Synopsis:
Subtitled: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization.
Review:
I was first introduced to Lars Brownworth’s Lost to the West thanks to his outstanding podcast 12 Byzantine Rulers. He presented tangled, complicated history so compellingly that I just had to read the book.
The book is a fantastic read. The history is clearly presented with [...]

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Synopsis:
A collection of unpublished and previously uncollected short stories by the reigning queen of gothic Americana.
Review:
Short stories are not usually my cup of tea, because they’re over far too quickly. But I’ll read anything that Shirley Jackson writes, and I really enjoyed the stories found in Just An Ordinary Day, which I’ve been reading [...]

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Synopsis:
After the death of her mother’s seventh husband in the gladiatorial arena, a teenage girl finds herself betrothed to his killer–unless she can fight her way out of it.
Review:
When I first picked up Girl in the Arena, I was expecting some kind of Hunger Games ripoff. That’s not a bad thing, per se–I love [...]

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I’m giving away 3 copies of Hunger Games–check out this post for rules & to enter!
Synopsis:
After winning the Hunger Games, underdog Katniss Everdeen finds herself caught up in political intrigue as rebellion foments in other districts, and when the president himself makes a game-changing move, Katniss must choose between love and freedom.
Review:
I was totally and [...]

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Synopsis:
A princess who can talk to animals sent to marry a foreign prince is replaced by her lady-in-waiting in a nefarious plot, and ends up caring for geese while she figures out a plan.
Review:
The Goose Girl was simply wonderful. Shannon Hale’s writing is poetic, subtle, and complex, and she really knows how to spin [...]

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Synopsis:
The death of her best friend sends an anorexic girl into a backsliding tailspin.
Review:
While all of Laurie Halse Anderson’s books are fantastic, Wintergirls is the first one to equal Speak in its simple depth, elegant honesty, and dynamic storytelling.
Anderson frames Lia’s emotional journey through her grief over the death of her best friend, the girl [...]

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Synopsis:
At night, the demons rise, terrorizing humanity for centuries until three grown orphans dare to fight back.
Review:
Warning: freak-out coming…
THE WARDED MAN ROCKED ROCKED ROCKED.
I mean, seriously. I am losing my mind over how good this book was. Why oh why oh why am I going to have to wait all the way until [...]

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Synopsis:
After winning the heart of the most popular girl in school, dorky Albert risks losing it all when her alpha ex-boyfriend develops Hodgkin’s.
Review:
Imagine the dorkiest kid you can imagine–the guy with no social filter, the one who’s never seen talking to anyone, who eats lunch in the cafeteria and never makes eye contact. Now [...]

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Synopsis:
An aging minister writes a letter to his young son, telling him all he’ll never have the chance to tell him when his son is a man.
Review:
“Just now I was listening to a song on the radio, standing there swaying to it a little, I guess, because your mother saw me from the hallway and [...]

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Synopsis:
Callously ravished by the man she hoped to love, an 11th Century Norwegian woman shapes her life around dreams of vengeance.
Review:
Gunnar’s Daughter is an early novel from the Sigrid Undset, author of the Nobel Prize-winning Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, and it is no less of a powerful, shocking work not just for a book set in [...]

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