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Palace of treason book7/7/2023 ![]() ![]() Just as fast-paced, heart-pounding, and action-packed as Red Sparrow, Jason Matthews’s second novel confirms he is “an insider’s insider…and a masterful storyteller” (Vince Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author). When the past catches up with him in the form of Kara, a Russian spy with whom he shares a complicated past, he is forced to question everything and everyone in his life. ![]() Adam Lawrence was trained and groomed by MI6 his career seems set. And when a mole in the SVR finds Dominika’s name on a restricted list of sources, it is a virtual death sentence… With Olga Kurylenko, Oona Chaplin, Ciarán Hinds, Charlie Cox. ![]() Complicating these risks is the fact that Dominika is in love with her CIA handler, Nate Nash, and their lust is as dangerous as committing espionage in Moscow. What no one knows is that Dominika is working for the CIA as Washington’s most sensitive penetration of SVR and the Kremlin.Īs she expertly dodges exposure, Dominika deals with a murderously psychotic boss survives an Iranian assassination attempt escapes a counterintelligence ambush rescues an arrested agent and exfiltrates him out of Russia and has a chilling midnight conversation in her nightgown with President Putin. She despises the men she serves, the oligarchs, and crooks, and thugs of Putin’s Russia. From the bestselling, Edgar Award–winning author of the “terrifically good” (The New York Times) Red Sparrow, a compulsively readable new novel about star-crossed Russian agent Dominika Egorova and CIA's Nate Nash in a desperate race to the finish.Captain Dominika Egorova of the Russian Intelligence Service (SVR) has returned from the West to Moscow. ![]()
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Good Christian Bitches by Kim Gatlin7/7/2023 ![]() ![]() She’s divorced her cheating husband and fled, along with her two teenagers, back to her hometown, Hillside Park, a Dallas suburb so upper-class that the question isn’t where to bank, but whose family owns the bank. Will their evil gossip destroy her reputation, or will she show them exactly how to turn the other cheekĪmanda Vaughn needs some heaven-sent help. "The GCBs of Hillside Park Presbyterian are praying for Amanda Vaughn-or so they claim. The show was originally going to be named after the book, but many critics thought it to be very inappropriate, so ABC made the change to Good Christian Belles. The story has been turned into a television show on ABC called Good Christian Belles. ![]() ![]() Good Christian Bitches is a novel by Kim Gatlin. ![]()
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Pete the cat by eric litwin7/6/2023 ![]() The moral of Pete's story is: "No matter what you step in, keep walking along and singing your song because it's all good." Who couldn't use a little of Pete in their classroom for morale? Keep on singing, Pete.Ībout the author: Eric Litwin is a musician-turned-writer whose book about Pete the Cat made the New York Times best-seller list. The story reinforces that whatever happens in life, you can rise above it. How teachers can use this book: It's a great book for K-1 for character building. The free download and read-aloud of the song, are a lot of fun, too. What I like best: I love the great outlook Pete has about life. But no matter what color his shoes are, Pete keeps movin' and groovin' and singing his song. Along the way, his shoes change from white to red to blue to brown to WET as he steps in piles of strawberries, blueberries and other big messes. ![]() ![]() He doesn't let anything get him down! Pete goes walking down the street wearing his brand new white shoes. Why I chose it: Pete the Cat is one cool cat. Recommended by: Lisa Marinucci-Berner, library media specialist, South Colonie Teacher's Association. ![]()
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Green grass raffaella barker7/6/2023 ![]() What a talent,’ he chortles, slapping Inigo on the back with a broad, well-manicured hand. Manfred, an art collector who flew in this evening from Munich to dine with Laura and Inigo, claps his hands and laughs out loud. Laura has of course seen it all before, but she knows better than to roll her eyes and sigh instead she beckons the circling waitress and whispers instructions. He flexes his fingers and balances a cigarette packet on one corner, then flashes a grin at his audience. His watch glitters and beeps, becoming a green screen for a second. ![]() The trick is finding it.’ Inigo pushes back the sleeves of his shirt. ![]() ‘Everything has a point from which it can balance. Laura is grateful that Inigo does not demonstrate spoon balancing, but instead contents himself with arranging all the glasses and cutlery on the table into a gleaming circuit, with fork following knife following spoon, each one balanced on the rim of a glass. ![]()
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Never letting go book7/6/2023 ![]() ![]() Not over- dramatic warm and gutsy and real. ![]() It kept getting put at the bottom of the pile.Then I started listening on my way into school and back and was quickly gripped and thoroughly involved. I am a school librarian and the kids have been telling me for a while that this was wonderful- but I have grown a bit allergic to Dystopian Fantasy- indeed, any fantasy recently!- and this is a tough one to get into. What did you like most about The Knife of Never Letting Go? I've just listened to the audio book and Humphry Bower does his usual amazing job turning in a powerful, energetic performance, (except I'd always thought of the settlers having an American deep south accent! but what do I know, rural England works too!). ![]() The story of a boy and his dog and a girl, who are running for their lives seems simple, but like the very best literature, the actual way this story is written is revolutionary and transporting. It's hard to describe how I fealt reading this book the prose is so raw and brutal and funny and tragic and very 'new'. This comes from a 40 something teacher who has to plough through some drab 'teen' fiction for a living, and who's favourite author is Jane Austen!. ![]() I read this book a couple of years ago, based on a librarian's recommendation and once I'd got passed the first few confusing pages and got used to the raw writing style I realised it was one of the most amazing books I'd ever read in my life. ![]()
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Eugene b sledge with the old breed7/6/2023 ![]() ![]() Now including a new introduction by Paul Fussell, With the Old Breed presents a stirring, personal account of the vitality and bravery of the Marines in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Sledge's memoir of his experience fighting in the South Pacific during World War II so devastatingly powerful is its sheer honest simplicity and compassion. In his own book, Wartime, Paul Fussell called With the Old Breed "one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war." John Keegan referred to it in The Second World War as "one of the most arresting documents in war literature." And Studs Terkel was so fascinated with the story he interviewed its author for his book, "The Good War." What has made E.B. ![]()
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The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan7/5/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And also a bit weary of ambiguous or downright depressing endings. And, okay, I liked that both Ruth and Art, and LuLing all had happy endings. It struck me as very true to life, trite as that might sound. GaoLing, Art, and Art's two children in particular struck home for me: I recognized the reality of their rough edges but also their smoother sides, both of which fit together in surprising ways. The background characters in this book were excellently done, carefully nuanced rather than playing simple roles. I loved Ruth every bit as much as I loved LuLing young and old. This book, though, was a delight from cover to cover. Tan mentions in an interview included in the back of this edition that she knows her strength is writing from the perspectives of mothers (372). Usually when I read Amy Tan's books I find myself wishing that the whole thing was told from the mothers' point of view, or even just set in the past entirely. ![]()
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Commonwealth book ann patchett7/5/2023 ![]() I have stepsiblings, I have a sister, I have a mother, I have two stepfathers, I have a stepmother - all these people who are very close to me and very involved in my life, and they have a place in this book. ![]() I certainly drew from things that were much closer to my life. On whether she has fictionalized her own family story, as one of her characters does in the book my parents got divorced when I was young and my mother married someone who had four children and we moved to the other side of the country - albeit not to Virginia - and I think that being thrown together, being pulled out of a family and put into a family has always been very interesting to me. ![]() If I could stretch out on the couch for a minute. On why she keeps coming back to these groups of people thrown together under unexpected circumstances ![]() Author Interviews Patchett: In Bad Relationships, 'There Comes A Day When You Gotta Go' ![]()
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![]() ![]() Yet Bornstein quickly realized that she could not discuss her gender identity in the conservative climate of 1950s America. In the waking world, Bornstein also constructed an imaginary gender change machine in her basement at age ten by decorating an old chair with wires and dials. ![]() To end this faceoff, the men would tie Bornstein to a wooden cart and wheel her across to the women as a peace offering. This gender dysphoria (the mismatch between her assigned sex and internal gender identity) often expressed itself in a recurring dream that pitted an army of men against an army of women. Born a “nice Jewish boy” to Ashkenazi parents Paul and Mildred Bornstein in Asbury, New Jersey, on March 15, 1948, Bornstein knew by preschool that she did not identify as a boy. ![]()
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The locked room paul auster7/5/2023 ![]() The story begins with the protagonist receiving a letter from a childhood friend of his who he has not seen in years, which leads to the discovery that this man, named Fanshawe (the title of an autobiographical novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne) has now disappeared and left behind a trove of unpublished literary treasures. It is also the only book in the Trilogy where the protagonist is not given a name and where the story is told from a first person point of view, which emphasizes the greater control over the text that the character achieves by the end of the book. ![]() ![]() This story also features a detective as its protagonist, although he is a detective in a much looser sense of the word. The Locked Room takes it title from the popular detective fiction mystery of a dead body found in locked room with no other entrances, but, in keeping with the ideas presented in the first two books of The New York Trilogy, it is transformed into a metaphor about a character/reader's relationship to a texta book becomes a locked room because of the character/reader's inability to escape the control of the author. ![]() |