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You can find my review of Blake Crouch's Recursion (mentioned in the Greedy Reading List Six Riveting

I listed the Queen's Thief series in the Greedy Reading List Six Royally Magical Young Adult Series,

of Force of Nature (Aaron Falk #2) and The Lost Man, which I mentioned in my Greedy Reading List The Six

Shirley Jackson wrote six novels, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two memoirs, and the

you're interested in immigrant stories, you might want to check out the books on the Greedy Reading List Six

They're from other times in history. protagonist's focus in her work is Commander Graham Gore (a character based upon a real figure from history Their common disjointedness brings them together, and the mashup of personalities and histories was fantastic

Paulette Jiles also wrote two other Civil War-era historical fiction books I loved, News of the World #historicalfiction, #civilwar What are you reading now? Concurrently reading a young adult LGBTQ mystery, a comedian's memoir, and a historical fiction story

For other light fiction books I've enjoyed, check out the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories

If you're in the mood for more light fiction, you might try the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six

French is the author of six books in the Dublin Murder Squad series: In the Woods, The Likeness (my absolute

Whitehead, inspired by a real-life reform school that abused and terrorized boys for over a century, shares a tale of racial injustice, abuse and horrors, terrible fear, and the very real threat of death at the hands of openly, willfully cruel white men. We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness. Elwood Curtis is a promising young man in 1960s Tallahassee. But when he hitchhikes with the wrong guy to his first day of scholarship university classes, he's unfairly sent to a boys' reform school, The Nickel Academy. The "Nickel Boys" endure endless injustices, abuse, and horrors, including the looming threat of being "disappeared" out back, never to be heard from again. But as naive as it may be, Elwood persists in pursuing justice and clinging to the moral high road just like his idol Martin Luther King, Jr., and he is unwavering in his ideals regardless of the dangers. His best friend Turner is more savvy, careful, and jaded, while loyal to Elwood. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things. In the midst of becoming pawns in the crooked trading away of the school's supplies to line the pockets of the corrupt men in charge, Elwood and Turner form a friendship that has repercussions for the rest of their lives. The Nickel Academy is based on a real-life reform school that, horrifyingly, abused boys for 111 years. The Nickel Boys doesn't shy away from infuriating, relentless, insidious, damaging, often deadly racial injustice and cruelties. I felt a little manipulated regarding the "twist" Whitehead introduces late in the book, but the living out of an identity and living into an envisioned future is a powerful element. I listened to The Nickel Boys  as an audiobook. For more fiction and nonfiction books about race Colson Whitehead is also the author of The Underground Railroad . For other titles that center around race, please check out the books at this link . For more nonfiction titles that focus on race, please click here .

This book is on my Greedy Reading List Six Fantastic Dystopian and Postapocalyptic Novels.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading The Goddess of Warsaw, Lisa Barr's dual-timeline historical fiction 01 The Goddess of Warsaw by Lisa Barr In Lisa Barr's newest historical fiction, The Goddess of Warsaw

Their settlement is on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History, and they hunt and gather in with her parents' researcher friends, her family helps try to save and further the exhibits of human history Nonie and her group carry a book holding precious history, and on their journey they encounter various

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Go as a River, historical fiction from Shelley Read; I'm listening version of Mary Otis's Burst, a story about a mother and daughter; and I'm reading Mary Sharratt's historical Mary Sharratt offers an exhaustively researched, fascinating historical fiction account of the life of

Isola , based upon the story of a real-life sixteenth-century woman, shifts between details of a life of moneyed ease and an abandonment on an unforgiving, uninhabited island after our main protagonist falls in love with the wrong person. Marguerite is heir to a fortune, but after she is orphaned, she grows into a young lady while her guardian Roberval squanders her inheritance. The unfolding of this continued theft and this absurd man's greedy, gratuitous mishandling of funds--which he legally pursues as a male distantly related to her, ugh--was enough to make my blood boil, but things deteriorate much further from there. As Marguerite enters into her early teens, she begins to fear that her cousin views her as a creepy match for himself. At the very least it becomes clear that he will pay no dowry in order to make another match for her. Instead, in a somewhat shocking turn of events, he forces her to sail with him to New France. But on the way, Marguerite falls for her guardian's servant. When their relationship is discovered, Roberval cruelly punishes them by abandoning them on an uninhabited island to perish. Marguerite, once a privileged, protected child of wealth and opportunity, must learn to survive in the wild. Chapters are preceded by tips from Anne of France to her daughter (from Lessons for My Daughter ) urging constant preservation of reputation, exuding modesty, maintaining a paralyzing fear of making errors, and striving for perfection in the form of delicacy and beauty. These prescribed behaviors suggest a goal of women's disappearing into the background, serving as beautiful, silent, ghostlike creatures. The highly controlled, minutiae-filled advice contrasts more and more starkly with Marguerite's desperate situation on the island and her necessary rejection of even the most basic societal expectations for her status (wearing shoes, using utensils, living a life without work, not developing freckles in the sun, and not dirtying her hands, much less killing, skinning, and processing animals) in order to cling to life. Her slowly deteriorating social and financial standing early in the book gives way to a fascinating, unforgiving stretch of life lived on the rocky island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, bounded in part by Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Labrador Peninsula. As Marguerite taps into her inner strength, she builds a resolve to get home again. But if she is saved and delivered safely back, where will she make her home? How will she secure a future for herself? If her guardian is living, how will she remain safe from him? After a harsh winter, her guardian's ships sail by again, but veer away after spying her. But Marguerite won't give up hope. Now she knows she can see her way through any adversity. I was fascinated by each aspect of this tale, and Goodman transported me into the details and (often infuriating) dynamics of life at the time. Isola  is inspired by the story of the real-life sixteenth-century heroine, Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval. I'd love to hear your Bossy thoughts about this book! I first read Allegra Goodman's work 25 years ago, when I enjoyed her novel Kaaterskill Falls . Since then she has published many more novels, including Sam . I received a prepublication edition of Isola courtesy of Random House and NetGalley.

There Are Rivers in the Sky weaves together three stories set in three timelines, featuring disparate characters, to explore interconnectedness, the power of water, echoing tragedies, and the timelessness of the written word. Water remembers. It is humans who forget. In 1840 in London, young Arthur lives near the sewage-filled River Thames, desperate to escape poverty and his abusive household. In 2014 Turkey, ten-year-old Narin is living near the Tigris and is affected by a disorder that will cause her to go permanently deaf. And in 2018 London, Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames when she and her husband break up, but she can't shake her thoughts of suicide. There Are Rivers   in the Sky traces the stories of these three disparate characters living alongside rivers in three different times, interconnected by a single drop of water and "the Epic of Gilgamesh," an ancient poem that may have the power to change each of their lives. Later, when the storm has passed, everyone will talk about the destruction it left behind, though no one, not even the king himself, will remember that it all began with a single raindrop. Shafak uses the life-giving--and at times, through flood or pollution, life-taking--waters of the Tigris and the Thames to help shape this story in three timelines. Through Zaleekah's 2018-set story we explore climate change, pollution, and the consequences of abusing natural resources, as well as the questionable morality of private or museum ownership of other cultures' precious artifacts. Yet the river is a backdrop to her reimagined future, her newfound inner strength and search for love, and her renewed hope in life. Narin's story, aside from modern modes of travel and communication, feels like a tragedy pulled from deep in the past--and, in fact, it is said that the Yazidi people have been endlessly beaten down and massacred over and over again since ancient times. In a shockingly speedy escalation of force, Isis brings centuries-old hatred to trap and murder innocent Yazidis, eradicating communities in relentless genocide. And clever Arthur slowly pulls himself out of a London slum by lucking into an apprenticeship at a printing shop with nurturing mentors. His curiosity about antiquities leads him to the British Museum and, eventually, a key role in deciphering tablets, then a formative trip to the Middle East and Nineveh, which will be the source of his one true love and also his undoing. Shafak makes what could have been an unwieldy or disjointed-feeling set of complex situations into a tragically beautiful intertwined novel that shines a light on weighty issues at three points in space and time. I was haunted by this and fascinated as well. I received a prepublication edition of There Are Rivers in the Sky  courtesy of Knopf and NetGalley. I'd love to hear your bossy thoughts about this book. Elif Shafak also wrote the lovely The Island of Missing Trees . Shafak is a British-Turkish author of seventeen books, including eleven novels.

French is the author of six books in the Dublin Murder Squad series: In the Woods, The Likeness (my absolute

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Emma Donoghue's newest historical fiction, Learned by Heart, set series, One of Us Is Back; and I'm listening to Niall Howell's debut, Only Pretty Damned, which is noir historical Pretty Damned by Niall Howell I'm listening to Niall Howell's debut, Only Pretty Damned, which is noir historical

camper daughter of the owners has disappeared, God of the Woods ; and I'm listening to Joy Callaway's historical 03 What the Mountains Remember by Joy Callaway I love a North-Carolina-set story, and Joy Callaway's historical

This book is listed in the Greedy Reading List Six Captivating Nordic Stories.

Makepeace spy mystery, The Trap ; I'm listening to Miss Morgan's Book Brigade , Janet Skeslien Charles's historical Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles I love a book about scrappy librarians , and Janet Skeslien Charles's historical

Dunlap's debut novel explores early Edinburgh surgical schools, questionable methods of obtaining study subjects, a main protagonist's surprisingly believable entrée into body snatching, a forbidden love, and serial killers, and I was in for it all. I've heard comparisons drawn between A. Rae Dunlap's The Resurrectionist  and Caleb Carr's The Alienist , a suspenseful novel about the evolution of forensic science that I adored reading years ago, and while the books are quite different, I can appreciate the favorable association. Dunlap's debut novel is dark, twisty, gothic, and it's set in 19th-century Scotland as fictionalized versions of real-life serial killers Burke and Hare are terrorizing Edinburgh. James Willoughby is a na ï ve young medical student whose family fortunes have taken a negative turn, leaving him with a passion for studying medicine but no resources to pursue schooling. He becomes drawn into the underworld of body snatching when he seeks paid work to fund his studies--and begins to understand (and assist with) the process of obtaining cadavers for his surgery study. Ultimately, terrifyingly, his activities lead him to run into the cadaver-producing killers Burke and Hare. Dunlap does a wonderful job of bringing a spooky, fascinating underworld of Edinburgh to life, while also exploring the burgeoning surgery and medical school experience, and, against all odds, building the somewhat-reasonable-feeling case for James's horror-turned-acceptance on the subject of mining graveyards for bodies to study. At the center of the story there's a hesitant friendship, then a meaningful, playful, and poignant relationship between James and his "handler" (which is affected by the complication of societal intolerance for gay relationships in this period), plus the mystery of the disappearances of community characters, and an elaborate, amateur, exciting group attempt to catch Burke and Hare. I love Dunlap's writing and the way the author crafted this story. I'm definitely in for reading this author's future books! I'd love to hear your Bossy thoughts about this book! I read this title, published in December, courtesy of NetGalley and Kensington Books. For Bossy reviews of more books set in Scotland, please check out the titles at this link .

Wilkerson is exceptional at laying out absurdities, horrors, disturbing historical events, shocking trends Because of the music involved in the story, Mary Jane reminded me of the books on the Greedy Reading List Six

book felt clunky to me, bogged down by explanations of how Aaron's imagined world works and the basic history Eventually the story seemed to hit its stride, and the various demons, magical powers, dark histories

of Killer Fashion: Poisonous Petticoats, Strangulating Scarves, and Other Deadly Garments Throughout History , She Kills Me: The True Stories of History's Deadliest Women, It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History, and other books.

Mason's novel isn't simply a historical fiction story linked through timelines. But North Woods isn't a charming historical fiction novel.

Henry's Beach Read was one of my favorite books last year, and it made it onto the Greedy Reading List Six

you're interested in memoirs that explore similar themes, check out the books on the Greedy Reading List Six

This book is part of my Greedy Reading List Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes.

builds the pool of potential culprits for Nathan to examine in this story of uncovering truths, family history I listed this book in the Greedy Reading List The Six Best Mysteries I Read Last Year.

I mentioned Life After Life in the Greedy Reading List Six Fascinating Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life

01 A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham The summer Chloe Davis was twelve, six girls went missing

Shirley Jackson wrote six novels, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two memoirs, and the

Are you interested in a historical fiction retelling of the story of King Edward, Lady Jane Grey, and #historicalfiction, #fantasyscifi, #series, #fourstarbookreview

the final book in Black's Folk of the Air trilogy (I mentioned the series in the Greedy Reading List Six

If you're into nonfiction, you might like the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction

This was also listed in my Greedy Reading List Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes.

This book is part of my Greedy Reading List Six Fantastic Dystopian and Postapocalyptic Novels.

This book made my Greedy Reading List of My Six Favorite Summer 2020 Reads.

This book is on my Greedy Reading List Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes.

Both of these books are listed in my Greedy Reading List of Six Fantastic Dystopian and Postapocalyptic

If you like fiction about bands and music, you might like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Rocking

in recent years has been primarily focused on shutting off the outside world, but the demands of a six

reclaim versions of their lives using competitive magical tasks, The Book of Love; and I'm listening to a historical Walsh Unsinkable is historical fiction set in two timelines by Jenni L. Walsh.

Safekeep feels claustrophobic, quiet, and hopeless, but unexpected shifts late in the story turn accepted histories relationships and made me question the basis for the story's loyalties and for the accepted family histories

friend @angelsmomreads recommended this book to me when I was talking about my Greedy Reading List Six

In this historical fiction-fantasy, characters from Dickens's tale are plunged into a dark, powerful

February is the shortest month, but I squeezed in some great reading: compelling historical fiction based memoir; a fast-paced WWII-set mystery for young readers that came out of a writing collaboration; and historical War II-focused books here , and you can also check out my review of Kate Quinn's great codebreaking historical for adults, The Rose Code . 06 Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine Erin Crosby Eckstine's richly detailed historical

Six More Book Gift Ideas for the Holidays Shhh!