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Book List - Books Read in 2020

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<?=$who;?> Books Read in 2020 Edit
List created by Heather D. (icantswim) - on Dec 24, 2019
List Votes: 1 Books: 66 Contributors: 1 Watchers: 0 List Type: Open
1
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan
A charming, clever, and quietly moving debut novel of of endless possibilities and joyful discoveries that explores the promises we make and break, losing and finding ourselves, the objects that hold magic and meaning for our lives, and the surprising connections that bind us. Lime green...  more

Book Votes: 1
2
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James
1920s England: Sarah Piper’s lonely, threadbare existence changes when her temporary agency sends her to assist an obsessed ghost hunter. Alistair Gellis, rich, handsome, and scarred by World War I, has been summoned to investigate the spirit of the nineteen-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who...  more

Book Votes: 1
3
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
A murder? A tragic accident? Or just parents behaving badly? Sometimes it's the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal. What's indisputable is that someone is dead. Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She's funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and...  more

Book Votes: 1
4
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial...  more

Book Votes: 1
5
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The bride – The plus one – The best man – The wedding planner  – The bridesmaid – The body On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The...  more

Book Votes: 1
6
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
A Ladder to the Sky: A Novel by John Boyne
The new novel from the beloved New York Times bestselling author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and The Heart's Invisible Furies, a seductive Highsmithian psychodrama following one brilliant, ruthless man who will stop at nothing in his pursuit of fame If you look hard enough, you can find...  more

Book Votes: 0
7
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Reckless Oath We Made by Bryn Greenwood
A provocative love story between a tough Kansas woman on a crooked path to redemption and the unlikeliest of champions, from the New York Times bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things Zee is nobody's fairy tale princess. Almost six-foot, with a redhead's temper and a shattered...  more

Book Votes: 0
8
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Last Romantics by Tara Conklin
“The greatest works of poetry are the stories we tell about ourselves." When the renowned poet Fiona Skinner is asked about the inspiration behind her iconic work, The Love Poem, she tells her audience a story about her family and a betrayal that reverberates through...  more

Book Votes: 0
9
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Freefall by Jessica Barry
A propulsive debut novel with the intensity of Luckiest Girl Alive and Before the Fall,about a young woman determined to survive and a mother determined to find her.  When your life is a lie, the truth can kill you When her fiancé’s private plane crashes in...  more

Book Votes: 0
10
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Memory Police: A Novel by Yoko Ogawa
A deft and dark Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor. On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, things are disappearing. First, animals and flowers. Then objects?ribbons, bells, photographs. Then, body parts....  more

Book Votes: 0
11
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson
With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of Gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality -- the stories we tell ourselves about our...  more

Book Votes: 0
12
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago & Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)
Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago's brilliant new novel poses the question -- what happens when the grim reaper decides there will be no more death? On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This of course causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and...  more

Book Votes: 0
13
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
?Morbid and illuminating? (Entertainment Weekly)?a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession. Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty?a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre?took a job at a crematory,...  more

Book Votes: 0
14
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Revisioners: A Novel by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Following her National Book Award?nominated debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton returns with this equally elegant and historically inspired story of survivors and healers, of black women and their black sons, set in the American South In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner...  more

Book Votes: 0
15
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot,...  more

Book Votes: 0
16
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Daughter of Moloka'i (Moloka'i, Bk 2) by Alan Brennert
Rachel Kalama was quarantined for most of her life at the isolated leprosy settlement of Kalaupapa-- and forced to give up her daughter at birth. Ruth is taken to the Kapi'olani Home for Girls in Honolulu, and adopted by a Japanese couple who raise her on a farm in California. During World...  more

Book Votes: 0
17
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson
Jacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories. It all starts when six...  more

Book Votes: 0
18
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Holdout: A Novel by Graham Moore
From the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game and bestselling author of The Last Days of Night: a jury on a murder trial is deadlocked when a young woman manages to turn the tide to acquit; now, a decade later, she must face the consequences when a fellow juror is killed and...  more

Book Votes: 0
19
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin
Alexis Schaitkin?s Saint X is a gripping psychological drama straight from the headlines?about a young girl whose older sister vanishes on a luxury Caribbean vacation and, years later, a chance encounter with one of the suspects which spirals into obsession. Claire is only seven years old when...  more

Book Votes: 0
20
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Third Hotel: A Novel by Laura van den Berg
In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband?s death?and the truth about their marriage?in Laura van den Berg?s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery.Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New...  more

Book Votes: 0
21
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Dream Daughter by Diane Chamberlain
New York Times bestselling author Diane Chamberlain delivers a thrilling, mind-bending novel about one mother's journey to save her child. When Carly Sears, a young woman widowed by the Vietnam war, receives the news that her unborn baby girl has a heart defect, she is devastated. It is...  more

Book Votes: 0
22
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum
Palestine, 1990. Seventeen-year-old Isra prefers reading books to entertaining the suitors her father has chosen for her. Over the course of a week, the naïve and dreamy girl finds herself quickly betrothed and married, and is soon living in Brooklyn. There Isra struggles to adapt to the...  more

Book Votes: 0
23
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Sue Trinder is an orphan, left as an infant in the care of Mrs. Sucksby, a "baby farmer," who raised her with unusual tenderness, as if Sue were her own. Mrs. Sucksby’s household, with its fussy babies calmed with doses of gin, also hosts a transient family of petty...  more

Book Votes: 0
24
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick
Librarian Martha Storm has always found it easier to connect with books than people - though not for lack of trying. She keeps careful lists of how to help others in her superhero-themed notebook. And yet, sometimes it feels like she's invisible. All of that changes when a book of fairy...  more

Book Votes: 0
25
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Seven Sisters: A Novel by Lucinda Riley
Maia D'Apliese and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home, 'Atlantis' - a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva - having been told that their beloved father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died. Maia and her sisters were all adopted by...  more

Book Votes: 0
26
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell
Three entangled families living in a house with the darkest of secrets... Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am. She...  more

Book Votes: 0
27
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Force of Nature (Aaron Falk, Bk 2) by Jane Harper
Five women reluctantly pick up their backpacks and start walking along the muddy track. Only four come out the other side. The hike through the rugged Giralang Ranges is meant to take the office colleagues out of their air-conditioned comfort zone and teach resilience and team building. At...  more

Book Votes: 0
28
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Institute by Stephen King
In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis's parents and load him into a black SUV.  The operation takes less than two minutes.  Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own,...  more

Book Votes: 0
29
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, fairly...  more

Book Votes: 0
30
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
Something hasn’t been right at the roadside Sun Down Motel for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why. Upstate New York, 1982:  Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New...  more

Book Votes: 0
31
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Becoming by Michelle Obama
An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first...  more

Book Votes: 0
32
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Olive Kitteridge (Olive Kitteridge, Bk 1) by Elizabeth Strout
At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine... and in the world at large. But she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a...  more

Book Votes: 0
33
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Future Home of the Living God: A Novel by Louise Erdrich
A New York Times Notable Book of 2017Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House, paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a...  more

Book Votes: 0
34
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Gods of Jade and Shadow: A Novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Mayan God of Death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this dark fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore, for readers of The Song of Achilles and Uprooted. Here we shall begin to tell a story: a tale of a throne lost, of monsters and magic. A tale of gods and of the...  more

Book Votes: 0
35
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
Ivy Gamble was born without magic and never wanted it.Ivy Gamble is perfectly happy with her life ? or at least, she?s perfectly fine.She doesn't in any way wish she was like Tabitha, her estranged, gifted twin sister.Ivy Gamble is a liar.Sharp, mainstream fantasy meets compelling thrills of...  more

Book Votes: 0
36
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Little Shop of Found Things (Found Things, Bk 1) by Paula Brackston
An antique shop haunted by a ghost. A silver treasure with an injustice in its story. An adventure to the past she’ll never forget. Xanthe and her mother Flora leave London behind for a fresh start, taking over an antique shop in the historic town of Marlborough. Xanthe has always had...  more

Book Votes: 0
37
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Long Bright River by Liz Moore
Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then, one of them goes missing. In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of...  more

Book Votes: 0
38
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of...  more

Book Votes: 0
39
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
The Last Time I Lied follows a young woman as she returns to her childhood summer camp to uncover the truth about a tragedy that happened there fifteen years ago. Two Truths and a Lie. The girls played it all the time in their tiny cabin at Camp Nightingale. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and...  more

Book Votes: 0
40
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
With stark poignancy and political dispassion Tightrope addresses the crisis in working-class America while focusing on solutions to mend a half century of governmental failure. Drawing us deep into an “other America,” the authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some...  more

Book Votes: 0
41
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
It's late one night at the Spanish port of Algeciras and two fading Irish gangsters are waiting on the boat from Tangier. A lover has been lost, a daughter has gone missing, their world has come asunder - can it be put together again?Night Boat to Tangier is a novel drenched in sex and death and...  more

Book Votes: 0
42
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Case of the Green-Dressed Ghost (Dr Ribero's Agency of the Supernatural, Bk 1) by...
Kester Lanner didn’t know what to expect when he followed his mother’s dying request to contact the mysterious Dr. Ribero, but he wasn’t expecting to find his long lost father. Nor was he expecting to join the family business: catching supernatural spirits. Kester is...  more

Book Votes: 0
43
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Godshot: A Novel by Chelsea Bieker
"Chelsea Bieker's Godshot is an absolute masterpiece. A truly epic journey through girlhood, divinity, and the blood that binds and divides us, it is a feminist magnum opus of this, or any, time. Bieker is a pitch-perfect ventriloquist of extraordinary talent and ferocity. Imagine if Annie...  more

Book Votes: 0
44
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road. One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger...  more

Book Votes: 0
45
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver
“I read The Two Lives of Lydia Bird in a single sitting. What a beautiful, emotional gift Josie Silver has given us.”—Jodi Picoult Written with Josie Silver’s trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love...  more

Book Votes: 0
46
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Tenth Muse: A Novel by Catherine Chung
An exhilarating novel about a trailblazing mathematician who unearths her own extraordinary family story and its roots in World War II The first thing I remember being said of me with any consistency was that I was intelligent--and I recognized even then that it was a comment leveled at me with...  more

Book Votes: 0
47
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Hum If You Don't Know the Words by Bianca Marais
The Secret Life of Bees set in Johannesburg, now in paperback. A perceptive and searing debut about Apartheid South Africa, as told through the story of one unique family brought together by tragedy. Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a nine-year-old white girl...  more

Book Votes: 0
48
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
The suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences. Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she’s accepted an invitation from a mentor in...  more

Book Votes: 0
49
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Bookshop on the Corner (Scottish Bookshop, Bk 1) by Jenny Colgan
Nina Redmond is a literary matchmaker. Pairing a reader with that perfect book is her passion… and also her job. Or at least it was. Until yesterday, she was a librarian in the hectic city. But now the job she loved is no more. Determined to make a new life for herself, Nina moves to a...  more

Book Votes: 0
50
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Girl at War: A Novel by Sara Novic
For readers of Anthony Marra, Téa Obreht, and Anthony Doerr comes a powerful debut novel about a girl?s coming of age?and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war.   Zagreb, 1991. Ana Juri? is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a...  more

Book Votes: 0
51
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
Inception meets True Detective in this science-fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope. The Gone World follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind. Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval...  more

Book Votes: 0
52
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora
Spanning eras and generations, this novel tells of the lives of three women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds...  more

Book Votes: 0
53
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The River by Peter Heller
Wynn and Jack have been best friends since college orientation, bonded by their shared love of mountains, books, and fishing. Wynn is a gentle giant, a Vermont kid never happier than when his feet are in the water. Jack is more rugged, raised on a ranch in Colorado where sleeping under the stars...  more

Book Votes: 0
54
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Shadows by Alex North
You knew a teenager like Charlie Crabtree. A dark imagination, a sinister smile -- always on the outside of the group. Some part of you suspected he might be capable of doing something awful. Twenty-five years ago, Crabtree did just that, committing a murder so shocking that it’s attracted...  more

Book Votes: 0
55
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Guineveres: A Novel by Sarah Domet
?Deft and lovely?The perfect weight, in all ways. It?s suitable for a vacation, and you can describe it in one inviting line, but then it keeps unfolding and deepening, taking unexpected turns.? ?The New York Times Book ReviewTo four girls who have nothing, their friendship is everything: they...  more

Book Votes: 0
56
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying -- from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s...  more

Book Votes: 0
57
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Ghostwriter by Alessandra Torre
Four years ago, I lied. I stood in front of the police, my friends and family, and made up a story, my best one yet. And all of them believed me. I wasn't surprised. Telling stories is what made me famous. Fifteen bestsellers. Millions of fans. Fame and fortune. Now, I have one last...  more

Book Votes: 0
58
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Clockmaker's Daughter by Kate Morton
My real name, no one remembers. The truth about that summer, no one else knows... In the summer of 1862, a group of young artists led by the passionate and talented Edward Radcliffe descends upon Birchwood Manor on the banks of the Upper Thames. Their plan: to spend a secluded summer month in a...  more

Book Votes: 0
59
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of...  more

Book Votes: 0
60
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty
Could ten days at a health resort really change you forever? Nine perfect strangers gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering,...  more

Book Votes: 0
61
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and...  more

Book Votes: 0
62
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness by Yongey Rinpoche M...
An illuminating perspective on the science of meditation?and a handbook for transforming our minds, bodies, and livesIn The Joy of Living, world-renowned Buddhist teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche?the ?happiest man in the world??invites us to join him in unlocking the secrets to finding joy and...  more

Book Votes: 0
63
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
The long-awaited new collection of stunningly original, humane, and already celebrated short stories This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's...  more

Book Votes: 0
64
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Storm Sister (Seven Sisters, Bk 2) by Lucinda Riley
Ally D’Aplièse is about to compete in one of the world’s most perilous yacht races when she hears the news of her adoptive father’s sudden, mysterious death. Rushing back to meet her five sisters at their family home, she discovers that her father -- an elusive...  more

Book Votes: 0
65
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Big Lies in a Small Town by Diane Chamberlain
North Carolina, 2018: Morgan Christopher's life has been derailed. Taking the fall for a crime she did not commit, she finds herself serving a three-year stint in the North Carolina Women's Correctional Center. Her dream of a career in art is put on hold -- until a mysterious visitor...  more

Book Votes: 0
66
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Heather D. (icantswim) -
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman & Neil Smith (Translator)
Looking at real estate isn’t usually a life-or-death situation, but an apartment open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes a group of strangers hostage. The captives include a recently retired couple who relentlessly hunt down fixer-uppers to avoid the...  more

Book Votes: 0

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Comment added 6/6/21 by Jeanne G. (IlliniAlum83) - , :
Loved the Guest List!