that Aly has captured the attention of someone else. Someone with far more sinister intentions than a little light stalking. As Josh turns from predator to protector and the stakes heighten, he must ask himself how far he’s willing to go for the woman he’s obsessed with.

Lights Out is a fast-paced dark romance with a morally gray male lead. Some themes and scenes may be disturbing to readers. Please check the TWs at the beginning of the book.

Tropes: Stalker romance / Morally grey MMC / Masked stalker / He falls first / Black cat x golden retriever / Kink friendly]]> 416 Navessa Allen 1638932239 Ebster 0
The characters are engaging enough that if they ended up headlining a murder mystery series, I'd be interested in reading their next adventure.]]> 3.99 2024
author: Navessa Allen
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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It's a kink story that doesn't try too hard to be edgy.

The characters are engaging enough that if they ended up headlining a murder mystery series, I'd be interested in reading their next adventure.
]]> 716094
Now, for the first time, Brown, with journalist Rob Merritt, gets to tell his full version of the story. He describes the warning signs that were missed or ignored, and the evidence that was kept hidden from the public after the murders. He takes on those who say that rock music or video games caused Klebold and Harris to kill their classmates and explores what it might have been that pushed these two young men, from supposedly stable families, to harbor such violent and apocalyptic dreams.

Shocking as well as inspirational and insightful, No Easy Answers is an authentic wake-up call for all the psychologists, authorities, parents, and law enforcement personnel who have attempted to understand the murders at Columbine High School. As the title suggests, the book offers no easy answers, but instead presents the unvarnished facts about growing up as an alienated teenager in America today.

Brooks Brown graduated from Columbine High School in 1999; this is his first book. Most recently, Brooks worked and consulted on Michael Moores latest documentary called Bowling for Columbine. He lives in Littleton, Colorado. Rob Merritt graduated from the University of Iowa School of Journalism in 1998 and currently works as a newspaper writer in Marshalltown, Iowa.]]> 277 Brooks Brown 1590560310 Ebster 0 to-read 3.99 2002
author: Brooks Brown
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2002
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]]> 42058511
Revisiting Dr. Michael Stone's groundbreaking 22-level Gradations of Evil Scale, a hierarchy of evil behavior first introduced in the book The Anatomy of Evil, Stone and Dr. Gary Brucato, a fellow violence and serious psychopathology expert, here provide even more detail, using dozens of cases to exemplify the categories along the continuum. The New Evil also presents compelling evidence that, since a cultural tipping-point in the 1960s, certain types of violent crime have emerged that in earlier decades never or very rarely occurred.

The authors examine the biological and psychiatric factors behind serial killing, serial rape, torture, mass and spree murders, and other severe forms of violence. They persuasively argue that, in at least some cases, a collapse of moral faculties contributes to the commission of such heinous crimes, such that "evil" should be considered not only a valid area of inquiry, but, in our current cultural climate, an imperative one. They consider the effects of new technologies and sociological, cultural, and historical factors since the 1960s that may have set the stage for "the new evil." Further, they explain how personality, psychosis, and other qualities can meaningfully contribute to particular crimes, making for many different motives.

Relying on their extensive clinical experience, and examination of writings and artwork by infamous serial killers, these experts offer many insights into the logic that drives horrible criminal behavior, and they discuss the hope that in the future such violence may be prevented.]]> 615 Michael H. Stone 163388533X Ebster 0 to-read 4.15
author: Michael H. Stone
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.15
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]]> 18803640 300 Helen Macdonald 0224097008 Ebster 0 to-read 3.72 2014
author: Helen Macdonald
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2014
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date added: 2026/01/25
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]]> 209351031 192 Andrew J. Bauman 1540903974 Ebster 0 to-read 4.52
author: Andrew J. Bauman
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.52
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date added: 2026/01/22
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]]> 310459 288 Mildred D. Taylor 014034893X Ebster 0 to-read 3.89 1976
author: Mildred D. Taylor
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1976
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]]> 182867362
Just as their investigations were unfolding, the brutal double murder of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh rocketed Alex Murdaugh onto the international stage. From the newsroom to the courtroom, Blood on Their Hands is a propulsive true crime saga, an empathetic work of investigative journalism, and an excoriation of the “good old boy” systems that enabled a network of criminals.]]> 272 Mandy Matney 006326921X Ebster 0 to-read 3.62 2023
author: Mandy Matney
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2023
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date added: 2026/01/21
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]]> 223665360
When a new neighbor, Bitsy, moves in, Lulu suspects that something darker lurks behind the woman's constant smile. As her fixation on Bitsy deepens, Lulu is drawn into a web of unsettling truths that threaten to expose the cracks in her own life. The more she uncovers about Bitsy, the more she questions everything she thought she knew―and soon, others begin questioning her sanity. But is Lulu truly losing her mind? Or is she on the verge of discovering a reality too terrifying to accept?

In the vein of The Bell Jar and The Hours, The Mad Wife weaves domestic drama with psychological suspense, so poignant and immersive, you won't want to put it down.]]> 352 Meagan Church 1464236747 Ebster 0 to-read 3.83 2025
author: Meagan Church
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/19
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]]> 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 Ebster 0 to-read 4.10 2005
author: Timothy Egan
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2005
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]]> 176883 The Politics of Reality includes essays that examine sexism, the exploitation of women, the gay rights movement and other topics from a feminist perspective.]]> 192 Marilyn Frye 089594099X Ebster 0 to-read 4.16 1983
author: Marilyn Frye
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1983
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/04
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]]> 2337326 352 Gertrude Atherton 141793400X Ebster 0 to-read 3.18 1923
author: Gertrude Atherton
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.18
book published: 1923
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/01/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 193388653 The unforgettable memoir by the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who dared to take on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words—until now.

In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody’s Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.

Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody’s Girl preserve her voice—and her legacy—forever.

Nobody’s Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre’s unshakable will—first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.]]> 367 Virginia Roberts Giuffre 0593493125 Ebster 0 currently-reading 4.47 2025
author: Virginia Roberts Giuffre
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/12/20
date added: 2025/12/20
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]]> 3778463 238 Eliza Gatewood Warren 1591972094 Ebster 4 4.07
author: Eliza Gatewood Warren
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 4
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date added: 2025/12/13
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]]> 234356296 A former public defender takes us behind the closed doors of America's criminal courts, revealing how the institutions that claim to protect us are doing the exact opposite—and offering a blueprint for finally fixing it.

“Galvin-Almanza takes readers inside the system with crystalline insight, heart, and writerly skill. Anyone who cares about justice should read this urgently-needed book.”—Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money

As Americans, we are told a rose-tinted story about our criminal courts—that these are the hallowed halls of justice, that the purpose of our legal process is to find the truth, and that those who enforce the law are both equitable and heroic. But what if the reality is being purposefully obscured to hide something rotten at the system’s core?

In The Price of Mercy, attorney and former public defender Emily Galvin Almanza weaves hard data and unforgettable stories, dark humor and compelling evidence to tell us the truth about what’s really going on behind the closed doors of America’s criminal courts. She shows us how jails actually increase future crime, the dirty tricks police use to make millions in overtime pay, how a man could spend decades in prison because scientists mistook dog hair for his own, the perverse incentives that push prosecutors to seek convictions even when they themselves don’t want to, and how judges may decide cases differently after lunch.

We’ll learn what’s working, how public defenders can improve public health and even economic mobility, and how planting more trees can reduce a neighborhood’s murder rates. But a lone defender winning a case won’t change the system. Galvin Almanza argues that we need an engaged public to confront the stark reality of our crime-generating, poverty-entrenching, health-destroying legal apparatus and rebuild it into something that can save our collective present and prevent our future from being torn apart.

Provocative and eye-opening, The Price of Mercy lifts the curtain on the way our laws really operate and presents a path forward for true transformation of the American criminal court system. Justice, and the law itself, is not some static thing. It is something enacted together, decision by decision, in acts of inhumanity or mercy.]]> 377 Emily Galvin Almanza 0593799127 Ebster 0 to-read 4.41
author: Emily Galvin Almanza
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.41
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date added: 2025/12/04
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]]> 86103
How have national pride and American patriotism come to seem an endorsement of atrocities--from slavery to the slaughter of Native Americans, from the rape of ancient forests to the Vietnam War? Achieving Our Country traces the sources of this debilitating mentality of shame in the Left, as well as the harm it does to its proponents and to the country. At the center of this history is the conflict between the Old Left and the New that arose during the Vietnam War era. Richard Rorty describes how the paradoxical victory of the antiwar movement, ushering in the Nixon years, encouraged a disillusioned generation of intellectuals to pursue "High Theory" at the expense of considering the place of ideas in our common life. In this turn to theory, Rorty sees a retreat from the secularism and pragmatism championed by Dewey and Whitman, and he decries the tendency of the heirs of the New Left to theorize about the United States from a distance instead of participating in the civic work of shaping our national future.

In the absence of a vibrant, active Left, the views of intellectuals on the American Right have come to dominate the public sphere. This galvanizing book, adapted from Rorty's Massey Lectures of 1997, takes the first step toward redressing the imbalance in American cultural life by rallying those on the Left to the civic engagement and inspiration needed for "achieving our country."]]> 176 Richard Rorty 0674003128 Ebster 0 to-read 4.13 1998
author: Richard Rorty
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 243440960 The Hunt was intended to make us an example, not a threat. That changes now.

Thirty-year-old Orelle Bren knows the best way to avoid death is to play by the rules of a society that only values women as wives and wombs. Though it would be nice to reclaim the dream life her ex-husband stole from her, Orelle would gladly settle for a loveless engagement that exempts her from being among the ten unwed, childless women drafted for the annual Hunt.

It’s supposed to be an honor, being selected to leave their underground utopia to eliminate the Sols—humans who’ve been mutated with corrupt magic by exposure to the sun.

But Orelle knows it’s a glorified death sentence, especially for someone who’s already in a daily battle with their own body.

When her desperate attempts at enticement fail and she’s cast above into the fatal world of light, an unexpected ally challenges Orelle to find a new dream of living—and maybe even loving—out of spite.

To do that, there are few lines she won’t cross to uncover the true monsters before becoming one herself, or something even worse: prey.

The first book in a duology that follows a disabled woman fighting to live—and love—out of spite in the deadly world of light after her eviction from the underground haven. A weaponized lottery system, corrupt utopia, and slow-burn romantic sub-plot that’ll have you squealing over a simple wrist touch make this the perfect read for fans of The Hunger Games, Blood Over Bright Haven, and Gild.

May the shadows guide you.]]> Alexis Maragold Ebster 0 to-read 4.24 2026
author: Alexis Maragold
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 240060955 347 Allison Regina Gliot 0819831670 Ebster 0 to-read 4.55
author: Allison Regina Gliot
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.55
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 529252 Will Jessica steal Todd from Elizabeth?

Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield are identical twins at Sweet Valley High. They're both popular, smart, and gorgeous, but that's where the similarity ends. Elizabeth is friendly, outgoing, and sincere—nothing like her snobbish and conniving twin. Jessica gets what she wants—at school, with friends, and especially with boys.

This time, Jessica has set her sights on Todd Wilkins, the handsome star of the basketball team—the one boy that Elizabeth really likes. Elizabeth doesn't want to lose him, but what Jessica wants, Jessica usually gets ... even if it ends up hurting her sister.

Meet the Wakefield twins, their guys, and the rest of the gang at Sweet Valley High....]]> 182 Francine Pascal 0553250337 Ebster 0 to-read 3.58 1983
author: Francine Pascal
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1983
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/22
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 250792 Ain't I a Woman examines the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism within the recent women's movement, and black women's involvement with feminism.]]> 205 bell hooks 089608129X Ebster 0 to-read 4.51 1981
author: bell hooks
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.51
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 18330117 25 H.P. Lovecraft 1443427063 Ebster 3
http://www.horrortalk.com/features/34...

Basically Dr Moreau and Dr Jekyll teach a seminar at Miskatonic University, and study the mysterious qualities of a meteor.

Now I've listened to/read the original stories for each of the three main characters, I really think they took a few liberties with them. In the original, the unnamed scientists aren't able to discover any latent qualities to the rock (except that it disapears) so they don't tell the family that lives where the meteor came down anything about it.

WHELL WHAT ABOUT THE DANCING DEAD BUNNIES OK? Or What about Jekyll and that other assitant dude going all exorcist HUH?!?!?

YA THINK YOU COULD HAVE GIVEN THEM A HEADS UP?!?!?

Mad scientists...you can't count on them for anything. [spoilers removed] /facepalm]]> 4.08 1927
author: H.P. Lovecraft
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1927
rating: 3
read at: 2015/06/23
date added: 2025/11/15
shelves:
review:
Fanfiction based on this story convinced me I was ready for Lovecraftian horror:

http://www.horrortalk.com/features/34...

Basically Dr Moreau and Dr Jekyll teach a seminar at Miskatonic University, and study the mysterious qualities of a meteor.

Now I've listened to/read the original stories for each of the three main characters, I really think they took a few liberties with them. In the original, the unnamed scientists aren't able to discover any latent qualities to the rock (except that it disapears) so they don't tell the family that lives where the meteor came down anything about it.

WHELL WHAT ABOUT THE DANCING DEAD BUNNIES OK? Or What about Jekyll and that other assitant dude going all exorcist HUH?!?!?

YA THINK YOU COULD HAVE GIVEN THEM A HEADS UP?!?!?

Mad scientists...you can't count on them for anything. [spoilers removed] /facepalm
]]> 39359728 “Mary Renault is a shining light to both historical novelists and their readers. She does not pretend the past is like the present, or that the people of ancient Greece were just like us. She shows us their strangeness; discerning, sure-footed, challenging our values, piquing our curiosity, she leads us through an alien landscape that moves and delights us.” —Hilary Mantel

In myth, Theseus was the slayer of the child-devouring Minotaur in Crete. What the founder-hero might have been in real life is another question, brilliantly explored in The King Must Die. Drawing on modern scholarship and archaeological findings at Knossos, Mary Renault’s Theseus is an utterly lifelike figure—a king of immense charisma, whose boundless strivings flow from strength and weakness—but also one steered by implacable prophecy.

The story follows Theseus’s adventures from Troizen to Eleusis, where the death in the book’s title is to take place, and from Athens to Crete, where he learns to jump bulls and is named king of the victims. Richly imbued with the spirit of its time, this is a page-turner as well as a daring act of imagination.

Renault’s story of Theseus continues with the sequel The Bull from the Sea.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Mary Renault including rare images of the author.
]]> 354 Mary Renault 1480433128 Ebster 0 to-read 3.92 1958
author: Mary Renault
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1958
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11933489 Manufacturing Consent Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky show how an underlying elite consensus largely structures all facets of the news. Far from challenging established power, the media work hard to discover and mirror its assumptions. The authors skilfully dissect the way in which the marketplace and the economics of publishing significantly shape the news. They reveal how issues are framed and topics chosen, and contrast the double standards underlying accounts of free elections, a free press, and governmental repression. The authors conclude that the modern mass media can best be understood in terms of a 'propaganda model'. News and entertainment companies dedicate themselves to profit within the established system. Their interests require that they support the governing assumptions of state and private power. The propaganda model provokes outrage from journalists, editors and broadcasters, but twenty years after first publication, Manufacturing Consent remains the most important critique of the mass media.]]> 464 Edward S. Herman Ebster 0 to-read 4.22 1988
author: Edward S. Herman
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1988
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 328424
The experiences absorbed through these "skins too few" are evoked in this memoir of Doris Lessing's childhood and youth as the daughter of a British colonial family in Persia and Southern Rhodesia Honestly and with overwhelming immediacy, Lessing maps the growth of her consciousness, her sexuality, and her politics, offering a rare opportunity to get under her skin and discover the forces that made her one of the most distinguished writers of our time.]]> 448 Doris Lessing 0060926643 Ebster 0 to-read 4.10 1994
author: Doris Lessing
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 215358342
Part Bible study and part personal faith journey, The Judas Effect is about the selling out of Christian values for political gain. It’s about how, buoyed by Trumpism, the message ringing from church bells across America has morphed from “goodwill toward men” to “it’s us against them.” By sharing her own faith crisis, Hawk casts a vision for the evangelical church that steers us away from Judas’s power lust, toward a Christ-centered mission of servitude, humility, compassion, and kindness.]]> 232 Amy Hawk 1666763667 Ebster 0 to-read 4.53
author: Amy Hawk
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.53
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 3088548 7 Kate Chopin 1883049334 Ebster 0 to-read 4.01 1893
author: Kate Chopin
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1893
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 39926 368 Naomi Wolf 0060512180 Ebster 0 to-read 3.90 1990
author: Naomi Wolf
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 204593914 Welcome to Phantasma. There are only two rules to the game: Stay alive. And don’t fall in love.

When Ophelia’s sister disappears, there is only one way to save her. Ophelia must enter Phantasma, a deadly contest inside a haunted mansion, and claim its prize—a single wish.

Phantasma is a maze of twisting corridors and lavish ballrooms, of demons and temptations. Ophelia will face nine challenges, each more dangerous than the last. There can only be one winner, and the other contestants will stop at nothing to eliminate their rivals.

Every day the house creates new monsters. But just as Ophelia’s fears threaten to overwhelm her, a mysterious stranger offers her a bargain.

Charming, arrogant and infuriatingly attractive, Blackwell claims he can guide her through the lethal trials ahead. All he asks in return is ten years of her life.

Ophelia knows she shouldn’t trust him. Blackwell doesn’t seem dangerous, but appearances can be deceptive. Worse still, she feels a dark and irresistible attraction drawing them closer and closer.

Her life is on the line. But in Phantasma, the only thing deadlier than losing the game is losing your heart . . .]]> 497 Kaylie Smith 1538769255 Ebster 0 to-read 4.01 2024
author: Kaylie Smith
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 125157226 The rules were simple: keep his hands off his agent's daughter and stay out of trouble.

But now he's stuck with her. There's only one bed. And well, rules are made to be broken.

Rhett Eaton is the face of professional bull riding. The golden boy. Or at least he was until it all blew up in his face after a public brawl. Now his agent says he has to clean up his image, and sticks Rhett with his ball-busting daughter for the rest of the season as "full-time supervision."

But Rhett doesn't need a goddamn babysitter--especially one with skin-tight jeans, a sexy smirk, and a mouth she can't stop running.

A mouth he can't stop thinking about.

And he quickly learns that Summer Hamilton isn't just another conquest. She sees the man behind the mask, and she doesn't run--she pulls him closer, even when she shouldn't.

She says this means nothing.

Rhett says this means everything.

She says there are boundaries they shouldn't cross. That Rhett's reputation can't take any more hits...and neither can her damaged heart.

Rhett says he's going to steal it anyway.]]> 378 Elsie Silver 1728297001 Ebster 0 to-read 3.90 2022
author: Elsie Silver
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 84943172 RYAN
I’m the newest Captain of the Devils, Chicago’s NBA team, and the last thing I needed this year was for Indy Ivers, my sister’s best friend, to move into my apartment. She’s messy, emotional, and way too tempting.

But when the team’s General Manager vocalizes his blatant disapproval of my promotion to Captain, referring to me as an unapproachable lone wolf with no work-life balance, I can’t think of a better way to convince him otherwise than pretending to date my outgoing roommate.

The only problem? Faking it feels far too natural.

Having a fake girlfriend wasn’t supposed to be messy but having Indy under my roof and in my bed is complicated, especially when she wants all the romantic parts of life that I could never give her.


INDY
I never imagined I’d be living with my best friend’s brother, NBA superstar Ryan Shay. Even more unbelievable? He needs me to act as his loving girlfriend who’s suddenly changed him into a friendly and approachable guy.

Because, well…he’s not. He’s controlling of his space and untrusting of others.

Our arrangement isn’t one-sided, though. I’m in a wedding coming up, one where every one of my childhood friends, including my ex-boyfriend, will be in attendance, and there’s no better date than my ex’s celebrity hero.

Blurred lines make it almost impossible to separate real from fake. Falling for my roommate was never part of the deal, especially when Ryan is quick to remind me that he doesn’t believe in love.

I’m a romantic and can’t help fantasizing that he’ll change, but soon enough, I find myself questioning if sharing a roof with my best friend’s brother was the right move after all]]> 499 Liz Tomforde Ebster 0 to-read 4.37 2023
author: Liz Tomforde
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60909831 ZANDERS

Chicago hockey isn't complete without me - everyone's favourite player to hate. I know my role, and I play it well. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy spending the majority of my game time in the penalty box before leaving the arena with a new girl on my arm each night.

What I don't like is the new flight attendant on our team's private plane. She works for me, not the other way around. But I'll be sure to remind her of that, and I can guarantee, by the end of the season, she'll be begging to quit her job.

But every road trip blurs the lines, and I can't quite figure out if I keep pushing that flight attendant call button in order to push her buttons, or if it's more than that.

STEVIE

I've been a flight attendant for years. I thought I'd seen it all, but when my new job lands me onboard working for the most egotistical and self-righteous diva in the NHL, I start to second guess everything. Including the promise I made to myself of never hooking up with an athlete again . . . no matter how annoyingly tempting he may be.

Evan Zanders is unfiltered, unapologetic, and too attractive for his own good. He loves his image, but I hate everything about it.

Everything but him.]]> 603 Liz Tomforde Ebster 0 to-read 3.92 2022
author: Liz Tomforde
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61918816 A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances, and the joy in finding your perfect match.

Dr. Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalized, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin’-seven on Briana’s “pain in my ass” scale. But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr. Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter.

And it’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her “sob closet,” and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses. But when Jacob decides to give Briana the best gift imaginable—a kidney for her brother—she wonders just how she can resist this quietly sexy new doctor . . . especially when he calls in a favor she can’t refuse.]]> 398 Abby Jimenez 1538704390 Ebster 0 4.27 2023
author: Abby Jimenez
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2025/10/28
date added: 2025/10/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 282758 320 Julian Baggini 0452287448 Ebster 0 to-read 3.74 2005
author: Julian Baggini
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 6632182 256 Peter H. Aykroyd 1605298751 Ebster 0 to-read 3.40 2009
author: Peter H. Aykroyd
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 487216 120 Samantha Stonebraker 0312261144 Ebster 0
'Did you know??? That underneath their clothes??? The backstreet boys are naked?!?!?'

😆

But really, it's a very genuine and sometimes quite thoughtful retrospective of a relationship.

She's got a very mature outlook on it, doesn't scandalize it too much, but is still honest.



PS.


I got this book to see if Siberia, one of Brian's favorite songs, was autobiographical. It isn't about Sam directly, but the ones that are written about her are, like, less mature versions of what that song is conveying.

Breaking up was definitely the right thing to do. Hope she's out there living her best life.]]> 3.93 1999
author: Samantha Stonebraker
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at: 2025/10/23
date added: 2025/10/23
shelves:
review:
This was actually really sweet. It's written in an interview format, and I was expecting it to be kind of like:

'Did you know??? That underneath their clothes??? The backstreet boys are naked?!?!?'

😆

But really, it's a very genuine and sometimes quite thoughtful retrospective of a relationship.

She's got a very mature outlook on it, doesn't scandalize it too much, but is still honest.



PS.


I got this book to see if Siberia, one of Brian's favorite songs, was autobiographical. It isn't about Sam directly, but the ones that are written about her are, like, less mature versions of what that song is conveying.

Breaking up was definitely the right thing to do. Hope she's out there living her best life.
]]> 544343 Backstreet Boy, he was my boy--and I want to share his whole exciting story with you.]]> 182 Jane Carter 0451408950 Ebster 0 'When you care for older and sick men and women, you see firsthand that the opportunities and the dreams each one of them once had have slipped away. It is the nature of those who have reached old age to look back. Once someone gets to that time in life, they always look back with longing and sometimes also with regret. Some have more regret than others and point to the roads they should have taken, the people to whom they should have said "I'm Sorry."'

This book is written in a quippy-style, like it could have been a series of magazine articles. There's even a little quiz at the end like those types of teen/tween magazines would have had.

I do get the feeling that the author is conveying her and her family's lives through rose-tinted glasses, which isn't entirely inappropriate, but it was refreshing when her eldest son and daughter gave her a reality check.

This is definitely a novelty book, but essential if you're addicted to the Carter Family's Dirty Laundry saga.

As flawed as it is, she's giving us a perspective that her children can't. Some of their most formative experiences are ones they can barely remember, but obviously, they still had a powerful impact.

You can definitely see how Nick has tried to pass the positive things his mom did for him along to his own children.

PS

I wish she could've told us more about Grandpa Spaulding. Nick really seems to love him.

Also, when I first knew of this book's existencene I thought it was creepy that a parent would so readily share their kid's baby photos with the world.
Wow, how things have changed these past 26 years!]]> 3.51 1998
author: Jane Carter
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.51
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at: 2025/10/23
date added: 2025/10/23
shelves:
review:
'When you care for older and sick men and women, you see firsthand that the opportunities and the dreams each one of them once had have slipped away. It is the nature of those who have reached old age to look back. Once someone gets to that time in life, they always look back with longing and sometimes also with regret. Some have more regret than others and point to the roads they should have taken, the people to whom they should have said "I'm Sorry."'

This book is written in a quippy-style, like it could have been a series of magazine articles. There's even a little quiz at the end like those types of teen/tween magazines would have had.

I do get the feeling that the author is conveying her and her family's lives through rose-tinted glasses, which isn't entirely inappropriate, but it was refreshing when her eldest son and daughter gave her a reality check.

This is definitely a novelty book, but essential if you're addicted to the Carter Family's Dirty Laundry saga.

As flawed as it is, she's giving us a perspective that her children can't. Some of their most formative experiences are ones they can barely remember, but obviously, they still had a powerful impact.

You can definitely see how Nick has tried to pass the positive things his mom did for him along to his own children.

PS

I wish she could've told us more about Grandpa Spaulding. Nick really seems to love him.

Also, when I first knew of this book's existencene I thought it was creepy that a parent would so readily share their kid's baby photos with the world.
Wow, how things have changed these past 26 years!
]]> 1224369 in8. Broché. 362 Barbara Cartland 0515095125 Ebster 0 to-read 3.83
author: Barbara Cartland
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.83
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 35231460
A letter that was never meant to be seen, a lie that was never meant to be told, a life he never dreamed he could have. Evan Hansen is about to get the one thing he's always a chance to finally fit in. Both deeply personal and profoundly contemporary, Dear Evan Hansen is a new American musical about life and the way we live it.

The book-produced by Melcher Media, the team behind Hamilton , Wicked , Rent , and many more-tells the story of the musical from its conception nearly a decade ago to the Broadway stage. From developing the idea to writing the show, composing, casting, and rehearsals, Dear Evan Hansen appeals to fans far and wide offering them the opportunity to continuously revisit the show, and for those who haven't seen the musical, reading the book will make them feel like they have.

Filled with interviews with the cast and crew, original behind-the-scenes photography, a deeper look into Evan's fictional world and the visual world of the show, unreleased lyrics, and of course the libretto, as well as reflections on the creators own formative memories from their adolescence as it relates to the show's themes, and important examinations of how we present ourselves online and mental health, Dear Evan Hansen is a beautifully produced, thoughtful, and uplifting book.]]> 224 Steven Levenson 1538761912 Ebster 0 to-read 4.51
author: Steven Levenson
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.51
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 65212029 Nat Cassidy is at his razor-sharp best again with his horror novel Nestlings, which harnesses the creeping paranoia of Rosemary's Baby and the urban horror of 'Salem's Lot, set in an exclusive New York City residential building.

Ana and Reid need a break. The horrifically complicated birth of their first child has left Ana paralyzed, bitter, and struggling―with mobility, with her relationship with Reid, with resentment for her baby. Reid dismisses disturbing events and Ana’s deep unease and paranoia, but he can't explain the needle-like bite marks on their baby.]]> 293 Nat Cassidy 1250265258 Ebster 0 to-read 3.78 2023
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 231246952 THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER

A Book of the Year in The Times and Financial Times

‘The biographer who brought down Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’ THE OBSERVER

‘This isn’t a book; it’s a case for revolution’ SUNDAY TIMES

'Undoubtedly the most important book of the last year, if not the century' MAIL ON SUNDAY

‘This book has changed the way its readers think. Possibly the most important book that touches on the British monarchy since the days of Thomas Payne’ WILL LLOYD

‘As represented in the book’s pages, the royal family, with its appendages and penumbra, can be seen as an impossible entity, toxic to those in it and attached to it, and subtly contaminating the rest of us.’ DAVID AARONOVICH

‘Surely has a claim to the title of book of the year, for its seismic impact’ FINANCIAL TIMES

Drawing on four years of research, numerous FOI requests and interviews with over a hundred people who have never spoken out before, the book traces the lives of the late Queen’s second son and his ex-wife through their childhoods, courtship, marriage, divorce, careers, and royal and charitable activities.

Having still lived together until their departure from Royal Lodge in 2025, they claimed to be "the happiest divorced couple in the world". The book investigates the reality of their relationship and their love lives. It charts Andrew’s record in the Falklands, his business activities and reveals details of how the couple have been able financially to sustain their extravagant lifestyles. It also recounts the full story of their links with Jeffrey Epstein.

Chronicling their lives in parallel, the picture that emerges is of a spoilt former prince unable to connect and a former duchess pushed by her insecurities into a desperate need to maintain the attention her ‘royal’ status brought. Rigorously researched and packed full of revelations, this is eye-watering biography at its best.

‘This isn't just a royal biography. It's a study in reputational collapse and the danger of unchecked power inside Britain's most protected institution' THE STANDARD

‘A catalyst for Andrew’s de-princing’ THE TIMES]]> Andrew Lownie Ebster 0 to-read 3.62 2025
author: Andrew Lownie
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61099621
Kash Patel partners with Beacon of Freedom Publishing House, an imprint of BRAVE Books, to bring a fantastical retelling of Hillary’s horrible plot against Trump to the whole family.

Full of fake heralds and keeper Komey’s spying slugs, this is a story of daring and danger. But never fear! Kash the Distinguished Discoverer will win the day.]]> 40 Kash Patel 1955550123 Ebster 0 to-read 2.19 2022
author: Kash Patel
name: Ebster
average rating: 2.19
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54985743 Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows without a doubt it was on that ill-fated final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?]]> 361 Emily Henry 1984806750 Ebster 0 to-read 3.83 2021
author: Emily Henry
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
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]]> 65137920 The Keeper of Stories meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets.

‘The thing about books,’ she said ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.’

On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found…

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder… where nothing is as it seems.]]> 444 Evie Woods 0008609209 Ebster 0 to-read 3.97 2023
author: Evie Woods
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/09/19
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]]> 124942162
I want you to KNOW what to do in an emergency, so we can prevent injury and death, and that is why I wrote this book. Every year, hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries could be prevented if people knew what to do.

The guide answers these do you do if someone has an asthma attack?How do you do CPR?What do you do if someone is having a life-threatening allergic reaction?How do you know if someone is having a stroke?What do you do if you get stabbed?And many, many more
Instant Hero focuses on basic first aid, and addresses the most common life-threatening emergencies, taking each body system up one at a systemCirculatory systemRespiratory SystemEtc.
Now, this isn't just another first aid guide. It has something very special that I developed. With our framework you can know how to handle any medical emergency, and it is easy to remember.

We also wrote the book in simple English, and defined all difficult words with a glossary, this way anyone even an elementary school student can read and understand it.

It is YOURS, download it now and get empowered.

Purchase it here on Amazon, or go to our website to download it for www.polarisdrt.org

The mission of Polaris is to turn potential disaster victims into disaster rescuers by empowering them with training.]]> 389 Kieram Litchfield Ebster 0 to-read 0.0
author: Kieram Litchfield
name: Ebster
average rating: 0.0
book published:
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]]> 1352601 Translated from the French by George Morehead

Contents:
* The Arrest of Arsène Lupin
* Arsène Lupin in Prison
* The Escape of Arsène Lupin
* The Mysterious Traveller
* The Queen's Necklace
* The Seven of Hearts
* Madame Imbert's Safe
* The Black Pearl
* Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late]]> 308 Maurice Leblanc 0836939549 Ebster 0 to-read 3.70 1907
author: Maurice Leblanc
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1907
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> 39963 148 Richard Peck 0142401102 Ebster 0 to-read 3.97 1998
author: Richard Peck
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1998
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201626940 From New York Times bestseller Maureen Callahan, a fierce, character-driven exposé of the real Kennedy Curse—the family’s generations-long legacy of misogyny, murder, and mayhem—and the women who have paid the price for our obsession with Camelot

The Kennedy name has long been synonymous with wealth, power, glamor, and—above all else—integrity. But this carefully constructed veneer hides a dark truth: the pattern of Kennedy men physically and psychologically abusing women and girls, leaving a trail of ruin and death in each generation’s wake. Through decades of scandal after scandal—from sexual assaults to reputational slander, suicides to manslaughter—the family and their defenders have kept the Kennedy brand intact.

Now, in Ask Not, bestselling author and journalist Maureen Callahan reveals the Kennedys’ hidden history of violence and exploitation, laying bare their unrepentant sexism and rampant depravity while also restoring these women and girls to their rightful place at the center of the dynasty’s story: from Jacqueline Onassis and Marilyn Monroe to Carolyn Bessette, Martha Moxley, Mary Jo Kopechne, Rosemary Kennedy, and many others whose names aren’t nearly as well known but should be.

Drawing on years of explosive reportage and written in electric prose, Ask Not is a long-overdue reckoning with this fabled family and a consequential part of American history that is still very much with us. At long last Callahan redirects the spotlight to the women in the Kennedys’ orbit, paying homage to those who freed themselves and giving voice to those who, through no fault of their own, could not.]]> 400 Maureen Callahan 0316276170 Ebster 0 4.01 2024
author: Maureen Callahan
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/09/15
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review:

]]> 75513900 She is the very thing he’s spent his whole life hunting.
He is the very thing she’s spent her whole life pretending to be.

Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya—the exceptional, the empowered, the Elites.

The powers these Elites have possessed for decades were graciously gifted to them by the Plague, though not all were fortunate enough to both survive the sickness and reap the reward. Those born Ordinary are just that—ordinary. And when the king decreed that all Ordinaries be banished in order to preserve his Elite society, lacking an ability suddenly became a crime—making Paedyn Gray a felon by fate and a thief by necessity.

Surviving in the slums as an Ordinary is no simple task, and Paedyn knows this better than most. Having been trained by her father to be overly observant since she was a child, Paedyn poses as a Psychic in the crowded city, blending in with the Elites as best she can in order to stay alive and out of trouble. Easier said than done.

When Paeydn unsuspectingly saves one of Ilyas princes, she finds herself thrown into the Purging Trials. The brutal competition exists to showcase the Elites’ powers—the very thing Paedyn lacks. If the Trials and the opponents within them don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for certainly will if he discovers what she is—completely Ordinary.]]> 526 Lauren Roberts Ebster 0 to-read 4.12 2023
author: Lauren Roberts
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/09/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 17802605
 ]]> 256 Nick Carter 1939457882 Ebster 0 Physician, heal thyself

I'm impressed with how much actionable information is in this book: When he talks about getting help, he actually addresses things like financial barriers people may face when trying to get into therapy. I wish more self-help style books would do this!

I also think that the writing style and vocabulary are accessible to people who aren't into self-help books. It becomes evident pretty early that he chose to do this because, just like in his professional life, he's trying to reach a particular target audience.

In this case, it's his siblings (and people like them).

As a person who also envisioned a closer relationship with my siblings than ended up happening, I can relate to this element of his struggles more than the addiction struggles.

The biggest takeaway for me was weirldy about forgiveness, though: most people will say something like 'Forgiveness for your enemy is really for you !! "

Well, that doesn't work when a part of you enjoys hating someone!


Look at it this way: forgiving that person makes them less important to you.

(Ok, Nick, maybe I did need to be called out like that!)

I would recommend this for people with borderline personality tendencies who recognize they need to make a change but aren't sure how.






PS: It's nice to know the 2006 version of Nick Carter was exactly as much of a meatheaded moron as he looked. It's also nice that he didn't stay a moron forever.]]> 3.50 2013
author: Nick Carter
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at: 2025/09/11
date added: 2025/09/11
shelves:
review:
Physician, heal thyself

I'm impressed with how much actionable information is in this book: When he talks about getting help, he actually addresses things like financial barriers people may face when trying to get into therapy. I wish more self-help style books would do this!

I also think that the writing style and vocabulary are accessible to people who aren't into self-help books. It becomes evident pretty early that he chose to do this because, just like in his professional life, he's trying to reach a particular target audience.

In this case, it's his siblings (and people like them).

As a person who also envisioned a closer relationship with my siblings than ended up happening, I can relate to this element of his struggles more than the addiction struggles.

The biggest takeaway for me was weirldy about forgiveness, though: most people will say something like 'Forgiveness for your enemy is really for you !! "

Well, that doesn't work when a part of you enjoys hating someone!


Look at it this way: forgiving that person makes them less important to you.

(Ok, Nick, maybe I did need to be called out like that!)

I would recommend this for people with borderline personality tendencies who recognize they need to make a change but aren't sure how.






PS: It's nice to know the 2006 version of Nick Carter was exactly as much of a meatheaded moron as he looked. It's also nice that he didn't stay a moron forever.
]]> 120718 102 Maurice Sendak 0517586592 Ebster 0 to-read 4.02 1984
author: Maurice Sendak
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/09/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 299763
Steeped in tradition and lore, the grand bastion known as El Cid is considered one of the South's most infamous and controversial institutions. Built in 1842, it has turned out a unique brand of Southern man -- and now woman. This is the true account of one young woman's battle to be a part of the long gray line.]]> 238 Nancy R. Mace 0689840039 Ebster 0 to-read 3.93 2001
author: Nancy R. Mace
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/09/03
shelves: to-read
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]]> 164255
And Adam, though only eleven, was to remember his father's words when his beloved dog, Nick, was stolen and Roger had disappeared and he found himself traveling alone along these same great roads, searching the fairs and market towns for his father and his dog.

Here is a story of thirteenth-century England, so absorbing and lively that for all its authenticity it scarcely seems "historical." Although crammed with odd facts and lore about the time when "longen folke to goon on pilgrimages," its scraps of song and hymn and jongleur's tale of the period seem as newminted and fresh as the day they were devised, and Adam is a real boy inside his gay striped surcoat.]]> 317 Elizabeth Janet Gray 0142406597 Ebster 0 to-read 3.78 1942
author: Elizabeth Janet Gray
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1942
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/30
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]]> 978689  
That’s Milton Mayer, writing in a foreword to the 1966 edition of They Thought They Were Free. He’s right about the critics: the book was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. General readers may have been slower to take notice, but over time they did—what we’ve seen over decades is that any time people, across the political spectrum, start to feel that freedom is threatened, the book experiences a ripple of word-of-mouth interest. And that interest has never been more prominent or potent than what we’ve seen in the past year.
 
They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. His discussions with them of Nazism, the rise of the Reich, and mass complicity with evil became the backbone of this book, an indictment of the ordinary German that is all the more powerful for its refusal to let the rest of us pretend that our moment, our society, our country are fundamentally immune.
 
A new foreword to this edition by eminent historian of the Reich Richard J. Evans puts the book in historical and contemporary context. We live in an age of fervid politics and hyperbolic rhetoric. They Thought They Were Free cuts through that, revealing instead the slow, quiet accretions of change, complicity, and abdication of moral authority that quietly mark the rise of evil.]]> 346 Milton Sanford Mayer 0226511928 Ebster 0 to-read 4.10 1955
author: Milton Sanford Mayer
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1955
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/27
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]]> 1264883 207 Judith Herrin 0670893773 Ebster 0 to-read 3.94 1999
author: Judith Herrin
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/25
shelves: to-read
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]]> 70027 104 Alexandre Dumas 1600961304 Ebster 0 to-read 3.72
author: Alexandre Dumas
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.72
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/08/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> 855731 104 Joe O'Donnell 0826514677 Ebster 0 to-read 4.38 2005
author: Joe O'Donnell
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/08/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 12741006 80 Hans Christian Andersen Ebster 0 to-read 4.07
author: Hans Christian Andersen
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.07
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/15
shelves: to-read
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]]> 181110045 A haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, D.C. boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?

Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.]]> 432 Kate Quinn 0063244748 Ebster 0 to-read 4.23 2024
author: Kate Quinn
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/08/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 563205 192 Deborah Mitford 0711218374 Ebster 0 to-read 4.07 1999
author: Deborah Mitford
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1999
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 563203 208 Deborah Mitford 0711222576 Ebster 0 to-read 3.94 2003
author: Deborah Mitford
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2003
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> 2986183
When all the galaxies are colonized, John Craig, a young space diplomat, is captured by interplanetary pirates and sold into slavery.

On Kossr, where boredom and absolute power have driven the rulers to a special kind of madness, Craig is auctioned off to the exquisite Lady Morgan Sidney, a beautiful, sensual woman. He soon makes his way from the hellish slave mines into her bed in the tower of her castle. And it is here, under the strange castle, that he finds the secret that may bring about the end of man in the galaxy.]]> 248 Donald Barr 0860000249 Ebster 0 to-read 2.90 1973
author: Donald Barr
name: Ebster
average rating: 2.90
book published: 1973
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/26
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]]> 426952 The Silver Call collects two of the earlier novels-Trek to Kraggen-Cor and The Brega Path-in one volume for the very first time.]]> 507 Dennis L. McKiernan 0451458613 Ebster 0 to-read 3.99 2001
author: Dennis L. McKiernan
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 827274 The Corn King and the Spring Queen tells of ancient civilisations where tenderness, beauty and love vie with brutality and dark magic. Erif Der, a young witch, is compelled by her father to marry his powerful rival, Tarrik the Corn King, so becoming the Spring Queen. Forced by her father, she uses her magic spells to try and break Tarrik's power. But one night Tarrik rescues Sphaeros, an Hellenic philosopher, from a shipwreck. Sphaeros in turn rescues Tarrik from near death and so breaks the enchantment that has bound him. And so begins for Tarrik a Quest - a fabulous voyage of discovery which will bring him new knowledge and which will reunite him with his beautiful Spring Queen.]]> 719 Naomi Mitchison 0939149990 Ebster 0 to-read 3.96 1931
author: Naomi Mitchison
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1931
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/22
shelves: to-read
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]]> 31122 408 Dodie Smith 0312181108 Ebster 0 to-read 3.98 1948
author: Dodie Smith
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1948
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/19
shelves: to-read
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]]> 51256446
Anglo-Saxon women were prized for their bloodlines - one had such rich blood that it sparked a war - and one was appointed regent of a foreign country. Royal mothers wielded power; Eadgifu, wife of Edward the Elder, maintained a position of authority during the reigns of both her sons.

Æthelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, was a queen in all but name, while few have heard of Queen Seaxburh, who ruled Wessex, or Queen Cynethryth, who issued her own coinage. She, too, was accused of murder, but was also, like many of the royal women, literate and highly-educated.

From seventh-century Northumbria to eleventh-century Wessex and making extensive use of primary sources, Women of Power in Anglo-Saxon England examines the lives of individual women in a way that has often been done for the Anglo-Saxon men but not for their wives, sisters, mothers and daughters. It tells their stories: those who ruled and schemed, the peace-weavers and the warrior women, the saints and the sinners. It explores, and restores, their reputations.]]> 240 Annie Whitehead 1526748118 Ebster 0 to-read 3.85
author: Annie Whitehead
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.85
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/20
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]]> 37959891
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita is one of the most beloved and notorious novels of all time. And yet, very few of its readers know that the subject of the novel was inspired by a real-life case: the 1948 abduction of eleven-year-old Sally Horner.

Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, The Real Lolita tells Sally Horner’s full story for the very first time. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records, and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing Lolita.

Sally Horner’s story echoes the stories of countless girls and women who never had the chance to speak for themselves. By diving deeper in the publication history of Lolita and restoring Sally to her rightful place in the lore of the novel’s creation, The Real Lolita casts a new light on the dark inspiration for a modern classic.
Duration: 07:26:31]]> 8 Sarah Weinman 0062661957 Ebster 0 to-read 3.41 2018
author: Sarah Weinman
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.41
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1898
Into Thin Air is the definitive account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of the bestseller Into the Wild. On assignment for Outside Magazine to report on the growing commercialization of the mountain, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas as a client of Rob Hall, the most respected high-altitude guide in the world. A rangy, thirty-five-year-old New Zealander, Hall had summited Everest four times between 1990 and 1995 and had led thirty-nine climbers to the top. Ascending the mountain in close proximity to Hall's team was a guided expedition led by Scott Fischer, a forty-year-old American with legendary strength and drive who had climbed the peak without supplemental oxygen in 1994. But neither Hall nor Fischer survived the rogue storm that struck in May 1996.

Krakauer examines what it is about Everest that has compelled so many people -- including himself -- to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concerns of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer's eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.]]> 368 Jon Krakauer Ebster 0 to-read 4.25 1997
author: Jon Krakauer
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/14
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]]> 11862952
This edition is an unusual book, as it was published sideways, so that you turn the pages from bottom to top. This edition is illustrated by William Pène du Bois. It also features an introduction by Professor Willy Ley and an epilogue by Dr. Hubertus Strughold. The Englsh translation is by George M. Towle from 1874.]]> 100 Jules Verne Ebster 0 to-read 3.12 1872
author: Jules Verne
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.12
book published: 1872
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/11
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]]> 20010025
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.]]> 70 Catherine Thomson Dickens 117543163X Ebster 0 to-read 4.00 1852
author: Catherine Thomson Dickens
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1852
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 63915715
Gritta, Appel, and Efi managed to survive the Black Death, only to find that they are in desperate need of money. With limited options and lots of obstacles, they band together to become alewives - brewing and selling ale in the free Alsatian town of Colmar. But when an elderly neighbor is discovered dead in her house, the alewives cannot convince the sheriff and the town council that her death wasn’t an accident, it was murder. As the body count piles up, the ale flows and mystery is afoot!

Set in the tumultuous years after the most devastating pandemic the world has ever experienced, The Alewives is a playful romp through a dark time, when society was reeling from loss and a grieving population attempted to return to normal, proving that with the bonds of love, friendship, and humor, the human spirit will always continue to shine.]]> 266 Elizabeth R. Andersen Ebster 0 to-read 3.89
author: Elizabeth R. Andersen
name: Ebster
average rating: 3.89
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 58950736 From a New York Times investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist, “an essential book for our times” (Ezra Klein), tracking the high-stakes inside story of how Big Tech’s breakneck race to drive engagement—and profits—at all costs fractured the world

We all have a vague sense that social media is bad for our minds, for our children, and for our democracies. But the truth is that its reach and impact run far deeper than we have understood. Building on years of international reporting, Max Fisher tells the gripping and galling inside story of how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks, in their pursuit of unfettered profits, preyed on psychological frailties to create the algorithms that drive everyday users to extreme opinions and, increasingly, extreme actions. As Fisher demonstrates, the companies’ founding tenets, combined with a blinkered focus maximizing engagement, have led to a destabilized world for everyone.

Traversing the planet, Fisher tracks the ubiquity of hate speech and its spillover into violence, ills that first festered in far-off locales to their dark culmination in America during the pandemic, the 2020 election, and the Capitol Insurrection. Through it all, the social-media giants refused to intervene in any meaningful way, claiming to champion free speech when in fact what they most prized were limitless profits. The result, as Fisher shows, is a cultural shift toward a world in which people are polarized not by beliefs based on facts, but by misinformation, outrage, and fear.

His narrative is about more than the villains, however. Fisher also weaves together the stories of the heroic outsiders and Silicon Valley defectors who raised the alarm and revealed what was happening behind the closed doors of Big Tech. Both panoramic and intimate, The Chaos Machine is the definitive account of the meteoric rise and troubled legacy of the tech titans, as well as a rousing and hopeful call to arrest the havoc wreaked on our minds and our world before it’s too late.]]> 400 Max Fisher 031670332X Ebster 0 to-read 4.25 2022
author: Max Fisher
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2022
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/06/03
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]]> 1078
A poignant tale about the life and labors of a Chinese farmer during the sweeping reign of the country¹s last emperor.

Each enriched classic edition includes:

• A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
• A chronology of the author's life and work
• A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
• An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
• Detailed explanatory notes
• Critical analysis, including contemporary and modern perspectives on the work
• Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
• A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

SERIES EDITED BY CYNTHIA BRANTLEY JOHNSON]]> 418 Pearl S. Buck 1416500189 Ebster 0 to-read 4.00 1931
author: Pearl S. Buck
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1931
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/30
shelves: to-read
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]]> 1182403
The popularity of this book in Australia for over thirty years means that adults and children alike look forward to such favourites as the train cake (pictured on the cover), the piano cake, the popcorn-studded duck, or the jelly-filled swimming pool.]]> 128 Maryanne Blacker 0949892742 Ebster 0 to-read 4.65 1990
author: Maryanne Blacker
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.65
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/25
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]]> 1044689 128 Australian Women's Weekly 0949892785 Ebster 0 to-read 4.00 1990
author: Australian Women's Weekly
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1990
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/05/25
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]]> 12519893 “This is my kitchen. Come on in, but be prepared—it might not be quite what you expect. There is flour on the counter, oats that overflowed onto the floor, chocolate-encrusted spoons in the sink. There is Joey, the husband, exhausted by the thirty-five preschoolers who were hanging on him all day, and he is stuffing granola into his mouth to ease his five o’clock starvation. There are two little girls trying to show me cartwheels in that miniscule space between the refrigerator and the counter where I really need to be.”
 
In her debut cookbook, Alana Chernila inspires you to step inside your kitchen, take a look around, and change the way you relate to food. The Homemade Pantry was born of a tight budget, Alana’s love for sharing recipes with her farmers’ market customers, and a desire to enjoy a happy cooking and eating life with her young family. On a mission to kick their packaged-food habit, she learned that with a little determination, anything she could buy at the store could be made in her kitchen, and her homemade versions were more satisfying, easier to make than she expected, and tastier. 
           
Here are her very approachable recipes for 101 everyday staples, organized by supermarket aisle—from crackers to cheese, pesto to sauerkraut, and mayonnaise to toaster pastries. The Homemade Pantry is a celebration of food made by hand—warm mozzarella that is stretched, thick lasagna noodles rolled from flour and egg, fresh tomato sauce that bubbles on the stove. Whether you are trying a recipe for butter, potato chips, spice mixes, or ketchup, you will discover the magic and thrill that comes with the homemade pantry.
           
Alana captures the humor and messiness of everyday family life, too. A true friend to the home cook, she shares her “tense moments” to help you get through your own. With stories offering patient, humble advice, tips for storing the homemade foods, and rich four-color photography throughout, The Homemade Pantry will quickly become the go-to source for how to make delicious staples in your home kitchen.
]]> 288 Alana Chernila 030788726X Ebster 0 to-read 3.74 2012
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]]> 3773807 بی‌خانمان داستان رمی، پسر هشت ساله سر راهی و آواره است.
بی‌خانمان داستان تلاش و پشتکار در برابر ناملایمات و سختی‌ها است.
بی‌خانمان داستان مهر بی‌پایان رمی به نامادری خویش است.
بی‌خانمان داستانی از امید، در اوج ناامیدی، گرسنگی و تنهایی است.
سرانجام رمی چه خواهد شد؟...
متن پشت کتاب]]> 0 Hector Malot 2092703293 Ebster 0 to-read 4.32 1878
author: Hector Malot
name: Ebster
average rating: 4.32
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]]> 22318033 Unknown Ebster 0 3.24 2014
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]]> 347430 Mama Makes Up Her Mind or listened to Bailey White's commentaries on NPR knows that she is a storyteller of inimitable wit and charm. Now, in her stunningly accomplished first novel, she introduces us to the peculiar yet lovable people who inhabit a small town in south Georgia. Meet serious, studious Roger, the peanut pathologist and unlikely love object of half the town's women. Meet Roger's ex-mother-in-law, Louise, who teams up with an ardent typographer in an attempt to attract outer-space invaders with specific combinations of letters and numbers. And meet Della, the bird artist who captivates Roger with the sensible but enigmatic notes she leaves on things she throws away at the Dumpster ("This fan works, but makes a clicking sound and will not oscillate").
  
Heartbreakingly tender, often hilarious, Quite a Year for Plums is a delectable treat from a writer who has been called a national treasure.]]> 220 Bailey White 0679764925 Ebster 0 to-read 3.21 1998
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name: Ebster
average rating: 3.21
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]]> 907260    Soon, one by one, the last of the Yahi died--until Ishi was left alone, the sole survivor of a proud people. When Ishi stumbled into a small California mining town, the world learned his true story for the first time. This is the incredible story of the last hunter of the Yahi tribe, and how he brought to "civilization" all the courage, faith and strength of the Yahi Way of Life.]]> 208 Theodora Kroeber 0553248987 Ebster 0 to-read 3.98 1964
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name: Ebster
average rating: 3.98
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]]> 53914938 The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of East-End London poverty, works the legendary code-breaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter—the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger—and their true enemy...]]> 656 Kate Quinn 0062943472 Ebster 0 to-read 4.41 2021
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]]> 59829178 Audiobook duration: 16 hours and 1 minute

The bestselling author of The King in the North turns his attention to the obscure era of British history known as 'the age of Arthur'.

Somewhere in the dim void between the departure from Britain of the Roman legions at the start of the fifth century and the days of the venerable Bede, the kingdoms of Early Medieval Britain were formed. But by whom? And out of what?

Max Adams scrutinizes the narrative handed down to us by later historians and chronicles, stripping away the most lurid nonsense about Arthur and synthesizing the research of the last forty years to tease out strands of reality from myth. His central theme evolves from an apparently simple question: how, after the end of the Roman state, were people taxed? Rejecting ethnic and nationalist explanations for the emergence of the Early Medieval kingdoms, Adams shows how careful use of a wide range of perspectives from anthropology to geography can deliver a picture of the emergence of distinct polities in the sixth century that survive long enough to be embedded in the medieval landscape, recorded in the lines of river, road and watershed and in place names.]]> 17 Max Adams 1838937293 Ebster 0 to-read 3.44 2021
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average rating: 3.44
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]]> 61340217
This magnificent volume―the first modern edition of Blackwell’s herbal―reproduces all five hundred of her exquisite plates. Blackwell not only made the drawings, but prepared the copper plates and personally hand-colored them. Her handwritten descriptions of the plants, which she creatively adapted (with permission) from Joseph Miller’s Botanicum Officinale , retain considerable interest. This book features a previously unknown preface by Blackwell, in which she reveals her passion for art and nature, and her vision for the herbal. Two introductory texts contextualize Blackwell’s the noted garden writer Marta McDowell explores the history of herbals as a genre, and the state of botanical knowledge in Blackwell’s time; and the historian Janet Stiles Tyson relates the artist’s rather extraordinary biography.

A Curious Herbal will be essential for all lovers of botanical art, and for anyone interested in women’s history and the history of science.


500 full-color illustrations]]> 576 Janet Stiles Tyson 0789214539 Ebster 0 to-read 4.73
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]]> 355697
In 1914 a room full of German schoolboys, fresh-faced and idealistic, are goaded by their schoolmaster to troop off to the ‘glorious war’. With the fire and patriotism of youth they sign up. What follows is the moving story of a young ‘unknown soldier’ experiencing the horror and disillusionment of life in the trenches.]]> 296 Erich Maria Remarque 0449213943 Ebster 0 to-read 4.07 1928
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name: Ebster
average rating: 4.07
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]]> 3432478 The Sisterhood always knows best.
The Guardians will protect and serve.
The Unconsecrated will never relent.
And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future—between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?]]> 336 Carrie Ryan 0575090855 Ebster 0 to-read 3.62 2009
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name: Ebster
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2009
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]]>