My best friend gave me “The Backyard Bird Chronicles” by Amy Tan for Christmas and I can’t wait to get started on it …. I wanted to finish up another book first.

I love bird watching. And listening.

YA fiction. Had it for a year, but just now gonna dig in today. It's large print. Hoping it grabs my attention. Been a while since I've gotten into a novel.

"Full of high stakes and detailed fantasy worldbuilding with interesting mythology for readers." -- Library Journal

... "Book I" - Very violent opening, which is off-putting, but makes sense later, when learning what makes these characters immortal. It's like "Dark Shadows" meets "Lord of the Rings" - really attached to the characters!

Dark Shadows" and "Lord of the Rings".

Now reading The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. Well written. "Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier. - The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature."

Perfect for a cold, winter's night. Hope your power stays on.

A Wild bit of magic realism set in the Texican borderlands It is focused on a Mexican bandit who’s progeny find their way to familial redemption despite living under the specter of a vengeful shadow that has followed previous generations and is itself changing. Excellent writing.

Also “mesmerizing...wildly entertaining” (The Boston Globe) A magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez.

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Valley of Fear".

with Sherlock, I always say.

And what a week it has been! I started with Nickel Boys. Now I’m finishing up with The Underground Railroad.

Thank you everyone for all your wonderful suggestions. Looking forward to next week’s thread.

Catching up with two new titles:

Kingpin and Untouchable

Fixer/bagman for the House speaker, Joe resolves political and personal crises.

Lots of insider DC. Golf, martinis, and maybe mow the lawn next week.

John Sanford adjacent.

Looks like a most interesting series. Though I can't imagine little Mikey Johnson involved in this sort of thing. Too much of a wimp.

By Ken Follett. British/Russian historic novel of pre- WW1. Enjoying the descriptive plots involving cultural and political intrigue of the times..

A hidden journal penned by Pope Pius XII exposes his secret manipulation of Adolf Hitler's ascent to power, revealing a clandestine control over the Nazi regime that could redefine history.

As Mario delves deeper, he and his best friend Roberto are ensnared in a deadly web of Vatican secrecy and deceit. Facing relentless pursuit by those desperate to bury the truth, they navigate a perilous path between faith and fact.

Torn between the sanctity of his vows and the imperative of truth, Mario faces the ultimate Can he bear the burden of this knowledge, or will he risk everything to bring the dark past to light?

Drawing on the thrilling essence of classics like The Da Vinci Code and the intricate mystery of the Vatican Secret Archive Thrillers, The Vatican Dictator is a gripping tale of faith, betrayal, and the quest for truth. It invites readers into a labyrinth of intrigue where the stakes extend beyond personal salvation to the very understanding of history itself.

Early in the week I finished It Happened in Silence by Karla Jay. I really liked this book! In fact I read all night until I finished it. Loved the characters and the story line.

It is self-published so not going to be in libraries, for a while anyway. It seems quite popular, though, so that may change soon. It is on Kindle.

A panoramic and epic novel in the grand romantic style, PUSH NOT THE RIVER is the rich story of Poland in the late 1700s--a time of heartache and turmoil as the country's once peaceful people are being torn apart by neighboring countries and divided loyalties. It is then, at the young and vulnerable age of seventeen, when Lady Anna Maria Berezowska loses both of her parents and must leave the only home she has ever known. With Empress Catherine's Russian armies streaming in to take their spoils, Anna is quickly thrust into a world of love and hate, loyalty and deceit, patriotism and treason, life and death. Even kind Aunt Stella, Anna's new guardian who soon comes to personify Poland's courage and spirit, can't protect Anna from the uncertain future of the country. Anna, a child no longer, turns to love and comfort in the form of Jan, a brave patriot and architect of democracy, unaware that her beautiful and enigmatic cousin Zofia has already set her sights on the handsome young fighter. Thus Anna walks unwittingly into Zofia's jealous wrath and darkly sinister intentions. Forced to survive several tragic events, many of them orchestrated by the crafty Zofia, a strengthened Anna begins to learn to place herself in the way of destiny--for love and for country. Heeding the proud spirit of her late father, Anna becomes a major player in the fight against the countries who come to partition her beloved Poland. PUSH NOT THE RIVER is based on the true eighteenth century diary of Anna Maria Berezowska, a Polish countess who lived through the rise and fall of the historic Third of May Constitution. Vivid, romantic, and thrillingly paced, it paints the emotional and unforgettable story of the metamorphosis of a nation--and of a proud and resilient young woman.

I just started this last night and was pulled right into it. It's 550 pages, so I doubt I will finish it this week. It will be one of those that I will be on the hunt for the rest of the series in the discounted sellers.

I took this book out of my library when I saw it mentioned by hermetic. Thanks, hermetic. When a young woman has the nerve to open her novel with this opening sentence: "Ronnie Childers was tripping his balls off in Jackson Square when an angel of the Lord appeared before him.", she had me hooked. I'm about 70 pages in and am enjoying it very much. Its chapters are messages that also have a sense of humor.

Later, Ms. Miller writes in regard to banning books: "When you have everything, the only luxury left is taking things away from others."

Lula Dean includes 'Art of the Deal' in the okay, safe books list.

I hope the rest of this book is equally good.

I enjoyed it all the way to the end.

I read it decades ago and really, really enjoyed it, never have forgotten it. I just now (five minutes ago) found a tattered paperback copy of it in a box of old paperbacks and now I'm going to re-read it. It's a time-travel novel, very clever and wonderfully entertaining, although the ending is kind of predictable.

— Ron

“A ribald, Byzantine tale of time-tourism” Will have to look for that one.

Sorry to be so slow. Just had a weird power outage here. I hate when that happens....

It's a good story and Barclay is now one of my favorite authors.

Will be looking for more.

by James Patterson and David Ellis.

From the book jacket:

An attorney and mother of two discovers her husband's secret life and it might kill them all.

Everyone in Hemingway Grove, Illinois, knows David and Marcie Bowers. David owns the local pub. Marcie is a former big-city attorney who practices family law.

When David saves a stranger from drowning, he's celebrated as a hero. Photos of his muscled physique, shaved head, and piercing blue eyes are broadcast over every news channel.

For most people, newfound fame is a lifeline.
For David Bowers, it's a death sentence.
For Marcie Bowers, it's a test.

In her previous life as a defense attorney, she and her boss were negotiating a deal with the government for a hit man under arrest to turn state's evidence to an organized crime boss in Chicago. All she and her boss could see and hear from their client was his blue eyes through a slit in his jail cell door and his voice was disguised with an electronic device. the hit man is thought to be have been killed before he could testify but could he still be alive and be her husband whom she met after she returned to her hometown of Hemingway Grove?

Love Patterson. Thanks.

Contemporary Ireland slides into a Right Wing totalitarian police state.
Profit Song examines the effects of this political transition on a typical South Dublin family whose father is a leader in the Teachers Union… and who is “disappeared” into the prison system, leaving his wife Eilish and their four children to cope in a new grim society where police run amok, information is throughly censored, and the social order breaks down, leading to Civil War.

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 • INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

How terrifyingly prophetic.

"A prophetic masterpiece." says the Washington Post in 2023. Oh, the irony.