Suspenseful, but at times, hard to stay engaged in.

People traveled in the 12th-15t centuries. Merchants sought new markets, diplomats finagled treaties, and anyone who could get the necessary funding and permissions took religious pilgrimages. Bale explores the most common holy and trade routes based on what the travelers wrote in journals and guidebooks. It is very interesting, but too limited. Bale points out several times that Christians (Roman and Eastern/Greek), Muslims, and Jewish pilgrims visited many of the same places in Constantinople and Jerusalem. We only have the Christian, and almost exclusively Western European Christian, stories. One small chapter near the end follows Asian travelers’ adventures in the west. Ma Huan (Chinese Muslim), Het’um (Armenian Christian), and Rabban Bar Sauma (Christian Mongol) don’t represent the majority of nonEuropeans. A broader range of viewpoints and less personal commentary from the author would improve the book.

An intimate charity auction on a secluded estate. A storm. A murder. It’s straight out of a Christie novel — or the multiplayer game, Murderscape, designed by Addie. Addie is her grandmother’s plus one to the party. There’s something odd with her grandmother, beyond the murder, but Addie is living her Nancy Drew dream chasing clues and interviewing suspects. This Is Not a Game is fun fluff at times, annoying fluff at others. I’m pretty sure the author has never lost electricity due to a storm. She definitely overestimates how much one candle can light up a large room in a blackout.

Absolutely loved this book. Will for sure read more by this author. HEA plus hockey romance, what more could you ask for. Lots of spice also!!

Garland compares beliefs about the afterlife, funerary issues like mummification and embalming, and general attitudes to death and dying across the peoples of the ancient world. Unfortunately the ancient world in this book only covers the various ancient societies of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome (only the original kingdom, not the full empire), plus the Etruscans, Jewish people, early Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Zoroastrians. That's a lot of course, but look at a map and you see what a very small part of the ancient world. Nothing east of India or west of Italy, north of Italy or south of Egypt. So while it is really interesting, I'm hoping for a volume two covering the Far East, Africa, Australia, and the whole western half of the world.

I love reading classics from my childhood!

Love this book. Amazing story a must read

Steve Smith is recently out of prison. He’s sworn he’s not going back to his old life, not going back to prison again. He has an adult son he’s never met. And Steve has memories of the book he found on a bus that led to a favorite teacher disappearing when he was 14. We follow Steve through transcripts of recorded notes he left on his phone. Because in trying to find out what happened to Miss Iles (or “missiles” per the transcription software) Steve falls down the vast Twyford Code conspiracy rabbit hole. Was Twyford just a children’s author? Or a spy who hid messages to other WWII spies in her books? Maybe she was a double agent? Did she help the Nazis steal Britain’s gold reserves? Or did she save the gold via bluffs and double bluffs? Her code (does it even exist?) leads to the stolen (or possibly saved) gold. Or to a supervirus and it’s vaccine. Or aliens. Or it’s the biggest internet conspiracy hoax ever. Who knows what? Who’s lying about what they know? And what did happen to Miss Iles in 1983?

I loved the movie and didn’t realize there was a book. I loved all the added detail in the book!!!!!

Donovan explores board games from ancient Egypt (senet) and Ur (the royal game of Ur) up to the biggies of the 21st century (Pandemic, Catan, and Ticket to Ride). He describes some less than ethical dealings by the big US game companies, but seems to downplay them. Trying to play nice, maybe? His chapter on Monopoly portrays the execs of Parker Brothers as being unfortunately duped instead of deliberately squashing The Landlord Game and its creator, Elizabeth Magie. It’s All a Game even touches on Google’s AlphaGo defeat of a (human) grand master go player, one of the big steps in AI development.