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Book List - Books Read in 2019

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<?=$who;?> Books Read in 2019 Edit
List created by Heather D. (icantswim) - on Dec 24, 2019
List Votes: 1 Books: 53 Contributors: 1 Watchers: 0 List Type: Open
1
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, and The Lying Game comes Ruth Ware’s highly anticipated fourth novel. On a day that begins like any other, Hal receives a mysterious letter bequeathing her a substantial inheritance. She...  more

Book Votes: 1
2
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, Bk 1) by Tana French
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing...  more

Book Votes: 1
3
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn
Anna Fox lives alone -- a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother,...  more

Book Votes: 1
4
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
An unforgettable memoir in the tradition of The Glass Castle about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the...  more

Book Votes: 1
5
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
A dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the Thames. The regulars are entertaining themselves by telling stories when the door bursts open on an injured stranger. In his arms is the drowned corpse of a little child. Hours later the dead girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to...  more

Book Votes: 1
6
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell
The lingering aftermath of a young girl’s disappearance... Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter. She was fifteen and the youngest of three. Beloved by her parents, friends, and teachers, and half of a teenaged golden couple. Ellie was days away from an idyllic post-exams summer vacation,...  more

Book Votes: 1
7
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Handmaid's Tale (Handmaid's Tale, Bk 1) by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest...  more

Book Votes: 1
8
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Stranger Diaries (Harbinder Kaur, Bk 1) by Elly Griffiths
Death lies between the lines when the events of a dark story start coming true in this haunting modern Gothic mystery, perfect for fans of Magpie Murders and The Lake House. Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M....  more

Book Votes: 1
9
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
When she stumbles across the ad, she’s looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss—a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten—by the luxurious...  more

Book Votes: 1
10
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Testaments (Handmaid's Tale, Bk 2) by Margaret Atwood
Fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with...  more

Book Votes: 1
11
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Omens (Cainsville, Bk 1) by Kelley Armstrong
#1 New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong begins her new series with Omens, featuring a compelling new heroine thrust into a decades-old murder case and the dark mysteries surrounding her strange new home. Twenty-four-year-old Olivia Taylor Jones has the perfect life. The only...  more

Book Votes: 0
12
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One...  more

Book Votes: 0
13
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Salt to the Sea (Large Print) by Ruta Sepetys
Shining a light on one of the war's most devastating, yet unknown, tragedies... World War II is drawing to a close in East Prussia and thousands of refugees are on a desperate trek toward freedom, many with something to hide. Among them are Joana, Emilia, and Florian, whose paths converge en...  more

Book Votes: 0
14
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight, Bk 1) by Katherine Arden
At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind. She spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she...  more

Book Votes: 0
15
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
"She smiled a soft, troubled smile and I felt the whole world slipping away, and I wanted to slip with it, to go wherever she was going... I had existed whole years without her, but that was all it had been. An existence. A book with no words." Tom Hazard has just moved back to...  more

Book Votes: 0
16
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
A journey through old Hollywood into the harsh realities of the present day as two women struggle with what it means, and what it costs, to face the truth... Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when...  more

Book Votes: 0
17
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay
The Far Field follows a complicated flaneuse across the Indian subcontinent as she reckons with her past, her desires, and the tumultuous present. In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in...  more

Book Votes: 0
18
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Severance by Ling Ma
Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted...  more

Book Votes: 0
19
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Gustav Sonata: A Novel by Rose Tremain
A tale of betrayal, survival, and enduring friendship shadowed by the Second World War. Gustav Perle grows up in a small town in Switzerland, where the horrors of the Second World War seem only a distant echo. An only child, he lives alone with Emilie, the mother he adores but who treats him...  more

Book Votes: 0
20
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
How to Walk Away (Thorndike Press Large Print Core) by Katherine Center
From the author of Happiness for Beginners comes an unforgettable love story about finding joy even in the darkest of circumstances. Margaret Jacobsen is just about to step into the bright future she's worked for so hard and so long: a new dream job, a fiancé she adores, and the promise of a...  more

Book Votes: 0
21
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Sleeping Giants (Themis Files, Bk 1) by Sylvain Neuvel
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square-shaped hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little...  more

Book Votes: 0
22
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Confessions by Kanae Minato & Stephen Snyder (Translator)
HER PUPILS KILLED HER DAUGHTER. NOW, SHE WILL HAVE HER REVENGE. After calling off her engagement in wake of a tragic revelation, Yuko Moriguchi had nothing to live for except her only child, four-year-old Manami. Now, following an accident on the grounds of the middle school where she...  more

Book Votes: 0
23
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Winter Sister by Megan Collins
In this spellbinding and suspenseful debut, a young woman haunted by the past returns home to care for her ailing mother and begins to dig deeper into her sister?s unsolved murder. Sixteen years ago, Sylvie?s sister Persephone never came home. Out too late with the boyfriend she was forbidden...  more

Book Votes: 0
24
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Normal People by Sally Rooney
At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and...  more

Book Votes: 0
25
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Library at the Edge of the World by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
As she drives her mobile library van between villages of Ireland’s West Coast, Hanna Casey tries not to think about a lot of things. Like the sophisticated lifestyle she abandoned after finding her English barrister husband in bed with another woman. Or that she’s back in Lissbeg,...  more

Book Votes: 0
26
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. In The Interestings, Wolitzer follows these characters from the height of youth through middle age, as their talents,...  more

Book Votes: 0
27
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Golden Child: A Novel by Claire Adam
A deeply affecting debut novel set in Trinidad, following the lives of a family as they navigate impossible choices about scarcity, loyalty, and love Rural Trinidad: a brick house on stilts surrounded by bush; a family, quietly surviving, just trying to live a decent life. Clyde, the father,...  more

Book Votes: 0
28
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Miracle Creek: A Novel by Angie Kim
A thrilling debut novel for fans of Liane Moriarty and Celeste Ng about how far we?ll go to protect our families?and our deepest secrets My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn?t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first . . .In rural Virginia, Young and Pak Yoo...  more

Book Votes: 0
29
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
"There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones." In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He...  more

Book Votes: 0
30
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter
The Stunning new novel from the internationally #1 bestselling author-a searing, spellbinding blend of cold-case thriller and psychological suspense. Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family...  more

Book Votes: 0
31
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Ruin (Cormac Reilly, Bk 1) by Dervla McTiernan
It's been twenty years since Cormac Reilly discovered the body of Hilaria Blake in her crumbling Georgian home. But he's never forgotten the two children she left behind... When Aisling Conroy's boyfriend Jack is found in the freezing black waters of the river Corrib, the police...  more

Book Votes: 0
32
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
When newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge, what greets her is far from the life of wealth and privilege she was expecting... When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined...  more

Book Votes: 0
33
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Recursion by Blake Crouch
Memory makes reality. That's what NYC cop Barry Sutton is learning, as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome—a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived. That's what...  more

Book Votes: 0
34
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Lost Among the Living by Simone St. James
England, 1921. Three years after her husband, Alex, disappeared, shot down over Germany, Jo Manders still mourns his loss. Working as a paid companion to Alex's wealthy, condescending aunt, Dottie Forsyth, Jo travels to the family’s estate in the Sussex countryside. But there is...  more

Book Votes: 0
35
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
Alaska, 1974: Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed. For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival... 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...  more

Book Votes: 0
36
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
A Nearly Normal Family by M. T. Edvardsson & Rachel Willson-Broyles (Translator)
M.T. Edvardsson’s A Nearly Normal Family is a gripping legal thriller that forces the reader to consider: How far would you go to protect the ones you love? In this twisted narrative of love and murder, a horrific crime makes a seemingly normal family question everything they thought they...  more

Book Votes: 0
37
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Lock Every Door by Riley Sager
No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen's new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings....  more

Book Votes: 0
38
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Girl in the Tower (Winternight, Bk 2) by Katherine Arden
A young woman blazes her own trail, from the backwoods of Russia to the court of Moscow... Vasilisa has grown up at the edge of a Russian wilderness, where snowdrifts reach the eaves of her family’s wooden house and there is truth in the fairy tales told around the fire. Vasilisa’s...  more

Book Votes: 0
39
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
THINGS FALL APART tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a “strong man” of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of...  more

Book Votes: 0
40
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Rosewater (Wormwood, Bk 1) by Tade Thompson
Tade Thompson's Rosewater is the start of an award-winning, cutting edge trilogy set in Nigeria, by one of science fiction's most engaging new voices. Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful,...  more

Book Votes: 0
41
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Beautiful Ruins (P.S.) by Jess Walter
The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress,...  more

Book Votes: 0
42
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
"Life is both fleeting and dangerous, and there is no point in denying yourself pleasure, or being anything other than what you are." In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent...  more

Book Votes: 0
43
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center
Cassie Hanwell was born for emergencies. As one of the only female firefighters in her Texas firehouse, she's seen her fair share of them, and she's excellent at dealing with other people's tragedies. But when her estranged and ailing mother asks her to uproot her life and move to...  more

Book Votes: 0
44
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity... until now. Daisy is a girl coming of age in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of...  more

Book Votes: 0
45
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves...  more

Book Votes: 0
46
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Korede's sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola's knife. Korede's practicality is the sisters' saving grace. She knows the best...  more

Book Votes: 0
47
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply...  more

Book Votes: 0
48
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Ninth House (Alex Stern, Bk 1) by Leigh Bardugo
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she...  more

Book Votes: 0
49
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
'Shrewdly observed, brimming with wisdom and utterly of this moment . . . Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut is that rare and delicious treat: a page turner with heft' MARIA SEMPLE'Taffy Brodesser-Akner can write the pants off any novelist out there. She's a star, and this book is a work of utter...  more

Book Votes: 0
50
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister
Water for Elephants meets The Night Circus in The Magician’s Lie, a debut novel in which the country’s most notorious female illusionist stands accused of her husband's murder -- -and she has only one night to convince a small-town policeman of her innocence. The Amazing Arden...  more

Book Votes: 0
51
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
A moving and uproarious novel about a woman who finds meaning in her life when she begins caring for two children with remarkable and disturbing abilities. Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. But then Lillian had to leave the...  more

Book Votes: 0
52
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
The Whisper Man by Alex North
In his debut psychological thriller, Alex North weaves a multi-generational tale of suspense, as a father and son are caught in the crosshairs of an investigation to catch a serial killer preying on a small town.After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy believes a fresh start will help him...  more

Book Votes: 0
53
icantswim
Heather D. (icantswim) -
This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
A tale about an orphan's life-changing adventure traveling down America's great rivers during the Great Depression, seeking both a place to call home and a sense of purpose in a world sinking into despair.   "Ask me, God's right here.  In the dirt, the rain, the...  more

Book Votes: 0

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Comment added 6/6/21 by Jeanne G. (IlliniAlum83) - , :
Love Elly Griffiths and Ruth Ware....try to read every book they write. Working my way thru Elly’s archeology mystery series .