libraries

39d

📚 Little Bosses Everywhere by: Bridget Read

Companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the world’s greatest opportunity: the chance to be your own boss via an enigmatic business model called multilevel marketing, or MLM. They offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and most precious of all fin...

https://bookblabla.com/book/little-bosses-everywhere

#books #reading #libraries #businesseconomics #marketing

Companies like Amway, Mary Kay, and Herbalife advertise the world’s greatest opportunity: the chance to be your own boss via an enigmatic business model called multilevel marketing, or MLM. They offer a world of pink Cadillacs, white-columned mansions, tropical vacations, and most precious of all financial freedom. If, that is, you’re willing to shell out for expensive products and recruit everyone you know to buy them, and if they recruit everyone they know, too, thus creating the multiple levels of MLM.

Overwhelming evidence suggests that most people lose money in multilevel marketing, and that many MLM companies are pyramid schemes. Yet the industry’s origins, tied to right-wing ideologues like Ronald Reagan, have escaped public scrutiny. MLM has slithered in the wake of every economic crisis of the last century, from the Depression to the pandemic, ensnaring laid-off workers, stay-at-home moms, and teachers—anyone who has been left behind by rising inequality.

In Little Bosses Everywhere, journalist Bridget Read tells the gripping story of multilevel marketing in full for the first time, winding from sunny postwar California, where a failed salesman started a vitamin business, through the devoutly religious suburbs of Michigan, where the industry built its political influence, to stadium-size conventions where today’s top sellers preach to die-hard recruits. MLM has enriched powerful people, like the DeVos and Van Andel families, Warren Buffett, and Presid

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40d

📚 Dungeon Crawler Carl by: Matt Dinniman

You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game ...

https://bookblabla.com/book/dungeon-crawler-carl

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #sciencefiction #fantasy

You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what.

Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world—or just get to the next level—in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.

Includes part one of the exclusive bonus story Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The apocalypse will be televised! Welcome to the first book in the wildly popular and addictive Dungeon Crawler Carl series—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition.

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40d

📚 Against the Grain by: Terry O'Reilly

In Terry’s bestselling book, My Best Mistake, he uncovers the surprising power of screwing up. Now, he turns his incredible eye to the mavericks who go “against the grain” in their work to see what makes them tick and to explore what lessons we can learn from them. People wh...

https://bookblabla.com/book/against-the-grain

#books #reading #libraries #businesseconomics #managementselfhelp #personalgrowth #success

In Terry’s bestselling book, My Best Mistake, he uncovers the surprising power of screwing up. Now, he turns his incredible eye to the mavericks who go “against the grain” in their work to see what makes them tick and to explore what lessons we can learn from them. People who chose to ignore conventional wisdom, found or invented a better way, questioned the status quo at great sacrifice and pushed for change against all odds.

Some were drummed out of their careers for it but in the end were proven right (Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis). Some were celebrated but had to fight every inch of the way (Norman Lear). Some re-invented their industry but preferred to stay an outsider (Tom Laughlin—aka Billy Jack).

Some confounded their competitors with ingenious strategies (NHL coach Roger Neilson). One even saved millions of people around the world, but was humiliated, demoted, and dismissed for her entire career (Dr. Katalin Karikó—co-creator of the COVID vaccine). All persistent visionaries, each covered in battle scars.

New from the bestselling author and host of CBC Radio’s Under the Influence

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24d

One more time for international folks, The Gospel of the Public Library, Sightless Scribbles https://sightlessscribbles.com/posts/20250910/ #Library #Libraries

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38d

📚 His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (Book 1) by: Philip Pullman

A war is brewing in Lyra's world between those who would keep people in ignorance and those willing to fight for freedom. Lyra is thrust into the middle of the conflict when her uncle Asriel comes to Oxford, fomenting rebellion, and wh...

https://bookblabla.com/book/his-dark-materials-the-golden-compass-book-1

#books #reading #libraries #juvenilefiction #fantasy #actionadventure #classics

A war is brewing in Lyra's world between those who would keep people in ignorance and those willing to fight for freedom. Lyra is thrust into the middle of the conflict when her uncle Asriel comes to Oxford, fomenting rebellion, and when her best friend, Roger, suddenly disappears.

Lyra learns that Roger was kidnapped by a shadowy organization that is rumored to experiment on children. To find him, she will travel to the cold, far North, where armored bears and witch clans rule—and where Asriel is attempting to build a bridge to a parallel world.

What Lyra doesn’t know is that to help one of them will be to betray the other—and that her actions will have consequences not just in her world, but in all the worlds beyond.

Look for the modern fantasy classics of HIS DARK MATERIALS:
The Golden Compass. The Subtle Knife. The Amber Spyglass

And Lyra’s adventures continue in THE BOOK OF DUST:
La Belle Sauvage. The Secret Commonwealth. The Rose Field

DON’T MISS THE EPIC FINALE TO LYRA’S STORY: THE ROSE FIELD, AVAILABLE NOW!

Discover the modern fantasy classic that kicked off the epic trilogies His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust—a world where humans have animal familiars and parallel universes are within reach.

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38d

📚 The Kaiju Preservation Society by: John Scalzi

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to h...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-kaiju-preservation-society

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #sciencefiction #aliencontact

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm, human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is John Scalzi's first standalone adventure since the conclusion of his New York Times bestselling Interdependency trilogy.

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37d

📚 Death of the Author by: Nnedi Okorafor

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s...

https://bookblabla.com/book/death-of-the-author

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #womenfiction #sciencefiction #literaryfiction #sagasfiction

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.

When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.

A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on t

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37d

📚 The Love Wager by: Lynn Painter

Hallie Piper is turning over a new leaf. After belly-crawling out of a hotel room (hello, rock bottom), she decides it’s time to become a full-on adult. She gets a new apartment, a new haircut, and a new wardrobe, but when she logs onto the dating app that she has determined will find her new love, she s...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-love-wager

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #romance #contemporaryfiction #women

Hallie Piper is turning over a new leaf. After belly-crawling out of a hotel room (hello, rock bottom), she decides it’s time to become a full-on adult. She gets a new apartment, a new haircut, and a new wardrobe, but when she logs onto the dating app that she has determined will find her new love, she sees none other than Jack, the guy whose room she snuck out of.

After agreeing they are absolutely not interested in each other, Jack and Hallie realize they’re each other’s perfect wing-person in their searches for The One. They text each other about their dates, often scheduling them at the same restaurant so that if things don’t go well, the two of them can get tacos afterward.

Spoiler: they get a lot of tacos together.

Discouraged by the lack of prospects, Jack and Hallie make a wager to see who can find true love first, but when they agree to be fake dates for a weekend wedding, all bets are off. As they pretend to be a couple, lines become blurred and they both struggle to remember why the other was a bad idea to begin with.

Two people make a wager on who can find love first, not realizing what they should be betting on is each other, in this new romantic comedy by Lynn Painter, New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Wrong Number.

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43d

The site of the Bodleian MLGB database is KU Leuven's site of the week. It's indeed a great project that deserves more attention.

#Libraries #Manuscripts

https://bsky.app/profile/speccoll-kuleuven.bsky.social/post/3mc7lb525kc2i

Edited 43d ago

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1y

A most interesting chart. And most revealing.
#books #bookstodon #libraries

Bar chart.
Title: Number of Toronto Public Library in-person visits versus attendance at games (home and away) of major sports teams, 2023.
The chart shows that there were 12.5 million library visits, versus attendance of 3 million for Blue Jays games, 1.7 million for Maple Leafs games, and 0.8 million for Raptors games.

Edited 1y ago

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36d

📚 I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom: A Novel by: Jason Pargin

Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC.

But there are rules:

He cannot look inside the box.
He cannot ask question...

https://bookblabla.com/book/im-starting-to-worry-about-this-black-box-of-doom-a-novel

#books #reading #libraries

Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC.

But there are rules:

He cannot look inside the box.
He cannot ask questions.
He cannot tell anyone.
They must leave immediately.
He must leave all trackable devices behind.

As these eccentric misfits hit the road, rumors spread on social media that the box is part of a carefully orchestrated terror attack intended to plunge the USA into civil war.

The truth promises to be even stranger, and may change how you see the world.

THE INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER

A standalone darkly humorous thriller set in modern America's age of anxiety, by New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin.

Source: Publisher

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36d

📚 The Strange House (Manga) Vol. 4 by: Uketsu, Kyo Ayano

As Yuzuki and I investigate the Katabuchi family home, our unease grows. What dark secrets has her family been hiding? The mysteries deepen, but at least one has been solved: the identity of You-chan's murderer. Yet that is only the beginning of the strange, disturbing truth...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-strange-house-manga-vol-4

#books #reading #libraries #manga #horror

As Yuzuki and I investigate the Katabuchi family home, our unease grows. What dark secrets has her family been hiding? The mysteries deepen, but at least one has been solved: the identity of You-chan's murderer. Yet that is only the beginning of the strange, disturbing truth...

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35d

📚 Fauves by: Melissa Da Costa

Je veux jouer avec le feu, trembler, sentir la morsure de la mort. Défier les instincts les plus brutaux, les plus sauvages, et les dépasser.

Comment s'échapper de sa cage ? C'est l'obsession des fauves mais aussi celle de Tony, dix-sept ans, lorsqu'il rejoint un cirque itinérant après avoir fui la violence de son père. Faire face aux bê...

https://bookblabla.com/book/fauves

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #general

Je veux jouer avec le feu, trembler, sentir la morsure de la mort. Défier les instincts les plus brutaux, les plus sauvages, et les dépasser.

Comment s'échapper de sa cage ? C'est l'obsession des fauves mais aussi celle de Tony, dix-sept ans, lorsqu'il rejoint un cirque itinérant après avoir fui la violence de son père. Faire face aux bêtes, affronter ses propres démons...

Le nouveau roman de Mélissa Da Costa nous propulse au coeur de l'arène, où l'ivresse du danger fait oublier la mort. Une fresque magistrale, portée par une écriture tendue et charnelle.

Mélissa Da Costa relève hautement le défi de cet audacieux roman. Le Parisien WE

C'est tout un univers de brutes et d'audacieux, de femmes endurantes et bouleversantes, l'envers du chapiteau que conte brillamment Mélissa Da Costa. Adrénaline garantie. Elle
Fauves séduit par la complexité de ses personnages, rendant le roman addictif et difficile à lâcher. Huffington Post

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35d

📚 Cibola Burn by: James S. A. Corey

An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave.

The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has beg...

https://bookblabla.com/book/cibola-burn

#books #reading #libraries

An empty apartment, a missing family, that's creepy. But this is like finding a military base with no one on it. Fighters and tanks idling on the runway with no drivers. This is bad juju. Something wrong happened here. What you should do is tell everyone to leave.

The gates have opened the way to a thousand new worlds and the rush to colonize has begun. Settlers looking for a new life stream out from humanity's home planets. Ilus, the first human colony on this vast new frontier, is being born in blood and fire.

Independent settlers stand against the overwhelming power of a corporate colony ship with only their determination, courage, and the skills learned in the long wars of home. Innocent scientists are slaughtered as they try to survey a new and alien world.

The struggle on Ilus threatens to spread all the way back to Earth. James Holden and the crew of his one small ship are sent to make peace in the midst of war and sense in the midst of chaos. But the more he looks at it, the more Holden thinks the mission was meant to fail. And the whispers of a dead man remind him that the great galactic civilization that once stood on this land is gone. And that something killed it.

The ExpanseLeviathan WakesCaliban's WarAbaddon's GateCibola BurnNemesis GamesBabylon's AshesThe Expanse Short Fiction The Butcher of Anderson StationGods of RiskThe ChurnThe Vital Abyss.

The explosive fourth novel in James S.A. Corey's New York Times bestselling Expanse series. Now a m

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33d

📚 The Vanishing Half by: Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years ...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-vanishing-half

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #womenfiction #literary

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.

As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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34d

📚 Piranesi by: Susanna Clarke

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls lined with thousands upon thousands of statues. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; and waves thunder up staircases, while rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he...

https://bookblabla.com/book/piranesi

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #fantasy #generalfiction #general

Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls lined with thousands upon thousands of statues. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; and waves thunder up staircases, while rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

Spellbinding, strange, and unforgettably original (Esquire), Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty.

The award-winning, New York Times bestselling fantasy sensation that Madeline Miller called, “a miraculous and luminous feat of storytelling,” Piranesi is an intoxicating, hypnotic novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality from the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

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34d

📚 The Unnoticeables by: Robert Brockway

There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, and the problem that is "you" gets solved.
...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-unnoticeables

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #fantasy #urbanfiction #horror #general

There are angels, and they are not beneficent or loving. But they do watch over us. They watch our lives unfold, analyzing us for repeating patterns and redundancies. When they find them, the angels simplify those patterns and remove the redundancies, and the problem that is "you" gets solved.

Carey doesn't much like that idea. As a punk living in New York City, 1977, Carey is sick and tired of watching strange kids with unnoticeable faces abduct his friends. He doesn't care about the rumors of tar-monsters in the sewers or unkillable psychopaths invading the punk scene—all he wants is to drink cheap beer and dispense ass-kickings.

Kaitlyn isn't sure what she's doing with her life. She came to Hollywood in 2013 to be a stunt woman, but last night a former teen heartthrob tried to eat her, her best friend has just gone missing, and there's an angel outside her apartment. Whatever she plans on doing with her life, it should probably happen in the few remaining minutes she has left. There are angels. There are demons. They are the same thing. It's up to Carey and Kaitlyn to stop them. The survival of the human race is in their hands.
We are, all of us, well and truly screwed.

A nasty, freaky, and haphazardly funny horror story. Kirkus Reviews
Strangely readable, with unexpected depths. Publishers Weekly

Filled with "irreverent wit" this urban fantasy novel is a raunchy, rollicking tale of punk rock, gruesome horror and pop-culture satire ( NPR).

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34d

This made me happy! I feel like their update is saying, yes yes yes Robert, we fuckin’ get it. Our catalog has bugs. Could you pretty please find a hobby or a man so you will quit pointing out bugs to our development team? Your constant nagging about our accessibility issues piss us off a lot, too! Go find a man or a hobby.

Our team is continually making improvements to the Hoopla app to make it faster and more reliable. This update includes minor updates to the store listing. Thanks for supporting your local library!

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hoopla-digital/id580643740 #Hoopla #Library #Libraries #HooplaDigital #Librarian

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32d

📚 Operation Bounce House by: Matt Dinniman

To be released February 10, 2026.

All colonist Oliver Lewis ever wanted to do was run the family ranch with his sister, maybe play a gig or two with his band, and keep his family's aging fleet of intelligent agriculture bots ticking as long as possible. He figures it will be a...

https://bookblabla.com/book/operation-bounce-house

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #fantasy #epicfiction #sciencefiction #thrillers

To be released February 10, 2026.

All colonist Oliver Lewis ever wanted to do was run the family ranch with his sister, maybe play a gig or two with his band, and keep his family's aging fleet of intelligent agriculture bots ticking as long as possible. He figures it will be a good thing when the transfer gate finally opens all the way and restores instant travel and full communication between Earth and his planet, New Sonora. But there's a complication.

Even though the settlers were promised they'd be left in peace, Earth's government now has other plans. The colossal Apex Industries is hired to commence an eviction action. But maximizing profits will always be Apex's number one priority. Why spend money printing and deploying AI soldiers when they can turn it into a game? Why not charge bored Earthers for the opportunity to design their own war machines and remotely pilot them from the comfort of their homes?

The game is called Operation Bounce House.

Oliver and his friends soon find themselves fighting for their lives against machines piloted by gamers who've paid a premium for the privilege. With the help of an old book from his grandfather and a bucket of rusty parts, Oliver is determined to defend the only home he's ever known.

A man must fight for his planet against impossible odds when gamers from Earth attempt to remotely annihilate it in this epic, fast-paced novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the smash-hit Dungeon Crawler Carl.

To

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33d

📚 Anxious People by: Fredrik Backman

Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hid...

https://bookblabla.com/book/anxious-people

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #sportsfiction

Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.

First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else until tragedy changed her life. Now, she’s obsessed with visiting open houses to see how ordinary people live—and, perhaps, to set an old wrong to right. Then there’s Roger and Anna-Lena, an Ikea-addicted retired couple who are on a never-ending hunt for fixer-uppers to hide the fact that they don’t know how to fix their own failing marriage. Julia and Ro are a young lesbian couple and soon-to-be parents who are nervous about their chances for a successful life together since they can’t agree on anything. And there’s Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by a masked bank robber waving a gun in her face. And despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car.

As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face

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30d

📚 Seascraper by: Benjamin Wood

Twenty-year-old Thomas Flett lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, Northern England, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the drizzly shore to scrape for shrimp, and spends the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash...

https://bookblabla.com/book/seascraper

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #historical #generalfiction #familylife

Twenty-year-old Thomas Flett lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, Northern England, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the drizzly shore to scrape for shrimp, and spends the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and sea-scum, pining for his neighbor, Joan Wyeth, and playing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but this remains a private dream.

Then a mysterious American arrives in town, and enlists Thomas's help in finding a perfect location for his next movie. Though skeptical at first, soon Thomas starts to trust the stranger, Edgar, and, shaken from the drudgery of his days by the promise of Hollywood glamour, begins to see a different future for himself. But how much of what Edgar claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?

Haunting and timeless, from one of the finest British novelists of his generation (The Times) Seascraper tells the story of a quiet existence upturned over the span of one day, and a young man hemmed in by his circumstances, striving to achieve fulfilment far beyond the world he knows.

Longlisted for the Booker Prize, this cinematically plotted, radiant (The New York Times) novel follows shanker Thomas Flett as his quiet life in a small English coastal town is forever changed over the course of one fateful day.

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32d

📚 A Midlife Holiday by: Cary J. Hansson

Meet Helen. She worries that the walls are closing in. With her children grown and her selfish husband away again, she's full of regrets at not taking the exciting paths she dreamed about in her youth. So when the chance of a last-minute holiday to Cyprus with her two best friends i...

https://bookblabla.com/book/a-midlife-holiday

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #generalfiction #humorous #womenfiction #friendship

Meet Helen. She worries that the walls are closing in. With her children grown and her selfish husband away again, she's full of regrets at not taking the exciting paths she dreamed about in her youth. So when the chance of a last-minute holiday to Cyprus with her two best friends is offered, she grabs it.

Meet Caro.A successful city analyst. Single and childless, she's not in Cyprus for the glorious sunshine and crystal-blue waters. But her secret feels so shameful she can't bring herself to share it.
Meet Kay. Sandwiched between the needs of a grown-up son with learning difficulties and elderly parents, all she wants to do is sleep in the sun, preferably all week.
As Caro's secret emerges, tensions between the women explode.
Friendship was easy when they were young, how can it be so hard now?

A Midlife Holiday is the life-affirming first tale in The Midlife Trilogy women's fiction series. Funny, emotional, compassionate and wise, Cary J Hansson shows us why middle-aged women are only just getting started!Prepare to meet three new friends you'll feel you've known all your life!

A wonderfully witty and brutally honest story about female friendship.

'Heart-warming, heart-breaking and hilarious' Reader review.
'Shirley Valentine meets Bridget Jones' Cup Full of Books.

An Amazon All-Stars award winning title

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31d

📚 Pines by: Blake Crouch

One way in. No way out.

Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission: locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, n...

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One way in. No way out.

Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission: locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase.

As the days pass, Ethan's investigation turns up more questions than answers: Why can't he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn't anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out?

Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan farther from the world he knew, from the man he was, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

The nail-bitingly suspenseful opening installment in Blake Crouch’s blockbuster Wayward Pines trilogy, Pines is at once a brilliant mystery tale and the first step into a genre-bending saga of suspense, science fiction, and horror.

The first book of the smash-hit Wayward Pines trilogy, from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter, Recursion, and Upgrade

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31d

📚 Pachinko by: Min Jin Lee

Yeongdo, Korea, 1911. Teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a fisherman, falls for a wealthy yakuza. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant, and that her lover is married, she refuses to be bought.

Facing ruin, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle minister passing thro...

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Yeongdo, Korea, 1911. Teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a fisherman, falls for a wealthy yakuza. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant, and that her lover is married, she refuses to be bought.

Facing ruin, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle minister passing through on his way to Japan. Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country where she has no friends, Sunja will be forced to make some difficult choices. Her decisions will echo through the decades.

Spanning nearly 100 years of history, Pachinko is an unforgettable story of love, sacrifice, ambition and loyalty told through four generations of one family.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES' BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY

- The million-copy bestseller
- National Book Award finalist
- A New York Times Bestseller
- Selected for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club
- Selected for The Queen's Reading Room

This is a captivating book. Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK OBAMA.

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24d

📚 The Mountain in the Sea by: Ray Nayler

The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed off the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where a species of octopus has been discovered that may have developed its own language and culture. The marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching c...

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The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed off the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where a species of octopus has been discovered that may have developed its own language and culture. The marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them. She travels to the islands to join DIANIMA's team: a battle-scarred securityagent and the world’s first (and possibly last) android.

The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. As Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves.

But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. Or what they might do about it.

A near-future thriller, a meditation on the nature of consciousness, and an eco-logical call to arms, Ray Nayler's dazzling literary debut The Mountain in the Sea is a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.

*WINNER OF 2023 LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL . FINALIST FOR THE NEBULA AWARD, and THE LOS ANGELES TIMES RAY BRADBURY PRIZE

The Mountain in the Sea is a wildly original, gorgeously written, unputdownable gem of a novel. Ray Nayler is one of the most exciting new voices I’ve read in years.
-Blake Crouch, author of Upgrade and Dark Matter

Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets

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