en-US Sun, 11 May 2025 06:24:58 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 36223860 alternate cover for ISBN 9781250186928

It has a dark past – one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot." But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks.]]> 158 Martha Wells Cindy 5 4.23 2018
author: Martha Wells
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/11
date added: 2025/05/11
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]]> 219542914 She deserved more. They all did. A gripping and emotional new suspense novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This is Where it Ends.

A terrible accident. A horrible loss. A regrettable tragedy. That's all anyone in Fenix can talk about when a fire consumes the local high school, taking the life of a student. The town mourns, except who really knew―let alone cared about―Eden when she was alive? And why was she in the building that night?

Five teens each hold a piece of the truth about what happened. They also have their own secrets, secrets they will fight to protect with the same fury as the blaze that killed Eden. But silence is meant to be broken, and this story can't be extinguished
]]> 352 Marieke Nijkamp 1728291208 Cindy 0 to-read 3.73
author: Marieke Nijkamp
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.73
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 13129925
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.

A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, ±áŽÇ°ù°ùŽÇ°ùČőłÙö°ù is designed to retain its luster and natural appearance for a lifetime of use. Pleasingly proportioned with generous French flaps and a softcover binding, ±áŽÇ°ù°ùŽÇ°ùČőłÙö°ù delivers the psychological terror you need in the elegant package you deserve.

Designed by Andie Reid, cover photography by Christine Ferrara.]]> 248 Grady Hendrix 1594745269 Cindy 5
This book is amazing. Hendrix is such a genius I feel despair (as a writer). To conclude, this book is fucking terrifying. And also funny. But mostly terrifying.]]> 3.64 2014
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/07
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves:
review:
How does Hendrix make me feel like I’M the one [spoilers removed]??? I might never be able to bring myself to step into another IKEA ever again.

This book is amazing. Hendrix is such a genius I feel despair (as a writer). To conclude, this book is fucking terrifying. And also funny. But mostly terrifying.
]]> 190165394 ASIN moved from less recent edition

A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence.

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated spacefaring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. Exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids, for their own safety.

But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid — a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

But when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and their Murderbot to get to the truth.]]> 156 Martha Wells Cindy 5 4.25 2017
author: Martha Wells
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/04
date added: 2025/05/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 199300544 Cheats. Liars. Fakes. Friends? A breathtaking contemporary YA thriller – serious questions and hot romance in an irresistible twisty mystery. Perfect for fans of One of Us is Lying.

Jo used to be the perfect high-school girl – class president, popular, bright and successful. But when nude photos of her were leaked to the entire school, her grades plummeted, her friends fell away and now she's a reckless, difficult social outcast. The girl who 'deserved' it.

Then her former best friend Maddie disappears. Everyone else assumes Maddie has just run away but that doesn't add up to Jo. To discover the truth, Jo needs to get back in with the group of classmates who have shut her out: the boys who betrayed her and the clique of girls who whisper behind her back. And she has to make it look as if she wants to be there.

The only way back in is through Hudson. An old fling with his own reasons for finding Maddie, he persuades Jo to fake date him. And it works. But as the truth about Maddie's disappearance comes to light, so do long-hidden secrets from Jo's past. Who is Jo really trying to find-Maddie, or the girl she herself used to be?

A gripping read, perfect for fans of One of Us is Lying, We Were Liars and A Good Girl's Guide to Murder.]]> 320 Meredith Adamo 1526669862 Cindy 5 3.92 2024
author: Meredith Adamo
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
Many YA thrillers are fast-paced and twisty. Not many, however, are full of heart and humor like Not Like Other Girls. Messy, confused, hurting, and brave Jo had me laughing and crying and rooting for her from start to finish. Thank you Meredith Adamo for writing such an incredible book!
]]> 60018623
Amy Foster considers herself lucky. After she left the city and moved to the suburbs, she found her place quickly with neighbors Liz, Jess, and Melissa, snarking together from the outskirts of the PTA crowd. One night during their monthly wine get-together, the crew concoct a plan for a clubhouse She Shed in Liz’s backyard—a space for just them, no spouses or kids allowed.

But the night after they christen the She Shed, things start to feel . . . off. They didn’t expect Liz’s little home-improvement project to release a demonic force that turns their quiet enclave into something out of a nightmare. And that’s before the homeowners’ association gets wind of it.

Even the calmest moms can’t justify the strange burn marks, self-moving dolls, and horrible smells surrounding their possessed friend, Liz. Together, Amy, Jess, and Melissa must fight the evil spirit to save Liz and the neighborhood . . . before the suburbs go completely to hell.]]> 336 Maureen Kilmer 0593422376 Cindy 0 to-read 3.49 2022
author: Maureen Kilmer
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 216563981 Hunger devours.
Takeaway food and human flesh. Sexual humiliation or humanity's survival. Smooth, unblemished skin.

It cannot be sated.
But people try. They push eager hands into their own gaping injuries. They suck the blood of rabbits and other people. They buy from a restaurant that only serves food they didn't order. They do everything the song from the ocean demands.

This outstanding first collection cements Eliza Clark's place as one of the UK's most extraordinary voices. Its ten dark, visceral stories range from urban teenage fantasies to dystopian, each bursting with unexpected and insatiable intruders into bodies, communities and ecosystems - both deeply desired and violently resisted.]]> 225 Eliza Clark 0571371817 Cindy 0 to-read 3.82 2024
author: Eliza Clark
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/04/16
shelves: to-read
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]]> 209823376 Some secrets just won't stay hidden in this twisty new thriller from New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Megan Lally!

To Brooke, image is everything. She works hard to maintain perfect grades, perfect looks, a perfect life—especially after "the incident" that threatened it all. Getting into her dream university puts her that much closer to a fresh start. How can she say no to celebrating with all her classmates?

Hanging out with her crush by the bonfire is the perfect end to the night. Except it isn't the end. An old truck starts aggressively tailing Brooke and her best friend on the isolated road toward home. Someone thinks they know the truth about "the incident," and they won't stop until it's all out in the open. This terrifying drive is about to bring out Brooke's worst fears
if she survives it.]]> 259 Megan Lally 1728270146 Cindy 0 3.55 2025
author: Megan Lally
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
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]]> 58568509 The storm isn't the only thing they'll have to survive.

It was supposed to be just one night in the cabin: one night for Lottie and her brand new stepsister, Jade, to try to get along. When a solar flare causes a massive blackout―no power or cell signal―Lottie knows they've got a long night ahead of them.

Then, in the dark, someone else shows up at the cabin―a stranger named Alex, claiming to be lost and needing shelter from the coming snowstorm. But later that night, Lottie spies him in the driveway talking to two mysterious men in a pickup truck, and she's sure he's lying about why he's here.

Before Lottie can find out more, a fire forces her, Jade, and Alex out into the blizzard, where they must rely on one another to get to safety―wherever that is. In the remote, freezing Tahoe wilderness, they have to survive more than just the elements. Soon it becomes clear that Alex's accomplices are hunting for all three of them, in a scheme that's gone too far and taken a chilling, deadly turn.]]> 320 Keely Parrack 1728256763 Cindy 0 to-read 3.34 2022
author: Keely Parrack
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 200174176
Twelve million people were watching when Rhys Sutton died on camera, and someone must pay for the crime. The best friend, the rival, the girlfriend, the lover, and the sworn enemy are left standing. And of course, no one is talking. But how do you keep secrets when the world has been watching? Especially when, just a day before his murder, Rhys was the most hated man on television.]]> 432 Bea Fitzgerald 1728278759 Cindy 0 to-read 3.16 2024
author: Bea Fitzgerald
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.16
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 200174139 White Lotus meets Kevin Wilson in this whip-smart social satire about a man who finds himself trapped on an island resort after the sun literally explodes, and suddenly must choose whether to save himself from the chaos, or help fellow guests make it off the island alive


Vacation Checklist: Ìę
Pack swim trunks.Ìę
Apply sunscreen.Ìę
Survive the apocalypse?

Professional underachiever Dan Foster is finally taking a vacation. Sure, his life has been average at best, and yeah, he’s never quite lived up to his potential. But after a few Miller Lites in paradise with his girlfriend, Mara, things are starting to look up.

Then the sun explodes.

With the island resort suddenly plunged into darkness (he really should’ve sprung for the travel insurance), Dan’s holiday goes from bad to worse when elite guests stage a coup and commandeer supplies. As temperatures drop and class tensions rise, revolution begins to brew on the island, and Dan accidentally becomes a beacon of hope for the surviving vacationers. But when one six-person plane is discovered that could get them back to the mainland, Dan realizes he has a choice to make.

Does he escape the island with Mara? Or does he stay and fight to become the most unlikely hero of the end of the world?

]]> 384 M.J. Wassmer 1464218021 Cindy 0 to-read 3.69 2024
author: M.J. Wassmer
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 213570816 Everyone knows the legend of Fairport Village: twenty-five years ago, a shocking murder closed the place down. This year, the ruins will be bulldozed at last. But tonight, it's not too late to die.

All her life, Eden Stafford has heard the lore about the abandoned beach resort at the edge of town: ever since the notorious murder there, anyone who sets foot on the property is cursed to die, It's more than just a story: over the years, two high school students who dared to explore the ruins of Fairport Village were killed there.

Eden is no stranger to notoriety, having endured a family scandal that's made her a target at school. So when she reluctantly attends an overnight party at the ruins, she's on edge―not because of some legend, but because the clique that has made her life hell for years is there, too, including Caleb Durham, the worst of them all.

Yet out of all the things Eden expected to happen that night, finding another student dead at Fairport Village wasn't one of them.

Though the death is ruled an accident, Eden knows she saw something suspicious at the ruins―and Caleb and her other longtime tormentors did too. Now they're all being followed by a deadly stranger, and to save themselves, they must work together to uncover the truth about Fairport Village. But after all that's happened, can Eden really trust Caleb and his friends? Or will they leave her to face a killer alone?]]> 358 Chelsea Ichaso 1728299705 Cindy 0 to-read 3.73 2025
author: Chelsea Ichaso
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 213570812 "I'm in your blood, and you are in mine
"

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

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

Lucy soon comes to suspect that something is trying to possess her beloved sister. Or is it madness? As Sarah changes before her very eyes, Lucy must reckon with the dark, monstrous truth, or risk losing her forever.]]> 368 Johanna van Veen 1728281571 Cindy 0 to-read 3.97 2025
author: Johanna van Veen
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 217387959 Dark Matter meets Girl, Interrupted in this spellbinding psychological thriller about a young woman teetering on the edge of reality.

Virginia 1954. When a young woman wakes on a patient transport bus arriving at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital, she remembers nothing of her life before that moment, none of the dark things she must have seen and done that forged her into the skillful and cunning fighter she is. Doctors tell her she is Dorothy Frasier, a paranoid schizophrenic, committed by the state for her violent delusions. She’s certain they’re wrong—until disturbing visions of a dystopian future in which frantic scientists urge her to complete “the mission” and save humankind begin to invade her reality.

Believing Hanover is causing the hallucinations, she tells no one and focuses only on escaping. Then a visitor arrives, a man whose loving face and touch she remembers, a man who knows about her visions because he has spent years helping her cope with them: her husband, Paul Frasier.

Now she is sure of nothing, caught between two realities: Believe in the future, and she might save the world. Believe in her husband and doctors’ plans for her treatment, and she might save herself. She needs answers, but to get them she will have to face the darkness inside her and use it as she risks her freedom, mind, and ultimately her life in a twisty, heart-stopping quest for the truth.]]> 384 Melissa Pace 1250358671 Cindy 0 to-read 4.13
author: Melissa Pace
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.13
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> 198276006 I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.]]> 336 Leif Enger 0802162932 Cindy 0 to-read 3.95 2024
author: Leif Enger
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: to-read
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]]> 60553263 From New York Times bestselling author of My Best Friend's Exorcism, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, and The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix takes a break from horror and goes all-in on sci-fi in this novella about backyard rocket jockeys trying to get into low earth orbit.

Melville, South Carolina was out of money, it was out of jobs, it was out of hope, and today it was out of astronauts. There were only two to begin with, and now one is stuck on the abandoned International Space Station after his mission went south. With NASA’s budget cut to the bone, there’s no one to bring him back home, so everyone is only too happy to ignore this embarrassing sign of American Failure and just let him die. But his cousin, Walter Reddie, isn’t going to let that happen.

Tanked on vodka, living on a “farm” whose only crop is cars on cinderblocks, Walter's a wash-out from the Shuttle Program and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let his cousin die in the sky like a dog. And so he begins to build a rocket. If America won’t rescue its astronauts, he’ll do it himself.

Violating numerous laws, good taste, common sense, logic, and reason, Walter becomes a lightning rod for people who aren’t ready to give up. His farm is transformed into the promised land for misfits, drifters, rocket junkies, pyromaniacs, dreamers, science nerds, and astro-hippies who believe that space shouldn’t just be for billionaires. But it won’t be easy. Chances are good they’ll blow themselves up, get arrested, or kill each other before they ever get into orbit.]]> 166 Grady Hendrix 1625675585 Cindy 0 to-read 3.72 2012
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> 199139356
"Wildly entertaining." -The New York Times

"Ingenious." -The Washington Post

New York Times bestselling authorÌęGrady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.
Ìę
When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Ìę
Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
Ìę
But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them

Ìę
Like his novels The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires and The Final Girl Support Group , How to Sell a Haunted House is classic equal parts heartfelt and terrifying—a gripping new read from “the horror master” ( USA Today ).]]> 448 Grady Hendrix 0593201272 Cindy 0 currently-reading 3.66 2023
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 207611566 There’s power in a book


They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament. There’s Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to find a way to keep her baby and escape to a commune. And Zinnia, a budding musician who knows she’s going to go home and marry her baby’s father. And Holly, a wisp of a girl, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid
and it’s usually paid in blood.

In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a “horror master” (NPR).]]> 482 Grady Hendrix 0593548981 Cindy 0 to-read 3.99 2025
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 60720222
Every morning, Kris Pulaski wakes up in hell. In the 1990s she was lead guitarist of DĂŒrt WĂŒrk, a heavy-metal band on the brink of breakout success until lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom, leaving his bandmates to rot in obscurity.

Now Kris works as night manager of a Best Western; she’s tired, broke, and unhappy. Then one day everything changes—a shocking act of violence turns her life upside down, and she begins to suspect that Terry sabotaged more than just the band. Kris hits the road, hoping to reunite DĂŒrt WĂŒrk and confront the man who ruined her life. Her journey will take her from the Pennsylvania rust belt to a celebrity rehab center to a satanic music festival. A furious power ballad about never giving up, We Sold Our Souls is an epic journey into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, pill-popping, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul.]]> 333 Grady Hendrix 168369340X Cindy 0 to-read 3.64 2018
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219542927 Seven authors enter the manor

Can they survive the story within?

When legendary horror author Mortimer Queen passes, a group of writers find themselves invited to his last will and testament reading expecting a piece of his massive fortune. Each have their own unique connection to the literary icon, some known, some soon to be discovered, and they've been waiting for their chance to step into the author's shoes for some time.

Instead, they arrive at his grand manor and are invited to play a game. The rules are simple, solve the riddle and progress to the next room. If they don't, the manor will take one of them for itself.

You see, the Queen estate was built on the bones of Mortimer's family, and like any true horror story, the house is still very, very hungry.

With the clever, locked-room thrills of Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone with the ghostly horror of The Fall of the House of Usher, How to Survive a Horror Story is a bright, biting, thrill-ride that begs us to contemplate how the best horror stories come to be.]]> 368 Mallory Arnold 1464227403 Cindy 0 to-read 3.71 2025
author: Mallory Arnold
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves: to-read
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]]> 204818771 322 Ainslie Hogarth 180546003X Cindy 0 to-read 2.79 2023
author: Ainslie Hogarth
name: Cindy
average rating: 2.79
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 56554590 Pretty Little Liars meets Teen Wolf in this fast-paced, sharply funny, and patriarchy-smashing graphic novel from author Maggie Tokuda-Hall and artist Lisa Sterle. When the new girl is invited to join her high school’s most popular clique, she can’t believe her luck—and she can’t believe their secret, either: they’re werewolves. Fans of Mariko Tamaki and Elana K. Arnold will devour the snappy dialogue, vivid artwork, and timely social commentary.

When Becca transfers to a high school in an elite San Francisco suburb, she’s worried she’s not going to fit in. To her surprise, she’s immediately adopted by the most popular girls in school. At first glance, Marley, Arianna, and Mandy are perfect. But at a party under a full moon, Becca learns that they also have a big secret.

Becca’s new friends are werewolves. Their prey? Slimy boys who take advantage of unsuspecting girls. Eager to be accepted, Becca allows her friends to turn her into a werewolf, and finally, for the first time in her life, she feels like she truly belongs.

But things get complicated when Arianna’s predatory boyfriend is killed, and the cops begin searching for a serial killer. As their pack begins to buckle under the pressure—and their moral high ground gets muddier and muddier—Becca realizes that she might have feelings for one of her new best friends.

Lisa Sterle’s stylish illustrations paired with Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s sharp writing make Squad a fun, haunting, and fast-paced thriller that will resonate with fans of Riverdale, and with readers of This Savage Song, Lumberjanes, and Paper Girls.]]> 224 Maggie Tokuda-Hall 0062943146 Cindy 0 3.87 2021
author: Maggie Tokuda-Hall
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:

]]> 136281676 464 Laura Bates 1728290902 Cindy 5 4.47 2020
author: Laura Bates
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:
If there is one non fiction book I recommend to anyone, it would be this book. Not an easy read, downright terrifying, in fact, but an important read. Eye-opening.
]]> 60613920 298 Richard V. Reeves 1800750544 Cindy 1 4.02 2022
author: Richard V. Reeves
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at:
date added: 2024/12/28
shelves:
review:

]]> 211866338
Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly...something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community she grew up in meant she couldn’t return. But then an envelope arrives on her doorstep.

Inside is an invitation to the wedding of Vesper’s beloved cousin Rosie. It’s to be hosted at the family farm. Have they made an exception to the rule? It wouldn’t be the first time Vesper’s been given special treatment. Is the invite a sweet gesture? An olive branch? A trap? Doesn’t matter. Something inside her insists she go to the wedding. Even if it means returning to the toxic environment she escaped. Even if it means reuniting with her mother, Constance, a former horror film star and forever ice queen.

When Vesper’s homecoming exhumes a terrifying secret, she’s forced to reckon with her family’s beliefs and her own crisis of faith in this deliciously sinister novel that explores the way family ties can bind us as we struggle to find our place in the world.]]> 304 Rachel Harrison 0593545869 Cindy 5 3.67 2023
author: Rachel Harrison
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/27
date added: 2024/12/27
shelves:
review:
I greatly enjoyed this book. Going to get Such Sharp Teeth next!
]]> 209622883 It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known—where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another. A tale for our dispossessed times, and one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love.]]> 132 Anne de Marcken 1804270741 Cindy 5 3.84 2024
author: Anne de Marcken
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/26
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves:
review:
What an extraordinary book! Beautiful.
]]> 136276891 276 Keely Parrack 1728256798 Cindy 5 3.06 2024
author: Keely Parrack
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.06
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/12/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 55600867
But when someone close to her is brutally murdered and Ava is the primary suspect, she starts to wonder if the legends surrounding the town are more fact than fiction.

Whatever secrets Burden Falls is hiding, there's a killer on the loose, and they have a vendetta against the Thorns...]]> 400 Kat Ellis 0241397065 Cindy 0 to-read 4.05 2021
author: Kat Ellis
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 63335402 The No. 1 bestselling author's first classic collection of short stories.

A collection of terrifying stories that reveal a shudderingly detailed map of the dark places that lie behind our waking, rational world.

Stories include:

- Jerusalem's Lot
- Graveyard Shift
- Night Surf
- I Am The Doorway
- The Mangler
- The Boogeyman
- Gray Matter
- Battleground
- Trucks
- Sometimes They Come Back
- Strawberry Spring
- The Ledge
- The Lawnmower Man
- Quitters, Inc.
- I Know What You Need
- Children Of The Corn
- The Last Rung On The Ladder
- The Man Who Loved Flowers
- One For The Road
- The Woman In The Room]]> 496 Stephen King 1444723197 Cindy 0 to-read 3.96 1978
author: Stephen King
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1978
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52704636
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.

------
Please see for trigger and content warnings.]]> 357 Rory Power 1529021286 Cindy 0 to-read 3.39 2019
author: Rory Power
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58492118
This tiny town, where seventeen-year-old Grey spends her summers, is the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World—and the place where Elora Pellerin, Grey's best friend, disappeared six months earlier.

Grey can't believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something—her grandmother Honey; her childhood crush Hart; and even her late mother, whose secrets continue to call to Grey from beyond the grave.

When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou—a stormy-eyed boy with links to Elora and the town's bloody history—Grey realizes that La Cachette's past is far more present and dangerous than she'd ever understood. Suddenly, she doesn't know who she can trust. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent—and La Cachette's dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart.]]> 432 Ginny Myers Sain 0593403983 Cindy 0 to-read 3.92 2021
author: Ginny Myers Sain
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 195826748
From rape culture to mansplaining, from French sex scandals to marriage and the nuclear family, from Virginia Woolf to colonialism, these essays are a fierce and incisive exploration of the issues that a patriarchal culture will not necessarily acknowledge as ‘issues’ at all. With grace and energy, and in the most exquisite and inviting of prose, Rebecca Solnit proves herself a vital leading figure of the feminist movement and a radical, humane thinker.]]> 159 Rebecca Solnit 1803510072 Cindy 0 to-read 3.74 2014
author: Rebecca Solnit
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62241135
Journalist Rebecca Traister’s New York Times bestselling exploration of the transformative power of female anger and its ability to transcend into a political movement is “a hopeful, maddening compendium of righteous feminine anger, and the good it can do when wielded efficiently—and collectively” ( Vanity Fair ).

Long before Pantsuit Nation, before the Women’s March, and before the #MeToo movement, women’s anger was not only politically catalytic—but politically problematic. The story of female fury and its cultural significance demonstrates its crucial role in women’s slow rise to political power in America, as well as the ways that anger is received when it comes from women as opposed to when it comes from men.

“Urgent, enlightened
realistic and compelling
Traister eloquently highlights the challenge of blaming not just forces and systems, but individuals” ( The Washington Post ). In Good and Mad , Traister tracks the history of female anger as political fuel—from suffragettes marching on the White House to office workers vacating their buildings after Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Traister explores women’s anger at both men and other women; anger between ideological allies and foes; the varied ways anger is received based on who’s expressing it; and the way women’s collective fury has become transformative political fuel. She deconstructs society’s (and the media’s) condemnation of female emotion (especially rage) and the impact of their resulting repercussions.

Highlighting a double standard perpetuated against women by all sexes, and its disastrous, stultifying effect, Good and Mad is “perfectly timed and inspiring” ( People , Book of the Week). This “admirably rousing narrative” ( The Atlantic ) offers a glimpse into the galvanizing force of women’s collective anger, which, when harnessed, can change history.]]> 336 Rebecca Traister 1668022923 Cindy 0 to-read 4.29 2018
author: Rebecca Traister
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25663653
With a shocking conclusion and writing that will absolutely knock you out, Courtney Summers' new novel All the Rage examines the shame and silence inflicted upon young women in a culture that refuses to protect them.]]> 317 Courtney Summers 1250069157 Cindy 0 to-read 3.85 2015
author: Courtney Summers
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 54547507
Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

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

And NoemĂ­, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.]]> 314 Silvia Moreno-Garcia 1529402670 Cindy 3 3.68 2020
author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/06/15
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves:
review:
Moreno-Garcia’s voice is superb, and the setting really comes alive in this lush, dark tale. Having said that, I’d wished to love this book more than I did. I found the protagonist to be passive for almost the entire book (rather than her driving the plot, things just happened to her), and certain elements in plot and narrative description were repetitive. I also felt the repeated SA in the book was unnecessary.
]]> 217476752 Last summer, Sara Ellis was found dead by the lake, and only Mandy knows what really happened.

This summer, she's desperate to keep it a secret.

For a few weeks every summer, Sara was Mandy's best friend. At Highmark, the lake resort where their families vacationed, the two were in a world of their own. Or at least Mandy got to be part of Sara's world.

But now Sara’s dead. The police ruled her death an accident; a tragic mistake after a night of impaired judgment. For the past year, Mandy's coped by escaping: leaving home and barely keeping it together at school. The last thing she wants to do is return to Highmark this summer—even if she does need "closure." As soon as she's back, though, she hears the whispers: someone killed Sara Ellis.

And if she’s not careful, they'll figure out it's all her fault.

As evidence resurfaces and anonymous accusations are scrawled in angry red spray paint, Mandy must confront the truths she's been avoiding about last summer. Because someone wants to make her pay for what happened to Sara that night.]]> 400 Roselyn Clarke 1464223483 Cindy 0 to-read 4.21 2025
author: Roselyn Clarke
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 36934018
A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the mysterious green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague spreads across the earth. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery about a store's dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted house guest.

Bodies become inconsequential, humans become monstrous, and anger becomes erotic. A dark, shimmering slice into womanhood, Her Body and Other Parties is wicked and exquisite.]]> 245 Carmen Maria Machado 1781259526 Cindy 5 3.74 2017
author: Carmen Maria Machado
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2017
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/15
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves:
review:

]]> 62333933
Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre twenty-two years ago, and it has defined every day of her life since. And she’s not alone. For more than a decade she’s been meeting with five other actual final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, putting their lives back together, piece by piece. That is until one of the women misses a meeting and Lynnette’s worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to take their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about these final girls is that they have each other now, and no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.]]> 399 Grady Hendrix 1789097460 Cindy 5 3.58 2021
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2024/12/14
shelves:
review:

]]> 154838223 The Haunting of Hill House meets Sadie in this evocative and mind-bending psychological thriller following two teen girls navigating the treacherous past of a mysterious mansion ten years apart.

Daisy sees dead people—something impossible to forget in bustling, ghost-packed Toronto. She usually manages to deal with her unwanted ability, but she’s completely unprepared to be dumped by her boyfriend. So when her mother inherits a secluded mansion in northern Ontario where she spent her childhood summers, Daisy jumps at the chance to escape. But the house is nothing like Daisy expects, and she begins to realize that her experience with the supernatural might be no match for her mother’s secrets, nor what lurks within these walls


A decade later, Brittney is desperate to get out from under the thumb of her abusive mother, a bestselling author who claims her stay at “Miracle Mansion” allowed her to see the error of her ways. But Brittney knows that’s nothing but a sham. She decides the new season of her popular Haunted web series will uncover what happened to a young Black girl in the mansion ten years prior and finally expose her mother’s lies. But as she gets more wrapped up in the investigation, she’ll have to decide: if she can only bring one story to light, which one matters most—Daisy’s or her own?

As Brittney investigates the mansion in the present, Daisy’s story runs parallel in the past, both timelines propelling the girls to face the most dangerous monsters of all: those that hide in plain sight.]]> 544 Liselle Sambury 1665903503 Cindy 0 to-read 3.99 2023
author: Liselle Sambury
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/13
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 Cindy 0 to-read 3.81 2023
author: Nat Cassidy
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57307172
Memories of that night torment Alice, but when Ila asks her to return to the House, to go past the KEEP OUT sign and over the sick earth where teenagers dare each other to venture, Alice knows she must go.

Together, Alice and Ila must face the horrors that happened there, must pull themselves apart from the inside out, put their differences aside, and try to rescue Hannah, whom the House has chosen to make its own.]]> 264 Alison Rumfitt Cindy 0 to-read 3.54 2021
author: Alison Rumfitt
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 32301955
Abby's investigation leads her to some startling discoveries — and by the time their story reaches its terrifying conclusion, the fate of Abby and Gretchen will be determined by a single question: Is their friendship powerful enough to beat the devil?

]]> 332 Grady Hendrix 1594749760 Cindy 5 3.98 2016
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/06
shelves:
review:
I LOVE THIS BOOK SO FUCKING MUCH
]]> 43579692 From legendary writer Amy Hempel, one of the most celebrated and original voices in American short fiction: a ravishing, sometimes heartbreaking new story collection--her first in over a decade.

Amy Hempel is a master of the short story. A multiple award winner, Hempel is highly regarded among writers, reviewers, and readers of contemporary fiction. This new collection, her first since her Collected Stories published more than a decade ago, is a literary event.

These fifteen exquisitely honed stories reveal Hempel at her most compassionate and spirited, as she introduces characters, lonely and adrift, searching for connection. In "A Full-Service Shelter," a volunteer at a dog shelter tirelessly, devotedly cares for dogs on a list to be euthanized. In "Greed," a spurned wife examines her husband's affair with a glamorous, older married woman. And in "Cloudland," the longest story in the collection, a woman reckons with the choice she made as a teenager to give up her newborn infant. Quietly dazzling, these stories are replete with moments of revelation and transcendence and with Hempel's singular, startling, inimitable sentences.]]> 160 Amy Hempel 1982109122 Cindy 0 to-read 3.60 2019
author: Amy Hempel
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 62326571 Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.

Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 264 John Scalzi 0765389231 Cindy 0 to-read 4.30 2023
author: John Scalzi
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 841644
With her inimitable compassion and wit, Hempel introduces characters who make choices that seem inevitable, and whose longings and misgivings evoke eternal human experience.

For readers who have known Hempel's work for decades and for those who are just discovering her, this indispensable volume contains all the stories in Reasons to Live , At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom , Tumble Home , and The Dog of the Marriage . No reader of great writing should be without it.]]> 407 Amy Hempel 0743291638 Cindy 0 to-read 4.21 2006
author: Amy Hempel
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 201741005
From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new collection of twelve short stories, many never-before-published, and some of his best EVER.

“You like it darker? Fine, so do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to this magnificent new collection of twelve stories that delve into the darker part of life—both metaphorical and literal. King has, for half a century, been a master of the form, and these stories, about fate, mortality, luck, and the folds in reality where anything can happen, are as rich and riveting as his novels, both weighty in theme and a huge pleasure to digest. King writes to feel “the exhilaration of leaving ordinary day-to-day life behind,” and in You Like It Darker, listeners will feel that exhilaration too, again and again.

“Two Talented Bastids” explores the long-hidden secret of how the eponymous gentlemen got their skills. In “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” a brief and unprecedented psychic flash upends dozens of lives, Danny’s most catastrophically. In “Rattlesnakes,” a sequel to Cujo, a grieving widower travels to Florida for respite and instead receives an unexpected inheritance—with major strings attached. In “The Dreamers,” a taciturn Vietnam vet answers a job ad and learns that there are some corners of the universe best left unexplored. “The Answer Man” asks if prescience is good luck or bad and reminds us that a life marked by unbearable tragedy can still be meaningful.

King’s ability to surprise, amaze, and bring us both terror and solace remains unsurpassed. Each of these stories holds its own thrills, joys, and mysteries; each feels iconic. You like it darker? You got it.]]> 480 Stephen King 1399725106 Cindy 0 to-read 4.17 2024
author: Stephen King
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 219542906 Eight friends went on a trip. Only six came back. Now a killer has one night to make sure the survivors pay for what they did . . . so that zero make it out alive. From the author of Perfect Little Monsters comes another incredible twisty thriller.

Sadie, Will, Isla, Anthony, Emily, and Charlie are survivors. They were the six (out of eight) to return from a ski holiday turned nightmare two years ago. Although
 nobody knows exactly what happened; the details hushed up via the wealth and connections of Sadie's rich parents.

When an exclusive private island with a mansion for rent goes viral on social media, their graduating class persuades Sadie to rent it for the weekend. The six arrive first by helicopter and wait for the rest of their classmates to join them by boat the next day.

But nobody ever comes.

Cut off from the rest of the world with no cell service and no means off the island, paranoia and terror mount as they start to be picked off one by one by an unseen killer. Their past has finally caught up with them, and they'll need to figure out who is killing them before they all wind up dead.]]> 336 Cindy R.X. He 1728293421 Cindy 5 4.10 2025
author: Cindy R.X. He
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/11/28
shelves: 2025, mystery-thriller, young-adult, ya, thriller, mystery, murder-mystery
review:
Hi! I wrote this book. I might be biased, but I think it's pretty good. I hope you'll enjoy it!
]]> 210832179 When several small-town locals die under mysterious circumstances, an aspiring journalist is determined to prove the connection between them, only to discover the dangerous secrets they left behind.

Boney Creek is a dying town where not a lot happens. The perfect solution for married couple Addie and Toby who are escaping their own personal tragedy. But a quiet and simple life is not exactly possible with so many recent, strange deaths.

Seven locals, all gone too soon. That’s the nature of tragic accidents. And in a town this small, there’s no room for too many questions.

But Addie isn’t so sure. Although she never followed through on her dreams of becoming a journalist, she still has a reporter’s instincts. And her gut—not to mention all the small-town gossip—is telling her that whatever’s happening in Boney Creek is not as random as it seems.

There’s no such thing as coincidence, especially when it comes to seven bodies. And while burying her own secrets, Addie digs up far greater ones that will have her asking if she will be the town’s next so-called accident.]]> 299 Paula Gleeson 1662519567 Cindy 0 to-read 3.81
author: Paula Gleeson
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.81
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 57826552 Inferno is the riveting memoir of a young mother who is separated from her newborn son and husband when she's involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward in New Jersey after a harrowing bout of postpartum psychosis.

When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity.

In this memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She interweaves these parts of her past with an immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward.]]> 261 Catherine Cho 1526619040 Cindy 0 to-read 4.40 2020
author: Catherine Cho
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 11282000
As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castavet's circle is not what it seems.]]> 229 Ira Levin 1849015880 Cindy 0 to-read 4.11 1967
author: Ira Levin
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1967
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199139695 257 Rachel Yoder 8804758767 Cindy 5 3.36 2021
author: Rachel Yoder
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/02
shelves:
review:

]]> 55687716
Now in paperback, Steel Magnolias meets Dracula in this New York Times best-selling horror novel about a women's book club that must do battle with a mysterious newcomer to their small Southern town.

Bonus features:
ÌęÌęÌę‱ÌęReading group guide for book clubs
ÌęÌęÌę‱ÌęHand-drawn map of Mt. Pleasant
ÌęÌęÌę‱ÌęAnnotated true-crime reading list by Grady Hendrix
ÌęÌęÌę‱ÌęAnd more!

Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only thing keeping her sane is her book club, a close-knit group of Charleston women united by their love of true crime. At these meetings they’re as likely to talk about the Manson family as they are about their own families.

One evening after book club, Patricia isÌęviciouslyÌęattacked by an elderly neighbor, bringing theÌęneighbor's handsome nephew, James Harris, into her life. James is well traveled and well read, and he makes Patricia feel things she hasn’t felt in years. ButÌęwhen children on the other side of town goÌęmissing, their deaths written off by local police, Patricia has reason to believe James Harris is more of a Bundy than a Brad Pitt. The real problem? James is a monster of a different kind—and Patricia has already invited him in.Ìę
Ìę
Little by little, James will insinuate himself into Patricia’s life and try to take everything she took for granted—including the book club—but she won’t surrender without a fight in this blood-soaked tale of neighborly kindness gone wrong.]]> 424 Grady Hendrix 1683692519 Cindy 5 3.88 2020
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves:
review:
Ok, this is my favorite book among all the 40 or so books I’ve read this year. Love the humor, the scary parts are truly terrifying, but the thing that surprised me the most is how much Hendrix was able to write how condescending and disrespectful men can be to women through a woman’s pov. Like if I had no idea who the author was I would think it was a woman. I can’t read most books written by men anymore but I will read all of Hendrix’s books. This is the first book by this author that I’ve read, and I immediately went out and bought three more by him. I guess that says it all.
]]> 218372435 Knives Out meets The Hazel Wood in this twisty contemporary fantasy about an amusement park shrouded in dark secrets—and the family desperate to inherit it at any cost.

Welcome to Whisperwood, a sprawling theme park nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, where thrilling rides and picture-perfect scenery bring cult-classic fairy tales to life. Or at least they did until eighteen months ago, when the family matriarch, Virginia Strauss, suddenly shut Whisperwood’s gates and the beloved park was left to wither away along with the family’s dwindling fortune.
 
For seventeen-year-old Frankie Strauss, Whisperwood's closure has been a blessing in disguise. After seeing three generations of wealth’s corrupting influence, she is more than ready to shed the Strauss-family's gilded handcuffs.
 
But when Virginia goes missing, Frankie realizes that her family might be guilty of something much worse than mere dysfunction. With the help of the mysterious and handsome groundskeeper, Jem, Frankie sifts through a web of near truths and outright lies, uncovering a reality where nothing is as it seems and fairy tales aren’t just real—they’re deadly.]]> 352 Jo Schulte 031657872X Cindy 5 3.75 2025
author: Jo Schulte
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves:
review:

]]> 60097451 A darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law.

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

When Laura takes her own life, her ghost haunts Abby and Ralph in very different ways: Ralph is plunged into depression, and Abby is terrorized by a force intent on destroying everything she loves. To make matters worse, Mrs. Bondy’s daughter is threatening to move Mrs. Bondy from the home, leaving Abby totally alone. With everything on the line, Abby comes up with a chilling plan that will allow her to keep Mrs. Bondy, rescue Ralph from his tortured mind, and break Laura's hold on the family for good. All it requires is a little ingenuity, a lot of determination, and a unique recipe for chicken à la king
]]> 288 Ainslie Hogarth 0593467027 Cindy 5 3.64 2022
author: Ainslie Hogarth
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/03
shelves:
review:
Shockingly, ferociously, good. Do not eat chicken while reading.
]]> 199924235 From three-time Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy, and Nebula Award-winning author Elizabeth Hand comes the first-ever authorized novel set in the world of Shirley Jackson'sÌęThe Haunting of Hill House.
Ìę
Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, which is nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s enormous, old, and ever-so eerie—the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.

Despite her own hesitations, Holly’s girlfriend, Nisa, agrees to join her in renting the house for a month, and soon a troupe of actors, each with ghosts of their own, arrive. Yet as they settle in, the house’s peculiarities are made known: strange creatures stalk the grounds, disturbing sounds echo throughout the halls, and time itself seems to shift. All too soon Holly and her friends are at odds not just with one another but with the house itself. It seems something has been waiting in Hill House all these years, and it no longer intends to walk alone.]]> 0 Elizabeth Hand 140872958X Cindy 0 to-read 3.33 2023
author: Elizabeth Hand
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 52658305
She was the first of his victims but not the last.

Now Jess is the star of a YouTube reality series and she's using it to catch the killer once and for all.

The whole world is watching her every move.

And so is the Magpie Man.]]> 400 Vincent Ralph 1728231868 Cindy 5 3.71 2019
author: Vincent Ralph
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/26
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
A girl uses a reality tv show to find the serial killer who murdered her mother. A fast, gripping read, with a moving portrayal of grief.
]]> 204593562 B&N Best Horror of 2024
A Golden Poppy Octavia E. Butler Award Finalist
A Book of the Month Club Pick

A new mom in need of help opens her door to her long-estrangedÌęmother—only to invite something much darker inside—in this "fast-paced and frightening debut" (Rachel Harrison) about the long shadows cast by family secrets, perfect for readers of Grady Hendrix or Ashley Audrain.

Flora is a new mom enamored of her baby girl, Iris, even if she arrived a few weeks early. With her husband still deployed, Flora navigates the newborn stage alone. But as the sleepless nights pass in the loneliness of their half-empty home, the edges of her reality begin to blur.

Just as Flora becomes convinced she is losing her mind, a surprising guest shows up: Flora’s own mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken in years. Can they mend their fraught relationship? Or is there more Flora’s mother isn’t telling her about the events that led to their estrangement?

As stranger and scarier events unfold, Flora begins to suspect the house is not as empty as she once thought. She must determine: is her hold on reality slipping dangerously away? Or is she, in fact, the only thing standing between a terrifying visitor and her baby?Ìę]]> 297 Jacquie Walters 0316580295 Cindy 5
Jacquie Walters explores all this in raw, genuine, no holds barred writing that had me in tears at moments, constantly terrified, and unable to stop reading.

It’s hard to believe that this is a debut. Dearest is one of the best books I have read all year.]]> 3.50 2024
author: Jacquie Walters
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/15
date added: 2024/09/15
shelves:
review:
Any woman who has had a baby knows what a nightmare the postpartum stage is like. Juggling learning how to look after a helpless newborn with recovering from delivery/ c-sections, extreme sleep deprivation, troubles with breastfeeding, and unhelpful partners is actual torture, add to all that the constant fear that you’re going to do something wrong and the baby is going to end up dead
. Perfect for the horror genre.

Jacquie Walters explores all this in raw, genuine, no holds barred writing that had me in tears at moments, constantly terrified, and unable to stop reading.

It’s hard to believe that this is a debut. Dearest is one of the best books I have read all year.
]]> 205436025
The trip of a lifetime might be the death of them all.

The students of LA’s elite Warner Prep can’t wait for their Senior Excursion—five days of Instagrammable adventure in one of the world’s most exclusive locations. This is not your average field trip.

Which is why eight students can’t believe their bad luck when they end up on a digital detox in an isolated Colorado ski chalet. Their epic trip is panning out to be an epic bore . . . until their classmates start dropping in a series of disturbing deaths. The message is clear: this trip is no accident.

And when a blizzard strikes, secrets are revealed, betrayals are exposed, and survival is at stake in a race to the bitter end.]]> 352 Alexa Donne 0593651065 Cindy 5
Thanks to Random House BYR for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.]]> 3.66 2024
author: Alexa Donne
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves:
review:
This is an intricately plotted YA thriller that's perfect for fans of isolated, locked-room mysteries like Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None and Knives Out, but make it YA. I thought I'd guessed the killer for sure, but I was so wrong! A super fun read that will have readers racing to the end to find out what happens.

Thanks to Random House BYR for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
]]> 212105788 Two years ago, the murder of a neighbor tore three best friends apart--now the killer is going to walk free and the ex-friends are going to have to face the past--and each other--in another twisty thriller from the New York Times bestselling co-author of The Agathas

Grace, Henry, and Ally grew up together on the same block. They used to be best friends--until Grace's testimony put Henry's brother, Jake, away for killing their English teacher. Now, two years later, Ally and Henry hate Grace, and Grace is doubting what she thinks she saw that night.Ìę

It feels like everyone's getting a second chance, then, when due to a mistrial, Jake is suddenly released. And Henry knows his brother is innocent, but when Grace reaches out to say she’s rethinking what she saw the night of the murder, Jake’s reaction is confusing. He doesn’t want Henry—or Grace--getting involved.

For Ally not getting involved isn’t an option, and there’s nothing Grace can say to convince Ally she’s not the enemy. But can Ally afford to push Grace out when she’s one of the only other people willing to believe in Jake’s innocence? Ìę

The clock is ticking. Jake’s new trial date is about to be set, and he's sure to be foud guilty again unless there's new evidence to prove he's innocent. Grace, Henry, and Ally are going to have to decide whether you can trust an old friend now that they’re your enemy.]]> 384 Liz Lawson 059330103X Cindy 0 to-read 3.86 2025
author: Liz Lawson
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 33385391
Alex Craft knows how to kill someone. And she doesn’t feel bad about it.

Three years ago, when her older sister, Anna, was murdered and the killer walked free, Alex uncaged the language she knows best—the language of violence. While her own crime goes unpunished, Alex knows she can’t be trusted among other people. Not with Jack, the star athlete who wants to really know her but still feels guilty over the role he played the night Anna’s body was discovered. And not with Peekay, the preacher’s kid with a defiant streak who befriends Alex while they volunteer at an animal shelter. Not anyone.

As their senior year unfolds, Alex’s darker nature breaks out, setting these three teens on a collision course that will change their lives forever.]]> 344 Mindy McGinnis 0062320904 Cindy 5 4.13 2016
author: Mindy McGinnis
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/03
shelves:
review:
This book tore my heart out and stomped it into the ground. I then proceeded to immediately buy every other book that Ms McGinnis has ever written. If you like books like Sadie, you will like this.
]]> 201799705 Perfect for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Kelly Link, Jo Paquette’s Stories I Told My Dead Lover contains eight searing tales of psychological horror that probe the darkest and most deeply buried parts of the human psyche.

A child is forced to grow up too soon.

A woman trusts her doctor too much.

An abandoned woman isn’t as alone as she thinks.

An idyllic holiday masks an unspeakable act of violence.

Driven, desperate, fighting for the power to choose their own fate, Paquette’s characters dare to push back at the walls that hold them in.

Come watch them burn.]]> 206 Jo Paquette Cindy 0 to-read 2.95
author: Jo Paquette
name: Cindy
average rating: 2.95
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 215010428
It’s been raining for a long time now, so long that the land has reshaped itself and arcane rituals and religions are creeping back into practice. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken in some time when their father dies. An architect as cruel as he was revered, his death offers an opportunity for the sisters to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until their fragile bond is shattered by a revelation in his will.

More estranged than ever, the sisters’ lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams; Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling; and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters have been chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.]]> 327 Julia Armfield 0008608040 Cindy 0 to-read 3.75 2024
author: Julia Armfield
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 205951610
Laura, Daniel and Mo disappeared without trace a year ago. They have long been presumed dead. Which they were. But now they are not. And it is up to the resurrected teenagers to discover what happened to them.

Revived by Mr Anabin - the man they knew as their high school music teacher - they are offered a chance to return to the mortal realm. But first they must solve the mystery of their
death and learn to use the magic they now possess. And only two of them may stay.

What they do not realise is their return has upset a delicate balance that has held - just - for centuries.]]> 628 Kelly Link 1804548464 Cindy 0 currently-reading 3.72 2024
author: Kelly Link
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 206099543 342 Charlotte Brontë Cindy 0 to-read 0.0 1847
author: Charlotte Brontë
name: Cindy
average rating: 0.0
book published: 1847
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 59208213 A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family--and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for--and everything she feared.

Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter--she doesn't behave like most children do.

Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well.

Then their son Sam is born--and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she'd always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth.

The Push is a tour de force, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.]]> 303 Ashley Audrain 198488168X Cindy 0 to-read 4.03 2021
author: Ashley Audrain
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 181979136 Millicent Foxboro is haunted.

Not by ghosts but by the anguish of her past and the uncertainty of her future. After all, even in the progressive year of 1928, most people would balk at hiring a woman who’d spent two months in a mental ward for traumatic amnesia. So when an uncommon assistantship to a reclusive Professor of mythology falls into her lap with an ungodly salary attached, her desperation for stability overrides her cautious nature.

To Millie’s dismay, the widowed Professor Callum Hughes and his estate, Willowfield, are more than she bargained for. The once magnificent home, known for its sprawling gardens and dazzling parties, is falling to pieces after the death of the professor’s fragile wife. What’s more, the staff has been reduced to the only three people not frightened away by rumors of ghosts, leaving the halls empty and languishing in bitter memories.

The professor himself is a grim, intense man with unclear expectations, unpredictable moods, and hungry eyes that ignite Millie’s own dormant passions. The closer she finds herself drawn to Professor Hughes and his strange world of flowers and folklore, the more the house closes in, threatening to reveal her secrets. But the professor is keeping secrets of his own and the most dangerous of all is hers to discover.]]> 254 Bea Northwick Cindy 0 to-read 4.05 2023
author: Bea Northwick
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210450024
The Turn of the Key meets Parasite in this eerily haunting debut and Reddit hit—soon to be a Netflix original movie starring Blake Lively—about two homeowners whose lives are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit.

As a young, queer couple who flip houses, Charlie and Eve can’t believe the killer deal they’ve just gotten on an old house in a picturesque neighborhood. As they’re working in the house one day, there’s a knock on the door. A man stands there with his family, claiming to have lived there years before and asking if it would be alright if he showed his kids around. People pleaser to a fault, Eve lets them in.

As soon as the family enters their home, strange and inexplicable things start happening, including their toddler going missing and a ghostly presence materializing in the basement. Even more weird, the family can’t seem to take the hint that their visit should be over. And when Charlie suddenly vanishes, Eve slowly loses her grip on reality. Something is terribly wrong with the house and with the visiting family—or is Eve just imagining things?]]> 10 Marcus Kliewer Cindy 0 3.55 2024
author: Marcus Kliewer
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/21
date added: 2024/07/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 61357933
Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand and more.

A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by, and in tribute to, Shirley Jackson.

Shirley Jackson is a seminal writer of horror and mystery fiction, whose legacy resonates globally today. Chilling, human, poignant and strange, her stories have inspired a generation of writers and readers.

This anthology, edited by legendary horror editor Ellen Datlow, will bring together today’s leading horror writers to offer their own personal tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson.

Featuring Joyce Carol Oates, Josh Malerman, Carmen Maria Machado, Paul Tremblay, Richard Kadrey, Stephen Graham Jones, Elizabeth Hand, Kelly Link, Cassandra Khaw, Karen Heuler, Benjamin Percy, John Langan, Laird Barron, Jeffrey Ford, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, Gemma Files, and Genevieve Valentine.]]> 416 Ellen Datlow 1789097177 Cindy 0 currently-reading 3.83 2021
author: Ellen Datlow
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 123764393 178 Ai Jiang 195859802X Cindy 0 4.15 2023
author: Ai Jiang
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/14
shelves: currently-reading, literary, horror, asian
review:

]]> 60234307
Moving through something that only resembles normal life, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had before might be gone. Though Leah is still there, Miri can feel the woman she loves slipping from her grasp.

Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep deep sea.]]> 223 Julia Armfield Cindy 5 3.70 2022
author: Julia Armfield
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/13
shelves:
review:
Gorgeous, gorgeous, literary horror. When Miri’s wife, Leah, missing for six months when a deep sea mission goes terribly wrong, finally returns, she CBW (comes back wrong)
]]> 28915986
While writers might disagree over showing versus telling or plotting versus pantsing, none would argue If you want to write strong fiction, you must make your readers feel. The reader's experience must be an emotional journey of its own, one as involving as your characters' struggles, discoveries, and triumphs are for you.

That's where The Emotional Craft of Fiction comes in. Veteran literary agent and expert fiction instructor Donald Maass shows you how to use story to provoke a visceral and emotional experience in readers. Topics covered

ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęemotional modes of writing
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìębeyond showing versus telling
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęyour story's emotional world
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęmoral stakes
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęconnecting the inner and outer journeys
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęplot as emotional opportunities
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęinvoking higher emotions, symbols, and emotional language
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęcascading change
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęstory as emotional mirror
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìępositive spirit and magnanimous writing
ÌęÌęÌę‱Ìęthe hidden current that makes stories move
Readers can simply read a novel...or they can experience it. The Emotional Craft of Fiction shows you how to make that happen.]]> 224 Donald Maass 1440348375 Cindy 0 4.24 2016
author: Donald Maass
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/11
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves:
review:

]]> 25437843 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—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 humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 345 Emily St. John Mandel 1447269004 Cindy 0 to-read 4.07 2014
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61286907 Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes.

Eight stories of literary dark fiction from a master storyteller. Exploring the shadow side of love, these are tales of grief, obsession, control. Intricate examinations of trauma and tragedy in raw, poetic prose. In these narratives, a woman imagines horrific scenarios whilst caring for her infant niece; on-line posts chronicle a cancer diagnosis; a couple in the park with their small child encounter a stranger with horrific consequences; a toxic relationship reaches a terrifying resolution


Originally published under the title The Strange Thing We Become and Other Dark Tales, this is a much-praised collection of deeply unsettling, painfully dark tales.]]> 205 Eric LaRocca 1803363002 Cindy 0 to-read 3.68 2021
author: Eric LaRocca
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 25555839 Alternate cover edition can be found here and here.

At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots - neighbours who can't reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d'etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents' Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.

But isn't it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so?

In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible...

The word-of-mouth bestseller causing a sensation across Europe, Fredrik Backman's heartwarming debut is a funny, moving, uplifting tale of love and community that will leave you with a spring in your step - and less ready to judge on first impressions a man you might one day wish to have as your dearest friend.]]> 295 Fredrik Backman 1444775812 Cindy 5 4.41 2012
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2012
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/25
date added: 2024/06/25
shelves:
review:
“It wasn’t as if Ove also died when Sonja left him. He just stopped living.” If you also like books that make you laugh, and rip your heart out at the same time, have I got the book for you! It is, at its heart, a love story. If you read it, you will also fall in love with the grumpy old man called Ove.
]]> 200719704 Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches...

In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.

But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.

When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña SolĂłrzano?

Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her.

Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to battle the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda.

Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.]]> 277 Isabel Cañas 1837860807 Cindy 0 currently-reading 4.14 2022
author: Isabel Cañas
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/15
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 63051209 A sharp-witted, high fantasy farce featuring killer moat squid, toxic masculinity, evil wizards and a garlic festival - all at once. Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, K. J. Parker and Travis Baldree.

It’s bad enough waking up in a half-destroyed evil wizard’s workshop with no eyebrows, no memories, and no idea how long you have before the Dread Lord Whomever shows up to murder you horribly and then turn your skull into a goblet or something.
It’s a lot worse when you realize that Dread Lord Whomever is
 you.
Gav isn’t really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed.
But as he realizes that nothing – from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess – is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he’ll have to answer the hardest question of all – who does he want to be?
Dread Lord Gavrax has had better weeks.]]> 344 Caitlin Rozakis 1803365471 Cindy 5 3.66 2024
author: Caitlin Rozakis
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/06
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves:
review:
This cozy fantasy is delightful. The protagonist wakes up from an incident with his memory (and eyebrows) completely gone, and discovers to his horror that he is apparently some dark wizard named Gavrax. He’s not sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, a sassy princess locked in a cell, or terrible interior design and fashion choices. Can he figure out who he is, wrestle with toxic masculinity, save the world (and host a garlic festival) at the same time? Another one of my fav books read this year. The voice actor was also absolutely brilliant.
]]> 193544854 A Children's Book Council 2025 Young Adult, Teacher, and Librarian Favorites Awards Winner

Someone has murdered the queen bee of Sierton High School. All the dead girl’s friends are suspects. And each one has a reason for wanting her dead.

Ella Moore was the most popular girl in school
and also the most hated. When she’s murdered at her own party, there are too many suspects to count--and too many people who think she deserved it. The police’s prime suspect is the new girl, Dawn Foster. She was the last to hand Ella a drink on the night Ella died. Plus, all of Ella’s friends with a motive for wanting her dead are more than willing to implicate Dawn.

But Dawn refuses to go down without a fight. She’s determined to clear her name. As she delves deeper into the past, she discovers that Ella and her friends had enemies, and someone is out for revenge. She must uncover the truth before the police arrest the wrong suspect and before the next person dies.]]> 336 Cindy R.X. He 1728293391 Cindy 5
Dear Reader,

When I was sixteen, after half a year of being bullied in school by a teacher, I attempted to kill myself. Thanks to the quick intervention of a friend who’d suspected something was wrong, that attempt was nonfatal; but I remained emotionally vulnerable for many years after. Even though that was decades ago—decades where the conversation surrounding mental health and suicide has improved—that is still hard to write. Even now, it is a part of me I still feel hesitant to share with others because the stigma of suicide persists; I worry that people may think less of me after knowing this part of my past.

Unfortunately, suicide is the second-leading cause of death today for teens and young adults aged 10–34 (CDC, 2022). More than one in three high school students, and nearly half of female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2019 (CDC, 2020). I can’t help but think that maybe if we talked about it more—suicide and what might drive young people to attempt it—we could break down the walls of silence and offer a lifeline of empathy. In my debut YA thriller, PERFECT LITTLE MONSTERS, certain characters feel hopeless enough to attempt suicide. As you can imagine, it was difficult to write, but I think worth it if my book might help lessen the stigma surrounding it.

I hope you’ll find that PERFECT LITTLE MONSTERS is a twisty read that will keep you up all night. But at its heart, it’s a story exploring the impact of bullying and cruelty, and its oftentimes long lasting or devastating consequences. And because it’s a thriller, it’s a dark tale of what happens when a victim of bullying reaches her breaking point and, when her suicide attempt is nonfatal, makes a frightening decision.

Thank you for giving this book a chance. I'm so excited to share this book with you, and I hope it entertains, surprises, and chills you.

- Cindy]]> 3.66 2024
author: Cindy R.X. He
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/06/06
shelves: contemporary, fiction, crime, 2024, murder-mystery, mystery, mystery-thriller, thriller, ya, young-adult
review:
Content warning: Suicide

Dear Reader,

When I was sixteen, after half a year of being bullied in school by a teacher, I attempted to kill myself. Thanks to the quick intervention of a friend who’d suspected something was wrong, that attempt was nonfatal; but I remained emotionally vulnerable for many years after. Even though that was decades ago—decades where the conversation surrounding mental health and suicide has improved—that is still hard to write. Even now, it is a part of me I still feel hesitant to share with others because the stigma of suicide persists; I worry that people may think less of me after knowing this part of my past.

Unfortunately, suicide is the second-leading cause of death today for teens and young adults aged 10–34 (CDC, 2022). More than one in three high school students, and nearly half of female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2019 (CDC, 2020). I can’t help but think that maybe if we talked about it more—suicide and what might drive young people to attempt it—we could break down the walls of silence and offer a lifeline of empathy. In my debut YA thriller, PERFECT LITTLE MONSTERS, certain characters feel hopeless enough to attempt suicide. As you can imagine, it was difficult to write, but I think worth it if my book might help lessen the stigma surrounding it.

I hope you’ll find that PERFECT LITTLE MONSTERS is a twisty read that will keep you up all night. But at its heart, it’s a story exploring the impact of bullying and cruelty, and its oftentimes long lasting or devastating consequences. And because it’s a thriller, it’s a dark tale of what happens when a victim of bullying reaches her breaking point and, when her suicide attempt is nonfatal, makes a frightening decision.

Thank you for giving this book a chance. I'm so excited to share this book with you, and I hope it entertains, surprises, and chills you.

- Cindy
]]> 50015181
But then Melody goes missing, and Cassidy thinks she may have information. She knows she should go to the cops, but she recently joked about how much she’d like to get rid of Melody. She even planned out the perfect way to do it. And then she gets a chilling text from an unknown number: I’m so glad we’re in this together.

Now it’s up to Cassidy to figure out what really happened before the truth behind Melody’s disappearance sets the whole town ablaze.]]> 336 Chelsea Ichaso 1728210526 Cindy 0 to-read 3.51 2020
author: Chelsea Ichaso
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 61273351
To keep one another safe.
To hold one another accountable.
Or both.

Their annual meeting place, a house on the Outer Banks, has long been a refuge. But by the tenth anniversary, Cassidy Bent has worked to distance herself from the tragedy and from the other survivors. She’s changed her mobile number. She’s blocked the others’ email addresses. This year, she is determined to finally break ties once and for all. But on the day of the reunion, she receives a text with an obituary attached: another survivor is gone. Now they are seven—and Cassidy finds herself hurling back toward the group, wild with grief—and suspicion.

Almost immediately, something feels off this year. Cassidy is the first to notice when Amaya, the annual organizer, slips away, overwhelmed. This wouldn’t raise alarm except for the impending storm. Suddenly, they’re facing the threat of closed roads and surging waters
again. Then Amaya stops responding to her phone. After all they’ve been through, she wouldn’t willfully make them worry. Would she?

And—as they promised long ago—each survivor will do whatever he or she can do to save one another. Won’t they?

A propulsive and chilling locked-box mystery filled with the dazzling hairpin twists that are the author’s signature, The Only Survivors is New York Times bestselling author Megan Miranda’s best novel yet.]]> 339 Megan Miranda 1668010410 Cindy 0 to-read 3.52 2023
author: Megan Miranda
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 58723109 96 Henry James Cindy 4 ]]> 3.67 1898
author: Henry James
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1898
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/03
shelves:
review:
With endless sentences like “I had left her meanwhile in little doubt of my small hope of representing with success even to her actual sympathy my sense of the real splendor of the little inspiration with which, after I had got him into the house, the boy met my final articulate challenge”, this novella imposed on me that, most importantly, prose must be clear and coherent. That aside, this infamous work is about a governess who is either trying desperately to protect her very young charges from evil ghosts, or is growing more and more insane and dangerous to the little ones. The ambiguity is pretty cool.

]]> 51260845 A classic sort of love story... except somebody might wind up dead.

Nobody knows Delilah like Logan does. Nobody. He makes sure of it by learning everything he can through her social media and watching her through a hidden camera he has trained on her house. Some might call him a stalker. Logan prefers to be called “romantic.”

But after Logan sees Delilah killing her abusive stepfather, he realizes there’s still more about her to discover. His sweet, perfect Delilah isn’t so perfect after all.

Delilah knows she should feel guilty, but all she feels is free. She’s so over the men in her life controlling her. Except Logan saw what she did, and he won’t let her forget it.

Delilah is done being the victim. And she refuses to be a character in Logan’s twisted fantasy. If Logan won’t let her go
 she’ll make him.]]> 309 Jesse Q. Sutanto 1728215161 Cindy 1 3.71 2021
author: Jesse Q. Sutanto
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2021
rating: 1
read at: 2023/04/07
date added: 2024/06/01
shelves:
review:
This book got me out of a reading slump. I could not put it down. So good!
]]> 20362391
Inspired by the unsolved disappearance of a female college student near Shirley Jackson's home, Hangsaman is a story of lurking disquiet and haunting disorientation.]]> 240 Shirley Jackson 0141391987 Cindy 5 3.78 1951
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1951
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/31
date added: 2024/05/31
shelves:
review:
The brilliant Jackson is my favorite writer (The Haunting of Hill House, my favorite book), so I’ve set out to read every one of her books and short stories. Published in 1951, this strange, eerie, unsettling, and haunting novel doesn’t disappoint. It’s my favorite kind of horror: psychological horror. With characters as frightening as the villagers in The Lottery, it’s utterly terrifying without reliance on gore or supernatural elements. Just like Eleanor, the protagonist in Hill House, I came to care greatly for the poor, sensitive, lonely creature in this book, and the final line brought me to tears.
]]> 6535724 292 Edith Wharton 184022164X Cindy 0 to-read 3.90 1934
author: Edith Wharton
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 210217484
Two hours later, chaos has descended. A bungled attempted robbery has developed into a hostage situation - and the offender is refusing to communicate their demands to the police.

Within the building, fear quickly turns to irritation for the seven strangers trapped inside. If this is to be their last day on earth, shouldn't it be a bit more dramatic?

But as the minutes tick by, they begin to suspect that the criminal mastermind holding them hostage might be more in need of rescuing than they are...]]> 400 Fredrik Backman Cindy 0 to-read 4.22 2019
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127306444
IĂ°unn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same ― have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.

Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .

What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?]]> 197 Hildur KnĂștsdĂłttir 1250322049 Cindy 5 3.30 2021
author: Hildur KnĂștsdĂłttir
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/28
date added: 2024/05/28
shelves:
review:
Reminiscent of Sara Gran’s Come Closer, this adult horror is lean, hungry, and oh so creepy. A masterpiece that horror fans will not want to miss. CW: animal death
]]> 200450085
When Marina Chan ran from her old life, she brought nothing with her-not even her real name. Now she lives in fear of her past being discovered. But when her online gaming team is offered a tour of their favorite game company, Marina can't resist accepting, even though she knows it might put her fake identity at risk.

Then the creator of the game is murdered during their tour. Whoever killed him plans to frame Marina and her friends for the murder unless they win four rounds of a dangerous game. A game that requires them to lie, trespass, and steal. A game that could destroy everything Marina's worked so hard to build
. A game that she might not survive.]]> 341 Kelsea Yu 1547613351 Cindy 5 ]]> 3.72 2024
author: Kelsea Yu
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/26
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves:
review:
Oh man, this YA thriller is so GOOD. So twisted, but also so fun! I raced through the pages and devoured this book in two days. I particularly enjoyed the gaming aspect with the nightly “challenges”, and also all the descriptions of Chinese food (yum).

]]> 63214019 Looking Glass Sound.

This book will be Wilder's revenge on Sky, a man who betrayed his trust and died without ever telling him why. But as he writes, Wilder begins to find notes written in Sky's signature green ink and events in his manuscript start to chime eerily with the present. Is Sky haunting him? Did Wilder have more to do with Sky's death than he admits? And who is the woman drowning in the cove, whom no-one else can see?

No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder begins to wonder: is he writing the book, or is the book writing him?]]> 400 Catriona Ward 1800811004 Cindy 0 to-read 3.72 2023
author: Catriona Ward
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 127280445 A crew must try to survive on an ancient, abandoned planet in the latest space horror novel from S.A. Barnes, acclaimed author of Dead Silence.

Space exploration can be lonely and isolating.

Psychologist Dr. Ophelia Bray has dedicated her life to the study and prevention of ERS—a space-based condition most famous for a case that resulted in the brutal murders of twenty-nine people. When she's assigned to a small exploration crew, she's eager to make a difference. But as they begin to establish residency on an abandoned planet, it becomes clear that crew is hiding something.

While Ophelia focuses on her new role, her crewmates are far more interested in investigating the eerie, ancient planet and unraveling the mystery behind the previous colonizer's hasty departure than opening up to her.

That is, until their pilot is discovered gruesomely murdered. Is this Ophelia’s worst nightmare starting—a wave of violence and mental deterioration from ERS? Or is it something more sinister?

Terrified that history will repeat itself, Ophelia and the crew must work together to figure out what’s happening. But trust is hard to come by
 and the crew isn’t the only one keeping secrets.]]> 377 S.A. Barnes 1250884926 Cindy 5 3.51 2024
author: S.A. Barnes
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/24
date added: 2024/05/24
shelves:
review:
Space horror fans will not want to miss this one. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Zura Johnson, who did a fantastic job. I spent the entire time whispering to myself “Jesus”and “what the fuck”. This book traumatized me. 5 stars.
]]> 56876304
How about everything.

This spectacular can't-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It's about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.

You won't put this story down, and you won't forget Billy.

From legendary storyteller and No. 1 bestseller Stephen King, whose 'restless imagination is a power that cannot be contained' (The New York Times Book Review), comes a thrilling new novel about a good guy in a bad job.]]> 480 Stephen King 1529365694 Cindy 0 4.44 2021
author: Stephen King
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2024/05/20
date added: 2024/05/20
shelves:
review:

]]> 195511870 A missing family. A traumatized detective. The past and present collide in a riveting novel of suspense by the USA Today bestselling author of These Still Black Waters, Do No Harm, Behind Every Lie, and The Night Olivia Fell.

Late Christmas Eve, the Harper family’s car crashed on a desolate stretch outside Black Lake. Sixteen-year-old Alice was found injured by the side of the road—alone. It was as if her parents and younger sister, Ella, had simply disappeared.

One year later, Alice is still dealing with nightmares and unanswered questions when she and her friends find Ella’s bloodstained backpack in the basement of an abandoned home. As Detective Jess Lambert investigates, she uncovers dark secrets that put her on a collision course with her past. Jess’s only witness is haunted by her own ghosts—ghosts that might ultimately be connected to Jess.

Jess will do anything to find out what happened to the Harpers—no matter how deep she has to dig. Because neither the living nor the dead are giving up their secrets easily.]]> 343 Christina McDonald 1662511639 Cindy 0 to-read 4.38 2024
author: Christina McDonald
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 197074281 0 Kaira Rouda 1501243365 Cindy 0 to-read 4.00 2024
author: Kaira Rouda
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 199281532
For seventeen-year-old Bryn, being the youngest, messiest, most rebellious sister in a family of valkyries isn’t easy. Especially considering home is a Renaissance faire in Chicago full of costumed workers who see her as nothing more than a nuisance. When her mother disappears on a mission for Odin, Bryn begins having strange visions about the impending Ragnarök. Bryn senses their mother is in great danger, but her annoyingly perfect older sisters refuse to take her seriously. Their mother is, after all, captain of the valkyries.

Things only take a turn for the worse when a half human, half giant named Juniper crashes the party with a violent zombie in tow, confirming Bryn’s worst fears—her visions of Ragnarök are real. If that wasn’t enough, the faire’s mysterious new addition, Wyatt the Black Knight, just so happens to have a ferocious secret that threatens everyone around him. Determined to survive Ragnarök, Bryn, Juniper, and Wyatt team up to combat the horde of monsters that keeps appearing throughout the faire. But after Bryn ignores the call to deliver Wyatt to Odin’s eternal warriors in Valhalla, choosing to save his life instead, she starts to wonder if she’ll ever get this valkyrie thing right.

Whispers of divine interference—including sightings of the mischievous Loki—reach Bryn’s ears. Soon everyone at the faire becomes a suspect, leaving Bryn, her sisters, and their newfound friends the only ones who can stop the war to end all realms. Whether she’s ready or not, Bryn is about to learn how the ties between fate and choice are as interwoven and unbreakable as the bonds between sisters.]]> 384 Freya Finch 1368100996 Cindy 5 3.88
author: Freya Finch
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/15
date added: 2024/05/15
shelves:
review:
This book is SO GOOD. It left me laughing and then almost in tears and then gasping and then laughing again, rinse and repeat. My new favorite book!! I could not put it down!! Loki may or may not be in it!!
]]> 25025684 142 Ursula K. Le Guin Cindy 5 4.33 1998
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
review:
Fantastic, essential craft book for writers.
]]> 211861437 Be careful who you fall for...

Robbie and Trevor Cresmont have a body count—the killer kind. Handsome and popular, the Crestmont brothers' have enough wealth and privilege to ensure they’ll never be found guilty of any wrongdoing, even if all of Happy Valley believes they're behind the deaths of their ex-girlfriends. First there was soccer star Victoria Moreno, Robbie’s ex, who mysteriously drowned at the family lake house. Then, a year later, Trevor’s girlfriend died of a suspicious overdose.

But the Crestmonts aren’t the only ones with secrets. Lauren O'Brian might be the new girl at school, but she's never been a good girl. With a dark past of her own, she's desperate for a fresh start. Except when she starts a no-strings-attached relationship with Robbie, her chance is put in jeopardy. During what’s meant to be their last weekend together, Lauren stumbles across shocking evidence that just might implicate Robbie.

With danger closing in, Lauren doesn't know who to trust. And after a third death rocks the town, she must decide whether to end things with Robbie or risk becoming another cautionary tale.

This is an edge-of-your-seat debut YA thriller about a teen who is forced to confront her past in order to catch a murderer before she ends up the next victim. Perfect for fans of Karen McManus and Holly Jackson. ]]> 384 Trish Lundy 1250292166 Cindy 5 3.76 2024
author: Trish Lundy
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/11
date added: 2024/05/11
shelves:
review:
The narrator for the audiobook did an incredible job, making this an enjoyable listen. A fun, drama-filled YA mystery that will keep readers guessing.
]]> 199798895 The author of The Girls Are All So Nice Here returns with a thriller set in the vineyards of Napa Valley that asks: what happens when the husband you thought died years ago shows up alive?

Ten years ago, June’s beloved husband drowned on their honeymoon, his body never found. Now, a decade later, June is finally ready to move on. She owns a natural wine bar in Brooklyn and is engaged to a patient, supportive man named Kyle. She’s excited to finally begin a new chapter in her life and start a family.

But out of the blue, she sees him—Josh, her first husband. Is this just a hallucination from the guilt June carries about finally moving on, or is it possible that her husband never died in the first place?

June tries to forget about this vision, chalking it up to grief and nerves, but soon enough, she stumbles across a website for a winery in Napa, and the owner in the photo is identical to her dead husband. With her upcoming wedding looming and a fiancĂ© who’s already worried she hasn’t quite left her past behind, June secretly flies to Napa for answers. But she’s not prepared for all the secrets she’s about to unlock because everything she thought she knew about her first love is a lie.]]> 320 Laurie Elizabeth Flynn 1982144661 Cindy 5
Enough said. Which mother doesn’t relate to this? Read this twisty suspense, especially if you’re a wine aficionado. Bravo, Laurie!]]> 3.44 2024
author: Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/03
date added: 2024/05/03
shelves:
review:
“It was so much easier for David, disappearing into the vineyard and returning home for the fun parts, while I warred in the trenches with our children, potty training and prying stubborn mouths open to brush molars and trimming tiny half-moon fingernails without clipping skin, mediating temper tantrums and shouting matches. Father was something David wore like a designer label; mother was a scar embedded in my skin.”

Enough said. Which mother doesn’t relate to this? Read this twisty suspense, especially if you’re a wine aficionado. Bravo, Laurie!
]]> 43263504
You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.

You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love.

You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.

Assume nothing.

Twisted and deliciously chilling, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen's The Wife Between Us exposes the secret complexities of an enviable marriage - and the dangerous truths we ignore in the name of love.

Read between the lies.]]> 496 Greer Hendricks 1250133319 Cindy 5 3.81 2018
author: Greer Hendricks
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/27
date added: 2024/04/27
shelves:
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]]> 53138046 “They found the bodies on a Tuesday.”

So begins this twisty and breathtaking novel that traces the fate of the Pine family, a thriller that will both leave you on the edge of your seat and move you to tears.

After a late night of partying, NYU student Matt Pine returns to his dorm room to devastating news: nearly his entire family—his mom, his dad, his little brother and sister—have been found dead from an apparent gas leak while vacationing in Mexico. The local police claim it was an accident, but the FBI and State Department seem far less certain—and they won’t tell Matt why.

The tragedy makes headlines everywhere because this isn’t the first time the Pine family has been thrust into the media spotlight. Matt’s older brother, Danny—currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his teenage girlfriend Charlotte—was the subject of a viral true crime documentary suggesting that Danny was wrongfully convicted. Though the country has rallied behind Danny, Matt holds a secret about his brother that he’s never told anyone: the night Charlotte was killed Matt saw something that makes him believe his brother is guilty of the crime.

When Matt returns to his small hometown to bury his parents and siblings, he’s faced with a hostile community that was villainized by the documentary, a frenzied media, and memories he’d hoped to leave behind forever. Now, as the deaths in Mexico appear increasingly suspicious and connected to Danny’s case, Matt must unearth the truth behind the crime that sent his brother to prison—putting his own life in peril—and forcing him to confront his every last fear.

Told through multiple points-of-view and alternating between past and present, Alex Finlay's Every Last Fear is not only a page-turning thriller, it’s also a poignant story about a family managing heartbreak and tragedy, and living through a fame they never wanted.]]> 368 Alex Finlay 1250268826 Cindy 5 3.89 2021
author: Alex Finlay
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/26
date added: 2024/04/26
shelves:
review:

]]> 6219656
“The Lottery” stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history. Originally published in The New Yorker, the author immediately began receiving letters from readers who demanded an explanation of the story’s meaning. “The Lottery” has been adapted for stage, television, radio and film.
]]> 30 Shirley Jackson 1563127873 Cindy 5 4.08 1948
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Cindy
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1948
rating: 5
read at: 2023/02/21
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves:
review:

]]> 176443093
Patric Gagne realized she made others uncomfortable before she started kindergarten. Something about her caused people to react in a way she didn’t understand. She suspected it was because she didn’t feel things the way other kids did. Emotions like fear, guilt, and empathy eluded her. For the most part, she felt nothing. And she didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt.

She did her best to pretend she was like everyone else, but the constant pressure to conform to a society she knew rejected anyone like her was unbearable. So Patric stole. She lied. She was occasionally violent. She became an expert lock-picker and home-invader. All with the goal of replacing the nothingness with...something.

In college, Patric finally confirmed what she’d long suspected. She was a sociopath. But even though it was the very first personality disorder identified—well over 200 years ago—sociopathy had been neglected by mental health professionals for decades. She was told there was no treatment, no hope for a normal life. She found herself haunted by sociopaths in pop culture, madmen and evil villains who are considered monsters. Her future looked grim.

But when Patric reconnects with an old flame, she gets a glimpse of a future beyond her diagnosis. If she’s capable of love, it must mean that she isn’t a monster. With the help of her sweetheart (and some curious characters she meets along the way) she embarks on a mission to prove that the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren’t all monsters either.

This is the inspiring story of her journey to change her fate and how she managed to build a life full of love and hope.]]> 368 Patric Gagne 166800318X Cindy 5 3.74 2024
author: Patric Gagne
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/24
shelves:
review:
I listened to the audiobook, which was narrated by Gagne herself (I think all nf audiobooks should be narrated by the authors themselves, it clearly only adds to the the books). It was a fascinating insight into how sociopaths think, (don't) feel, and see the world.
]]> 194020321
While going through their parents' belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the VHS tapes reveals a night back in 1999 that none of them have any recollection of. On screen, their father appears covered in blood. What follows is a dead body and a pact between their parents to get rid of it, before the video abruptly ends.

Beth, Nicole, and Michael must now decide whether to leave the past in the past or uncover the dark secret their mother took to her grave.]]> 256 Jeneva Rose Cindy 5 2024, mystery, adult 3.77 2024
author: Jeneva Rose
name: Cindy
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/17
date added: 2024/04/17
shelves: 2024, mystery, adult
review:
I listened to the audiobook for this adult domestic mystery about three estranged siblings who stumble upon what appears to be a murder in an old home video, after their mother passes away. The audiobook was an enjoyable experience with no less than four talented voice actors. Everything comes to a head in a breathtaking and satisfying conclusion.
]]>