A whole 5 years since I bought my Kindle Paperwhite and a whole year since I caved in and bought my Kindle Scribe! So, I thought I would do another blog post from the year before talking about all the books I read on my Kindle from Aug 2023 – Aug 2024.

Plot: What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award–winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy. An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind—hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out eons ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.

Plot: Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family’s insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of The Golden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried – gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore’s pelvis remained hidden. The book was a sensation. A community of treasure hunters called the Bonehunters formed, in frenzied competition, obsessed to a dangerous degree. People sold their homes to travel to England and search for Elinore. Marriages broke down as the quest consumed people. A man died. The book made Frank a rich man. Stalked by fans who could not tell fantasy from reality, his daughter, Nell, became a recluse. But now the Churchers must be reunited. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. Nell is appalled, and terrified. During the filming, Frank finally reveals the whereabouts of the missing golden bone. And then all hell breaks loose.

Plot: Down a quiet backstreet in Kyoto exists a very special restaurant. Run by Koishi Kamogawa and her father Nagare, the Kamogawa Diner treats its customers to wonderfully extravagant meals. But that’s not the main reason to stop by . . . The father-daughter duo have started advertising their services as ‘food detectives’. Through ingenious investigations, they are capable of recreating a dish from their customers’ pasts – dishes that may well hold the keys to forgotten memories and future happiness. From the widower looking for a specific noodle dish that his wife used to cook, to a first love’s beef stew, the restaurant of lost recipes provides a link to the past – and a way to a more contented future.

Plot: Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood. The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom. But even as undeniable as she is, Laure is not the only monster around. And her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is—monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first.

Plot: Teddy Angstrom is no stranger to morbid public interest in her family’s tragedies. And when her father dies suddenly, ten years to the day after her sister Angie’s disappearance, she intends to maintain as much privacy as she always has. Clearing out her father’s office, however, Teddy discovers her father’s double a decade-long investigation into wild conspiracies from a Reddit community of true crime fans fixated on Angie. Repelled and compelled in equal measure by this new online dimension, Teddy finds herself falling down that same rabbit hole. So when nineteen-year-old Mickey, a charming amateur internet sleuth, materialises in real life, Teddy determines that the two of them are going to team up to find out what really happened to Angie – and whether there’s any chance she might still be alive. But as she struggles to reconcile new information with old memories, Teddy doesn’t notice that her obsession is making her increasingly self-destructive. And she’s in way over her head before she’s realises that Mickey, too, is not all she seems…

Plot: Struggling to deal with the familial trauma of her Catholic upbringing, hotel cleaner, Noelle, travels to the Isle of Bute. There, she meets a man who claims to be a vampire, and a relationship blooms between them based solely on confession. But as talk turns sacrilegious, and the weather outside grows colder, Noelle struggles to come to terms with her blasphemous sexuality. She becomes hounded by memories of her past: her mother’s affair with the local priest, and the part she played in ending it.

Synopsis: She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral—viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time. Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways—there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Synopsis: How the monarchs of England and Scotland met their deaths has been a shocking mixture of violence, infections, overindulgence, and occasional regicide. In Mortal Monarchs, medical historian Dr. Suzie Edge examines 1,000 years of royal deaths to uncover the plots, accusations, rivalries, and ever-present threat of poison that the kings and queens of old faced.

Plot: Amid the rubble of post-war Tokyo, inside the grand Tsubaki house, a once-noble family is in mourning. The old viscount Tsubaki, a brooding, troubled composer, has been found dead. When the family gather for a divination to conjure the spirit of their departed patriarch, death visits the house once more, and the brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi is called in to investigate. But before he can get to the truth Kindaichi must uncover the Tsubakis’ most disturbing secrets, while the gruesome murders continue…

Plot: All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power. Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them. As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.

Plot: To an observer, hauling a baby grand piano onto a college quad to publicly serenade an ex might seem like a romantic gesture. To literature professor Eva Campbell, it’s the latest manipulative move by a cheating jerk who won’t take a hint. Plus, she never liked that song anyway. Setting the piano on fire  might  be an overreaction, but Eva’s at the end of her rope, at least until hot young firefighter Sean Hannigan talks her down. And that’s not all Sean does. Soon he’s offering to be Eva’s fake boyfriend to get her creepy ex off her back. Unexpected, maybe, but there’s something about Sean—beyond the angelic face and take-me-now body—that makes Eva say yes. Sean battles infernos for a living, reads romance on the side and is a straight-up, family-loving good guy. Eva’s not sure she’s ready for the danger he poses to her jaded heart. Given their differences, a relationship can’t last, right? But the line between fake and real keeps blurring, daring her to take the biggest risk of all…

Plot: Detective Chief Inspector Ryan retreats to Holy Island seeking sanctuary when he is forced to take sabbatical leave from his duties as a homicide detective. A few days before Christmas, his peace is shattered and he is thrust back into the murky world of murder when a young woman is found dead amongst the ancient ruins of the nearby Priory. When former local girl Dr Anna Taylor arrives back on the island as a police consultant, old memories swim to the surface making her confront her difficult past. She and Ryan struggle to work together to hunt a killer who hides in plain sight, while pagan ritual and small-town politics muddy the waters of their investigation.

Synopsis: From glossy costume dramas to gripping reads, the glamorous world of Regency London’s Bon Ton is synonymous with romance – a place where dashing heroes and independently minded heroines flirt, fight and side-step scandal, all while in pursuit of the perfect match. But who were the real women who went looking for love in the age of elegance, and what were their lives really like? Taking us behind drawing room doors and into high society ballrooms, The Game of Hearts follows six leading ladies and their family, friends, and contemporaries as they move from matchmaking to matrimony and beyond. Candid insights into the competitive world of the marriage mart; real stories of rakish husbands and rich heiresses; and true tales of lost and long-lasting love, reveal not just Regency courtship customs, but truly captivating lives. Using diaries, letters and stories of scandal from the newspapers, author Felicity Day pieces together a rich and intimate view of this most beloved period of British history, showcasing the voices and opinions, hopes and desires of the real women who lived and loved in the Regency era.

Plot: New Alms is a city of sin and vice, populated by all manner of criminals. The ruling Cerenite priests can barely keep order; not that they—or anyone else for that matter—ever try too hard. It’s a den of cutthroats and thieves, and there ain’t many thieves out there as talented or as skilled as Jackson Balor. When Jackson’s hired by a priest to steal an old mask, he thinks it’s just another job. But that’s before he sees the blasphemous shrine it’s housed in, before he starts getting followed around by bugs and birds and three-eyed cats, before he finds out that the mask was a vessel for the Wild God Ferengris, and that by filching it, he’s invited the Enemy of Civilization to take up residence inside his head. Now to save his own mind, Jackson’s gonna have to team up with the very Wild cult he stole the mask from and take it back from the Cerenite Temple. But the priests have their own plans for the Wild God’s artifact. They have their own ambitions for New Alms—and Jackson’s about to learn that there ain’t no room in their design for no-good criminal scum like him.

Plot: When Auto mechanic Sawyer Taft’s estranged grandmother offers her a six-figure contract to participate in debutante season, Sawyer’s first instinct is to run a mile. But then she realizes her grandmother’s offer might mean solving the biggest mystery of her life – her father’s identity. So she signs on the dotted line and braces herself for a year of makeovers, big dresses and even bigger egos. . .
However, Sawyer doesn’t expect to find a group of fellow debutantes with scandalous, dangerous secrets of their own and soon it’s clear that the truth about her father is just one of the shocking secrets buried deep in this high-society world . . . And no one wants Sawyer poking her nose into the past.

Plot: Reluctant debutante Sawyer Taft joined Southern high society for one reason and one reason alone: to identify and locate her biological father. But the answers Sawyer found during her debutante year only left her with more questions and one potentially life-ruining secret. When her cousin Lily ropes her into pledging a mysterious, elite, and all-female secret society called the White Gloves, Sawyer soon discovers that someone in the group’s ranks may have the answers she’s looking for. Things are looking up… until Sawyer and the White Gloves make a disturbing discover near the family’s summer home–and uncover a twisted secret, decades in the making.

Plot: Chef Nagare and his daughter Koishi serve their customers more than delicious food at their Kamogawa Diner down a quiet street in Kyoto. They can help recreate meals from their customers’ most treasured memories. Through ingenious investigations, these “food detectives” untangle flavors and pore through old shopping lists to remake unique dishes from the past. From the swimmer who misses his father’s lunchbox to the model who longs for fried rice from her childhood, each customer leaves the diner forever changed—though not always in the ways they expect…