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<title>MyListens.com Book Reviews</title>
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<pubDate>Aug 14 2026 6:18 PM</pubDate>
<title>Where The Rivers Merge by Mary Alice Monroe</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3111</link>
<description><p>1908: The Lowcountry of South Carolina is at the cusp of change. Mayfield, the grand estate held for generations by the Rivers family, is the treasured home of young Eliza. A free spirit, she refuses to be confined by societal norms and spends her days exploring the vast property, observing wildlife, and riding horses. But the Great War, coastal storms, and family turmoil bring unexpected challenges to Eliza, putting her on a collision course with the patriarchal traditions of a bygone era.
</p><p>
1988: At 88, Eliza is the scion of the Rivers/DeLancey family. She&#039;s fought a lifetime to save her beloved Mayfield and is too independent and committed to quietly retire and leave the fate of the estate to her greedy son. She must make decisions that will assure the future of the land and her family--or watch them both be split apart.
</p><p>
Set against the evocative landscape of the twentieth-century Lowcountry, Where the Rivers Merge is a dramatic and sweeping multigenerational family story of unyielding love, lessons learned, profound sacrifices, and the indomitable spirit of a woman determined to persevere in the face of change in order to protect her family legacy and the land she loves. </p></description>
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<pubDate>Aug 14 2026 5:42 PM</pubDate>
<title>Nobody Knows You&#039;re Here by Bryn Greenwood</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3093</link>
<description><p>Beatrice is about to lose everything when a kind stranger offers her a cup of coffee and a job. It seems like a promise of a better life . . . until she wakes up under lock and key in an isolated mansion in the woods.
</p><p>
On orders from a shadowy criminal organization, armed jailers make the rules for their captives, enforcing them with unflinching violence. Beatrice has always been a &quot;nice girl,&quot; but that won&#039;t save her now. Nobody helped her when she lost her job, her car, and her home, and nobody&#039;s coming to give back her freedom. The only person she can rely on is herself. And now, several child hostages are relying on her too.
</p><p>
When the situation gets more dire--deadly even--Beatrice has to become the hero she and her fellow prisoners need. To escape she&#039;ll have to outsmart her captors and do terrible things that would horrify her former self. If she succeeds, there&#039;s no telling who she&#039;ll be when the ordeal comes to an end.
</p><p>
</p></description>
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<pubDate>Aug 12 2026 11:54 PM</pubDate>
<title>Follow The Water by Ellen Cochrane</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3098</link>
<description><p>On Christmas Eve 1971, seventeen-year-old Juliane Koepcke and her mother boarded a plane in Lima, Peru, bound for their home at the Panguana Research station deep in the Amazon. Twenty minutes from landing, the plane was struck by lightning, and Juliane hurtled two miles down through the rainforest canopy, crashing on the jungle floor.
</p><p>
She woke up the next day with a broken collarbone, missing her glasses and one shoe, but incredibly, miraculously, alive. Pulling on every bit of knowledge her rainforest-studying parents imparted to her, she journeyed through the danger-filled jungle for eleven days. She was the sole survivor.
</p><p>
Follow the Water is a powerful and unforgettable true story of survival against all odds.
</p><p>
</p></description>
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<pubDate>Aug 12 2026 12:36 PM</pubDate>
<title>Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3110</link>
<description><p>Mercy is hard in a place like this...
</p><p>
It&#039;s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town&#039;s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow.
</p><p>
In the early hours of the morning after Valentine&#039;s Day, fourteen-year-old Gloria Ramirez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead&#039;s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field--an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law. When justice is evasive, the stage is set for a showdown with potentially devastating consequences.
</p><p>
Valentine is a haunting exploration of the intersections of violence and race, class and region in a story that plumbs the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into beauty and hope. Told through the alternating points of view of indelible characters who burrow deep in the reader&#039;s heart, this fierce, unflinching, and surprisingly tender novel illuminates women&#039;s strength and vulnerability, and reminds us that it is the stories we tell ourselves that keep us alive. </p></description>
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<pubDate>Aug 10 2026 7:39 PM</pubDate>
<title>The Book Of Polly by Kathy Hepinstall</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3109</link>
<description><p>Willow Havens is ten years old and obsessed with the fear that her mother will die. Her mother, Polly, is a cantankerous, take-no-prisoners Southern woman who lives to chase varmints, drink margaritas, and antagonize the neighbors--and she sticks out like a sore thumb among the young modern mothers of their small conventional Texas town. She was in her late fifties when Willow was born, so Willow knows she&#039;s here by accident, a late-life afterthought. Willow&#039;s father died before she was born, her much older brother and sister are long grown and gone and failing elsewhere. It&#039;s just her and bigger-than-life Polly.
</p><p>
Willow is desperately hungry for clues to the family life that preceded her, and especially Polly&#039;s life pre-Willow. Why did she leave her hometown of Bethel, Louisiana, fifty years ago and vow never to return? Who is Garland Jones, her long-ago suitor who possibly killed a man? And will Polly be able to outrun the Bear, the illness that finally puts her on a collision course with her past?
</p><p>
The Book of Polly has a great blend of humor and sadness, pathos and hilarity. This is a bittersweet novel about the grip of love in a truly quirky family and you&#039;ll come to know one of the most unforgettable mother-daughter duos you&#039;ve ever met. </p></description>
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<pubDate>Aug 9 2026 12:44 AM</pubDate>
<title>The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3108</link>
<description><p>Honor Bright, a modest English Quaker, moves to Ohio in 1850--only to find herself alienated and alone in a strange land. Sick from the moment she leaves England, and fleeing personal disappointment, she is forced by family tragedy to rely on strangers in a harsh, unfamiliar landscape. Nineteenth-century America is practical, precarious, and unsentimental, and scarred by the continuing injustice of slavery. In her new home Honor discovers that principles count for little, even within a religious community meant to be committed to human equality.
</p><p>
However, Honor is drawn into the clandestine activities of the Underground Railroad, a network helping runaway slaves escape to freedom, where she befriends two surprising women who embody the remarkable power of defiance. Eventually she must decide if she too can act on what she believes in, whatever the personal costs. </p></description>
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<pubDate>Aug 7 2026 1:49 PM</pubDate>
<title>The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3106</link>
<description><p>Oxford, Mississippi, 1933.
</p><p>
Abandoned by her mother one Christmas Eve, eleven-year-old Meg Lefleur has learned the hard way to rely on no one. Now one of the unadoptable &quot;big girls&quot; at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, she fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed.
</p><p>
Birdie Calhoun, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford to ask her socialite sister to help the struggling family she&#039;s left behind. But as the Depression tightens its grip, Birdie discovers her sister&#039;s seemingly charmed life is a tapestry of lies.
</p><p>
Then, Birdie encounters Charlie, a woman running low on luck with little left to lose. When their fates--and Meg&#039;s--converge, Charlie comes up with an audacious plan for them to take control of their lives. But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife and women&#039;s freedom is fragile, even the smallest act of defiance can have dangerous consequences.
</p><p>
</p></description>
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<pubDate>Aug 1 2026 3:25 PM</pubDate>
<title>The Postman by David Brin</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3107</link>
<description><p>He was a survivor -- a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war.
</p><p>
Fate touches him one chill winter&#039;s day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.
</p><p>
This is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth. A timeless novel as urgently compelling as War Day or Alas, Babylon, David Brin&#039;s The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction.
</p><p>
</p></description>
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<pubDate>Jul 30 2026 12:12 AM</pubDate>
<title>The Good Girl by Mary Kubica</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=2545</link>
<description><p>&quot;I&#039;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&#039;t know the color of her eyes or what they look like when she&#039;s scared. But I will.&quot; 
</p><p>
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&#039;t show, she unwisely leaves with an enigmatic stranger. With his smooth moves and modest wit, Colin Thatcher seems at first like a safe one-night stand. But following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia&#039;s life. 
</p><p>
Colin&#039;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&#039;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&#039;s world to shatter. 
</p><p>
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. </p></description>
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<pubDate>Jul 27 2026 5:40 PM</pubDate>
<title>Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3105</link>
<description><p>My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.
</p><p>
Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie&#039;s followers--all 8 million of them--don&#039;t know won&#039;t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They&#039;re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn&#039;t simply living the good life, she&#039;s living the ideal--and just so happens to be building an empire from it.
</p><p>
Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn&#039;t hers. Her home, her husband, her children--they&#039;re all familiar, but something&#039;s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she&#039;s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.
</p><p>
A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood. </p></description>
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<pubDate>Jul 27 2026 1:15 AM</pubDate>
<title>After We Burned by Marieke Nijkamp</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3104</link>
<description><p>A terrible accident. A horrible loss. A regrettable tragedy. That&#039;s all anyone in Fenix can talk about when a fire consumes the local high school, taking the life of a student. The town mourns, except who really knew--let alone cared about--Eden when she was alive? And why was she in the building that night?
</p><p>
Five teens each hold a piece of the truth about what happened. They also have their own secrets, secrets they will fight to protect with the same fury as the blaze that killed Eden. But silence is meant to be broken, and this story can&#039;t be extinguished... </p></description>
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<pubDate>Jul 19 2026 3:05 PM</pubDate>
<title>The Grace Year by Kim Liggett</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3103</link>
<description><p>Survive the year.
</p><p>
No one speaks of the grace year. It&#039;s forbidden.
</p><p>
In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That&#039;s why they&#039;re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.
</p><p>
Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life--a society that doesn&#039;t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it&#039;s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It&#039;s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.
</p><p>
With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between. </p></description>
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<pubDate>Jul 17 2026 12:32 AM</pubDate>
<title>The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger</title>
<link>http://www.MyListens.com/viewbook.php?id=3101</link>
<description><p>To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna--the world&#039;s first category 6 hurricane--upends everything they have taken for granted.
</p><p>
When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs. Swept into a mass rush of evacuees from across the American South, they are transported hundreds of miles to a FEMA megashelter where their new community includes an insurance-agent-turned-drug dealer, a group of vulnerable children, and a dedicated relief worker trying to keep the peace. Will &quot;normal&quot; ever return?
</p><p>
A suspenseful read plotted on a vast national tapestry, The Displacements thrillingly explores what happens when privilege is lost and resilience is tested in a swiftly changing world. </p></description>
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