Reading Challenge: The Backlist Reader

Just so I remember:

Book need to be on my TBR list somewhere before signing up for this challenge.
Doesn’t metter if I own the book or borrow it from the library. Or buy it during the year as long as it was on my list.
Book publishing date needs to be before 2022 so 2021 downward.

  • Challenge Website: Link
  • Goal: 20
  • Challenge Post: Link

The Honeybee Heist

LauraLeave a Comment on The Honeybee Heist
The Honeybee Heist
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, Book # 7
Poisoned Pen Press
October 24, 2020
eBook
106
English
February 13, 2023 February 17, 2023
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The world's greatest detective is back in an all-new adventure! When thieves pull off a daring heist that threatens a quaint town in Montana, Virginia Holmes and her partner decide to work "pro bono," taking no pay unless they can solve the case in time to prevent economic ruin. What they find is an elaborately planned theft that baffles them at every turn. And at the center of the mystery is one crucial question ... how does thief steal MILLIONS OF HONEYBEES?!

What I think

Nice story, certainly not full of twists. The style still doesn’t convince me, too many repetitions and a superficial language. Although I learned a lot about bees, I don’t understand what these poor bees did to get stolen. Or rather, I understand the reason given but, bees? really…oh well. I don’t think I will continue with the series. However I have to say that I like Holmes, I feel like I’m reading Hetty from NCIS: Los Angeles when I read her parts.

Between Shades of Gray

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Between Shades of Gray


Philomel Books
March 22, 2011
Hardcover
344
English
February 3, 2023 February 9, 2023

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.

About the book

We are in Lithuania at the beginning of the Second World War, Lina with her family is deported to Siberia in a labour camp, but she doesn’t know why. Her family, like other families of university professors, writers and doctors, is on the black list that the Soviet police uses to deport people. She only wants to draw and perhaps this ability is her only salvation.

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The Last Train to London : A Novel

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The Last Train to London : A Novel
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HarperCollins Publishers
September 10, 2019
eBook
480
English
January 28, 2023 February 2, 2023
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In 1936, the Nazi are little more than loud, brutish bores to fifteen-year old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Vienna’s streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephan’s best friend and companion is the brilliant Žofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescents’ carefree innocence is shattered when the Nazis’ take control.

There is hope in the darkness, though. Truus Wijsmuller, a member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after the Anschluss—Hitler’s annexation of Austria—as, across Europe, countries close their borders to the growing number of refugees desperate to escape.

Tante Truus, as she is known, is determined to save as many children as she can. After Britain passes a measure to take in at-risk child refugees from the German Reich, she dares to approach Adolf Eichmann, the man who would later help devise the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” in a race against time to bring children like Stephan, his young brother Walter, and Žofie-Helene on a perilous journey to an uncertain future abroad.

About the book

The book is about a true story even if a little fictionalised, in the sense that the author, as she says in the final part, added her own, especially where it is not known exactly how the story went.

What I think

The book is very beautiful, the hope that you read is very heartfelt and knowing this part of the history made me happy. I knew the rough outlines of the help England gave to Jewish children, but I didn’t know the story that deep.

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From Bruges with Love

LauraLeave a Comment on From Bruges with Love
De kinderen van Chronos


, Book # 3
Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
January 1, 1997
Paperback
336
Dutch; Flemish
Brian Doyle
January 25, 2023 January 29, 2023
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Inspector Pieter Van In is begrudgingly finishing up a healthy lunch when he hears the news: While restoring their farmhouse, the Vermasts have found a skeleton in the backyard. Van In, who happens to be married to the deputy public prosecutor, is determined to solve the case in double-quick time and squeeze in one last vacation before the birth of his first child.

But this murder is trickier than it looks, and Van In soon finds himself in murky waters. The Vermasts’ land belonged to the most prominent businessman in West Flanders before it was suddenly handed over to a right-wing charity. The heavily endowed foundation appears to have no expenditures or investments. So who’s financing it—and why?

Before he knows it, Van In finds himself in the middle of a complex web—one that involves high-level officials, local law enforcement, and common thugs. The harder he tries to unravel the thread, the more difficult it becomes to uncover the secrets that the charity’s benefactors are trying to hide. This time Van In will have to risk lives to find out the truth.

About the book

A body is found in the garden of a house outside the city. The body looks like a man and has been underground since 1985, or so it seems. Van In finds himself investigating against politicians and men of power who would like to see the case covered up. Obviously he goes on and what he discovers is a truth that has been buried for more than 20 years.

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The Torment of Others

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The Torment of Others
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, Book # 4
HarperCollins Publishers
January 1, 2004
eBook
466
English
January 18, 2023 January 23, 2023
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A dead girl lies on a blood-soaked mattress, her limbs spread in a parody of ecstasy. The scene matches a series of murders which ended when irrefutable forensic evidence secured the conviction of one Derek Tyler. But Tyler's been locked up in a mental institution for two years, barely speaking a word except to say that 'the Voice' told him to do it.

Top criminal psychologist Dr Tony Hill is prepared to think the unthinkable - this is not a copycat murder but something much stranger. While DCI Carol Jordan and her team mount a desperate and dangerous undercover police operation to trap the murderer, Hill heads towards a terrifying face-off with one of the most perverse killers he has ever encountered..

About the book

After the third volume of this series, Carol Jordan took a break, but Tony Hill knows she must get back to work to overcome the trauma of the previous case. Meanwhile, a new serial killer roams the streets of Bradfield and is killing prostitutes. What’s special? That this case was solved two years ago without a doubt and the killer is locked up in the psychiatric hospital where Tony has been working part-time for some time. Meanwhile, a missing child has not yet been found.

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