Modern Good Reads discussion

What do you want to read & discuss in March?

We will be picking from your choices, but one book will be decided by your votes and the second by the moderators. We try to maintain a balance between indie and more mainstream books, and will make sure the final choices reflect the two. If the popular vote is for an indie, then the moderators will choose a mainstream option. If the popular vote is mainstream, then we will chose an indie option.


Please nominate your favorite to our list and we will get the poll up soon. First the ground rules:
- No self-nominations
- Any nominated book must have a minimum of 100 ratings
- The nominations will be open for three days
- Nominations will be listed in a first-come, first-serve manner, with the books with the most nominations heading the list
- Total number of nominations taken for the poll is twenty.
- If you prefer to email me your choices, those will be added at the end of that day’s nominations.

I nominate Chaysing Dreams, the first book in Jalpa Williby's Chaysing series. I loved it.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

"I've been following her for the past few days. I know where she buys her groceries, where she has her dry cleaning done, where she works. I don't know the color of her eyes or what they look like when she's scared. But I will."

Born to a prominent Chicago judge and his stifled socialite wife, Mia Dennett moves against the grain as a young inner-city art teacher. One night, Mia enters a bar to meet her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when he doesn't show, she unwisely leaves with an enigmatic stranger. With his smooth moves and modest wit, at first Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand. But following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia's life.

Colin's job was to abduct Mia as part of a wild extortion plot and deliver her to his employers. But the plan takes an unexpected turn when Colin suddenly decides to hide Mia in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota, evading the police and his deadly superiors. Mia's mother, Eve, and detective Gabe Hoffman will stop at nothing to find them, but no one could have predicted the emotional entanglements that eventually cause this family's world to shatter.

An addictively suspenseful and tautly written thriller, The Good Girl is a compulsive debut that reveals how even in the perfect family, nothing is as it seems….

JerUSAlem and the Blood of Jesus

I would like to discuss something of great importance that has to do with the law vs legalism, the mind and the future of things taking place today and what people can do about it.

I Am Pilgrim

A breakneck race against time...and an implacable enemy.

An anonymous young woman murdered in a run-down hotel, all identifying characteristics dissolved by acid.

A father publicly beheaded in the blistering heat of a Saudi Arabian public square.

A notorious Syrian biotech expert found eyeless in a Damascus junkyard.

Smoldering human remains on a remote mountainside in Afghanistan.

A flawless plot to commit an appalling crime against humanity.

One path links them all, and only one man can make the journey.

18,620 ratings in GoodReads for an average of 4,21 stars.

I nominate The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove. 5,158 ratings, 283 reviews.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Synopsis: "The Army of Northern Virginia in 1863 is ragged and ill-equipped. The battle of Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower. Grant and Lincoln have nearly won the war between the states.

Then Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with strange clothing and an unplaceable accent, approaches General Robert E Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing new rifle; its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking--and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantities of the weapon and ammunition (100,000 rounds) to the Confederates.

He calls the extraordinary new weapon an AK-47."

In one of Harry Turtledove's first novels he explores the idea of an alternate history set in the US Civil War. But it is not just about the war, it paints a realistic portrait of what might have happened if the South won the war and how it might have affected slavery and civil rights. What if Lincoln had lived? How would the two nations have grown and would they have eventually have rejoined? A great read for everyone and incredibly researched. Highly recommended.

I want to nominate Faking Normal. It's kind of an "issues" book, but I think it's a valuable addition to the YA realm. I keep hearing it compared to "Speak," but I haven't gotten a chance to read that one yet. (I hope t remedy that within a month or so--local librarians willing...)

I nominate psychological thriller First Night of Summer

"Thoroughly engaging from start to finish...Overwhelming love, fear, self-doubt, and rage...emotions any parent could relate to. A foe that readers will want to see defeated, abolished, ground to dust."
--Sandra Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of LETHAL

"FIRST NIGHT OF SUMMER is a wonderfully written tale of secrets, subterfuge and their effects on one family. Landon Parham's debut thriller is a smooth mix of C.J. Box with Harlan Coben in an angst-riddled novel staged in the murky half-light of moral complexity. The book's simple, ironic title belies its fully realized characterizations and multi-layered plot, serving up a superb cat-and-mouse game where very little is what it first appears to be."
--Jon Land, bestselling author of STRONG RAIN FALLING

WHEN TRAGEDY STRIKES, a father discovers that a journey of misfortune is sometimes the path to deliverance.

The quaint mountain town of Ruidoso, New Mexico, is the perfect place for Isaac Snow to raise his family. But when eight-year-old daughters, Caroline and Josie, commit an innocent act of heroism, media coverage attracts the wrong kind of attention. Soon, their life unravels, leading them to the crossroads of love and hate, forgiveness and retribution.

In the dark hours of a drizzly morning, Isaac, an ex-air force pilot, wakes to find a masked intruder cradling one of the twins in his arms. Before he can react, the man in black leaps through the nearest window, plummeting in a tangle of body parts and glass. Isaac charges in pursuit, but is suddenly faced with a new dilemma. Caroline is unconscious, lying facedown in the lawn, cuts from the shattered window saturating her pajamas. If he gives chase, his little girl will surely bleed to death.

From a secretive loner with a pension for unrestrained violence to the pristine granite peaks of the Rocky Mountains--from laughter filled family dinners to a string of cross-country abductions, LANDON PARHAM'S debut novel relentlessly explores the horrific realities of unnatural lust and obsession. Taken well beyond the investigation and law-enforcement tactics, you'll find yourself steeped in journey of evil and torment, and the power of family that overcomes it all. Suspenseful, bold and meticulously researched; a true psychological thriller that captures the heart.

Last Light

It begins on a very normal Monday morning. But in the space of only a few days, the world's oil supplies have been severed and at a horrifying pace things begin to unravel everywhere. This is no natural disaster. Someone is behind this. Oil engineer Andy Sutherland is stranded in Iraq with a company of British soldiers, desperate to find a way home, trapped as the very infrastructure of daily life begins to collapse around him. Back in Britain, his wife Jenny is stuck in Manchester, fighting desperately against the rising chaos to get back to their children in London as events begin to spiral out of control -- riots, raging fires, looting, rape, and murder. In the space of a week, London is transformed into an anarchic vision of hell. Meanwhile, a mysterious man is tracking Andy's family. He'll silence anyone who can reveal the identities of those behind this global disaster. The people with a stranglehold on the future of civilization have flexed their muscles at other significant tipping points in history, and they are prepared to do anything to keep their secret -- and their power -- safe.

All the Light We Cannot See

My first go round on nominating a book. Please excuse me if the group has already read this book. The book was a GoodReads CHOICE Award for 2014

It is a retrospective on WWII as experienced through the eyes of children.

Book Synopsis:

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When Marie-Laure is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Mud, Sweat and Tears

“Bear Grylls is a veritable superhero….The former UK Special Forces paratrooper has braved the world’s harshest environments.”
—Hampton Sides, Outside Magazine

“Bear Grylls is one tough, crazy dude.”
—Washington Post

Already a #1 London Sunday Times Bestseller, Mud, Sweat, and Tears is the adrenaline-fueled autobiography of the mega-popular star of the hit survival series Man Vs. Wild, adventurer Bear Grylls. A former British Special Forces commando, a man who has always sought the ultimate in dangerous challenges, Bear’s true story reads like an outdoors action and adventure novel. But Bear’s story is true—full of breathtaking escapes and remarkable exploits that would make any Jack London or H. Ryder Haggard hero proud.

Yes, it's about the guy that we see on TV eating every bug he meets.

I second The Good Girl.

Thanks for all these great nominations. I will put the poll together this evening.